its a bird, its a plane, its a DVD

apologies if this was posted earlier in the month, but i just noticed this little chunk at http://www.thedigitalbits.com/rumormill.html, in the october 12th entry:

'Superman is definitely being prepped for DVD over at Warner, but don't expect it to be released until as late as 3rd or 4th quarter of 2000- apparently there is a LOT of restoration work that needs to be done, and it isn't going to be

Finally, a reason for me to buy a DVD player.

If you want a good reason to buy a DVD player Ernest Goes to

I was watching it on Laser the other night. It needs to be cleaned up, bad.

How the Hell can a movie that's only 20 years old fall into such a sorry state, when movies live 'Wizard of Oz' and 'Gone With The WInd' look like they were made yesterday ?? Doesn't add up.....

That's easy. Those movie were cleaned up and restored to their original conditions. No one has done that with 'It's a Bird....'. Yet.

It happens. Remember that even the classic (and relatively recent) film LAWRENCE OF ARABIA was in sorry shape before it was restored. Also keep in mind that GONE WITH THE WIND looks good because it's been restored several times already. THE WIZARD OF OZ was retooled a year or two ago.

In any case, SUPERMAN: THE MOVIE badly needs color correction. The color temperature wanders all over the place and, sometimes, the blue of Superman's uniform looks green.

Which causes one to wonder why the film wasn't given sufficient care to begin with. The green uniform isn't a recent sign of decay, it was visible from Opening Day on.

Sure was, especially when he's approaching Hoover Dam (or whatever it is). That can be corrected, though.

I think they had to purposefully tickle the uniform toward green because some shots couldn't be made to work otherwise.

That was true about the green uniform. It was in the movie houe that I saw it the first time at the damn scene in the movie.

The suit was probably green due to the way they superimposed his image on the backgrounds. We are talking 20 years ago when this movie was tops in special effects. Remember, he had to perform flying motions on a blue screen and then mix it in with the scenery. They did whatever they could, but if they would have done nothing all the blue on his suit would essentially have been invisible (blue on blue you know). I'm rambling, but this movie was still killer.