From: bill@bilver.uucp (Bill Vermillion)
Subject: Re: LD mini reviews : The Omen and Heaven's Gate
Organization: W. J. Vermillion - Winter Park, FL
Distribution: usa
Date: Sat, 11 Apr 1992 01:43:33 GMT

In article <1992Apr7.154243.20885@cbfsb.cb.att.com> tzung@cbnewsf.cb.att.com (tzung-i.lin) writes:
>Just rented these two new LDs over the weekend, here is some brief reviews.


>** Heaven's Gate

>	I remember someone posted the purchase of this film and promised
>to give a full review, but it never came out. SO I rented it myself.

I posted when it came out, but I don't remember if I said I
would review it.   If I did, I'm sorry for not doing so.  I
have alway liked this film, and had it on CED originally.  I am
perhaps too prejudiced to give an impartial review as I know
the history involved, having grown up in part of that area.

>As long as it's a Michael Cimino's film, Cinamatography is always
>an important element. Hence a LBX is a must for his films. BTW,
>does anyone know whether Sicilian is origianly widescreen?
>BUT, something wrong in its aspect ratio here!! At the end, the credit
>said the film was host in Panavision, so it should be 2.35 : 1,
>but the LBX LD presentation is such a narrow strip, I measured
>the ratio, even without the overscanning problem of my TV set,
>the ratio measured around 2.5 : 1.

Yes - I noticed that too. The LBX image is close to that as
seen in Ben Hur.

>While watching the film, many scenes
>gave me an impression that it was wrongly "matted". The most obvious 
>one is the dance scene in the Yale campus at the beginning. When 
>they finally get around in a circle and dance, you can see the lower edge
>of the circle is cut off which destroys the harmony of the composition.
>What happened?

I saw the 'cut' version - and to my memory from that time until
I got the full version CED but P&S - the Dance scene seemed to
flow much better in the cut version.  It gave the illusion of
being more of a continuous take than the full release.  However
the story did not make much sense at all in the short version.

>	The color looks a little bit faded, the outdoor scene is O.K.
>but the indoor shot was blurring, not sharp at all. Probably it's filmed
>that way. No noticable graininess in the transfer. Image askd
>for $59.99 (am I right?). Unless someone convince me otherwise about
>the "wrongly" matted LBX release, I don't think it's worth it.

I will go an recheck my version and compare notes on what you say.
However this LBX is so much better than the orignal uncut P&S version,
I am not quibling.

>BTW, it's a reasonably good film, though the story sometimes 
>drifts away and not very fine tuned. The ending is unreasonable to me,
>it seems too sudden, too unrealistic to accept. 

I'll agree about the ending.  It seems as if Cimino finally had to wrap
it up and get it out.  Read Bach's "The Final Cut" which documents the
whole film and all of it's fiasco's.

My mother wrote me about part of the filming, as some was shot in the
town I grew up in.  She told me of the party they had when they shot
their MILLIONTH foot of film.  Cimino does get carried away, and if you
read the book you can see how they spent (or perhaps more properly put
-wasted) $40,000,000.

If you think the story was not quite as good as it could be, you should
see (or perhaps avoid) "The Johnson County Wars".  This was a film
staring (and I use the word losely) Bill "The Incredible Hulk" Bixby.
Apart from the fact that it was a film about bounty hunter of the
original Polish imigrants, you'd be hard put to tell it was about the
same thing.  A real piece of trash. 


>	One last question, was this the original theatrical releases?
>Many ads list it as UNCUT, (it ran about 220 min.), how long was the
>original theatrical release? And was this LD version REALLY what Cimino wanted?

This was the way the orignal release - that only ran 1 day in LA - was
edited.   

>I really suspect this since the story line is loose and not well
>thought through, it's hard for me to believe it's what Cimino intended.
>
>Tzung-I

This is probably not what Cimino really wanted - Bach's book is full of
interesting stuff.   This is the film that killed UA.  If you read the
book about the Fox network, you can see where/what some of the people
involved in UA did later on.      What a waste of money in that
business.



-- 
Bill Vermillion - bill@bilver.uucp 
                - ..!{peora|ge-dab|tous|tarpit}!bilver!bill
Newsgroups: rec.video.releases