Godfather PtII on 2 DVD's

[ColinD]

I noticed that this movie is on two discs. I am assuming this is because of image quality reasons for such a long movie.

Colin

[JamesK]

Good.

[Michael Brooke]

You're absolutely right - with a film of this length (three hours plus), a distributor is faced with a trade-off between transfer quality and number of sides.

Other long films that have been split over two sides like this include <I>Ben-Hur, Lawrence of Arabia</I> and various Russian Cinema Council titles like <I>Solaris</I> and <I>Andrei Rublev</I>.

It's well worth noting that if films are that long, the chances are they'd have had a built-in intermission anyway, so they've made absolutely the right decision - I'd <U>far</U> rather have the best possible quality (the bitrate on <I>Solaris</I> is 8-9MB/sec and it has three DD5.1 soundtracks and multiple subtitles) than the very very minor inconvenience of having to change discs halfway through, and I suspect most true film fans would agree.

[JamesK]

Yeah, sorry about my previous post :) - just looked like you weren't asking anything.:rolleyes: ;) :D

As long as the DVD switch comes at a sensible point (ie the intermission if there is one - I don't find it so acceptable when its not at intermission but if its the only option available) then I don't mind the switching of discs. Its normally a good tie to get to the bog grab a drink and a bag of crisps anyway;) .

[White Line]

There will always be those who don't like the idea of having to 'get up' and swap discs halfway through the film. I wonder how many people who have 'accepted' that this film requires 2 discs would have done the same if it had been a double-sided disc?

Can you imagine the uproar if we'd been given The Godfather Part II on a flipper?!?!? :D

[JamesK]

White line - if the flip was at an intermission Ala Ben-Hur I wouldn't of minded one bit, like I said in my previous thread. I think most people would be the same, its only really annoying when it interrupts the narrative or the drama of the film

[Lenny Nero]

I've yet to see anyone sitting through the whole 3-4 hours of a movie without getting their fat ass up. At least once. At least to get more stuff to stuff the face with :D

[White Line]

:rolleyes:

I thought the flipper idea was an obvious joke...

I did watch Magnolia without leaving my seat once and the 3+ hours seemed to fly past, but I can't remember with the Godfather films as I haven't seen them in a while.

[JamesK]

Whiteline - I realise your comment was light-hearted but some people would really not have bought it if it was a flipper though, thats the thing, so I was just emphasising that there isn't really a problem with flipping discs (IMHO) on films with built in intermissions.

[ColinD]

It must have been a close call, for example when compared to Criterions Spartacus specs:

196 Mins
16x9 Transfer
DD 5.1
Plus Commentary Track.

Looking forward to watching the movies again.

Colin

[Lenny Nero]

I just opened my set and took a closer look, it's pretty funny really, because the first movie is 175 mins or 3 hours short of 5 mins, and the third is 170 mins, 2 hours and 50 mins, while the second which is on 2 discs is only 30 and 25 mins longer than first and last parts, at 200 mins or 3 hours and 20 mins.
So they should have either put all 3 movies on 2 discs making it a 7 disc set (and making the price seem reasonable then) rather than just splitting the second part for some half an hour onto a second disc, which btw is single layer, there must be the very last little portion of the movie on it. All others are dual layered.

[Michael Brooke]

Bear in mind that <I>The Godfather Part II</I> has rather more picture information to deal with, as <I>Spartacus</I> has rather bigger black bars at the top and bottom of the image because it's a wider picture - and of course the black bars use up far less data than moving video.

So you're not really comparing like with like here, as I'd assume that <I>Spartacus</I> would take up less space by definition - without losing anything in terms of image quality.