37 Time Bandits

[manicsounds]

Well, it's not "Mega-Deluxe", but the blu-ray upgrade is coming December 2014

[Cinephrenic]

I'm personally waiting for the ultimate ultra definitive edition.

[dwk]

Blu-ray.com review

[MichaelB]

Just to clarify this point:

The high-definition transfer is not identical to the one Arrow Video used for their release of Time Bandits in the United Kingdom. However, it has been sourced from the same recent 2K restoration of the film, which was approved by the American director.

It might be more accurate to replace the word "transfer" with "encode", as this is indeed exactly the same restoration that James White created for Arrow at Deluxe in London last year. The only appreciable difference is that separate authoring houses were responsible for each disc - Criterion might have made a few tweaks here and there, but they shouldn't have needed to clean anything significant up, as all that was done last year.

Which of course is why Svet "could not see any important discrepancies" between the two discs - if there were any, I'd be baffled as to how they occurred.

[tenia]

This is however the usual phrasing Svet uses, eg on Playtime (The release uses as a foundation the same new 4K restoration which StudioCanal introduced in France and the United Kingdom (see our review here) However, the high-definition transfers these releases use are not identical), Breaking The Waves (The release uses as a foundation the same recent 4K restoration of Breaking the Waves which Criterion accessed when they prepared their Blu-ray release for the U.S. market. However, the high-definition transfers the two releases use are not identical.), Branded To Kill (The high-definition transfer is not identical to the one Criterion used for their Blu-ray release of Branded to Kill, but as the quoted text above clarifies it has been struck from the same master.), Powaqqatsi (I could not see any major discrepancies in the contrast, clarity, and brightness settings between the two high-definition transfers used by Arrow Video and Criterion), Secret beyond the door (The high-definition transfer is not identical to the one Olive Films used for their Blu-ray release of this film in the United States, but the basic characteristics of the two high-definition transfers are very similar.), etc etc etc.

[MichaelB]

In all those cases, I'd similarly say "encode" instead of "transfer".

On the one hand it's a minor linguistic quibble, but on the other I think it's important to distinguish between the tape/digital file containing the core information transferred from the original materials, and the compressed file encoded from the digital master that ends up on the final disc.

And in the case of Time Bandits, as far as I'm aware (and also as far as James White is aware, come to that), the same digital master fuelled both the Arrow and Criterion encodes - there'll be minor differences at the viewing end to do with different encoding methodologies, but that really should be the limit.

[tenia]

Imagine when in France, the use of "tranfert" is different from the English "transfer".

[David M.]

Most people use "transfer" to mean "any video that appears on screen" so the difference is often lost.

[bugsy_pal]

In all those cases, I'd similarly say "encode" instead of "transfer".

On the one hand it's a minor linguistic quibble, but on the other I think it's important to distinguish between the tape/digital file containing the core information transferred from the original materials, and the compressed file encoded from the digital master that ends up on the final disc.

And in the case of Time Bandits, as far as I'm aware (and also as far as James White is aware, come to that), the same digital master fuelled both the Arrow and Criterion encodes - there'll be minor differences at the viewing end to do with different encoding methodologies, but that really should be the limit.

This is a good point Michael. Looking at a few matching captures from the Criterion and Arrow versions on bluray.com, I could detect some differences in the 'grain' pattern, especially on the shot with lots of blue sky. To me, it appears that the Criterion has more digital blockiness and/or smearing going on, while the Arrow renders the grain more naturally.

But the differences are very minor, and not apparent in all comparison shots. I'd be willing to bet that the Criterion has a lower bitrate - either that, or a slightly inferior encoding job.

[tenia]

Most people use "transfer" to mean "any video that appears on screen" so the difference is often lost.

I think I've been corrected in the past about this, but I usually have this phrasing in mind :

HD Master <-> Digital restoration raw source
Transfer <-> the result once it has been conformed to the BD specs (what I should / would sometimes call the encode).

[tenia]

Just to clarify this point:

The high-definition transfer is not identical to the one Arrow Video used for their release of Time Bandits in the United Kingdom. However, it has been sourced from the same recent 2K restoration of the film, which was approved by the American director.

It might be more accurate to replace the word "transfer" with "encode", as this is indeed exactly the same restoration that James White created for Arrow at Deluxe in London last year. The only appreciable difference is that separate authoring houses were responsible for each disc - Criterion might have made a few tweaks here and there, but they shouldn't have needed to clean anything significant up, as all that was done last year.

Which of course is why Svet "could not see any important discrepancies" between the two discs - if there were any, I'd be baffled as to how they occurred.

Also, I just checked Svet's review of Criterion discs, and there seems to be discrepancies not down to the encode. Notably, there's a so-slight difference in ratio : 1.85 for Criterion and 1.83 for Arrow.

[David M.]

Most people use "transfer" to mean "any video that appears on screen" so the difference is often lost.

I think I've been corrected in the past about this, but I usually have this phrasing in mind :

HD Master <-> Digital restoration raw source
Transfer <-> the result once it has been conformed to the BD specs (what I should / would sometimes call the encode).

