Kino Lorber Studio Classics

[cdnchris]

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.

There are a handful of people who represent certain entities that don't post here anymore because I and other mods don't play favourites (one left because I refused--after overcoming the initial shock at the balls of this person to ask this--to ban certain members), so you're free to air grievances. We just ask that if you get into a heated discussion with someone, whether it be a rep or another general member, just keep it fairly civil.

[MichaelB]

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

Is this the moment to break the news that the subject of this discussion wasn't very happy about it?

But there was obviously no question of me censoring it - even if he'd asked me politely. Which he didn't.

(Obviously, unambiguously defamatory posts are a different matter, but that's very very rarely an issue - most criticisms here are very very strongly evidence-backed!)

This is probably also a good opportunity to make it clear that although I have moderator powers in the BFI and Arrow subforums, and inside info on both labels (I've freelanced for both for many years), I have never altered anybody else's non-spamming posts for more than the most superficial cosmetic reasons, and I never will. Even if you're having the fullest and frankest imaginable discussion with me, I give you my word that I will never abuse my powers for censorship, because quite aside from anything else it would be outrageously hypocritical of me. (I've left other forums in protest at absurdly heavy-handed moderation that spilled over into outright censorship.)

[phelings]

That's all good to know.
MichaelB - I saw your recent problems on Bluray.com where the favouritism is rife. I had a few run ins with the mods who banned me for telling the Code Red guy a few home truths and now they ban me every time I re-register and accuse me of "trolling", just because I've been banned before. (They banned my IP address and actually thought it would make any difference).
I'll pop onto the Code Red thread and say my piece as Bluray.com delete most critical posts.

[FrauBlucher]

You would think that MisterLime, Nick Redman and the others that get argumentative would take their queue from Becker and Hendrickson. Criterion never confronts the criticism. If it's something they can fix, like Code Unknown, then they issue a press release about the correction. If they can't correct, like Children of Paradise, then they just keep quiet and stay above the swirling winds. Some may be critical of their radio silence at times but it really is the best approach, because they just can't make everyone happy, nor should they try.

[MichaelB]

The BFI has been happy to use me as a go-between for the better part of a decade - it means that they don't have to get directly involved, and I can also forward useful stuff to them while filtering out the white noise. Same with James White on an individual level - he's deliberately opted not to join any forums (he'd never hear the end of it!), but if you see me talking about a release that he worked on in extreme technical detail, the chances are that I'm quoting his private emails directly (always with permission, of course).

Which is a good way of maintaining (usually) civilised dialogue without getting the labels involved at a corporate level.

[swo17]

Some may be critical of their radio silence at times but it really is the best approach, because they just can't make everyone happy, nor should they try.

Sensible, level-headed engagement with the customer base (like from MichaelB, peerpee, Bikey, JamesF, cinemaguild, drdoros, etc.) is actually the best approach. No label is perfect, but this goes a long way toward sealing in the gaps.

[MichaelB]

It's particularly useful when preparing people for potential bad news. For instance, when the BFI released The Devils, they knew that they'd run into trouble over the lack of a Blu-ray and the fact that it didn't contain the "rape of Christ" footage, for reasons entirely beyond their control. So by authorising me to discuss it months in advance of the release date (across multiple platforms, although in the event it was mostly here and in comments under Amazon reviews) they were able to control the narrative in a way that might not have been the case if they'd maintained complete silence.

[GetHarryPalmer]

You would think that MisterLime, Nick Redman and the others that get argumentative would take their queue from Becker and Hendrickson. Criterion never confronts the criticism. If it's something they can fix, like Code Unknown, then they issue a press release about the correction. If they can't correct, like Children of Paradise, then they just keep quiet and stay above the swirling winds. Some may be critical of their radio silence at times but it really is the best approach, because they just can't make everyone happy, nor should they try.

Wow, I should've just left it alone. It's great to post on a thread where everyone agrees with each other and rip apart anyone who disagrees with them. Anyway, like the Code Unknown situation, Kino offered replacement Blu-ray discs of Madhouse at no cost to the customer and without proof of purchase, and just like the Children of Paradise situation, Kino stayed silent for weeks and should've stayed silent and until the matter was completely dropped. By responding with a rude comment of "get a life", MisterLime made things worse and gave the lynch mob the ammunition they needed to continue this argument and it doesn't matter that he apologized the following day for making those comments.

