JonasEB
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Posts posted by JonasEB
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> {quote:title=Anuska wrote:}{quote}Later we watched The Birds, also on TCM. Same effect. It cheapened the movie a lot. The image was sharper, the main characters were brought to the foreground. But it didn't look good. It had the look of a sitcom filmed live.
Do you have Auto Motion Plus turned on? Go to your picture options menu, it should be in there, and check. If so, turn it off.
Don't know why TV makers insist on including this feature. They also wrongly associate it with the higher refresh rates most new TVs have - usually 120hz or higher. The higher refresh rate is a good thing, mostly for Blu-ray, but there is nothing good about motion interpolation features like Auto Motion Plus.
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> {quote:title=infinite1 wrote:}{quote}{quote:title=}{quote}
> > *I don't know if this was asked, or if it could even be answered by the TCM Staff, but an interesting follow up question could be Of the 66% of TCM's audience, the 18-49 year olds, what era of films do they prefer and do they prefer b+w or color? Or to put it another way, does TCM program based on the preference of the majority of their audience? For example, if TCM ever runs a survey, I don't suppose they ever have, have they?, and the majority expresses a dislike of silent films, would TCM discontinue Silent Sunday Nights?*
> >
As a member of the 18-49 demographic, I don't "prefer" anything - I'm a cinephile and I like cinema, the totality of it, Doesn't matter where it came from, doesn't matter when it was made, doesn't matter whether it's black or white or color, doesn't matter whether it's sound or silent, narrative or experimental, plotty or plotless, doesn't matter how long it is, doesn't matter what it's about.
I wish more people were that way, alas...
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> {quote:title=FredCDobbs wrote:}{quote}Maybe with your commercial Blu-Rays the sharpness adjustment shouldn't be all the way up. I don't know about your system or your TV. I'm telling you about my system and my TV. I don't know why people should get rude and mad at me because of the way I adjust my own TV in the privacy of my own home.
We were replying to your indignant tone and misrepresentation of the subject and others' words (David Hare from criterionforum.org, who you take out of context and I can tell you doesn't think the way you're presenting him) from the very start. If you haven't watched Blu-rays or commercial DVDs as you admit then you shouldn't be making broad proclamations about what those things do. How can anyone treat your position fairly if you haven't stated it to begin with all the while continuing to make assumptions on others' viewing habits and experience where you yourself just admitted that you have little experience with Blu-ray?
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You're backing down on the point of the cap...you said if we "...don't want to be able to read newspaper articles in 1933 films," we should turn the sharpness down on our TVs - stating that sharpness settings makes these things more or less readable. From that example, albeit several years later, it doesn't, and if I could find another Blu-ray sourced image from a film in which the words were perfectly readable, I would be able to read it without increasing sharpness because it simply doesn't do what you're stating it does.
And we were talking about TV viewing to begin with, it was all within that context, so bringing film into it all of a sudden is a good example of the "moving the goal posts" that I mentioned in another thread here.
And your comparison of the screen cap to a photo of a dollar bill: Again, we were talking about TV and video, not the actual film, so putting a Blu-ray in a computer drive, capturing the precise electronic image from the computer and the screen, not taking a picture with a camera and scanning it onto a computer, is completely different. I myself don't think screencaps always communicate what a disc looks like as it is playing but that's all irrelevant to the point of the cap to begin with.
{quote:title=
> }{quote}{quote:title=Krieger69 wrote:}{quote}Wow...that screen grab looks awful. My regular DVD of the movie looks better than that. Also, I think that players with an upcoverting function helps to minimize that and really does make standard definition DVD's look closer to Blu-ray high definition.
I think dissolves may have been involved in that sequence, so that would increase the amount of grain in the picture. I haven't watched Kane in a long time and I don't have the Blu-ray myself so I can't say for sure. And the old Kane DVD had a lot of noise reduction applied to it - to the point of removing rain in one sequence. The rest of the Blu-ray caps don't show that level of grain - this one for example, http://www.dvdbeaver.com/film3/blu-ray_reviews54/citizen_kane_blu-ray_/large/large_citizen_kane_blu-ray_3x.jpg - but even the newspaper Blu-ray cap looks better than DVD cap above it.
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> {quote:title=FredCDobbs wrote:}{quote} All films should have maximum sharpness and minimum grain, unless you want to do some kind of special effect.
