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

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!!!

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!

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!

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

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

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?

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