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Tuesday, January 5, 2010
Bakshi's Lord of the Rings on BD in March
10:08 PM / Blu-ray / 
5 Comments
That Ralph Bakshi's 1978 adaptation of Tolkien's The Lord of the Rings is a superior effort to Peter Jackson's mega-blockbuster offering is a view that I doubt many will hold. I feel on considerably safer ground stating that Bakshi's version is the more interesting of the two, as awful in places as it is brilliant in others and a genuinely unique interpretation of Middle-Earth that could really only have been the product of one man.
We got confirmation today that Warner will be releasing the film on BD on April 6th as a "Remastered Deluxe Edition". Bonus features seem to be limited to a new featurette entitled "Through the Darkness: The Ralph Bakshi Vision for The Lord of the Rings", but that's a significant step up from the bare-bones standard definition release from 2001. It's also getting a Dolby TrueHD 5.1 remix (which will hopefully reinstate the music cue missing from the current DVD) and, of course, a new high definition transfer. Given that more than half the shots in the film are process shots, I'm not sure quite how good this will look, but you can bet your bottom dollar I'll be there to report on it.
Cover art for the new DVD edition, being released the same day, is below:
Source: DVD Times
5 Comments
Yeah, apparently United Artists suddenly decided not to finance the second part, leaving Bakshi and co. high and dry. Contrary to popular perception, the first part was far from a box office disaster and actually recouped its modest budget nearly eight times over ($4 million vs. $30.5 million), so I can't for the life of me think why the whole story wasn't allowed to be told.
I would have liked to have seen the Boorman version too, if only to satisfy my curiosity. From what I've gathered, he appropriated a number of elements from it into Excalibur.
(Posted on Wednesday, January 6, 2010 at 1:29 PM)
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1. Ronny said:
It's been ages since I last saw Bakshi's version of "The Lord of the Rings". If memory serves correct, it covered "Fellowship of the Ring" and some parts of "The Two Towers", but none of "The Return of the King". I have come to appreciate the movie after a few more viewings, particulary the rotoscope effects, which initially didn't appeal to me. Interestingly enough, John Boorman was planning his own movie version during the 1970s, but ultimately that fell through. It would have been interesting to see what he came up with, although from what I have read, he took quite a few liberties with the story.
(Posted on Wednesday, January 6, 2010 at 1:23 PM)