And they do this...at the telecine stage. The sharpness settings on home TVs are completely different and if you have yours turned up all the way you are drastically altering the fixed, maximized image on the disc, not making it the way it's supposed to look (you're doing the opposite.)
Most discs are mastered from IPs or the original negative (or digital intermediates) and they are perfectly sharp (for instance, the very, very tiny credits on the title cards of the Wizard of Oz Blu-ray are pin sharp and absolutely legible at 0 sharpness) and with the natural level of grain that makes up the image on the film. If you're getting something different, your TV isn't configured properly, it's that simple.
If you like the way your HDTV looks with the sharpness turned up to the max, that's one thing and it's your right to do so, but you can't say it's correct because it definitely isn't.
> {quote:title=FredCDobbs wrote:}{quote}If you want a fuzzy picture, set your sharpness to half-fuzzy or all-fuzzy if you want. If you don't want to be able to read newspaper articles in 1933 films, turn down the sharpness on your TV. If you want to read them, turn up your sharpness.
I just did an experiment with this image - http://www.dvdbeaver.com/film3/blu-ray_reviews54/citizen_kane_blu-ray_/large/large_citizen_kane_blu-ray_1.jpg - I turned up the sharpness on my monitor to the max, the words aren't any more legible, in fact, they're probably less so.
Oh, something that hasn't quite been addressed here: The presentation of grain on DVDs and Blu-rays are completely different. The lower resolution of DVD often makes grain look slightly...I dunno...fatter than it really is (on HDTVs anyway, this is insignificant on SDTV.) With Blu-ray it looks completely different, much more like the actual film.
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> {quote:title=darkblue wrote:}{quote}He's not whining. He'd like to see TCM go back to when it showed almost all golden age Hollywood movies and no Japanese anime. He has the right to prefer that and the right to say that he does.
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> Stop whining is a phrase that could be used on every single person who has an opinion - including those who think Japanese anime should be shown and argue for it. But the phrase is intrinsically dismissive and is sure to offend.
>
Whining - making a ruckus about that one time (one time) that TCM showed those films, in a context in which it has been demonstrated that they have shown films that new before, since day 1, films which they haven't shown since, haven't shown anything like it since, all while continuing the misconception that TCM is "changing" against all reason and evidence.
If I were to say, "TCM should show Takahata's Only Yesterday again." - How does this qualify as whining? It's a mere suggestion, with no apparent background that can be gleamed from it in and of itself.
And for the record, no one here is arguing that TCM should show a regular block of Japanese animation. Fred C. Dobbs brought up an obvious case of trolling from way back in 2006 (purposely to taint the argument, btw, so spare me your sanctimony,) certain things needed to be cleared up because of it, and a tangential conversation happened.
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In Japan, animation is essentially a microcosm of the whole of cinema. Different people watch different things and the demographic spread is as wide as live action cinema or TV is. They don't think about animation the way we do here (or at least as we have since TV and the 1960s) - for them, it's simply another means of expression.
Some people over there are obsessed with animation itself - they are called Otaku. Americans, Britons, etc., have adopted these very particular habits and even the name...but in Japan it is usually a tern of derision.
Again, it's a distortion. You wouldn't study the history of the Bible based on only materials from the King James translation on - you go back to the original Greek. So you shouldn't form an impression on the scope and qualities of Japanese animation based on Americans and American TV. But I seriously doubt you actually watched any of those films that TCM aired years and years ago. The January 2006 series on Miyazaki/Studio Ghibli was a one time deal. Some of the films reaired as TCM Imports later that year. Those films haven't been on US TV in five or so years. Stop whining.
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I don't require realism, and I'm not at all against pure fun, but do prefer material that grapples with the realities of human life, whether in a realistic or fantastic context. In this case, we just disagree on how much these varying things relate to issues from real life.
I agree that Castle in the Sky is fairly light on ideas and works best simply as action/adventure but Spirited Away is very different. Although Miyazaki uses an old fashioned fantasy world, it's for a deliberate reason - his main character comes from modern day Japan, her personal character is affected by the society she lives in, and we see that she can change and adapt to the adversity of the fantasy world (not even simply change, which comes easily - she always had the capacity - it's simply who she, and we, really are. A belief in fundamental goodness.) Thematically, the similarities (chiefly greed) and social contrasts between the free modern Japan (individualism, consumerism, self-interest) and the fantasy world's feudal society (communalism, selflessness - to an oppressive degree here) explores how we are shaped by these things and the need to find a balance and reflect on the effects of modern life. It's a coming of age film for the protagonist, but it also talks about issues that are significant to everyone and, most importantly, expresses them in an exceptionally beautiful way.
