ZAP Breaking News

Monsters to Destroy: ZAP Completes Post on Lucasfilm's 3-Part Foreign Policy Documentary Series

2011-06-14T18:52:00.001-07:00

After a six month hiatus, our friends at JAK Films (Lucasfilm Ltd.'s production arm) completed offline editing on part three of their series "Manifest Destiny." The final chapter "Monsters to Destroy" spans the historical period of Bush 41 through Bush 43, from the end of the Cold War (1989) through the 2003 invasion of Iraq.

We provided finishing on episodes one and two in 2010 covered here in our blog.

"Monsters to Destroy" was written and produced by our old friend Sharon Wood and was edited by Greg Sirota and Jim McSilver. The task (for ZAP) was in some ways more complicated than the previous two episodes, as the archival material was 1980s-early 2000s video of decidedly mixed quality requiring careful up-rezzing to HD, conformed by ZAP's on-line wizard Ri Crawford and artfully color graded by our colleague Leo Hallal. Same post team who was colorist on episodes 1 and 2.

MANIFEST DESTINY

A documentary mini-series on U.S. Foreign Policy

What does a City on a Hill have to do with Guantanamo? How did descendants of anti-colonialists create what some have called the most powerful empire on earth? Where do exceptionalism, democracy promotion and interventions abroad intersect or collide? How has the 19th century rallying cry of “Manifest Destiny” continued to influence American foreign policy?

These and other questions are raised in the powerful stories featured in MANIFEST DESTINY, an historical series being produced by the documentary unit of JAK Films, a division of Lucasfilm. The series is comprised of three 90 minute episodes

Part 3, “Monsters to Destroy,” examines America’s multilateral and unilateral military campaigns in the post-Cold War era. By following how George H.W. Bush, Bill Clinton and George W. Bush interpreted humanitarian intervention and democracy promotion, from the first Gulf War, through Somalia, Rwanda, the Balkans, and the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, the episode will bring the concept of Manifest Destiny into the 21st century.

Now that the series is completed, Lucasfilm will begin actively trying to place the series on domestic television and will plan their educational distribution.

Swimming Upstream at ZAP for PBS Nature

2011-03-25T17:45:00.000-07:00

Salmon : Running the Gauntlet
A Sea Studios Foundation Production for WNET/NATURE. Airing on PBS Sunday 8pm, May 1. Check local listings.

Mark Shelley, founder and executive producer at Sea Studios in Monterey spent four years putting together this remarkable 60 minute documentary that examines the folly of humans damming wild salmon habitat throughout the west and then going to extreme measures to preserve the fish by raising them in hatcheries and trucking and barging the fingerlings AROUND the dams to enter the sea. The footage is spectacular; the specie's life cycle is even more amazing than you had previously thought and sad to say, the future looks pretty bleak.

ZAP provided online finishing services including color grading and HD mastering for THIRTEEN WNET in New York.

Here is a statement from the filmmaker:

Salmon: Running the Gauntlet celebrates one of the world's most incredible animals, with a remarkable and vital role in sustaining millions of square miles of diverse ecosystems - and whose imminent disappearance will have profound effects for the richness of life in the pacific northwest. Salmon: Running the Gauntlet is the story of a creature at once resilient and fragile, manipulated and wild. It is one of the nature stories of our time - not just of what we destroy, but how we try to save.

August to June Goes Tri-Lingual

2011-03-25T17:06:00.000-07:00

Tom and Amy Valens' wonderful documentary, August to June was completed at ZAP last September. Over the past six months, we have been in a raging national debate on the state of public education: the achievement gap between rich and poor, the role of teacher unions and school boards, the place for charter schools and other alternatives. Yet "August to June" examines an elemental part of this...the teaching process itself, focusing on one year in the life of a classroom as master teacher Amy Valens teaches the "whole child" for the last time and reflects on her career in a beautiful nuanced way.

FROM THE AUGUST TO JUNE website:

After 30 years of watching the public open classroom where his wife taught, and admiring at a distance the model for learning that evolved, Tom Valens couldn’t miss the opportunity to film her last class from beginning to end. And so he was there the day school started and many days thereafter: one man with a camera and a tripod, trying to stay out of the way as kids skipped from one activity to another, listening on headphones for events in other parts of the building, and sometimes rushing, tripod in hand, only to arrive at the action just as it ended.
Slowly but surely kids came into focus. Tom captured their relations with each other, with their teacher, with learning. The film is not meant to suggest there is one right way to teach. Instead, it shows how one unconventional classroom puts schoolwork inside a larger picture, bringing into focus a broader vision of what education should and can be.

ZAP helped our old friends Tom and Amy with some film finishing details and we created a DVD edition in November. Recently, we helped the filmmakers prepare a special tri-lingual DVD version with subtitles in Spanish and French.

The Power of Two - Marc Smolowitz's New Documentary

2011-03-25T16:41:00.000-07:00

"The Power Of Two" is a new documentary film based on a remarkable memoir by the Stenzel twins, Anabel Mariko Stenzel (“Ana”) and Isabel Yuriko Stenzel Byrnes.

The film was directed by San Francisco-based Marc Smolowitz, one of the producers of the 2002 documentary "The Weather Underground." The film was edited by Matthew Sultan and Thomas Eugene Green. Gary Coates did color grading. Sound post by Berke Sound.

ZAP supported the filmmakers with post production consultation, HD mastering and deliveries.

The 90 minute documentary was filmed at nearly 20 filming locations, following the Stenzels on their quest to raise consciousness about organ donation in the U.S. and especially in Japan. You can read more about the twins remarkable story at their website.

Here is an excerpt:

The Stenzel Twins

Anabel Mariko Stenzel (“Ana”) and Isabel Yuriko Stenzel Byrnes (“Isa” – pronounced “ee-sah”) are identical twins who were born in Los Angeles in 1972 to Japanese and German immigrant parents. At three days old, Ana and Isa were diagnosed with Cystic Fibrosis (CF), a fatal genetic disease that impacts the lungs and pancreas; their doctor told their parents they would be lucky to live to reach 10 years of age.

For decades, Ana and Isa struggled to maintain their health with rigorous daily respiratory and digestive treatments. Working together, they survived and thrived into adulthood, graduated from college and graduate school, started careers as a genetic counselor (Ana) and social worker (Isa), and developed loving relationships.

In their mid-20s, however, the twins’ health began to decline precipitously. Every breath was difficult. Many of the activities they loved, including hiking and traveling, tried the limits of their stamina. Their passion and will to live remained but CF was relentless.

There is no cure for CF. But, in their darkest hour, when their ability to breathe was leaving them, Ana and Isa received the gift of new life and new breath in the form of double lung transplants in 2000 and 2004, respectively.

Because of the generosity of their organ donors James and Xavier, and their donors’ families, Ana and Isa have survived and are thriving with their new lungs. Their post-transplant activities have included running a half marathon, climbing a 10,000 foot mountain peak, swimming and running in the U.S. Transplant Games, traveling across three continents, and writing their memoir, “The Power of Two: A Twin Triumph Over Cystic Fibrosis,” which the University of Missouri Press published in late 2007.

Ana and Isa’s experience has influenced them to cherish the following values:

1. Each human interaction is a cherished blessing.
2. Illness has great potential to teach awareness and appreciation of life.
3. Life is too short to not appreciate every moment- the good and the bad

A Fierce Green Fire - History of the ECO Movement at ZAP

2011-03-25T15:40:00.000-07:00

ZAP STOKES KITCHELL'S
FIERCE GREEN FIRE

Mark Kitchell's new ambitious documentary series, a history of the environmental movement from "Silent Spring" and the Sierra Club through Love Canal, Greenpeace and the current global warming consciousness is in the fine cut stage here in the Presidio. ZAP has been providing the filmmakers with exotic solutions to the problems that come with integrating media from over 4 decades and six continents. Up-rezzing and improving archival video and general post production advice.

Mark is best known for Berkeley in the Sixties, which won top honors and has become a well-loved classic, one of the defining documentaries about the protest movements that shook America during the 1960s. I've known Mark for several years; I was one of many who helped prep 16mm footage for his "Berkeley In The 60's" when I worked for a time at an independent film studio on Mission Street in the mid 1980s. Then, in 2000 when I was preparing documentary shorts for "The Godfather" on DVD for Paramount, I was filming the great production designer Dean Tavoularis on the Lower East Side talking about the Sixth Street location for The Godfather, Part II (filmed in 1973). I was remarking that there was no "behind the scenes" footage of the original photography, and Dean said "too bad you can't find that kid's student film....by Mark something or other, skinny tall kid, long hair...NYU film student I think..." That led me to Mark Kitchell, and his great student film "The Godfather Comes to Sixth Street" from which we licensed clips for our documentary short.

Here is a synopsis of the project from the Fierce Green Fire website:

A Fierce Green Fire is the first film to take on environmentalism as a whole, to bring together all the parts and eras, from conservation to climate change. It explores how the issues built into an international cause, the largest movement the world has ever seen and perhaps the most crucial in terms of what’s at stake. It’s not easy being green – every battle is against the odds. We focus on successes: halting dams in the Grand Canyon; rescuing the people of Love Canal; saving whales and the greatest rainforest on earth. However, we also look at how the struggles continue and the issues grow in scope until it’s an open question whether they’re too big for the environmental movement to deal with. Our approach differs from the usual environmental documentary in two ways. First is our focus on activism. We reveal the issues by showing how people acted on them; it’s a more engaging approach, emphasizing drama and passion. Second is our emphasis on the big picture – connections, core ideas, what it all means. This film is designed to reach and teach a huge and hungry audience, give them an understanding of environmentalism like nothing before. Now we must all be environmentalists, as Bob Bullard the environmental justice advocate puts it: “There’s no Hispanic air. There’s no African-American air. There’s air! And if you breathe air – and most people I know do breathe air... then I would consider you an environmentalist.” A Fierce Green Fire unfolds in five acts, each 20-25 minutes. E.O. Wilson, the biologist and advisor to the film, suggested focusing on five of the most dramatic and important events and people. In developing those main stories and characters, we discovered each was emblematic of an era and a part of the environmental movement. So we devised an hourglass structure for each act. They begin with the broader context. Then they focus in on the main story, more fully told. Finally they open up again to explore ramifications.erke

Getting Great HD Video from Inferior Source Material

2011-03-25T12:29:00.000-07:00

UP-REZ YOUR STANDARD DEF

CLIPS TO HD AT ZAP

Are you working with a sequence containing a mixture of HD and SD elements and frame rates? Need to deliver in HD 1080i or 1080p24? Perhaps ZAP can help!

We have been testing a powerful image processing system called Dark Energy developed by Cinnafilm of Albuquerque. The system uses sophisticated motion analysis and is great at re-scaling from SD to HD, and is also effective at de-interlacing, restoring original film pull-down, converting between frame rates and speed changes. The spatial module has excellent noise, film grain and scratch removal and texture control. At ZAP, we are exploring whether there is a market for this high-end “better mouse-trap” in the Bay Area.

ITEM: We fixed 12 shots in a feature length documentary film recently released theatrically. The film was edited at HD 24P, but had many inserts shot in HDV at 60i with a frame size of 720x540. These shots had been previously converted to 24P HD using an expensive real-time hardware solution. The original conversions were juddery, and degraded the overall look of the film.

ITEM: A documentary feature had digitally acquired shots of the sky (in HD) with noticeable banding caused by the small gradient of brightness from the darkest to lightest part of the otherwise flat field. We fixed the problem using Dark Energy’s texture components.
ITEM: A documentary film was shot with the Panasonic DVX-100a in 4x3, protected for 16x9. The finished film must be delivered 16x9 HD. Dark Energy allowed us to re-scale the footage blowing it up to 16x9 1920x1080 with greater sharpness and a more natural look than other scalers we tried.
ITEM: A clip of analog 1980s home video needed to be blown up to HD, cropped to 16x9, de-interlaced and slowed down to 30% of its original speed. The Dark Energy conversion was a vast improvement over what was done in the client’s editing system.

UP-REZ CLIP TESTS: ZAP can convert your source material to any HD resolution and frame rate. We can provide you with conversions at no charge up to 15 seconds duration for you to compare to the original footage in your sequence. Or we can show you A/B comparisons between your original and converted footage on our HD displays.

You can see an on-line demo here: www.zap-sf.com/dark_energy_demo

ZAP Offers "Digital Direct" HD Screenings at SF Film Centre

2011-03-25T11:01:00.000-07:00

A Bay Area Filmmakers' Secret Resource: a rarely used, well-equipped 24-seat screening room in The Presidio. Originally installed in the late 1990s as a film rushes facility with high quality 35mm changeover projection and calibrated Dolby 5.1 audio monitoring, the room has been under-utilized as the number of Hollywood features shooting on location in San Francisco has dropped off to a trickle.

Beginning in November of last year, ZAP took over some of the management and oversight of the facility working in league with the SF Film Centre. Our goal was to ENGINEER an economical way for local filmmakers to screen their works in progress, without having to resort to costly HD tape outputs, or down-grading their film by burning a mediocre screener DVD. We came up with a scheme involving a professional HD Media player that can play back all popular screening formats and frame rates from QuickTime movies delivered to ZAP on a portable hard drive or via FTP. To date, we have hosted around a dozen HD screenings; mostly works in progress, sound mix checks and a few fundraisers and cast/crew thanks screenings.

If you'd like to know more about the facility or the service, you can email screening@zap-sf.com, and we'll send you info and a delivery spec.

