It Couldn't Happen Here Laserdisc

Archive for quick access to detailed information about the band.
Message
Author
User avatar
York Minster
Posts: 5412
Joined: Thu 21 May 2009, 2:47 pm
Contact:

It Couldn't Happen Here Laserdisc

#1 Post by York Minster »

I am watching the It Couldn't Happen Here Laserdisc for the first time, and the whole thing is playing like a slow tape! Has anyone else had this problem with the laserdisc? I watched Performance on LD last night and it was fine.

I haven't watched the movie in full since the 90s. Hasn't improved a whole lot.
And tryin' to figure out what happened to 'Germaine Propaine'
"He couldn't have fell off that hard" Ain't no way
"What happened to the way you was rappin' when you was scandalous
That Canibus turned into a television evangelist"
Plus he raps with his regular voice [BOOSH! BOOSH!]
[BOOSH! BOOSH!] (What was that?) Pet Shop Boys

User avatar
themgnt
Posts: 347
Joined: Wed 29 Oct 2003, 12:01 pm
Contact:

Re: It Couldn't Happen Here Laserdisc

#2 Post by themgnt »

I have no problems with my ICHH LD.

User avatar
DJ Fairborne
Posts: 385
Joined: Sat 06 Dec 2003, 6:30 am
Contact:

Re: It Couldn't Happen Here Laserdisc

#3 Post by DJ Fairborne »

themgnt wrote:I have no problems with my ICHH LD.
When is ICHH finally going to be released on DVD? I thought it may have been in '08 to celebrate the 20th anniversary etc, but alas not. But maybe it will be in 2013 for the 25th anniversary instead? It would be great to have it on DVD & also maybe a new documentary about it would be good to have as an extra feature. Sadly, Gareth Hunt died a few years ago, but Barbara Windsor, Neil Dickson & Joss Ackland are all still alive & could be in it, aswell as Neil & Chris of course and also the Director, Jack Bond. I don't own the laserdisc of it (or indeed a laserdisc player!), just the VHS version (which is a bit poor quality now, although it's about 20 years old or so!), so a nice shiny remastered DVD version would be very welcome at some point in the next few years!

Of course, I want the Further Listenings to ''Nightlife'' & ''Release'' first though!...

kennytosh
Posts: 218
Joined: Fri 08 Jan 2010, 7:19 pm
Contact:

Re: It Couldn't Happen Here Laserdisc

#4 Post by kennytosh »

If it were to be released in 2013 I'd say it'd be more of a Blu-ray release than a DVD one (which I definitely wouldn't be against!). Also, was it Joss Ackland who said ICHH was one of the worst things he's done in his career? If so, good luck getting him on board for a documentary.

User avatar
DJ Fairborne
Posts: 385
Joined: Sat 06 Dec 2003, 6:30 am
Contact:

Re: It Couldn't Happen Here Laserdisc

#5 Post by DJ Fairborne »

kennytosh wrote:If it were to be released in 2013 I'd say it'd be more of a Blu-ray release than a DVD one (which I definitely wouldn't be against!). Also, was it Joss Ackland who said ICHH was one of the worst things he's done in his career? If so, good luck getting him on board for a documentary.
I didn't know that Joss Ackland said that about ICHH, so maybe it is a long-shot hoping that he'd take part in any documentary about the film. I also wonder how Barbara Windsor feels about the film now, as when it was made back in '87, her career wasn't going as well as it now (mainly thanks to her many years on ''Eastenders'' playing Peggy Mitchell), so maybe she wouldn't want to be involved in it either. As for Neil Dickson, well aside from ICHH, the only other things I've ever seen him in are the film ''Biggles'' & TV mini-series ''Sins'' (both from '87) & then presenting on the short-lived TV shopping channel, Shop America in 2001, so I wonder if he'd take part? Perhaps all the actors involved are totally embarrassed by it all now & are trying to erase it from their minds! Lol... Did the late Gareth Hunt ever comment on it btw? Surely iCHH wasn't as bad as his Nescafe coffee ads in the 80's with Sarah Greene & Diane Keen?

Is Blu-Ray tipped to take over DVD as the 'standard' format by around 2013? I've yet to get a HD-ready TV, let alone a Blu-Ray player, so would prefer a DVD release of it instead or at least release it on both formats etc.

