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Here is the fight.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S4EwWkuXbFw

Clark does his signature move of throwing Titan who is then stabbed through the heart. Clark flat out said going into the fight that he believed the best resolution would be for him to kill Titan, and given how Clark stepped into a kill or be killed combat situation with the intention of using lethal force, Clark considers himself a killer after this.

Clark tells Martha at the end, as he prepares to hunt down more Phantom Zone escapees menacing innocent humans: "I don't know how to return them to the Phantom Zone. The only way to get rid of them is to kill them like I did Titan." Martha protests that it was an accident and that Titan was trying to kill Clark. "So I just killed him first?" Clark protests. "How does that make me any different than Titan?" The debate is left unresolved.

I personally am... okay with Clark using lethal force against a superpowered adversary who wanted him and any easy prey humans dead. As the Professor would say, this was a roaming predator, not a social worker. At the same time, it would worry me if Clark weren't looking into containment options first.

Interestingly, Steven S. DeKnight, the Season 5 - 6 supervising producer consulting on all episodes (and also the writer of one of your favourites, "Run" with Bart Allen), was highly resistant to Clark killing anyone, highly resistant to the usual situation of villains conveniently defeating themselves... and paradoxically/fascinatingly pushed for a situation where Clark would set out to kill a villain and be deeply troubled by it at the end, and he wanted it to end on an uncertain note.

I know I've been really down on SMALLVILLE and said Seasons 2 - 7 are bad, but I was mistaken. The main issue with SMALLVILLE is that the brilliant creators and showrunners, Alfred Gough and Miles Millar, were frequently absent, focusing on feature film scripts instead of writing and rewriting scripts for their TV show. As a result, staff writers often defaulted to freaks of the week as a safe area of easy showrunner approval; story arcs would not be consistent or coherent; nobody else seemed empowered to do rewrites on freelance stories or each other's scripts. Season 2 was a mess due to the absent leadership, Season 3 was stronger because Millar and Gough were more present that year, but Season 4 was a mess again.

However, Seasons 5 and 6 are absolutely great. I think it's all thanks to Steven S. DeKnight being brought in as supervising producer after "Run" and "Spirit" in Season 4. DeKnight's grasp of drama, banter, comedy, absurdity, superheroics and story arcs were honed to a fine art on ANGEL, and DeKnight seems so perfect for SMALLVILLE. More importantly, SMALLVILLE was not the first show where Steven S. DeKnight had worked for showrunners who didn't seem to be around; he'd been in a similar situation on ANGEL where Joss Whedon held total authority and yet wasn't there on a daily basis to lead the show.

DeKnight seemed to have a talent for identifying the absent showrunner's preferences and writing material that he was passionate about that the showrunner would readily approve. He seemed to have a similar ability to gauge what story ideas Gough and Millar would want to buy and what season-long arcs they'd approve. ANGEL had given DeKnight extensive experience in stewarding a show where he wasn't in charge.

This is probably why SMALLVILLE with DeKnight as supervising producer suddenly became a lot more coherent, dramatic, skillful and comedic, and it's probably why SMALLVILLE went from avoiding the issue of Clark maybe having to kill villains to confronting it head on and not trying to offer an easy answer.

DeKnight left after Season 6... which may be why I remember Season 7 being utterly terrible.

My concern about a Batman movie featuring Batman and his homicidal 10 year old son Damian (as he is in the comics) -- movies are shot and go through post production over at least a year, and then pre-production has to set up the next film. If they hire a 10 year old actor to play Damian, he'll be at least 12 in the second film, 14 by the third, and so forth. How are they going handle this? Will Damian age with the actor, or will they hire a performer with a genetic predisposition to staying short and skinny?

