Raiders of the Lost Ark (1981)

Raiders is back on UK cinemas this weekend March 1st - 3rd.

 

If they knew they were here they would have killed us already.

 

Got my tickets to see it tonight at a local cinema, just need the guides and the donkeys to take me there.

 

I mean if they knew we were here ha. Have fun!

 

*face melts due to ticket being too bright*

 

I told you not to look.

 

The 1980's had a lot of great films, Raiders is one of them.

 

The Raiders soundtrack is being re-released on double vinyl in the UK on June 28th. My assumption is that it will the same as the 2016 double vinyl release but with different packaging, that one rather annoyingly used a Temple of Doom pic on the rear art. For the purists amongst us though they have used the Indiana Jones and the .... title for this 2024 re-release.

 

The music with the Ark being taken away on the plane/mechanic fight is quite stirring. As is when Indy is riding the horse going after the truck.

 

Just watching an old episode of Cagney and Lacey from season 3 called Victimless Crime. It feature me a detective from Paris who is there to observe how the department do things in New York. The French detective in question is played by Paul Freeman bringing back his Belloq accent.

 

Considering how big Raiders was (and how good Freeman was in it) it's surprising he didn't have a bigger career.

 

Same with Karen Allen. It's infuriating how fickle Hollywood is sometimes.

 

Karen Allen was in a lot of good movies. Off the top of my head Animal House, Raiders, Starman, Scrooged, The Wanderers & The Sandlot.

 

Dug out my 1988 VHS version of Raiders today. This would have been the version I’d been watching on TV and home rental in the mid-80s prior to managing to get myself a copy when it came out to buy.

Although I never would have known it at the time it’s amazing how much that gets cut from the picture because of the aspect ratio back then. I’d never really compared before. Here’s a freeze frame from the same spot on the modern version and the old VHS.

 

That scene does a great job of exposition and exactly what the Ark is for. And adds humor.

 

4:3 pan & scan. It was a pretty cool solution to the CinemaScope (anamorphic lens)problem.

 

One of the best exposition scenes in film history. Just watch the acting between the 2 government guys too, so natural with their reactions and as they cut in on each others conversations. Brilliant.

It must have been an art in itself to make sure they got the necessary picture / information to display on screen with being noticeably detrimental.

 

Lousy solution IMO. I always hated that format. I once had a copy of ROTJ, where there was one scene of Lando and that alien dude (forget his name) in the Falcon's cockpit, talking. Only on the VHS tape you could see neither of them, only the door. For me it has to be original aspect ratio, always, black bars or not.

 

Nein Numb!!


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

 

Thats a terrible way of presenting it if its not focused on whoever was talking and then moving around to the next person.

IIRC when widescreen first came out with the black bars top and bottom, it was a big sell. Widescreen TV's weren't a common thing yet, so you'd have a big square TV with most of the screen not being used because of the black bars and I used to hear people complaining about how that looked.

 

'Letterbox' is right, that's about how big the image was.

 

I'm sorry, but that's hilarious

"Huh? Who the hell is talking? WHAT THE HELL IS GOING ON?! WHAT'S WITH THE ****ING DOOR?!?!"