Transfer = the process of transferring film to video, or the end result of that process
Master = the source which we try to replicate as best as possible on disc (the transfer after all work has been done on it)
Encode = compressed version of the master

[therewillbeblus]

Rewatched this for the sci-fi project, and aside from the time-travel component it's straight fantasy- perversely so! Not only is it venturing along a tonal plane of dark fantasy throughout, but the ending is objectively alarming treated with irreverence, refusing to express an affected mood to reflect the consequences of what we've just seen.

SpoilerShow

The end of the tale involves God's introduction, who shrugs off a moral issue with an air of disinterest as his parting action, and then.. Kevin's parents die right before his eyes. Connery winks with a grin to signify validation that Kevin is not imagining his prior adventure, which is cool and all- but that absolution of gaslighting effect is somehow juxtaposed with literal death and impending orphanage as if Gilliam is trying to resonate a happy ending while events tell a different story. Our final images involve everyone abandoning Kevin as he approaches his parents' remains while the camera zooms out to the entire globe, Gilliam himself playing God and rendering any follow-up trauma insignificant as belonging in a new story- similar to God's own final actions just minutes earlier. Now, there's another reading where this is in step with Kevin's child fantasy, as his parents were neglectful of his presence or interests, but leaving his fate as one physically isolated from supports, that have alienated him by choosing to continue journeys without him, is one that's deeply tragic despite the generic wish-fulfillment of liberation from parental control.

[Michael Kerpan]

TWBB - No harsher an ending than the average Roald Dahl ending....

[MichaelB]

When she was about five or six, my daughter loved the ending so much that she asked me to show just that part repeatedly.

[Michael Kerpan]

Even as a parent (watching with my 3 sons) I thought the ending was "fitting and proper" (and so did they, and my wife too).

[therewillbeblus]

I love the ending but watching the film for the probably fourth time today, it just played as so eccentric and profoundly irreverent with a very strange tonal splice- I don't necessarily disagree that it's "fitting and proper" for such a dark fantasy, but I'm definitely curious to hear more about why you think so in the context of the rest of the film. The abandonment by everyone at the end played so tragically, especially when after the first anti-cathartic desertion, Connery's wink triggers a brief affirmation only for the subsequent rapid dispersement of all bodies to occur in 'real life' as a second one. It was jarring to say the least.

[John Cope]

Rob Ager's excellent take on the ending.

[therewillbeblus]

Rob Ager's excellent take on the ending.

Thanks for that, I enjoyed listening to it! I definitely appreciated the ending on a less-intricate but similar interpretation, yet it was the harsh shifts of abandonment by everyone, even the camera, so abruptly that leaves room for this unsettling feeling. The parents are "assholes" as Ager says (the final straw is caring about saving the microwave over their kid!) but a child without any supports within sight (in fact, everyone actively running away from him) is I think a bit more ambiguous than Ager gives it credit for- though his explanation of the tone being feel-good isn't wrong, it's just what makes this all the more unnerving!

[colinr0380]

I have often thought of Time Bandits as kind of being the boy-centric version of Matilda, where the book loving kid gets drawn into high fantasy battles and action! Or where its all about opportunistically robbing the wealthy passengers of the Titanic rather than getting too concerned about anything particularly movingly tragic or soppily emotional about the situation! (Maybe that's the difference between boys and girls approaching literature: girls get empowered by their reading to practically change their outer world; whilst boys read to escape into highly seductive fantasy worlds that they wish would replace the current one. Both presumably realising at some point that the dream of control is itself a fantasy to some extent. Peter Pan is a good example of this as well) I also have a feeling that Time Bandits pretty much influenced (or at least was a significant part of) a run of productions in the early to mid-80s of kids retreating into fantasy worlds, from The Neverending Story to The Company of Wolves and Labyrinth!

I agree with therewillbeblus and the ending really troubled me as a kid, but in a good way. Even if the parents are terrible (and they are terrible with the film pointedly having them actively ignore their son's pleas as their final act!) and while it might be a comfort blanket that needs to be ripped away because they will obviously do Kevin more harm than good if he stays with them any longer, its still existentially terrifying to be left all alone in your cul-de-sac next to your fire damaged home, surrounded by gawking neighbours! I think that may be what the film is really going for in that final tonal whiplash out of the fantasy world back into the 'real' one: that for all the scary, fantastical, dangerous and terrifying sights he has witnessed throughout his exciting adventures (always with a group of companions-turned-friends) that the real terrifying challenges Kevin is going to face is his life in the isolated, crushingly mundane world of just fighting for survival. Maybe he'll turn into the protagonist of Brazil.

Stylistically, I also really like the strangeness of the way that the image of Kevin approaching the smoking remains of his parents is in reverse at the start of that long pull back. I suppose that it is your classic pre-CGI issue of presumably only having a little bit of helicopter or crane footage starting up high and then moving downwards before being reversed (in order to keep the smoke from blowing away?) But whilst that presumably is just a practical limitation I do like that having that reversal adds to that scary sense of Kevin, after all of his flights of fancy, being rather trapped at an impasse now. (Its the same kind of thing that happens with the 'back and forth' looping of footage that occurs to the character who finds themselves stuck in the endless junkyard in Nightmare on Elm Street 4, for much the same kind of disturbing effect!)

