Close Encounters of the Third Kind rereleased to theaters

To be fair it is a very awkward edit in the film and feels completely out of place.

 

I get the sense that this is not a Fathom Events release because Sony is re-releasing it for an entire week from September 1-7 from a newly mastered 4k source. Usually Fathom Events are once or twice a week with single showings per night at a certain time because it's delivered through a real-time satellite link-up. This appears to be a new DCP that will run in theaters for an entire week with multiple showings like any other normal release.




The trailer is also posted on Sony's YouTube account so it looks like they're distributing it like any other movie (i.e., not Fathom Events).




Thus, you're probably better off watching Fandango or Moviefone for showtimes.

Close Encounters of the Third Kind Times - Movie Tickets | Fandango


I'm anti-Facebook as well, but here's Sony's Close Encounters of the Third Kind page on Facebook:

Close Encounters of the Third Kind


And these Entertainment Weekly and Hollywood Reporter articles says it will be Spielberg's director's cut (1998 version) and that Sony is the one releasing it to theaters for the 40th anniversary.

'Close Encounters of the Third Kind' Is Headed Back to Theaters: Watch the New Trailer

'Close Encounters of the Third Kind' Returning to Theaters for 40th Anniversary

 

This is great that there will be so many showings. I should be able to make one of them.

 

One of the best things about watching CE3K for the first time back in the day was not knowing what was going to come up from behind that mountain and being stunned by how huge and elaborate the mothership was. So it's kind of a shame to see that just given away on the poster.... though I know of course that the images have been out there for everyone to see for 40 years and that probably a high percentage of people watching the re-release will have seen the movie before. Still....

 

Agreed. But still not as bad as this one, which I believe was also a movie poster at one point. (prob. for re-release)

 

I've seen the film numerous times . . . so I'll skip on the ripoff prices they will charge in my neighborhood with less than great sound and picture quality on par w/an old projector I had several years back.

Great film which I enjoy watching for free

 

Is MovieFone still 555-FILM ? Or was it 555-FILK?

 

So do I... I am a purist and im grateful to have the original analogue release on VHS (Its a 'goodtimes video' 1988 release)

There is no Hifi track I notice so I wonder if they took it from the first RCA/Columbia VHS release (that first one didnt have a hifi track either I dont think))

I love this m0vie...

 

I saw this back in '77.

After having watched Star Wars at least 6 times by then.

Two totally different movies but loved them both.

Of course, my avatar has been from this film for several years now.

Still, I was able to maintain my love for Star Trek too.

When I first saw the TV version with the added ending, at the time I thought I looked pretty cool, but as time went on and saw it a few more times on vhs, I began to dislike it.

I got the Criterion CAV laserdisc with the theatrical edit (except for the one brief shot added after Neary's encounter in the truck). Unfortunately, side three was filled with the white dot-crawl spots all the way through. I did like seeing the scenes that were taken out for the special edition put back in. But I did like some of the other added footage elsewhere in the film and missed them not being there.

I eventually got the Collectors Edition on DVD, and then the Blu-ray with all three cuts.

I'd love to see it on the big screen and would take my 20-year-old son with me. But, somehow I don't think it will show up in Baton Rouge.

I hope I'm wrong.

 

The entire December 1977 audience gasped when the Mothership was first revealed in the movie. Forty years ago, this was a pretty stunning visual effect. Now... eh, this kind of thing is in Jello TV commercials.

 

I haven't seen Close Encounters since 1978. Does it still hold up as a movie?

 

Best Sci-Fi film of all-time!

 

I'll have to re-watch it. Which of the 3 versions do you suggest I watch in order to reacquaint myself with it?

 

The 1998 Collector's Edition, a nice hybrid of the two previous versions.

 

in your situation I would go with the theatrical. I also like the director's cut, but I've seen the film many times and usually watch the DC as an alternative experience. I avoid the Special Edition, though honestly the bulk of the SE is fine, its just the additional scene at the end I hate, it really hurts the magic or wonder of the film.

The Director's Cut was made in '98, so I assume we're talking about the same cut. Though I still think he might want to start w/ the original.

 

I never liked the addition of Dreyfus going into the ship.
Somethings are much better left to the imagination and wonder. And this scene was one of them.
Perhaps if this was in the originally released movie, I might have felt differently. But this scene pretty much ruined the rest of the movie for me. I'm glad I'd seen the original before ever seeing this "bonus" footage inserted.

