BD 25 Touch of Evil

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perkizitore
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Re: BD 25 Touch of Evil

#126 Post by perkizitore » Sat Dec 03, 2011 7:57 pm

manicsounds wrote:Something I couldn't find, does the MoC disc have the Welles 56 page memo included on the Universal DVD?
No, but MoC has kindly uploaded it online and they list the link in the booklet.

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swo17
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Re: BD 25 Touch of Evil

#127 Post by swo17 » Sat Dec 03, 2011 8:21 pm


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neilist
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Re: BD 25 Touch of Evil

#128 Post by neilist » Mon Dec 12, 2011 5:10 am

The Fopp store in Covent Garden had a stack of the 'Touch Of Evil' steelbook for sale when I went in this weekend. So much for it being exclusive to HMV.

(Yes, I know HMV own Fopp, but still...)

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Telstar
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Re: BD 25 Touch of Evil

#129 Post by Telstar » Tue Jan 03, 2012 12:03 pm

tenia wrote:I just received my Touch Of Evil Steelbook, and like other people, unfortunately, one clip maintaining the booklet is broken.
I'm thinking about ordering this from HMV but am nervous about what shape the case will be in by the time it reaches the states. How does HMV handle international returns/replacements?

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raithrover
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Re: BD 25 Touch of Evil

#130 Post by raithrover » Tue Jan 03, 2012 3:38 pm

I cannot speak for HMV shipping abroad but their packaging is a very sturdy cardboard. The only issue with that I can suggest is a steelbook could rattle about within it and become damaged.

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willoneill
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Re: BD 25 Touch of Evil

#131 Post by willoneill » Tue Jan 03, 2012 8:25 pm

I ordered my Touch of EVil steelbook from HMV, and it got to Canada in flawless condition. Reasonably thick cardboard packaging.

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eerik
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Re: BD 25 Touch of Evil

#132 Post by eerik » Thu Jan 05, 2012 6:24 am

Picked up my steelbook from the post office yesterday. One of the booklet clips was broken (had the same problem with Metropolis, ordered from Eureka) but otherwise it was in a perfect condition.

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HJackson
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Re: BD 25 Touch of Evil

#133 Post by HJackson » Fri Jan 06, 2012 7:25 am

Gotta admit that before I got this I was firmly in the 1.85 camp, and continue to consider it the 'correct' ratio (I think it is indisputable that the film was primarily composed and intended for it), but I'm really digging the look of this in Academy. Pretty sure I'll watch this one in Academy from now on.

Really hope MAGNIFICENT OBSESSION is on the horizon. Not only is it one of my absolute favourite melodramas, but the thought of rediscovering another masterpiece in a new ratio is an exciting prospect to me now.

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Fred Holywell
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Re: BD 25 Touch of Evil

#134 Post by Fred Holywell » Sun Jan 08, 2012 1:51 am

Like most everyone else, I'd always seen both "Touch of Evil" and "Magnificent Obsession" in 1.37 or 1.33:1 ("TofE" in revival theaters, "MO" on TV), and still prefer them that way. It isn't that cropping to a 1.85 or 1.75 aspect ratio looks so wrong to me, it's that in doing so the telecine operator seems to have zoomed in too tightly on the frame, lopping off picture info that should still be viewable even at those wider aspect ratios. That missing image is often what helps let the frame 'breathe' -- and gives the film an intended rhythm and balance that's often lost by cropping too tightly for home viewing.

When it comes to a film as meticulously shot as "Touch of Evil" it doesn't take an MFA in design to notice something's wrong. I sometimes wonder if the people doing these DVD transfers actually sit down and watch the film from beginning to end after their work is done. Of course, time and money are always a priority, and even when problems are noticed, it's usually in everyone's best interest to keep the project moving forward, till we buy the disc, see what's wrong, and start pulling our hair out. Thank God for Masters of Cinema and a few other companies that actually know what they're doing. I certainly wish there were more of them.

Calvin
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Re: BD 25 Touch of Evil

#135 Post by Calvin » Tue Jan 10, 2012 5:02 pm

This is screening in Picturehouse cinemas on the 17th

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MichaelB
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Re: BD 25 Touch of Evil

#136 Post by MichaelB » Tue Jan 10, 2012 5:12 pm

Calvin wrote:This is screening in Picturehouse cinemas on the 17th
But what's the aspect ratio? Or will they poll the audience five minutes before the screening starts and relay the verdict to the projectionist?

