Why Won't They Release Only What I Want?

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tenia
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Re: Why Won't They Release Only What I Want?

#1251 Post by tenia » Thu May 26, 2022 8:12 am

It's often I often say to distributors and labels working on catalogue titles : if it wasn't for video releases, many restorations would only be seen locally by a few hundreds people lucky enough to live around theaters showing those during re-releases. Video releases, however, ensure these are visible on a nationwide scale.
Now that I've been covering regularly Lyon Lumière Festival, I can confirm that first hand, since I've seen restorations (and sometimes movies altogether) still not available on a larger scale in France (and sometimes in the world).

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Re: Why Won't They Release Only What I Want?

#1252 Post by MichaelB » Thu May 26, 2022 8:28 am

Poland's incredibly frustrating in this respect because they've carried out tons of restorations over the last decade (the number must be in triple figures) but they're asking for ridiculous sums for the international distribution rights, which simply aren't commercially realistic for labels outside Poland.

This is why Second Run's Polish BDs amount to a big round zero to date - and it's absolutely not for want of trying on their part; you have only to look at the number of Czech and Slovak BDs they've released to get some idea of what their Polish BD catalogue have looked like if it had been down to them!

Thankfully, Polish-label BDs almost always have English subtitles, which is how I've managed to amass no fewer than twenty Andrzej Wajda films in HD (to cite another unarguably major European auteur who's seen the bulk of his output get BD premieres within the last two or three years), but realistically only a tiny minority of people are going to import from Poland - and a lot of restorations still haven't made it to physical media even there. Most notoriously, nearly six years after I saw the restorations on the big screen, we still haven't had English-friendly Blu-rays of Andrzej Żuławski's three 1970s Polish films.

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tenia
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Re: Why Won't They Release Only What I Want?

#1253 Post by tenia » Thu May 26, 2022 10:23 am

I wonder if it might also be because of Polish' labs current view on restoration, which often relies on heavily filtering the grain out. Some restorations escaped that, but too many haven't, and I can imagine some of the most technical-minded Western labels being put off by this.

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Re: Why Won't They Release Only What I Want?

#1254 Post by MichaelB » Thu May 26, 2022 11:09 am

I can say with a fair amount of certainty that it has nothing to do with that. And I'd challenge your "often", although admittedly I'll have seen far more recent Polish restorations than you have.

(The vast majority are fine, but because some of the early and very high-profile ones like The Saragossa Manuscript were excessively scrubbed, it's created the unfortunate impression that this is more the norm than it actually is.)

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dwk
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Re: Why Won't They Release Only What I Want?

#1255 Post by dwk » Thu May 26, 2022 11:36 am

tenia wrote:
Thu May 26, 2022 6:49 am
The only ones I can say I've grown uninterested by are Arrow, but that's because I used to buy most of their slashers and have realised I find most of them pretty crappy and so have learnt not to bother anymore, but that's just me since there's clearly a market of happy customers for Hell High (etc).
I am curious if Ewan Cant leaving Arrow will have any effect on their output of slashers, since, unless I'm mistaken, he was a driving force behind those releases.
MichaelB wrote:
Thu May 26, 2022 7:17 am
The notion that amazing releases "dried up five years ago" is simply not true in any way, shape or form - hell, even in terms of unquestionably world-class European auteurs we've had Kino's Miklós Jancsó box out just this month. Which is an absolute banquet of a release, and one that was scarcely imaginable fifteen years ago, when the best we could manage was fuzzy letterboxed SD presentations, sometimes without English subtitles.
Or the Jean Eustache titles that should be getting released over the next couple of years.

It is funny, I had seen a tweet regarding Eureka's Police Story UHD set that said Criterion was having their lunch handed to them from other labels. Which is, I think, asinine. On a number basis alone, by the time the Police Story set comes out, they will have released at least 16 UHDs. It also makes the assumption that Criterion has access to Police Story 3 (they don't) and that the Police Story set they released on Blu-ray was a strong enough seller to justify the expense of a UHD (with some exceptions, like Bruce Lee, Hong Kong titles seemed to never really sell all that great in the US. So it is entirely possible that Police Story under performed for them.)

And frankly if the choice is something like the Eustache films or a SDR UHD upgrade of The Great Escape or some other UHD upgrade of something they released on Blu-ray in the last 2 or 3 years, I'd much rather they opt for the former.

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tenia
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Re: Why Won't They Release Only What I Want?

