Kino Lorber Studio Classics

[GetHarryPalmer]

Correct me if I'm wrong but Kino was offering wrong aspect ratios and inferior discs before MisterLime joined them. Now he has just become the defensive voice for the organization and their same old issues.

That may be true, would like some examples. But can we also give them credit for the thousands of great releases they've had since the 80s, they're easily one of the top 5 best labels in the world.

[domino harvey]

Kino has gone from a valuable but frequently sketchy (in terms of transfers) DVD label to one of the best Blu-Ray labels when it comes to budget releases of Hollywood flicks otherwise languishing in the MGM back catalog. Their rescue choices so far from Fox have been promising also. I like the label's output a lot. None of this excuses MisterLime's unprofessional behavior and desire to only interact with sycophants

[Black Hat]

I guess anyone who dares to defend MisterLime has to be Scott.

Again, it's easy to be a tough guy sitting behind your computer at the safety of your mom's basement.

If this is your idea of defending someone you must be an agent for the other side.

[Der Spieler]

Kino are mostly great, although the absence of subtitles irks me.

But you have to take responsability for your errors. You can't tell customers to deal with it and gtfo.

MisterLime is rapidly gaining a bad reputation that can only hurt the company.

[EddieLarkin]

To be clear, the issue with these releases is not that they are in the "wrong" aspect ratio because yes, the difference between 1.28:1 and 1.33:1 is minuscule enough that it barely deserves mention. The issue is that to achieve this difference the Kino has not been slightly cropped by a small percentage (which would have been fine), but instead squashed, affecting the dimensions of every shot in the film, some to a noticeable degree. I genuinely wonder if Kino even understand this. The exact same thing has happened with StudioCanal's release of The Fallen Idol (squashed to 1.29:1 from 1.33:1), which they announced an exchange programme for as soon as Blu-ray.com brought the error to their attention. They also confirmed it was an encoding error on their part, rather than blaming the entity that restored the film.

For the record, this particular issue affects not just Spione, Diary of a Lost Girl and Woman in the Moon, but also their releases of Faust and Tabu (which hilariously has ended up in an AR reduced by a similar percentage as the others, but obviously a different one since the film started as 1.19:1). This all reminds me of the error with their release of Nosferatu, something they also have dismissed despite it being the result of some sort of encoding fault on their end, and not present on the MoC.

[Jonathan S]

The issue is that to achieve this difference the Kino has not been slightly cropped by a small percentage (which would have been fine), but instead squashed, affecting the dimensions of every shot in the film, some to a noticeable degree.

Indeed... an even worse example of this error occurred with Street Angel in Fox's prestigious Murnau & Borzage box. Later releases by the BFI and Carlotta corrected it.

[tenia]

I believe that the underlying issue is that Kino seems to be trying in every way to escape aknowledging there is an issue on these titles (1), one that shouldn't be there (2) and which should have been addressed (3). They also prefer mocking their own customers (4), those who actually have been able to prove that Kino's AR was wrong (5).

That's a lot of things they tried to get away from, and as a professionnal company, it's just basically the opposite of what customers would expect from them. A company trying to escape their responsabilities is the last thing a customer want to know (or maybe it's being insulted by the said-company ?)

People screw up. It happens. It's tough, and it costs money, but it's life. But at least, if some transparency was given and some honesty shown, the matter would have been closed since Day 2.

Also, what does this say about our society. This the most traffic this tread has seen in months.

Yes, it means there are still some people caring about movies being offered in the right format and not willing to let it go when such mistakes happen.

[Der Spieler]

Geez, a whole lot of people here with "no life".

[Jarpie]

I have studied business handling etc as part of the BBA-degree etc. and I have worked in big ISP/MSP helpdesk in both consumer- and business to business-side, and we'd gotten shitcanned and could've gotten fired if we'd behaved like Kino's rep in br.com.

Beside keeping finances on plus-side, keeping your customers happy is IMO the most important thing you need to do to keep the company going. It might cost extra to handle returns, re-pressings, refunds for customers benefit etc but it is worth it because it creates loyalty in your customers, and they will come back much easier and will spread the word about how well you hande things.

Kino will get a lot of negative PR for this, and it'll damage their reputation. Repairing it will take time and they will lose potential customers, thus will lose orders.

[tenia]

we'd gotten shitcanned and could've gotten fired if we'd behaved like Kino's rep in br.com.

Of course you would (and should be). Who ever insults their customers and think it could ever be defendable ? It's not. The company's money is coming from the customers you just insulted. It can't be, and shouldn't be, accepted. Ever.

I love the "it says a lot about our society".
Yes, it also means customers are not willing to get insulted. But also that some companies might want to avoid responding to customers' complaints too quickly. You might disagree with them, they might be wrong (pointing at an issue which actually isn't one), but you never insult them.

[Drucker]

I have studied business handling etc as part of the BBA-degree etc. and I have worked in big ISP/MSP helpdesk in both consumer- and business to business-side, and we'd gotten shitcanned and could've gotten fired if we'd behaved like Kino's rep in br.com.

Beside keeping finances on plus-side, keeping your customers happy is IMO the most important thing you need to do to keep the company going. It might cost extra to handle returns, re-pressings, refunds for customers benefit etc but it is worth it because it creates loyalty in your customers, and they will come back much easier and will spread the word about how well you hande things.

Kino will get a lot of negative PR for this, and it'll damage their reputation. Repairing it will take time and they will lose potential customers, thus will lose orders.

To me, I'm generally not a Kino customer precisely because you can sometimes count on another company to put out a superior product. And lately I've even tried to buy things when they are new releases because I know that helps a company more than when everyone just waits for a sale. Another thing I would never bother for Kino.