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kingofthejungle
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Re: BD 25 Touch of Evil

#137 Post by kingofthejungle » Mon Mar 05, 2012 3:24 pm

david hare wrote:The 58 Studio cut is still my favorite - I love the slight air of chaos that imbues the whole enterprise like the chaotically studio recut Lady from Shanghai. And because the 58 is so much a studio picture I find this makes the Wellesian signatures even more remakable in this context, like the superb refelective/miror transition shots before and after the motel sequence, and the alternation of rapid montage with long takes, the seemingly unique use of ultra wide angle lenses for the whole picture, etc.
I agree with this wholeheartedly. The Studio cut has a frenzied momentum that gets lost in the longer Preview and Restoration cuts. After (repeatedly) reading of the 'butchered' Theatrical version, I was initially reluctant to watch anything but the restoration. The MOC blu-ray was an excuse to finally explore the other cuts, and viewing the Studio cut for the first time was something of a revelation. While some great scenes hit the cutting room floor (Quinlan's berating Vargas after the acid-throwing incident is a favorite), the narrative drive of the Theatrical cut is searing in it's intensity. It's so tightly constructed that it leaves the viewer little room to breathe, while simultaneously managing to (largely) preserve Welles intricate themes--more a credit to directorial acumen than studio cutting. In fact, Quinlan's superhuman intuition seems comparatively belabored in the Restoration.

While the idea of the Restoration certainly has it's merits, I think the hype surrounding it is a little crazy. Many have bought into the notion that it's "closer to the director's vision" than the other cuts, but is this really the case? It follows the instructions of the legendary memo, but it's important to remember that these requests were made without the benefit of being able to watch, reflect on and revise them. Welles didn't spend 9 months editing Citizen Kane because he never second guessed himself! Had he been given free reign to edit Touch of Evil, he would most likely have produced a superior film that was vastly different from any of the three available versions. The director even acknowledged that the requests contained in the memo represented a minimum of changes necessary to produce a film even close to what he wanted. With this in mind, it's hard for me to see the Restoration as anything more than an academic curio--certainly not the definitive experience of the film (That, unfortunately, will never exist).

Thankfully, we now have all three cuts in beautiful HD, so we obsessives seeking Welles' vision can watch all three and read between the lines. It may be fragmentary, it may lack the full gritty, grandeur of what might have ultimately been, but it's as close as we'll ever come.

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Roger Ryan
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Re: BD 25 Touch of Evil

#138 Post by Roger Ryan » Tue Mar 06, 2012 1:33 pm

david hare wrote:...I have no idea what is missing from his first cut of Lady From Shanghai or how much it added or subtracted from Harry Cohn's release version. BUt again this is a typical case in which one can easily guess the studio cutting has been a response to something they thought had lost momentum and dramatic arc, tension, energy...
While it's true that Welles liked exploring digressions in his work that studios/preview audiences simply found superfluous, the cutting continuity for the initial edit of THE LADY FROM SHANGHAI reveals that this early version was probably a lot more comprehensible to what ended up being released. Numerous short transitional scenes that moved the action from one locale to the next were inexplicably excised as were dramatic moments that clarified character motivation. Not everything in the initial cut appears to be of equal value, but a good 15 minutes of some of this footage would have gone a long way to improving the final result. Keep in mind that I am only speaking about the story structure here. Welles' films often find their value in things other than story. In SHANGHAI, Welles' filmmaking aesthetic is largely trashed by truncating and disrupting elaborate on-location tracking shots with poorly done studio rear-projection process shots. For example, the scene in Acapulco where O'Hara and Grisby climb the hill and reach the cliff edge (where Grisby makes his deranged proposal to pay O'Hara to kill him) was originally shot as a series of long tracking takes showing the leads weaving through groups of tourists who all seem to be discussing wealth or the lack thereof. The released version of this scene removes most of the on-location tracking shots and attempts to cover the deletions with hackneyed studio inserts.