Manifest Destiny - A History of American Foreign Policy from Lucasfilm

2010-09-10T17:49:00.000-07:00

AMERICAN EXCEPTIONALISM

Was the United States a beacon of freedom or an emerging imperialist power? A new 3-part documentary series from the same Lucasfilm-JAK Films documentary unit that produced ninety four one-hour history documentaries for young people asks fundamental questions of American identity and its role in the world of nations since the early eighteenth century. Going from advocacy of democracy to containment, through the emergence of the US as a world power after the first world war to world superpower during the cold war and finally the world's only superpower.

ZAP was brought in to provide on-line post production including HD conforming, color grading, title design and animation.

This ground-breaking series revisits our foreign involvments and adventures throughout our history: Cuba and Spain, The Philippines, Mexico, Vietnam, Somalia, the Former Yugoslavia, Iraq and Afghanistan.

The American Historical Association got a sneak preview of epsode one earlier this year:

Broadening our vision.... to the Philippines, indeed taking in the Westward Movement on the North American continent and the whole Pacific region, is the first public screening (a world premiere!) of a just-completed Lucasfilm production, Manifest Destiny: To Conquer or Redeem. Directed and produced by Sharon Wood, the film tells the powerful story of the Spanish-American and U.S.-Philippine Wars in the context of continental expansion and conquest. As part one of Manifest Destiny, which will be a three-part series on U.S. foreign policy, this film tracks the evolving role of “American Exceptionalism” as the United States grew from a rebellious colony into a continental power and began to develop an overseas empire. Utilizing some remarkable historic footage and revisionist approach, it’s a work that guarantees you’ll never again see William McKinley as a kind of innocent victim of circumstances.

The three films all create linear worlds in which ambiguity is downplayed and the argument or story is made as clear as possible given the available evidence.

Race to Nowhere Launches in Theaters

2010-09-09T14:56:00.000-07:00

Opening This Week in Theaters in New York and Los Angeles.

Vicki Abeles' documentary Race to Nowhere will play for one week at the IFC Center in New York and at Laemmle's Sunset 5 theater in Los Angeles. The film was shot using portable HD equipment and was finished in HD 1080P. These playdates will be presented with digital projection using D-Cinema Package.

Vicki will be attending the shows in New York on September 10 and 11 and will be joined by others on the RTN film team and from the cast including Sara Bennett on September 11 at 5 PM. Vicki will also attend the shows in Los Angeles on September 14 and 15 and will be joined on the 14th at 7:30 PM by Dr. Wendy Mogel who appears in the film. Other cast members will make appearances throughout the week.

Other theatrical screenings in selected cities will follow. Go Vicki!

ZAP did final post production of the film including HD mastering, trailer work, Digital Cinema Packaging and DVD design and preparation.
The film was edited by Jessica Congdon, Color grading by Gary Coates, Sound by Jim LeBrecht and Berkeley Sound Artists, Original music by Mark Adler, On-Line Editing by Jesse Spencer with Ri Crawford. A truly Northern California crew!

Our Summer in Tehran Now on DVD

2010-07-22T19:11:00.000-07:00

To purchase this wonderful new documentary by Justine Shapiro of Promises Films, go to their webstore. We love this film!

The Nature of Cities, an exhibit of short films Opened in Shangai

2010-06-17T17:40:00.000-07:00

ZAP just completed the design and previsualization for a dramatic installation that will open in July in Shanghai. Oakland-based Art Works for Change engaged ZAP to figure out the best way present seventeen short films at the United Nations Pavillion at the EXPO; the curator, Randy Rosenberg has been working with Nairobi-based United Nations Environmental Programme (UNEP) to mount this exhibition that "...will be a visually compelling and entertaining exhibition, combined with effective storytelling, that informs and inspires viewers to respect nature and her ecosystems..."

United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) [link]

To learn more about the exhibition, click here.

The Nature of Cities
United Nations Pavilion, Shanghai Expo, China, July, 2010

UNEP has asked Art Works For Change to produce an art installation for the UN Pavilion at the upcoming Shanghai Expo. Up to 20 video artists, architects and animators will create short videos addressing the theme of urban biodiversity.

The renowned Zoetrope Aubry Productions is providing the design and technical editing for the project. The result will be a visually compelling and entertaining exhibition, combined with effective storytelling, that informs and inspires viewers to respect nature and her ecosystems. The UN anticipates that the installation be seen by 40,000 visitors a day.
Artists:
Allora & Calzadilla; Vincent Callebaut; Rob Carter; Catherine Chalmers; Ri Crawford; Anthony Discenza; Cao Fei; Hall Moline; Katja Loher; Kevin Nolting; Sven Pahlsson; Kahn Selesnick; Molly Schwartz; Marina Zurkow.

Wikipedia Documentary Premiers at Wikimania, Gdansk, Poland

2010-03-15T12:06:00.000-07:00

Truth In Numbers?
Everything, According To Wikipedia

A controversial new feature-length film that chronicles the remarkable rise of the "massive live collaboration" called Wikipedia. Filmmakers Nic Hill and Scott Glosserman traveled to over twenty countries filming interviews with the Wiki founders, Wiki critics, and Wiki contributors.

ZAP got involved with the film in December; the breadth of original source material is impressive. Post production: daunting. Our first task was to review the post production work flow; the film has been in post for over two years in an on-again, off-again cycle with various collaborators working in various cities on various platforms. Original interviews were shot in HDV and DVCProHD over years. ZAP organized the on-line and color grading, and will provide final delivery and DVD services. To learn more about the making of the film, you can go to an early filmmaker fan website that claimed that "anyone can edit this documentary web-site."

To view a trailer of the film, you can go to the GlenEcho Entertainment movie site.

A short list of some who appear in the film:

Jimbo Wales
Howard Zinn
Stephen Colbert
James Woolsey
Susan Jacoby
Richard Branson
Ray Kurzweil
Noam Chomsky
Bob Schieffer
Ward Cunningham
Len Downie, Executive Editor of The Washington Post
Bob McHenry, Former Editor-In-Chief - Encyclopaedia Britannica
Jaron Lanier
Lawrence Lessig
John Seigenthaler

Tati Documentary to have U.S. Premiere at Yerba Buena Center

2009-12-22T10:41:00.000-08:00

ZAP recently posted the new documentary by Michael House "The Magnificent Tati."

The film will be screened during a film series at the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts in late January. The documentary will be shown on Sunday, January 24 at 2pm, and the director Michael House will answer questions immediately afterwards.

JACQUES TATI: GENIUS OF FRENCH COMEDY

Is there anything new to be said about the French comic performer and filmmaker Jacques Tati and his eccentric alter ego Monsieur Hulot? Recognized internationally as one of the most innovative and creative filmmakers of his time, much of Tati’s work is about the humor of humanity attempting to exist in an increasingly mechanical society. He broke apart and then reinvented slapstick comedy. His films are just as relevant as ever, if not more so, in this new dehumanized digital age. For those who are new to his work, you will discover one of the masters of modern cinema. And for those who already know him, this is a rare chance for re-discovery of films which easily stand up to, and benefit from, repeated viewings.

Race to Nowhere on track at ZAP

2009-12-17T10:23:00.000-08:00

ZAP is helping Bay Area first-time filmmaker Vicki Abeles get her documentary feature "Race to Nowhere" finalized for HD screenings and for DVD release.

Race To Nowhere is a groundbreaking documentary film that examines education, childhood and the unintended consequences of the achievement-obsessed way of life that permeates American education and culture. Unrelenting pressure, whether from well-intentioned parents, teachers, national leaders or from children themselves, is creating a generation suffering from unprecedented levels of stress, depression and burnout.

Vicki Abeles, a mother of three and former corporate attorney, found herself questioning the changes she saw in her children as they navigated days filled with school, homework, tutoring and extracurricular activities. After a series of wake-up calls in her family and community, including the suicide of a young girl, Vicki set out to discover why children’s lives more closely resemble high-powered CEOs' than the relaxed, carefree lives of children from the past.

The filmmakers take viewers to schools across the country, featuring the stories of students who have been pushed to the brink, educators who are burned out and worried that students aren’t learning anything substantive and college professors and business leaders concerned that incoming young people lack the skills needed to succeed in our complex times.

Race To Nowhere is a call to families, educators, experts and policy makers to examine current assumptions on how to prepare our national youth to become the healthy, bright, contributing and leading citizens of the next century.

ZAP Posts Justine Shapiro's New Iran Documentary

2009-12-08T17:33:00.000-08:00

Berkeley native Justine Shapiro who co-produced the landmark 2002 film "Promises" has locked her edit on her new film "My Summer in Tehran." ZAP is conforming, color grading and designing titles and will online the film shortly.

About The Film:

A personal, poetic and provocative documentary film, My Summer in Tehran takes American filmmaker Justine Shapiro and her six-year old son into the lives of three Iranian families: a religious, conservative family with ties to the government; a modern, secular family; and a single mom who is also an actress. This remarkable journey introduces American audiences to the fascinating, and yet strikingly familiar home of our enemy," where we discover that everyday life is never separate from ever-watchful eye of the government.

With stunning cinematography, editing by renowned Iranian editor Mostafa Kherghehpoush, and featuring original music by French-Iranian composer Christophe Rezai, the film reveals a city and a culture where modernity and tradition sit side by side. 85 minutes, in English, Farsi, and French with English subtitles.

The documentary is in the final stages of post-production. It will be released in early 2010.

Gump Blu-ray On Sale

2009-11-05T18:09:00.000-08:00

Forrest Gump (on Blu-ray) went on sale a few days ago. Very little fanfare. No launch events. Not much press coverage either. (The item reprinted below was published yesterday.) Unlike previous high-profile DVD projects, this one seems to have gotten very little support (ads or PR) from the mothership. Reviewers and periodicals did not receive advance copies which seems to be the new policy at many of the studios in these new economics! (Shoot in foot!)

Click here to view an excerpt from one of our featurettes, "Little Forrest."

A detailed description of the release (and ZAP's contributions) can be found here.
(DVDBeaver.Com)

Below is an clipping from a review at Blu-ray.com.
Primarily descriptive, fairly complete. All of the documentaries and featurettes were produced here at ZAP earlier in 2009.

Forrest Gump Chocolate Box Giftset Blu-ray

Paramount Pictures | 1994 | 142 mins | Rated PG-13 | Nov 03, 2009 (New Release)

Included on disc one is Musical Signposts to History (1080p, 3:54) featuring Rock Journalist Ben Fong-Torres, Director Robert Zemeckis, and Music Supervisor Joel Sill discussing Forrest Gump's soundtrack and score and how the popular songs match up to the scenes they accompany. Also featured are Michelle Phillips from "The Mamas and the Papas," Roger McGuinn and David Crosby from "The Byrds," and Ray Manzarek from "The Doors." Once this introductory piece concludes, viewers will be prompted to choose a mode through which to view the film with the Musical Signposts feature. Modes include "Manual," "Auto," and "Selective." When activated, the film will stop and Ben Fong-Torres and others will discuss the music accompanying each particular scene.

Moving onto disc two, viewers will first find Greenbow Diary (1080p, 25:59), an excellent piece that chronicles the production of the film from the perspective of a bystander. Viewers will be transported to the set to witness the construction of various shots, and the piece also features interview clips with the cast and crew discussing the scenes being filmed. The Art of Screenplay Adaptation (1080p, 26:58) looks at the fascinating process of translating novel to screen and the lengthy process that was the creation of Forrest Gump, including the difficulty of the special effects, the films transition from Warner Brothers to Paramount, the many drafts of the screenplay, and more. The piece includes Forrest Gump author Winston Groom and others speaking on the process, from studios seeking to discover material not even on bookstore shelves to the process of adapting a screenplay from the novel, which may require changes to make the story work on-screen. This is a fantastic supplement that will enthrall anyone with interest in writing, filmmaking, or Forrest Gump.

Getting Past the Impossible: 'Forrest Gump' and the Visual Effects Revolution (1080p, 27:04) is another solid feature that examines the creation of some of the film's visual effects. It chronicles Industrial Light & Magic's contributions to the film, offers a fascinating history of optical effects, and Forrest Gump's groundbreaking visuals that advanced the field considerably, with emphasis on several particular shots, including Forrest's meeting with John Kennedy, the removal of Lt. Dan's legs, and the Washington, D.C. segments. Little Forrest (1080p, 14:48) looks at the casting and contributions of Actor Michael Conner Humphreys, including his voice that influenced Tom Hanks' performance. A now-adult Humphreys also recalls his experiences in working on the film. An Evening with 'Forrest Gump' (1080p, 55:08) is a discussion with Tom Hanks, Gary Sinise, Eric Roth, and Robert Zemeckis discussing the film at the University of Southern California.

"The Magnificent Tati" Posts at ZAP

2009-10-27T13:43:00.000-07:00

Around six months ago, we got a cold e-mail inquiry from filmmaker Michael House then in production on his new documentary on the life and work of the great French film auteur Jacques Tati. Michael hails from the Bay Area but has been an expat living and working in London for many years. He yearned to return to the Bay to finish his film. The subject matter alone got me interested. ZAP's scope includes motion graphics, on-line HD conforming, color grading and sound design. The film is scheduled to air on the British SkyTV network sometime early next year. The Magnificent Tati will premier at the "Totally Tati" retrospective film series in Edinburgh on November 26. All six of Tati's masterworks will being showcased in an ongoing French Film Festival in Europe.