 

We are.

Good followup.

 

Saw this when it opened at the now defunct Ziegfeld theater in Manhattan. Huge screen, state of the art (for the time) sound and a lot of pot. When the mothership landed it felt like there was an earthquake happening at stun volume.
But I agree with you, what was jaw dropping then is ho-hum now.

 

Is this being shown in the UK theatres?..............thanks in advance.

 

Reading through the thread I find many many similarities to my own history with CLOSE ENCOUNTERS OF THE THIRD KIND. I remember that when STAR WARS was the talk of the town in the summer of 1977, there was this buzz about an upcoming Steven Spielberg science fiction movie coming out late in the fall of that year. So I watched and waited for it to arrive.

Working in the radio biz, I was treated to a pair of tickets to the premiere in downtown Philadelphia a couple of days before release. It played at one of the big movie palaces in center city and I remember that the traffic around the theater was nuts. Parking was at a premium and we ended up many blocks away. I almost could have stayed parked where I was for work at the time (23rd and Walnut).

When we got to the theater, it was jam-packed and we ended up having to sit in the front row, so I understand where Vidiot is coming from on that front. Holy cow, that screen was big, and I think I must have gotten a stiff neck moving my head back and forth and up and down from being that close. Talk about a "close encounter"!

It was an instant favorite movie and has been ever since. I bought the original VHS, special edition versions, the CLV LaserDisc, then the CAV LaserDisc, the DVD, and the most recent all-three-cuts Blu-ray. In fact, with the discovery of this thread, we may watch the movie tonight. I'm not sure I'll go for an "uprezzed" Blu-ray in September. It seems to me the Blu-ray that's out is pretty darned good in its own right.

 

I would be very surprised if Sony doesn't release a 4K UHD Blu-Ray of Close Encounters later on this year.

I can tell you that the buzz around town in 1977 was that Spielberg was very unnerved by the summer success of Star Wars, and he and Doug Trumbull's VFX people knew they were going to have to considerably up their game in order to give CE3K more of a "wow" factor for their December release. The movie went considerably over budget, but it was all worth it when it wound up making over $300 million worldwide -- which was the biggest Columbia Pictures film in history at the time. I think Close Encounters was originally budgeted around $12M when they started off, but it had ballooned to $20M by the time production ended, which was a ridiculous amount of money for 1977. (Star Wars had only cost about $11M by comparison.)

 

I was too young to see CE3K upon initial release, but the still images from the film scared the living hell out of me. The Close Encounters bubblegum cards made the rounds when I was in kindergarten, and these two images had a lasting impact upon me (apologies for the image size):





A child kidnapped by aliens? And aliens that look like that? I was absolutely traumatised by these two cards.

 

Hey, trust me, that was a scary scene for adults in 1977. What got me was when the air vents started to unscrew themselves. That had never been done in film before to my knowledge. Vilmos Zsigmond's amazing lighting, particularly those huge shafts of light with lots of smoke and diffusion, instantly became a widely-used visual cliche because of the movie. As much as Close Encounters was an optimistic and uplifting movie, there were many scary moments where you weren't quite sure what the hell was going on. Spielberg has done many films that routinely place small kids in terrible danger in order to amp up the tension, so that's one of his go-to things.

I also remember some people being freaked out when the kid gets yanked through the doggie door, and then the mom cries hysterically as she runs out the door and can't quite catch up to the escaping UFO. On the other hand, the story is still vague as to why the kid was taken in the first place -- particularly when the aliens return him less than a week later -- and why they held on to seemingly hundreds of people for 40 or 50 years. There's a lot of questions in CE3K that are never really answered.

 

Vidiot makes a a great point, the scene with house, ominous clouds/ colored lights in sky, then the boy taken through "pet door" still raises the hair up on my neck! I still think the "unknown factors" why the boy was taken, and later when Dreyfuss not going into the ship at end of the original cut makes for a better film! By not having some of these answers, the movie is better for it!

 

I'm confused. Isn't that why Sony is facilitating this revival? Because it's all been remastered in 4k for its 40th? Certainly the re-release to theaters is just a big advertisement for the 4K UHD Blu-ray release?

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Amazon.com: Close Encounters Of The Third Kind (3 Discs) (4K + Blu-ray + UltraViolet): Richard Dreyfuss: Movies & TV