Fortunately, TOUCH OF EVIL is a film that was treated much better by Universal than Columbia treated SHANGHAI. The original theatrical release is simply a faster-paced version of what Welles had concocted, but it retains much of Welles' filmmaking aesthetics. The flaws in the theatrical release are the studio-imposed re-shoots that put too fine a point on story points implied elsewhere. I prefer the 1998 reconstructed version for removing most of this extraneous footage while re-introducing digressions that enrich the film (this material all comes from the preview version) and for the simple act of removing the superimposed credits from that spectacular opening shot.

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matrixschmatrix
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Re: BD 25 Touch of Evil

#139 Post by matrixschmatrix » Tue Mar 06, 2012 2:11 pm

In the interview with Bogdonovich, Welles said that the only changes made to Shanghai were a changed music track and the removal of one sequence (in the funhouse.) Are you arguing the internal structure of the movie was changed more than that?

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Roger Ryan
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Re: BD 25 Touch of Evil

#140 Post by Roger Ryan » Tue Mar 06, 2012 3:03 pm

matrixschmatrix wrote:In the interview with Bogdonovich, Welles said that the only changes made to Shanghai were a changed music track and the removal of one sequence (in the funhouse.) Are you arguing the internal structure of the movie was changed more than that?
Oh yes! I know that Welles was most upset about the music score (which is a disaster) so that is what he tended to harp on, but he did acknowledge further deletions and changes in other interviews. The original cut Welles was assembling was over two hours in length and did not feature voice-over narration. It's safe to say that Welles would not have wanted the film to be released at over two hours (and Columbia wouldn't have allowed it either), but a significant amount of material was scrapped to get it down to 87 minutes...too much in my opinion. Welles the writer/director was put in the awkward position of having to re-shoot inserts at the studio request and write a last-minute first-person narration to cover all the gaping holes left by the ruthless editing (which he had little-to-no control over after the studio rejected his original assembly). Next time you watch the film, take note of all the awkward studio rear-projection shots showing characters walking out of frame or crossing the frame - virtually all of them were included to cover deletions made to lengthier sequences shot on location. Likewise, almost every instance of narration is there to replace cut dialogue or a scene that presented that information dramatically. All in all, SHANGHAI ranks along with AMBERSONS as the two most mangled Welles films...even as Welles himself was obligated to manage the mangling.

As I mentioned earlier, TOUCH OF EVIL suffered less meddling apart from the small handful of re-shoots (half of which were then cut out anyway for the theatrical release). For me, I doubt that an official Welles edit would have looked much different from the reconstructed edit.

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swo17
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Re: BD 25 Touch of Evil

#141 Post by swo17 » Wed Feb 27, 2013 1:40 pm

MoC wrote:We only have 25 copies remaining of our Touch of Evil SteelBook left in stock, this gorgeous SteelBook won't be around for much longer, so make sure you grab a copy today; you'll find it on our exclusives page.

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dustybooks
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Re: BD 25 Touch of Evil

#142 Post by dustybooks » Wed Feb 03, 2021 12:58 am

I watched the "preview edition" for the first time last night. I've seen Touch of Evil many times but it's always been one of the other two cuts, and I've consistently had a long enough gap between visits to the film that the differences in tone and in minute details don't really jump out at me. (Welles' determination to make every scene interesting or atypical in some fashion does make certain moments very obvious as not his own work.) I can say, however, that even as the film becomes less enigmatic to me in narrative terms -- I genuinely loved the feeling of getting totally lost and thrown to the wolves the first few times -- it retains every bit of its greatness. From the very first time I saw it, it was obvious that Welles intended for Quinlan to be both a monster and a tragic figure; but as I grow old, regardless of how repellent I find his methodology, he becomes more and more the latter and less the former. Vargas, meanwhile, seems ever more clearly a rather over-eager variety of ineffective do-gooder -- even though I think his crusade is righteous in every sense -- as well as a perfectly dreadful husband, and a totally hapless hero. His physical struggles with the tape recorder in the final scenes are almost slapstick-like in their execution, and I think it's fascinating that Welles basically excludes him from the all-important closing dialogue exchange in the film.

I'm sure I'm not saying anything that isn't head-slappingly obvious here, but I enjoyed reminding myself that even when working within the bounds of this kind of genre fiction (said with great affection), Welles' cinema is just so impossibly rich and continually revealing.

