Zappa 200 Motels in 1080 HD on MGM HD

Discussion in 'Visual Arts' started by ceddy10165, Aug 22, 2010.

Thread Status:
Not open for further replies.
  1. ceddy10165

    ceddy10165 My life was saved by rock n roll Thread Starter

    Location:
    Avon, CT
    Thought you'd all be interested:

    Zappa 200 Motels in 1080 HD on MGM HD premieres Sat 8/28/10

    http://www.mgmhd.com/index.php?day=2010-08-28

    2010-08-28 10:00 pm 200 Motels 98min., Rated R
    Groupies, the media and surreal madness follow the rocker's band (The Mothers of Invention) on the road.

    Starring: The Mothers of Invention, Theodore Bikel, Ringo Starr | Directed By: Tony Palmer

    The TV ad says this is an HD premier:righton:

    Honestly, my least favorite Zappa film/video, but hey, it is seminal, and any FZ is good FZ:righton:
     
  2. Vidiot

    Vidiot Now in 4K HDR!

    Location:
    Hollywood, USA
    It was shot in standard def video (PAL 625, I think) and transferred to film. No way will this be "legit" HD. It's gonna be soft and fuzzy (like-a mah head).

    I saw this in 1972 when I was in film school, and I thought it looked like crap even then. If the 2" quad master tapes still exist, it might be possible to coax decent pictures out of them, but it'd be expensive and time-consuming.
     
  3. IndyTodd

    IndyTodd Senior Member

    Location:
    Fishers, Indiana
    Not sure I need more definition on this one. Tough enough to make it through it in standard def!
     
  4. kwadguy

    kwadguy Senior Member

    Location:
    Cambridge, MA
    Any serious Zappa fan is going to want to see this, despite all the informed warnings that it is terrible.

    Anyone who's seen it once won't want to see it twice.
     
  5. gd0

    gd0 Looney Tunes and Merrie Melodies

    Location:
    Golden Gate
    Heh...

    I give it a spin every once in a while. No one will confuse this with great cinema, but there are a handful of nice moments. Particularly ones that match the weird choreography with the ambitious orchestral compositions; pretty good visuals for a budget production.

    Not a terrible setting for one of Zappa's more notable music works, but FZ will be rightly remembered as a composer-musician rather than as a filmmaker.
     
    seed_drill likes this.
  6. whisper3978

    whisper3978 Forum Resident

    Location:
    Apex, NC
    So, did no one watch this? I'm no expert on the film, but it wasn't stretched to 16:9 like that terrible DVD. Looked fine to me (as fine as it can get).
     
  7. Vidiot

    Vidiot Now in 4K HDR!

    Location:
    Hollywood, USA
    An editor/friend of mine watched it and verified it was transferred from the kinescope. But he said they did keep it pretty colorful. I'm bummed they didn't go back to the 2" quad masters, which should've held up OK after only 40 years. You can still make this stuff look good, if the studios just spend the money and take the time to do it right in HD.

    My memory is that it was framed for 1.66, so it should be pretty close in 16x9. Weird film -- and I felt that way in film school when I saw it in 1973.
     
  8. Laservampire

    Laservampire Down with this sort of thing

    Mister Charlie likes this.
  9. heepsterandrey

    heepsterandrey Forum Resident

    Is this the same version that aired on MGM?
     
  10. paulisdead

    paulisdead fast and bulbous

    Weren't all the master tapes wiped? I though Zappa sold it all to be re-used?
     
  11. Vidiot

    Vidiot Now in 4K HDR!

    Location:
    Hollywood, USA
    I don't know the story, but that's stupid if true. Even in 1971, that was only like $600 worth of tape. Why not keep the master? I could see reusing all the pieces if they really wanted to, but the final released tape version should've been kept.
     
