1100 The Incredible Shrinking Man

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swo17
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1100 The Incredible Shrinking Man

#1 Post by swo17 » Thu Jul 15, 2021 12:43 pm

The Incredible Shrinking Man

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Existentialism goes pop in this benchmark of atomic-age science fiction, a superlative adaptation of a novel by the legendary Richard Matheson that has awed and unnerved generations of viewers with the question, What is humanity's place amid the infinity of the universe? Six months after being exposed to a mysterious radiation cloud, suburban everyman Scott Carey (Grant Williams) finds himself becoming smaller...and smaller...and smaller—until he's left to fend for himself in a world in which ordinary cats, mousetraps, and spiders pose a mortal threat, all while grappling with a diminishing sense of himself. Directed by the prolific creature-feature impresario Jack Arnold with ingenious optical effects and a transcendent metaphysical ending, The Incredible Shrinking Man gazes with wonder and trepidation into the unknowable vastness of the cosmic void.

SPECIAL FEATURES

• New 4K digital restoration, with uncompressed monaural soundtrack on the Blu-ray
• New audio commentary featuring genre-film historian Tom Weaver and horror-music expert David Schecter
• New program on the film's special effects by effects experts Craig Barron and Ben Burtt
• New conversation between filmmaker Joe Dante and comedian and writer Dana Gould
Auteur on the Campus: Jack Arnold at Universal (Director's Cut) (2021)
• Interview from 2016 with Richard Christian Matheson, novelist and screenwriter Richard Matheson's son
• Interview with director Jack Arnold from 1983
• 8 mm home-cinema version from 1957
• Trailer and teaser narrated by filmmaker Orson Welles
• PLUS: An essay by critic Geoffrey O'Brien

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Pavel
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Re: 1100 The Incredible Shrinking Man

#2 Post by Pavel » Thu Jul 15, 2021 12:46 pm

I guess they didn't feel that spine #1100 needed a particularly special release

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Finch
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Re: 1100 The Incredible Shrinking Man

#3 Post by Finch » Thu Jul 15, 2021 1:36 pm

Erm, this movie was outstanding in its day for its special effects that still hold up well and it's a cracking genre film. Okay, it's not Citizen Kane but it's not like they gave Spine 1100 to something like Tiny Furniture.

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Pavel
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Re: 1100 The Incredible Shrinking Man

#4 Post by Pavel » Thu Jul 15, 2021 1:40 pm

Oh I'm not hating on the film, it's just that people were speculating that spine #1100 would be something huge, and this is no bigger a release than Devi, Uncut Gems or High Sierra. They didn't treat it as a milestone number

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domino harvey
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Re: 1100 The Incredible Shrinking Man

#5 Post by domino harvey » Thu Jul 15, 2021 1:58 pm

I mean, is 1100 a milestone number?

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Pavel
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Re: 1100 The Incredible Shrinking Man

#6 Post by Pavel » Thu Jul 15, 2021 2:07 pm

Not really

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therewillbeblus
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Re: 1100 The Incredible Shrinking Man

#7 Post by therewillbeblus » Thu Jul 15, 2021 2:47 pm

I was making a joke a few weeks back about Citizen Kane being milestone 1100, not sure if that's what you're referring to but I don't recall anyone else making a similar joke (or sincere prediction) connected to the spine#

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Pavel
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Re: 1100 The Incredible Shrinking Man

#8 Post by Pavel » Thu Jul 15, 2021 3:13 pm

Oh not here, but I saw some people all over the internet linking Citizen Kane to spine #1100 (especially after the 4K news). Anyway didn't mean to make something out of nothing

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therewillbeblus
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Re: 1100 The Incredible Shrinking Man

#9 Post by therewillbeblus » Thu Jul 15, 2021 4:59 pm

The exclusive extras on this seem worth double dipping for- very excited for Dante's talk and a commentary including horror-music expert David Schecter! This is my favorite B-sci-fi/horror movie, and I'll take all the effusive praise-heaping supplements I can get

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FrauBlucher
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Re: 1100 The Incredible Shrinking Man

#10 Post by FrauBlucher » Thu Jul 15, 2021 5:48 pm

Pavel wrote:
Thu Jul 15, 2021 3:13 pm
Oh not here, but I saw some people all over the internet linking Citizen Kane to spine #1100 (especially after the 4K news). Anyway didn't mean to make something out of nothing
I always think that linking films to spine numbers are nothing more than coincidence rather than strategy.

