Ha ha, I'm sure many of you knew I'd be looking at another Highlander project now that I'm taking a break from Highlander 2. 

Compared to the other films in the franchise Highlander 3 is a lot more simple; only three versions with minor differences, so I'm going to use this as an experiment to learn about implementing seamless branching in MKVs to allow all three versions to be viewed. 

I own various different releases of this film, but I only own the Director's Cut version on laserdisc. Obviously the visual quality is less than ideal, but on top of that I currently have no way to actually capture video from LD. 

So I'm wondering if anyone has any of the Director's Cut DVDs and could provide me with the following CGI enhanced shots:

Kane teleporting himself to New York
   

Kane using magic to steal a pair of sunglesses
       

The final quickening sequence
   

Sadly I think all releases of the Director's Cut version were 4:3 letterboxed, so the quality won't be much better than the laserdisc, but at least it's something.

Also I was wondering if anyone could clear something up for me regarding Highlander 3's US Theatrical Release. I always understood it that the film was released to theatres without the above CGI effects, and that these were added later for home video. I can't say for sure myself as I'm in the UK, but a US friend swears blind that the version he saw on release day in the US featured the CGI effects, and claims that all the US home releases other than the Director's Cut DVDs have been cut. 

So what actually happened with this film in the US? Most resources I can find online point towards the Director's Cut only being on home video, but I'd love to have it confirmed. 

Thanks in advance for any help.

Hello!

I'm looking for the English digital audio of this Laserdisc edition, could someone help me?

https://www.lddb.com/laserdisc/02010/403...ey-Pit-The

Thanks in advance.

This project was completed here:

https://fanrestore.com/thread-5178-post-...l#pid85789



2010 The Year We Make Contact Older HDTV Master (Quick Project v1.0)


Project Info:
I've always loved 2010. I know most believe it pales compared to the Kubrick masterpiece and that is a sentiment I agree with but none of that has tempered my love for this movie. I always loved the more "real world" look and feel of this movie compared to the almost mysticism of the original. That and I think people will agree this movie has a superior cast giving pretty damn good performances.

The origins of this project are simple. While I was patching up the older HDTV master of Alien, I went through my collection of old HDTV caps and recordings and found a few unique ones that I wanted to polish up and release. 2010 is the first of those.

The older HDTV master of 2010 has the same the color timing of the dvd. I wouldn’t say one is better than the other, some colors are better, some worse. I would just call it different and not more theatrically accurate per say. And since there is a HDTV master with different color timing, I would like to preserve it. Hence this project.

Video:
A HDTV broadcast which has the dvd color timing cleaned up with various filters.

Audio:
1. PCM 2.0 Dolby Surround (from the Widescreen LD)
2. Dolby Digital 5.1 (from the HDTV)

Pics:.



Collaborators and Thanks:
jonno: For the synced LD soundtrack

Well, almost everyone agrees that this movie is too dark, and often part of the action is lost due to this.
I made my own project and increased brightness, along with fixing three short shots that needed to be fixed (at the time): https://originaltrilogy.com/topic/Aliens...D/id/16422

Now, after some time - and experience - I'm ready to "refresh" this project a bit... this time it would be the theatrical cut (and not the unrated version I used for the previous project).

Using the open matte WEB version and BD, I'll use the same brightness increase I used before, but this time I'll tweak also the colors, as I think they are quite dull...
At the end, plus points are:

• bigger frame size
  
• increased brightness
  
• "better" colors
  

Hi everyone,

I'm really excited to be a part of this forum. I just discovered this place doing some online research into the varying aspect ratios of films. Very much looking forward to be part of the discussion with like-minded individuals who are interested in the preservation of films

Does anyone have the Cantonese DD 2.0 mono track from the Japanese Paramount Blu-ray?

The HK Kam & Ronson BD only contains a 7.1 remix.

I have the Criterion DVD which includes a mono track and had a quick go at syncing, but its quite a bit different and will require some patch work.

Unfortunately, it's only available on certain Sony 4k TV'S. It was released on Fandango in IMAX Enhanced format.

