Tidbits from our news Archives

The RusCiCo Stalker DVD

This following material, taken from Nostalghia.com news archives, is © Nostalghia.com; it may not be reproduced without the express permission of Trond T. and Jan B.; it may be quoted in part, provided credit is given to Nostalghia.com.

October 1, 2001

November 22, 2001

January 1, 2002

No word yet on when the corresponding NTSC version of Stalker will be available via RusCiCo-partners st-p.com et al. in North America. Watch this page for constant updates.

January 6, 2002

January 13, 2002

January 29, 2002

There is one problem though: the publishers have crossed the boundary between restoration and alteration when they decided to change the soundtrack. While there is nothing terribly wrong in principle with a mere stereo remix (especially if the original soundtrack is included as an alternate audio), an altered soundtrack is unacceptable.

Here are some examples of the changes made for this edition:

• Music added to scenes where no music existed before (travel to the Zone on the trolley). In the original the only sound is the wheels clanking amplified slightly on the synthesiser.
• Music removed: Beethoven's 9th is gone!
• The mood of Stalker's rooms is changed completely by adding ambient wind and water noise (his rooms used to be silent except for train sounds).

There is also a slight jitter problem visible throughout in which highlights seem to "float" independently of the rest of the frame. Most of the time it's not noticeable, but it's a defect.

Very interesting interviews in the supplements. They include snippets of documentaries which we would love to see in their entirety. How about a separate DVD of Tarkovsky documentaries? (Hint, hint...) Even if they are silent and/or unedited.

Summing up: a good release that needs a corrected soundtrack and the jittering artifact to be looked into. Then it will be a perfect 10!

January 30, 2002

                      Thank you for your letters regarding STALKER DVD.

                      Please note that all changes in the film were made by
consent of the film's authors. But because of many requests, RUSCICO will
produce the original version of STALKER in February/March. And it will be
possible to change one version for another in a store where the first version
were purchased.


                      Sincerely,

                      RUSCICO.

March 20, 2002

See January 29 & 30 news items below for the full context of this story. Here at Nostalghia.com, we are eagerly awaiting the DVD release of the director-approved version of Stalker. Once it arrives, we shall provide you with detailed information on whether or not the various problems associated with the DVD transfer, as reported on earlier, have been adequately addressed by RusCiCo.

April 24, 2002

Initial reports from the U.K. indicate that the Artificial Eye release of Stalker does not repair the various visual errors of the RusCiCo disc. I.e., the video portion is identical to that of the original RusCiCo Stalker release. This unfortunately means that the float/jitter problem is still present, and the B&W sequences would still be overly contrasty, with no shadow detail and severely blocked highlights. We originally suspected that the jitter problem was an artifact of the PAL to NTSC conversion, and that the Artificial Eye release would thus be jitter-free. This is not the case. The problem thus appears to be somewhere at the root of the encoding process.

However, when choosing the menu item "Play Film," you are now presented with a menu that says "Russian Version 5.1" and "Original Version (Mono)". You can flip between the two audio tracks on-the-fly while playing the movie, if you need to convince yourself of the difference in quality between the director approved soundtrack and the new 5.1 re-mix. The Original sound track sounds crisp, with no annoying pops or hiss. Thanks to Nick Wrigley in the U.K. for contributing to this report.

Gary Tooze of DVD Beaver emailed Nostalghia.com some early impressions posted on his listserv by Nick Wrigley:

Oh God. [...] I've just watched the "train track ride to the Zone" whilst
flicking between the two, and the 5.1 added music sounds like a 1984 John
Hughes teen-flick as compared to the beauty of the original...

April 28, 2002

May 1, 2002

August 5, 2002

August 6, 2002

August 9, 2002

August 10, 2002

If I remember correctly, Philip Yermash (head of Goskino and Andrei's nemesis) referred to the first version of Stalker as having a "wide format" picture, which was a Russian expression for the 70 mm process (i.e., not SovScope).

However, around the time Stalker went into production Soviet film studios ceased to use 70 mm cameras and the resulting negatives. Instead, films were shot in an Anamorphic Widescreen process on 35 mm negatives (SovScope), and prints for the initial release were then blown up to 70 mm and shown in theaters. So, for example, Kurosawa's Dersu Uzala, Konchalovsky's Siberiade, Danelia's Mimino and others were released in 70 mm, but without the 6-channel stereo remix of a genuine 70 mm production. And thus the magnetic tracks of those prints contained only the original mono mix. What a waste of technology.

In the early 1970's a new system came into being. It was called Universalny Format Cadra (Universal Frame Format), and it is basically what is known today as the Super 35 (Spherical) process, in which all possible negative space between perforations is used for the filming, resulting in an aperture size of about 19 by 30 mm, or an aspect ratio of approximately 1.58:1. This picture was composed and cropped with regard to the final print, from the picture's top. Thus, the desired release prints could be made with aspect ratios of 1.37:1 for 16 or 35 mm prints, 1.33:1 for TV releases, 2.35:1 for 35mm anamorphic releases, 1.66:1 to 1.85:1 for spherical widescreen releases, or 2.2:1 for 70 mm releases. This results in the slightly paradoxical situation in which the 1.37:1 crop would actually include more picture information than its widescreen counterpart.

The second version of Stalker was shot using this process. Andrei was notoriously known as a director who despised anamorphic formats, which were imposed on him by the studio on Andrei Rublov and Solaris. His preferred format was 1.37:1. Needless to say, his widescreen compositions are among the best in world cinema, but that is besides the point. The point is, however, that an acceptable widescreen picture up to 2.35:1 could indeed be extracted from the original negative of Stalker. Of course Andrei never endorsed this, and the picture as we know it was released in the 1.37:1 aspect ratio.

Note that under no circumstances should we accept Stalker in any other aspect ratio than its original 1.37:1, no matter what technology may allow RusCiCo (and others) to do.

Incidentally, it is quite possible (albeit money-consuming) to create a beautiful 1.78:1 (16:9) video transfer for the DVD release of Stalker that will certainly please the owners of widescreen (16:9) displays and televisions, as it would utilize fully the space of widescreen display with no black mattes. It would have surely pleased me as a DVD producer from a technological point of view, if only it hadn't been Andrei's masterpiece; such a transfer from the original negative of Stalker would result in more than originally intended visual information on the sides, and slight bottom cropping—essentially ruining his painstakingly created compositions.

Here at Nostalghia.com, we can't help but think that if, say, Criterion should ever pick up this title, a 1.78:1 version would provide a truly excellent supplement in a multi-disk set, along with the first version of the film that was damaged in the lab. Portions of the first version (if not the whole thing) were apparently saved and are quite watchable—the damage supposedly consists mostly of a strong green tint.

In a news item yesterday, we erroneously stated that the Image Entertainment distributed version of the RusCiCo Stalker disk is a third version, as far as the audio mix is concerned. It is, in actual fact, the fourth version, as the 5.1 mix on the Artificial Eye Stalker is a tiny bit different than the 5.1 mix of the original NTSC RusCiCo disk. Recall that the latter disk had no Beethoven's 9th at the end. In the Artificial Eye release, presumably due to popular demand, Beethoven's 9th is back, with a vengeance: it is mixed in obnoxiously loud. Which is the exact opposite of what Tarkovsky had intended. Just for the record.

August 14, 2002

August 31, 2002

September 25, 2002

This was a database error on our part; it's been corrected and should
post to the site as soon as it updates. Thanks for pointing this out.

Image Entertainment
Publicity Dept.

The disk thus appears to have the correct aspect ratio as well as the proper soundtrack (see August 9 news item).

October 2, 2002

October 15, 2002

Case closed.