Paramount should have AT MINIMUM added a Blu-Ray (non-4K option inside this case (there is PLENTY of room for two discs) and a PAPER version of the digital code (which they have done in the past, as this is not my first Paramount movie). It's a gift from the movie gods. I was dazzled when the opportunity came up," Robbins enthused. "When they invited me to participate in the restoration, I was unaware of what power they would be applying. I was not prepared for it." The Slayer of All Dragons (HD, 1:03:24) –This is a rather deep dive journey into the production of Dragonslayer, a majority of it being from the ILM special effects angle of the film with bringing the dragon to life. Director Matthew Robbins and ILM legends Phil Tippett and Dennis Muren guide us through this incredible journey that features a lot of production design, sketh work, behind the scenes footage and photos as well as plenty of documented ILM stuff in the form of photos and videos. If you enjoyed the documentary from last year that was on Disney+, The 5-part “Slayer of Dragons” is a fantastic extension. The parts are titled: Since I was under the impression I could still play this on my Blu-Ray player (spoiler alert, I could not) I attempted, at minimum, to get the digital copy off the disc, which is where I assumed it would be.

A Long Way To Urland: A nearly ten-minute look at the journey of the characters, the production design, the process of shooting the film, the lighting, the costumes and more. According to Hal Barwood, Matthew Robbins and he got the inspiration for Dragonslayer from The Sorcerer's Apprentice sequence in Fantasia. They later came up with a story after researching St. George and the Dragon. Barwood and Robbins rejected the traditional conceptions of the medieval world to give the film more realism: "Our film has no knights in shining armor, no pennants streaming in the breeze, no delicate ladies with diaphanous veils waving from turreted castles, no courtly love, no holy grail. Instead, they set out to create a very strange world with a lot of weird values and customs, steeped in superstition, where the clothes and manners of the people were rough, their homes and villages primitive, and their countryside almost primeval, so that the idea of magic would be a natural part of their existence." For this reason, they chose to set the film after the end of Roman rule in Britain, prior to the arrival of Christianity. Barwood and Robins began to hastily work on the story outline on June 25, 1979, and completed it in early August. They received numerous refusals from various film studios, due to their inexperience in budget negotiations. The screenplay was eventually accepted by Paramount Pictures and Walt Disney Pictures, becoming the two studios' second joint effort after Popeye (1980). [3] Dragon [ edit ] According to Barwood, the dragon's basic body plan was based on that of the Jurassic pterosaur Rhamphorhynchus. [4] Dragonslayer is out on 4K Ultra HD + Digital & 4K Ultra HD + Digital SteelBook March 21, 2023, from Paramount Pictures Home Entertainment.Urland, a sixth-century post-Roman kingdom situated near the River Ur, [3] is being terrorized by Vermithrax Pejorative, a 400-year-old dragon. [3] To appease the creature, King Casiodorus offers it virgin girls selected by lottery twice a year. An expedition led by a young man called Valerian seeks help from the last sorcerer, Ulrich of Cragganmore. A Long Way to Urland – Pre-production begins in England as the film takes shape. The young filmmakers seek gritty medieval realism through the production design, cinematography, and costumes. I get asked about that, too. It was not an easy production either, even without the special effects. But what can I tell you? Except it was a studio film and there were a lot of struggles over that movie, about the post-production, about how to cut the movie and finish it.

Dragonslayer is the kind of campy, goofy fun you’d find in Disney movies, but it’s anchored deliberately by care and detail given to the world in which the story inhabits. All of these characters don’t function like our typical fantasy heroes, as Robbins’ vision hews much closer to historical fact, surmising that these people languishing in poverty within the feudal system would be inspired, even motivated by the appearance of magic in their lives. Such an approach removes much of the flair in other fantasy films, though it emphasizes the power of on-screen magic when the special effects take hold.