UPDATE 12/03/2024 - For now this preservation will no longer be available. 

The US Cut of Highlander 2 is suddenly available to buy and stream on Amazon UK! If I had to guess I'd say it's an old, fairly soft, HD transfer made for a DVD that was never released. It's certainly different from every transfer I've seen before. Sadly it's got PAL speedup. I wonder if the UK distributor is planning to finally update their old pan and scan DVD. It's certainly a step up from the French DVD which served as the basis for this preservation.

I encourage everyone who has this preservation to consider buying a copy of the new streaming version, hopefully it will remind the studios that there is demand for a wider release of this cut.

After completing the latest version of the European Theatrical Cut preservation, I thought I'd put one together for the US Theatrical Cut too. I had hoped this would be a quick process (I actually had an initial version ready to release just before New Year) but a few complications came up and it got delayed a few times. 

The US Theatrical Cut is a mess, but it deserves to be preserved if only as an example of how not to edit a film. As I was putting this one together I noticed lots of tiny editing oddities which clearly point towards the US Cut being edited from the EU Cut (or at least something very similar to it), rather than this version being put together from scratch. There's one instance where an additional scene is added to the US cut, and when the film proceeds to the next scene you can still see a few frames of fade out from the scene before the new scene. It's a real mess. 

The main visual source for this restoration was the French DVD which provides a nicely detailed picture. It's probably the highest detailed SD source I've seen for the film in any cut, however it looks like there's been some DNR applied and there are quite a few compression artefacts. It does however have the US Theatrical colour grading which is nearer to grey than the blue of the EU cut. 

Thanks goes to TomArrow for helping me with a shot extension; a ~3 second clip had to be reconstructed from three very different sources. My attempts to fix the shot were far from convincing but TomArrow came up with something that works really well. 

I originally used the English language audio from the Japanese DVD of the US Theatrical Cut, which is basically a poor quality LD rip, however Soundman offered me a bit perfect PCM rip from the US laserdisc which was much nicer quality so I've used that here instead. 

So thanks to both Tom Arrow Soundman! 



There's a bit of scope for an second version in the future; I have both the French and Japanese audio for this cut of the film so they could be included if there's call for it. The French audio does feature Christopher Lambert dubbing himself so it may be of interest to some. 

I think after this I'll be leaving the world of Highlander 2 for a bit. I've now spent over a year working on various cuts of this film so want to take a break, work on some other projects and learn some new skills. I may revisit this and the EU cut later down the line though as I've still got some ideas for improvements...

PM me for links. I hope you enjoy and please let me know if you have any feedback!

Question for you guys.  In this video, there's a hard cut around :46-:47...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=adBmLtE4wwg

But on the US and Holland Blu-ray's, those two shots dissolve, as seen at around :48 in this video...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7QdLc9Fz4dI

Does anyone know which edit is accurate to the original International Cut?  Anyone have the laserdisc to check this?

After restoring the European Theatrical Cut of Highlander 2 I thought I'd put together a preservation of the US Theatrical Cut. I thought this would be a quick task as the French DVD provides an excellent visual source, and all I'd have to do would be to sync up some high quality audio. I completed a first version that I was fully happy with, but just as I was about to release it I ran into a problem. 

The US Theatrical Cut contains a shot that is extended by around 1 second. Annoyingly this extension isn't present on the French DVD. I have two other sources for the extended shot; the Japanese DVD which is a low quality letterboxed LD rip, and the UK DVD which is high quality but Pan and Scan. 

Even with colour correction the Japanese DVD shot has such a massive drop in quality that it sticks out like a sore thumb. The UK DVD is an excellent match for the French DVD in terms of colour and quality, so I attempted to use the various sources to patch back in the cropped off parts of the image but the result was less than successful. 

Does anyone have any suggestions or tips on what can be done? Part of me is tempted to just ignore the extended shot as it's less than a second and contains absolutely nothing of interest, but the perfectionist in me doesn't want to let this go.

Below are frames from each source. I can provide the actual clips if anyone wants them. 

Japanese DVD


UK DVD


French DVD