Well, I just started a new thread for the James Gunn era: https://sliders.tv/bboard/viewtopic.php?id=487

All DC TV shows and animated productions from 1966 - 2024 can be discussed in the newly named DC Superheroes on TV & Streaming (1966 - 2024) thread: https://sliders.tv/bboard/viewtopic.php?id=67

All DC feature films from 1943 - 2024 can be discussed in the DC Superheroes in Film (1943 - 2024) thread: https://sliders.tv/bboard/viewtopic.php?id=60

We can talk about SMALLVILLE here: https://sliders.tv/bboard/viewtopic.php?id=167

I hope that isn't too confusing. I'm already having to make exceptions:

• The 1966 BATMAN film is discussed in the 1966 - 2024 TV thread (because it launched from the TV show)

• THE BATMAN (2022) is discussed in the 2025 thread (because its sequel will be produced by James Gunn and we may as well cover the first installment in the same thread)

• THE SUICIDE SQUAD (2021) and PEACEMAKER's first season in 2022 are also part of the 2025 thread (because both are James Gunn projects).

If someone has a better idea, lay it out and I'll see what can be done.

I'd like to believe this, but ominous vagaries, even if they're in favour of my preferences, are still just ominous vagaries.

Given how self-incriminating Trump is already, I'm not optimistic there is any bombshell left to be had. Bombshells for Trump have become background noise, unfortunately.

I don't know if there was any "supposed to". Most major network shows, studios and creators will hope for seven seasons of a TV show by default as an ideal point for streaming and broadcast sales for ad revenue and subscription earnings.

I can assure you that, no matter what the CW says, James Gunn did not get SUPERMAN AND LOIS cancelled. Ever since CW was purchased by Nexstar, there has been a mass cancellation of their scripted programming that operates at a higher price point than what the CW now prefers.

This network couldn't keep THE WINCHESTERS or WALKER: TEXAS RANGER on the air at this new budget ceiling, and SUPERMAN AND LOIS was the most expensive show on the CW. Its budget-reduced, truncated return for a fourth and final season was all the CW was willing to pay. Gunn did not shut this series down; the CW did.

Trump's demands that Kamala be forced off are obviously projection: he is angry because Joe Biden was his preferred opponent.

I am really scared.

But I am continuing to fulfill my responsibilities and do the things I need to do for myself and others.

I'm afraid, but I'm trying not to let it stop me from doing anything.

I've rewatched Max Landis' video on Superman's power levels and how his only path is to save or conquer. I'd say... while a valid perspective, it's primarily focused on Superman's external superpowers and neglects more internal aspects.

Often, the argument is that power can reveal while absolute power will corrupt absolutely. The fantasy of Superman is that someone with great power would wield it almost entirely in service of civilization as a whole; and this person would, in using their power for themselves, only use it for harmless personal indulgences like eating lots of ice cream and never gaining weight (Dean Cain) or using superspeed to make up for sleeping in later (Tom Welling).

Often, it's claimed that this is implausible and unlikely that someone with this power would not use it to serve themselves.

In the "Leech" episode of SMALLVILLE, Clark's powers are transferred to an abused and bullied teenager named Eric Summers. Eric, shortly after discovering his superstrength, violently assaults his abusive father and his school bully. Clark asks his parents if they were ever afraid of Clark and Clark's strength. Jonathan says Clark had a few tantrums as a child and kicked some holes in walls, but never hurt anyone and never frightened Jonathan or Martha.

From a physiological standpoint, I offer this head canon: Clark's alien body absorbs and stores solar energy -- sunlight -- in a way that also makes Clark highly sensitive to light in all forms. Light is not just energy to Clark; it's sensory information that he can access via his super senses where his eyes can absorb vast levels of light and also magnify minute levels, and he can even perceive the way sound saves interact with light waves to hear small sounds and across great distances. Clark will amplify these super senses at times, but he's also living with heightened awareness in his daily life, in ways he reflexively tones down but doesn't tune out.

These super senses would give Clark an increased awareness of all the biological processes around him: when someone is hurt or sick or sad or lonely, Clark can subconsciously feel a reflected version of those sensations and emotions.

It wouldn't be to the degree where he's overwhelmed by them, and it largely manifests as super empathy and super compassion -- an innate awareness of the fragility of life around him. As a result, the young Clark, even when upset, was highly aware of how he could hurt his parents and restrained himself.

When Eric receives Clark's powers, Eric likely has the same perception of life around him being fragile -- but it manifests as contempt and dominance and as the sick pleasure of being able to inflict pain upon the people who tormented him who are now defenceless. Clark had the benefit of a loving and nurturing environment where the pain of others was met with understanding and support; Eric was raised by an abusive father who taught him that other people's pain was to be relished and to keep them in line, so his enhanced awareness of life becomes a form of superiority.