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what is happening through the film and pull the listener into each and every locale. The overhead speakers are not prominently engaged with discrete

It's not a question of forgiving him," he laughed. "The question is do I forgive the marketing and the publicity people at the same studio that was at that time mostly busy with Raiders of the Lost Ark?" The way it sounds is something that I hadn't heard in years, not since we had a few 70 mm theaters in the initial release," he explained. "Walter Murch mixed it and did a phenomenal job, so his work is showcased as well." Dragonslayer (1981), starring Peter MacNicol, Ralph Richardson, John Hallam, Peter Eyre, and Albert Salmi. The releases are scheduled to arrive on the market on February 21.Alex Keneas of Newsday criticized the focus on superstition, and for being "bereft of any sense of medieval time, place and society". [13] Starting with its advertising campaign, Dragonslayer seems pitched to reach the huge audience of Star Wars. The original poster is practically a clone of the artwork for George Lucas’s first space adventure. With a major nod to The Sorcerer’s Apprentice, the story also bites off a huge chunk of Tolkien’s popular The Lord of the Rings. Ralph Richardson’s elderly wizard is more like Gandalf than Merlin — standing on high peaks, causing giant whirlwinds to rush around him. A terrible dragon is terrorizing the medieval land of Urland in the 6th century. Representatives from the kingdom seek the assistance of the Phil Tippett built a model for the dragon's walking scenes. He did not want to use standard stop-motion animation techniques, and had his team build a dragon model that would move during each exposure, rather than in between, as was once the standard. This process, named "go motion" by Tippett, recorded the creature's movements in motion as a real animal would move, added motion blur, and removed the jerkiness common in prior stop-motion films. [3] And Stephen has delivered his in-depth take on AGFA and Something Weird Video’s nine-film, three-disc The Films of Doris Wishman: The Moonlight Years Blu-ray box set, distributed by Vinegar Syndrome.

George R.R. Martin's Top 10 Fantasy Films". The Daily Beast. April 11, 2011 . Retrieved June 24, 2011. Paramount has done a great job of restoring the film working with the original camera negative along with the various elements for the visual effects. It’s from the ground up rebuilding of the film and they deserve praise for their work here. The animators manage some great shots with moving cameras, as when the creature crawls out of the hazy darkness of the cave. One spectacular shot shows the reptile rearing up and vomiting yellow flame at the cavern ceiling. Vermithrax is given just enough personality to be loathsome. It is also given a bit of motherly sympathy when it discovers that Galen has chopped its babies into ugly dragon-bits. We’re disturbed by the dead girls and the dead monsters.

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First things first: Our sources continue to report that Disney is likely to release both James Cameron’s original Avatar (2009) and his long-awaited remaster of The Abyss (1989) on physical 4K Ultra HD early next year. Both titles are expected to arrive on disc at the same time as the home video release of the sequel, Avatar: The Way of Water, which debuts in theaters in just 9 days. We don’t have any details as to which version(s) of The Abyss this release may include, but when we’re able to confirm we’ll certainly post an update here. Starring: Peter MacNicol, Caitlin Clarke, Ralph Richardson, John Hallam, Peter Eyre, Albert Salmi, Chloe Salaman, Ian McDiarmid. I don’t remember big cheers at the finale; the end of Vermithrax plays as downbeat, not a glorious victory. Barwood and Robbins have Richardson’s Ulrich employ the ‘Father Karras’ method of defeating the monster, a gag that I’ve always argued is itself stolen from a near-legendary finale of, of all things, Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein. The Wolf Man, Father Karras and Ulrich all make suicidal gestures to destroy a conventionally un-killable evil — Dracula, the spirit of Pazuzu, and the hell-dragon Vermithrax. From another viewpoint, another friend said the demise of the monster is simply copied from Jaws— something Vermithrax grabs to eat, blows up in his face. Describing the team as "big partisans" who loved the movie too, Robbins was equally astonished by what could be achieved by restoring Dragonslayer's sound mix.