I have loved Tati's great films since college, and I was thrilled when The Criterion Collection released the controversial and fascinating "Play Time" (1967) on Blu-ray disc earlier this year. Here is just one fascinating factoid: Jacques Tati, a performing mime artist and showman had been cast as a back-up to play the mime "Baptiste" in Marcel Carnet's 1945 landmark Les enfants du paradis, in case the great Jean-Louis Barrault had been unavailable to take the part. Michael's documentary is full of fascinating historical and aesthestic info, chronicling the amazing career of a well-known filmmaker whose output was actually very small: just six films. We hear from Tati fans Black Francis/Frank Black (formerly of the Pixies) and Craig McCracken, creater of the Powerpuff Girls cartoon series; we learn that every episode has at least one visual reference to a Tati film!

From the filmmaker's website: Sit Up Straight Films

‘The Magnificent Tati’ a feature factual film on the life and work of iconic French director/comedian Jacques Tati. One of cinemas greatest artists, Tati pushed cinema to its limits with six feature films that redefined how we experience movies. ‘The Magnificent Tati’ will be the first English language feature to explore the Tati legacy, produced in collaboration with the Jacques Tati Archive in Paris, this film will offer unprecedented access to the world of Tati. The film examines Tati’s life and work and the massive influence his films have had on contemporary art, film, music and design. Shot on RedOne.

Jonathan Parker's (Untitled) Opens later this Month

2009-10-08T11:57:00.000-07:00

A new comedy by Jonathan Parker starring Adam Goldberg and Marley Shelton
(Untitled) will be released by Samuel Goldwyn Films in New York and Los Angeles on October 23rd and in San Francisco, Chicago, Washington D.C., and most major cities on November 6th.

We talked about ZAP's participation in the finishing of this independent feature film in an earlier blog entry.

Haven't seen the trailer yet? Watch it here.

And here is the film's official site.

ZAP Posts Documentary on the History of the Global Anti-Apartheid Struggle

2009-10-02T13:13:00.000-07:00

Occasionally, we have an opportunity to become involved with a film who's subject is so compelling that we drop everything to jump in. Clarity Films "Have You Heard From Johannesburg: The Bottom Line" is one.

The film will premiere at the British Film Institute's 53rd London International Film Festival at the end of October. ZAP is providing HD post production facilities for their final push.

Here is a synopsis from the London Film Festival's site:

Have You Heard From Johannesburg: The Bottom Line

As the British anti-apartheid movement celebrates it 50th birthday, a look at how grass roots movements mobilised during the 80s to enforce economic sanctions on South Africa.

2009 marks the 50th anniversary of the British anti-apartheid movement, and in timely fashion documentary maker Connie Field (who directed the memorable The Life and Times of Rosie the Riveter and Freedom on My Mind) is working on a series of films which tell the story of the global anti-apartheid activity. The Bottom Line explores the role of money, specifically how grass-roots organisations mobilised to cut the South African government off from their financial allies in the West. Through a widely-sourced collection of archive material, Field charts the history of the power of collective action, which culminated in a number of major companies withdrawing from South Africa during the 1980s. From the employees of Polaroid and General Motors in the USA to the massed ranks of British protestors boycotting Shell and withdrawing their money from Barclays Bank, all refuse to let it be business as usual with the repressive regime. Interviews with the key players, including British activists and senior figures in UK-based banks, add fascinating insights into just how effective the economic isolation of South Africa was.

Sandra Hebron

http://www.bfi.org.uk/lff/films/world_cinema/405

Speaking In Tongues - A Documentary on Immersion Education

2009-09-10T17:03:00.000-07:00

SPEAKING IN TONGUES

ZAP recently helped San Francisco filmmakers Marcia Jarmel and Ken Schneider of Patchworks get their wonderful new documentary "Speaking in Tongues" out on DVD. The film won an audience award at this year's San Francisco International Film Festival. Ken Schneider has edited several short films at ZAP, and it was a great pleasure to help Ken and Marcia get their beautiful topical film out to a broad audience.

The heated debate over bilingual education usually takes place in courtrooms, at academic conferences and in editorial missives. At its most vitriolic the "English only" camp skews toward xenophobia and racism, while the opposition at times sounds utopian themes of American global economic resurgence with the aid of multilingual classrooms. Often neglected in this discourse is the firsthand experience of students, an oversight that veteran documentarians Marcia Jarmel and Ken Schneider beautifully rectify with their latest effort.

Closely following four very different local public-schoolers through an academic year, they draw on subtle nuances of the kids' stories to illustrate the complex shades and permutations of bilingual schooling. Two children are placed in immersion programs to retain their native tongues while learning English, and the other two are in the reverse situation. Their parents list both familiar and surprising reasons for enrolling their children, but each remains a strong proponent of the programs despite criticism from extended family, friends and a loud chorus of English-only activists. Even while dismissing common barbs, the families must confront unique challenges both humorous and serious.

With San Francisco becoming the first city to mandate access to bilingual opportunities for all public schoolchildren, this thought-provoking documentary could hardly be timelier.

—Ilya Tovbis

San Francisco International

ZAP helps "Repo Man" director Alex Cox finish "Repo Chick" Just in time for VENICE

2009-09-08T16:42:00.000-07:00

Legendary, eccentric, Liverpudlian director Alex Cox (Sid and Nancy [1986] Walker [1987]) has made a sort-of follow up to his remarkable 1984 film Repo Man finalizing image and sound in the Bay Area. Richard Beggs (who mixed Repo Man and Walker) joined another long-time Bay Area Cox colleague, composer Dan Wool, to create a sound mix to accompany the picture.

The large cast was filmed almost entirely in front of green-screen with animated and static backgrounds and transportation added in post by a team of brilliant animators, model-makers and digital compositors, many of them from the Tippett Studio (in Berkeley).
Model makers? I could tell you that the action is set in a model railroad world, a table-top experiment by the CIA, but that might be giving away too little.

Stalinist ZAP jumped in at the last minute to transform the highly anarchic and de-centralized work flow with HD color grading, mastering and high definition outputs. Producer Simon Tams had to stand by the HDCAM VTR at ZAP awaiting a final master tape to take away to the Venice Biennale for the world premiere!

Shortly, we'll post a clip from this weird and wonderful film on the ZAP screening room.
Meanwhile, here are some groovy links:

http://www.alexcox.com/index.htm

http://www.chud.com/articles/articles/18743/1/IT039S-A-WRAP-ON-REPO-CHICK/Page1.html

Best DVD of 2008...Again!!!

2009-09-08T16:32:00.000-07:00

Best Classic/Catalog Title:The Godfather:
The Coppola Restoration Gift Set, Paramount

That, according to Reuters and Home Media Magazine! (see below)
Was there a dinner?
Did we have our ZAP-monogrammed tuxedos pressed in time?
Were we invited? Did we even know about this award?
Nope.
But still darned proud!

The Fifth Annual DVD Critics Awards honor the top DVD and Blu-ray Disc titles
from 2008. The awards, presented by Home Media Magazine, are traditionally held
during the summer Home Entertainment Summit, which has been delayed this year.

"We still wanted to honor the best titles on DVD and Blu-ray as soon as
possible," said Thomas K. Arnold, Home Media Magazine publisher and executive
producer of the Summit.

The delay allowed organizers to create special categories for an online consumer
vote, a first in the history of the DVD Critics Awards.

More than 130 entries were judged by a panel of critics and journalists.
Submitted titles also were placed in eight special categories for the consumer
vote, bringing the total number of awards to 21.

Warner Home Video`s The Dark Knight won Best Theatrical Title, plus the consumer
categories Best Action Title, Best Superhero Title and Consumer Favorite.

Walt Disney Studios Home Entertainment`s Pixar release Wall-E also fared well,
winning for Best Animated Title and taking the consumer vote for Best Sci-Fi
Title.

In all, Warner won five awards, while sister company HBO took three. Disney
earned four awards.

2009 DVD Critics Award Winners:

Title of the Year:The Sopranos: The Complete Series, HBO
Best Theatrical Title:The Dark Knight, Warner
Best TV DVD:Mad Men: Season One, Lionsgate
Best Classic/Catalog Title:The Godfather: The Coppola Restoration Gift Set, Paramount
Best Collection/Multidisc Set: The Sopranos: The Complete Series, HBO
Best Nonfiction Title: Young @ Heart, 20th Century Fox
Best Animation Title: Wall-E, Walt Disney Studios
Best Kidvid Title: Tinker Bell, Walt Disney Studios
Best Nontheatrical Title:Stargate: Continuum, Fox/MGM
Best Extended Cut/Director`s Cut:Step Brothers, Sony Pictures
Best Extras: Hellboy II: The Golden Army, Universal Studios
Best Packaging:Masters of Horror: Season Two, Anchor Bay
Best Blu-ray Disc:Planet of the Apes: 40-Year Evolution, 20th Century Fox

ZAP Revisits "Forrest Gump" - Streets November 3!

2009-09-08T13:56:00.000-07:00

Paramount has announced November 3 as the street date for the new Blu-ray release of "Forrest Gump.

In July, we finished work on a new greatly expanded 15th anniversary re-release of Robert Zemeckis' 1994 film "Forrest Gump." The special 2-disc Blu-ray only package will hit the street sometime in late 2009.

ZAP produced over 180 minutes of brand new high-definition content on a wide range of Gump-related topics, in collaboration with Paramount Home Entertainment. We had terrific support and cooperation from our neighbors at George Lucas' Industrial Light and Magic here in the Presidio (ILM was responsible for those jaw-dropping composite effects sequences in the film), and from Imagemovers, Robert Zemeckis' own company based in Carpinteria and Novato.

Extras for this release include:

Greenbow Diary
The Art of Screenplay Adaptation
Getting Past Impossible - Forrest Gump and The Visual Effects Revolution
Musical Signposts to History - Music as "Chronological Set Design" for the Times of Forrest Gumpwith an introduction by rock journalist Ben Fong-Torres
Little Forrest
An Evening with Forrest Gump (a panel discussion at USC with Tom Hanks, Bob Zemeckis, Gary Sinise and screenplay author Eric Roth)

Stay tuned for more news on the release.

http://www.blu-ray.com/news/?id=3235

ZAP Moving Uptown!

2009-02-21T15:59:00.000-08:00

On March 1, ZAP will be moving to the beautiful San Francisco Film Centre located in the historic Presidio.
Our new home will be on the south end of Building 39, adjacent to Rough House Editorial.

The ZAP facility will include our Avid Media Composers (HD and SD) and Unity storage area network, Final Cut Pro stations, After Effects and Pro-Tools in a dedicated 5.1 mix room. We will continue offering our premier DVD creative, compression and authoring services as before. We will be sharing some facilities and equipment with our friends at Rough House, who have a fully equipped HD and SD machine room.

As of March 2, our new mailing address will be:

ZAP Zoetrope Aubry Productions
San Francisco Film Centre
39 Mesa Street, Suite 113 - The Presidio
San Francisco, CA 94129

Please update your rolodexes (or databases).
Our email and phones are unchanged.

We look forward to seeing you in our beautiful new tranquil location!

Kim Aubry

ZAP Zoetrope Aubry Productions LLC - USA
(415) 788-7900 Main
http://www.zap-sf.com

(Untitled) Premieres at Palm Springs

2009-01-16T16:42:00.000-08:00

Jonathan Parker's new film (Untitled) [yep, that's the name of the picture] had its world premiere at the Palm Springs International Film Festival last week.

You can read the Variety review by clicking on this link. Here is an excerpt:

Palm Springs

(Untitled)

By ROBERT KOEHLER

Shifting from the jet-black absurdism of "Bartleby," director Jonathan Parker jabs and pokes at the New York contemporary art world with some satirical success in "(Untitled)." Teasing today's new realms in painting, conceptual art and music is almost too easy, and the impressive aspect of Parker's latest is an evident grasp and respect for what's worthy and worthless in the fecund present-day scene. The smart-ass comedy isn't sustained throughout, but there's more than enough here for a bright fest roadshow and theatrical gallery space. Notably, this pic is one of the rare American indie films to land a world premiere at a fest prior to Sundance on the calendar (Palm Springs). And yet, it bears all the hallmarks of a prestige Sundance movie, from a hip cast including Adam Goldberg and Eion Bailey to a brilliant score by leading new music composer and Pulitzer winner David Lang.

The first film since "Art School Confidential" to seriously confront issues befuddling artists torn between their drives for personal expression and a demanding marketplace, "(Untitled)" surveys two art worlds repped by a pair of competitive brothers: terminally self-important composer Adrian (Goldberg) and commercially successful painter Josh (Bailey) -- as well as the network of gallery owners, dealers, patrons, critics and audiences that put the work in the public sphere.

ZAP played a small supporting role in the film's post production, as Bay Area director Jonathan Parker and his producer Catherine Di Napoli finished the film over the past nine months. San Francisco sound designer and ZAP friend Richard Beggs did the soundtrack; the film was shot on location New York City using Panavision Genesis cameras.

Parker's association with ZAP and friends goes back to his 2001 film "Bartleby" with sound design by our old friend Jennifer Ware of Homegirls Sound.