While I have a lot of issues with SMALLVILLE, for the most part, it believes that Superman's physical superpowers also come with super senses, and also super morality and super empathy. One version of Superman's comic book origin, BIRTHRIGHT, outright makes the super compassion textual by saying that Superman can see a field of light and life around all living beings and that it is emotionally and physically devastating for him when he sees that light die. For me, that's a little too overt and I would prefer it as something more subconscious yet present.

I admit, in saying the super senses can either manifest as empathy or superiority, we are back to saying that Superman could either save or conquer -- but I would also note that Tom Welling did an amazing job of showing Clark's gentleness and compassion in his performances, and his cautious screen presence certainly implies an awareness of how breakable the world is for Clark.

I thought it was good. But... I question the merit of doing SUPERMAN AND LOIS where Superman is dead. It seems to defeat the purpose of having a Superman show.

I'm relieved that, despite the reductions, all of the cast will be present, even if they won't be in every episode.

The flashback to a thirtysomething Clark admitting to Lois that he's never had sex was hilarious.

One of the things I found frustrating about SMALLVILLE: Season 1 seemed to be gently laying the Clark/Lana romance to rest in the last third or so of the episodes and moving Chloe into the role of Clark's love interest. This made sense on every level: Chloe was directly involved in investigating the weekly villains and Clark's eventual wife is Lois Lane, a quippy, intrepid, adventurous journalist like Chloe.

Season 2 abruptly removed this and sidelined Chloe while making her obnoxiously jealous and ridiculously invested in wanting a boy who, for whatever reason, didn't want her back. This has always struck me as the showrunners reasserting control after the majority of the Season 1 writers left, with the studio, showrunners and network all wanting to sell the show on Kristin Kreuk's face alongside Tom Welling's and Michael Rosenbaum's, taking the view that Kreuk was the one they were paying to be the female lead, not Allison Mack. Chloe passive-aggressively told Clark she just wanted to be friends and immaturely got upset when he agreed.

Setting that aside -- why isn't Clark interested in Chloe? Tom Welling, in Talkville, offered this view: Clark and Chloe were friends trying to stretch their friendship into something it wasn't.

I have a different view, and I don't entirely believe my theory, but going by what's onscreen: my view is that Clark defaults to his attraction to Lana and dismisses his attraction because Lana wants normalcy and Clark wants to be a normal person. Lana's trauma over the meteor shower and preference for civilian life demands that Clark suppress and hide his alien side, which he wants to do to be a normal kid. Lana keeps Clark in his comfort zone.

Chloe doesn't do that: Chloe wants to explore the extraordinary and bizarre and alien, all the things that Clark is suppressing and hiding and avoiding in himself. Chloe's investigative nature unnerves Clark, makes him guarded and withdrawn. It maybe subconscious, but Clark avoids romancing someone who is too curious, too outspoken, too bold and too analytical because that curious, outspoken, bold, analytical person might uncover and reveal his secrets. Clark wants the ordinary, not the extraordinary.

However, when Clark meets Lois, there is a gradual shift. Lois may be a goofier, sillier version of Chloe, but there is a distinct difference: Lois adores both the ordinary and the extraordinary. Lois takes as much joy in small town barbeques and living on a farm as she does in battling mutants and investigating aliens. Lois makes Clark realize he can have both the ordinary and the extraordinary.

Chloe's never interested in ordinary life. Chloe's adulthood is defined by her support work for superheroes and she never wants to go back. Chloe has no interest in being a civilian, whereas Clark very much wants a civilian life. They were fundamentally opposed in what they wanted out of life.

That is my head canon and as someone who adored the Chlark ship, I only half believe it.

So.

Nervous.

Wow. I will probably carve out some time to read it on Saturday.

