544-550 America Lost and Found: The BBS Story (Easy Rider, Five Easy Pieces, The Last Picture Show, etc.)

[beamish14]

Considering that Richard Linklater is from Texas and already made a fairly solid, long-belated sequel to a 70’s classic, I’d say he could do it, too

[jazzo]

That would be great, too, although, no matter how much I love Linkater's work, I feel like Payne and Jenkins have slightly better visual aesthetics. But "Bernie" also gives me "Duane's Depressed vibes", which is a phrase, I suspect, young people will be embracing any day now when they want to articulate their melancholy in shorthand.

[PfR73]

Reading the restoration notes in the book included in the Columbia Classics set, I learned that there are 2 versions of the Director's Cut of The Last Picture Show: the Director's Cut released in 1991 apparently altered the pool scene and the Duane/Jacy hotel room scene; while then in 1999, Bogdanovich decided to revert these scenes to the original 1971 versions, and thus what has always been released since then is the "Definitive Director's Cut". The book says the 1991 Director's Cut is what was released on the Criterion/Voyager laserdisc. Does anyone know actual specifics about the differences in the scenes?

[andyli]

I was under the impression that Criterion recycled the old BBS blu-ray disc for their 4k combo, yet upon closer inspection it appears that is not the case. A new disc is produced to allow for rearrangement of some extras (adding "The Next Picture Show" while moving "Picture This" to the Texasville disc). And this must be good because it also allows Criterion to update the blu-ray transfer to the new 4k restoration, in the meantime making the stand-alone UK blu-ray version possible.

[tenia]

The BD in the new set has The Last Picture Show at the exact same bitrate and the file is the exact same size as the previous time, down the last bytes. I'd be surprised this happened despite updating the movie to its new restoration.

[andyli]

Is that so? Then why issue a UK blu-ray and calling it a 4k restoration in the amazon specs? Weird.

EDIT: Did some further digging. It appears the stand-alone blu-ray was released by Criterion in both territories, with the US containing a second disc for Texasville. DVDcompare shows the following specs (with content different from the BBS disc in bold):

DISC ONE "The Last Picture Show"
* The Film - Director's Cut
(1) Audio Commentary by director Peter Bogdanovich and actors Cybill Shepherd, Randy Quaid, Cloris Leachman and Frank Marshall
(2) Audio Commentary by director Peter Bogdanovich
"The Last Picture Show - A Look Back" documentary (64:40)
"The Next Picture Show" featurette (16:17)
Screen Tests (2:14)
Location Footage (6:27)
"A Discussion with Filmmaker Peter Bogdanovich" featurette (12:51)
"Truffaut on the New Hollywood" featurette (4:36)
Teaser Trailer (1:28)
Theatrical Trailer (3:05)

DISC TWO "Texasville"
* The Film (Theatrical Cut)
* The Film (Director's Cut)
Introduction by Peter Bogdanovich, Sam Shepherd, and Jeff Bridges (3:47)
"Picture This" documentary (41:59)
Trailer (2:09)

whereas Chris notes in his review for the 4k combo:

The release also includes a standard dual-layer Blu-ray disc featuring a 1080p film presentation alongside all of the release’s special features. This disc replicates the 2010 disc found in the box set, which uses the older restoration, taken from a 35mm fine-grain master positive. As a bonus, the release includes another standard Blu-ray disc, which features two versions of the sequel, Texasville.

I couldn't make sense of this any more.

EDIT 2: Okay. Now I kind of get it. The so called "The Next Picture Show" featurette that runs about 17 min is actually on the Texasville disc. It is the last part of George Hickenlooper's documentary that went missing in the original "Picture This" extra. So the bonus disc for The Last Picture Show is indeed the original one from the BBS set, down to the last bit. And dvdcompare somehow mixed it all up; there wasn't any rearrangement of extras whatsoever.