Holly Goodhead's Deadly Diary - vanishing dart!
emtiem
SurreyPosts: 5,948MI6 Agent
On another forum I visit it was pointed out that the current Blu Rays and their restored version of Moonraker have managed to restore the picture so much in the scene of Bond discovering Holly's gadgets that you can no longer see the dart fire out of her diary! It's something I've not spotted before, but if you look at an old VHS or DVD copy you can see the dart leaving the barrel for a couple of frames, but on the Blu Ray version it has been erased: nothing comes out to accompany the sound effect. Certainly there's a clip on YouTube you can check out and there's no sign of a dart.
Apparently this is probably something to do with the Lowry process where the frame was scanned and digital noise reduction performed, and I guess the dart seemed to be an imperfection which it smoothed out. A real shame as it's a nice bit of practical effects work which has been lost. I wonder if anything else like this has gone missing from the films?
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That's interesting. MR is not one I've bought on Blu-ray (I had it on Betamax, then VHS, then DVD, then Special Edition, then Ultimate Edition if I remember correctly cos you gotta draw the line somewhere) so thanks for pointing that out.
Can confirm that on the Ultimate Edition DVD (2006) that there is no blur (no sign) of the dart. Same with a copy of the Blu Ray and copy of the UHD. No blur out of the diary, no blur from any of the darts from this film before they hit the target.
MR is already a famous case of the Mandela Effect due to Dolly and her (missing?) braces- have we found another one? 😁
No, it's definitely there in earlier versions. Can I post a video link clip?
From the VHS:
The films were restored by Lowry for the 2006 DVDs so I was wrong to say it was visible on that (it might be on the earlier Special Editions, I don't know); other things like the wire holding the model helicopter in FRWL had disappeared for them as well.
Of course. We're just not posting pics etc as much as we used to.
Great, thank you. Here's a version from VHS or perhaps TV broadcast, I'm not sure (about 45 secs in):
Despite the quality you can even spot the film wobble to one side as the dart in the wall is cut in! :)
Here's the BR version:
I thought this was quite interesting (again not my pics!):
FRWL Special Edition:
FRWL Blu Ray:
See what's missing? 😊
If it's what I'm thinking of, that could be deliberate.
It will be….deliberate, that is 🙂
That’s what the article says, yes.
https://www.mtv.com/news/m3358a/to-high-def-with-love-restoring-007
That's an interesting article which in a way raises a 'reverse censorship' issue over the integrity of filmmaking as technology seeks to improve or restore older movies for the modern era. It doesn't always do what it sets out.
And of course in the case of the dart, some things go missing accidentally because of the nature of the technology. I read somewhere else that some arrows disappeared from a version of Gladiator.