Why the Trump watches are garbage:
https://www.thebulwark.com/p/everything … ed-to-know

Simon Rosenberg says The New York Times polls are completely unreliable and little more than outliers. He says he will not spend any more time taking them apart.

https://www.hopiumchronicles.com/p/winn … -gop-keeps

I really hope I don't come to regret sharing so much Simon Rosenberg stuff. Just because he says things in a fact-oriented fashion and is saying what I want to hear doesn't mean he's right. I can only be cautiously optimistic.

Simon Rosenberg has been very big on voting ASAP, as early as possible.

I'm pretty freaked out by all of it, albeit less frightened than with Biden, but still pretty darn scared. With Biden, my terror was at a nine out of ten. With Kamala, I'm at... seven to seven and a half.

I guess I'll just try to focus on work.

My post about political anxiety in Canada was referring to a conservative Canadian politician who is likely to be the next Canadian prime minister. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pierre_Poilievre He's basically Donald Trump lite in Canada. I will not vote for him, but many will; the current prime minister (for whom I will grudgingly vote) has managed to alienate progressives and centrists alike. Even people who might support the (supposedly) progressive party will not support its present leader.

You may wish to consider caution with this metaphor.

I am not saying you have done anything inappropriate, and this is not a reprimand, but a confession: I have used this metaphor in the past, and I was wrong to do so, and I deeply regret it.

I do not think you are wrong to use it, but speaking only for myself: I have elected to retire this one from my own usage.

I once knew a woman who was the webmaster for Hollywood actress Allison Mack. This woman was regularly posting about how Chloe was her favourite character on SMALLVILLE and at one point declared that Chloe was the most important character in the series. At that point, I snarked -- and I should not have -- that Chloe's two minutes of screentime across most episodes made her trivial and irrelevant and that anyone who called Chloe a lead character was like a...

Well, you know what I said. I won't say it twice. I shouldn't have even said it once.

This web designer was deeply hurt and upset, and I blew it off, and I shouldn't have done that either.

At one point, she accidentally instant messaged me, sharing some difficulties with Allison Mack. I would take this opportunity to 'apologize', but not, I think, as sincerely as I would now; I said I'd been unwell and unhappy, but I think I was using illness as an excuse. She deserved better from me and deserved a sincere message of regret and responsibility from me.

In recent years, the world learned: Allison Mack was running a cult, she was physically and emotionally abusive to those she inducted into her cult. She had inducted this woman, this wonderful web designer, into her cut. She was abusing this woman savagely. This means my remark about this web designer was both grossly inappropriate and savagely accurate, and the accuracy of my comment actually makes it all the more cruel, insensitive and shameful on my part.

I have thought about the situation with Allison Mack and her web designer a lot, and about my words. I have concluded that I should have used a different metaphor.

I should have likened the situation to someone in a pyramid scheme who constantly thinks their big payout is coming soon (it isn't) or someone in a cult who constantly thinks the ascension is any day now (it's not) or to a politician insisting they can win when their fundraising and support have fallen through the floor or to SLIDERS fans who constantly thought that with one more season, John and Jerry and Sabrina and Tracy would come back (they wouldn't).

Is your use of this metaphor apt? I think so... but it's a sensitive area and I have learned not to make light of this subject. This is not a reprimand. I am not saying you have done anything wrong. I am saying it was wrong for *me* to use the metaphor that I did. I should not have done it. I won't do it again.

You aren't me. The subject to which you apply this metaphor is not the same. Your use of it is not the same. For one thing, you are speaking about a media appearance, not a private person. For another, you are describing the situation generally as opposed to directing it towards a specific individual. My mistakes are not yours.

Since we're friends, I merely wish to share my own contemplations on this, for you to use or dismiss as you see fit, and you can come to your own conclusions and decisions. Thank you for attending my TED Talk.

i have gone from a terrible sense of doom to a moderate sense of doom.

After looking at the material, I do not think that finding and scanning theatrical prints of THE EMPIRE STRIKES BACK is a good use of anyone's time or effort.

The only reason to locate and scan a print of this nature is to restore the 1980 theatrical cut. But unlike STAR WARS and RETURN OF THE JEDI, the blu-ray version of EMPIRE is very easily returned to its original version. EMPIRE had very few changes made.

The very few non-HD shots and effects that need to be reinstated to the blu-ray version, even if sourced from low-resolution DVD, are easily matched to the blu-ray footage because those effects were mostly in motion, looked more painterly than photorealistic, and the upscaling blur isn't going to make them seem out of place.