Ghibli has its share of fluff (the fun but completely slight The Cat Returns) and they definitely don't have a spotless record (Earthsea is mostly a failure) but Isao Takahata's body of work, as well as Whisper of the Heart and Ocean Waves, and Miyazaki films like My Neighbor Totoro, Kiki's Delivery Service, Howl's Moving Castle (and more,) are so rich in detail and expression, capture so much about life and specific periods of life, that they're not just superb animated films - they're among the best Japan and world cinema has to offer.
"Adult" - My views on this were shaped by the boom of the 1990s (things have changed quite a bit since around the millennium.) Looking back at what was very popular at that time, like Ninja Scroll, I find them today to be the equivalent of an album with a "Parental Advisory" sticker on it; a Limp Bizkit album, for example - "Adult" content, but it attracts adolescents like flies on...(and I fully admit I was like that 14 years ago.) I lost interest in Japanese animation in 2001 and it actually was the January 2006 Miyazaki/Ghibli festival that changed my opinion about Japanese animation. What before I felt was merely graphic, here I found ideas and ingenuity, and it meshed with all of the things I was discovering at that time (especially classic Japanese cinema, Ozu, Naruse, Shimizu, etc.) The films have the thoughtfulness of maturity - this is what I consider "adult."
On Akira - I always recommend the original Ghost in the Shell over it. I prefer its lack of excess, its self-control, its efficiently crafted action sequences, and its ideas over the shaggy and very histrionic Akira. I know Akira is adapted from a large amount of source material but I think, especially given the specific point of its intervention in Japanese animation's history outside of Japan, that it is the triumph of style over substance...and I think that had a very negative impact on how we have received Japanese animation ever since.
I can have a cantankerous attitude on this particular subject but know it's nothing like the way I feel about the main subject of this thread. *;-)*
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> {quote:title=MovieMadness wrote:}{quote}If the Vampire Hunter D movies are trash then so are most Westerns as that is what they are based on- The lone gunslinger against everybody else except for helping the defenseless. I wish they had made more of those movies but alas there are only two, and they are certainly as creative as anything Studio Ghibi has done.
I'm not saying they're simply "trash" (well, Ninja Scroll is.)
Being based on westerns doesn't mean much in and of itself. There are significant differences between John Ford, Anthony Mann, Budd Boetticher, Spaghetti, Roy Rogers, Audie Murphy, etc. The mediocre Green Lantern film could trace it's lineage back through the tradition and purpose of heroism in literature and myth but that doesn't mean it can automatically claim a certain position because of it.
Beside that, the films you cite (again, with the great exception of Grave of the Fireflies) certainly aren't going to make the right impression to most people here and specifically some of the posters in these threads.
And I really don't mean to offend, I just have a pet peeve about westerners' notion about the "adult" in Japanese animation, especially in comparison to the films of Studio Ghibli. Rather, Studio Ghibli's work, with a clear perspective and feeling about life and people, is a better definition of "adult" animation. An Isao Takahata can work as effectively in documentary, his epic The Story of Yanagawa's Canals, communicating the same sophisticated worldview about individuals & society, work & culture, and the life of the land, as his animated films do.
His is an exceptionally rare talent, with much depth, and it doesn't help to equate what he does with loopy sci-fi action films and genre pastiche. These things aren't cut from the same cloth; the Japanese don't feel as such.
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First, this board should feel embarrassed about that "Anime" thread - you all got trolled very obviously and really, really hard.
No offense, but with the exception of Grave of the Fireflies (which has been on TCM before and for the benefit of some readers here is from the same company, Studio Ghibli, that got the month long tribute in January 2006,) those are precisely the kinds of things that give Japanese animation a very bad name and they are juvenile.
I would be very worried if TCM decided to show something like Ninja Scroll - the poster child for blood and ****, an old western-pushed example of the supposedly "adult" (but really juvenile) sensibilities of "Anime."