[Der Spieler]

MisterLime don't give no damn about losing customers though.

[tenia]

I guess Kino are rich enough, then.

[MichaelB]

Yes, it also means customers are not willing to get insulted. But also that some companies might want to avoid responding to customers' complaints too quickly.

This can get frustrating sometimes for the people on both sides of the fence, but sometimes silence is the best response if you're not 100% certain of your own position.

I remember when the BFI's The Leopard had three specific complaints levelled against it - the first two were dealt with swiftly because they weren't down to a faulty product (problem one was down to the way it reacted to an Oppo player, which I believe was eventually fixed with a firmware upgrade, problem two turned out to be the extremely localised issue of the complainant's equipment being set up incorrectly), but because the third problem was a recall-worthy issue the policy was to keep silent about it until everything had been thoroughly investigated and a potential solution worked out. Which is a completely rational policy, as the last thing you want to do is circulate misleading information, but of course from the consumer's perspective it potentially made the BFI look evasive over a fairly lengthy period. (A complicating factor here is that it turned out that the problem only affected final retail copies, not the master on which they originally signed off, so when they inspected their checkdiscs they couldn't initially duplicate the problems that people were complaining about!)

Ditto Arrow's Shivers - the problem there being Arrow accepted in good faith that the restored master that they were originally supplied with was "director-approved", and of course had to carry the can when it wasn't. And they then had to choose between a bodge job whereby the missing footage was sourced from SD (this was actually tried out, but it looked horrible) or waiting for a full-length restoration to become available - but although the second option was ultimately the best decision long-term, they had absolutely no control over the timetable. And while they were happy to reveal as much as they could, the fact that they couldn't offer concrete details for several months led more than one excitable conspiracy theorist to conclude that they were trying to hide something. They genuinely weren't (believe me, they wanted this whole affair sorted out as quickly as possible), but they obviously didn't want to make any promises that they subsequently couldn't fulfil - and it was only when the master finally arrived and was thoroughly checked that they could start saying more than "we're investigating".

[Der Spieler]

In Kino's case though, the error is repeated on multiple releases and it seems that the company considers this "minuscule" enough that it's not worthy of their time. They're not silent about it, they're in fact very vocal, but the message they express is to deal with it and move on.

The worst thing too is that they said Eureka were the ones with a stretched image, and after that they blamed the Murnau Stiftung for providing elements in 1.28. They're playing the blame game and blasting the customers, the people who restored the film and what they consider their "rival" company.

A big mess all around. I had several Kino titles in my Amazon cart but frankly I think I'll just cancel. I don't feel like giving my hard-earned cash to someone who insults their customers like nobody's business.

[MichaelB]

In Kino's case though, the error is repeated on multiple releases and it seems that the company considers this "minuscule" enough that it's not worthy of their time. They're not silent about it, they're in fact very vocal, but the message they express is to deal with it and move on.

That's the point that Tenia and I were making - silence often is the best policy until you're absolutely certain of your ground, no matter how frustrating it might be to your customers.

[Der Spieler]

In Kino's case though, the error is repeated on multiple releases and it seems that the company considers this "minuscule" enough that it's not worthy of their time. They're not silent about it, they're in fact very vocal, but the message they express is to deal with it and move on.

That's the point that Tenia and I were making - silence often is the best policy until you're absolutely certain of your ground, no matter how frustrating it might be to your customers.

You're absolutely right. I misread.

[Ashirg]

Back to the announcements - John Ford's 3 Bad Men has been announced with

Brand New Audio Commentary by Film Historian Joseph McBride, the author of Searching For John Ford: A Life

[DeprongMori]

Did the Shivers replacement ever get announced?

[tenia]

In Kino's case though, the error is repeated on multiple releases and it seems that the company considers this "minuscule" enough that it's not worthy of their time.

It's worthy enough for them to squeeze the material instead of just issuing on BD the material as supplied by the FWWS.
That's the most baffling to me : that they would take the time to introduce a problem on their own, but then would deem the issue minuscule enough for it not to be bothered with.

[Orlac]

Kino's BD of DEVIL BAT is squished too.

[tenia]

Battleship Potemkine probably is too.

[phelings]

I understand the impetus behind defending your friend, but as MisterLime has made himself a public figure, members here are free to speak however they choose of him. Unlike some boards, we don't whitewash dissent against a label and/or labelhead in return for their continued patronage

I've only just joined as Criterion Blurays in my UK collection of discs only reach single figures.
It was a link to this thread that got me interested as I have difficulty with forums where favouritism operates.

Does this mean we are free to point out the incredible incompetence of the numpty who runs Code Red without the Bluray.com arse licking system that operates?

And I'm glad there's no bias toward Misterlime either.
That he operates in the PR department is a story in itself.

He was so rude to members on HTF that he got banned more than once and was only allowed back on after some behind the scenes discussion.
ML often posts the appropriate reply required to stupid questions but not answers that should come from the PR department.
The customer is not always right but that isn't really something people in the PR department should be telling their customers in a niche market.

So I look forward to seeing just how unbiased this forum is.

On the KL front I think they've released some cracking titles these last few months although some are on the fringes of my interest so are a bit over priced for me in the UK after postage is added . But the ones I have are very good.

[domino harvey]

If any of the labelheads or reps who post here ever asked me to delete a dissenting or negative view, I would laugh in their internet face equivalent, and I'm sure the other mods would do likewise

EDIT: And yes, we have a whole thread charting the Code Red Guy's greatest hits

[Der Spieler]

EDIT: And yes, we have a whole thread charting the Code Red Guy's greatest hits

This is glorious.