The changes made to STAR WARS and RETURN OF THE JEDI were harder to undo: restoring the original versions of Tatooine, Mos Eisley, the Death Star and the final battle required a lot of cross-sourcing to rebuild it. RETURN, while having more isolated changes, had so many key shots altered or replaced in Jabba's palace and the Ewok celebration that a DESPECIALIZED version has to use a lot of mismatched SD and HD material and fade back and forth between them, sometimes in the same shot.

But EMPIRE doesn't have that mismatch problem. Most of the missing HD material is meant to be blurred by motion or due to being a matte painting. A high quality theatrical print of EMPIRE would not look very different from the DESPECIALIZED version.

The only real issue with the DESPECIALIZED version of EMPIRE is that it was made in 720p, largely because the upscaled DVD footage didn't scale well to 1080p, and even modern AI upscaling has addressed that gap; a 1080p upscale of EMPIRE looks as good as the denoised theatrical print scan of STAR WARS.

I don't think EMPIRE will benefit from finding any more prints to scan.

I'm looking forward to seeing it. I mean, having sat through all of the TERMINATOR movies, I might as well weather through whatever this is, although I've heard good things.

Another piece of TERMINATOR writing I'd like to finish reading: a fan wrote 28 (!!) screenplays wrapping up THE SARAH CONNOR CHRONICLES with a virtual Season 3 of 22 episodes and a virtual Season 4 of five episodes and a feature length finale screenplay. I've read the first one and it's precisely the show I remember, from Josh Friedman's sardonic and militaristic tone to the omnipresent shadow of war and violence over every scene.

https://tib.cjcs.com/terminator-the-con … c-project/

If you don't want DESPECIALIZED to use rotoscoping, I'm not sure how you expect DESPECIALIZED to even exist.

Rotoscoping: a technique usually used by animators use to trace over live action footage, creating an outline around a visual element. Used in animation, the outline can be used for an illustration. Used in film compositing, the visual element within the outline can be copied, and then placed on a different piece of footage.

Rotoscoping effects in the DESPECIALIZED editions: This refers to drawing an outline around a special effect from the theatrical version of a film (from DVD or a theatrical film print). The effect is copied. The effect is then placed over the blu-ray version of the footage to cover the SPECIAL EDITION effect with the theatrical version of the effect.

Rotoscoping is the means by which the DESPECIALIZED editions were created. If you don't want the blu-ray SPECIAL EDITIONS and you don't want DESPECIAIZED using rotoscoping to put the original effects back in place, what do you want DESPECIALIZED to do and why were you interested in it at all?

That said, I'm shifting away from DESPECIALIZED. It was great when first released, but I think I'm happier with digital scans of theatrical prints. Those scans were years away from being released when DESPECIALIZED first hit the internet.

DESPECIALIZED, because it starts with the blu-rays, may be as sharper in most scenes, but the sourced-from-DVD or print material doesn't match the rest of it. You sometimes get an HD Luke against an SD matte painting, or HD interiors of X-Wing fighter pilots intercut with SD exteriors of the X-Wings themselves.

Digital scans of film prints, while a little softer, are consistent throughout. Of course, a lot of people may prefer DESPECIALIZED because they find the hyper grainy look of the digital scans more distracting than DESPECIALIZED being a bit schizophrenic in sharpness. I personally decided to run the digital scans through an AI grain normalization process -- not to remove the grain, just to make it the same in one scene as it is in all others.

I hope he's right.

I guess, taking this more seriously, one factor would be whether or not Jerry O'Connell needs the money and if doing more panels and signing autographs for fans is how he wants to spend his time.

Actors like Kim Rhodes and Briana Buckmaster (Jody and Donna on SUPERNATURAL) earn a lot of income from convention appearances and maintaining a fan-directed persona. Fans love them. Wil Wheaton made a living from convention appearances for a time, many former DOCTOR WHO and STAR TREK actors do the same.

DOCTOR WHO actor Sylvester McCoy remarked that when he was cast as the Seventh Doctor, he didn't realize that this moderately well-paying and brief job would also come with a pension -- by pension, he means the convention appearances (and audioplays).

