MK2

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drdoros
Joined: Fri Nov 23, 2007 4:36 pm

Re: MK2

#101 Post by drdoros » Mon Mar 21, 2011 8:06 pm

Jonathan S wrote:The Stroheim box looks almost identical to the US Kino releases, including the shortening of the documentary for copyright reasons. (The uncut version, which I recorded off a Channel 4 broadcast in the 1980s, has clips from Greed and other films that are reduced to stills in Kino's version.)
I would be heavy hand when I was working at Kino. :oops: The film was made before the VHS age and clip rights were never secured for video. Rather than go back and try to license every clip from the studios for something that would sell hundreds of copies, Pat approved the idea of me going back and replacing the clips. It was actually fairly good work for the video editing possibilities back then. As for the "banned" outtakes from Queen Kelly, that was actually a reel of film salvaged from the flood back in the 1930s that Swanson had kept in her collection. It also had clips from Indiscreet. In that reel were a few minutes of footage I was able to use for the 1985 version. The African footage came from Janice Allen and the Swanson introduction came from a 2" quad found at the WNET archives -- that was the hardest thing to restore.

Dennis D
Milestone F&V

Jonathan S
Joined: Sat Jun 07, 2008 3:31 am
Location: Somerset, England

Re: MK2

#102 Post by Jonathan S » Tue Mar 22, 2011 5:53 am

I did think the re-editing of the documentary was well done, especially for that time - I was just surprised to find it cut when I'd been so used to watching my complete off-air tape. I expect Warner and similar companies would have demanded hefty license fees and it seems to be increasingly the norm even for companies like Criterion to remove clips that would have to be licensed, and usually with nothing so subtle as replacement stills. When I've been able to compare an old broadcast with a re-edited version, I often find that non-copyright material shot for the documentary (such as speech laid over the clips) has been hacked out too, not always necessarily.

I'm actually quite jealous that you were even able to use stills, as when my Laurel & Hardy book was published in 1995, my publisher (Cassell, now Continuum) demanded that I secure and if necessary pay for copyright permission to include stills from these 1920s & 30s films, despite the fact everyone else seemed to publish L&H stills without permission. When the then copyright holder of the films was approached, they of course demanded an exorbitant figure (basically my entire advance royalties) so the book was published without any stills and, unsurprisingly, was a commercial flop.

I talked to someone who had published film books in the UK in the 1960s & 70s, who told me that then movie companies would be only too willing to allow free publication of - and even supply - film stills, as they saw it as useful promotion of works they owned. But all that seems to have changed, at least in my experience. I've also noticed this in the production of new documentaries by the BBC and similar. Up to around the 1990s, if one was made about a particular Hollywood director, you could expect to see extensive clips from films made at different studios. Now they usually rely on quick snatches from trailers (presumably PD) with maybe just one or two genuine, longer extracts.

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MichaelB
Joined: Fri Aug 11, 2006 6:20 pm
Location: Worthing
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Re: MK2

#103 Post by MichaelB » Tue Mar 22, 2011 7:23 am

I remember being struck by the way that Jonathan Ross's Aki Kaurismäki documentary from the early 1990s featured clips from all of Kaurismäki's features up to then (including titles never distributed in Britain at that point), whereas most similar TV profiles were and are hamstrung by rights clearance issues.

Ironically, the version included as an extra on one of Artificial Eye's Kaurismäki volumes removes every trace of I Hired a Contract Killer - which, ironically, the original documentary was partly made to help promote! But it turned out to be a decidedly minor Kaurismäki film, and the loss of those clips didn't hurt the documentary at all. In fact, if anything, it's better in the shorter, tighter cut.

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andyli
Joined: Thu Sep 24, 2009 4:46 pm

Re: MK2

#104 Post by andyli » Tue Sep 11, 2012 6:41 pm

Review and screencaptures for the new MK2 blu-ray of Jules et Jim. It is sourced from the new 50th Anniversary restoration. From what I've heard the flipped-image scene has been fixed.

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feihong
Joined: Thu Nov 04, 2004 12:20 pm

Re: MK2

#105 Post by feihong » Tue Sep 11, 2012 10:17 pm

Those caps look better than the time I saw it in 35mm. The contrast is really lovely.

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mfunk9786
Under Chris' Protection
Joined: Fri May 16, 2008 4:43 pm
Location: Philadelphia, PA

Re: MK2

#106 Post by mfunk9786 » Tue Sep 11, 2012 10:43 pm

andyli wrote:Review and screencaptures for the new MK2 blu-ray of Jules et Jim. It is sourced from the new 50th Anniversary restoration. From what I've heard the flipped-image scene has been fixed.
Is it still misogynist claptrap? ;)

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tenia
Ask Me About My Bassoon
Joined: Wed Apr 29, 2009 11:13 am

Re: MK2

#107 Post by tenia » Wed Sep 12, 2012 1:28 am

On the other end, Le dernier métro release is absolutely dreadful.

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feihong
Joined: Thu Nov 04, 2004 12:20 pm

Re: MK2

#108 Post by feihong » Thu Sep 27, 2012 9:17 pm

I see nothing about subtitles. I assume the Jules et Jim disc has none.

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pointless
Joined: Tue Nov 07, 2006 9:55 am

Re: MK2

#109 Post by pointless » Tue Aug 25, 2015 10:07 pm

Hotel du Nord (Marcel Carné, 1938) - November 4th
Hotel du Nord was recently restored with the support of the CNC. 2K image restoration (from a 4K scan of the image nitrate negative) done by Digimage Classics. Earlier this summer, the restoration was introduced in the Classics section of the Cannes Film Festival.
Image

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