BFI (British Film Institute)

[NABOB OF NOWHERE]

Before plumping for the Kino 'They made me a fugitive' blu any likelihood of this BFI resto turning up sporting a lens flare logo?

[antnield]

Before plumping for the Kino 'They made me a fugitive' blu any likelihood of this BFI resto turning up sporting a lens flare logo?

Odeon Entertainment currently have this one on release in the UK. DVD only, but they are slowly moving into Blu-ray.

[Bürgermeister]

I was just having a look at some of the Mizoguchi releases on Amazon UK, and noticed BFI previously released Tales of the Taira Clan on VHS do BFI still have the rights to this? If so what are the chances of it getting a Blu release?

[MichaelB]

The most likely scenario is that the licensing period expired several years ago - if the BFI had renewed the rights, they'd probably have done something with it on DVD by now.

[Bürgermeister]

Oh that sucks, we need more Mizoguchi on Blu.

Hopefully BFI will join MoC & AE and release afew.

[MichaelB]

To be honest, I wouldn't hold your breath - the BFI is still heavily immersed in its Ozu project, and as a general rule they're releasing far fewer non-British titles than they used to. Largely because when Connoisseur Video was around, hardy anyone else was catering for that market in the UK - but today, as you yourself acknowledge, there are other arthouse labels with more of a track record of handling Mizoguchi on DVD and Blu-ray.

[lubitsch]

Does anyone know if the BFI has any plans to release more British early films? There was the nice R.W. Paul set as well as a bit of Shakespeare and Dickens and obviously the Mitchell & Kenyon collection but beyond that we only have the old Early Cinema set, incorporated in The Movies begin. It's a bit frustrating to see the very limited access at http://www.screenonline.org.uk/film/index.html" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false; and it seems to me an update of the early Cinema discs would be in order, e.g. with a full version of Attack on a Chinese Mission Station or including A Runaway Match. The situation with French films and their equally ultralimited access to http://www.gaumontpathearchives.com/" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false; is equally frustrating, but at least the BFI should be able to handle the British films because legal questions shouldn't be relevant anymore for these old films.

[MichaelB]

I think there are certainly long-term plans to release more early cinema - the main problem being that these sets are expensive and logistically complex to produce and tend to sell in pitifully small numbers: I doubt I'm betraying any commercial confidences by revealing that the R.W. Paul set didn't exactly fly off the shelves. (In fact, it barely even got reviewed).

As for "legal questions", you'd be surprised - in fact, even many Victorian and Edwardian films are still potentially copyrighted because of current UK and EU-wide legislation that dictates that the copyright in films only expires 70 years after the death of the last significant creative contributor. Which is fine in the case of people like Birt Acres (d. 1918) or James Williamson (d. 1933), and R.W. Paul's copyright expires next year - but the work of heavyweight pioneers like Cecil Hepworth (d. 1953) and G.A. Smith (d. 1959) is still copyrighted. The BFI has generally made blanket agreements with the filmmakers' estates, given that they're uniquely qualified (at least in Britain) to preserve and exploit this material properly - but such agreements obviously have to be respected.

[peerpee]

Haven't seen this mentioned elsewhere? But StudioCanal have taken all rights to all Tati films outside of France, so it looks like the BFI (and Criterion) will lose everything shortly?

http://www.variety.com/article/VR1118056538" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

[Calvin]

The live stream of The Ring was wondrous for those of us who don't live anywhere near London. I can't really comment on the restoration, because my internet connection forced me to watch at a paltry resolution of 360p, but the new score by Soweto Kinch fits the film perfectly. I hope the BFI does these streaming screenings more often, they could act as a replacement for Moviedrome - the likes of which we'll never see again of TV.

[Kauno]

The Gangster Films, Cria Cuervos, Opening Night and The Killing of a Chinese Bookie are all delayed quite significantly. Is there some common reason?

[zedz]

The Gangster Films, Cria Cuervos, Opening Night and The Killing of a Chinese Bookie are all delayed quite significantly. Is there some common reason?

If you're going by the 'new' release dates on Amazon for those titles, Amazon itself often pulls those out of thin air when a release is delayed by any amount of time. The actual delay may end up being quite different and much shorter.

[kidc85]

Very excited to see GREED on the big screen in August, slightly surprised there seem to be a good number of tickets still available for what are very rare screenings of a legendary film not available on DVD...

[MichaelB]

Sight & Sound's long-awaited Digital Archive has gone live.