In Wil Wheaton's biography, he describes how, as a young teenager, he attended a STAR TREK cruise and saw some of THE ORIGINAL SERIES cast greeting fans in the morning, all clearly hungover or drunk, and Wil details how, as a boy, he thought those actors were such pathetic losers: they were wasted in the morning, they were trading on work that was decades in the past to earn money now, and Wil decided to quit STAR TREK: THE NEXT GENERATION before he ended up like them.

Wil then writes that as an adult, he is ashamed of his thoughts and choices: he says that he now feels it is not a big deal to enjoy alcohol on what is really a paid vacation; that those actors were probably very happy to keep revisiting their time aboard the USS Enterprise and earning a decent living; that he should have been more grateful for his TREK opportunities and stuck with the show to build up some savings for the post-TREK future.

Also, he too as an adult was trying to earn a living off conventions, having steered into the very fate he sought to avoid -- and worse, he wasn't earning any income from conventions as not many wanted his autograph (at least not until his writing career took off).

I don't think Jerry is as caustic as Wil, but the main thing to take away from Wil's thoughts is this: conventions are a way for actors to earn money between acting roles or after an acting career has ceased to produce any new acting credits.

Jerry O'Connell isn't a big star who is above conventions, but because he worked so much as a lead on so many shows, he has a level of income from residuals and new & well-paid roles that mean convention-income isn't as central for him as it is for others. As a result, he may prefer to devote the time he might have for conventions to his family and especially his children.

I'm not entirely sure what you are asking.

The DESPECIALIZED versions took the blu-ray version and downscaled it from 1080p to 720p, and upscaled the DVD release of the theatrical versions to 720p. Wherever the blu-ray had a effect, it was replaced with the DVD version rotoscoped out of the DVD version and on top of the blu-ray version. Some of the theatrical material from the DVD version was then further replaced with material from theatrical prints or frames or photographs of matte paintings. The original transitions were recreated, and the fan editor attempted to restore the original lighting and colour. If there were matte lines and such painted out of the blu-ray version, they were added back in the DESPECIALIZED version.

I can't swear that all SPECIAL EDITION additions have been rotoscoped or replaced in DESPECIALIZED, but I'm betting that 99 percent of them are gone.

At the time, with 720p televisions, DESPECIALIZED looked pretty good, and the upscaled DVD footage seemed to blend well with the blu-ray content. Today, the 720p versions of DESPECIALIZED films look very odd on modern 4K screens: the upscaled DVD content is severely mismatched to the blu-ray. I replaced the DESPECIALIZED versions of STAR WARS and RETURN OF THE JEDI with the 4K77 and 4K83 versions, which are not as blu-ray sharp as DESPECIALIZED, but are more consistent throughout in video quality.

Before the 4K80 version of EMPIRE was finished, I upscaled the DEPSPECIALIZED version of EMPIRE from 720p to 1080p. This smoothed out the mismatches in DVD and blu-ray by adding a slight AI smooth-sharpening while adding AI grain to be consistent. This upscaled version of the DESPECIALIZED 720p EMPIRE is actually a bit clearer and sharper than the 4K80 version, which is a digital scan of a theatrical print.

However, the theatrical print scan is, despite being less sharp and heavily grainy, still very adequate for 4K display, and more authentic. And I just want to run some AI digital noise reduction on it -- not to remove the grain entirely, just to make it consistent across the whole film so I can get used to it, not noticing it intensifying or diminishing, and focus on the story.

Well, I ran two upscales on the 4K80 THE EMPIRE STRIKES BACK for a 1080p output with AI grain refinement, not to remove it, just to get it consistent. And... hmm. My first attempt set the grain reduction to mild, but it left too much of the grain intact and seemed to make no difference.

The second one, I set the DNR more aggressively, and removed so much grain that there was an unpleasant waxy quality to it that the overlaid AI grain couldn't do the job of offsetting the smoothness.  James Cameron would love it since he re-released TRUE LIES looking like this, but I found it untenable.

I'm now running a third attempt where after removing the almost static-like levels of noise, the replacement AI grain will be 50 percent larger than my last effort.

