The Thing [Blu-ray] [4K UHD]

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Blu-ray. Overall clarity is superb. Even examining snow and the rather bleak and utilitarian furnishings and construction details around the camp good, the former particularly pleasing and a high yield upgrade over the 13-year-old original Blu-ray. It's too bad that the studio could not assemble a It then makes for great movie history trivia, that The Thing has gained such a remarkable afterlife on video, DVD and television. Both financially and critically. Carpenter's version is less a remake of the Howard Hawks' version than a more faithful adaptation of John W. Campbell's short story "Who Goes There?' (on which both were based), and critics today point out how well Carpenter plays his characters against each other. Kurt Russell will never top this one, and he gets a brilliant sparring from the entire cast.

Does the cast, a mixture of classic Hollywood leading men and wonderfully grizzled character actors, who all inhabit their roles, making each one unique and memorable, even with very little screentime for most, need discussing any further? Universal morphs The Thing onto the UHD format with a solid all-around 2160p/HDR UHD presentation. The picture reveals noticeable Cundey worked with Bottin to determine the appropriate lighting for each creature. He wanted to show off Bottin's work because of its details, but he was conscious that showing too much would reveal its artificial nature, breaking the illusion. Each encounter with the creature was planned for areas where they could justify using a series of small lights to highlight the particular creature-model's surface and textures. Cundey would illuminate the area behind the creature to detail its overall shape. He worked with Panavision and a few other companies to develop a camera capable of automatically adjusting light exposure at different film speeds. He wanted to try filming the creature at fast and slow speeds thinking this would create a more interesting visual effect, but they were unable to accomplish this at the time. For the rest of the set, Cundey created a contrast by lighting the interiors with warmer lights hung overhead in conical shades so that they could still control the lighting and have darkened areas on set. The outside was constantly bathed in a cold, blue light that Cundey had discovered being used on airport runways. The reflective surface of the snow and the blue light helped create the impression of coldness. The team also made use of the flamethrowers and magenta-hued flares used by the actors to create dynamic lighting.The first thing to notice is the richer, darker colour scheme of the image – slightly darker than the Arrow version, the vibrancy in these colours from the WCG employed, especially the dashes of colour dotted throughout the film, help give the image more depth and texture. Fine detail is considerably sharper and more noticeable, without ever feeling artificially so – the first clear examples include the establishing shot of the camp at 6:22 as the Norwegian helicopter flies over it when every mast is clearly delineated against the sky on the 4K disc, less so on the Arrow version; similarly at 8:26, the Norwegian with the gun screaming after the dog has razor sharp clothing lines on the 4K, a much softer version of which is on the Arrow disc; as MacReady arrives at the Norwegian camp by helicopter at 16:39, the crisp lines of the burnt clothing at the bottom of the screen on the 4K disc are nowhere to be found on the Arrow disc; and the list goes on… The Men of Outpost 31 – Interviews with Keith David, Wilford Brimley, David Clennon, Thomas Waites, Peter Maloney, Richard Masur and Joel Polis (51:14, 1080p) In the "chest chomp" scene, Dr. Copper attempts to revive Norris with a defibrillator. Revealing himself as the Thing, Norris-Thing's chest transforms into a large mouth that severs Copper's arms. Bottin accomplished this scene by recruiting a double amputee and fitting him with prosthetic arms filled with wax bones, rubber veins and Jell-O. The arms were then placed into the practical "stomach mouth" where the mechanical jaws clamped down on them, at which point the actor pulled away, severing the false arms. The effect of the Norris-Thing's head detaching from the body to save itself took many months of testing before Bottin was satisfied enough to film it. The scene involved a fire effect, but the crew were unaware that fumes from the rubber foam chemicals inside the puppet were flammable. The fire ignited the fumes, creating a large fireball that engulfed the puppet. It suffered only minimal damage after the fire had been put out, and the crew successfully filmed the scene. Stop-motion expert Randall William Cook developed a sequence for the end of the film where MacReady is confronted by the gigantic Blair-Thing. Cook created a miniature model of the set and filmed wide-angle shots of the monster in stop motion, but Carpenter was not convinced by the effect and used only a few seconds of it. It took fifty people to operate the actual Blair-Thing puppet. Keith David plays the role of Childs another strong character and rival / ally of MacReady, the two work well together. The disc presents a native 3840 x 2160p resolution image with the original widescreen 2.35:1 aspect ratio, and uses 10-bit video depth, High Dynamic Range, a Wide Colour Gamut(WCG) and is encoded using the HEVC (H.265) codec for HRD10.

