What movies, do you think are worth seeing/owning in HD?

Off the top of my head... Citizen Kane, The Godfather Parts 1 & 2, and The Lord Of The Rings trilogy. Plus Kubrick's 2001 and Barry Lyndon. Those five titles (actually eight I guess) would get me into an HD player. Plus an HDTV, I don't have one yet.

I'd go with Chris' list, and would add Alien and Aliens.

Hmmmmm... I don't have an HDTV either. I guess that's another topic.

tim

It's funny that both my choices are in theaters now but they just looked so amazing on screen. I would love to see them in HD.

King Kong, and Memoirs of a Geisha.

Thanks,
Eric James

I have 3 HDTVs in the house. I got rid of the last of the old televisions when I moved to Florida last month.

I still can't take my eyes off some of the fantastic footage on Sunrise Earth, and some of the HD travel shows. And the downsized former IMAX movies are enough to make you drop your jaw and just stare at the HDTV.

But there are a few movies I would like to see in HD. Woodstock would be cool. In alphabetical order, let's say Casablanca, Easy Rider, Fantasia, Lawrence of Arabia, all of the Star Wars movies, Top Hat, 2001, Yankee Doodle Dandy.

I am sure there are more I would want to see if they were brought to my attention.

Dinosaur, or something like that with photo-real graphics.

Serenity....oh wait, that's already been announced for the HD-DVD camp. Dangit, and I really wanted a BluRay player! LOL! :-P

Releasing Kubric and Ridley Scott's films in HD would do it for me. Heck, Blade Runner alone would do it, especially if they end up restoring the hospital scene.

But truthfully, I'm going to have to wait a while. The initial price point of the players are just too high for my blood.

Well if you're going to get Serenity in HD, you might as well have the entire Firefly series too. Sign me up for that boxed set.

I'm not sure if I care yet about commercial movies, which look okay on widescreen DVDs. I just want to be able to see my own HD footage at full resolution without having to plug a camera into my HDTV, and be able to show it to customers the way they could watch it at home. I'm thinking of getting on the waiting list now for one of the Toshiba players...and if Blu-ray wins I'll have a nice conversation piece a few years down the line.

Kevin,

I was an early adopter of the Linkplayer (pre JVC) and have been watching my own movies without the Sony FX1 connected for almost a year now. Get in line. It is worth it even if something new comes out soon. We still have to wait for reasonable priced burners and players. The moment they are announced you will just have to get in that line anyway.

The Blair Witch Project ;-)

Off the top of my head: "Baraka", "Thin Red Line", "Heat", "Saving Private Ryan", "Apocalypse Now", "2001", "Blade Runner", "Ran", "Lord of the Rings", "Glory".

OK Mathieu, that was just plain amusing. I hadn't smiled much today. Thanks for that.

The Empire Strikes Back.

Baraka.

Akira Kurosawa's RAN

Brazil

Blade Runner

Raiders of the Lost Ark

Empire of the Sun

Little Big Man

City of Lost Children

Prospero's Books

Caligula ;)

Holy cow, somebody else here knows about Prospero's Books? I'd get that on plain 'ol DVD if I could find it!

Close Encounters of the Third Kind

The Fifth Element

The Abyss

Ran would look great, no doubt, but I think Kagemusha is a much more compelling film visually. Lots of close-ups and interesting cinematography present, whereas Ran seems, at least to me, painstakingly detached. Don’t get me wrong, it is an absolutely fantastic picture, and probably my favorite Shakespeare adaptation to date.


FYI... have you seen Criterion's new release of Ran? It puts the previous versions to shame!


As for my picks:

Kurosawa: (definitely Kagemusha... maybe Dreams, too).
Sergio Leone's stuff... ie, The good, the bad, and the ugly.
Star Wars, obviously. While you don’t have to like them, II and III would look stunning. Revenge of the Sith already looks like a hi-def broadcast on its current dvd incarnation.
Likewise, all the Pixar animated films would look great.

Thanks for the tip on the Criterion release of "Ran". I wasn't aware they had one.

I watched "Kagemusha" again this year and I still prefer "Ran" visually. Although the story of "Kagemusha" appeals to me, there are more set pieces in "Ran", more spectacle and more visual poetry. There isn't much in "Kagemusha" that matches the attack on the third castle scene in "Ran", the one that is played out against music without sound with the burning castle, the showers of fire arrows, the bright blood and the smoke obscuring the sun.

Chris, I'm glad someone brought up "Prospero's Books". That movie blew my mind when I saw it in the theatres on its first release. I remember checking two years ago to see if there was any kind of DVD release for that film. Has there since? BTW, I can't stand "Pillow Book". "The Cook the Thief His Wife and Her Lover" would be a good one to demonstrate color on an HD screen.

I'll add more to the list:

"Lawrence of Arabia" / "A Passage to India" / "Bridge Over the River Kwai"
"Last of the Mohicans"
"Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon"

The previous two dvd’s were notorious for their bad transfers, so definitely pick this one up if you are a kurosawa fan (awesome cover, by the way):

http://www.criterionco.com/asp/release.asp?id=316

There is also has a documentary, ‘AK’ ,associated with it, which is in itself incredible.



I think you are right… the scope of Ran totally surpasses Kagemusha. However, at its root, Ran seems so much more elemental than the film that preceded it. It is as if the visuals compliment this baser delve into archetypal storytelling. Kurosawa just seems to be so detached from his characters (no close-ups at all, and a very still camera… even for him). Kind of like in Doudesuka, in which you get the feeling that the screen is trying to hurt you, or something. I am only 17, and not a film expert… so this is just my base opinion, and will probably change. : )


Some more for the list:
Big epics like ‘Spartacus’, the aforementioned ‘Laurence of Arabia’, and ‘Ben-Hur’ (1950-something version).