4K80 is very authentic, but the DESPECIALIZED versions of the movies have some advantages. They are 720p files made from integrating upscaled DVD footage back into the blu-ray via recutting and rotoscoping. They looked fine on a 32 inch 720p screen. But they look very bad on on a 55 inch 4K screen: the blu-ray footage looks razor sharp; the upscaled DVD sequences look muddy and blocky.

Before 4K80 (but after STAR WARS and RETURN OF THE JEDI had been restored via theatrical prints), I ran the DESPECIALIZED EMPIRE through Topaz to upscale it to 1080p and created a pretty consistent level of smooth and sharp throughout, and I used this for the second film in my STAR WARS collection.

4K80, however, doesn't look as crisp, obviously because it's a theatrical print and not a blu-ray drawn from the  original master negative. DESPECIALIZED if upscaled from 720p to 1080p, is always going to look a lot sharper for the blu-ray sourced segments and a little smoother for the DVD sections. In comparison, 4K80 will be rough and grainy and my AI scaling will only make it slightly smoother and get the grain consistent so as not to be distracting.

DESPECIALIZED upscaled to 1080p is probably the most 'modern' looking version while the AI-DNRed print scans are more 'authentic', but they are a bit of a step down in terms of basic image quality.

Last night, in the depths of despair over how I can't properly upscale "Summer of Love" to "Luck of the Draw", I started looking on Kijiji for used CRTs. I saw one for $15 USD. Then I realized that while I have $15 USD, I have absolutely nowhere sensible to put a CRT television set because anywhere it could go is already occupied by a modern TV.

I've a really interesting program called ShaderGlass. https://mausimus.itch.io/shaderglass

It casts an overlay over the screen of a Windows PC, which you can apply to different windows or make fullscreen. It makes your screen mimic a cathode ray tube television with the dot pattern and the screen curvature and the crushed blacks. ShaderGlass made "Luck of the Draw" look like it did in 1995 for the first time since I'd thrown out my old CRT. And unlike an actual CRT, ShaderGlass doesn't cost or weigh anything or take up any physical space.

I don't believe in book burning, but if I could burn one book, it would be Brad Linaweaver's novelization. I would settle for it being erased off the face of the Earth.

Let Brad Linaweaver be remembered for his masterpiece, MOON OF ICE, as well as THE LAND BEYOND SUMMER and his BATTLESTAR GALACTICA novels and his DOOM novels. Let his non-contributions to SLIDERS be forgiven as an unfortunate set of errors in judgement on the legacy of a man who did better work elsewhere. And then let his work on SLIDERS be forgotten.

Let him be honoured and remembered for his best and not his worst.

I cannot stress enough in the name of Wade Welles' leather jacket that the opinions of ireactions on anything -- up to and including Brad Linaweaver's SLIDERS writing -- are not the consensus views of Sliders.tv.

If it were up to me -- and it's not -- it would have been nice if the TRUE LIES blu-ray had included an unenhanced original negative scan, even if only as an extra DVD.

I think AI sharpening has its place, but I cannot fathom why anyone would need to use it on TRUE LIES. It was shot on 35mm film, it was stored on 35mm film. The original negative, after rescanning, might have benefited from a modest noise reduction because film projection softens noise while LCD sharpens it and makes it more distracting. It might benefit from some colour and lighting adjustment because LCD is much brighter than a theatrical print projection screen: it would be good to make sure elements meant to be dark and shadowy remain so while bright scenes aren't overexposed. But it certainly would not need resharpening for 4K televisions; it's already a 35mm film scan.

The AI sharpening on TRUE LIES, in my view, makes details that would be naturally blurred by movement retain sharpness even when in motion, which becomes way too distracting. This is a similar issue to TVs with motion smoothing via frame duplication to boost 24 and 30 FPS video to 60 or 120 FPS. While motion smoothing might make a video look more fluid, the process doesn't create the blur that the eye would expect to see with motion, so the image looks unnatural. The AI sharpening on TRUE LIES has created a similar effect of sharpness without motion blur within a 24 FPS frame rate, and the human brain will reject the mismatch of movement without blur.

