Hello!

Here’s something we didn’t expect … Kino Lorber has announced an upcoming Blu-ray 3-D of the Universal-International film noir The Glass Web. Associate, advisor and fellow 3-D enthusiast Gary Teetzel was quick to report:

“This comes as a pleasant surprise, as the film was previously said to suffer from music rights issues that blocked any home video release. Starring Edward G. Robinson, the murder thriller will mark the 25th Golden Age 3-D title announced or released, meaning we’ll have precisely half of the 1950s’ extant 3D feature titles on 3D Blu-ray.

Bob Furmanek of The 3-D Film Archive has been posting that they are at present working on seven 3-D titles in addition to the five that have been announced: Bwana Devil, Robot Monster, Prison Girls and the roadshow version of The Bubble. Hopefully some of the seven are Golden Age titles.”

I’m eager to review The Glass Web because it’ll give me an excuse to relate my personal story about meeting Kathleen Hughes, from 2008.

Setting aside the various reasons why each is unlikely to be remastered in 3-D, some of the remaining ‘Golden Age’ titles most desired are: John Wayne in Hondo, Anne Bancroft in Gorilla at Large, Marie Windsor in Cat-Women of the Moon, Karl Malden in Phantom of the Rue Morgue, Jane Russell in The French Line, and Vincent Price in Son of Sinbad. We’re told that Phil Silvers’ Top Banana does not survive in 3-D.

Yet another ‘new’ link that’s actually been around quite a while. Wayne Schmidt forwarded this comparison page that really knocked us out.

Martin Scorsese’s The Irishman (2019) got a lot of attention for its use of ‘digital de-aging’ software to rejuvenate Robert DeNiro. We were all impressed with the ‘younger’ De Niro seen in the movie’s flashback scenes.

A YouTube poster called ‘Shamook’ put up a page of ‘Deepfake’ improvements on shots from The Irishman, and the results are pretty amazing: De-aging Robert Deniro in The Irishman [DeepFake]

Says Wayne:

“Some improvements are more dramatic than others, but overall they definitely look better. But as one commenter pointed out the Deepfake guy started with footage that already had a lot of the work done, so it’s not fair to dump on ILM too much. That, and the progress of technology might make a difference. It still would be nice to remaster the film and drop in these improvements in.”

I think many of us saw The Irishman and thought the rejuvenation process worked pretty well. Looking at this Deepfake version, my first thought was, “maybe Scorsese didn’t want to go so far, be so obvious. Maybe he was first shown similar younger-looking De Niro shots, and was concerned that viewers would stare at the miracle and forget to watch the movie.”

And then I thought “nah, the Deepfake is just better.”

Thanks Wayne, and Happy New Year — Glenn Erickson