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Sergio Leone News / Re: Which version of FOD/FFDM is best ???

« on: August 25, 2005, 12:12:05 PM »

Hi Iceman

I'll enlighten you about the different DVD versions of Fistful of Dollars and For a Few Dollars More.

- First you have the unremastered barebones DVD's which came out around 2000 I think. These are from distributor MGM.
Picture and sound quality is poor on both DVD's and a dialog after the beating scene in FAFDM is missing.
No extras except if you count a trailer as an extra.

- The Special Editions from MGM (only in Europe and Australia at the moment)
These are the ones that came out in April this year.
Picture quality is good on both films but the sound has been 'upgraded' to 5.1 surround and lacks the original unaltered mono soundtracks. The dialog after the beating scene in FAFDM is missing here also.
Excellent extras on these DVD's.

- Special Editions from Paramount (only in Germany)
In October this year Paramount will release FOD and FAFDM seperately and in the wooden box. These German DVD's will feature different transfers, picture quality will be probably even better than the MGM SE's. But more important is that these discs will feature the original (cleaned up)mono soundtracks and the missing dialog from the beating scene in FAFDM wil be restored.
The extras on these DVD's will be identical to the MGM SE's.

These are the major editions of both films at the moment, hope I clarified it for you.

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Sergio Leone News / Re: My name is nobody rerelease

« on: August 23, 2005, 03:57:37 AM »

On areadvd.de they have reviewed the disc. Of course it's in German so I pulled it through a German -> English translator. I have made some quick corrections to the translation so it should be more or less readable.


Original german review

Picture (5.5 out of 6 stars)

Although Paramount possesses the "Nobody" of DVD rights only for the German-speaking countries, the film for this DVD publication was complex restored and a new HD scan was made by a 35-mm negative with German-language linking up insertions. In the bonus material the restoration process is described in great detail. The film is presented on DVD including missing sequences and the complete end credits.

The image quality is very good for the age of the film and exceeds in most scenes even the quality of today's DVDs clearly. The master has an predominantly good picture quality, which is in view of the achievement tidy over 600 splices, which had to be controlled and adapted. The master shows as well as no scratches or other disturbances. The contrast is very high and lets the picture thereby appear very synthetic. Dark scenes appear in deep black. The color reproduction is very good and despite a tidy saturation, which is in the deep blue of the sky again, the colors is very naturally represented. The sharpness is on very high level and also the detail rendering is excellent in close-ups. This high level is not maintained constantly, since e.g. the opening titles appears somewhat less sharp, yet the detail rendering is very good in the majority of the film. This is made possible among other things by the outstanding compression. The capacity of the DVD is almost completely used with 97% - a proceeding which is much too rare unfortunately nowadays and therefore should find special acknowledgment. The very high video bit rate is obtained by the optimal utilization of capacity by almost constantly approximately 8,8 Mbps. Fine irregularities arise primarily with movements in scenes with highly detailed surfaces. Altogether the picture is however very calm and clean.
 
Sound

The sound was revised likewise and restored as good as possible, the sound is presented in both German and in original English mono. A 5.1-Mix with artificial sound effects is not offered as the DVD producer did not like this.

The sound offers as good as none dynamics and also the music only with little gloss in mono is shown, but the  dialogue is very clear: Only a few distortions and some hiss are still there to be noticed and the German Dub is also better with it's brighter sound to understand than the somewhat muffled sounding dialogues of the original version.

 
Special feature (6 out of 6 Stars)

The German Paramount Home Entertainment let make very extensive bonus material again, which is presented completely in the German language specially for the DVD publication:

    * approx. 75-minute documentary "Nobody Is Perfect: Leones grave singing on the Western of the old generation ": This very comprehensive documentation tells the history of the emergence of "my name is Nobody" after. Commentating sounds sometimes somewhat stressed academic, but nothing the despite this is one of the most material film documentations, which there are at all on DVD and itself differentiated from the nowadays usual Promo Making ofs in a well-meaning manner.

    * approx. 35-minute documentary "NOBODY ' Dusted ' - the film before and after the restoration": By the example of the publications of "Nobody" on the most diverse media the history of the home cinema is repeated. It begins not only with video home system, but already with that 8 mm film, in which "Nobody" became available for the domestic use for the first time. The technical progress between the individual technologies is descriptive represented to video home system & Laserdisc versions on the basis picture comparisons of the new Hp HD-Masters with the 8-mm -.

    * Gallery with music: rare pieces of collector's items of the film supported by Ennio Morricone's soundtrack, with Postern & cinema notice photos, photos, film/video/audio publications, curiosities and A. from Germany, the USA, Japan, Mexico, France, Belgium, Great Britain and Austria.

    * "Nobody in The news": - rare press books - exclusive presentation of the German and American press books with detailed information and, diagrams and advertisement would background.

    * "Nobody in 8 mm": approx. 20-minute graduation Reel of 1976 and approx. 7-minute excerpt from the German publication on 8 mm. Despite optimum scanning these two tie-clips show very clearly, which progress the video technology made in the last decades and for "home cinema" still before 20 years have been as grausig must.

    * Eastwood & Leone: "shortly on DVD" Promotrailer

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Sergio Leone News / Re: Fistful of Dollars/ For a Few Dollars More: German Special Editions

« on: July 28, 2005, 03:12:12 AM »

The film contains now the beating scene and the dialogue missing from all other DVD releases.  Faf$sm is now close to 20 sec longer.  Also, the masters of both films have been cleaned and restored to a much more accurate level than ever before.  The films were cleaned shot fo shot with the most appropriate and best software; we made sure that no artifacts would remain.  Also, both films contain the fully (and painstakingly) restored English Mono soundtrack  - now also completely in sync. 

Great news that FAFDM finally gets an uncut release on DVD! This is one of the reasons why I didn't buy the MGM SE, I still don't get how MGM could have overlooked those missing dialogs for the second time. 

I'm very curious about the picture quality for FOD and FAFDM in comparison to the MGM versions, are there any screencaps available like those from My name is nobody?

Keep up the excellent work!

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A Fistful of Dollars / Re: Uncut video cover

« on: February 14, 2005, 01:30:16 PM »

The cover from Hang 'em High says enough
http://images-eu.amazon.com/images/P/B00004U3XO.02.LZZZZZZZ.jpg

I also looked a little strange when I saw the FoD cover for the first time.

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A Fistful of Dollars / Re:Help identifying a song.

« on: May 29, 2004, 06:56:18 AM »

I did some search work on imdb.com and I found this thread on the discussion board. Someone typed over the soundtrack listening from the instruction manual.

This should be the name of the song you where looking for.
"Main Titles" by. E. Morricone, taken from 'E Per Tetto Un Cielo Di Stelle'.

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A Fistful of Dollars / A Fistful of Dollars longer Italian cut?

« on: May 09, 2004, 10:31:54 AM »

I live in Holland, here A fistul of Dollars is not distributed by MGM but by a local distributor named A-Film. About a month ago they released a new Fistful of Dollars DVD, which features apart from a (worthless) DD5.1 remix a longer Italian cut of the film. According to a review of this disc the English cut has a running time of 92.24 min. and the Italian 95.32 min.

The reviewer writes that he was unable to spot the differences between the two versions. Does anybody here have a clue what may be added to the film?

I am curious what these new scenes may hold but I don't feel like replacing my previous one for only three added minutes.