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To sum up:

If my spreadsheet is correct, with the release of Columbia Noir #4 all of the titles from the four DVD sets from Sony/TCM of Columbia Film Noir Classics will now have been released on Blu-ray, with the exception of The Burglar.

Sony/TCM set titles outside the Indicator Columbia Noir box sets: The Big Heat has a standalone release from Indicator; Nightfall, My Name is Julia Ross, and So Dark the Night have standalone releases from Arrow; Human Desire has a standalone release from Eureka.

There seems to be barely any overlap between the Indicator sets and the Kit Parker Noir Archive sets, which is fine by me for the time being. Only 5 Against the House, The Lineup, Escape in the Fog, and 711 Ocean Drive overlap, with the first two also overlapping the Sony/TCM sets.

Some other Columbia-originated titles (rather than Columbia-distributed) not available on Blu and not in any of these sets which have potential include Dead Reckoning (1947), The Harder They Fall (1956), and Miami Exposé (1956). If Columbia-distributed titles were included in the mix, that opens lots of other possibilities for future inclusions.

As The Undercover Man draws to a close and the end credits start coming up, Tony Rayns says he forgot to discuss a subject he had announced earlier in his commentary, so he launches into it. Indicator graciously provides him with nearly 5 minutes of a black screen so he can finish his interesting comments. I am trying to remember at least one other instance where a commentary provider was allowed to speak substantially beyond the length of the film and I am drawing a blank. Are there other notable examples?

Also, the commentary track and the subtitles seem to be mutually exclusive on that disc. If you turn one on, the other feature becomes unavailable. I will have to test it on another player.

Adrian Martin did it for one of the Godards, maybe Vivre sa vie?

The commentary on the DVD of Fast Times at Ridgemont High runs longer than the film. The Universal Blu-ray cuts the track off at the end of the film and I don't know if Criterion's Blu restores the end of the commentary or not.

domino harvey wrote: ↑

Thu Jul 08, 2021 4:34 pm

Adrian Martin did it for one of the Godards, maybe Vivre sa vie?

Hmm, I just listened to that commentary track a few weeks ago and don't recall that happening

Florinaldo wrote: ↑

Thu Jul 08, 2021 4:25 pm

Also, the commentary track and the subtitles seem to be mutually exclusive on that disc. If you turn one on, the other feature becomes unavailable. I will have to test it on another player.

It's most likely the film is mastered as a "hidden playlist" where one stream is just "The Undercover Man" normally while the other stream is the commentary with the blank five minutes being seamlessly branched. Some early Silversun-authored Eureka discs like "The Man From Laramie" and "Witness for the Prosecution" are similar where selecting the commentary won't let you switch back and forth between the main audio nor turn on subtitles (though I have no idea why they were authored like that since the video is the exact same on both).

therewillbeblus wrote: ↑

Thu Jul 08, 2021 4:51 pm

Hmm, I just listened to that commentary track a few weeks ago and don't recall that happening

On whichever Australian DVD it was, it cut off. They reissued it with blank screen after the movie to cover the missing audio. My guess is no issue resulted from Criterion using it because it was timed to the PAL video so it didn’t run long on 24fps.

If it was a scene-specific commentary (and Adrian's usually are), the synchronisation would have gone haywire if they'd done that.

I've occasionally had to deal with commentaries recorded for PAL releases, and sometimes even commentaries inadvertently recorded to a PAL release because the commentator wasn't aware of the difference. Provided I'm aware of this upfront - and the fact that it'll run short by approximately four minutes is the usual giveaway - it's easy enough to fix. In most cases I simply slow the commentary down to 23.976fps, pitch-correcting to compensate, although in one case the commentator hadn't really recorded anything scene-specific so was happy to send me another four minutes that I could just drop in anywhere that seemed appropriate.

In the case of Tony Rayns and The Undercover Man he simply asked us upfront if we could add five minutes of black and we were happy to oblige. I seem to recall that something similar happened with The Beast Must Die, although if a commentary only slightly overruns (up to a minute, say) and it's not obsessively shot-specific it's usually quite easy to edit it so that it fits. (Quite a few commentaries end up rambling a bit by the end just to fill space, so it's easy enough to trim those points.)

Final specs for Columbia Noir #4:



Walk a Crooked Mile:



Walk East on Beacon!:



Pushover:



Bullet Is Waiting, A:



Chicago Syndicate:



Brothers Rico, The:

Volume 2 is currently on sale at Zavvi: https://www.zavvi.com/blu-ray/columbia- ... 40425.html

According to Bob Furmanek, A Bullet is Waiting should be 1.85:1, but it is 1.37:1 on the new release. I wondered at first if Sony only had a very old master but the caps just put up at Beaver show that it looks very nice and new indeed.