Amazon Ranks Godfather Blu-Ray Best of 2008

2009-01-13T14:30:00.000-08:00

Amazon Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com
On the DVD People used to say this was Frank Sinatra's world, and the rest of us just lived in it. After watching the multiple special features in the box set The Godfather - Coppola Restoration, one might conclude it's actually time for a cultural and historical revision: This is the Corleone family's world. The rest of us better tread lightly. Actually, the point of the half-dozen or so features crammed onto a disc accompanying the beautifully restored The Godfather, The Godfather II and The Godfather III, is that The Godfather movies have penetrated popular culture in such a deep and meaningful way that they are second-nature to everything. David Chase, creator of and writer on The Sopranos, for example, describes in the featurette "Godfather World" that his hit HBO series was intended to be the story of the first generation of mobsters actually influenced by Francis Ford Coppola's hit trilogy. Joe Mantegna calls the three films "the Italian Star Wars." (Mantegna co-stars in The Godfather III.) Alec Baldwin says no matter what one is doing, one is compelled to stop and watch the films if they're on television. Richard Belzer calls the films "a religion." And so on. A number of people similarly testify in "Godfather World" to the importance and ubiquitousness of The Godfather and its sequels in American life. There's no point in arguing, so its best to move on to the other featurettes, including "The Masterpiece That Almost Wasn't," reviewing in detail much of what has been said about Paramount's mistreatment of Coppola, about casting fights (Steve McQueen as Michael?), about the studio's assumption they were getting a quick-and-dirty B-movie, and about producer Robert Evans' determination to keep his choice of director and unlikely actors under his wing. Fresh information within the special features, however, begins with "… When the Shooting Stopped," a fine study of post-production on The Godfather, with several surprising and fascinating facts. Among emerging details is an explanation of why Michael Corleone's scream toward the end of The Godfather III is silenced out. (Hint: it was meant to be the inverse of a sound effect in the first movie.) "Emulsional Rescue: Revealing The Godfather" talks about the painstaking work of restoring the first two films, beginning with a phone call from Coppola to Steven Spielberg (after the latter's DreamWorks studio became part of the Viacom family) asking if he'd request money from Paramount for restoration work. "The Godfather On the Red Carpet is a negligible series of fawning statements about the movie from hot young actors, while "Four Short Films" are brief and enjoyable takes on different aspects of The Godfather's impact on modern living. --Tom Keogh

Best of 2008?

2008-12-31T11:27:00.000-08:00

The 10 Best Blu-Ray, DVD Releases of 2008

Submitted by BrianTT on December 23, 2008 - 3:43pm.

1. “The Godfather: The Coppola Restoration”

The painstaking restoration of The Godfather trilogy for Blu-Ray is so flawless that it can bring a tear to your eye. No one has seen “The Godfather,” one of the best movies ever made, until they’ve seen this restoration. The visual detail is overwhelming. Even people who can quote these movies in their sleep will be blown away. The final disc of the four-disc Blu-Ray set includes nearly five hours of bonus materials, almost all in HD themselves. All of the featurettes from the 2001 release were imported along with great new ones like “The Masterpiece That Almost Wasn’t,” featuring interviews with people influenced by the series including Guillermo Del Toro, David Chase, Alec Baldwin, and Steven Spielberg. The history and impact of the film is expanded upon in the just-as-good “Godfather World.” Some movies stand the test of time but “The Godfather” has that very rare quality of moviemaking that just makes the film seem better every time you see it. People who don’t like “The Godfather” simply don’t like movies. And there isn’t a Blu-Ray player on Earth truly living up to its potential if “The Godfather: The Coppola Restoration” isn’t sitting next to it.

DVD SPIN DOCTOR

Best DVDs of 2008: The top 20

2. The Godfather: The Coppola Restoration -- Blows away any other video incarnation of the Francis Ford Coppola gangster classics, especially when seen on Blu-ray. That amber tone comes on orders from cinematographer Gordon Willis.

My A-B comparisons of the new and old "Godfather" DVDs quickly demonstrated why the restoration was overdue. Even when the 2001 DVDs were given the advantage of upconversion, there was simply no contest. Comparing the Blu-rays to the old DVDs proved ... ridiculous. (Paramount Home Entertainment)

Read the full review of "The Godfather" on Blu-ray

Not another awards show!! - Godfather Blu-ray Accolades

2008-11-11T19:08:00.000-08:00

‘Godfather’ Rules High-Def Awards

By John Latchem | Posted: 11 Nov 2008
jlatchem@questex.com

LOS ANGELES — Despite joining the Blu-ray Disc camp just after the end of the format war this year, Paramount Home Entertainment scored huge wins at the second High-Def Disc Awards.

The studio’s new The Godfather: The Coppola Restoration Collection Blu-ray boxed set won for best of show and best catalog title.

2008 High-Def Award Winners:

Best of Show: The Godfather: The Coppola Restoration Collection, Paramount Home Entertainment

Best Theatrical Blu-ray: Iron Man, Paramount Home Entertainment

Best Catalog Blu-ray: The Godfather: The Coppola Restoration Collection, Paramount Home Entertainment

Pakistani Film Kala Pul (Black Bridge) at ZAP

2008-11-10T18:43:00.000-08:00

We are helping Bay Area indy filmmaker Saqib Mausoof (he's originally from Karachi, Pakistan) with post production on his new short film Kala Pul. It premiers this Thursday at the San Francisco International South Asian Film Festival.

According to the film fest program: Kala Pul is named after a bridge in Karachi, which connects, and simultaneously separates, the affluent parts of the city and the lower income areas. Our protagonist, Arsalan, returns from the Middle East to this segregated world to investigate the violent death of his younger brother, blamed on fundamentalists. He finds himself estranged from his family, which is divided in opinion between his anglicized father and his devoutly militant younger brother. Now Arsalan must navigate these diverging and conflicting paths to discover his dead brother’s past and Karachi's future.

Apocalypse Now and the Holy Grail

2008-11-04T14:33:00.000-08:00

The Guardian (UK) had an article in their film section recently describing the joys of viewing a boot-legged video copy of the legendary "5-hour cut" of Apocalypse Now. Ever since we prepared the special 2-disc "Apocalypse Now - The Complete Dossier" version a few years ago in which we included more than 26 minutes of "deleted scenes" (which really meant scenes that had not been in the final cut of either version of the film: 1979 or 2001) I thought that the mythic status of the 5.5 hour long Betamax video assembly would have faded into oblivion. Not so. Below is Gordon Coates October 17th article. It is followed by my letter to the editor in which I tried to correct some inaccuracies. It was published last weekend.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/film/2008/oct/17/1

Coppola's slow boat on the Nung

Gordon Coates on the five-hour Apocalypse Now

Gordon Coates The Guardian, Friday October 17 2008

The long and the short of it ... Francis Ford Coppola's Apocalypse Now. Photograph: Ronald Grant Archive

The work print is the holy grail of film collecting. These are the vastly long, rough versions of a picture, containing much of the movie-making fat that is trimmed out by the editing process. For years, film collectors tap their keyboards until their fingers bleed in attempts to track down the bum-numbing versions of movies such as Dune and This Is Spinal Tap for the unseen gems they may or may not hold.

Of all the legendary work prints out there, the most persistently tantalising prospect is seeing the rumoured 289-minute version of Francis Ford Coppola's Apocalypse Now. The theatrical release print runs a mere 153 minutes, and the Redux reissue 202 minutes, so the work print offers almost an hour and a half of unseen footage. To a serious film geek, the prospect is unthinkably exciting - surely it couldn't be true?

Despite a lack of tangible proof that it even existed - including denials from the film's producers - the most dedicated collectors spent years searching for it, until something supposed to be this grail-like object found its way into the public domain. After exhaustive negotiations with an American film collector who had tracked down a copy, I found myself signing for an airmail package, booking the day off work and settling down for some serious viewing.

The first thing to point out is that to call this five-hour work print a "rough cut" is a mistake. It's an "everything-and-the-kitchen-sink" cut, which takes almost all the material from the 238-day shoot and tapes it together in a linear form. The work print moves at a snail's pace, with unfeasibly long scenes. The Ride of the Valkyries helicopter episode alone accounts for well over 30 minutes of footage. Scenes that, with expert editing, would become tense and compelling simply drift along aimlessly, interesting only to anoraks for the extra line of dialogue here and there.

There are, however, gems amid the mass of footage, which leave the viewer wondering how Coppola could have taken the scissors to them. Marlon Brando's Colonel Kurtz has three extra scenes, which more than quadruple the size of his part. In one, Brando reads from Time magazine to an imprisoned Martin Sheen. In another he delivers a monologue to Sheen about the "master liars" in Washington who "want to win, but can't stand to be thought of as cruel". In a third, he reads TS Eliot's The Hollow Men, while Dennis Hopper gets excited and says "man" a lot.

One of the things removed from the film for the cinematic release, along with the extra footage, is its political conscience. Scenes in which the characters question and criticise the US involvement in Vietnam and the conduct of American government are cut. Themes of politics give way to an exploration of the human nature and psychology.

Of all the cuts, the unkindest are dealt to Scott Glenn's character, Colby, Willard's predecessor, who was charged with killing Kurtz, but instead falls under his spell. In the work print, Colby is revealed to be a significant character who taunts an imprisoned Willard and, more importantly, shoots Hopper's character before being killed himself. Likewise, the character of Lance (played by Sam Bottoms) gets extra scenes designed to show his instability. In one, he inexplicably machine-guns a water buffalo, while screaming: "I control the destiny of every living thing which passes before my sights."

It took Coppola and his editors more than 700 days to turn a million feet of celluloid into a watchable film. What the work print makes clear are the choices editors are forced to make when faced with almost unlimited footage. Scenes that drove the crew to the brink of madness and Coppola to the edge of financial ruin were dropped without sentiment - simply because they didn't improve the story.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/film/2008/nov/01/apocalypse-now-holy-grail-letters

The Guardian, Saturday November 1 2008

Letter: Apocalypse Now and the holy grail

Gordon Coates (Coppola's slow boat on the Nung, Film & Music, October 17) referred to the "holy grail" of film collecting as a "rumoured 289-minute version of Francis Coppola's 1979 film Apocalypse Now", adding that the film's producers denied the existence of this long version. In reality, it comes down to semantics. When the film-makers returned from their 238-day shoot, the editors put together a rough assembly that ran to nearly five hours, and contained all the scenes that had been shot. So when one heard "there is no five-hour version", the producers were not being evasive. It is not a version of a film, it is a catalogue of everything, which then had to be edited into a coherent narrative.

In 1999 Coppola decided to revisit the raw material to create a new version that would be more faithful to his original vision. Apocalypse Now Redux was screened at Cannes in May 2001 and had a theatrical release later that year.

In that long first assembly is the scene in which Kurtz is reading from Time magazine. It was restored, recut and included in the Redux version, along with several other scenes. Brando's reading of Eliot's The Hollow Men can be seen in its entirety as a special feature in the special two-DVD release, Apocalypse Now (Steelbook Edition).

Many significant scenes that were neither in the original nor the Redux version are in the Steelbook version. They include scenes with Willard's special ops predecessor Colby, and the death of the foreign correspondent played by Dennis Hopper. It also includes audio commentaries by the director in which he addresses the editing decisions he faced in the 70s and again in 2000-01.

Kim Aubry
Co-producer of Apocalypse Now Redux

This article appeared in the Guardian on Saturday November 01 2008 on p39 of the Editorials & reply section. It was last updated at 00.06 on November 01 2008.

Tarkovsky takes Brazil

2008-11-04T10:13:00.000-08:00

Our good friend Dmitry Trakovsky won a special mention jury award at the 2008 Mostra film festival in São Paulo, Brazil last week. Congratulations to you Dima!
Here are some links to Brazilian festival coverage and reviews.

http://www.mostra.org/32/exib_jornal.php?jornalId=608&language=en

Jornal da mostra

32ª Mostra > 23/10/2008

Edition: Renata de Almeida and Leon Cakoff

Dmitry Trakovsky

Poetic Identification, The Means to Enjoy Tarkovsky

Son of Russian poet Arseniy Tarkovsky and one of the most important filmmakers in Russia since Sergei Eisenstein, Andrei Tarkovsky is often admired by those that identify with the poetic rhythm of his films, since without this identification his work can at times be seen as slow and difficult. That is what Dmitry Trakovsky, the director of Meeting Andrei Tarkovsky, said in an interview to journalist Rubens Ewald Filho in the Clube da Mostra on Tuesday, October 21st.

In spite of their similar last names, Dmitry explained that he is not related to Tarkovsky. Born in Russia, the young filmmaker lives in the US and, even though he does not often visit his native country, he still maintains strong spiritual ties with his motherland. He could not pinpoint an exclusive reason why he identifies with Tarkovsky´s work, but he did emphasize that he likes the rhythm and the language of his films.

Dmitry, who once studied to become a doctor, explained that American universities offer students the possibility to take courses in parallel to their majors. This system led him to study Buddhism. After completing a short film on the subject, his professor encouraged him to apply for a grant to further pursue filmmaking. This funding laid the foundation of the documentary, Meeting Andrei Tarkovsky.

Dmitry said that Tarkovsky preferred to use long takes because he believed that time is the fundamental fabric of cinema. Mirror, from 1975, is Tarkovsky´s film that Dmitry admires the most, as he believes this to be the director’s most personal and poetic work. Conversely, Ivan’s Childhood (1962), Tarkovsky’s first film, is Dmitry’s least favorite because, as Tarkovsky would admit himself, it did not yet completely reflect the poetic language developed later on in his work.

The young filmmaker took three years to complete the documentary, and tried to investigate the idea, proclaimed by Tarkovsky, that death does not exist. Dmitry’s next project is to make fiction, maybe in a short film.

http://cinema.uol.com.br/ultnot/2008/10/21/ult6887u19.jhtm

21/10/2008 - 15h14

Documentário investiga a permanência do cineasta Andrei Tarkovsky

NEUSA BARBOSA
Especial para o UOL

Dmitry Trakovsky faz sua estréia como cineasta com o documentário "Conhecendo Andrei Tarkovsky"

O plano do estudante Dmitry Trakovsky, russo emigrado para aos EUA aos 2 anos, com seus pais, era estudar Medicina. Na própria universidade, na Califórnia, porém, o cinema desviou-o desse caminho. Ele acabou estreando como cineasta com o documentário "Conhecendo Andrei Tarkovsky", que tem sua première mundial na 32ª. Mostra Internacional de Cinema.

