Kino

[What A Disgrace]

Alright, *apart* from Awful Dr. Orloff, Black Sabbath, College, Foolish Wives, Little Fugitive, Of Human Bondage, and Scum, what has Kino ever done for us?

[domino harvey]

They got you that danish

[knives]

They released one of my favorite Rollins in The Grapes of Death. They remain one of the companies I most consistently buy new releases from. I think this says enough about how great they're doing to this day in terms of titles.

[Gregory]

On the other side of the scale, there was that incident involving them drowning a sack full of puppies, though. Or was that Twilight Time?

[Minkin]

Of course, if anyone else had released that edition of White Zombie, they would be excused for the condition of the source materials. Really, that transfer itself looks completely fine like many other titles of that vintage and, in case we've forgotten (perhaps willfully - I wouldn't doubt it), the Kino Blu-ray does have a non-DNR/filtered version of the film on it. Kino hasn't actually done what you're casually accusing them of doing but I guess that doesn't count for anything.

I'm fairly certain that the White Zombie transfer is universally hated for being a total butchered job. That you find "that [the] transfer itself looks completely fine like many other titles of that vintage" - is concerning, since this is not how film or movies look (unless it was made in the past decade). There's apologist, and then there's misinformed. Here's Bluray.com's review:

The disc defaults to the former, which is absolutely slathered with DNR, removing all grain from the image, softening print damage like scratches and debris, but—in the process—stripping the picture entirely of fine detail. The result is a film that no longer looks like film; it looks more like someone ran each frame through the "brush strokes" filter in Photoshop, turning the film into a kind of moving painting. The effect is apparent even from a distance— especially if you have a large screen—but up close it's atrocious.

Whenever a company goes overboard with digital fuckery, they deserve and receive as much hate as possible from this board. Even Criterion isn't immune from it (though in that case, the DNR was done by the licensor/print supplier, and not by Criterion themselves - still, its probably their worst bluray for video quality).

I did mention the "un-waxy version," but its not much of a cause for celebration when your two choices are DNR disaster vs raw scan (unrestored). Sure, the inclusion of the non-DNR'd version of the film is great (and the only thing that potentially saves Kino's face with this release), but one usually expects some degree of restoration or digital work - otherwise companies wouldn't invest so much money to restore old films. Granted, Kino probably couldn't be bothered to either find a better print or do an actual restoration, but why couldn't Kino have found a middle ground with the digital tools? Removing scratches, tears, etc while preserving film grain. Its not a new technique. Perhaps DVD Savant's review is most illuminating:

Raw scan:

This encoding has a surplus of white speckling and exaggerated grain, not to mention unsteady splices and a few missing frames. The soundtrack is fairly clear, but there are numerous dropouts. Normally, a transfer like this wouldn't be considered ready for distribution on disc, not even as an extra.

vs

"restored":

Automated restoration tools have not been used in a judicious way. Speckles are gone and the image stabilized, but the visual quality of every shot has effectively been wrecked. The problem goes beyond a slight waxy quality and a lack of natural granularity. Contrast is so blown out that most of the detail is wiped away from bright objects, such as Madeleine's dress. "New" textures appear in just about everything. The effect is so heavy that action frames don't properly refresh.

He goes on and on about how awful the "restored" version is. Essentially, the restored version should be ignored at all costs, except as a curio-piece on how digital restoration can go very wrong.

The commentary and the interview are nice touches, but overall - Kino's White Zombie screams of awfulness. Thankfully the film is in public domain, thus VCI now get a chance to improve over what Kino did, and it won't take much to improve on video quality.

-- In response to Swo, I wouldn't use "Black Sabbath" as a highlight of Kino's recent triumphs. I doubt it will hold a candle to Arrow's release (based on their Bava track record thus far) - and its apparently missing the AIP version of the film.

Also - am I completely making this up, or do I remember reading somewhere that MOC wanted to release Keaton on Bluray, but they've been hampered by Kino's releases? I'm probably wrong on that or thinking of something else. Though I do know that Cohen plans on releasing Keaton on Bluray - and they have a new restoration of The General planned to be released soon.

I don't hate Kino, and I do own several of their films on Bluray. They did release many great films in great editions in the past few years. It just seems as though their golden age from a few years ago (where every release seemed great/amazing) seems to have dropped sharply. Thus most of us usually wait for a better edition to come along. Or did everybody buy Blue Angel/Black Sunday/etc (yes there are others, but I'm tired of writing this post) just because it was "the only thing available?"

[JonasEB]

I'm fairly certain that the White Zombie transfer is universally hated for being a total butchered job. That you find "that [the] transfer itself looks completely fine like many other titles of that vintage" - is concerning, since this is not how film or movies look (unless it was made in the past decade). There's apologist, and then there's misinformed.

