Czech DVDs

[Calvin]

Yes, I couldn't work out any cheaper method than ordering two copies of Marketa plus loads of other DVDs that I'd had my eye on - my usual method of keeping postage down when ordering from central/eastern Europe, since retailers usually charge a flat rate.

But if you just want Marketa, a bulk order shared with several other people may be the best way to go. As I said, I'd be happy to coordinate such a thing once my FilmCity order turns up and I can assess whether it's worth giving them repeat business (and of course whether the Blu-ray is any good!).

Is there no chance that Second Run will upgrade it sometime in 2012?

[MichaelB]

Is there no chance that Second Run will upgrade it sometime in 2012?

Second Run have no plans to go Blu-ray for the foreseeable future. They'd love to, but the economics just don't pan out at present.

[MichaelB]

My Marketa Lazarová Blu-ray was apparently posted earlier today.

I suspect there's next to no chance of it arriving before Christmas, but I should have it by the end of next week.

More details when I get them.

[perkizitore]

This e-tailer is the cheapest I could find, the BD costs only 32 euro delivered to Europe or about 35 euro for the rest of the world!

[videozor]

Am I wrong or Marketa is expected from Criterion?
I already have Second Run's disk (as wel as docu disk on Vlacil). Should I buy this one or wait for CC?

[admira]

http://dvdfreak.bloudil.cz/freak.php?p= ... arova&dz=0" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

[John Edmond]

Nice. A bit of a shock to see how bright some shots are (the nuns in particular - the church in the background almost looks like a negative) but that may just be a statement of how murky previous releases have been.

[MichaelB]

Thanks for that - you've just reminded me that my own copy should arrive any day now.

As for Criterion, I have no idea - I've heard rumours, but they haven't amounted to anything concrete. From what the DVDFreak piece suggests, they'll almost certainly have to work from the same digital master, so AV differences will probably be fairly minimal (see the BFI/Criterion The Leopard and Red Desert situations for comparison).

The piece also raises some interesting questions about restoration ethics - specifically, whether it's acceptable to "improve" on the original now that the director is no longer around to authorise such improvements. It sounds to me that the NFA's main priority was to duplicate the 1967 release as closely as they could, even if this meant retaining "mistakes" that could have been fixed. As a former national film archive curator myself I can understand where they're coming from, even if I can also sympathise with the naysayers who are after a "perfect" version that has never actually been screened anywhere.

On the subject of murkiness, the 35mm prints (or at least the English-subtitled one that played a few engagements in the UK) were also pretty dark - though since the restoration was supervised by Vláčil's regular cinematographer František Uldrich (who didn't shoot Marketa itself but did work on the original grading, presumably after Vláčil fell out with the credited DOP Bedřich Baťka), it has a fair amount of authority behind it.

[John Edmond]

I'm not worried about the brightness. Considering Vláčil's (and Uldrich's) demonstrated talent for white on white in The Valley of the Bees it seems highly plausible that it was their original intention. And the rest of the shots look exactly like I hoped (see: cowled man and tree).

[McCrutchy]

So my Golden Sixties box set is supposedly still in transit after being shipped out on 24 November (!). I e-mailed the supplier and they gave me a tracking number, which tells me the package hasn't moved since 25 November, and neither Czech Post nor USPS show the item as having arrived in the USA from the Czech Republic...I thanked them for the tracking number but I told them I'd soon be forced to open a dispute and retrieve my funds from PayPal (they have a 45 day window). I hate to do that, as they've been quite helpful, but it's very strange that an item could just be in a holding pattern for over a month like this, even with the holiday shipping period.

[Perkins Cobb]

I remember getting things from Slovakia or the Czech Republic more quickly than that, but Poland always took at least six weeks and I just waited over a month for a package from Amazon Italy.

[MichaelB]

I order quite a bit of stuff from multiple suppliers in Poland, the Czech Republic, Slovakia and Hungary, and in general it takes about a week from shipping notification to actual delivery - sometimes a bit less, but rarely much more. In fact, if it wasn't for the Christmas holidays, I'd expect to have Marketa Lazarová by now (it was shipped on the 22nd), and there's every chance it'll turn up today or tomorrow.

But that's to Britain (i.e. a fellow EU member state), which may make a difference. Certainly, the geographical distance is far less.

[Perkins Cobb]

There was a theory floating around earlier this year that large packages from Europe were taking longer to clear US customs because the homeland-security idiots had instituted some new and spectacularly inefficient way of inspecting them. Dunno if that's true, but I have noticed a slowdown since around that time, even from Amazon UK, which used to be really fast. But the 6-week Poland rule goes back long before that.

[MichaelB]

Yes, I imagine it's far less convoluted if everything's kept within the EU. In theory, there shouldn't be any significant customs issues - I imagine they do the occasional random spot check, but in theory everything should just be waved through.

That said, my copy of Marketa still hasn't arrived - but this is only the fifth working day since the shipping notice was sent (since Monday and Tuesday were public holidays), so it's no big deal.

[admira]

Spalovač mrtvol (The Cremator) at DVDFreak (Label: Bildstörung, NO ENG subtitles)

[MichaelB]

Bizarrely, it looks as though the original non-anamorphic Czech release is still the one to go for: the subtitles drift out of sync briefly at one point, but at least it has them.

[Calvin]

Have you received your copy of Marketa Lazarova yet?

