random Legacy DVD thoughts

Pre-ordered in May and it got here 1 Jun 99 at 11am. Happy camper. At
long last.

=====
Alien DVD is super cool all the way around. The animation breaking up
the Fox logo at the very begining is very cool.

The main menu is a bit cheesy - reminds me of the Lost In Space DVD -
virtually has the same 'swooshing' sound when something is selected. But
it's cooler. Loud main menus :-]

Nice to see all the cut scenes in a superior format. Pretty easy to
navigate.

Easter eggs...

Go to Main Menu, highlight Extra Features, press Left to highlight the
rectangle, press Enter to see the DVD credits. Press Enter to exit,
highlight 'Scene Selection', press right to highlight the other
rectangle in the background, press Enter to read the Nostromo crew
dossiers. A decent read.

Other easter Egg...

'Extra Features' menu press down to highlight the acid drop hole, press
enter to read Ash's transmission to W-Y about the stages of the Alien.
Kind of nice.

Last sort of Easter egg...

In Deleted scenes you can listen to Ridley Scott's audio commentary of
the cocoon scene - doesn't say much of interest though.

Most of the extras are taken from the laser disc but presented better.
Nice to have.

Commentary track is great.

Production audio track is *very* interesting.

Isolated score track is *loud* but interesting.

=====
Aliens DC...finally...

They used the same crappy film grainy print for Aliens DC that
they must have used for the laser disc IMHO. They may have cleaned it up

or adjusted it a bit. I know all about the Van Ling explaination but
what's odd is that it's not consistent - the picture is either rather
crappy or really good - and SFX shots do not have anything to do with it
as far as I can tell.

If I use one of the Pioneer Elite DV-05's DNR controls I can get it to
look
good - almost a film-like quality. The soundtrack in 2.0 or 5.1 sounds
odd though - a wierd mix to get ambience with rain, humming, wind etc.
in the background. almost too harsh and contrived - not natural surround

at all. I'm sure its' all intentional because Cameron wanted it to feel
like a war documentary but takes some getting used to.

It's super cool to have it in this format though. The main menus are
*great*.

Cameron interview lifted from laser. But that's OK.

=====
Alien 3 looks and sounds great.

One thing that always irked me about the Making of Alien 3 is the SFX
guys who did that godawful puppet for an otherwise great film talk like
they're proud of it - ugh :-[

Some of the scenes from the film in the 'Making Of' are in a different
aspect ratio - more like 2.20:1 - I wonder if the movie isn't cropped to

2.35:1 for home video [?]

=====
Alien Resurrection

AR could have been a better transfer but it's not the best movie either
- nice to see it widescreen. heheh. Not much to talk about there. No
suprise. Glad I didn't pay full price for it.

=====
The silver Alien box is godawaful ugly and uminaginative. What a piece
of crap. Looks terrible in the stores too. What a terrible
representation of the Alien series.

The individual cases ldo ook good as does the Alien Legacy onscreen
intro.

Odd inside cases - you have to get used to the new way they want you to
pop the disc out - have to put your thumb in the center and then lift
the top edge - almost bent the disc in half first time I tried it :-[]

Inserts are nice looking, intersting format. Info is OK.

On the 'official' web site they have Dan O'Bannon's picture where it
says Ridley Scott :-[] Nice looking site but I hate frames.

All-in-all pretty damn nice having it on DVD. Widescreen.

Hope you enjoy it too - DVD or VHS.

:::::::: | Brian Pesti | ::::::::

http://home.earthlink.net/~bpesti/alien/index.html

The quality however was not much better, if any, over the laserdisc
versions that were released of all four movies. The sound quality is
much better though with the Dolby Surround, and 5.1 options.

Much better than the VHS versions that came out. No problems
playing them on... Pioneer, Panasonic and the new Sharp DV-650U.

There have been problems with one of the discs on the Toshiba 3108
though. The one with the DVD rom stuff on it.

daarksun

daarksun

The picture quality of Alien on DVD is a much-welcomed improvement
over any previous release of the film -- plus, no side breaks. Check out
the various articles at www.thedigitalbits.com about the work that was
put into the new hi-def transfer of Alien. Blows all of the LDs away.

As for Aliens, although it is still fairly grainy, it's also an improvement
over the SE LD, if not as noticable improvement as the Alien DVD. Looks
pretty damn good though, considering.

And, I'm sorry, but the picture quality of the Alien 3 DVD is a HUGE
improvement over the muddy-looking LD.

As for Alien Resurrection. Eh, who cares? (Just kidding, you AR fans.)

