Man, was this brief two or three year period a goldmine for TV, or what? The Monkees Batman Star Trek Lost In Space Gilligan's Island Laugh-In Smothers Brothers All still beloved and all still considered ground-breaking... Has there ever been a more fertile period in TV history?
I am going with "or what." None of these that I know really hold up for me today. I don't know Laugh In and Smothers Brothers well enough to comment on them. I have some affection for The Monkees due to the music they made and for Star Trek due to the much better series that grew out of the premise, starting with TNG.
I often wondered if the guys had just heard some of these recordings right before they were about to mime them so they didn't have a lot of time to prepare. Also, I'm assuming they shot them multiple times with one camera? So maybe the best edits get left on the cutting room floor sometimes.
That could be, Peter just looks like he can't even fake it, he's a much better musician than that though
Another thought I my Peter predicament - he looks like the 'dumb' character he is supposed to play on the show when playing instruments during that first season. Maybe he was intentionally doing that to go along with the character. By the 2nd season he got serious about the music.
Ever see Keith Moon try to mime to a pre-recorded performance? Some people are just no good at it. Although Peter is just cheeky and probably did it on purpose to be funny or as a wink and a nod.
Rhino owns the copyright on all the masters, they only need to pay for publishing royalties for use of any of the songs. If they were to ask me (yeah, right!), my opinion would be to gather the audio from the re-runs, and then edit the sections with alternate music into a duplicate of the audio track from the original episode. As long as the alternate version didn't edit within the "romp," they could easily get the alternates to line up. Then all a viewer would need to do is cycle between several audio tracks tied to a single video track for each episode. The end credits, I could live with those being just the originals if need be, but they certainly could program branching to different versions of the end credits depending on which audio track was selected from the menu. It's a matter of willingness, budget, and time to get this done, but it could even have been done in the DVD days, so Blu-ray shouldn't make it more difficult. On second thought, I'd love to have some "clean" end credits on these shows as well, instead of just the ones with Kellogg's and Yardley products next to the guys' faces. Ideally, I'd love to see alternate edits and versions in their own separate presentations, to preserve things exactly like where you say "Find The Monkees" was trimmed down and a musical segment was swapped in from a different episode. Chip, I think Andrew was asking around for people who might have prints of the commercials. Maybe they could have a use for your re-run, even if just to preserve the edits. In 2008, some Saturday morning prints (from a private collection) were screened after "Head" at the Egyptian Theater and they looked FANTASTIC. Much cleaner and clearer than "Head" itself (which I think is because Rhino wasn't able to get a lower-generation source to make a print of the movie from). By the way, has anyone considered Sony would be willing to cooperate (both resources and $$) on this project because they would be able to get HD masters for their own TV distribution purposes out of it? I'm not saying this to suggest we're being gouged by the $200 price tag, but rather that Sony might help reduce the costs of film transfer so that MORE work could get done than they would normally have gotten with a $200 price tag?
Doubtful it will happen, for a number of reasons. First, if I were Rhino I wouldn't because an argument can be made that it would decrease the value of what they are trying to sell. (Why buy it if you can watch the restorations on MeTV or whatever) Second, cooperation between the various divisions at Sony that would be involved in something like this is probably a pipe dream. I would wager all the syndication arm of Sony cares about is making money off the show with as minimal investment possible. If they did care, they would have done it while Columbia still owned the property and the syndication packages over the years wouldn't be the mess it has been and still is. (IMO) Historically, TV syndication arms of the studios don't care about picture/sound quality, only how many stations they can sell the show to.
Let's just say I will agree to disagree. Technically, Columbia (Sony) does still own the property, they just don't have home video rights. There was no HD in the late 80s when they last had all the rights. At this point in time, having HD masters of programming opens up new licensing agreements (streaming opportunities, too). And Rhino always put this material out for sale when viewers could also get it on free TV. Some of the Rhino DVD transfers are in the syndication package.
I got a call from my bank today asking to verify charges including one for $228.97 from Warner Music Electra that was placed yesterday at 4:30. The Blu-ray set already slipped my mind and I told him I wasn't familiar with it. Had to go through a bunch of e-mails to jog my memory. If they do push it through that in the next few weeks I'm cancelling until the release date.
I used Paypal, so the charges already went through for $233.37. I rather pay now than save cash for a post Christmas big ticket item. I bet the release will end up being delayed, as it seems a lot to do and put together in a very short time. Very excited about including the 7 inch record! At 10K copies its not ever gonna be rare, but those kind of add-ons make sense for this collectors box set. I have to agree that a remastered series will increase the likelihood of more syndication deals; and because our gen likes to physically own it, I don't see it hurting the box set sales.
Nice shot of Andrew looking at HEAD outtakes on The Monkees Tumblr page: http://themonkees.tumblr.com/
just so ya know: http://monkeesstore.warnermusic.com/music/the-monkees-complete-tv-series-blu-ray.html
I'll keep my DVDs likely as I still have DVD players! The Disney doc has been released as an import, but it looks to be the TV broadcast transfer on DVD. The Justus also has been released by Friday and appears to be a VHS transfer too.
Same here, but I do hope to eventually buy the upcoming Blu-Ray set as well... The "Heart and Soul" promo video was included in Friday's release of "Pool It!" and it appears to be a video transfer too...
I wonder if that's a direct scan of a trim or if it has already been color corrected to a point? The photo itself is off in color (look at the computer window in the pic...the color just seems off), but that frame shot shows a variable fade, so I'm interested to know how good/bad the outtakes are. I see signs of sprockets with no soundtrack on the left, so I'm wondering if this is a trim or a scan from a negative. The fun part for the fan is going to be trying to insert these parts back into the movie! We shall see!
A few years ago someone apparently gained access to a whole stash of 35mm episodes. Included were network prints and rerun prints with various alternate music inclusions. Andrew ended up buying a few of these, as did other collectors. i was outbid a few times on episodes myself when they made their way to eBay. Mine came from a collector that had gotten his from the same eBay haul. The ones that were played out west on 'the big screen' most likely came from this stash, although I have obviously no clue as to who the owners were. I would guess Andrew. The commercials in mine are *not* Monkee related. they're mostly kiddie themed (McDonalds, pudding cups, etc), although the Alpha-Bits spot with The Jackson 5 is def. awesome!
Micky and Peter only did a couple of dates, I think they've been back. Not 100% sure it's Andrew but my guess is it is.