But they didn't, they showed films by Hayao Miyazaki, Isao Takahata, Studio Ghibli - an entirely different, wholly superior beast. TCM honored Miyazaki's 65th birthday for very good reason, he is arguably the most respected animator in the world today. It's still one of the best pieces of programming TCM has ever assembled.
Pay no attention to the monolithic view of Japanese animation pushed by American/Western "Anime" fandom - it's a distortion of what Japanese animation actually does and can accomplish (not that this foolishness runs one way - this thread is more than evidence of that.)
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> {quote:title=infinite1 wrote:}{quote}Here is a FACT for you and all the other FACT lovers. FACTS can be used and twisted by people on both sides of an argument to prove or disprove anything. That is why polls and lie detector tests are never the final word even though they also "stare you in the face". The FACT is that, more then just a few, TCM FANS feel that the channel is becoming less classic and our opinion is just as valid as yours.
Then this should be extremely easy for you to do - use the same numbers cited by sansfin and fxreyman to prove your argument. Surely, if what you say is true - that facts are absolutely malleable - then you should be able to make a conclusive argument in seconds. You haven't done this and I suspect you never will.
The "fact" that some TCM fans think the channel is becoming "less classic" means nothing if you can't produce any solid proof to back that belief.
Using polls and lie detector tests to make an argument...there's a huge, HUGE, difference between calling random people on the telephone and making observations based on numerous precise, direct, correct pieces of evidence (today's TCM schedules, schedules from a decade ago, schedules from 1994) available for everyone to see.
Logical fallacies abound...Once again, this is yet another example of your likeness to the Intelligent Design mob, they do the exact same thing.
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Infinite1 made this asinine comment in another threaad - "...boring foreign made silents that were made well into the talkie era and don't qualify in my mind as true silents."
This is what we're dealing with here. These people will keep moving the goal posts at every single opportunity. They're like the "Intelligent Design" mob.
(And for the record, the film hinted at above is likely Ozu's A Story of Floating Weeds, which is one of the most beautiful looking films of the 1930s and one of his many masterpieces.)
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Garbo, despite her talents, was never used particularly well. At this age she should have been playing complex characters like Nastasya Filippovna in an adaptation of The Idiot (only silent Garbo for this) but no one, least of all MGM, would have had the guts to do something like that despite having the talent quite capable of doing it. Instead we got terrible Ibanez stories like Torrent or The Temptress...
Out of the eleven silent films she made in America I only endorse two or three of them (chiefly The Kiss, but also Flesh and the Devil...and of course The Divine Woman is unfortunately lost - Sjostrom and Garbo, lots of potential there.)
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Part of the problem is the lack of attention people pay to the settings on their TVs. They have the contrast and brightness out of control and they keep the various sharpness settings on. Things like "edge enhancement" should be turned off immediately and the general sharpness setting should be set to "0" (abslutely no artifical enhancement..."0", that is unless your TV uses "50" as a neutral level and anything below it artificially softens the picture but I believe those TVs are the exception; "0" should be the natural point on most TVs.)
Grain is visible on the new Blu-ray of Fort Apache but it's light, completely unobtrusive, natural, and pleasant looking on my system, but if you turn the sharpness up to the max, it's going to look guite garish. This is the case with most of the Hollywood films I've seen on the format. I don't remember seeing anything Hollywood with Red Desert or Faces levels of graininess (and I like the way those look too - Cassavetes was proud of the effect he achieved on Faces.)
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> {quote:title=FredCDobbs wrote:}{quote}The problem is not with just showing "newer films". The problem is that most "newer films" made after 1960 aren't any good. Most made after 1966 are lousy. Most made in the 1970s are too awful to every watch even once. Etc. They get worse every decade after that, so much so that many films today are slasher vile vulgar decapitation films, castration films, mutilation films, cannibal films, torture. Films made by crazy people for crazy people. These are the kinds of films Hitler liked to watch, with real people being tortured. In Mexico now, the death cults are torturing people such as cutting off their arms and legs while they are still alive. Like what we see in some modern Hollywood films. Such is the new world we live in. No thanks, not for me.
Newsflash: Most films made **before** 1960 are terrible and if that's all you see today, you're not looking hard (not looking at all.)
The idea that TCM's faux-change (which, for the 1,000,000 time, facts prove it hasn't) is going to kill the channel is the height of shortsightedness.
