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Buy Close Encounters Of The Third Kind (Collector's Edition) at Walmart.com. Find a John Williams (4) - Close Encounters Of The Third Kind (The Collector's Edition Soundtrack) first pressing or reissue. Complete your John Williams (4) collection. Close Encounters Of The Third Kind: Collector's Edition. Close Encounters of the Third Kind was that year's. 1998 'Collector's Edition' edit. The Collector's Edition (CE) represents Steven Spielberg's third version of Close Encounters. Created in 1998, this sequence contains most of the judicial edits made. Title: Close Encounters of the Third Kind (1977) 7.7 /10. Want to share IMDb's rating on your own site? Use the HTML below. You must be a registered.
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The DVD Journal: Close Encounters of the Third Kind: Collector's Edition. Review by Alexandra Du. Pont. "Twenty years later, I look at (Close Encounters) and I see a lot of naiveté, and I see my youth, and I see my blind optimism, and I see how I've changed.. I look at Close Encounters and I see a very sweet, very idealistic odyssey about a man who gives up everything in pursuit of his dreams — or his obsession.
In 1. 99. 7, I would never have made Close Encounters the way I made it in 1. I have a family that I would never leave. I would never drive a family out of house and home and build a papier- mache mountain in the den and then further leave them to get on a spaceship and perhaps never return to them. I mean, that was just the privileges of youth.
And when I see Close Encounters, it's the one film I see that dates me."— Steven Spielberg"It was either too easy or too hard to get Steven Spielberg's attention. That's why he was such a great director: for him it had to be perfect small moments between people or Barnum & Bailey. Lots of directors were doing small moments but no one was doing the circus quite so well.". Julia Philips, co- producer of Close Encounters. You'll Never Eat Lunch in This Town Again* * *I. Preamble. Close Encounters of the Third Kindis a pitch- perfect film.
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But what pitch is being sounded here, precisely? Make no mistake: This is a Hollywood classic, a deeply personal vision, and a unique object. I can watch it again and again, and fought bitterly for the chance to review it.
But the Spielberg quote preceding this writeup really gets at one of the movie's central fallacies — a fallacy I want to expand on a bit. Most of the comments I've read about CE3. K dwell on its beautifully realized "We Are Not Alone" hookum and its wishful thinking about benevolent aliens and its stick- in- your- eye images and its nearly wordless final act and its music and its follow- your- dream humanism and of course its Douglas Trumbull- crafted special effects (which are probably the best- aged special effects of all time — other than maybe 2. Trumbull also worked).
I won't dispute any of that praise, because it's all well- deserved. But none of it gets at the movie's dark heart.
Yes, its dark heart. CE3. K is, first and foremost, an apologia for artistic obsession — a fantasy that says it's okay to abandon your family, break the law and destroy other people's property in pursuit of your dreams. In fact, the movie goes so far as to reward its obsessed protagonist with a literal glowing Nirvana.
Let's not spend too much time on the "content" end of the review: Hundreds of millions of people have already seen Close Encounters and formed their own vast opinions. Skip ahead to section IV.
DVD specs and extras.* * *II. But first: Which of the gazillion cuts of Close Encounters are we watching here, precisely? This disc contains the final "Collector's Edition" cut, released to home video and Laserdisc in 1. According to IMDb's fascinating detailing of the myriad cuts of Close Encounters (a document way too long to distill here), the CE cut is "basically a 1.
Special Edition.' "* * *III. What's the story? The stripped- down plot is fascinating in that is contains a great deal of conflict, but no clear antagonists — instead, it features two groups of obsessed protagonists, each racing toward a final confrontation with alien life, each distrusting the other. Roy Neary (Richard Dreyfuss) is a lowly power- plant employee (and nascent child- man, obsessed with "Pinocchio" and toy trains).
He sees a UFO — several, in fact. He is subsequently obsessed by the image of a mountain — an obsession that drives him to make ill- placed sculptures, which drive his harridan wife (Teri Garr) and beastly children to abandon him as a "crybaby" nut case (in scenes that any child of divorce will find deeply painful to watch). But Roy's suffering is short- lived — as his disbelieving family is conveniently replaced by one better- suited to his consumptive mindset. Flaky single mom Gillian (Melinda Dillon), who's lost her son (Cary Guffey) to an alien kidnapping, ends up joining Roy on a cross- country journey to Devil's Tower, where UFOs are about to be officially received by a government team led by the equally obsessed Frenchman Lacombe (François Truffaut) — a man who, along with his tweedy interpreter (Bob Balaban), has spent the film tracking down clues and interviewing witnesses in preparation for a climactic alien encounter. Of course, this being the movies, the aliens' universal language isn't numbers, it's music — and music scored within Western scale parameters, to boot.)All of this builds to a frantic chase and effects- filled denouement, with climax piled upon climax — and with Roy's fixation rewarded by (a) a smooch from his more- understanding "wife" and (b) the chance to abandon everyone and "step into the light."And so there you have it: a beautifully lensed tale of neglectful parents, unhappy families, and a retreat into creativity; the metaphor for driven artistic types is obvious.