As coincidências foram muitas até chegar ao filme, a começar pelo sobrenome do jovem cineasta, quase igual ao de seu ídolo, Andrei Tarkovsky (1932-1986), prestigiado diretor de "Solaris" (72), "Stalker" (79) e "O Sacrifício" (86).

http://www.mostra.org/32/exib_jornal.php?jornalId=626&language=en

and a blog entry in Portuguese
http://andreavelloso.blogspot.com/2008/10/meeting-andrei-tarkovsky.html

More Godfather Attention

2008-10-22T14:23:00.000-07:00

Revisiting 'Godfather' trilogy

Mick LaSalle

San Francisco Chronicle Datebook - Sunday, October 19, 2008

Any excuse to rewatch all three "Godfather" movies is welcome, but the new boxed set of "The Godfather: The Coppola Restoration" is one of the better reasons to come along in years. It features digitally restored versions of the films, plus all the outtakes and features from previous releases, plus brand-new documentaries about the trilogy from director Kim Aubry. (I'm in two of those documentaries, as a talking head.) On consecutive nights, I revisited these movies for the first time in about 10 years. Watching them, I had some new impressions, in some cases contrary to previous things I've written. For what it's worth, here are some random "Godfather" thoughts, fresh and unfiltered.

The Godfather: This film and "Casablanca," which also had a tortured production history, are the two most irresistible films in the American cinema, a succession of winning scenes, with no dip in audience interest, no time out for regrouping, just one great moment followed by another. We remember a movie for its best moments, but with "The Godfather" that means remembering virtually the whole thing. Its appeal is astonishing.

This time, I found myself marveling at the casting of James Caan and Marlon Brando. Francis Ford Coppola is an Italian American, right? So he knows as well as I do that these guys don't really act like Italian Americans. (Look at the difference between the two of them and Al Pacino and John Cazale.) Yet their performances have about them something truer than literal accuracy. They're like Kabuki Italians. They have a detailed internal life, but they also seem to be observing consciously what they're doing externally; that is, acting Italian. And somehow their approach is in dignified harmony with the tone and tenor of what Coppola was after. What I can't figure out is this: How did Coppola intuit that they would be right? It's one thing to aim for authenticity, and quite another thing to preimagine a theatricality that's truer than authenticity and picture it within a whole design. That's extraordinary.

Also, this time out I very much enjoyed Pacino's trajectory, not only the change Michael Corleone undergoes but also the hints of latent power and authority within him that are present early in the film. There was a moment I'd never noticed before: You know when Michael stands with a guy outside the hospital and they pretend to be armed Mafia soldiers in order to scare away a car full of assassins? At the end of that scene, the other guy goes to light a cigarette, but he's so terrified that his hands are shaking wildly. So Michael takes out a lighter and lights it for him, and then - this is what I'd never noticed before - there's a split second in which Michael looks down and takes in the fact that his own hands are not shaking. It's as if he's confronting tangible proof that he is different from other people - that, in a sense, he has the talent to make it in crime.

The Godfather: Part II: Years ago, I used to say that I thought "Part II was better than Part I, but having seen both back to back, I would say that Part I is superior. But Part II has lots of great things in it, and it's an exceptional movie.

However, one thing bothers me. Watching the movie, it's still not clear to me why Michael kills Fredo, or even when he decides to do it. There are conflicting interpretations, which we'll look at. But first, let's lay out the known facts, chronologically:

1) There's an attempt on Michael's life.

2) Johnny Ola (Dominic Chianese), who works for Jewish mobster Hyman Roth, calls Fredo in the middle of the night. And from their conversation we derive that a) The Roth mob was behind the attempted hit; b) Fredo was the one who set Michael up; and c) Fredo didn't realize that he was setting his brother up to be killed. (I say that he didn't know because he seems horrified at what Johnny and Roth have tried to do. However, he has not - and does not - go back to Michael and tell him that the Roth mob is out to kill him. And that's bad.)

3) Michael finds out that Fredo betrayed him and is devastated. (It's the one time anything really gets to him in the whole movie.)

4) He goes over to Fredo and kisses him, as though giving him the kiss of death, and tells him that he broke his heart. But it doesn't seem, at this point, that Michael intends to kill Fredo.

5) Later, Michael has a conversation with Fredo in which Fredo, explaining himself, gives way to anger and resentment. He announces, "I'm smott! I'm smott!" by which he means that he's intelligent, and further says that he got involved with Ola and Roth because he was tired of being a flunky and wanted something that was his own. At this point, Michael hardens and disowns him. And immediately after that, he tells his assistant that he wants nothing to happen to Fredo while his mother is alive, implying that Fredo is to be killed when his mother is dead. The order is still in effect after he ostensibly reconciles with Fredo, who is killed not long after their mother's funeral.

Those are the facts. Here is the question: Why does Michael decide to kill Fredo, and when does he decide to do it? I see three possibilities, or rather multiple possibilities within the following broad categories:

Possibility 1: The least interesting possibility has Michael deciding to kill Fredo when he kisses him. This is possible, but it drains the subsequent conversation scene of its dramatic consequence and makes Fredo's blunder (saying that he resented Michael) of no importance. In this scenario, Michael kills Fredo because he assumes Fredo was in on the conspiracy (not true) or because he thinks Fredo is too dangerous to let live (a debatable point). But to believe this is to believe that, halfway into the movie, Michael's moral descent is all but complete.

Possibility 2: This second possibility, the one I believe most people assume to be accurate, is that Michael decides to kill Fredo in the course of their conversation because something in Fredo's words reveals to him, with certainty, that Fredo was in on the plot to kill him. The idea is that Michael realizes that Fredo either knew or pretended not to know what the Roth gang was up to. The problem with this, though, is that there's nothing in what Fredo says that reveals his complicity with any certainty. Also, we were privy to Fredo's conversation with Johnny Ola, which seemed to exonerate him. Yes, there's still the possibility of Fredo's unconscious or semiconscious complicity, but it's a slender reed on which to justify fratricide.

Possibility 3: As in the second possibility, this scenario has Michael deciding to kill Fredo during their conversation because of something Fredo says. But in this version, Michael is wrong. That is, Michael assumes Fredo was in on the conspiracy, but Fredo, in fact, was not. To me, this is the best possibility, because it preserves the drama of the conversation scene, partly justifies the issue's ambiguity and presents a genuinely tragic misunderstanding. Michael, who seems able to read everybody he meets, has one fatal error in perception, and it's about his own brother. He assumes something about Fredo that isn't quite true and dooms both of them. This interpretation also supports the idea that Michael - instead of becoming an ideal don - is becoming more and more paranoid and twisted. (Or, rather, that in order to be an ideal don, becoming paranoid and twisted is inevitable.) Still, I've seen this movie half a dozen times and can't say I'm sure on this score.

The Godfather: Part III: Set in 1979 and 1980, this is an entertaining movie, very watchable, very enjoyable, but inferior to the previous entries. The movie has some big problems, but Sofia Coppola, who took the rap at the time of the film's release, really isn't one of them. I think all the story elements were there for a great movie, but as presently constituted and arranged, they're a little out of balance. The main problem is that the Michael Corleone of Part III is not like the Michael Corleone of Parts I and II. He doesn't seem to be the same person. The Michael of the first two movies was a my-way-or-the-highway sort of guy, driven by an intense fear of being controlled and an overwhelming sense of responsibility toward those in his charge. The Michael of Part III is a guy who has always been driven by a desire to do the right thing, one who has come to realize that his judgment has led him astray. Yes, people change. But generally, when people go off the existential edge, they repress their guilt and behave in even worse ways. Stalin didn't become a nice guy when he was 60. But Michael is a nice guy, and from the beginning of the movie. As the movie opens, he longs to go legit and wants to assuage his guilt. These are two separate desires that could and should have been more closely linked.

I understand the problem that confronted Coppola and his screenwriting collaborator, Mario Puzo. As Coppola says in one of the special features documentaries, by the end of Part II Michael was a "zombie." You can't make a movie about a human blank who is hardened against all human feeling. But what if, in Part III, he started out as that kind of guy? And what if he then experienced a health crisis that left him unable to suppress his guilt? What I'm saying is, in "The Godfather: Part III" Michael's guilt over Fredo is like a chronic illness, but in dramatic terms it might have been better if the guilt were sudden and acute. Then you'd have a movie about a guy suddenly and all at once having to face crimes and emotions that he's repressed for years. Truly, then it would have been about a guy cracking up, which is what I think the movie wanted to be but isn't quite.

I also have never figured out why the movie takes place in 1979 and 1980, even as it depicts the real-life events of 1978 - the death of Pope Paul VI followed by the death of Pope John Paul I a month later. Anyway, Part III is still a good movie. Pacino has a great confession scene. Andy Garcia (as Vincent) is lots of fun throughout, and the picture has provided the world with a handful of taglines, which is always a mark of cinematic vividness. I love saying, for example, that "on this day, I have been treated with no respect." Or "There's a stone in my shoe." And, of course, it's hard to imagine a world without "Just when I think I'm out, they pull me back in." Vincent Corleone's midlife crisis is 10 years overdue. Bring on Part IV.

E-mail Mick LaSalle at mlasalle@sfchronicle.com.

http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2008/10/19/PK3H13BSNI.DTL

The Godfather: The Coppola Restoration Blu-ray Review

http://www.dailygame.net/news/archives/008369.php
10/02/08

The Godfather and its 1974 sequel are revered by many as two of the best films ever made, and their influence continue to affect our culture nearly 40 years after their release. Unfortunately, the series "re-releases" on VHS, Laserdisc and a DVD box set have had poor picture and sound quality. Paramount had nowhere to go but up with The Godfather Trilogy's release on Blu-ray, and someone clearly needed to save the Corleones.
That someone ended up being Steven Spielberg, who, acting on behalf of Francis Ford Coppola, asked Paramount to clean The Godfather's prints. Film, of course, not finger.... Scanned at 4k resolution and digitally cleaned one frame at a time, the restored and (in the case of Part III) re-mastered prints have been assembled for release in a deluxe four-disc Blu-ray edition called The Godfather: The Coppola Restoration. The results are fantastic.

When it comes to the bonus material, Coppola and Paramount have assembled a terrific collection. Not only are all of the bonus materials that bestowed the 2001 DVD set here, we also get approximately an hour and a half of new supplements which are all presented in either 1080p or 1080i.
Clocking in at approximately 30 minutes, The Masterpiece That Almost Wasn't examines the origin, production, reaction and impact of the 1972 original. Roughly sixteen people are interviewed, a mix of individuals involved with the production in one capacity or another (Coppola, George Lucas, Peter Bart, Robert Evans and Walter Murch) as well as actors and filmmakers offering their own personal reflections on the impact the film made on them. This includes Sopranos creator David Chase, actors Alec Baldwin and John Turturro and directors Steven Spielberg, Guillermo Del Torro and William Friedkin. If you already know the history of the film's production, a majority of this material may ring familiar. But the doc is still well worth your time, if only to hear Spielberg admit the film was so well made it seriously shattered his confidence in his own storytelling abilities.
Emulsional Rescue: Revealing The Godfather (19:02) -- This is the most fascinating of the new supplements as it covers the restoration process of the first two films. Coppola begins the short explaining how Spielberg got the ball rolling on the project. Willis and Daviau discuss Willis' shooting style for the film, while Robert A. Harris and Paramount VP of feature post-production Martin Cohen go into detail on the lengthy process on the efforts to restore the movies as closely as possible to the way they originally intended to look.
When the Shooting Stopped(14:00) -- Looks at the post production of the series and features interviews with Walter Murch and Richard Marks, who worked on the editing of the second film. The importance of having a good editor on a film is driven home by Murch's story of how his reworking of Nino Rota's music cues during the infamous Horse's Head scene saved the Italian Composer's score from being discarded altogether by Paramount.
Godfather World (11:20) -- A quick look at the film's long-lasting impact on our culture via interviews with South Park co-creator Trey Parker, David Chase and actor Joe Mantegna (aka The Simpsons Mafioso Fat Tony). All offer up anecdotes and tidbits on how these films have influenced their own work over the years.
Score: 9
It's The Godfather Trilogy, so you know it rocks, and the Blu-ray transfer is fantastic. This is a must-buy for all Blu-ray owners. Seriously.

-- Shawn Fitzgerald

NOT FADE AWAY: DVD is Dead - Long Live DVD

2008-09-25T10:46:00.000-07:00

I wanted to re-publish a page from a now extinct web site. This eulogy is around 13 months late. But with the advent of Blu-ray Disc...no, not advent, but product re-launch as the winner of the HD disc format war, I find myself wondering how long this platform will last. Will it make serious inroads into home entertainment.

DVD in 1998 was a BIG LEAP for consumers. The discs were cheap to produce, they could be viewed in portable players and laptops, and the improvement in picture and quality from VHS tapes was immense. Initially, the purists and videophiles decried the new format...the image would look too "compressed" and "digital" compared to their beloved Laserdiscs. (remember them?).