What I find kind of funny and sad at the same is the reappearance of his comments on this thread which was removed hours later by that forum's moderator and no longer exists. So this means, someone actually took pictures of these comments and saved it, now I'm not sure if the "get a life" comments was really the off-base.

[yoshimori]

GetHarryPalmer
Joined: Sun Mar 27, 2016 12:06 pm

[Werewolf by Night]

GetHarryPalmer, what are you hoping to accomplish by continuing to stir this pot? You say in one paragraph that you should have just left it alone, but then toss off another insult in the very next paragraph. To paraphrase Shirley Jackson, if you don't like the peaches, don't shake the tree.

[GetHarryPalmer]

GetHarryPalmer
Joined: Sun Mar 27, 2016 12:06 pm

Yes, I joined yesterday to defend my friend.

And to the answer the followup post, this was a dead thread for months and all of a sudden its booming, so how am I stirring the pot. I'm just posting my opinion, so anyone who doesn't agree with you guys should not post here?

[knives]

A post just two days before is dead?

[Gregory]

Yes, I joined yesterday to defend my friend.

Clearly that's your aim and bias, yet you accuse other posters of being a "biased mob." Is bias only objectionable when it's what you happen to disagree with? And it's up to you, of course, but consider saving terms like "lynch mob" for when someone's life may actually be at stake. Complaints about Kino are not a lynching. If you want to post your opinions, great, but you could be more reasonable about it and not victimize yourself so much.
And if you think this suggestion is another case of someone "ripping you apart," then you're still being too sensitive.

[tenia]

If they can't correct, like Children of Paradise, then they just keep quiet and stay above the swirling winds.

They did try to confront criticism when the new Leopard restoration was released (and obviously made their release obsolete while they could have waited a bit and licenced the new restoration), and it hasn't been in their favor, so I surely understand why they now prefer to keep quiet instead.

Sensible, level-headed engagement with the customer base (like from MichaelB, peerpee, Bikey, JamesF, cinemaguild, drdoros, etc.) is actually the best approach. No label is perfect, but this goes a long way toward sealing in the gaps.

Exactly. As a customer-at-heart myself, these people provide exactly the type of communication I like to get. Of course, sometimes they don't know the answer to our questions, or can't say anything yet, or sometimes they have to face mistakes or to answer silly questions. But as a whole, all these people do a pretty good job (and I'd tend to add Jerome Wybon and Fabien Braule on DVD Classik, and Kevin @ Eureka, though it's quite obvious he doesn't have the same amount of time for this than before) and I'm quite sure people are very happy to interact with them.

Anyway, like the Code Unknown situation, Kino offered replacement Blu-ray discs of Madhouse at no cost to the customer and without proof of purchase, and just like the Children of Paradise situation, Kino stayed silent for weeks and should've stayed silent and until the matter was completely dropped.

The 1st example has nothing to do with what is being discussed here (bad AR being introduced by Kino and them then shifting the blame to whoever they can - FWWS and then customers -) and the 2nd one is not the same situation than what is being discussed here (Children of Paradise is a flawed restoration licenced as is by Criterion, the 1.28 AR isn't what has been licenced as is).

By responding with a rude comment of "get a life", MisterLime made things worse and gave the lynch mob the ammunition they needed to continue this argument and it doesn't matter that he apologized the following day for making those comments.

Yes, he apologized. No, it was too late anyway. No, it's not "giving the lynch mob ammunition", but choosing as 1st spontaneous answer to insult customers instead of having a professionnal constructive answer.

What I find kind of funny and sad at the same is the reappearance of his comments on this thread which was removed hours later by that forum's moderator and no longer exists. So this means, someone actually took pictures of these comments and saved it, now I'm not sure if the "get a life" comments was really the off-base.