Remove DVDRULES to respond via e-mail
---------------------------------
"Your 'netiquette' is very poor."
- Joe Kelsey (10/29/98)
---------------------------------

I was rather shocked out how grainy it can appear at times. Having only
seen the VHS widescreen before this, the lack of detail in the VHS may
have hidden the grain. A few scenes really look ugly because of the
grain though. But I am just nit picking, I love the Aliens DVD.

I know you think the Alien DVD menus are cheesy looking, but maybe you
were tainted by the lost in space movie, hehehehe. I mean, if the menus
reminded me of Lost in Space, I might think they look silly too.

I was smart enough not to buy or rent Lost in Space, so I have no such
comparrison. The Alien DVD menus look fantastic to me 8-)

The people who transfer these movies work with them for months, why the
hell didn't they nocite the text doesn't fit on the screen in the
beginnig of Alien3? I seem to remember being able to see it all in other
versions, but it's been a long time since I watched A3. (not my fav, can
you tell?)

And as for Alien Res, well as long as they include that cut-scene where
Call takes a naughtly shower, I won't complain..hehehehehe

A couple things I would have liked to see in the box set.....

Pan and scan verisons of all the films. I have found Pan and scan to be
very usefull and as a sort of Zoom feature to really get a good look at
details. I really am going to miss being able to flip the disc over to
get a good look at something in the background or whatever.

An option to include, and discard the cut scenes from the movie. I wanna
be able to watch the DVD as the released verison AND with the cut scenes
included. This goes for Alien and Aliens. That would have been very easy
to do for the DVD creators.

**************************************
http://fly.to/alien.interactive.story
http://members.tripod.com/~metalalien

"Very easy?" Hardly. Amazing how some consumers think that all you
need to do is press a button and -- viola! -- instant Super-Ultra-Mega-
Deluxe-Cure-for-Cancer-Special Edition DVD. If Fox had put both
widescreen AND pan & scan, PLUS branching two different cuts of the
film, you would have kissed goodbye to all those cool supplements and
perhaps even the high bitrate of the film itself.

Wait for DVD-18 to hit, and then you might have a valid gripe. But for
now, the Alien and Aliens DVDs are packed to the gills.

And one more time, to release a version of Alien *with* its deleted
scenes restored into the whole of the film would go AGAINST Ridley
Scott's wishes, effectively making it an Anti-Director's Cut.

First of all, on my DVD-ROM, the dialogue sounds much different than
my VHS version. There is a degree of echo whenever anyone talks.
Perhaps it's due to my equipment. Perhaps that's how it was orginally
released. I don't know. I didn't notice it on the other films however.
Anyone have any idea why that is?

Also, as I saw the Alien split apart from being drenched with water, I
thought, "Why didn't Weyland Yutani use those pieces of DNA to clone
the Alien?" That would seem easier to do than to clone the host and
the organism growing inside her. The company seemed desparate to save
anything they could from the incident so they would have probably
saved those alien parts too. The only thing I can think to explain
this is that the parts could not be found or if they were found and
saved, cloning them proved difficult. Or perhaps the Alien body parts
were lost or used up over the years between Alien 3 and Alien
Resurrection.

Michael
http://welcome.to/thehive

On Fri, 04 Jun 1999 20:16:27 -0400, Brian Pesti <bpe...@earthlink.net>
wrote:

That was the promise of DVD to begin with, alternative scenes at the
push of a button. Both versions are already on the disc, they could have
just had the player skip over the tracks that were the extra scenes.

That's what the other side of the disc is for, room to include both
versions.

Thats why it's called a wish, because anything is possible, just not
probable.

A good point! But, hold on... if they had cloned from those parts, they
would have got themselves one warrior. Cloning from Ripley gave them one
queen, and potentially unlimited warriors.

--

Mike

Another good point! But, hold on... if Cameron had used the original
Alien lifecycle as seen in the deleted Dallas/Brett cocoon scene from
Alien, there would be no need for a Queen to continue the lifecycle.

:)

>Zap barked:

Oh, relax! I did NOT bark. :)

How about focusing more on the REALITY than on the PROMISE. In any
case, it wouldn't be "very easy" (as you suggested) to do this, especially
if you wanted all of those supplements on the disc as well. Believe it
or not, but there IS a finite amount of room on a DVD.

As I said, it would require a DVD-18 to accomplish this (dual-sided,
dual-layered) and the technology isn't quite there yet. Almost, but not
quite. Of course, you could get rid of all those supplements and have
a different version of the film on each side of the disc, or hell, even
put them on one side of the disc, dual-layered. But I'm not sure most
people would want to give up all the extras just to have a pan & crap
version of the film...or a branched version of the film that goes against
the director's wishes.

