Wednesday, February 4, 2015

News: SILENT RUNNING (1972) Coming to Blu-ray

Universal's on a roll. Along with Gerry Anderson's Journey To The Far Side Of the Sun, the studio is releasing Douglas Trumbull's 1972 sci-fi parable, Silent Running, for the first time in HD in the United States on April 7th. It's about time!

From the Press Release:
Academy Award nominee* Bruce Dern stars in Silent Running, a sci-fi classic that journeys beyond the imagination. Botanist Freeman Lowell (Dern) has spent eight years aboard the space freighter Valley Forge preserving the only botanical specimens left from Earth under huge geodesic domes. When he receives orders to destroy the project and return home, Lowell rebels and hijacks the freighter, while plunging the craft into the gaseous rings of Saturn. From that moment on, he has only the trees, the gardens and two “Drone” robots, Huey and Dewey, to keep him company on his greatest adventure of all.
Extras appear to be the same as on the previously-released DVD:

The Making of Silent Running
Silent Running by Douglas Trumbull
A Conversation with Bruce Dern
Douglas Trumbull: Then and Now
Theatrical Trailer
Optional Feature Commentary with Director Douglas Trumbull and Star Bruce Dern


I'm pretty excited about this - Trumbull's effects deserve to be viewed in hi-def - but I still hate that cover art, recycled from the DVD release. The original poster artwork is so much better. Anyway, the Silent Running Blu-ray is available now for pre-order from Amazon ('natch).

10 comments:

  1. Already available on Blu-Ray by Eureka!

    https://www.eurekavideo.co.uk/moc/silent-running

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    1. I have adjusted the post to note that this is the first U.S. Blu-ray release.

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  2. Just realised it's a UK release only and region B. It also came with a 48-page booklet. Looks like this and 'Journey to the Far Side of the Sun' are All Region discs which is good. I don't think 'Journey' is available in the UK on Blu-Ray

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  3. Now Univesal should bring This Island Earth on blu.

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  4. would have liked the original artwork, that's on the soundtrack album, is much better than that picture shown.

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  5. "Earth's Last Battle will be Fought in Space."

    Ugh, that's such a bad tagline -- very deceptive if people aren't familiar with the movie.

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  6. Been waiting for this one. And yeah, I hate that cover, too.

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  7. It's a shame that the 48-page booklet is not also being released in the U.S. It supposedly has behind the scenes images and concept art. I have not been able to find any photos or scans of the booklet (but there might be something on YouTube).

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  8. I'm still running plain ol' DVD. Luckily I was able to snatch the regular DVD version of this from Best Buy a couple of years ago for the Nice Price of $7.99. They include a behind-the-scenes short film documentary about the making of the movie, which was super cool, especially when they discuss the making of the maintenance drones.

    Yeah, that DVD cover art totally blows. You would think that it'd be so easy to slap the original movie poster art onto the box, for pete's sake. They probably spent more time making that cheezy "new" art! No love. No love.

    Sigh. Silent Running remains one of my all-time favorite movies. I saw it sometime in the late '70s on TV (I was about 6-7 yrs. old) and fell in love with those maintenance drones...obviously bawling my eyes out at the end when Dewey was left alone in that biosphere. It never fails to get me choked up even to this day, when I think about that.

    Scary how that movie and its social commentary is hitting closer and closer to home now than it was over 40 years ago.

    Yet, on a happier note, I recently made myself a life-sized paper craft Huey (#2) to keep me company. I thought you'd dig something like this. Check it out:

    http://www.leftylimbo.com/2015/04/life-sized-papercraft-huey-maintenance-drone-from-silent-running/

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  9. Wonderful news: Intrada has FINALLY released the long out-of-print and highly sought soundtrack album to this film on CD ( legally ) for the first time. Apparently the original music master tapes been lost and a multi-year search has yielded nothing, so Intrada made their CD master from a carefully mixed transfer from a virgin album copy. The results are quite excellent.

    Disappointing that the masters couldn't be found, but a great sounding release anyway...well worth picking up. Details here; http://store.intrada.com/s.nl/it.A/id.10636/.f?sc=13&category=22848

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