The reason they AI sharpened it is probably because their overly aggressive digital noise reduction created a very soft image, and they wanted to sharpen it up. But the end result is that aggressive noise removal on TRUE LIES has eliminated texture from surfaces like skin and clothes. The sharpening, in turn, has increased edge contrast, but does not restore the obscured texture. The image looks computer generated instead of captured in film videography.

One of the first movies that I recall looking like it had suffered way too much noise reduction was WILD WILD WEST, which I saw in theatres and found oddly unnatural with very little grain, but also overly smoothed out skin. At the same time, I've watched a digital scan of a 1977 theatrical print of STAR WARS and found that on LCD, the grain is so prominent and distracting that some DNR is worthwhile -- not to remove it entirely, just to tone it down so it's not a barrier from the story.

Back to TRUE LIES: Cameron insists he reviewed and approved each AI-restored shot. I suspect that when a director has looked at a movie for too long, they may confuse how good individual frames look with how it all plays when in motion and they will also see what they expect to be there instead of what's actually there.

Of all the films that very much did not need elaborately extensive 'restoration', TRUE LIES would be at the top of the list. These changes may have been to make it look more 'modern', but there is nothing wrong with a 1994 film looking like it was made in 1994, and trying to change that doesn't make it look like it was made in 2024; it just looks like it was warped and distorted in 2024.

I think Cameron would have done better to make the 'restoration' of TRUE LIES subtle and low key, focusing on making it look at home on an LCD screen rather than trying to make it look 'better' and making it look... stranger.

EDITED TO ADD:

Hours later, watching a pre-remastering 1080p version of TRUE LIES -- this movie is hilarious. It is beyond me why someone would spend a number of years making this movie with such wonderfully human characters, with Arnold Schwarzenegger being particularly vulnerable and sweet -- and then spend an additional year turning a cinematic, detailed, textured film image into some sort of weird cartoon of oversharpened wax dummies. The remastering eliminated all the motion blur while keeping the framerate at 24 fps -- but you want the motion blur or it looks like some sort of CG animatic instead of a movie.

I wasn't aware that Disney was releasing poor bit rate DVDs (if I understand you correctly). Where can we read more about this?

I like EARLY EDITION a lot. I miss it so much. Kyle Chandler once remarked (and I'm paraphrasing), "EARLY EDITION isn't a crime show or a scary show. It's just a nice show that tells nice stories." There's something quite wonderful about the concept of a man who receives tomorrow's newspaper today and wants to do nothing more than prevent as many horrible things as he can in all the time he has.

Four seasons was a good run, and while I would have liked a fifth season, the fourth season finale of Gary learning why he was chosen to receive the paper and declaring that he wouldn't be the last -- that was a really nice way to end the series. I'm looking forward to checking out the DVD and am so glad that you randomly brought it up. Even if the video quality is less than awesome, it'd still be great to have it close by.

To me, $15 was an acceptable price for me to see MISSION IMPOSSIBLE and THE MARVELS and DEADPOOL AND WOLVERINE. There were a bunch of movies I wanted to see in theatres, but didn't muster the energy to make it: MARIO, BARBIE, LADY FRANKENSTEIN. $15 made going to those movies feel like work I was doing at my own expense whereas $8 feels like the movie theatre is meeting me halfway.

Also, while I'm sure THE SUBSTANCE with Demi Moore, MY OLD ASS with Aubrey Plaza and NEVER LET GO with Halle Berry will have interesting performances, I can't say these low to mid-budget dramas are something I need to see on a big screen for $15. But to see them upon release instead of waiting for them to reach VOD? That's worth $8 each to me.

I've had a lot of trouble watching TV I'm eager to see because I keep using it as background noise. Sometimes, I prefer to have something I don't like all that much so that I don't need to give it too much attention. During a particularly tiring bout of data entry recently, I watched two Aurora Teagarden Hallmark Mystery movies which have such poor dramatic range and a total lack of subtextual scripting... which is great because I can follow the story despite missing one out of three lines of dialogue.

As a result, it somehow took me a year to watch the final season of THE MARVELOUS MRS. MAISEL because I only wanted to watch it when I was giving it my undivided attention.