Accidentally bought it three times.

I'm going to compare the image quality on all three later tonight. The first disc I watched had some warbling effects during the court scene and a few minutes after that.

Being from the Criterion Collection, I thought there would be a couple bonuses or a second disc. Nope, just the movie. It does include deleted scenes and commentary. I'm going to have to listen to the commentary to figure out what scenes were deleted (my digital copy seems to retain all the scenes as well).

I do like the LD's album cover art. I'm going to frame one of them and hang it on my wall.

The page for the Criterion version also lists: "Video interview with Irvine Welsh, author of the novel Trainspotting"

The Criterion LD has excellent picture quality, one of the best I've seen actually.

The "uncut" version is very similar to the standard R-rated cut. This was around the mid-90's where many movies had small, almost insignificant cuts made to get the R-rating. Here's a comparison (NSFW):

http://www.movie-censorship.com/report.php?ID=912549

It was extremely rare in the LD days to have an entire extra disc full of crap, even for Criterion. In all seriousness, its pretty rare for there to actually be a hour's worth of bonus stuff worth putting out anyway. Modern DVDs come loaded with sometimes 5 or 6 hours of bonus junk, and even when I love the movie its usually just boring as hell to actually try and watch.

Brazil was many discs, but that's because Brazil is an infamous movie and can be talked about for hours. Trainspotting was a great movie, but it was a new release at the time, not though of as a classic like it is now, and it wasn't murdered by the studio so the movie itself is...pretty much all you need.

In the LD days revolutionary "bonus content" was often only a few minutes.

Also, there are a lot of Criterions with almost no "bonus". When they started doing movies just putting out the movies they chose at all was a big deal, regardless of extras. Now "Criterion Collection" means "super duper version" but back in the day it meant something just for a movie to be in the Criterion Collection at all. It meant, "this is a great movie that the studio doesn't feel like putting out on home video in the US so we will do it". That was before they released a dubbed only Supercop, obviously.

also they would release some films either uncut or in widescreen when all other releases were not.
and most would be director approved or supervised, with other releases not being that at all.

i rememeber dr. strangelove was like that, the widescreen LD was i believe a matted 1.85
and the criterion release varied from 1.33 to 1.66 and the print was kubricks own that was
used for the CAV release.

Just watched it last night till 1:30 am, love the quality of the print , music, fun to go wanted to go back to 1980's.

Trainspotting: Special Edition #325 (1996) (Uncut) [CC1477L]

Ahah!

I guess we are all prepping up for Trainspotting 2 (March release in Singapore) by revisiting the first opus!

I did that too few days ago. I was mentioning the upcoming sequel and my (younger) friends went "Trainspo-what? Never heard of it".

=> I had to organize an urgent Criterion LD movie evening to fix that of course.

They really freaked out at the beginning of the toilet scene.
And also got confused by the Scottish accent (I'm still not sure what the characters are saying in some scenes).

But overall it was refreshing to revisit a slice of 90's UK pop culture referencing famous albums cover visuals, making the music progress from 80's pop/disco to 90's electro/dance. And to think that this cheating junkie would one day become Obi-Wan Kenobi!

Choose life... But why would I want to do a thing like that? I chose not to choose life: I chose something else. And the reasons? There are no reasons. Who needs reasons when you've got LaserDisc?

Julien

The Criterion Laserdisc was one of their best releases imo. Master is overall superb with fine detail and color grading yet noise is relatively low throughout. I do remember the chroma being somewhat too strong in the scene where he takes an overdose but other than that there's really nothing to complain about. Its gatefold is certainly something to write home about as well.

And TRAINSPOTTING is back in the theaters for its 30th anniversary.

Was fun to follow a young Mark Renton back in Scotland for the evening.

And pumping dance music from the speakers for Bedrock, Ice MC and the final climax with Underworld / Born Slippy.

Tokyo even had a DJ night mixing music from that period: https://shibuya-o.com/east/schedule/ccc-presents-1996-trainspotting-30th-anniversary/



Choose life!

Julien

Related: the Nuxx reissue 12” Underworld put out last year was extremely premium. I paid way too much for it directly from them but now it seems the only option is to pay even more.

Only got the 20th anniversary LP release with the Born Slippy (NUXX) [9:43] in RECOFAN Shibuya before Covid killed the store... and an artist poster art from Vietnam!





Julien

That Criterion LD really is a gem — great master, iconic gatefold, and Born Slippy still hits just as hard all these years later.

66 and 68yo and they still kick a** !!



Julien

They aren’t just a nostalgia act either. Their 2024 album was really good. They are always doing stuff.