The Exorcist (William Friedkin, 1973)

[Matt]

A few screenshots from the UK Blu-ray (which is sure to be the same as the US Blu-ray)

[oldsheperd]

Got this yesterday. There is an insert in the blu ray written by Friedkin in which he says that him and his cinematographer did indeed color time the film. The new docs are pretty good. There is a part where Friedkin talks about the crucifix masturbation scene and it makes him sound like a creepy uncle.

[domino harvey]

Human skin tones!!

[hearthesilence]

I'm watching the current Blu-Ray set on a 55" television for the first time, and I'm a little disappointed in the grain management. This is becoming a recurring issue where the flaws of BD's that looked fine on my old, smaller set are becoming much more apparent on this larger set up.

As soon as the film begins, it's noticeable that something's going on with the film grain. It's there, but it doesn't look or move in a natural way. Finally when I got to chapter 14, which opens with a shot that booms down from a nice blue sky on to the church (where the vandalism occurred), I froze the frame and the grain management is obvious. Look at the details where the sky meets the church, this is where it's worst, but it's in all the grain. It's as if each individual grain has partially dissolved, as if chewed away around the edges, and as a result, this look extends to some of the actual picture details.

[Matt]

The Exorcist: 40th Anniversary Edition Blu-ray - October 8, 2013

The "Are You Fucking Kidding Me I Just Bought This 3 Years Ago" Edition.

[mfunk9786]

The new features aren't worth the upgrade, and the packaging can't possibly be better than the existing packaging.

[Finch]

Apparently the Fear of God documentary on the first BD is incomplete so if true it'd make sense to reinstate what's missing. The inclusion of the original mono and the proper theatrical cut with the Saul Bass logo etc would be very welcome, and on the Blu-Ray forum someone was saying the exorcism scenes did not have the correct colour timing on the earlier BD.

[Matt]

I very much doubt this is a new or corrected transfer, though.

[Finch]

Agree because Warner would have made a big fuss about it in their press release. Still, the new Deliverance BD had improved audio over the original Blu, so let's wait and see.

[krnash]

I very much doubt this is a new or corrected transfer, though.

New 4K scan/resto. Heard it from Friedkin directly a few weeks ago.

[Matt]

Well shut my mouth. There's absolutely no indication in the press release and you'd think that would be a major selling point if you're trying to get people to buy something that just came out in the last few years.

[krnash]

Well shut my mouth. There's absolutely no indication in the press release and you'd think that would be a major selling point if you're trying to get people to buy something that just came out in the last few years.

Agreed 100% on that. They're not doing a very good job separating this from the last.

[Brian C]

"The Version You've Never Seen - Now Looking Better Than Ever!"

[Forrest Taft]

Agree because Warner would have made a big fuss about it in their press release. Still, the new Deliverance BD had improved audio over the original Blu, so let's wait and see.

The new Mad Max 2 BD also has a lossless track (and a new AVC codec replacing the old VC-1), but I don't think it was mentioned in any press release from Warner.

[Gregory]

review of "The Exorcist 40th Anniversary Edition", says discs 1 and 2 are identical to the previously released version.

That's also what a reviewer on Amazon says, who picked up a copy before release date somewhere. I guess Friedkin just cannot be trusted about things like this.

Reported in a fansite article: " When asked by a fan if a digital or film print would be shown at the Seattle International Film Festival on June 9, where Friedkin is being honoured in person, the director confirmed a new digital print of The Exorcist is being used for the screening. He went on to say the same print is also being used by Warner Brothers for a new Blu-ray release next year." Apparently he's been saying this over and over.

A forum member on that site mentioned having bought The Exorcist 17 different times.

[Finch]

Oh well, at least I didn't buy the original release and I got the new set for Amazon's low $19.99 preorder.

[hearthesilence]

I guess Friedkin just cannot be trusted about things like this.

His bullshit excuse for why The French Connection was messed up on the first BD was bad enough. Maybe he was misled on this one, but Jesus, you really can't trust his words on anything, even on something this minor in the grand scheme of things.

[Gregory]

Oh well, at least I didn't buy the original release and I got the new set for Amazon's low $19.99 preorder.

I cancelled my preorder, deciding that was more than I wanted to spend on what's essentially one film with a lot of largely boring commentaries and featurettes (plus some worthwhile features I'm sure), a transfer that has already been improved upon with a better scan and corrected color timing, still no original mono soundtrack, and [insert your own complaints in this litany here]. Plus I don't really want to support this typical Warner BS, though I'm sure this release will sell gangbusters anyway.

[jindianajonz]

His bullshit excuse for why The French Connection was messed up on the first BD was bad enough.

What's this about? I never heard that story.

[Drucker]

His bullshit excuse for why The French Connection was messed up on the first BD was bad enough.

What's this about? I never heard that story.

