Wednesday, October 13

Alien 2: On Earth (Alien 2 sulla Terra) (1980) - Daiei Video Japan VHS...plus word of an upcoming Blu-ray release (!?!)

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Gotta thank Mr. Z over at TOMB IT MAY CONCERN again for this heads up. An "upstart" studio, Midnight Legacy (rare cult supplier Midnight Video), has just announced Ciro Ippolito's Alien 2: On Earth for an upcoming restored BD release. The tentative specs are certainly impressive, especially the 2k telecine of the original 35mm negative with footage never before seen (Japanese VHS runs 80 minutes). It also appears they've already finished the high definition MPEG-4 AVC encode. If not ruined by noise reduction or authoring issues, these particulars bode well for picture quality that at least approximates the appearance of the negative--good or bad. Although thirty-thousand units is a huge quantity for a "limited edition" considering this title and "soft niche" status of the format, so I doubt this release will sell out quickly once unleashed. We'll see...

5 comments:

Dolph Chiarino said...

Dolph here from Midnight Legacy. Glad to see this already being discussed. Anyway, what I can tell you regrding some concerns you have is this. I attended Rome to supervise the transfer and supervised the encode as well. Next, there was NO DNR performed at all. We absolutely abhor these practices, and the negative was gorgeaous once we created a DI and worked from there.

Two, the post facility we used is currently used by WB and Sony, and is regarded as the best in the US, so encode issues are nothing to worry about.

Finally, on the number we are pressing, during our intial discussion to gauge interest, this number was about right.

Please feel free to contact me if there are any more questions, and again, I appreciate this being mentioned here.

Dolph

DrunkethWizerd said...

Just get it in my hands and I'll buy it.

Dolph Chiarino said...

Thanks, that's much appreciated.

It really looks great, and the additional footage was an awesome find. We'll be announcing a final release date shortly, but to give you some idea, we are talking before the end of the year.

Thank you for your support, as doing this films justice needs to be at the forefront of what we're trying to accomplish.

Dolph

Jayson Kennedy said...

Thank you very much for your fast feedback, Mr. Chiarino!

And sorry about sounding skeptical, I've just learned to sadly never get too excited about forthcoming Blu-ray releases given the loopy quality studios sometimes decide is good enough. But this release sounds undeniably great!

I'll definitely be grabbing it.

Dolph Chiarino said...

Please, call me Dolph. Thanks for following our blog Jayson, and I understand your skepticism. Rest assured that things were done correctly, and once my followup blog is up, you'll see that there were some very difficult issues we had to correct in order to make this release amazing.

Thanks again for the support, and I truly hope to exceed your expectations.

Dolph

...do you dare tread upon the staircase?

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