[MichaelB]

OK, it's arrived, and I set aside the morning to watch it properly, and...

Good things

• The Blu-ray image ranges from "very noticeable" to "massive" upgrade in definition, stability, physical condition, you name it;
• No evidence whatever of any unnecessary digital "enhancement": there's a lovely light dusting of grain throughout;
• A far stronger sense of texture and physicality: snow, stone, bark, chainmail and fur are all beautifully delineated, as are beards and wrinkles;
• Sound is stronger than the DVD, to the extent that I could turn the volume up much higher (and consequently could hear rather more of Zdeněk Liška's amazing score), though we're obviously still talking 1967 vintage mono. But I can well believe that this is as good as it's ever going to sound;
• Subtitles seem fine: a different translation from Second Run's (and it's in American English), but no typos or grammatical flubs. On names, Czech diacritics are present where necessary (hardly surprising for a Czech release, but worth mentioning anyway);
• My Czech is barely up to basic tourist level these days, but it's nice to have optional subtitles in the language to clarify what people are actually saying;
• Uncut (aside from a second or two off the beginning; see below);
• Region-free 1080p - I checked against my player's Region A settings (though the supplementary DVD is, unsurprisingly, PAL).

Less good things

• A fraction of the very beginning is cut off affecting the start of Liška's music. Trivial but irritatingly sloppy, as the Second Run disc doesn't do this (obviously, as I wouldn't have known otherwise);
• The intertitles, while clean as a whistle (and revealing a textured background that didn't come across on the DVD), look a little 'frozen' for my taste - though this may be a by-product of the clean-up: I'm attuned to expect print damage to be most visible here!

Unavoidable things

• Based on the Second Run DVD, the 35mm print (I haven't seen the whole thing in 35mm, but I have seen excerpts courtesy of Peter Hames' talk on Vláčil) and now this new restoration, it's clear that parts of the film were intended to be very dark. There's certainly more shadow detail visible in most cases, but not every one;
• The controversial 'overexposed' shots are clearly deliberate - they make artistic sense (they tend to accompany either pagan/Christian visions or explicitly religious material such as the scenes inside and outside the cathedral), and since the restoration was signed off by the guy who graded the film in the first place (Vláčil's regular cinematographer František Uldrich), it's hard to imagine it was an accident;
• Any shot with opticals over it (for instance, 'Part One: The Witch') is grainy as hell;
• Some shots are noticeably grainier than others: almost certainly down to original materials and challenging shooting conditions.

Extras

Aside from biographies (in Czech and English) and stills galleries (accompanied by music), there are four extras, of which by far the best is an archive interview with Vláčil himself from 1989, talking exclusively about Marketa (it appears to have been made for Czech TV, and clips are sadly panned-and-scanned). Two of the other extras are essentially straight-to-camera lectures by a film critic and an art historian (I'm not a fan of these on principle: if there's no visual content, why not just write a booklet essay that will take half the time to read?), while the third is a ten-minute film about the restoration: you know the drill. These are all on a supplementary DVD, with the main feature on either a BD or a DVD depending on which package you bought. The booklet contains a short essay, biographies and critical quotes, in both Czech and English.

All in all, I'm thrilled with this: the extras are a bit blah, but I'd have been happy with a barebones BD.

[Perkins Cobb]

Bizarrely, it looks as though the original non-anamorphic Czech release is still the one to go for: the subtitles drift out of sync briefly at one point, but at least it has them.

The Dark Sky edition of Cremator is anamorphic and has English subs, of course.

[vertovfan]

Another detail about the Czech Marketa blu - the extras disc is region-2 locked (confirmed in a region-1 player that does play region-free PAL discs). Strange, considering the feature disc is region-free. The film itself looks wonderful.

[John Edmond]

Thanks for that MichaelB, I doubt any of the blu-ray review sites will come close to providing as much information.

And I'm glad I'm not the only one bugged by frozen intertitles. I guess it's a restoration short cut: pick the best quality frame, clean it up, and then reproduce the frame until you've replaced all the other more damaged frames - so much quicker than restoring each individual frame. At a viewing of Metropolis everybody looked at me like I was mad when I complained about that.

[MichaelB]

And I'm glad I'm not the only one bugged by frozen intertitles. I guess it's a restoration short cut: pick the best quality frame, clean it up, and then reproduce the frame until you've replaced all the other more damaged frames - so much quicker than restoring each individual frame. At a viewing of Metropolis everybody looked at me like I was mad when I complained about that.

Standard practice at the BFI National Archive (and probably elsewhere) is to rephotograph the restored title card on 35mm, thus reinstating the grain and very slight judder that makes it "feel" authentic.

But it's a very minor issue: for the most part the restoration looked better than I was expecting, given the controversy over the six-week deadline and other issues.

[Calvin]

Looks like I'll have to pick Marketa up next time I go on a spending spree - it sounds great! Now if someone could take it upon themselves to give the same treatment to other Eastern European classics I would be a very very happy guy but I suppose it's a small miracle for even Marketa to get a Blu Ray release.

[Perkins Cobb]

I suppose it's a small miracle for even Marketa to get a Blu Ray release.

Actually I would hope this makes it a legitimate Criterion contender, now that there's a viable HD master available.

[Calvin]

I went ahead and ordered Marketa Lazarova from gorila.sk. Has anyone ordered from them before?