Here's part of an interview he gave with AV Club:


Oh, The French Connection Blu-ray, the master that we made was absolutely perfect. Then when Fox took it out to reproduce it, mass production, it goes through four different companies. It got screwed up badly, and I didn’t know that. I had only seen the master; I never saw any of the playback copies. And Owen Roizman, the cameraman, got a copy at Best Buy and said it looked like shit! He denounced it. I said, “What are you talking about?” He brought his copy in, and we ran it next to the master, and he was right. The prints were badly made. So we remade them, he and I supervised a new version of the Blu-ray, which went into a Best Buy exclusive, for I think six months, and then it’ll go broad—it’ll replace the other one. What I learned was that Fox, when they put that DVD out, there was a little warning inside the box that said, “This may not play well on your home receiver. If it doesn’t, write to w-w-w dot so-and-so, so-and-so. We’ll send you a disc that will make your own playback receiver compatible.” This was like a caveat emptor. And Roizman was right. The copies were all over the place. That’s not a perfect process, either. We made new ones that should be great, because we had a different company do the mass release. They’re at Best Buy, and when their exclusive expires, they’ll be everywhere..

That link also has a similar explanation given to Twitchfilm.

[HerrSchreck]

His commentaries are positively awful... I couldn't believe what I was hearing when watching the French Connection w his track running.


"...and now Popeye, not knowing that Charnier is on to him, is about to..."

Fucking narrating the film essentially. You'd figure he'd know if folks are going to listen to a commentary on a classic film from several decades ago, the one reason they're NOT listening to it is to find out what happens NEXT in the narrative.

[colinr0380]

Sadly Friedkin's commentary on The Leopard Man in that Val Lewton set wasn't much better, and fell somewhat flat sandwiched between the Kim Newman and Steve Jones track on I Walked With A Zombie and Steve Haberman's discussion of The Seventh Victim, both of which were packed to overflowing with observations both scene specific and spreading outwards to provide much appreciated wider context too.

[HerrSchreck]

Yeah that Lewton commentary wasn't all that much to write home about either. It's a amazing how a man who was so artistically precise and even visionary viz that initial stretch of films could wind up such an intellectual flop. Reminds me of when I was so high on Blade Runner and also admired Rutger Hauer's performance in The Hitcher . . . one day long ago he appeared on Letterman (this is when he was still late nite on NBC after Carson) and was just the worst interview on the face of the earth-- I mean he came off really just--like--dumb. It was probably a little bit of language, despite his excellent English, and a little bit of nerves colliding to make it an extremely uncomfortable interview.

[colinr0380]

This is taking it off track a little, but do you think that some directors might be reticent about doing commentaries or interviews about their work for fears that they might find out that they do not really have anything particularly insightful to say about their work, or perhaps just a particular film, and that to talk at length might in some ways 'expose' that, or destroy a sense of magic or mystique that a film might have built up? (Or to phrase it more kindly, that they feel that they have no more to say than their film already articulates without anything needed to be added, and that they wouldn't want to impose their views on their audience any more than they already have in that initial act of creation?)

You might be in a good position to answer this HerrSchreck due to creating your own commentaries. I would be curious as to whether you might prefer a director or actor to talk about their own work, or someone with a knowledgeable outsider's perspective on a particular film? Or would that kind of judgement be less about whether someone was an 'insider' or 'outsider' with regard to the work in question and perhaps just depend on the abilities of the individual commentator?

[HerrSchreck]

It depends where an artist is in their career. And it also depends on how intellectual--or more importantly, verbally effective at expressing certain aesthetic mysteries--an artist is.

If a director has made a great film, yet isn't much of a deep thinker, or is simply more of a technician than artist, there's still plenty of ground to cover without deep pondering plumbing the depths of subtext and metaphor and That Special Place where his art comes from. Like I could listen to Spielberg (ack) and Richard Dreyfuss talk for years about how suddenly the the walkie talkies lit up on the set of Jaws about "(ccccccckkkkk) The shark is working... (ccccckkkkkk!!!!) I repeat-- the shark is working," viz the klunky shark special effect.

The wind up is there is no need to be flighty and whispy when a director recording a track . . . some of the best commentaries tease with little hints of where the inspiration came from, with the rest being anecdotes bringing the listener into the day to day process of making the film. I'd much rather hear inside stories about James Caan and Pacino mooning each other with Brando on the set, and what it was like making the movie than hear either one of these guys talk about the Method.

It kind of runs the same with "scholarly" commentaries. Some of the worst commentaries I've ever heard are on CC, because it's so self-consciously overwrought from a to z. Like Pandoras Box is virtually unlistenable . . . these obscure professors and writers believe they are mounting the Olympus of cinema scholarship by recording these specific kinds of track and suck the fucking fun and excitement right out of the cinema. Cinema is alive, exciting, cinema moves and pulses and throbs, and to me there's few things worse than listening to a track wallowing in the mire of a completely voluntary hyperintellectualization of a text, and dispensing the madness as though it all were irrevocable fact.

Give me a raving fanatic like Greg Mank, Kalat, Mike Blake, etc.

Speaking of which-- my guest commentator (who you all know) has completed his commentary and it's being prepared for upload onto my blog as I write this!