User avatar
DominoDancing
Posts: 284
Joined: Mon 13 Mar 2006, 9:44 pm
Contact:

Re: It Couldn't Happen Here Laserdisc

#6 Post by DominoDancing »

DJ Fairborne wrote:
kennytosh wrote:If it were to be released in 2013 I'd say it'd be more of a Blu-ray release than a DVD one (which I definitely wouldn't be against!). Also, was it Joss Ackland who said ICHH was one of the worst things he's done in his career? If so, good luck getting him on board for a documentary.
I didn't know that Joss Ackland said that about ICHH, so maybe it is a long-shot hoping that he'd take part in any documentary about the film.
Neil and Chris seem to have a healthy attitude concerning ICHH's "quality", and they have been very open about what they like and dislike about their own videos on the PopArt commentary. In that light I wouldn't deem it impossible that they would invite Ackland to do the commentary and allow him to speak relatively freely about his negative feelings.

Those quotation marks are only there on anecdotal evidence, by the way. I still haven't seen the movie.

kennytosh
Posts: 218
Joined: Fri 08 Jan 2010, 7:19 pm
Contact:

Re: It Couldn't Happen Here Laserdisc

#7 Post by kennytosh »

DJ Fairborne wrote: Is Blu-Ray tipped to take over DVD as the 'standard' format by around 2013? I've yet to get a HD-ready TV, let alone a Blu-Ray player, so would prefer a DVD release of it instead or at least release it on both formats etc.
I dunno when it'll happen, but Blu-ray is certainly getting more popular (and cheaper thank god!) so I assume, by 2012, it'll be the standard format for most things (though it'll take a lot longer for DVD to phase out than it did for VHS to phase out, I think). If it comes out for its 25th birthday then I'm sure it'll be a Blu-ray and DVD release.

User avatar
Oznerol
Posts: 2354
Joined: Fri 31 Oct 2003, 5:31 am
Contact:

Re: It Couldn't Happen Here Laserdisc

#8 Post by Oznerol »

FirthofForth wrote:I am watching the It Couldn't Happen Here Laserdisc for the first time, and the whole thing is playing like a slow tape! Has anyone else had this problem with the laserdisc? I watched Performance on LD last night and it was fine.

I haven't watched the movie in full since the 90s. Hasn't improved a whole lot.
Oh, this is right!! For sure you're watching the US Laserdisc, wich plays full screen, mono quality audio, and at a slower speed!! That´s weird but right!
I have two rips of the movie, one from the US Laserdis and another from the asian LD...the asian is in stereo and running at the correct speed (what means that the movie is almost 5 minutes shorter) but the image is letterboxed, cropping the image with black bars at the top and the bottom...so a definitive version of the movie (that means full image with no cropping + stereo audio + correct speed) is stil unreleased (as far as I know)...
This is not my signature.

User avatar
York Minster
Posts: 5412
Joined: Thu 21 May 2009, 2:47 pm
Contact:

Re: It Couldn't Happen Here Laserdisc

#9 Post by York Minster »

Oh, this is right!! For sure you're watching the US Laserdisc, wich plays full screen, mono quality audio, and at a slower speed!! That´s weird but right!
Argh! :grumble: I want my money back. How could they have pressed it at too slow a speed? This is unheard of. Shouldn't they have recalled it? I bought a laserdisc player (I'm 28, never had one) just to play this and the Performance on LD that I got in a lot on ebay. But thanks for confirming that it's not my player.
And tryin' to figure out what happened to 'Germaine Propaine'
"He couldn't have fell off that hard" Ain't no way
"What happened to the way you was rappin' when you was scandalous
That Canibus turned into a television evangelist"
Plus he raps with his regular voice [BOOSH! BOOSH!]
[BOOSH! BOOSH!] (What was that?) Pet Shop Boys

Paul
Posts: 203
Joined: Mon 29 Aug 2005, 7:19 pm
Contact:

Re: It Couldn't Happen Here Laserdisc

#10 Post by Paul »

FirthofForth wrote:
Oh, this is right!! For sure you're watching the US Laserdisc, wich plays full screen, mono quality audio, and at a slower speed!! That´s weird but right!
Argh! :grumble: I want my money back. How could they have pressed it at too slow a speed? This is unheard of. Shouldn't they have recalled it? I bought a laserdisc player (I'm 28, never had one) just to play this and the Performance on LD that I got in a lot on ebay. But thanks for confirming that it's not my player.
Its not pressed at a slower speed :lol:

Its all about pal (50hz) v NTSC 60hz)

The answer is pretty simple:

Film original source = 24FPS

Now, to play that on an NTSC system which is 60 *fields* per second it is "telecined" (transferred from film to video) with "3:2 pulldown". That means that 1 frame is played for 3 fields, and the next for 2. The result? 24 frames fit right into 60 fields.