  12. paulisdead

    paulisdead fast and bulbous

    Did a bit more research and found this from the director Tony Palmer:

    http://www.waysidemusic.com/Music-Products/Zappa-Frank-200-Motels-DVD-(Mega-Blowout-Sale)__TPDVD-spc-127.aspx

    "....Next, it was clear that many of the scenes could not be shot the way Frank envisaged them on conventional celluloid, or rather they could be shot, but would take an age and a lot of money (neither of which we had) because of the special effects involved. It was me who suggested using videotape, not Frank Zappa, because I was already experimenting with video effects using the earliest colour video cameras that had arrived at the BBC only three years before. Initially, MGM/UA vetoed this idea because, as they quite reasonably pointed out, videotape (“what is that?” one executive asked me) could not be projected in their cinemas. It was a colleague in Technicolor London who came up with the solution, namely that since the old pre-war Technicolor process involved shooting with three different negatives (red, green & blue) run in parallel, and since the television image in those days also comprised three different elements - red, green & blue, it might be possible to transfer each element separately to the different negatives and, when printed together, a true film ‘transfer’ might result. Which is precisely what happened, and the first ever ‘film transfer’ from videotape resulted. MGM/UA was satisfied, because they now had ‘a film’, not a videotape. Frank Zappa was satisfied because he could now have all the effects he desired, quickly and relatively inexpensively. But he had nothing to do with discovering the process; in fact, I’m not too sure he understood it. Nonetheless I’ve often read that he ‘pioneered’ the whole thing, a porky that is repeated in the totally misleading film about the ‘making of’ made by the Dutch television station, VPRO. In this same film, Zappa asserts that only a third of his script was filmed. Nonsense. The director (me) “quit mid-production”, which is news to me, as well as several actors and a band member. More fiction. Wilfred Brambell, a famous British character actor (famous especially as ‘Steptoe’) refused the part he was offered, and Jeff Simmons was replaced by Martin Lickert in the role of Jeff because he had the temerity to call Frank Zappa an ego-maniac. All true, but Zappa’s later claim that these events “accounted for several radical, last-minute changes” is yet more nonsense. Apparently – according to the Dutch documentary – when I had quit, I had threatened to wipe the tapes – which is odd, considering I edited all the videotapes myself after completion of filming before handing them over to MGM/UA.

    I’ve also read that the out-takes and the videotapes on which they were stored were wiped and sold back to MGM/UA to reduce the overspend. No company such as MGM/UA would ever accept second-hand tapes, even if wiped, not least because the tapes would be more-or-less worthless. Another Zappa wopper.


    It begins to sound as if I am attempting to pour scorn on Frank Zappa’s achievement. Quite the contrary. It’s impossible not to have a sneaking admiration for a film which self evidently would never have been made had it not been for him and his curious talent. And, crazy though the film seems to be, it does have a certain insight into how ‘life on the road’ was for many of these rock bands at that time. The fact is also that, here we are, nearly 40 years later, and there is still a huge market/interest for the film.

    Oh, and by the way, according to several websites devoted to the film, because I had ‘been fired’ and/or ‘quit’ (delete whichever you think is applicable) I went off and destroyed the master tapes – which is very odd considering that these very same master tapes are sitting in front of me as I write.


    And finally, that as a result of any of the above (you choose which), Frank & I ‘never spoke again’. Which is even odder, because a couple of years later when Zappa sued the Royal Albert Hall in London for cancelling a concert in which he had intended to perform the music from 200 Motels, I appeared at the trial in The Royal Courts of Justice in the Strand as Frank Zappa’s ‘expert witness’. Would Zappa have wanted that had we not stayed friends? So, forty years on, I’m proud to be associated with the film, proud to have known Frank Zappa, and proud to have stayed his friend, in spite of all the rubbish that (mostly) others have written about what ‘really’ happened."-Tony Palmer

    So there you go.
     