Because that's how blu-ray.com works and we all know this here at a rather large extent (sometimes pretty directly), yes, a 5-sec PrintScreen save is sometimes best to remember people what factually happened. Because being blu-ray.com, damage control usually involves removing the problem rather than aknowledging there was one in the first place.
Funny / sad thing also is that now, we're left with these pictures of the insults, but none of the apologies. I guess that's how 5-sec (aka "a life") can sometimes make a difference.


You might be wanting to defend your friend, and that's a nice gesture, but really, you don't do himself (or yourself) any favor by trying to avoid the matter at heart here. Instead, you're just making things worst by making mocked / insulted customers as people who actually are just a "lynch mob".

[MichaelB]

Screencapping discussions at Blu-ray.com, a site that's becoming increasingly notorious for censorship in the form of arbitrary and often unacknowledged deletion of posts, is plain common sense - and it takes seconds.

[FrauBlucher]

Some may be critical of their radio silence at times but it really is the best approach, because they just can't make everyone happy, nor should they try.

Sensible, level-headed engagement with the customer base (like from MichaelB, peerpee, Bikey, JamesF, cinemaguild, drdoros, etc.) is actually the best approach. No label is perfect, but this goes a long way toward sealing in the gaps.

This approach works well with this forum, but I'm not sure this works on other forums or on social media. Bluray.com and HTF heavily moderate the label threads. And the social media sites are just rife with trolls waiting to pounce.

Yes, he apologized. No, it was too late anyway. No, it's not "giving the lynch mob ammunition", but choosing as 1st spontaneous answer to insult customers instead of having a professional constructive answer.

Indeed, referring to customer complaints to a lynch mob is unprofessional and just plain awful biz.

[MichaelB]

This approach works well with this forum, but I'm not sure this works on other forums or on social media. Bluray.com and HTF heavily moderate the label threads. And the social media sites are just rife with trolls waiting to pounce.

In my experience, it varies. Blu-ray.com is frustrating partly because of the aggressive censorship (which includes an autocensor so undiscriminating that a current Arrow release is referred to as Beware of a Holy *****), but also because the mods there seem to have an openly confrontational attitude towards anyone perceived to have industry connections, and they generally express this in publicly accessible posts, presumably so they can be seen to be throwing their weight around. Tellingly, Blu Titan, the mod I had the greatest number of run-ins with, never once sent me a PM of any description (not even when he arbitrarily decided to suspend me for having the temerity to defend myself and my colleagues against unwarranted personal attacks) - and life's frankly too short to deal with that kind of bullshit.

I've also heard similar things about the HTF, which is why I haven't even bothered registering there - although other forums have generally been very welcoming. I always post under my own name (or near enough) and have never made the slightest secret about my various connections, so there's no subterfuge involved.

But I've generally had pretty good experiences with Facebook - I mostly hang out on the Arrow, Eureka and DVD Beaver pages, which maintain a very sensible balance between censoring obvious spam while allowing others to speak freely.

[bugsy_pal]

I haven't gone back to read all of the previous posts about these recent disagreements, but the mention of 'Mister Lime' made me chuckle. I do read a bit on HTF, and Mister Lime has a history of biting the heads off of unsuspecting folks who question him on quite reasonable matters. Then he might storm off and not be heard of for ages. I guess as an insider, he has access to information that people want - but who needs that sort of aggravation?

[JamesF]

I have to confess I'm sometimes grateful that Soda's relatively low profile means we don't bear the same scrutiny of some other labels! Clearly alienating potential customers en masse is a deeply foolish thing to do, but as a disc producer I understand where the anger from the likes of Bill Olsen comes from as well. It's a high risk business (depending on the business model and your level of financial/administrative entanglement with the company, anyway) with limited rewards that swallows up an often disproportionate amount of time and energy, and one that attracts creative personalities to boot - so of course some of those personalities are ones without a thick skin or the ability to step back and breathe for a moment before responding. That's not always easy to do when online discussions and the harsh realities of the marketplace are often dictated by endless games of one-upmanship - "I like that so-and-so has released this, but I think I'll wait until so-and-so releases a better version and buy that instead" - that can automatically invalidate months of hard work. (And as a fan and consumer, I'm every bit as guilty of doing that myself.) In that respect, I'm privileged in that Soda's relative anonymity and my just being an employee allows me some distance; I'm not sure I'd be able to do that if it were my own label, though I like to think so. (I know it was hard not to take the handful of negative reviews of The Reflecting Skin personally after spending several months literally losing sleep over it.)

tl;dr - Why can't we all just get along?