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andyli
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Re: 1100 The Incredible Shrinking Man

#11 Post by andyli » Thu Jul 15, 2021 7:13 pm

The Arrow release used an old HD master that looked not so good. I was waiting for someone to publish the 4K restoration but didn't expect it's good old Criterion that finally delivers.

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barnyard078
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Re: 1100 The Incredible Shrinking Man

#12 Post by barnyard078 » Thu Jul 15, 2021 11:00 pm

In all honesty, I'm wondering if they're going to go gimmicky for Spine #1111. Just a thought.
Last edited by barnyard078 on Fri Jul 16, 2021 11:40 am, edited 1 time in total.

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therewillbeblus
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Re: 1100 The Incredible Shrinking Man

#13 Post by therewillbeblus » Thu Jul 15, 2021 11:06 pm

It'll be Citizen Kane for sure

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colinr0380
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Re: 1100 The Incredible Shrinking Man

#14 Post by colinr0380 » Fri Jul 16, 2021 3:42 am

This is pretty much the Citizen Kane of sci-fi films, the best of the 1950s cycle of them (even if I love Them! the most! Which is going the other way size-wise!) and still one of the most philosophically interesting sci-fi films ever made (almost anticipating J.G. Ballad's The Enormous Space in the way that its sense of kenophobia - it is probably not unintentional that the 'infection' first occurs when the hero is unmoored from any sense of location as he sunbathes on his yacht which then hits the mysterious fogbank - even eventually invades the enclosed walls of the aspirational suburban home). I love that it captures a lot of the sense of the cheesier films in its sci-fi set up, then becomes a bit of a medical thriller as the hero is falteringly trying to alternatively ignore, come to terms with and live with the condition and the toll it takes on the surrounding family. I wonder how this would work double billed with Bigger Than Life?

Then we have the most interesting section of the film as the main character is forced to abandon the 'norms' of society (or society's norms abandon him?) and has to make a new existence on the margins, losing his generic girlfriend and starting a relationship with a person of the same (for now) size, as everything is scaled down in proportion in order to accommodate his new state. But even that attempt at 'normality' is doomed and as he gets smaller and smaller he gets pushed further and further out of society (even 'marginal' society) altogether, even having to fight against the trappings of domesticity and the animals and insects that normally untroublingly share the suburban homes (the exciting action climax that most 50s sci-fi movies usually promise but only rarely deliver upon). Eventually he is out of sight altogether, and forgotten about by everyone but in that loss of a specifically fixed place and role in the world (and even body) he gets to spread his consciousness out through the universe in its entirety.

If Criterion could get Roger Corman's just as cheesily silly high concept initial premise turning to philosophically and existentially terrifying X: The Man With X-Ray Eyes out next (the best sci-fi film of the 1960s?) then that would be just as exciting!
Last edited by colinr0380 on Wed Sep 01, 2021 6:17 pm, edited 1 time in total.

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solaris72
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Re: 1100 The Incredible Shrinking Man

#15 Post by solaris72 » Fri Jul 16, 2021 8:01 am

A great film to be sure. Back in college I read a great essay in "Focus on the Science Fiction Film" (borrowable from the Open Library here) arguing for Jack Arnold as the one auteur of 50s scifi cinema, drawing out the pulp poetry of his works. (Indeed, the other great 50s scifi films were made by directors who didn't work in the genre again.) This is certainly one of his most artistically successful films. That essay would've been a great pull, but otherwise this release looks awesome.

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Re: 1100 The Incredible Shrinking Man

#16 Post by Jonathan S » Sat Jul 17, 2021 4:35 am

Criterion wrote: • 8 mm home-cinema version from 1957
Criterion's website has now amended that date to a more plausible 1969. This would be the Castle Films one-reel "abridgement" (really just a montage of brief snippets) that was superseded by a 17-minute two-reel Super 8 sound version from Universal 8 which I bought around the time it was released in 1977. This longer version, however, did not include anything from the flood sequence, scenes from which had been included in the shorter release, so those of us who owned both editions spliced the flood into the later one to produce a staggering length of around 20 minutes!

Given that boutique labels now often include these 8mm (usually Super 8) versions as supplements, I think it would be interesting (if it hasn't already been done?) to accompany some of them with a documentary - perhaps duplicated or serialised across several discs - about 8mm collecting in its heyday, which was more or less the 1970s. It's an important part of the history of feature films as home entertainment in the years immediately before domestic video became affordable. I'm not aware of many books on the subject and it would be a good opportunity to document it in an audio-visual form before all the people originally involved in distributing and even collecting 8mm are dead. I suspect even the specialist Super 8 review magazines survive only in a handful of copies (I still own some) as they were printed by fans in low numbers - a few hundred, I guess, in the UK anyway.