To play that on a PAL system which is 50 fields per second, it's not so simple, because the only way to make it work would be to repeat a frame. They don't do that. The solution is that the film is sped up by four percent. Obviously, that means that the movie is shorter.
The 24-to-25 fps speed up means that people and actions move 4% faster. In other words, a 1 minute scene that took 1 minute to view in the theatre only takes 57.6 seconds to view via PAL playback.

The NTSC and film versions are the same length. There are no "extra frames". The PAL version is shorter because it is played faster.

(Film is actually 23.976FPS and NTSC is 29.97FPS.. but that isn't important for this explanation)

I really should get my laserdisc player down from the loft and give ICHH ntsc disc another whirl :mrgreen:

User avatar
York Minster
Posts: 5412
Joined: Thu 21 May 2009, 2:47 pm
Contact:

Re: It Couldn't Happen Here Laserdisc

#11 Post by York Minster »

Ok, that response was not simple. Are you saying that I have a PAL disc that I'm playing on NTSC or vise versa. Or are you saying that the movie was shot in PAL and when it was pressed as NTSC it came out at the slower speed? Which still sounds like pressed at the wrong speed, because DVDs are PAL and NTSC and they don't have this problem.
And tryin' to figure out what happened to 'Germaine Propaine'
"He couldn't have fell off that hard" Ain't no way
"What happened to the way you was rappin' when you was scandalous
That Canibus turned into a television evangelist"
Plus he raps with his regular voice [BOOSH! BOOSH!]
[BOOSH! BOOSH!] (What was that?) Pet Shop Boys


Bruno Republic
Posts: 403
Joined: Sun 22 Mar 2009, 8:10 pm
Contact:

Re: It Couldn't Happen Here Laserdisc

#13 Post by Bruno Republic »

FirthofForth wrote:Ok, that response was not simple. Are you saying that I have a PAL disc that I'm playing on NTSC or vise versa. Or are you saying that the movie was shot in PAL and when it was pressed as NTSC it came out at the slower speed? Which still sounds like pressed at the wrong speed, because DVDs are PAL and NTSC and they don't have this problem.
None of the above.

Movies are shot at a frame rate different from both PAL *and* NTSC. When converting them for television, the PAL version is sped up.

User avatar
York Minster
Posts: 5412
Joined: Thu 21 May 2009, 2:47 pm
Contact:

Re: It Couldn't Happen Here Laserdisc

#14 Post by York Minster »

Thank you for the link. So is what is being said here is that the US Laserdisc is 4 percent slower because it was shot in PAL? This is crazyness. Is every movie made in Hollywood and released on DVD in the UK 4 percent faster? I have to admit, I don't watch many movies on DVD or VHS, just never have. But if this is true, I find it totally unreasonable. Would you be ok with it if the Pet Shop Boys re-released Please at 4 percent to fast or slow? (Actually, some of their very early stuff, Neil sounds like a chipmunk, and I've always wondered why it does sound sped up!)
And tryin' to figure out what happened to 'Germaine Propaine'
"He couldn't have fell off that hard" Ain't no way
"What happened to the way you was rappin' when you was scandalous
That Canibus turned into a television evangelist"
Plus he raps with his regular voice [BOOSH! BOOSH!]
[BOOSH! BOOSH!] (What was that?) Pet Shop Boys

User avatar
boyjohn
Posts: 1672
Joined: Wed 18 Jan 2006, 4:24 pm
Contact:

Re: It Couldn't Happen Here Laserdisc

#15 Post by boyjohn »

I believ this 4% PAL speedup has been around for a long time, although I think that most recent DVDs are encoded so that the the correct frame rate is shown via some encoding in the DVD player to fix it before it is seen. The article on "telecine" on wiki goes into more detail on this.
“Unless you consciously include, you will unconsciously exclude”
-Stephen Frost

Post Reply

Who is online

Users browsing this forum: No registered users and 15 guests