You took my words right out of my mouth. Indeed, it is the greatest American Western yet made, no matter what SD thinks.
I just read the whole thread and itās probably the funniest board on the SWDB forums. Priceless.
yes, the Wild Bunch is amazingā¦for me its a tie between this and Alfredo for favorite Peckinpahā¦
Broke down today and made a change on the IMDB site for the movieā¦
Factual errors: Gen. Mapacheās German military advisers stated that they were officers of āThe Imperial German Armyā. At the time of this filmās setting, 1913, the only German military forces belonged to the states of Prussia, Bavaria, Saxony and WĆ¼rttemberg, and they werenāt called the āImperial German Armyā. The filmmakers most likely meant the Imperial Prussian Army, as Prussia was ruled by a king and its army was generally regarded as among the best in Europe. It was also known to hire out its officers as advisers to foreign armies.
way off base on this fact - who knows where this person studied their history.
Check out this stationery from the production[url]http://thecountryfucker.tumblr.com/post/47547505370/studio-stationary-for-the-wild-bunch-sam[/url].
I have just been watching Sam Peckinpahās The Wild Bunch (1969) on Blu-ray for the first time and it looks simply stunning; seeing the opening gunfight/massacre again, merely confirms my opinion that it is one of the finest edited scenes there is, surpassed probably only (when it comes to gunbattles) by the climax.
I always preferred the opening. Like you say, unsurpassed, probably unsurpassable, on its own territory (gunbattles)
Absolutely agreed.
Scherp asked somewhwere about the quality of the Blu. This is what DVD Beaver has to say about it:
http://www.dvdbeaver.com/film2/dvdreviews32/wild_bunch_blu-ray.htm
Here he compares the older DVDs and the Blu:
http://www.dvdbeaver.com/film/DVDReviews8/wild-bunch.htm
Colors are indeed different to the SE DVD.
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I had seen the comparisons before, theyāre of course interesting, but they can never replace a real-life experience of actually watching a disc.
I still have the old flip-over disc from WB and even though itās non-anamorphic and grainy, I prefer it to the anamorphic 2xDVD released by WB a couple of years ago. My flipover looks exactly like the R1 flipover disc discussed by dvdbeaver here:
http://www.dvdbeaver.com/film/DVDReviews8/wild-bunch.htm
Whatever they say, my experiences while watching it were positive and I was dissapointed while watching the anamorphic release.
I donāt know about the blu-ray, havenāt watched it yet, but judging from the screenshots it looks very clean, but also a bit on the red side (look at skin colors). Maybe it feels different when watching it, but so far I see no reason to buy this blu-ray.
I would say (ignoring the colour issue for a moment) that the Blu-ray delivers in detail and clarity - yo usee the grains of dust when a man hits the ground, and not just a light brown cloud. The colour tones of a film have come into a sharp spotlight in recent years with comparison websites like the DVDBeaver. Trying to tell which release is accurate is very hard to tell, unless you saw the film in the cinema recently. For The Wild Bunch Blu-ray, which doesnāt appear to have any digital manipulation (no edge enhancement, no DNR), Iām going to give the benefit of the doubt to the Blu-ray and say that I feel itās colours are the most true to what Sam Peckinpah intended in 1969.
Generally Iām not interested to replace my DVDs with Blus. On a 42" TV a DVD is still sufficient. The TWB Blu will stay as an exception as this is a special film for me and as it was cheap.
I also bought the FAFDM Blu cause it contains the 2nd German dub which has one scene in which rthe score was altered in a fascinating way, and of course also cause it is now completely uncut. (Even if these few cuts never bothered me).
The FAFDM Blu was most likely taken from the same master and it indeed offers a much more detailed picture. I also compared the Wild Bunch discs and couldnāt spot the same amount of additional details. But the images look sharper and I preferred the slightly different colors in the scenes I compared.
But watching the old DVDs without comparing them to the Blus, I wouldnāt find anything to complain about, and both would still be good enough for me.
Only that nobody knows for sure how they really looked back then. And even copies back then may have differed considerably.
I assume restoring films is already some kind of an interpretation of films.
Exactly - it is some sort of guessing game. The Blu-ray is probably a very high scan of one of 1996(?) re-release prints held by Warner Bros. At the time, a judgement would have to have been made as to what the colour grading was; there is a discrepancies between the DVDs and Blu-ray release, but Iām not bothered because a) I like the colours better anyhow on the Blu-ray and b) the added depth and detail that is part of the format as well.
I have been replacing some of my DVDs with Blu-rays, generally ones that I feel will benefit a lot from an upgrade (Touch of Evil, Blade Runner). Others are straight upgrades from VHS to Blu-ray (Lawrence of Arabia, which looks simply extraordinary) or from DVD-Rāed recordings from television broadcasts like, the Alien Anthology boxset. Overall, Iām more than happy with the technology, especially when viewing it on my 50āā TV set. Blu-ray is only bad when the company that releases it fouls up.
Not bothered with Blu-ray yet, maybe one day.
You Mancunian Luddite ;D
Had to look up Luddite 
.
Me too:
[size=12pt]ludĀ·dite [/size]
/ĖlÉdĖÄ«t/
Noun
1.A member of any of the bands of English workers who destroyed machinery, esp. in cotton and woolen mills, that they believed wasā¦
2.A person opposed to increased industrialization or new technology.
^@2.A person opposed to increased industrialization or new technology.
Ah, now we all know how ENNIOO looks like