Film-Tech Forum ARCHIVE: DR. ZHIVAGO on May 4th in Blu-Ray

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Posted by Claude S. Ayakawa (Member # 1401) on 04-07-2010, 04:12 PM:

The Blu-Ray release of David Lean's DR. ZHIVAGO will be on May 4th. I saw this film many times on home video and once during it's first run in 70mm at the Cinerama Theatre in Honolulu during it's Road Show engagement. Beside it's epic story, the thing I fondly remember about this film was it's breathtaking cinematography by the late Freddie Young, BSC. Mr. Young was also responsible for two other films by David Lean, LAWRENCE OF ARABIA and RYAN"S DAUGHTER. Because of the exquisite work he did on the three films he photographed for David Lean , he received a Best Cinematography Academy Award for each of the three films. The only thing that had puzzled me me about the photography of DR. ZHIVAGO was why 65mm film was not used when Mr Young shot the film. He used it for the two other movies he photographed for David Lean. Although the 70mm blowup from 35mm was very good, native 65mm source would have yielded awesome results. I saw the two other films in 70mm and they were magnificent!

The BD will feature all of the bonus material that was on the special edition DVD that was released almost ten years ago and a CD sampler of music from DR. ZHIVAGO by Maurice Jarre.

-Claude

Posted by Richard P. May (Member # 3598) on 04-16-2010, 10:02 AM:

As I remember it, from Kevin Brownlow's biography of David Lean, shooting DR. Z in 35mm scope was a budget issue.

Posted by Bill Gabel (Member # 1105) on 05-09-2010, 01:50 PM:

Warner has done a very nice restoration on this film. The Dr. has not looked this good in a long time.

Posted by Claude S. Ayakawa (Member # 1401) on 05-09-2010, 02:00 PM:

Bill,

I am glad you liked the restoration Warners did on DR ZHIVAGO. I still did not get my copy yet because no local retailers are carrying it here even Best Buy. All I could get was SAVING PVT RYAN and that was excellent. Because I still have the excellent special edition of DR ZHIVAGO on DVD, I will wait until such time when Costco or other retailers will have it on sale in Blu Ray at very low prices. Costco did that with the WIZARD OF OZ, NORTH BY NORTHWEST , GONE WITH THE WIND, BLADE RUNNER, and the directors cut of WATCHMAN.

-Claude

Posted by John Wilson (Member # 269) on 05-11-2010, 05:00 PM:

Zhivago has never really been my cup of tea. Any idea when Laurence Of Arabia is due for BR?

Now THAT...would be great.

Posted by Claude S. Ayakawa (Member # 1401) on 05-13-2010, 02:35 PM:

John,

Sony was promoting a Blu-Ray of LAWRENCE OF ARABIA as coming soon on their BD trailers on their earlier releases. I do not know why the have not released it yet because Robert Harris did a wonderful job of restoring this film. I saw the restored version in 70mm several times. The first time was at the Northpoint Theatre in San Francisco and again at the Kapiolani and the Cinerama here in Honolulu and it was fantastic. I only hope when Sony finally releases this movie on BD, it will be from the restored 65mm elements and the studio uses only their best people who will do this film justice when they create the Blu-Ray disc. A classic example of what could go wrong can be seen in the Blu-Ray of SPARTACUS when Universal releases it very soon. Robert Harris who also restored this film now has a review up at the Home Theatre forum complaining about the new BD.

-Claude

Posted by Bobby Henderson (Member # 840) on 05-13-2010, 03:32 PM:

Sony is taking its time with the Lawrence of Arabia project and not giving out much in the way of details on progress or when the movie will be released on Blu-ray. The studio is definitely working on the movie and the eventual Blu-ray release will be sourced from an entirely new master created from the latest generation of film scanning equipment.

The previous materials used on the DVD release from several years ago won't cut it for Blu-ray.

Last fall Sony opened its Colorworks facility on the Sony lot, a facility formerly occupied by Technicolor. Sony installed a lot of brand new film scanning and digital intermediate gear along with some 4K digital projection systems.

BTW, I don't know if Technicolor has any design issues with their new Hollywood DI/authoring facility -the audio track for the new Saving Private Ryan Blu-ray had some lip sync issues and Paramount is now going to offer a disc exchange. I've had my BD of Saving Private Ryan only a couple of days. Ugh.

Anyway, I don't know if Sony's plans to build its own film scanning and DI facility had any impact on the time line of getting Lawrence of Arabia onto Blu-ray.

Another issue to consider is many older catalog titles have not exactly been selling well on Blu-ray, not even enough for the effort to be profitable. New movies have been dominating sales figures. Some general thinking is that it might be better to wait a couple of years or longer for the install base of Blu-ray players to double, quadruple, etc. before risking money on a film scan, meticulous DI clean-up and Blu-ray release of certain catalog titles, particularly movies that fall into "cult" status.

Lawrence of Arabia would probably sell well if released now on Blu-ray, but would move even more copies in a couple of years with a BD player install base being several times larger.

And the 50th anniversary of the release of Lawrence of Arabia is in 2012. Seems like a very obvious marketing thing to me.

Posted by John Wilson (Member # 269) on 05-13-2010, 05:21 PM:

quote: Bobby Henderson
And the 50th anniversary of the release of Lawrence of Arabia is in 2012. Seems like a very obvious marketing thing to me.

Agreed...that'll most likely be what they're waiting for. Hopefully, it'll get a 70mm re-issue the that anniversary first though.

Posted by Claude S. Ayakawa (Member # 1401) on 07-04-2010, 06:47 PM:

I finally had the opportunity to get a copy of DR ZHIVAGO on Blu Ray from Borders with their 50% Forth of July sales promo for their members and watched the movie in it's entirety last night. I saw it only once in a theatre and bits and pieces of it on home video in VHS, laserdisc and DVD and I was just amazed how wonderful it still look after 35 years. The last time I saw the picture looking that good was when I saw it at the Cinerama Theatre in 70mm during it original road show engagement. The Blu Ray was so outstanding, I have no doubt the picture could have looked like that in 70mm- nice and sharp with brilliant color especially the reds, yellows and flesh tones. The disc has a DTS HD Master Audio track and the sound was excellent although I do not have means to playback the sound in this format yet. It is not robust as modern day tracks is but managed to retain every bit of the quality of the original six track sound I heard at the Cinerama.

-Claude

Posted by Joe Tommassello (Member # 4632) on 07-06-2010, 11:08 AM:

I saw it over the holiday weekend too for the first time. I agree with Claude that it looked and sounded great and it held my interest more than I thought it would. My only complaint is the musical score. Every other cue was "Lara's Theme". I wonder if anyone ever counted how many times they that four note motif in the film. I'll bet it numbers over 100. It was like they were beating you down with it. Absolutely terrible over-use of that theme. Max Steiner must be rolling over in his grave.