Want to know what will kill TCM? Fashion fetishists. People obssessed with appearances (ex. a little boy refusing a favorite toy because it comes in a pink package.) People who aren't real cinephiles and are clearly proud of it (to adapt a famous quote, "Don't trust anyone who doesn't like films made after 1960.")
I don't think TCM's supposed methods for exanding their audience are going to help much; this is a deeper rooted problem that has to do with the lack of respect for the art form today. To get people to appreciate the films of the past they need to know and appreciate the multitude of great things that are in fact happening today, every day, every month, and every year. At least TCM is trying to do something about a very real problem. The whiners here aren't helping at all and, once again, apear to be very and shamefully proud of it.
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> {quote:title=filmlover wrote:}{quote}More on Blu from Olive on August 7th:
>
> *Rio Grande*
> *Johnny Guitar*
HURAHHHHHHHHH!!!
That makes me very, very happy!
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TCM mostly shows Turner-owned silents and silents from groups they have specific partnerships with (David Shepard, Flicker Alley, Milestone.) There's nothing "conspicuous" about the absence of that film when TCM is light on Kino product outside of Buster Keaton in the first place. But go ahead and build up phony narratives in your head if that makes you happy.
> {quote:title=infinite1 wrote:}{quote}...including some boring foreign made silents that were made well into the talkie era and don't qualify in my mind as true silents.
Thankfully no one cares what you think.
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That missing space is the third film in the Samurai Trilogy, Duel at Ganryu Island - 11:45 PM ET.
Very pleased to see Mifune get a day, although Muhomatsu is the only film I haven't seen in this lot.
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This comparison has been done before so I expect it'll all be conveniently wiped under the rug and forgotten in time for another thread on the same topic in a few weeks.
The fact that the 70s & 80s numbers are the same really says it all. Whether the 30s and 40s or 50s or 60s have more or less on the schedule changes with the months.
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> {quote:title=SansFin wrote:}{quote}The earliest TCM schedule I can find online is for January, 1998 at:
> http://web.archive.org/web/19980131213949/tcm.turner.com/CAL_TXT/9801/02/9801CT.htm
>
> There were 379 movies and 34 scheduled specials ranging from *MGM Parade Show#6* (1955) to *Festival of Shorts* (1998).
> The oldest movie was *Male and Female* (1919) which was 79 years old.
> The newest movie was *Marie: A True Story* (1998) with Sissy Spacek which was 10 years old.
>
> Per a fast-and-dirty sorting:
> 1 movie of pre-1920s.
> 11 movies of the 1920s.
> 121 movies of the 1930s.
> 101 movies of the 1940s.
> 72 movies of the 1950s.
> 51 movies of the 1960s.
> 18 movies of the 1970s.
> 4 movies of the 1980s.
>
> The April, 2012 schedule is at:
> http://www.tcm.com/schedule/monthly.html
>
> There are 444 movies and 15 scheduled specials ranging from *MGM Parade Show#9* (1955) to *Peter O'Toole: Live from the TCM Classic Film Festival* (2012)
> The oldest movie is *A Modern Musketeer* (1917) which is 95 years old.
> The newest movie is *Freaked* (1993) which is 19 years old.
>
> Per a fast-and-dirty sorting:
> 3 movies of pre-1920s.
> 20 movies of the 1920s.
> 92 movies of the 1930s.
> 89 movies of the 1940s.
> 108 movies of the 1950s.
> 109 movies of the 1960s.
> 17 movies of the 1970s.
> 4 movies of the 1980s.
> 2 movies of the 1990s.
>
> The percentage breakdowns are:
> 1998: 98.6% of movies were more than 20 years old. (374)
> 2012: 99.7% of movies are more than 20 years old. (443)
>
> 1998: 92.6% of movies were more than 30 years old. (351)
> 2012: 98.8% of movies are more than 30 years old. (439)
>
> 1998: 80.2% of movies were more than 40 years old. (304)
> 2012: 95.9% of movies are more than 40 years old. (439)
>
> 1998: 58.5% of movies were more than 50 years old. (222)
> 2012: 79.0% of movies are more than 50 years old. (351)
>
> For April, 2012 TCM is airing more movies and older movies than they did in January, 1998.
Quoted for emphasis since everyone seems to be ignoring it. Facts don't matter to some people.
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> {quote:title=willbefree25 wrote:}{quote}Why not some of the real movie lovers who are movie experts from this board?