That's a great example of an effect that is very much 'of its time' and might even be scoffed at by audiences now for how fake it looks, yet it does show that in the hands of sensitive filmmakers even such an effect can add an extra psychological dimension to a scene. Maybe such effects define their eras of cinema, but they just as much convey a specific meaning too, but it is as sad to think that we will probably never see that same specific meaning conveyed again in the era of CGI, or at least with the same kind of frisson that the 'back and forth' looping moment delivers! (Whilst something like reversing footage or the back and forth looping are more minor examples of the issue, I particularly miss the way that the arguably harsher quick cut digital era has pretty much done away with the use of dissolves in cinema, which loses both the dreamy sense that images fading into each other provides along with the opportunity for juxtapositions of imagery. Sometimes the technique of how something is portrayed can convey as much meaning as the actual content of the shot does)

Of course the wink goodbye from Connery suggests that Kevin will manage OK as he has more than proved his resilience in the exciting and adventurous stage of his life (even if he was just adventuring in his dreams. Though of course the dreams bleed into the coda enough to suggest there might be more to it than that!), but there is going to be an entirely new world and set of challenges ahead for our young protagonist.

Although the brutality of that ending was always more than mitigated for me as a viewer by the wonderful end credits song set to a montage of images of camaraderie from the film, which immediately contrasts the death of the parents with a more upbeat tone. Even if he is now forever trapped in the mundane world of cul-de-sacs and consumer goods at least Kevin will always have his memories (especially memories of father figures, both good and bad! Including I am sure the most scrupulously accurate to the historical record versions of Napoleon and Robin Hood ever to appear on film! ) and eventually replacement books to replace those lost in the fire, if not parents.

[therewillbeblus]

What a terrific reading, colin, by far the best I’ve heard yet- thanks!

[colinr0380]

Thanks! I may be apocryphal or just plain wrong about this but I seem to remember a mention somewhere (an interview with Gilliam?) that Gilliam was doing a 'three ages of man' series with the young boy of Time Bandits, the young man of Brazil and the old man of Baron Munchausen. All of them dreamers to a certain extent and it is more about how the society around them responds and plays along with those flights of fancy that more dictates the tone of the film than the content of the fantasies themselves.

At the very least it is interesting that all those main characters are male dreamers (as in a way is the main character in 12 Monkeys, dreaming of what turns out to be a distant memory that both grounds him and leads him to a pre-ordained end, just finally with added context and meaning to explain the dreamlike images. Arguably the Hunter S. Thompson character in Fear and Loathing In Las Vegas is a dreamer too, though that gets into the fine line between self-created dreams and drug-induced paranoiac hallucinations artificially twisting society! Robin Williams in The Fisher King is probably the balancing character between those two extremes, being an almost bi-polar dreamer torn between being tormented and entertained by the workings of his mind, and perhaps driven that way by the stresses of the wider society). Though I have unfortunately not yet gotten to see Tideland, where I would be interested to contrast a female dreamer against all the male ones.

I suppose the Sarah Polley character in Baron Munchausen is the audience identification figure too, and interestingly she gets portrayed as occasionally calling out Munchausen's tall tales. Which itself is part of that late 80s twist to the trend of kids escaping into fantasy worlds in films of the kids starting to not be too willing to immediately go along with some of the fantastical b.s. that is being peddled to them (the big example of course being The Princess Bride!) by unreliable narrators (we are a long way away from Angela Lansbury being deadly serious about her storytelling in The Company of Wolves by this point!), as if they are too 'woke' to be charmed and therefore there needs to be extra effort put in by their storytellers in order to help them to overcome those wise-beyond-their-years barriers and allow them to dream again.

There is also the suggestion that these child protagonists in all the films of that 1980s cycle need the space of childhood to safely dream all sorts of adventurous and scary situations without consequences because, especially in Gilliam's 90s films, we see what happens when adults who have never had the opportunity to properly dream and get properly rounded interior worlds as children have to start doing it at the same time as having to juggle existing in the adult world (it turns you into Brad Pitt in 12 Monkeys, basically!).

(And the ultimate example of a kid being traumatised by his urban environment is probably 1988's Pulse!)

[swo17]

UHD upgrade Jun 13

[Roscoe]

So many Gilliams so close together -- will we get a 4K BRAZIL at Christmas?

[5meohd]

So many Gilliams so close together -- will we get a 4K BRAZIL at Christmas?

That would be awesome! I just hope they announce Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas before the slipcovers for Arrow's 4K start to disappear. I have the CC blu and Arrow LE boxset blu now. Since CC aren't changing art (very often), it'd be the better one to upgrade for 4K since I like the Arrow box over the slip.

All of that being said, I'd be very pleasantly surprised if all 3 upcoming CC Gilliam potentials had slipcovers! Lenticular for Time Bandits and transparent with screen print for Brazil and Fear and Loathing!