It sounds like you haven't actually seen the disc. I was talking about the "unrestored" version the entire time. The "raw" version has perfectly fine grain structure. It is a filmic transfer. If that scrubbed version wasn't on the disc (this was produced by another company, by the way, that wasn't Kino's decision) there wouldn't have been the big to-do about the relative quality of the "raw" transfer. You know, two of the three French Frank Borzage Blu-rays aren't pristine but it's not the transfer and encode's fault - that's just how far you can take it. "Digital restoration" is just as often a magical buzz word that doesn't accomplish nearly as much as people seem to think.

This is a public domain title. PD titles usually don't have great elements lying around, certainly not negatives and IPs. That probably WAS the best White Zombie print and it's clearly a massive step above any PD release and an improvement over DVD.

Raw Scan: quote - This encoding has a surplus of white speckling and exaggerated grain, not to mention unsteady splices and a few missing frames. The soundtrack is fairly clear, but there are numerous dropouts. Normally, a transfer like this wouldn't be considered ready for distribution on disc, not even as an extra.

"Exaggerated grain" is in the print, it's not the fault of the transfer. That's what it looks like. It is true to film. The majority of what this guy reviews is new stuff, not old stuff, so I wouldn't consider him any authority about the challenges of bringing old films, and old PD films in particular, out of the woodshed.

This really looks just fine - http://www.blu-ray.com/movies/screensho ... position=1" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false; - this is essentially what I see on any number of early 30s blu-rays.

How often do you get big restorations of titles in the Public Domain? Not that often. PD films more often than not get "raw" scans and transfers and that's it, someone just happened to make a big note of it in this case.

Automated restoration tools have not been used in a judicious way. Speckles are gone and the image stabilized, but the visual quality of every shot has effectively been wrecked. The problem goes beyond a slight waxy quality and a lack of natural granularity. Contrast is so blown out that most of the detail is wiped away from bright objects, such as Madeleine's dress. "New" textures appear in just about everything. The effect is so heavy that action frames don't properly refresh. - He goes on and on about how awful the "restored" version is. Essentially, the restored version should be ignored at all costs, except as a curio-piece on how digital restoration can go very wrong.

I didn't say it shouldn't be avoided, everyone knows that a different untouched version is available on that disc and I'm saying it's misplaced expectations, not bad work, that is the problem here.

The commentary and the interview are nice touches, but overall - Kino's White Zombie screams of awfulness. Thankfully the film is in public domain, thus VCI now get a chance to improve over what Kino did, and it won't take much to improve on video quality.

I can guarantee you that it won't improve that much.

Also - am I completely making this up, or do I remember reading somewhere that MOC wanted to release Keaton on Bluray, but they've been hampered by Kino's releases? I'm probably wrong on that or thinking of something else. Though I do know that Cohen plans on releasing Keaton on Bluray - and they have a new restoration of The General planned to be released soon.

Yes, you are imagining things and most of those potential Cohen Blu-rays will probably use the same masters supplied to Kino for their excellent Keaton Blu-rays.

I don't hate Kino, and I do own several of their films on Bluray. They did release many great films in great editions in the past few years. It just seems as though their golden age from a few years ago (where every release seemed great/amazing) seems to have dropped sharply. Thus most of us usually wait for a better edition to come along. Or did everybody buy Blue Angel/Black Sunday/etc (yes there are others, but I'm tired of writing this post) just because it was "the only thing available?"

Point taken about those Bavas but what in the world is wrong with releasing a fine version of just the primary German Blue Angel? It's a perfectly worthy release that anyone would be glad to watch.

[JonasEB]

Their blu of Blue Angel offers a lot less than the old DVD version. They could have included both versions and ported over the extras easily enough it seems. Their They Made Me a Fugitive has some strange problem with the transfer toward the end that may point to a need for better quality control. That's just a couple examples. I want to cut them slack, and often do, but sometimes it seems like they're just not trying that hard or are taking their customer base for granted.

Plus, The Devil Bat is pretty terrible.

That's very fair, for sure.

A preference towards buying the MOC Blue Angel over the Kino for the the inclusion of the English language version and the booklet is a completely fine and natural thing but it seems odd to me to see people just slag off what is an otherwise perfectly fine edition of the German version. It might not be ideal but it does the good work of making the primary version of the film more widely available on a format providing the best visual quality to date, which is the most important thing.

It's true that they could often go the extra half-mile and beef up some of their packages but when "just good enough" equals their Die Nibelungen Blu-ray, that's fine with me. Alternate options do exist for those who want more (I've definitely went with the competition on many occasions) and we have another quality version of the film available for those who otherwise might not know or who are happy with the purchasing convenience afforded by the domestic release.