Those super-wide shots with thousands of extras will actualy have discernable detail in HD!


EDIT: Oops! Not 'Doudesuka'... I meant Dersu Uzala, the russian one.

Sneakers, American Beauty, Jimmy Hollywood, Kieslowski's tri colours, back to the futures...

Don't you judge me...

... have you seen Criterion's new release of Ran? It puts the previous versions to shame!It knocked my socks off when I saw the new version of Ran, I was leaning forward the whole time while I watched it. Very amazing transfer. Ran will probably come out first since it was re-mastered in HD.

Kurosawa's work will come across so much better in HD because of his awesome use of deep focus. I'll probably have to re-buy my whole Kurosawa collection in HD, just based on the deep focus shots.

Nick, Sneakers caught me off guard, but yeah that's one of my favorite movies, definitely a great one to initiate an HD player purchase.

And now thanks to you guys, I have to go and track down a VHS copy of Prospero's Books. Sheesh.

Barry Lyndon definitely. I'm with Chris on that one.

"Fear and Loathing In Las Vegas"... loads of good trippy scenes.

And "Apocalypse Now"... what a film

Andy.

"Fear and Loathing In Las Vegas"... loads of good trippy scenes.

And "Apocalypse Now"... what a film

Andy.


Yeah, I was gonna say "Fear and Loathing..." Anything by Gilliam for that matter. 'Cept for "The Fisher King". I don't know how much more detail one needs of the scene where Robin Williams trounces around naked in the park before cloud bursting with Jeff Bridges.

"Amadeus" might be worth seeing in HD.

I'll add another one.
Wong Kar Wai's "In the Mood for Love". Really sumptuous photography by Chris Doyle.

I'll add another one.
Wong Kar Wai's "In the Mood for Love". Really sumptuous photography by Chris Doyle.

I thought 2046 by Wong Kar Wai, the 'kind of sequel' was visually much better! The colors were much more brilliant! Have you seen it?
If not, be sure to do so!

how about... ALL of it? hahahah. i don't have a lot of DVDs (under 100) compared to friends. the minimum amount of DVDs any of my friends have is 500. one of them has at least 2000 (he's got several walls worth).

in fact, i have already sold off a great chunk of it and i plan on parting with most of it by the end of this year and stick with rentals until BR&HD-DVD comes down in price. i'll probably be left with LOTR, Star Wars, Matrix, Indy and Back to the Future just in case I get the itch to watch any of them right away =).

meanwhile, there are a few of my DVDs that i wanted in HD and couldn't wait. so i have 720p versions of them. Minority Report, 5th Element to name a few. =).

Throw in some George Pal and Ray Harryhausen films! :)

I thought 2046 by Wong Kar Wai, the 'kind of sequel' was visually much better! The colors were much more brilliant! Have you seen it?
If not, be sure to do so!
I think they are comparable. Both Christopher Doyle, of course, but I think the entire look of "In the Mood for Love" was much more coherent. "In the Mood for Love" had its reds and yellows. "2046" was a much cooler-toned film. I prefer the warmer tones of "In the Mood for Love". Story-wise, "In the Mood for Love" was much more refined and less indulgent. "2046" has its flashes of brilliance and is memorable in its own right.

The Devil In Miss Jones

Terminator 2. I saw it 15 times in 70mm when I lived in Denver. (maybe it already is in HD) :-)

Fantasia, in its full length, would be the one that would move me to spring for the cost of an HD player. Does anyone have an answer to the mystery, about how many hours of it there really are? The most common version is just two hours long. However, when I was in the 6th grade, all students in town were taken to a theater over a two-week period and shown a five-hour edition. I have a set of Kodak slides from Fantasia, that were sold when it premiered, that show some sequences and cartoon characters that didn't appear in even the five-hour edit. I know some people from other parts of the country, who swear they saw 7 hours of it and other friends have heard there were 11 hours or even more that were originally produced.

Personally, I would like to see :

Sleep Hollow : specially for the colour and the atmosphere..
Star Wars
LA Confidential
Aliens

there's several things that i'd like to see happen before i take a plunge for HD player:

1. the listing of all official bluray&HD-DVD specs. video i'm ok with. it's the audio that makes me woozy. for example with these HD formats, movie studios can include Dolby Digital HD, True HD, DTS-HD and... are there more? i'd like to know them all, the bit-rate, compressed or not, etc.

2. it's not just the spex, it's the studios' committment to releasing material with those formats. if the studios say NO to the new hi-res audio, i'll just stick with the plain ole vanilla DD-EX, DTS-ES 6.1 Discrete, matrix, etc. thus far, the newly announced movies coming out this year do not have details on the audio formats. yes, i realize the new formats will be backwards compatible, but that's not my point. the point is to be future-proof.

3. the announcement or arrival of a/v receivers capable of decoding DD HD, TrueHD, DTS-HD if hollywood is committed to it.

4. i'd like to see some of the classic movies released on HD formats before i plunge for a player. entire chaplain collection, entire FW Murnau, Fritz Lang, some of Harold Lloyd, Buster Keaton and of course, the 'giants' of the film past like john ford, huston, elia kazan, capra, and so on. if there's enough dedication on the software AND hardware front that i know i won't be buying into a dead format, i wouldn't mind making HD platform as the final resting stop for my collection. even if Ultra Definition comes out, i wouldn't care =). i honestly think HD is the last great consumer format before virtual reality and trek-like entertainment (holo-novels, here we come!).

IMHO its all about the epics. Braveheart, Gladiator, King Arthur, THe Patriot. Those are the movies that would be incredible in HD. Cinderall Man would look good, as wood the James Bond Films, as they are known for their great locations and big explosions.

Bryon <><

Ice Pirates