Horror-meister John Carpenter (Halloween, Escape from New York) teams Kurt Russell's outstanding performance with incredible visuals to build this chilling version of the classic The Thing. In the winter of 1982, a twelve-man research team at a remote Antarctic research station discovers an alien buried in the snow for over 100,000 years. Once unfrozen, the form-changing alien wreaks havoc, creates terror and becomes one of them. Art Booklet (includes production notes, excerpt of the script, behind the scenes photos, early concepts)Watch in awe at the scene where it walks through the hallway and stares at a human shadow, slightly tilting its head forward in stalking position like a wild wolf. This is a fine piece of animal training, sure, but that's not the point. This is as spooky as anything ever made in a horror movie. Behind the Chameleon: The Visual Effects of THE THING – Interviews with Visual Effects Artists Peter Kuran and Susan Turner, Special Make-up Effects Artist Rob Burman, Brian Wade and Stop Motion Animators Randall William Cook, and Jim Aupperle (25:26, 1080p) I've asked [Carpenter], as he was preparing some electronic music with an assistant to edit on the film, "Why did you call me, if you want to do it on your own?" He surprised me, he said – "I got married to your music. This is why I've called you." ... Then when he showed me the film, later when I wrote the music, we didn't exchange ideas. He ran away, nearly ashamed of showing it to me. I wrote the music on my own without his advice. Naturally, as I had become quite clever since 1982, I've written several scores relating to my life. And I had written one, which was electronic music. And [Carpenter] took the electronic score. Ennio Morricone created a sound that replicated John Carpenter's own style of synthesized music. The piece is used throughout The Thing. When a Norwegian science station in Antarctica finds something in the ice it turns out to be their worst nightmare. Anxious to kill one of their dogs they take to the air and attempt to shoot it and in doing so fly over the American Antarctica research station before crashing.

The Thing's special effects were largely designed by Bottin, who had previously worked with Carpenter on The Fog (1980). When Bottin joined the project in mid-1981, pre-production was in progress, but no design had been settled on for the alien. Artist Dale Kuipers had created some preliminary paintings of the creature's look, but he left the project after being hospitalized following a traffic accident before he could develop them further with Bottin. Carpenter conceived the Thing as a single creature, but Bottin suggested that it should be constantly changing and able to look like anything. Carpenter initially considered Bottin's description of his ideas as "too weird", and had him work with Ploog to sketch them instead. As part of the Thing's design, it was agreed anyone assimilated by it would be a perfect imitation and would not know they were the Thing. The actors spent hours during rehearsals discussing whether they would know they were the Thing when taken over. Clennon said that it did not matter, because everyone acted, looked and smelled exactly the same before (or after) being taken over. At its peak, Bottin had a 35-person crew of artists and technicians, and he found it difficult to work with so many people. To help manage the team, he hired Erik Jensen, a special effects line producer who he had worked with on The Howling (1981), to be in charge of the special make-up effects unit. Bottin's crew also included mechanical aspect supervisor Dave Kelsey, make-up aspect coordinator Ken Diaz, moldmaker Gunnar Ferdinansen, and Bottin's longtime friend Margaret Beserra, who managed painting and hair work. high intensity, stage filling elements saturate the stage with commanding intensity and spacing. Overheads are not used to regular effect but do help in Carpenter's friend John Wash, who developed the opening computer simulation for Escape from New York, designed the computer program showing how the Thing assimilates other organisms. Model maker Susan Turner built the alien ship approaching Earth in the pre-credits sequence, which featured 144 strobing lights. Drew Struzan designed the film's poster. He completed it in 24 hours, based only on a briefing, knowing little about the film.source. While not so dramatically excellent as the finest UHD releases, there's no mistaking this as a serious upgrade over the 2008 disc and easily deadly creature in their midst, one that can absorb and imitate any life form it so chooses, leaving In early drafts, Windows was called Sanchez, and later Sanders. The name Windows came when the actor for the role, Thomas Waites, was in a costume fitting and tried on a large pair of dark glasses, which the character wears in the film. Russell described the all-male story as interesting since the men had no one to posture for without women. Anita Dann served as casting director. English SDH, Spanish, Czech, Dutch, French, Greek, Hungarian, Italian, Japanese, Polish, Portuguese, Romanian In fact there’s not a bad performance in The Thing everyone adds a little something to proceedings.