#1256 Post by tenia » Sat Jun 04, 2022 9:42 am

MichaelB wrote:
Thu May 26, 2022 11:09 am
I can say with a fair amount of certainty that it has nothing to do with that.
Not sure if it's a good thing or not, but thanks for this precision in any case.
MichaelB wrote:
Thu May 26, 2022 11:09 am
And I'd challenge your "often", although admittedly I'll have seen far more recent Polish restorations than you have.
That's most likely the case, but out of the ones I know of, here are those that are most likely (if not quite certainly) digitally tinkered with : Brunet Will Call, Kingsajz, Gangsterzy i filantropi, Poszukiwany poszukiwana, Nie lubie poniedzialku, The Saragossa Manuscript and The Hourglass Sanatorium (indeed the 2 most known cases), Knights of the Teutonic Order, The Last Day of Summer, Pharaoh, Barwy Ochronne, Salto, Eroica, Walkover and Knife in the Water.
Several of those were included in the Martin Scorsese Presents sets : out of the 24 movies included in them, 9 are clearly digitally tinkering with (with The Wedding additionnally looking either like an older master or a clearly digitally smoothed new remaster).
A Polish lab (DiFactory) also said at Lyon Film Festival's professionnal side of things in 2019 that they don't work like us "European who always want to keep grain grain grain" (before presenting some of their works that was clearly DNRed).
I also saw in 2021 a presentation from DiFactory (a new restoration of 89mm od Europy) which was again obviously grain managed.

If that's just bad luck and I've stumbled upon the few bad ones, then my bad (1) and hurray ! (2) but these, the claims from the Polish lab and what I saw at Lyon during the pro events are what give me the impression of a systemic issue.

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Re: Pasolini 101

#1257 Post by vsski » Sun Mar 12, 2023 7:26 am

I’m very happy to see Criterion release this even though I’m not a Pasolini fan. Given the licenses Criterion is believed to have this is the type of release they should be focusing on. Leave Frownland, Daddy Longlegs and Cooley High to others and don’t worry about appeasing the woke crowd.

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Re: Pasolini 101

#1258 Post by yoloswegmaster » Sun Mar 12, 2023 7:34 am

vsski wrote:
Sun Mar 12, 2023 7:26 am
I’m very happy to see Criterion release this even though I’m not a Pasolini fan. Given the licenses Criterion is believed to have this is the type of release they should be focusing on. Leave Frownland, Daddy Longlegs and Cooley High to others and don’t worry about appeasing the woke crowd.
Ugh. Glad we found Svet's alt account.

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Re: Pasolini 101

#1259 Post by vsski » Sun Mar 12, 2023 7:50 am

Did Svet review these titles? I actually never read any reviews of them and frankly don’t give much credence to his reviews.
As I mentioned before, and every time I do I seem to rub people the wrong way here, Criterion sits on a treasure trove of licenses and at best takes forever to publish anything outside their channel.
I for one truly believe their release strategy has changed and if titles like Frownland, Daddy Longlegs and Cooley High are truly what sells over Fellini, Godard, Pasolini, Chabrol, Rivette, Kurosawa, Ozu, etc. (fill in your favorite director) then the world of physical media is clearly not the same anymore and I should just rewatch what I have rather than hoping for the next upgrade of titles from those widely acknowledged directors.

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Re: Pasolini 101

#1260 Post by MichaelB » Sun Mar 12, 2023 7:58 am

It's hardly "appeasing the woke crowd" to want to move outside traditional comfort zones. I much prefer working on titles that don't constitute the umpteenth repackaging of someone whose place in the canon is already rock-solid - in fact, Pasolini 101 is one of the least interesting new Criterion releases to me because I have all these films bar Mamma Roma on perfectly decent Blu-ray releases already.

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Re: Pasolini 101

#1261 Post by vsski » Sun Mar 12, 2023 8:17 am

I don’t disagree with you on the Pasolini release as I have all the UK BDs of his titles and while the new release may be slightly better than those, it doesn’t make it a must buy for me.
But how do you explain the significant increase in titles of African American directors and actors, female directors and Asian minorities since the publication of the New York Times article?
And again, as I have said before I don’t mind Criterion publishing titles that are different from the established ones, but I feel in the last years it has been at the expense of some directors that are not as well represented as Pasolini.
You, Michael, have reminded me time and again that Naruse - to take one example - didn’t sell in the UK so no one wants to touch him. My argument would be that if a company like Criterion puts its muscle behind him it will make a difference. Now in Naruse’s case existing restoration elements and licenses may well play a role, but my point is that Criterion is still the 500 pound gorilla in the market (even though I think that other labels like Indicator frequently surpass them in terms of extras) and they do have a treasure trove of licenses no one else has, so why not focus on these titles? Does the new release strategy really work for them and are these titles selling a lot better than the better known directors? And if yes, ok, then I really am a dinosaur who should die out, but somehow I find it hard to believe that if other labels would get their hands on these licenses they wouldn’t publish them.
So all I’m saying is if Criterion doesn’t want to publish them for whatever reason, fine, let others do it.