No doubt Kino still has problems but it feels like they get raked over the coals far more often than is necessary considering the vast improvements and great contributions they've made.

[Gregory]

A preference towards buying the MOC Blue Angel over the Kino for the the inclusion of the English language version and the booklet is a completely fine and natural thing but it seems odd to me to see people just slag off what is an otherwise perfectly fine edition of the German version.

It wasn't just the lack of the English version of BA or a nice booklet but the fact that they left off all the extras like the Dietrich's screen tests and concerts performances. Why? It seemed like a "screw you" to some devoted customers like me who had preordered the Blu-ray assuming that it would have at least as much going for it as the DVD SE. And the MoC offered so much more that I never should have preordered the Kino in the first place without being more vigilant. Not only due to region locking on blu-ray players but also because Kino is probably a different enough label from MoC in general, they likely don't really worry about competition from MoC or trying to reach the bar that MoC helped set, especially when it comes to extras and including extra films. Their Fear and Desire was pathetic in that respect alone.
But they're doing lots of good stuff and I don't really have any ill will.

[onedimension]

Kino's quality hasn't dipped that much, IMO- but they've clearly shifted focus to distributing contemporary films theatrically and on home media.. that's going by their Facebook presence, partly. Doesn't seem like they care about putting out their Murnau titles on blu, for example..

[swo17]

What Murnau title of theirs has had a restoration that would make it worth the leap to Blu?

[zedz]

On the other side of the scale, there was that incident involving them drowning a sack full of puppies, though. Or was that Twilight Time?

The puppies Twilight Time drowned were mongrels (after trying to sell them at pedigree prices!). And it was a really ugly sack.

[manicsounds]

Mario Bava's "Kidnapped" blu-ray is barebones, doesn't include the "Rabid Dogs" version of the film, no making-of, no TIm Lucas commentary from the DVD releases.

[Mathew2468]

Real quick: What happened to the Kieslowski box? Gone from their site and prices went up on amazon.

[knives]

Probably OOP. I wouldn't be surprised if it is with a new company now.

[Feego]

Mario Bava's "Kidnapped" blu-ray is barebones, doesn't include the "Rabid Dogs" version of the film, no making-of, no TIm Lucas commentary from the DVD releases.

Which makes this release pretty pointless, as the "Kidnapped" version is largely inferior to "Rabid Dogs."

[Adam X]

Which makes it all the sadder, as the screen caps show the new release to have hugely improved PQ. Weirdly this was listed on Amazon as a film-only version (or something like that). Maybe they're planning on a release with both versions? Doubtful I know - here's hoping Arrow's got this in their queue.

[domino harvey]

Black Sabbath also bare-bones

[Feego]

That's strange. All of Kino's previous Bava releases up until these two retained at least the Tim Lucas commentaries. Perhaps they couldn't secure the rights for them? Anyway, just one more reason (as if there weren't enough already) to go for the Arrows. The only Kino Bava title I've bought is Hatchet for the Honeymoon, which as yet has not been announced by Arrow.

[MichaelB]

The only Kino Bava title I've bought is Hatchet for the Honeymoon, which as yet has not been announced by Arrow.

Odeon presumably still has the UK rights to that one - I don't think their DVD came out that long ago.

As for Black Sabbath, Kino must be counting on their customer base being region-locked, as I've rarely seen such a glaring quality gap between releases. I can understand why the AIP version might have been off limits to a US company, but the Arrow threw in plenty of other extras as well.

[John Doe]

Nosfertau (1922)
Russian Ark
Welles's The Trial

Coming this year, according to The Digital Bits http://www.thedigitalbits.com/columns/m ... 71013_1200" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

[Calvin]

I've got Studio Canal's release of The Trial but would be tempted to double dip if Kino managed to include Filming The Trial as an extra.

[warren oates]

Nosfertau (1922)
Russian Ark
Welles's The Trial

Coming this year, according to The Digital Bits http://www.thedigitalbits.com/columns/m ... 71013_1200" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

In for all three. Here's hoping that's not their last Sokurov Blu. A little disappointed there's been no further news on their Tarkovsky holdings. The Mirror was supposed to be next for Blu. And what about Stalker and Nostalghia, does Kino even still have the rights?

[swo17]

Just remember that Nosferatu is also coming from MoC in November. I'm definitely in for the other two though.

[Lowry_Sam]

I've got Studio Canal's release of The Trial but would be tempted to double dip if Kino managed to include Filming The Trial as an extra.

Kino? You'd be lucky if there's any bonus features. I can't believe Kino got this over Criterion. Guess I'll shell out for the Studio Canal now.

[AlexHansen]

Tim Lucas posted on Facebook that he's recording a commentary for Kino's 5 Nights for an August Moon. If they use it is another matter one supposes.