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swo17
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Re: BD 25 Touch of Evil

#143 Post by swo17 » Tue May 03, 2022 3:07 am

How to make a hybrid container for the MoC Blu-ray and Kino UHD releases (saves space, classy looking):

1. Buy a 15mm Viva Elite UHD case with capacity for 6 discs.
2. Remove one of the two swing trays so there will be room for the MoC booklet.
3. You'll have to stack two of the discs on the first hub, but the booklet should keep them both there securely.

Looks like this:

Image Image Image Image Image

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hearthesilence
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Re: BD 25 Touch of Evil

#144 Post by hearthesilence » Tue May 03, 2022 12:09 pm

kingofthejungle wrote:
Mon Mar 05, 2012 3:24 pm
Many have bought into the notion that it's "closer to the director's vision" than the other cuts, but is this really the case? It follows the instructions of the legendary memo, but it's important to remember that these requests were made without the benefit of being able to watch, reflect on and revise them.
Very true. I think Rosenbaum himself made this point, but you can also see Curtis Hanson saying exactly the same thing in his interview for the extras, and it carries a bit more weight coming from another director.

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ChunkyLover
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Re: BD 25 Touch of Evil

#145 Post by ChunkyLover » Thu Jun 15, 2023 9:58 am

4K UHD upgrade arriving in September:

Image
SPECIAL FEATURES

Limited Edition Box Set - 3000 Copies
Limited Edition hardcase featuring artwork by Tony Stella
4K (2160p) UHD Blu-ray presentations of all three versions, presented in Dolby Vision HDR: the Theatrical version (95 mins), the Preview version (109 mins), and the 1998 Reconstruction (110 mins), across 2 UHD Discs.
A LIMITED EDITION 100-PAGE BOOK featuring writings by Orson Welles, François Truffaut, André Bazin, and Terry Comito; interview excerpts with Welles; a timeline of the film’s history; two new essays by critic Richard Combs; and rare stills and imagery
Four audio commentaries, featuring: restoration producer Rick Schmidlin (reconstructed version); actors Charlton Heston & Janet Leigh, with Schmidlin (reconstructed version); critic F. X. Feeney (theatrical version); and Welles scholars James Naremore & Jonathan Rosenbaum (preview version)
New video interview with critic, broadcaster and cultural historian Matthew Sweet
New video interview with critic Tim Robey
New video interview with author and critic Kim Newman
Bringing Evil to Life + Evil Lost and Found – two video pieces, featuring interviews with cast and crew, as well as critics and admirers
New video essay on the different versions of the film
Original theatrical trailer
https://eurekavideo.co.uk/movie/touch-o ... -ultra-hd/

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SeizureMilk
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Re: BD 25 Touch of Evil

#146 Post by SeizureMilk » Thu Jun 15, 2023 10:00 am

What I would give to own a UHD player now, looks fantastic.

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Finch
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Re: BD 25 Touch of Evil

#147 Post by Finch » Thu Jun 15, 2023 10:04 am

They appear to be carrying over the BD's booklet's content, and I prefer watching the film in 1.85:1, so if the 1.37:1 ratios don't make the transition, I can live with that. So the upgrade is essentially all versions in 4k (minus one ratio?), a book twice the size and one new video essay. I also prefer Stella's artwork to Kino's original poster art, so I'm in.

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What A Disgrace
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Re: BD 25 Touch of Evil

#148 Post by What A Disgrace » Thu Jun 15, 2023 11:06 am

I like the extras on Kino's release, so I'll just keep them, stuffed in an odd case on my MoC shelf with the art and booklet.

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rapta
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Re: BD 25 Touch of Evil

#149 Post by rapta » Thu Jun 15, 2023 11:14 am

Looks like a cracking release - new extras, as many versions in 4K as possible, hardcase slipbox, Tony Rayns artwork and 100 page book - and the only thing stopping me from pre-ordering this is that despite having a UHD player, I only have a 1080p projector (so haven't bought many UHD titles, naturally, and only ever on sale). My favourite Welles film though so I will definitely grab the standard edition eventually (and maybe by then I will have a 2160p setup option)!

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Finch
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Re: BD 25 Touch of Evil

#150 Post by Finch » Thu Jun 15, 2023 11:17 am

You're thinking of Tony Stella.

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