I'm sure younger Blu-ray collectors, encountering these abridgements for the first time, would be intrigued to know why we saved up the equivalent of around £70-120, at today's prices, for twenty minutes of highlights, often transferred by the studios from a dupey and worn 16mm projection print! (I sometimes wonder myself, though I tended to collect either complete shorts or, occasionally, full-length feature films... the latter at far more exorbitant prices.)

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colinr0380
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Re: 1100 The Incredible Shrinking Man

#17 Post by colinr0380 » Sat Jul 17, 2021 9:54 am

This seems like a really interesting impact that Indicator has had on the boutique labels by giving all of these pre-video age ways of watching films in the home environment a new life as extras. Here's a fun segment from the BBC's Film 86 programme about it ("We get them skillfully edited, cut out all the padding, and in half an hour you can tell the story that the Producer meant to tell" :shock: )

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Re: 1100 The Incredible Shrinking Man

#18 Post by MichaelB » Sat Jul 17, 2021 10:41 am

Arrow and Signal One were including Super 8 cutdowns before Indicator even existed. I’m not sure who was first, and Indicator certainly jumped on that bandwagon with a vengeance, but it had already been trundling for some time.

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Re: 1100 The Incredible Shrinking Man

#19 Post by Gerald Christie » Sat Jul 17, 2021 4:58 pm

I actually almost ended up buying the Arrow release multiple times, but held off on doing that when it was announced Universal had performed a new 4K restoration. It was long rumored to be with Criterion, so it was just a matter of time for it to finally come out.
The extras sound terrific. A new conversation with Joe Dante and a new commentary with Tom Weaver? Sweet, we're definitely in for a treat with the former. Also, when was the last time Criterion recorded a new commentary? What a delightful surprise and the fact that it's from Tom Weaver makes it even greater.
I'm also looking forward to the Craig Barron extra as I have been loving these programs dedicated to special effects.
All in all, this looks like a terrific release. I even like the cover.

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Re: 1100 The Incredible Shrinking Man

#20 Post by 4LOM » Sat Jul 17, 2021 7:23 pm

MichaelB wrote:Arrow and Signal One were including Super 8 cutdowns before Indicator even existed. I’m not sure who was first, and Indicator certainly jumped on that bandwagon with a vengeance, but it had already been trundling for some time.
Some German labels such as e-m-s, Anolis or Koch Media have already released Super8 versions as a bonus on DVD.

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dwk
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Re: 1100 The Incredible Shrinking Man

#21 Post by dwk » Mon Aug 30, 2021 10:28 pm

Another special feature has been added to this:
  • The Lost Music of “The Incredible Shrinking Man”

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L.A.
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Re: 1100 The Incredible Shrinking Man

#22 Post by L.A. » Tue Sep 14, 2021 1:26 pm


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Re: 1100 The Incredible Shrinking Man

#23 Post by FrauBlucher » Sun Oct 17, 2021 10:15 am


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tenia
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Re: 1100 The Incredible Shrinking Man

#24 Post by tenia » Mon Oct 18, 2021 2:59 pm

FrauBlucher wrote:
Sun Oct 17, 2021 10:15 am
bluray.com
Caps-a-holic's comparison with the older Arrow disc is available, and while the 4.5 score of blu-ray.com made me anticipate quite a visible upgrade (looking at the older visibly limited and electronic-looking master), these comparisons seem to suggest it's actually not the case at all. I can certainly understand shots with optical effects obviously limiting how sharp the picture can be, but this doesn't look quite filmic and instead looks quite smooth and likely degrained to some extent (since even with a loss of definition due to the opticals, you'd still retain a better spikier grain field, especially when working at 4K). Moreover, some of these comparisons don't contain optical effects, and the overall grading seems quite close to the older (typically DVD-era) one and not much more nuanced that one could expect (this cap in particular looks surprising to me).

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Re: 1100 The Incredible Shrinking Man

#25 Post by Orlac » Sat Nov 13, 2021 6:48 am

Chris' new reviw of the disc makes me reflect on how, awkward, Tom Weaver's commentaries can be. He is a font of wonderful knowledge, and a wacky sense of humour, but there are those moments that make you cringe. On his commentary for Frankenstein's Daughter, he refers to the pandemic as "Kung Flu" and goes off on an ill-advised tangent about woke-ness.

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