Artificial Eye / Curzon Film World

[MichaelB]

That's excellent news - I'm not fussed about the AE disc being barebones (the Criterion extras on Charulata aren't that compelling to me), but I was very keen to find out whether it was the same transfer. In fact, there's every chance I might prefer the AE treatment, as I generally prefer their sharper subtitles to Criterion's softer ones.

[peerpee]

I find it very sad that the Artificial Eye brand is being phased out (and this isn't speculation, it's a publicly stated intention).

The mysterious Tabatznik Family Trust took a "substantial equity stake" in Curzon AE last year. The TFT fortune appears to come from the generic pharmaceutical business, but I can't work out where they're based, although the family seem to have South African roots.

It appears the company is being streamlined / commercialised (ie. fattened up) for a big sale in a few years' time. The move towards more mainstream fare almost certainly an attempt to bolster the books.

The BFI Lottery Fund just gave a £150,000.00 "New Models" non-repayable award to Curzon for WHAT MAISIE KNEW, a thoroughly plain-looking American film, starring Steve Coogan and Julianne Moore.

I continue to be amazed at how much money is being dished out by the BFI so very, very nebulously.

[shaky]

the Criterion extras on Charulata aren't that compelling to me

I think the "Satyajit Ray in Progress" and the "Adapting Tagore" will be at least moderately educational. Atanasov doesn't give his opinion one way or the other(though he does gives the extras 3.5/5). Still, some discussion of a director's themes and ways of adapting from a written work is fine by me, even if it happens to be fairly obvious stuff. We'll see...

Also, the Philip Kemp essay should be nice.

Concerning the subtitles differences, I generally think Criterion have been making theirs a bit too big lately; that's my main problem. I actually kind of like the softness though!

[MichaelB]

I think the "Satyajit Ray in Progress" and the "Adapting Tagore" will be at least moderately educational. Atanasov doesn't give his opinion one way or the other(though he does gives the extras 3.5/5). Still, some discussion of a director's themes and ways of adapting from a written work is fine by me, even if it happens to be fairly obvious stuff. We'll see...

I'm sure they're great, but the price difference between the Criterion and the AE will be enormous for the likes of me. Even at a pre-order price the Criterion comes to nearly double the AE disc (because I get free shipping with the AE), and that's assuming I don't get stung for Customs charges on top - a genuine risk, as it's above the import limit.

And if that happens, the extras will effectively be costing me around £20 - i.e. more than a standard Blu-ray release on its own!

[Finch]

Michael, use dvdworldusa.com for the Criterions. Have used them ever since planetaxel folded and they are only marginally more expensive (usually £21.99 for titles on preorder and they ship them early too). They ship from within the UK.

[peerpee]

Or importcds.com, who I've been having a good time with over the last few months. Haven't been stung once, good prices.

[EddieLarkin]

importcds.com are my go to guys right now, their prices for Olive, Synapse and Scream Factory titles being unbeatable. But I've always kept it to one title per package, being too fearful of customs. But if it's the case that they seem to be customs safe, I'll order a few Criterions very soon!

[doc mccoy]

Aren't they also the 3rd party seller, allyourmusic, on Amazon?

[RossyG]

I find it very sad that the Artificial Eye brand is being phased out (and this isn't speculation, it's a publicly stated intention).

Me too. I love the fact that I'm still (for now) buying Blu-rays and DVDs that have the same spines and logos as the very first "art-house" VHS tapes (Nikita; Autobus; Tango etc) that I was buying as a youth twenty years ago.

[MichaelB]

Although the Artificial Eye of the 1990s (and the 80s and 70s before it) ceased to exist several years ago when Robert Beeson and Pam Engel left to form New Wave Films. They were two-thirds of the old Artificial Eye (alongside the late Andi Engel), so although the spines and logos might be the same, it's not the same company.

Same with the Everyman Cinema in Hampstead - the building's still there and it bears the same name, but it's been an expensive upmarket first-run cinema since the late 1990s, a complete change from the daily-changing bargain-priced double and triple bills that were its bread and butter before then. Last time I was there, the office where I spent six years of my career no longer existed: the physical space it once occupied had become part of the bar.