Columbeaver Noir #4.

Voyage à travers le cinéma français features this funny ad for Pushover, made by the young Tavernier's ciné-club:

And Tavernier might have found the French title himself.

Are you sure that wasn’t Domino?

Noir Vol 2 is among Slant's 25 best home video releases of 2021.

the adventurousness of the studio’s output is amply clear throughout the six films collected on Columbia Noir #2, in everything from Ginger Rogers’s against-type turn as a sassy, hard-nosed convict in Tight Spot to Perry Botkin’s wildly unconventional, solo guitar score for Murder by Contract. The high-def transfers are fantastic across the board, especially those for the two best films in the set, Murder by Contract and The Mob, both of which are premiering on Blu-ray for the first time. Powerhouse Films typically goes all out for their Indicator series box sets, but the distributor has really gone above and beyond here. The highlight of Columbia Noir #2 is surely the newly recorded audio commentaries, each of which offers critical insights into everything from the typical qualities of a Columbia noir to the formal strategies and thematic elements of the individual films.

Is the latest "coming soon" hint in the newsletter another noir?

Knock On Any Door. Over at BluRay.com it's taken as a hint for a Bogart themed Columbia Noir set.

this also confirms which Nicholas Ray title they will be putting out in a noir set. I believe the initial press release stated there would be something from Ray, and given that this one also has Bogart, it's a certainty Columbia Noir #5 will be all films starring him

ryannichols7 wrote: ↑

Thu Feb 17, 2022 11:30 am

this also confirms which Nicholas Ray title they will be putting out in a noir set. I believe the initial press release stated there would be something from Ray, and given that this one also has Bogart, it's a certainty Columbia Noir #5 will be all films starring him

There have so far been visual clues for Tokyo Joe (Sept '21), The Harder They Fall (Jan '22) and Knock on Any Door (Feb '22) but we could've figured that last one based on the fact it's the only noir title Ray made for Columbia other than In a Lonely Place (which Criterion have already released, so it wouldn't be available to Indicator anyway). Since they're teasing this set quite frequently I'd be surprised if it wasn't scheduled for Summer (or Autumn at the latest).

And yes, it certainly is going to be Columbia Noir #5 because that clue from last month even had the "#5" typed in the corner of the clue. Most people have speculated that the other titles will likely be Dead Reckoning and Sirocco, and I suggested if they were going to keep it to six titles as per the other Columbia Noir volumes, they might include The Family Secret (produced by Bogart's company Santana Productions, and featuring his Knock on Any Door co-star John Derek and Sirocco co-star Lee J. Cobb) rather than a non-noir starring Bogart such as Sahara or even Love Affair. Alternatively they could just stick to five films as a one-off, since this is Bogart after all.

A Reddit user was told by the co-owner of Indicator via email that there is going to be a big classical Hollywood-era boxset coming in June:

I thought you guys would be interested in knowing that I had an email exchange with the co-owner and director of Powerhouse/Indicator.

He asked where I learned of their company and I told him the boutiquebluray reddit forum. I also indicated that I appreciate the products they're putting out (giving a specific shout-out to the Howard Hawks classic Twentieth Century).

I encouraged them to continue with the great directors and actors of the classic Hollywood era (I specifically mentioned Hawks, Cagney, Bogart). His follow-up response is below:

"Given your comments, you are in for a real treat with our next announcement for our June releases, it's going to be one of our best ever boxsets, from one of the all time greats of Hollywood. We are all very excited about that one.

Getting the rights to some of these great films, seems to get a little harder each year, as the studios seem more keen to do big deals with the streaming platforms. We love physical media and long may it continue

Likely the Bogart noir set, though maybe it’ll just be all of his Sony titles if they’re talking it up like that

domino harvey wrote: ↑

Fri Feb 18, 2022 9:51 pm

Likely the Bogart noir set, though maybe it’ll just be all of his Sony titles if they’re talking it up like that

Doubt it'll just be all his remaining Columbia films as they've only been teasing noir titles starring Bogart, and one of the clues had "#5" in the corner so it's definitely a Columbia Noir box set. I'd be surprised if it wasn't just Dead Reckoing, Knock on Any Door, Tokyo Joe, Sirocco and The Harder They Fall, but if they added a sixth it'd likely be either The Family Secret (a noir produced by Santana, but not starring Bogart) or one of the other non-noirs he did for Columbia (so basically Sahara or Love Affair).

So in other words it can only really mean one thing right? Columbia Noir #5: Woah the Bogie Cogie!

I’d love to see Sahara on Blu from them, so while it’s definitely not a noir by even the most generous of definitions I am willing to pretend for the sake of getting it!

I would also be okay with this