[warren oates]

Sight & Sound's long-awaited Digital Archive has gone live.

Looks like you can subscribe digitally or buy single issues. Just downloaded their app from Apple and made the in-app purchase of the 100 greatest films Sept. issue... Looking at it on my non-Retina penultimate generation iPad is pretty easy. The oversized S&S pages require zooming to get good sharpness for reading. But it certainly seems worth it. I cancelled my S&S subscription years ago when things like this forum, review aggregator sites and the IMDb took over many of the functions I'd been using it for. Film Comment is the only movie magazine I still get physical copies of, but the ease of use here certainly makes me more likely to get an occasional digital issue of S&S.

[MichaelB]

As I understand it, the monthly fee doesn't just buy you a single issue but access to the last two years' worth for one month - is this true?

[warren oates]

As I understand it, the monthly fee doesn't just buy you a single issue but access to the last two years' worth for one month - is this true?

You're right about the access... I had thought that all that older content was only browsable on-line, and that you could only download the current issue... But I just tried and it seems like you can download other back issues too, at least from the current year.

[MichaelB]

As I understand it, the monthly fee doesn't just buy you a single issue but access to the last two years' worth for one month - is this true?

You're right about the access... I had thought that all that older content was only browsable on-line, and that you could only download the current issue... But I just tried and it seems like you can download other back issues too, at least from the current year.

I've also just discovered that the Digital Archive section has several complete sample issues to browse free of charge - roughly one per decade between Autumn 1935 and July 2011.

Go here, and click on the 'Archive' tab at the side.

[perkizitore]

If I buy a print copy, I probably cannot access the digital edition of that issue for free, can I?

[MichaelB]

Not as far as I'm aware. But if you buy a digital copy for £3.99, you have access to loads of issues for a whole month.

[caminoreal]

I have a subscription to Sight & Sound, so have automatically got access to the digital copy. I was hoping to save some money by going digital and dumping the print version. Sadly, it seems that I cannot download and keep an issue on my PC (I don't have an iPad). I'm not paying money to basically rent the journal, I want permanent offline access to my copies. I'm very disappointed.

[bigP]

You can download the magazine and save it as a PDF. I just did so with a couple of the samples. Click on the Download PDFs option at the top, select all and download all. Click on the link to open the download page to see it being prepared, wait a bit and the PDF will appear complete on a new page where you can simply save as to your computer as a permanent copy.

[MichaelB]

I'm very happy to confirm that this is indeed true - it takes a bit of time to prepare the download even before actually downloading it (a 100-page issue clocked in at 31.1 megabytes), but I now have the July 2011 edition open in front of me in Acrobat, entirely independent of either the S&S website or the subscriber paywall..

And the quality is excellent - I was able to zoom in a fair bit before the resolution started to tell against the stills, while the text remained pin-sharp.

You can download entire issues or individual pages, which is particularly good news for us contributors - I'll need Acrobat to put the individual pages together, but I can now conceivably put together a PDF file of my own work, which is particularly good timing since it's exactly ten years since my first piece appeared. And I might even realistically be able to dump my print copies (over forty years' worth!), which would free up an entire bookcase.

UPDATE: It's probably worth mentioning that older issues are substantially bigger downloads (May 1994 was 269 megabytes) and that they're clearly based entirely around scans of the printed issues rather than being generated from DTP files. Though this hardly comes as a surprise, this means that text and stills alike start to pixilate as you zoom in, but the resolution is still ample enough for comfortable reading even when zoomed in so that entire paragraphs fill my monitor screen.

[MichaelB]

I've just made a very pleasing discovery about the free online editions of the Monthly Film Bulletin - they aren't a single issue, they're a whole year's worth!

So if you fancy reading detailed reviews of every single film that opened in British cinemas in 1940, 1956, 1974 and 1980, follow those links.

One word of warning, though: they're addictive - especially the reviews and synopses of stuff that simply isn't covered anywhere else (not even the IMDB, which usually just provides credits). I'm particularly fond of the 1970s MFBs for all the reviews of the soft-porn films that underpinned the domestic industry, not because I have any intention of tracking them down myself, but because it's so entertaining reading intelligent people desperately trying to write something halfway interesting about films that seem completely worthless.

[colinr0380]

I like the 'best of' listings for the 1980 Monthly Film Bulletin. The first issue in that set includes an "MFB on the 1979 London Film Festival" chart which shows the critics star ratings for all the films shown there. I think "the black circle indicates antipathy" is quite pithy and could catch on in reviewing circles!