The Zoetrope DVD lab mastered our first DVDs in 1999. Our first title was a not widely known cult film called Fando y Lis by the Mexican director Alejandro Jodorowski followed quickly by Francis Coppola's Apocalypse Now, Tucker, The Man and His Dream and The Conversation.

By 2001, there were dozens of DVD review websites, fan sites...everyone writing on those sites was now an expert in image quality, sound quality, and the true "director's intention." Wine-tasting like adjectives began to proliferate in these earnest reviews "...the new transfer features rich burgundy reds...full enveloping Dolby sound with an edgy bite..." (I am not kidding.)

By 2002, $199 DVD no-name DVD players were available. And as the consumer economy continued to thrive despite the dot com bust, everyone was upgrading their aging 25" glass CRT televisions to 42" flat Plasmas or LCDs or even digital projectors.

Early HD adopters were trying out all kinds of early-adopter stuff: JVC had an HD "D-VHS format," and in the Summer of 2003, Cablevision launched their ill-fated VOOM HD satellite service which survived for less than 2 years, but programmed a vast range of films and other HD content to the few thousand subscribers that had signed up.

Meanwhile, a fierce ego-driven battle of titans kept a viable HD Disc from consumers: Sony and Pansonic were behind the eventual "winner" the Blu-ray Disc. Toshiba backed the loser, the HD-DVD. The movie studios changed alliances so many times it became impossible for consumers to choose one.

But in that interval, most consumers who had just spent $700 to $2,000 for their new large HD-capable screens found that by hooking them up to their plain old DVD players, movies looked pretty darn good. Without something to compare it to, their library of standard definition DVDs when presented on big wide-screen flat panels with scalers essentially LOOKED LIKE HD.

Back to where I started: here is a reprint of the last web issue of The DVD Journal from August of 2007:

Wednesday, 29 Aug. 2007
www.dvdjournal.com

Dimming the lights: On August 26, 1997, Digital Video Disc made its unofficial debut, with Warner Home Video placing 61 titles in nationwide release after a six-month trial period in test markets. Sony's flagship DVD player at the time, the DVD-s7000, cost $1,000; entry-level models reached the marketplace several months later with price-tags around half that, which still wasn't cheap. The nascent format faced several challenges — not all Hollywood studios were on board with the new digital media, while video-rental chains would not clear out a portion of their VHS shelf-space for the shiny new discs. However, thanks to a passionate group of early adopters, home-video divisions at Warner and Sony, the release of movies on DVD without the traditional "rental window" applied to VHS, and retailers stocking discs at affordable prices, consumers began crossing the digital divide. Since then, DVD has changed not just the way we watch movies, but how we think about them.

It's hard to understate the impact that DVD has had on our movie-consuming culture. Just as a lot of us will someday (even today) explain to young people what the world was like before personal computers or the Internet, we have to make an effort to scan back to the mid-1990s, when the idea of feature-length movies on CD-sized discs was a holy grail of film collectors. Prior to 1997, the condition of feature films on home video was sorry indeed. VHS tapes offered poor transfers compared to today's viewing standards, while film collectors hoarded hard-to-find movies captured from rare, late-night TV screenings. At the time, Laserdisc was the cineaste's choice, although the format was expensive, unwieldy, and sometimes subject to degradation thanks to the infamous "laser rot" that plagued more than a few collections. Folks who didn't have Laserdisc players and deep pockets could purchase some movies on VHS with widescreen transfers, but they came at a premium price. And then there was videotape itself — bulky, non-indexed, and liable to warp, break, and degrade, it simply was not durable enough to satisfy film collectors.

Looking back, we see there simply is no comparison between 1997 and 2007. Today, it's not only possible, but affordable for the average consumer to own an excellent personal film collection and home-theater equipment. It can even be done "on a budget," as it were. Compared to the pre-home-video era (basically, at any time before mass-market VCRs), the transformation is nothing less than astonishing, and it's worth thinking about. It was not that long ago that only the very wealthy could afford home theaters and actual prints of films for private screenings. It would require not only a large room, but a separate, muffled projection room as well, and somebody to run the projector (recall that famous scene in Sunset Boulevard, for example). You couldn't have a setup like that and, say, live in an apartment. DVD has made movies accessible to everyone, not just reclusive movie stars. This is one time when the movies may have gotten smaller, but they also got better.

As of this morning, The DVD Journal is ceasing publication. DVD first reached store shelves ten years ago this week, and this website went online with its very first DVD reviews nearly a year after that. Since then, we've posted almost 4,000 DVD reviews, watched the retail sheets for the best upcoming DVDs, and hopefully steered a few folks into renting or purchasing movies they otherwise might have overlooked.

Compared to many websites, very few writers have contributed to the Journal over the years, with a core group of around ten based in Los Angeles, San Francisco, Portland, and Seattle. The editor would like to thank all of them — it has been a privilege to be their first reader every week, and to be associated with a talented group of film critics who also happen to be good friends. Our own world has changed in the past decade as well, with marriages, children, new homes, career changes, and various other things that happen to sensible people when the subtle business of adulthood creeps up on them unawares.

The writers would like to extend thanks to everyone in the home-video industry we have had contact with over the past decade, from the hard-working publicists who do their best to get products out in advance of street-dates, to the miracle-worker technicians who have done the most challenging, and most important, job of all — restoring classic films to the best condition possible, allowing us to enjoy them at home, and forever. For many, this was the one true promise of DVD, and we rarely have been disappointed. We would also like to extend a special thanks to the good folks at The Criterion Collection, who have always set the highest bar for others in the industry to watch, and who got into this business back when Laserdiscs were a niche, and thus made the transition to the mass market with the greatest care, and as little fuss as possible.

For now, we will leave this website online, and while we won't be posting any regular features, all are welcome to return and get a look at a decade's worth of DVD, in review.

Finally, we thank our readers, for we too have been a niche of sorts, happily reviewing movies and posting release news without the need to fling around pop-up ads or hawk particular products to cover our bottom line, or worry about our own "growth" for the sake of raw traffic numbers. We're glad you made the time to drop by. We had fun. We hope you did, too.

—The Editor

The Godfather Redux - Out Today

2008-09-23T11:09:00.000-07:00

Here are more excerpts from press reviews of The Godfather - The Coppola Restoration out today on Blu-ray Disc and DVD.

'The Godfather,' at Its Greatest

By JEN CHANEY
washingtonpost.com Staff Writer
Tuesday, Sept. 23, 2008

Stop what you're doing and clear a space on that crowded home entertainment center shelf. Room must be made for "The Godfather: The Coppola Restoration," ($69.99) the box set that releases today and delivers one of the most influential series in cinema history, looking better than it ever has before.

A team of technicians spent more than a year meticulously restoring the three "Godfather" films, which also make their debut today on Blu-ray disc ($124.99). The results? A sun that shines even brighter on Connie Corleone's wedding day in "The Godfather"; blacker-than-midnight shadows in Michael Corleone's study in "The Godfather Part II"; and blood that pops with crisper crimson color during the Atlantic City shoot-out in "The Godfather Part III." In short, anyone who loves the movies simply must experience filmmaker Francis Ford Coppola's classics -- or at least the first two, since, let's face it, the third one most of us could take or leave -- through these DVDs, which capitalize on modern technology in a way that only enhances Coppola's and cinematographer Gordon Willis's original vision.

For those whose adoration of The Godfather" borders on religious fervor -- you know these people, they're the ones who can never resist a "Leave the gun. Take the cannoli" joke -- this collection is the definitive one to own. Everything that came with the 2001 box set, including several featurettes, 34 deleted scenes and three solid commentary tracks by Coppola, is here. But so is another disc with an all new slate of excellent extras, including one that explains every detail behind the restoration of the movies in more technical terms than some fans may have ever thought they needed.

Another smart addition: "Godfather World," a featurette that has great fun digging up homages to the mafia saga in everything from "The Simpsons" to "The Sopranos" to a recent Audi commercial. A wide range of admirers -- "Sopranos" creator David Chase, "South Park" mastermind Trey Parker, Coppola pal Steven Spielberg -- also appear in the interviews to explain why these movies have so widely influenced pop culture. (As actor Joe Mantegna puts it, "The Godfather" is "the Italian 'Star Wars.'")

Given the intense popularity and acclaim earned by this trilogy, some viewers may be surprised to realize how perilously close "The Godfather" came to never happening at all. The half-hour documentary "The Masterpiece That Almost Wasn't" delves into all that ugly behind-the-scenes history. For Corleone family scholars, many of the details -- about the shake-ups at Paramount in the late '60s and early '70s, the studio's desire to remove Coppola from the production and Al Pacino's near failure to be cast as Michael -- will sound very familiar. But for those just discovering these epics, the documentary does a fine, concise job of explaining this Oscar-winning enterprise's place in cinema history.

Most Oddly Comforting Bonus Point: With the economy on shaky ground, many Americans may find themselves living in fear of getting fired. Maybe some of them will feel better to know that, as "The Masterpiece That Almost Wasn't" and Coppola's commentary explain, the director lived with that same fear. And this guy is one of his generation's finest filmmakers. "It's a good reminder of what a delicate thing it is to create a really fine work of art, in any discipline," notes San Francisco Chronicle film critic Mick LaSalle. "And how dangerous it is to interfere with that."

/entertainment

The battle over 'The Godfather'

At one point, Coppola was almost fired. Tempers were short. Arguments were constant.

And then, on March 15, 1972, "The Godfather" premiered, and the world changed.

"I was pulverized by the story and the effect the film had on me," Steven Spielberg says in documentary material accompanying the new, digitally cleaned and remastered "The Godfather: The Coppola Restoration." The new DVD edition of the "Godfather" trilogy is out Tuesday.

"I also felt that I should quit, that there was no reason I should continue directing because I would never achieve that level of confidence or the ability to tell a story [as well as Coppola did in 'The Godfather']," he added. "In a way, it shattered my confidence."

Behind the scenes, things weren't going as well. Besides casting, Coppola and studio executives battled over music (the studio didn't like Nino Rota's score) cinematography (Gordon Willis' compositions were considered too dark), locations (Coppola wanted New York; the studio suggested cheaper St. Louis) and even era (Coppola wanted a period piece, the studio wanted the present day).

"There were people on the crew trying to take over the production," Coppola protégé George Lucas recalls in the documentary material.

Oscar-winning sound editor Walter Murch, a longtime Coppola friend, recalls the director being saved by the Italian restaurant scene in which Michael kills two opponents. "The feeling up to that time was, 'What is this movie? It's not turning out the way we thought it would' -- whatever that was," he says in the DVD.

The bickering continued practically up to the release date, with Coppola overshooting the two-hour, 10-minute running time the studio desired and the studio -- though pleased with the final two-hour, 55-minute cut -- uncertain how to please exhibitors who longed for more showings. Paramount came up with two solutions: eliminate an intermission -- de rigueur for long movies -- and open it in many theaters at once.

What emerged was a phenomenon.

"The Godfather" opened wider than any film before, changing Hollywood economics, and became the most successful film in history up to its time. ("Jaws," its successor as box office king, would codify the wide opening once and for all.) The film won best picture, gave the language such lines as "I'll make him an offer he can't refuse," and spawned two sequels, a video game, more Puzo underworld novels and -- essentially -- every gangster work to follow.

"When we started 'The Sopranos,' [referencing 'The Godfather'] was one of the original conceits," says "Sopranos" creator David Chase in the DVD set. Indeed, "Sopranos" characters are forever quoting from the films, thinking of them as a model for the mob experience.

"The Godfather Part II," which came out in 1974, did what no sequel has done before or since: win best picture. With its more intricate structure, many critics consider it the best film of the three. The third film, "The Godfather Part III" (1990), though the least successful, still contains some fine work; as a character on "The Sopranos" said, "A lot of people didn't like it, but I think it was just misunderstood."

The American Film Institute ranks the first film as the second-best of all time, after "Citizen Kane"; Internet Movie Database denizens have ranked it as No. 1 or No. 2 for years. It's been more than 35 years now, and the films still have a hold on the American psyche.

Just ask Joe Mantegna, who starred in "Godfather III" and plays Fat Tony on "The Simpsons" -- a character that owes an obvious debt to "The Godfather."

" 'The Godfather' was the Italian 'Star Wars,' " he says in the DVD.

New DVDs: ‘The Godfather: The Coppola Restoration’

By DAVE KEHR The New York Times

‘THE GODFATHER: THE COPPOLA RESTORATION’

Many of Francis Ford Coppola’s films, including the recent “Youth Without Youth,” have been haunted by the passing of time and an acute awareness of its destructive handiwork — the sense that once a treasured moment has been lost, nothing can be done to recover it.

But now a piece of Mr. Coppola’s own youth, which also happens to be one of the greatest works in American film, has been recovered, and spectacularly so. On Tuesday Paramount Home Entertainment is issuing the three films that make up Mr. Coppola’s “Godfather” saga, miraculously rejuvenated by a team of digital restoration experts under the supervision of the film preservationist Robert A. Harris. Offered both in high-definition Blu-ray and standard DVD editions, Mr. Coppola’s three films seem to have reclaimed the golden glow of their original theatrical screenings — a glow that has been dimmed and all but extinguished over the years through a series of disappointing home video editions.

Most of Mr. Harris’s work has gone into the first (1972) and second (1974) films in the trilogy. The later and less well-received third installment (1990) did not need as much effort, having been shot on a newer generation of film stock and never subjected to the abuse that nearly destroyed Parts I and II. By all accounts, the original negatives of the first two films were so torn up and dirty that they could no longer be run through standard film laboratory printing equipment, and so the only option became a digital, rather than a photochemical, restoration.

