[Released] Killing Zoe Director's Cut & Theatrical Cut Special Edition

[alleycat]

Killing Zoe has been released on blu ray in France and Japan as the Director's Cut. These releases do not contain subtitles for the French dialogue sections, they only contain 5.1 audio and they have a washed out color grade. There is also a UK blu ray of the Theatrical Cut which is reported to be similar to VHS quality.

This project is an attempt to fix those issues. The original Dolby Surround track has been captured from the laserdisc (thanks @williarob). The 5.1 from the blu ray has been downmixed to a 2.0 track using the Dolby Pro Logic I encoder in BeSweet. These two tracks have then been merged, using the LD for the majority and only reverting to the BD for the extra scenes. I tried to match the levels you may notice some changes, but I think it sounds pretty good. The majority of it is Dolby Surround.

The color has been taken from the laserdisc. The laserdisc does not look perfect, it's a lot better than the blu as it has nice warm and bright colors, but it might be a bit too much for some people. Truth be told I have no idea how this movie is supposed to look, I did reach out to the director but did not hear anything back. I think the LD is the best reference, although I did run it through a CRT LUT first to tone down some of the red.

The Blu Ray also suffers from blown highlights, particularly lights during the bank. I did try to patch this in from the DVD but I found it very difficult and did not get satisfactory results so there have been left as they are in the blu ray.

The subtitles have been retimed where necessary, including some brand new translations by @Stamper. There is a sub track for just the French sections and a full SDH track with the French and English sections.

Since it's only available on an awful looking UK Blu Ray I've also included the theatrical cut, that uses the complete LD track. The blu ray has been cut to match the laserdisc and where necessary a few DVD shots have been used. However as this DC is really just additional violence I don't see a need to revisit the TC, but it's there for completists.

Also I noticed the subtitles differ between the DC translation and the LD translation - there is a scene where one of the characters tells a joke and in the LD he talks about a woman's belly button, in the DC translation he talks about... well something else. So I have used the belly button version for the TC subtitles and the x rated version for the DC subtitles.

So hopefully this is a much better presentation than the standard Blu Ray.

• 2 x BD25 with animated menus, background video, pop up menus and resume function
  
• 1080P AVC Video
  
• English 2.0 Laserdisc PCM Hybird (DC only)
  
• English 2.0 Laserdisc PCM (TC only)
  
• English 5.1 DTS-HD (DC only)
  
• French 5.1 DTS-HD (DC only)
  
• Audio Commentary with Director Roger Avary (DC only)
  
• English SDH and French Section Subtitles
  
• French Subtitles (DC only)
  
• Shooting Zoe Documentary
  
• Making Of
  
• Interviews with Eric Stoltz, Julie Delpy, Jean-Hughes Anglade and Roger Avary
  
• Deleted Scenes
  
• Image Gallery
  
• Trailer
  

** Note that some of the extras have sections in French that are not subtitled.

PM me for the links, contributing/long term members only please. Contributing means active members of the forum who post and/or make their own projects.

High Resolution cover and disc art available from @Pineapples101 Here.

Before/After Screenshots:






















Menu:





Just to clarify this is a project that I have made for myself which I am choosing to share. If you don't like the project, if you think it should have been done differently then feel free to keep that to yourself and consider doing your own project.

[dvdmike]

Amazing, love this flick

[The Griff]

Great job!

The belly button thing is curious. I saw this on its original release and the joke was definitely never about the woman's navel!

[dvdmike]

The PAL vhs was always the Navel, so weird

[alleycat]

Yeah I grew up on the UK VHS so was always used to it being about the belly button, then I had the US DVD and I can't remember what that was, but the first time I noticed the change was when I was watching the DC with subtitles I'd found online. The US Laserdisc has burned in subs and that's belly button. Also it's not just the one word they changed, several lines are different - for example when the guy goes to the whorehouse in the x rated version of the joke the owner says "What do you expect to get for $20" but in the belly button version he says "We don't serve perverts here".

[The Griff]

Hmmmm. Well, it is possible that I'm mistaken! I can confirm 100% that the cruder translation of the joke appeared in the Artisan DVD of the theatrical cut (from around 1999/2000). Burnt in subtitles, too.

The Aussie DVD was made from the same tape master that was used for our local VHS rental releases back in the day. I may know a fella who still has the disc. If that's got the bellybutton version on it, I'll be happy to declare my memory faulty!

[MrBrown]

The German version was always the bellybutton, not the deeper... Region.

I always thought it hilarious enough that the guy in the joke wants tu lick a belly button... But with that... Cruder version.. The joke makes more sense..

[dvdmike]

Yeah I thought that was the joke

[dvdmike]

You are welcome guys

[MrBrown]

Germany even got the "wrong" (self censored) version in its dub... Somehow I think the belly button is even a bit more funny...