Fair enough. But I, for one, would rather the filmmaker's rights be
given priority over our curiosity to see a different version of the film.
I might be interested to see all of the raw dailies from Alien, but I don't
think I should have the right to view those if the director doesn't want
me to. It's sort of like letting a stranger peek through your drawers.

Theoretically, the DNA of a warrior should be the same as a queen or even a
facehugger or egg, with the exception of any host DNA mingled in...

I figure that any viable tissue was destroyed by the molten lead.

-|- Larken -|-

z> >Adelina Pantig <lpa...@earthlink.net> writes
z> >
z> >>Also, as I saw the Alien split apart from being drenched with water, I
z> >>thought, "Why didn't Weyland Yutani use those pieces of DNA to clone
z> >>the Alien?" That would seem easier to do than to clone the host and
z> >>the organism growing inside her. The company seemed desparate to save
z> >>anything they could from the incident so they would have probably
z> >>saved those alien parts too.
z> >
z> >A good point! But, hold on... if they had cloned from those parts, they
z> >would have got themselves one warrior. Cloning from Ripley gave them
z> >one queen, and potentially unlimited warriors.

z> Another good point! But, hold on... if Cameron had used the original
z> Alien lifecycle as seen in the deleted Dallas/Brett cocoon scene from
z> Alien, there would be no need for a Queen to continue the lifecycle.

Depends really, Cameron's way is far more effecient on a mass production scale
since you only need one host vs two host scenerio. I can see the two methods
being valid since one is a "quick and dirty" method on restarting the
population and the other is a "long term, high effeciency" method once the
nest has been established. So I don't see a conflict between the two films as
both forms of reproduction could be used by the same breed.

: damo...@nostromo.gate.net : Bruce Morrow,a man before and after his time:
:"The Constitution shall never be construed to prevent the people of the :
:United States who are peaceable citizens from keeping their own arms." :
: - Samuel Adams : Morrow Project Recon - The Expendable Ones :

>>A good point! But, hold on... if they had cloned from those parts, they

>Another good point! But, hold on... if Cameron had used the original

Good point again! But wait... why not just leave the alien parts where
they are and not bother making Alien 4! :]

--

Mike

Although i don't believe the original post warranting this particular
thread, but to be fair, Cameron's LC may not be any different than
Scott's. The bug in A1 may have used Kane's body for xformation into
an egg, but it was ejected, so effeciency would be at least the same
as those in A2 etc., maybe even better if the drone was xforming into
a queen. The drones in A2 were only retrieving hosts for implantation,
so we don't know if they could transform a victim into an egg.

(for that matter, xforming into an egg isn't even a fact, but there's
no proof against it yet,...)
"His Evil Brains Glow In The Dark! (with exposure to light)"

But there was also at least one egg, a shed skin, innards splashed all over
the place, and also slime in abundance.

Plenty of sources of DNA !

Covenant.
A Man With Far Too Much Time On His Hands

Y'know the problem with this?
Either the director has control over the rushes and edits, or he doesn't.

If Fox have all rights to the material, then I for one have NO qualms about
seeing early scenes, cut scenes, rehearsals, bloopers etc...

If the director *does* have control, why do *certain* directors bemoan the
fact that A3 and ARes where not *their true vision*?

If something is filmed, and that film still exists, then I, as a film
afficianado *and* as an actor, would like to see it. If not only for
curiosity value.

What you are saying is almost tantamount to saying that *Making of*
documentaries should not be shown. They invariably show scenes and behind
camera events that are not in the final film, yet people usually fall over
themselves to see these things.

What is *worse* for a films *vision*?
Seeing a scene which was cut for some reason, or seeing a computer generated
wireframe Alien have a texture map painted onto it and run through a anim
loop continuously?

(It's the second one isn't it!?)

Cheers!

Or the studio has control. Or the copyright owner has control. The point
is...the FANS do not have control. No problem at all.

The director might, and if the studio values their relationship with that
director, they will hopefully be sensitive to his wishes.

A poor question since Jeunet and especially Fincher did NOT have total
control over their entries in the Alien series.

Same here. But if the filmmaker doesn't WANT you to see it, then their
wishes should be respected.

Absolutely ridiculous -- I said no such thing. An EPK unit's B-roll
footage on-set is NOT the same as dailies or deleted scenes or whatever.
There's a difference between obtaining a discarded doodle that Picasso
made and never wanted anyone to see -- and a someone taking a
photo of Picasso drawing that doodle.

You keep confusing what the fans want and the what the filmmaker
wants. The two do not always agree.

