CAPRICORN ONE Longer Japanese Cut Coming to Blu-Ray

[AndyDursin]

Great catch Eric, because I was about to say, one of the few questions I had with the movie was Huddleston and whether or not he was "in on it". He just disappears in the second half of the film pretty much. It still could've been made clearer or alluded to more, but you're right, that is at least brought forward more clearly.

[Eric Paddon]

Yeah, if Huddleston was in on it, it does make clear that his reaction to seeing Brolin at the service is definitely of an, "Oh, ****!" variety and not one of stunned shock.

Looking at the rest of it, there may or may not have been a second or two of trims here and there in the final cut to collectively account for the running time (I think I remember during the landing we got a shot of a fire station listening to the coverage that I don't think was in the main cut) but definitely no additional scenes.

[AndyDursin]

I just thumbed through the booklet. While obviously in Japanese, the last few pages detail the additional material of the Japanese cut. It shows some stills from that central docking sequence, naturally, but also shots from two other scenes -- the bit with Gould in the Arizona ghost town, and some shots of Brolin on the wing of Savalas' plane at the end. Must be a few, brief additional shots in those two sequences, which would make sense because there's about a minute or so of other footage NOT from the docking scene in this cut.

[Eric Paddon]

Yeah, now that you mention that I think in the ghost town there are more shots fired at Gould than in the final cut. Going by memory I think maybe there was only one shot fired at Gould but in the Japanese cut there's about six shots fired at him and if that's the case, then Hyams may have felt it was ridiculous for that many to be fired and miss and that the gunman would drive away (whereas one shot as a "warning" might have made the point better).

[AndyDursin]

As a side note I re-bought the soundtrack album (re-recording) -- the Perseverance CD is dirt-cheap ($6 shipped at Moviemars.com) and sounds great (seems to have more detail than the GNP Crescendo CD that coupled it with "Outland" years back).

That re-recording is one of Goldsmith's best albums, bar none. The London performance has a much grander scale than the confined original score tracks, and Goldsmith's editing of the music for a listening experience results in something far more cohesive than the original soundtrack can provide.

The whole notion of re-recordings is one of those things that's been lost over the decades -- plus there's no music worth that kind of treatment being written today. CAPRICORN ONE may be one of Jerry's best dramatic scores altogether -- it has action, suspense and a great love theme on top of it, without being overly syrupy.

[Paul MacLean]

That re-recording is one of Goldsmith's best albums, bar none. The London performance has a much grander scale than the confined original score tracks, and Goldsmith's editing of the music for a listening experience results in something far more cohesive than the original soundtrack can provide.

He recorded the album at Abbey Road, whereas as the soundtrack recording was done at the MGM (now Sony) scoring stage. Agreed on the content selection and editing that made up the album.

CAPRICORN ONE may be one of Jerry's best dramatic scores altogether -- it has action, suspense and a great love theme on top of it, without being overly syrupy.

The track "Break Out" on the rerecording is arguably the best action music Goldsmith ever wrote.

It's also an interesting score in that it contains no woodwinds. Just strings, brass, percussion and piano.

[AndyDursin]

This I had no idea about...it wasn't Karen Black's name in the box originally.

[Eric Paddon]

Hyams said in his commentary track that Bergen was originally cast in the part but had to withdraw to do another project.

[Edmund Kattak]

I finally was able to order a copy from DiabolikDVD. It's an expensive release in general due to it being an import, but at least it was less expensive than some of the other outlets out there. This is one of those movies I grew up with as a kid in the late 70's when it came out and was a staple of early cable when there was nothing else to watch on HBO in 1980.

[AndyDursin]

Atomic has it for $48 shipped if anyone is looking for a copy:

https://www.atomicmoviestore.com/produc ... 6189&_ss=r

My JB Hifi copy was even cheaper ($40) but it just shipped after I ordered it back in September. Hopefully it'll be here before Christmas! (It ought to be, Aussie Air Mail has improved quite a bit since COVID)