The final product, which the studio is calling “The Godfather: The Coppola Restoration,” combines bits and pieces of film recovered from innumerable sources, scanned at high resolution and then retouched frame by frame to remove dirt and scratches. The color was brought back to its original values by comparing it with first-generation release prints and by extensive consultation with Gordon Willis, who shot all three films, and Allen Daviau, a cinematographer (“E.T.”) who is also a leading historian of photographic technology.

The tight grain of the image, so important a component of Mr. Willis’s original low-light photography, has returned to particularly spectacular effect in the four-disc Blu-ray edition. The effect is not unlike that of a pristine 35-millimeter print projected in perfect focus — a rare enough phenomenon in a movie theater and, until quite recently, inconceivable in the living room.

The Godfather Films Restored in HD at last.

2008-09-19T10:59:00.000-07:00

Below: Excerpts from DVD and Blu-ray reviews (print and web) coming over the transom. The new Blu-ray 4 disc set goes on sale Tuesday 23 September.

We actually completed the 70 minutes of new documentary materials last February because at that time, Paramount was insisting that this new set had to go on sale for Father's Day on DVD.

So we worked at a maddening pace from Thanksgiving 2007 through Valentine's Day 2008. Then, a new regime at the studio reconsidered the release date. Then a few months later, Paramount announced that they were back in the BD camp (a "decent interval" had passed, I guess.)
By the time we were given the 6 month "reprieve," the work was essentially complete.

All the new documentaries were filmed and finished in HD and they look great (if I can say that), and the three Godfather films do look superb. The cheerleaders in the trade press and the industry booster websites are saying that this release will really "launch Blu-ray," but I am not so sure. A question for our blog readers: Does Blu-ray disc matter at this point...in September
2008? Or will it be a footnote as viewers download films, VODs or get cerebral implants ?

'Godfather' Finds a New Way to Keep Dragging Us Back In
Posted on Sun, Sep. 21, 2008
Miami Herald

BY RENE RODRIGUEZ

In one of the new featurettes found on The Godfather: The Coppola Restoration Giftset (Paramount, $70 DVD, $125 Blu-ray), actor Alec Baldwin compares the first film in the trilogy to a drug. ''When it's on, you're gonna watch it whether you want to or not,'' he says.

The Godfather movies -- at least the first two -- are, in fact, insanely rewatchable. But no matter how many times you've seen them before, these newly restored editions are a revelation. The subject of a painstaking, frame-by-frame clean-up that brought the original, badly damaged negatives back to the way they were intended to be seen on opening day, the first two Godfathers have simply never looked better.

Home theater aficionados who crave shiny, glossy images will be disappointed, though. Cinematographer Gordon Willis made distinct choices during the filming of the movies -- choices that would inspire an entire generation of filmmakers -- that resulted in images that look alternately underlit or overlit. The new discs reproduce those choices faithfully, from the film grain that permeates the shadows in Don Corleone's office to the blown-out whites of Connie Corleone's wedding dress.

The DVDs look great, but the Blu-rays are even better, practically doubling the amount of fine detail in wide shots and revealing subtleties in close-ups that were too fuzzy to register in previous releases (right before the restaurant shooting of Sollozzo and McCluskey in Part I, you can see tics and emotions cross Al Pacino's face that were simply invisible before).

Careful color correction has also evened the golden sepia tones used through the first two pictures, which the disc producers have craftily extended to the Paramount Pictures logo preceding the films, so it, too, is bathed in the warm, honeyed light of a memory. The negatives for Part III had not deteriorated nearly as badly, so the film's presentation here isn't quite as eye-popping. But it is still good enough to make you want to sit through the movie again and give it another chance.

This definitive release of the trilogy is accompanied by a definitive assortment of extras, running more than four hours in total. The 30-minute retrospective documentary The Masterpiece That Almost Wasn't recounts the legendary making of the first film, in which Coppola was forced to battle Paramount executives over practically every creative choice he made, including the casting of Pacino and Marlon Brando, neither of whom met the studio's approval.

Steven Spielberg, William Friedkin, South Park's Trey Parker and Sopranos creator David Chase are among the famous folk who show up to talk about the movie. Spielberg admits he was dismayed the first time he saw The Godfather, because he felt he would never be able to make a movie anywhere near as good and seriously thought about quitting filmmaking. Chase admits he had a problem with the presence of Brando and James Caan in the film, because they weren't Italian, but learned to live with it.

The 11-minute Godfather World consists of clips from other movies and TV shows that reference the trilogy, everything from The Sopranos (hilarious) to The Simpsons, You've Got Mail to a TV commercial for Audi autos. The fascinating Emulsional Rescue: Revealing the Godfather is a 20-minute featurette detailing the complex restoration process the first two films underwent, which was kick-started by a memo Spielberg sent to Paramount chief Brad Grey after that studio became the home of DreamWorks Pictures.

When the Shooting Stopped is a 15-minute look at the post-production process of the trilogy. Editing consultant Walter Murch recalls how producer Robert Evans vetoed the original plan to have an intermission in the middle of The Godfather (right after the Sollozzo shooting) because he ''didn't want to let the audience off the hook'' by giving them time to catch their breath. Murch also talks about the tweaking of the musical cue leading up to the horse-head scene and shows you both the original and the final versions, for comparison's sake.

Murch also discusses why Pacino's scream at the end of Part III was rendered silent, while Coppola reveals that his first cut of Part II was liked by no one, because he shifted back and forth between the story's two timelines too often, damaging the pacing of the movie. Once he minimized the chronological interruptions, the picture fell into place. The disc also includes a two-minute featurette in which Coppola finally shares the details behind the death of wiseguy Peter Clemenza, which was brushed off with a fleeting reference in Part II and no explanation (Coppola tried until the last minute to convince actor Richard S. Castellano to reprise the role in Part II, but Castellano would only agree if his girlfriend got to write all his dialogue).

The Godfather: The Coppola Restoration Giftset isn't just a monumental release for fans of the trilogy: It may also be the DVD of the year.

The Godfather: The Coppola Restoration on Blu-ray Disc
By Chris Chiarella Big Picture Big Sound

Godfather was an uncommon instance where I actually wanted to watch one of the featurettes, "Emulsional Rescue," before the movie itself. I know how they all end, so no worries about spoiled surprises, but the included vignette about the restoration helped me figure out what to look for, how to appreciate what we've been given in this significant new set. Several factors have left the physical elements for the Godfathers in horrible condition. The success of the film necessitated many duplicate prints being copied off of the original film negative. Add in the less-than-perfect quality of film stock circa 1971 and the abundance of dark, dark scenes, and we were left with a soft, murky mess for far too long on home video. Prior cleanup attempts had made some improvement, but not nearly on the scale of The Coppola Restoration.

A Blu-ray We Can't Refuse: The Godfather Trilogy - The Coppola Restoration
Film.com
Glenn Erickson, Sep 19, 2008

Glenn takes the cannoli and says this release elevates these classics to a whole new level of home video.

"Film printing is really a contact sport."

That's a quote from Robert A. Harris, explaining how old film negatives accrue damage through lab handling. In a featurette on The Godfather: The Coppola Restoration, Harris and other film experts give the clearest explanation yet of the nature of film restoration. And it's only one excellent mini-docu in a score of interesting short subjects and interactive extras. Paramount's four-disc Blu-ray set -- available Sept. 23 -- includes all three Godfather films in stunning new high-definition transfers. It's the kind of release that will influence more home video enthusiasts to take the Blu-ray plunge.

Happily, the marketing hype is limited to an insert booklet, leaving Kim Aubrey's HD extras (located on a fourth Blu-ray disc) to examine the films in a critical light. The Masterpiece That Almost Wasn't is an exemplary making-of chronicling The Godfather's highly unlikely path to the screen. Key background is given in excellent interviews with Walter Murch, George Lucas, Francis Coppola, Peter Bart and Robert Evans, with additional input from other directors and actors. The beautifully organized docu touches on the difficulties of casting and production, comparing Coppola's ethnic vision with the portrayal of Italian-Americans in classic-era gangster pictures.

"Godfather World" concerns itself with the film's legacy, using clips from shows like South Park and The Simpsons. David Chase is on hand to explain how his TV series The Sopranos couldn't have existed without the The Godfather. His characters frequently discuss and debate scenes from Coppola's movies.

"Emulsional Rescue" gets into the details of the restoration process, using well-chosen graphics and visual examples to simplify confusing concepts. When cameramen Gordon Willis and Allen Daviau explain how over-printing damaged parts of the film negatives, we see the actual reinforced splices that marred earlier transfers. Willis purposely under-lit the movie for a certain look, leaving a negative that doesn't duplicate well. We find out that the 4K scanning process was able to recovered one major scene (the shooting of Captain McCluskey and Sollozzo) almost ruined by bad lab work back in 1971. Expert Robert A. Harris follows up nuggets of film wisdom like, "Added resolution is not the same as sharpness" with excellent explanations of the concepts involved. The insightful featurette is especially recommended for viewers uncomfortable with film technical talk.

"When the Shooting Stopped" isolates some great anecdotes from post-production, such as how Coppola cleverly retained control of the editing when the studio insisted on holding him to a contracted running time a little over two hours. Murch explains why the three-hour film has no intermission. He also remembers that the studio disliked Nino Rota's score so much that he had to re-engineer the music for the horse-head scene. Editor Richard Marks discusses the more experimental cutting in Godfather Part II, and Murch rationalizes his decision to drop the audio for Michael's screams at the end of Part III.

Three short films are orphaned interview bits; the best explains why Richard S. Castellano wasn't rehired to play Clemenza in the second movie. Godfather on the Red Carpet is a less interesting collection of comments from younger celebrities apparently taped at a preview of Cloverfield. Connie and Carlo's Wedding Album is a glossy presentation of photography from the Visconti-like wedding scene in Godfather #1.

The extras become exceptional again with The Family Tree and the Crime Organization Chart, interactive features that lay out the cast of characters for all three films using photos and pop-up info windows. The "Crime Rap Sheet" data on the second chart is especially helpful for keeping straight "Rivals and Associates" like the Tattaglias and Cittis. We need something like this for the books Dune and War and Peace!

Overall, this Blu-ray set has the best added value extras I've seen this year. Many new movies are burdened with puff pieces straight from the marketing department, while older classics are too often slighted with under-funded featurettes made on editorial assembly lines. [yowch...KA] Godfather: The Coppola Restoration is an exceptionally good Blu-ray release, and its extras elevate the stature of the disc supplement format.

'Godfather' trilogy dwarfs all other new Blu-ray releases
by Doug Nye
McClatchy-Tribune News Service (MCT)

Simply put, “The Godfather” trilogy (Paramount, $119.99) is a magnificent example of how enjoyable great films can be on Blu-ray.

The set, which arrives in the DVD high-definition format Tuesday, not only includes all three films but a fourth disc that is packed with more than a dozen absorbing extras...Disc four includes featurettes “Godfather World,” “The Masterpiece That Almost Wasn’t,” “When the Shooting Stopped,” a piece on the restoration, a couple of “The Making of ...” shorts, additional scenes and much more. Coppola’s commentary also accompanies each film.

“The Godfather: The Coppola Restoration” will also be available in a standard DVD 5-disc set ($72.99), but the suggestion here is to opt for the Blu-ray edition. For those who haven’t switched to the format, “The Godfather” trilogy is the perfect reason to do it now.

HARD TO REFUSE THE RESTORED GODFATHER
Posted By JOHN LAW

THE GODFATHER: THE COPPOLA RESTORATION (Paramount)

Blu-Ray has given studios a whole new excuse to double-dip, though Godfather fans may forgive this one.

All three films have been beautifully restored with digital surround sound, eliminating the flaws which dogged the original DVD release in 2001.

This is the version we should have gotten back then, but people were so eager for the trilogy, they overlooked the scratchy print and steep price.

For this re-release, director Francis Ford Coppola brings the gorgeous cinematography back to its original lustre, giving these dark films -especially II - a noir look they haven't had since their original run in theatres. The restoration is discussed in an all-new bonus disc, showing how badly the first two film's original prints had eroded. It doesn't matter how many times you've seen I and II -watching them without any visual flaws and new surround sound is bliss.

The other treat on the bonus disc is The Masterpiece That Almost Wasn't, revisiting how Paramount nearly ruined the first film by, among other things, insisting it take place in a modern setting, and how the story shouldn't focus on the mafia. (Huh??)

Coppola fought every dumb decision to not only make possibly the greatest film ever, but save Hollywood from a slump which threatened the entire movie industry. Things were so dire before The Godfather, Paramount was sold for $600,000 and producer Robert Evans made a video begging the new owners not to shut them down.

The other features are hit and miss (does anyone really care what the cast of Cloverfield thinks about The Godfather?), but there's also the original supplements from the 2001 release which includes a great retrospective on the first film as Coppola was preparing Part III. And to get the hidden Sopranos tribute, just keep pressing 'next' on the screen for DVD Credits.

The Godfather Collection: The Coppola Restoration Blu-ray Review

Cinema's great crime trilogy debuts in a glorious high definition package.