And indeed same with BFI DVD Publishing - the shifts have been subtler, but I think just one of the team was also there a decade ago, and in a different role. In particular, since 2008 it's been a sharply different outfit for all sorts of reasons, from programming (more British, more adventurous) to technical standards - the heavy influx of former Tartan staffers made a big splash there.

(Arrow might well fall into a similar category, but I'm less well up on that company's history - although it's certainly true that the people who are heavily responsible for the massive rise in technical and presentational standards are comparative newcomers.)

That's the thing about strong brands: they have a potency and a sense of continuity that's not always reflected by the reality.

[peerpee]

importcds.com are my go to guys right now, their prices for Olive, Synapse and Scream Factory titles being unbeatable. But I've always kept it to one title per package, being too fearful of customs. But if it's the case that they seem to be customs safe, I'll order a few Criterions very soon!

I've tried ordering different amounts, but I don't think they package more than two items together in any one package (I might be wrong). I'd definitely stick to ordering singly!

[peerpee]

Although the Artificial Eye of the 1990s (and the 80s and 70s before it) ceased to exist several years ago when Robert Beeson and Pam Engel left to form New Wave Films. They were two-thirds of the old Artificial Eye (alongside the late Andi Engel), so although the spines and logos might be the same, it's not the same company.

Indeed, but until this Curzon rebranding bollocks I think the remaining folk at AE have been doing a pretty killer job of carrying the torch. The quality of their Blu transfers has been very good on the whole, and they put out those Mizoguchi/Bergman Blu boxsets, which were great.
It's a crying shame that Knatchbull (and presumably marketing folk?) think that everything will work better if it's streamlined under one name. Totally bananas when you're also erasing the UK's longest running and highly respected arthouse brand. It's really idiotic.

Same with the Everyman Cinema in Hampstead - the building's still there and it bears the same name, but it's been an expensive upmarket first-run cinema since the late 1990s, a complete change from the daily-changing bargain-priced double and triple bills that were its bread and butter before then. Last time I was there, the officer where I spent six years of my career no longer existed: the physical space it once occupied had become part of the bar.

!

That's the thing about strong brands: they have a potency and a sense of continuity that's not always reflected by the reality.

Tell me about it.

[MichaelB]

It's a crying shame that Knatchbull (and presumably marketing folk?) think that everything will work better if it's streamlined under one name. Totally bananas when you're also erasing the UK's longest running and highly respected arthouse brand. It's really idiotic.

Then again, people said the same thing when the NFT became BFI Southbank - they all thought we'd gone raving mad (I say "we" because I was on the internal rebranding team) in getting rid of such a strong brand.

But our problem from a branding perspective the NFT was too strong - survey after survey revealed that embarrassingly few people really knew what the BFI did (at least as many people thought that it was responsible for the BAFTAs!). Hence the mid-2000s rebranding to make the name 'BFI' much more prominent - the National Film and Television Archive became the BFI National Archive, for instance, and they finally ditched the irritatingly affected 'bfi' typography, which was invariably rendered as 'bfi' in plain-text emails, thus diminishing it further (although people carried on using it for years afterwards, and I still see it pop up to this day: it's like fingernails down a blackboard to me now). There was even talk of changing Sight & Sound's name, but that was considered a step too far, not least because of the mag's international profile.

So there's every possibility that something similar is happening here.

[peerpee]

The NFT is an element of the BFI, a cinema only frequented by Londoners or visitors to London. (Did anyone suggest calling it the BFI NFT? Because pretty much everyone I know still calls it the NFT!)

Artificial Eye is Artificial Eye. Founded in 1976. A strong, strong label that permeated the length and breadth of the country into people's homes and collections for decades.

To kill a brand like Artificial Eye, for spurious streamlined marketing reasons, is not to understand the brand or its audience – and it reflects very badly on the people running Curzon Film World.

It's like Warner Bros. suddenly buying the privately owned Criterion Collection, keeping it going for a couple of years, but then rebranding it "Warner Bros. Film World".