Which is why I think the filmmakers should decide such matters. After
all, it's THEIR film.

Not necessarily. But in this instance, I would probably agree -- it
depends on what the other deleted scene is.

But there's also no proof that Aliens don't fly around on the magical wings of
a dozen fairy princesses...

But... *There's* the rub.. no ?

Why a poor question?
You just said above that it all depends on the producers reklationship with
the director?
Make your mind up ZPB

See below...

See below...

*I* am not confusing *anything*. I think *you* are confused by what I am
saying.
If the film makers didn't want 'Making of's' seen they wouldn't make them
QED.
see below...

So, which is it? The Producers or the Directors. Make your mind up.

Why?
By what you said above if the filmmaker (by which I assume you mean the
director) didn't *want* you to see it then you shouldn't.

But if you *do* want to see it, then *you* should be allowed *depending on
which scene it is*.
How does that differ from people wanting to see it all?

It doesn't does it?
(If it does , feel free to show me how.)

Sorry ZPB, you appear to be contradicting yourself on this one.

I commented that the company could have possibly cloned an alien from
the body part of the exploded alien in the third film. It would seem
easier to do than what the scientists in Alien Resurrection tried to
do. (Read below for my original post)

The reply said that though that's true, only one alien would have been
obtained while a queen can lay numberous eggs.

However, I think if the company were to obtain a small body part from
the deceased alien in Alien 3, they could have cloned several, maybe
even an army from that original piece. If that's not enough, they
could possibly make clones of the clones.

Anyway, it's just a thought. I do realize that there are numerous ways
to explain this away. For example, perhaps the company couldn't find
viable dna since it was damaged . Or perhaps, the company tried over
the years to clone the creature but had trouble due to its distinct
dna makeup.

Later,
Michael
http://welcome.to/thehive

On Mon, 7 Jun 99 07:19:42 EST, damo...@nostromo.gate.net (Randy Vice)
wrote:

>z> >>Also, as I saw the Alien split apart from being drenched with water, I
>z> >>thought, "Why didn't Weyland Yutani use those pieces of DNA to clone
>z> >>the Alien?" That would seem easier to do than to clone the host and
>z> >>the organism growing inside her. The company seemed desparate to save
>z> >>anything they could from the incident so they would have probably
>z> >>saved those alien parts too.
>z> >
>z> >A good point! But, hold on... if they had cloned from those parts, they
>z> >would have got themselves one warrior. Cloning from Ripley gave them
>z> >one queen, and potentially unlimited warriors.

Nope. AGAIN, as I've been saying all along, it goes right back to what
the filmmaker wants.

Is this really THAT difficult a concept for you to grasp? Surely you
realize that different people have different levels of power in Hollywood.
Ridley Scott and James Cameron had enough of a track record, combined
with a comparitively "high-creativity/low-politics" period in the Alien
series, whereas David Fincher and Jean Pierre Jeunet (both with less
political juice than Scott or Cameron) entered the Alien series after it
had become a true franchise (or "low-creativity/high-politics) -- thus,
their power over the product was greatly reduced. If you had applied
any sort of historical reference or knowledge of the production of the
various Alien films, you'd know why it was a bad question you posed.

All evidence to the contrary...

And here's where you're confused AGAIN, despite my detailed explanation
regarding this. Behind-the-scenes "Making of" footage is absolutely NOT
the same as an outtake or deleted scene. By your reasoning, you could
take B-roll footage from a featurette and seemlessly cut it into the
whole of the film -- which, of course, you cannot. Simple.

AS I KEEP SAYING...

I think the filmmakers should make all the creative decisions regarding
their films. This is all I have said, time and time again. This has far
less to do with me making my mind up and you being able to grasp a
painfully simple concept.

>>>(It's the seond one isn't it!?)

You asked ME what I *thought* was the lesser of two evils. I told you.
This has NOTHING to do with the rights of the filmmaker, who should
have the right to withhold both of your examples from ever being shown,
IF that's what they want.

And here's where I disagree -- AGAIN. It should be up to the filmmaker.

Sigh...this is getting ridiculous. I *want* a billion dollars, a mansion
on the moon inhabited with supermodels and a copy of The Phantom
Menace without a single frame of Jar Jar. That's what I *want* --
but that certainly doesn't mean I'm going to *get* it.

Nope. See above.

Is it really so hard for you to simply *answer* a point without trying to
insult anyone who doubts your *facts*?

Try it.
You may find people willing to talk to you.

Insofar as *this* little diatribe is concerned.
Forget it. You are obviously locked into your mindset.

ZapPowBam wrote in message <19990608175306...@ng-ff1.aol.com>...