They did that exactly three years ago.
They all, viewers and celebrity guest programmers, pick the same types of films and they all say the same types of things. Makes no difference to me.
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Would have been nice to see some silent films on the "Classic Adventure" days.
Couldn't find any of the missing Silent Sunday or TCM Imports yet.
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Just because a movie was remastered doesn't mean it's set in stone "as good as it gets." It just means it was scanned again, usually at a higher resolution, and presented with or without a lot of digital clean-up (the former can be a bad thing - the new Criterion Blu-ray of Late Spring is noticeably softer than its British counterpart because of a lazy attempt at removing damage.)
If you threw a VHS/Laserdisc era master onto DVD it would/could look better than either of the prior formats because of the increase in resolution. The DVD would match that old SD master's resolution, whereas the VHS & Laserdisc copies would be scaled down to their max resolutions. Most DVDs in the last twelve-plus years were made from HD masters (usually just 2K or 4K) but they can only display them at the max NTSC resolution of 720x480, whereas the Blu-ray takes advantage of much of the rest of the available resolution.
And 35mm film of any age, if it is of good lineage, ex. not a duplicate of a duplicate of a duplicate but an original theatrical print, interpositive or negative, has far greater "resolution" than the Blu-ray format can reproduce. Older films get the same amount of improvement with Blu-ray over DVD that newer films do.
You don't have to re-buy anything you don't want to - Blu-ray players play DVDs and always will. This has been the most consumer friendly new format yet people still make this complaint. Also, we should stop thinking about Blu-ray as "taking over" DVD; the two formats are going to co-exist for a long time...and they should (a lot of films, a lot of important films, may never make it to Blu-ray.)
Dual Format editions are good for numerous reasons. As stated before, it's a future proofing method but it also assists in the case of compatability issues, particularly for people with multi-region Blu-ray players. If my Region B disc fails to play on my multi-region player, and I can't do a firmware update because it would erase the multi-region capability, then I at least have the DVD (and usually for insignificant or no extra cost.) And then there's just the basic flexibility it affords.
As for Blu-ray reviews - a lot of people don't like film grain. Blu-ray is able to reproduce grain more authentically than any prior format and some people think the film grain is obscuring detail when it isn't (digitally cleaning it away actually wipes out detail.) Amazon.com reviews are more often than not produced by people who have no idea what they're talking about, so don't listen to them, look for professional reviews or find message boards that allow for discussion to clear up any misinformation. Blu-ray makes the film look more like a film on video, some people just can't take it.
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> {quote:title=RayFaiola wrote:}{quote} All of these films have seen previous home video release.
>
> When MERCY ISLAND gets released, THAT will be cause for celebration!
>
The Sun Shines Bright has never been available anywhere on DVD and hasn't been available in general for a very, very long time. And it's not the only one on that list.
Not to mention titles like The Quiet Man will finally have a shot at a decent looking release.
Not to mention Johnny Guitar will be coming out on Blu-ray (and possibly several other really important films on this list.)
Not to mention a lot of us have been waiting too many years for the 70s Godards.
More than cause for celebration for most of us. Thank heavens Lionsgate finally lost these.
Where the heck is Street Scene in the Sam Goldwyn acquisitions? I don't want to see any of the King Vidors thrown in the Warner Archive, they better get one of the TCM Greatest Classic Film Collection sets.
Good Films Ruined by Weak Endings
in General Discussions
Posted
> {quote:title=TopBilled wrote:}{quote}Instead, we get this trite romantic ending...an ending that probably tested well with audiences at the time, but which is not authentic to the story that Hitchcock and his wife, screenwriter Alma Reville, were likely trying to tell.
Actually, I think the ending as is, if a bit sloppy, is far more interesting than "Cary the murderer"...
Joan Fonataine is willing to overlook very serious flaws in Cary Grant's character simply for the fact that he hasn't killed anyone.
I think the film is as good an exploration of doubt and what can happen to people who do whatever they possibly can to maintain their illusions as any other important Hitchcock film and I think getting away with an ending like that in the purest way would be just as difficult in that era as would be the unpunished murderer. We hear conventionally happy music as they drive off...but the car's movement as it turns around by the cliff, visually, is more than a bit off and taking what we've seen throughout the film, the message is that while Joan may not have physically died, she is going off of the cliff in an entirely different way.