[Finch]

I ordered Criterions from importcds for a while but got stung by customs every single time despite ordering only one title at a time so figured it was safer to go with dvdworldusa. Agree though importcds are great for Olive, Synapse etc.

[Mathew2468]

Anybody know anything about the new Nostalghia and The Sacrifice? Came out last week.

[JonasEB]

Anybody know anything about the new Nostalghia and The Sacrifice? Came out last week.

They look like reproductions from the box set which means they are probably the same transfers as the old editions (the lack of Blu-ray and extra promotion would also indicate this.)

[Mathew2468]

But the Mirror transfer was different.

[JonasEB]

But the Mirror transfer was different.

The Mirror was a different transfer (as were Ivan's Childhood, Andrei Rublev, and, I think, Solaris) but Stalker, Sacrifice, and Nostalgia are all the same.

[AidanKing]

I find it very sad that the Artificial Eye brand is being phased out (and this isn't speculation, it's a publicly stated intention).

I agree wholeheartedly with this. Even though it isn't the same company as the Engel/Beeson version, it would be a shame to lose a venerable arthouse name in the UK. All the company's cinema releases this month seem to be under the Curzon Film World brand. The company also seems to be veering into more mainstream work when it can (e.g. What Maisie Knew) and also seems to be buying up a lot of films, some of which only get a cursory release and some of which may have been handled better by New Wave (e.g. The Turin Horse), apart from the BluRay issue, of course.

If AE is being prepared for a sale, there would appear to be two possible outcomes: ether a lot of films that would previously have secured a release will not be released in the UK, or some other distributor(s) (New Wave, Arrow, Soda, MoC?) will pick up the slack. Mind you, it was suggested in Sight and Sound a couple of months back (sorry, I couldn't find a link) that some distributors may have paid over the odds for some of the headline films at Cannes this year and that this might have a major impact in the arthouse sector. I think it was suggested that this may be one of the factors behind the BFI's decision to support the distribution of foreign films more substantially.

[manicsounds]

Satyajit Ray's Kapurush (The Coward) BD at Blu-ray.com

[GaryC]

Contrary to the theory above, here's a French film released on disc by Artificial Eye which does not have forced subtitles - Something in the Air (aka Après mai).

And the newest two Atom Egoyan releases have actual extras - a 51-minute documentary (Formulas for Seduction: The Cinema of Atom Egoyan) on Exotica and two shorts (Howard in Particular and Peep Show) on Calendar. No subtitles on these English-language films: the Armenian dialogue in the latter is intentionally left unsubtitled.

The above as per DVD checkdiscs received today.

[AidanKing]

Contrary to the theory above, here's a French film released on disc by Artificial Eye which does not have forced subtitles - Something in the Air (aka Après mai).

I think we can infer from this that Artificial Eye would prefer to release DVDs and BluRays with optional rather than fixed subtitles where possible. I wonder if the three films with fixed subtitles (Amour, Holy Motors, Beyond the Hills) shared a sales agent and/or production company which was not involved with Something in the Air.

With regard to the company's potential name change, I noticed in Sight and Sound that Christine Molloy and Joe Lawlor's new film, Mister John, is being distributed under the Curzon Film World, rather than the Artificial Eye, banner. Their last film, Helen, was released by New Wave.

Curzon also appear to be hiring non-managerial staff on zero-hours contracts: they were one of the companies named and shamed by The Guardian for this practice over the summer. Full details http://www.theguardian.com/film/2013/au ... zero-hours

[tenia]

I think we can infer from this that Artificial Eye would prefer to release DVDs and BluRays with optional rather than fixed subtitles where possible.

No need to infer. I mean, who wouldn't prefer this ? Even if it's not a prioritary target, I'm sure every editor like to keep the door open to exporting their release and pleasing people who don't want to have forced subs because they understand the main language.

[AidanKing]

I mean, who wouldn't prefer this ?

Oh, I agree absolutely. I think some previous posts implied that AE weren't really concerned about fixed subtitles and wouldn't try to negotiate with the rights holders over them.