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Re: Pasolini 101

#1262 Post by Finch » Sun Mar 12, 2023 8:26 am

I have no interest in some of Criterion's "non-canon" titles but the reality is if they focused only on upgrading the masters for each new format, then there'd be complaints (and not just from the "woke" crowd) that they don't explore and expand, and are getting predictable. Way I see it, if Criterion don't release something I'm interested in, another label will have something that does, and then the pendulum swings back eventually. And Criterion do upgrade the masters as evidenced by the 4k for Suzuki's Branded To Kill, though it may admittedly not be at the pace and the regularity you want.

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Re: Pasolini 101

#1263 Post by Drucker » Sun Mar 12, 2023 8:29 am

Nearly every director you've mentioned Criterion don't release enough of has been the backbone of the company for decades. And other labels have taken up the mantle of releasing films of Chabrol and Rivette. I'm not sure what more Criterion could do to service the directors you've named (unless you won't be satisfied until their entire catalogue is released under the Criterion banner?)

Additionally, it's exactly the woke crowd that helps keep an artist like Pasolini relevant, as his films play repertory theaters alongside Bill Gun and Marlon Riggs.

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Re: Pasolini 101

#1264 Post by rrenault » Sun Mar 12, 2023 9:04 am

Personally, I think blaming cultural trends in general on woke-ism can often become a straw man. Sometimes I want to say "Just let people like Jeanne Dielman and Daughters of the Dust and move on with your day". Who cares? It's not like they're getting praised in bad faith.

On the other hand, I think some people lean too heavily into the idea that harping on Pasolini, Antonioni, and Bresson necessarily serves a reactionary agenda. It doesn't in my opinion.

Either way, people need to stop just assuming any praise either for a film from a non-Western country or by a Western-based filmmaker who's not a white male is being made in bad faith, so this is a scenario where both sides can be wrong at times. Besides, I doubt your average "woke latte millennial" in Brooklyn gives a hoot about Cleo from 5 to 7 or Touki Bouki, yet people act like it's "because of them" the film canon has gone haywire.

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Re: Pasolini 101

#1265 Post by MichaelB » Sun Mar 12, 2023 10:03 am

rrenault wrote:
Sun Mar 12, 2023 9:04 am
Personally, I think blaming cultural trends in general on woke-ism can often become a straw man. Sometimes I want to say "Just let people like Jeanne Dielman and Daughters of the Dust and move on with your day". Who cares? It's not like they're getting praised in bad faith.
I know plenty of people who voted for Jeanne Dielman entirely sincerely. And the choice really shouldn't be that contentious - the film's nearly half a century old and has appeared in previous polls, so it's not as if it suddenly came out of nowhere.

(To my shame, I still haven't seen it, but I do need to remedy this soon.)
On the other hand, I think some people lean too heavily into the idea that harping on Pasolini, Antonioni, and Bresson necessarily serves a reactionary agenda. It doesn't in my opinion.
I don't remotely think that, but the fact is that those three filmmakers are very well catered for on physical media, in that I have English-friendly releases of the vast majority of their output on Blu-ray already, in most cases in excellent editions. Which is why I'm usually far more enthused by the arrival of something that I don't already know about, especially if it's been intelligently contextualised. Or indeed something that I do know about, but presented in demonstrably far superior editions to anything that's gone before - for instance, Kino's Miklós Jancsó box, the first time I've ever seen a halfway decent copy of The Red and the White. And if anyone does a high-quality Mexican Buñuel box to a similar standard, I'll be ecstatic - but my reaction to yet another appearance of the 1964-77 Buñuel catalogue (superb though many of those films are) is, unsurprisingly, "meh".

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Re: Pasolini 101

#1266 Post by rrenault » Sun Mar 12, 2023 10:06 am

While we're on the subject of Buñuel, I'm surprised Viridiana has never gotten an English-friendly blu-ray in either the US or the UK.

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Re: Pasolini 101

#1267 Post by DarkImbecile » Sun Mar 12, 2023 10:06 am

Am I the only one not grasping how Frownland and the Safdies fit into appeasing the wokes?

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Re: Pasolini 101

#1268 Post by yoloswegmaster » Sun Mar 12, 2023 10:12 am

It's because both films are set in NYC, the home of the wokes. Anyways, to bring this thread back on-topic, I'm assuming that Accatone would be the best place to start for someone that hasn't seen any other Pasolini besides Salo?