    Vidiot likes this.
  13. paulisdead

    paulisdead fast and bulbous

    izgoblin likes this.
  14. mBen989

    mBen989 Senior Member

    Location:
    Scranton, PA
    Yeah, avoid that DVD release like the plague and pray someone like Criterion or even Shout! Factory gives it a proper release.
     
    rstamberg and 93curr like this.
  15. izgoblin

    izgoblin Forum Resident

    Wow, that review is seriously in-depth.

    It's pretty sad that from that review, it would seem that a fan-made DVD-R that a buddy sent me from the old US laserdisc is likely to be a better viewing experience. Ho hum.
     
  16. The Panda

    The Panda Forum Mutant

    Location:
    Marple, PA, USA
    Man, you are so right. Ididn't see it til the early 90's and it was so hard to sit through in spots. My wife was in another room and she kept asking me if I had had enough yet.
    By the time of the newts, I was readyto shut it off, but I forced myself to stay.
     
  17. Vidiot

    Vidiot Now in 4K HDR!

    Location:
    Hollywood, USA
    That's good to know that they still exist! I wonder why the master tapes haven't been pulled for subsequent home video releases?

    I saw the movie in about 1972 or 1973 in college, and I thought it was weird and all over the place, but it's important in film history as one of the first movies shot on videotape. That whole process was very wonky back then, but it presaged what people have been doing since about 2002-2003: shooting movies in high-res digital and showing them on film or digital in theaters.
     
    Hymie the Robot and paulisdead like this.
  18. paulisdead

    paulisdead fast and bulbous

    But reading from the review, it looks like Palmer used footage that came from a film print. The video wouldn't have splice marks and reel changes.

    As for the film itself - I loved when I first saw it on VHS in the early 2000's. I'd be up for a decent BluRay for sure.
     
  19. Vidiot

    Vidiot Now in 4K HDR!

    Location:
    Hollywood, USA
    You can make a good argument that uprezzing PAL standard-def to HD Blu-ray won't necessarily improve it, but there's always mastering tweaks that could be made along the way. All they need is four things: 1) the master tapes; 2) time; 3) money; and 4) people who know what they're doing.
     
    paulisdead likes this.
  20. The hope for more bare boobs was about all that kept me from turning it off.
     
  21. davenav

    davenav High Plains Grifter

    Location:
    Louisville, KY USA
    I saw it in a double feature with Let It Be, back in the day. I liked it, but I was very impressionable then.

    The promise of more boobs *was* a factor. But, I got the album and played it a lot, as much as Lumpy Gravy, my favorite.
     
  22. The Panda

    The Panda Forum Mutant

    Location:
    Marple, PA, USA
    When I first got on the internet many moons ago, someone told me 'you can find 200 sites with the most obscure stuff on it". I entered 'the girl wants to fix him some broth.' He was right, there were skads of sites with the song on it, mostly lyrics.
     
  23. izgoblin

    izgoblin Forum Resident

    I love this movie since this is my favorite era of the Mothers. It's the Flo and Eddie vocals that mostly get me.

    The naysayers may find this funny though. My ex-roommate, who rarely drank, had two beers and pulled the 200 Motels VHS out of my collection to watch one night. He said he felt fine until the "Centerville" sequence came on, at which point he promptly threw up.

    Given that he only had two beers, he swears it was the movie that did it.
     
    danner likes this.
  24. seed_drill

    seed_drill Senior Member

    Location:
    Tryon, NC, USA
    CENTERVILLE. A real nice place to throw your beers uuuup.
     
  25. It's a terrible film, with terrible actors in it (save for Theodore Bikel)... But how can a Zappa fan not be stunned by that music, played live by those legions right there on that screen?...

    There is even some orchestral material you can hear only in the film (something or other having to do with the rock 'n' roll interviewers, featuring the soprano voice, IIRC)... And I love the Newts music... with those crazy "newts sound"... They kill me!

    Both times I saw it in a theater, in the 70s, it was on a double bill with "Yellow Submarine"! The people in the room applauded when Zappa completed a solo: great times!!
     
Thread Status:
Not open for further replies.

Share This Page

molar-endocrine