TCO HaB encode of the month - August

This month, we feature our first 1080p. This was a HaB encode submitted by OnkelLars.
We have had this suggested because "it's one of the best sources I've ever seen, the amount of detail is fantastic"

This month's featured encode is:

It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World - 1080p - HaB

https://i.imgur.com/l7Imn4Z.jpg

It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World (1963)

With this all-star Cinerama epic, producer/director Stanley Kramer vowed to make "the comedy that would end all comedies." The story begins during a massive traffic jam, caused by reckless driver Smiler Grogan (Jimmy Durante), who, before (literally) kicking the bucket, cryptically tells the assembled drivers that he's buried a fortune in stolen loot, "under the Big W." The various motorists setting out on a mad scramble include a dentist (Sid Caesar) and his wife (Edie Adams); a henpecked husband (Milton Berle) accompanied by his mother-in-law (Ethel Merman) and his beatnik brother-in-law (Dick Shawn); a pair of comedy writers (Buddy Hackett and Mickey Rooney); and a variety of assorted nuts including a slow-wit (Jonathan Winters), a wheeler-dealer (Phil Silvers), and a pair of covetous cabdrivers (Peter Falk and Eddie "Rochester" Anderson). Monitoring every move that the fortune hunters make is a scrupulously honest police detective (Spencer Tracy).

Virtually every lead, supporting, and bit part in the picture is filled by a well-known comic actor: the laughspinning lineup also includes Carl Reiner, Terry-Thomas, Arnold Stang, Buster Keaton, Jack Benny, Jerry Lewis, and The Three Stooges, who get one of the picture's biggest laughs by standing stock still and uttering not a word. Two prominent comedians are conspicuous by their absence: Groucho Marx refused to appear when Kramer couldn't meet his price, while Stan Laurel declined because he felt he was too old-looking to be funny.

Available for years in its 154-minute general release version, the film was restored to its roadshow length of 175 minutes on home video; the search goes on for a missing Buster Keaton routine, reportedly excised on the eve of the picture's premiere.

In 1991 MGM/UA released an extended version of the film on laserdisc that incorporated all the missing footage available at the time. Criterion is actually presenting a new extended version that includes even more rediscovered footage. To maintain continuity, they have inserted still photographs for the scenes that exist only as audio, and supplied subtitles where the audio is missing.