Reviewed by Martin Liebman, September 18, 2008
Blu-ray.com

Given the opportunity to travel back in time, specifically to the end of March, 1972, for the sole purpose of going to the movies in a major U.S. city, your choices of the notable films released that month were interesting and varied. The original Tales from the Crypt with Peter Cushing, and Frogs, with Ray Milland and Sam Elliott, might satisfy your desire to bring a little Horror into your life. If you would prefer a dose of Sci-Fi, you could choose Silent Running starring Bruce Dern, or the film version of Kurt Vonnegut’s classic novel Slaughterhouse-Five, in which Perry King and Valeria Perrine each received their first screen credit. Barbra Streisand and Ryan O’Neal’s What’s Up, Doc? satisfied both female audiences and the "date night" movie niche for the month. Each of these films is a somewhat entertaining example of their genre, but one film, released that same month, would not only redefine its genre, it would redefine American cinema and prove to be one of the most cherished and influential films of all time, and serve as a career-defining film for all involved. Released on March 24, 1972, based on the novel by Mario Puzo, and directed by Francis Ford Coppola, The Godfather quickly attained the status of instant classic, and if anything, has only risen in the estimation of critics and film fans worldwide. The success of The Godfather led to the inevitable sequels, both with their own unique followings and reactions, each of which we will with time approach in this review. Although we cannot, as of today, travel back in time to witness this indelible American classic on the big screen, Paramount Pictures' Blu-ray edition, released some 36 and a half years following the original film's theatrical debut, allows both film aficionados and newcomers to these classics to see the films as closely to the originals as any home video format currently allows, and with the stamp of approval from director Francis Ford Coppola himself.

The Godfather Collection comes to Blu-ray with a fourth disc full of supplemental material, and a feature-length commentary track with director Francis Ford Coppola accompanying each film. Across all three movies, spanning some 10 hours, Coppola runs the gamut of The Godfather in what is a comprehensive overview of the films. Coppola never falls into the trap of only discussing the action on-screen simply to fill up dead air. Instead, his comments are always insightful, whether he is discussing the performance of an actor, minor details added to the movie from the Mario Puzo novel while retaining the "dynamism" of the book, or describing something as simple as shooting locations. Coppola has a way of storytelling that is rare indeed, remaining engaging and entertaining no matter the topic at-hand. His is a natural, authoritative, yet friendly approach and delivery, and I doubt even the casual Godfather fan would lose interest in any of the fine commentaries accompanying these films. Even at around 10 hours, these commentaries are well worth your time. I imagine a day when you may be under the weather and home sick from work or school might be the ideal time to dig through all of the tracks. What better than a day with one of the finest filmmakers of all time to brighten your mood and forget your ailments?

Disc four contains a wealth of extra materials, some of which is ported over from previous releases, and some of it is new for this incredible Blu-ray release. The features begin with The Masterpiece That Almost Wasn't (1080p, 29:46). "It is impossible to imagine a world without them," the feature states up front, regarding the Godfather films. Indeed, this piece tells the story of how the first film was almost passed on by the studios. The decade was the 1960s, and Hollywood was in upheaval, as the studios pinched pennies and people sought to exit the business rather than enter into it. This feature contains interviews with American Zoetrope co-founders Walter Murch, George Lucas, Francis Ford Coppola, then-Senior Vice President of Paramount, Robert Evans, and others. As Zoetrope was founded in the late 1960s, Hollywood was in a period of flux, as tastes changed, ticket sales plummeted, and the future was bleak, thanks in large part to the introduction and mainstream embracing of television. This feature looks at the history of Paramount Pictures in the years leading up to the release of The Godfather, the non-acceptance of Sicilian mafia movies (due in large part to the lack of Italians working in and on such films), and Francis Ford Coppola's initial involvement in this project. Also discussed are squabbles over casting, shooting locations, the dark look of the film, the turing point in the film that also happened to be the turning point in the studio's backing of Coppola's work, the premiere of the film, and so much more. The piece then moves into reaction to the film, including that of Richard Belzer, John Turturro, Steven Spielberg (who calls this a confidence-shattering film, meaning he could never attain such directorial heights), Trey Parker, Alec Baldwin David Chase, and plenty of others. The feature, and the interviewees, also delve into the authenticity of the film, its contrast to previous gangster pictures, and more. This is a swift-moving 30 minutes and is a must-watch for anyone who purchases this set.

Godfather World (1080p, 11:19) is a pleasing look at the influence of the films in our culture and its mention and parody in film and television. Emulsional Rescue: Revealing the Godfather (1080i, 19:05) is an extended look at the restoration of these films. Included are interviews with Gordon Willis, Allen Daviau, Steven Spielberg, film preservationist Robert A. Harris, and others. This is a fascinating feature, an education all its own, and is required viewing for anyone who watches Blu-ray, reads our forums, or wants to appreciate what goes into the restoration process. ...When the Shooting Stopped (1080p, 14:18) looks more at the conflict between filmmakers and studio, this time focusing in on the music that plays over the famous "horse head" scene. Later, the piece delves into some thoughts on the themes of The Godfather sequels and how they tie the series together. The Godfather on the Red Carpet (1080p, 4:03) features a series of sound bites with various actors as they express their thoughts on the films.

This Blu-ray edition of The Godfather Collection is perhaps the most impressive set ever released on home video. Sure, other collections may have offered more supplemental features, more movies, and many have offered audio and video qualities that present to viewers and listeners that "modern" high definition experience, and all of that is absolutely wonderful. However, no other collection can boast three all-time classic films, so painstakingly restored and presented exactly as they should be, in line with the original theatrical presentations, beginning back on March 24, 1972, and spanning some 18 and a half years. Now, almost 18 more years after the third installment of the series first screened in theaters, The Godfather Collection is available to own in a package that director Francis Ford Coppola closely supervised during the year-long restoration; we can watch this new Blu-ray edition with the high expectation that the director himself has issued it with his own recommendation as to the presentation's quality. The set also contains a wealth of entertaining and insightful supplemental features. Despite this lengthy review, few need me to convey how good this set is. It speaks for itself, as do the films, and like the films contained thereon, The Godfather Collection on Blu-ray will go down in the annals of home video as one of the finest releases of all time. Leave the gun, take the cannoli, and buy the Blu-ray. This set easily receives my highest recommendation.

The Godfather: The Coppola Restoration Blu-ray Review
by Cindy White
IGN.com

EXTRAS: It's nice to see that all of the new extras have been produced in HD.

Among the new offerings, "Godfather World" features critics, authors, filmmakers and other celebrities talking about how they've been influenced by the films. Among those interviewed are Alec Baldwin, Richard Belzer, David Chase, William Friedkin, Trey Parker, Guillermo del Toro, Joe Mantegna (fun fact: he's voiced Fat Tony on The Sopranos for 17 years!), Sarah Vowell and Steven Spielberg. The featurette also covers the influence on pop culture as a whole, from The Sopranos to The Simpsons.

"The Masterpiece That Almost Wasn't" is the story of how the corporate masters at Paramount (then owned by Gulf & Western) tried their best to screw up The Godfather at every turn (they didn't want it filmed in New York; they didn't want it to be a period piece; they balked at the casting of DeNiro, Brando and Pacino; and generally disapproved of Coppola's entire vision). Through interviews with Coppola and his contemporaries such as George Lucas and Steven Spielberg, as well as Hollywood legend Robert Evans, the old story of the making of The Godfather is rehashed once again. It's old territory, sure, but it's still interesting to hear the story from those involved. It highlights the clash between art and commerce and ends up being as much critique of American capitalism as the film itself.

More disagreements emerge in "When the Shooting Stopped," which focuses on the fights over the editing process, the length of the film, the music and the pace of the story. It's also one of the few new segments which discusses The Godfather III in detail, as the editor discusses the creation of the sequence in which Michael laments the death of his daughter.

The most pointless inclusion here is "Godfather on the Red Carpet," which seems to have been filmed at the premiere of the Paramount film Cloverfield. In this piece of gratuitous studio promotion, various stars from that film and other Paramount releases talk extemporaneously about their opinions and recollections of the Godfather trilogy. The actors appear to have been taken surprise by the question and sometimes seem a little out of their depth. The "Godfather World" featurette accomplishes the same thing, only better and with celebrities who actually have some authority on the subject.

"Four Short Films on The Godfather" is a bit of a misleading title, as the segments aren't really short films, but interview pieces. "GF vs. GF Part II" features film critics and other celebrities debating the merits of the two films and their opinions on which is better. "Riffing on the Riffing" has Richard Belzer testing the knowledge of the star of a one-man stage version of The Godfather with random quotes. "Cannoli" explains the significance of the famous Italian dessert as it relates to the films and reveals that the famous "leave the gun, take the canolli" line was not originally in the script, but improvised by actor Richie Castellano as Clemenza. And speaking of "Clemenza," the final segment here has Coppola answering the lingering question of the character's fate, something which has puzzled fans to this day. Apparently, the director refused to comply with Castellano's request that his girlfriend write his dialogue and chose to write him out of the sequel. In Coppola's mind, he merely died of natural causes.

Finally, the sly menu design on the first disc, featuring the tomato patch that where Don Corleone meets his natural end, is worth a mention and is the best of the three.

Score: 10 out of 10

The Bottom Line
A fantastic collection worthy of this masterpiece.

The Godfather: The Coppola Restoration

Blu-ray Disc reviews by Bill Hunt, editor of The Digital Bits

Film Ratings (I/II/III): A/A+/B-
Video (1-20): 19.5
Audio (1-20): 18.5
Extras: A+

Paramount's The Godfather: The Coppola Restoration is, in my opinion, the current favorite for best Blu-ray Disc release of 2008... at the very least in terms of classic film presentation and restoration in high-def, if not overall. Yes, it's that good...

As if the restored, high-definition image quality wasn't enough to justify this set's purchase, Paramount has seen fit to include a great batch of bonus material as well, including EVERY SINGLE EXTRA THAT WAS ON THE PREVIOUS DVD COLLECTION BOX SET. You get all three audio commentaries by Coppola. You get all the deleted scenes. You get all the featurettes, all the storyboards and the filmmaker bios. You get the Family Tree, you get the photo galleries. You even get all four Easter eggs (in roughly the same place they were on the DVD set) AND a new one as well. Plus you get the trailers, now presented in HD. That's just for starters - and keep in mind, all of that material was pretty awesome in its own right...

But there's newly-produced material here too, exclusive to this Blu-ray release, all of it in full HD - something like 2 hours worth of new featurettes in all, including new interviews with Coppola, Willis, George Lucas, Steven Spielberg and many other filmmakers, technical people and more. The Masterpiece That Almost Wasn't (30 mins) examines the history of the production and how, as you might guess, it almost never came to be. Godfather World (11 mins) features filmmakers, actors and others discussing the impact of the film. When the Shooting Stopped (14 mins) features stories from the editing room and post production by those who were involved. The best of the new material, in my opinion, is Emulsional Rescue: Revealing The Godfather (19 mins) in which Harris and others talk about the process and the effort involved in restoring these films. There's a ton of interesting information here on the subject of restoration, all well explained and illustrated. Of less interest is The Godfather on the Red Carpet (4 mins) in which various actors and celebrities comment on the films. And the "four short films" (The Godfather vs. The Godfather, Part II, Cannoli, Riffing on the Riffing and Clemenza) are basically just short bits of interview footage that didn't really fit anywhere else - interesting stories, anecdotes, etc. (They're not actually self-contained films in their own right, just so you know.)...

People often ask me, "Why Blu-ray?" Well, folks... THIS is why. Sets like The Godfather (and last year's Close Encounters and Blade Runner sets) are EXACTLY why serious film fans should upgrade to Blu-ray. The very best thing about this format, in my opinion, is not its ability to show off the latest eye-candy blockbusters in total perfection. No, the best thing about Blu-ray is its ability to show you films that you've loved, in some cases for your ENTIRE life, in the kind of quality you've NEVER seen them in before. The kind of quality that was only ever available in a handful of the very best theatres when the films were first released. If you love the cinema, Blu-ray releases like this are a revelation, that serve to expand that love and appreciation even more. And isn't that, after all, what home video formats like DVD and Blu-ray are all about? The Godfather: The Coppola Restoration is a jewel, and should be regarded - along with a few other recent Warner classics on the format - as a new benchmark for the presentation of classic films in high-definition.

I'll tell you, it's days like this that I really love my job.

Tarkovsky by Trakovsky

2008-09-15T16:01:00.000-07:00

Андрей Арсеньевич Тарковский

Our latest project literally walked in off the street one day.

A recent UC Santa Cruz graduate, a Russian American kid named Dmitry called one afternoon recently to ask for advice. He wanted to know how to get his film post produced and into film festivals. [Oh god, not another film student first-time filmmaker...looking for free advice, somehow always available.] Time for tough love. "Forget it...don't bother...don't waste my time."

Except.

This kid wasn't calling about a hypothetical film. He'd actually already gone out and spent a year shooting, editing, and writing and recording his voiceover and made a perfectly presentable DVD screener...with original cover art. I was impressed. Dmitry takes us on a mission to learn who Tarkovksy is, and what the filmmaker meant when he asked in his long long films if death really exists.

And get this...he's not even a film student. Former pre-med.

So I watched [selectively] his screener, and we figured out what else needed to be done to raise it to the next professional level. Oh and I'm a UCSC alum too, and I am 75% Russian-American. But I freely admitted to Dmitry that Solaris put me to sleep when I first saw it when I worked as a projectionist in an arthouse cinema in the early 70s. (I liked Space Oddity more) And I had a hard time with Andrei Rublev when I got around to watching it in the 90s.

The new 90 minute film is called "Meeting Andrei Tarkovsky..." ballsy title considering that Tarkovsky died when young Dmitry was just 1.

Meeting Andrei Tarkovsky (the filmmaker's site)

http://www.criterion.com/asp/release.asp?id=34

http://www.criterion.com/asp/release.asp?id=164