Recent DVD Purchases

[Torgo]

I watched "Galaxina" last night to start working on the review (and stayed up until about 0100 doing that).  The new print is good, better than the Rhino DVD release.  However, I am wondering about the widescreen bit.  Some things still looked chopped, so I am wondering if it is just hacked full screen.  If I get a chance tonight, I will try to compare the two DVDs.

From the IMDB:

Technical Specifications for
Galaxina (1980)
Laboratory
DeLuxe

Film negative format (mm/video inches)
35 mm

Cinematographic process
Panavision (anamorphic)

Printed film format
35 mm

Aspect ratio
2.35 : 1

So, it should be true widescreen on the DVD.  Haven't seen that movie for years BTW.  I remember it being cool back in the day.

[Torgo]

I also found this bit of information, Andrew, for the Rhino Galaxina DVD from a review.

Image Transfer Review: I don't really know what to say about this transfer other than, "what were they thinking?" The image is murky, faded and just poor overall. The contrast is completely off, there is a ton of streaking (check out any of the space sequences with streamers following all the stars—there is no point really analysing the quality here because there is none to speak of. This was obviously mastered off an old analog source, as the transfer is ripe with analog video artifacts. Perhaps if they had run over the source a few times with a truck they could have at least made it look vintage.

As for the aspect ratio, here is where it gets interesting. First, this was a 2.35:1 film shot in Panavision, but the DVD is rendered at 1.85:1 (except for two shots, which are at the correct ratio!) Throughout the DVD they are reframing the 1.85 image, sometimes including the full 2.35 frame (resulting in a horizontally squeezed look), other times they zoom into the frame at 1.85:1 (cutting off the edges) and other times they have zoomed into a 1.33:1 image while still using 1.85:1 as the master. Second, the disc is anamorphic, though it was really tough to tell whether this was intentional or not on first viewing, or whether they had originally done a straight transfer from an anamorphic print and zoomed in on it. The film opens with a shaky zoomed in logo which is followed by a section where you actually see them horizontally compressing the picture to fit (most) of the intended width of the frame. The image is a mess, and I have seen better 10-year-old VHS tapes. Bad, really bad!

[raj]

Andrew, Femalien is not family viewing -- the scene at the end with Jacquiline Lovell and Venesa Taylor -- wow    ! Fun little softcore movie, the sequel is just as good/bad.

I need to see Videodrome again.  I taped it years ago, then taped over it for some reason, I love Debby Harry.

[Andrew]

I think that I first saw "Femalien" on late night cable (had to be Skinemax) with a friend, Steve, many years ago.  I do all of my movie watching after the kids are in bed.  Thought it would be safe to watch "Dogora" when Jenna was around one time.  She was scared of clouds for about a week, though I turned it off soon as I saw that she was paying attention to the movie and it was upsetting her.

Planning on making some popcorn and watching "Videodrome" tonight. 

On the subject of Deborah Harry:  she did the singing for the main female character in "Rock & Rule."  Not certain if you know about that animated film.

[raj]

Hadn't heard about Rock & Rule, thanks for the tip.