In fact, all Spielberg's personal obsessions are at play here — making CE3. K his most personal film besides E. T. and Hook (a film about a man who also struggles with a childlike obsession, but ultimately turns back to his kids). All the Spielberg tropes are here in full force: wonder, all- consuming passion, absent father figures, youthful optimism, suburbia, magical salvation, the slow reveal.
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It's powerful, powerful filmmaking.* * *IV. So how about those extras? Well, there aren't quite as many hard- core goodies as some DVD geeks would like — a score- only track would have been nice, given CE's abuse of music as a thematic device — but that's the simpering of obsessive- compulsives. This is an economical two- disc set, free of waste, and what's here is James dandy.
Video Presented in the original aspect ratio of 2.35:1 and given an anamorphic transfer, Close Encounters Of The Third Kind looks better than ever.
Disc I contains the feature, in anamorphic widescreen with Dolby Surround, Dolby Digital and DTS soundtracks. Other reviewers have said the picture's a bit soft in places — but I'd argue instead that the picture's so good you can finally see the flaws in the effects compositing, if that makes any sense. On Disc II, we find two Theatrical Trailers — a 4: 3. Special Edition." The '7.
Close Encounter" and interviewing cast, crew and UFO consultant. There's a decidedly old- school vibe to the proceedings, right down to the super- groovy split- screen effects and a narrator intoning, "It could happen to you." The "Special Edition" trailer is decidedly more modern (and better- preserved), and features the following narration: "When we saw Close Encounters for the first time, we wanted more.
Now, there is more." (While the trailer's further promise to give us "the experience of being inside" may amount to mystery- wrecking dramatic suicide on Spielberg's part, it's damned good marketing.)Next we find "The Making of Close Encounters of the Third Kind," Laurent Bouzereau's 1- hr.- 4. Collector's Edition" Laserdisc (and released in truncated form at the end of the 1. VHS). This plays more or less like a commentary track with its own visuals — which makes it, I suppose, better than a commentary track. Among the many highlights: Talking- head interviews with Spielberg, Richard Dreyfuss, a very lively and funny Bob Balaban, Teri Garr, Melinda Dillon, now- twentysomething former child actor Cary Guffey, effects masters Douglas Trumbull and Dennis Muren, cinematographer Vilmos Zsigmond, composer John Williams, editor Michael Khan, animation supervisor Robert Smith, concept artist Ralph Mc.
Quarrie and modelmaker Gregory Jein; Spielberg talking about abandoned concepts, plus actors he couldn't interest in the lead role, including Al Pacino, Dustin Hoffman, Gene Hackman and Steve Mc. Queen (whom SS remembers trying to drink with at a bar called "The Doom Room"); Dreyfuss referring at one point to "meeting with the writers," which sort of undermines that whole "written by Spielberg" credit (Paul Schrader is rumored to have taken a crack at the script); Balaban's well- practiced anecdote about convincing the producers he knew enough French to land his role, which he didn't (at which point we cut to Spielberg, who says, "I think it's important for actors to lie in interviews.."); Tons of behind- the- scenes effects info — including how Trumbull manufactured his trademark lens- flare and atmospheric light effects, plus some truly embarrassing abandoned ideas that involved UFOs forming glowing corporate logos for Mc. Donald's and Chevron; Williams dishing about the struggle he and Spielberg had finding the film's trademark five- note signature; Superb, instructive anecdotes about the tricks Spielberg used to coax a good performance out of 4- year- old Cary Guffey — one of them involving boxes and men in clown and gorilla suits; Tons of bemused dish about the effects that didn't work — including attempts to "speed up" the aliens, lift Dreyfuss on wires, and (I kid you not) put an E.
T. suit on an orangutan wearing roller skates. There is footage of some of these failed attempts, but not of the monkey, which is very sad; And Spielberg, secure in his own talent two decades later, just ripping on his own bad ideas and general naiveté in 1. Special Edition": "They said to me, 'We'll give you the money ..
Give us something we can hang a campaign on.' And so I compromised .. I never should have done, because it should have always been kept a mystery." He's so right. Moving along, we come to a generous "Deleted Scenes" menu, which features no fewer than 1. All the footage was slashed for a reason (either for pacing or, in many cases, because it simply doesn't work) but a few scenes manage to deepen character: "In the Desert" (: 4.
WWII fighters — and Lacombe telling the Balaban character, "Listen to me. You're not only going to translate what I say, but also my sentiments and my emotions.""Roy at the Power Plant (5: 3.