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Re: Pasolini 101

#1269 Post by MichaelB » Sun Mar 12, 2023 10:33 am

vsski wrote:
Sun Mar 12, 2023 8:17 am
You, Michael, have reminded me time and again that Naruse - to take one example - didn’t sell in the UK so no one wants to touch him.
It's slightly more complicated than that. I'm sure a label would be prepared to take another gamble on Naruse, especially well over a decade since the last one, but I gather the licensing costs are commercially unrealistic given how poorly Naruse previously performed on both sides of the Atlantic. And I also gather that there are issues with suitably high-definition materials.
My argument would be that if a company like Criterion puts its muscle behind him it will make a difference.
But Criterion has released several Naruse features on DVD, when the physical media market was much bigger than it is now.

The problem is, while I certainly take your point that putting heavyweight marketing muscle behind a particular filmmaker can make a difference, it's very hard to justify underwriting that marketing muscle if the films already have a track record of performing badly when released by the same label in the past. It's one thing to cross fingers and hope for the best with a commercially unknown quantity, but quite another to explain why a filmmaker who's demonstrably flopped in the past is suddenly going to shoot up the charts now. And, with the exception of the BFI (and even then their physical-media arm is expected to turn a profit), none of these labels are charities.

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Re: Pasolini 101

#1270 Post by vsski » Sun Mar 12, 2023 10:58 am

I can’t disagree with you Michael. And in terms of Naruse, who I used primarily as an example, I’m not aware of any suitable high def masters out there which may well be the reason why no one has touched him rather than purely commercial considerations.
And while Criterion of cause is not a charitable organization I’m really scratching my head and find it hard to believe that a title like Frownland would sell substantially better than Naruse or Ozu or Bresson, but maybe I’m delusional and can’t wrap my head around that possibility.

And I would move heaven and earth if I could get my hands on good BDs of Buñuel’s Mexican films and would prefer those many times over 4K editions of his well published movies.

I realize I rubbed many people the wrong way with my woke comment, which was not intended as a political statement but simply a placeholder for the NYT article attacking Criterion. And yes it’s probably not fair to characterize this article as coming from the woke crowd, so my apologies to anyone taking offense with my choice of words.

To this day I find that article unfounded and take issue with the fact that people want to politicize the work of companies like Criterion.
While I don’t agree with Criterion’s current release strategy, I’m glad they do exist and have existed for as long as they have, since their contribution to the preservation of film history has been immense.

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Re: Pasolini 101

#1271 Post by rrenault » Sun Mar 12, 2023 11:10 am

Archibald de La Cruz actually does have a 4K-sourced BD and is streaming on HBO Max.

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Re: Why Won't They Release Only What I Want?

#1272 Post by rrenault » Tue Mar 14, 2023 5:45 am

The more I think about it, I'm starting to feel that complaints about high praise for directors like Akerman, Sciamma, and Denis, and for films by non-white male directors like Touki Bouki and Wanda and how it's emblematic of the "woke fetishes of privileged New Yorkers out of touch with the film tastes of real people" is really just the modern-day equivalent of Pauline Kael's "sick soul of Europe" rant.

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Re: Pasolini 101

#1273 Post by Maltic » Tue Mar 14, 2023 8:49 am

DarkImbecile wrote:
Sun Mar 12, 2023 10:06 am
Am I the only one not grasping how Frownland and the Safdies fit into appeasing the wokes?

I'd put those ones down to the Criterion people wanting to curry favour / mingle with the cool kids, maybe even get a cameo in a future movie.

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tenia
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Re: Pasolini 101

#1274 Post by tenia » Tue Mar 14, 2023 8:57 am

vsski wrote:
Sun Mar 12, 2023 8:17 am
But how do you explain the significant increase in titles of African American directors and actors, female directors and Asian minorities since the publication of the New York Times article?
Very good movies that used to be overlooked and are now finally getting proper care ?
Obviously, not all those movies are Absolute Masterpieces, but then, not even Bergman or Truffaut or Godard or Ozu movies are.
In any case, I'm very happy to see more interesting stuff getting some availability. We're getting a Med Hondo 3-movies boxset in France next week, that's probably this month release I'm most eager for, along with Carlotta's Mike De Leon boxset. I have no idea if this means I'm woke, all I know is that I'm very happy discovering new things and satisfying my always open curiosity.
rrenault wrote:
Sun Mar 12, 2023 9:04 am
Sometimes I want to say "Just let people like Jeanne Dielman and Daughters of the Dust and move on with your day". Who cares? It's not like they're getting praised in bad faith.
Absolutely. Even within Criterion and their monthly slot, this isn't a zero-sum game. More movies is more, not less.

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Re: Why Won't They Release Only What I Want?

#1275 Post by rrenault » Tue Mar 14, 2023 9:27 am

Speaking of French Blu-ray releases tenia, can you provide any insight on the French Blu-ray of Dillinger Is Dead? Is it 4K-sourced and does it have a good encode? I know the film had a 4K restoration at some point.
Last edited by rrenault on Tue Mar 14, 2023 9:29 am, edited 1 time in total.

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