[MichaelB]

That's not always easy to do when online discussions and the harsh realities of the marketplace are often dictated by endless games of one-upmanship - "I like that so-and-so has released this, but I think I'll wait until so-and-so releases a better version and buy that instead" - that can automatically invalidate months of hard work. (And as a fan and consumer, I'm every bit as guilty of doing that myself.)

Same here, but some people really can be astonishingly tactless. But I'm more than used to the chorus of moaning that accompanies pretty much every announcement, and some of them can even be quite funny (like the guy who complained that Arrow was focusing on Walerian Borowczyk instead of Krzysztof Kieslowski, Roman Polanski, Andrei Tarkovsky or Andrzej Wajda, arguably the four eastern European directors least in need of revival and rediscovery), but it can be a bit dispiriting at times. Or there's the "I've never heard of it so it must be rubbish" brigade.

In that respect, I'm privileged in that Soda's relative anonymity and my just being an employee allows me some distance; I'm not sure I'd be able to do that if it were my own label, though I like to think so.

Same here - in fact, one reason why the likes of Arrow, the BFI and Second Run are happy to let me fight online battles for them is that as a freelancer with no contractual ties who hasn't personally underwritten potentially risky releases I don't have any significant financial stake in this (bar my continued freelance employment) and so I'm much less likely to take things personally. And because I'm sometimes doing this on behalf of friends, that in itself is quite a powerful inhibiting factor because the last thing I want is to damage their reputation or business.

[tenia]

I think, in the end, it's all the simple question of whether or not the criticisms are valid (1) and constructively written (2).
It can be hard to take but some works actually deserve to be criticised. Mistakes can slip through QC, HD masters supplied can be obsolete (or at least not the best) and extra features might be disappointing in content or quantity.
For instance, I refrained myself from buying The Reflecting Skin because the HD master simply looks too filtered to me (though I’ll probably cave in at some point).

The complaint about the AR for the Kino silent is a genuine factual one, which is why it’s all the more frustrating that their PR have handled the matter so poorly.

But of course, there are and will always be people who just think the market can cope with their fantaisies, or that a label mission might include much more than what they think. And of course, the more famous the movies, the more unaware people might be looking for them (MichaelB, you probably remember the Ginger Snaps running gag !).

[MichaelB]

Oh, constructive criticism is absolutely fine, and strongly evidence-backed criticism even finer - in fact, in both cases it can be very very useful indeed. The stuff that irritates me is criticism based on wildly unrealistic expectations (usually technical or financial), and of course criticism based on ignorance (for instance, attempting a straight comparison of the framing of a recent scan with a twenty-year-old CRT-era telecine without taking the latter's compensation for overscan into account).

With regard to the Ginger Snaps saga, I actually had a huge amount of sympathy with the person desperate for Arrow to take it on - but, as I pointed out at the time, one person saying the same thing a thousand times is (literally) worth a thousandth of a thousand people saying it once. It's a good film (I saw it when it came out) but there just wasn't any compelling reason to pick it up - and, as he went on to prove with his quixotic online petition, there didn't seem to be much demand for it either. And it was known to be coming out in the US even at the time of our discussion, so it really wasn't an ultra-obscure rarity being kept off the market by Arrow's intransigence.

[JamesF]

For instance, I refrained myself from buying The Reflecting Skin because the HD master simply looks too filtered to me (though I’ll probably cave in at some point).

Kidding, obviously - one of the biggest lessons you have to learn in this biz is not to take any rejection or hesitance from potential customers personally. Especially as a Blu-Ray junkie myself, it's not like I've never held off buying something because of quibbles with the transfer or missing extras when there's something more immediately satisfying I could spend my hard-earned on.

(Though seriously, you're not likely to see a better version of The Reflecting Skin anytime soon and the remaster was done before we acquired the film and beyond our control and we filled it with hours of never-before-seen wonderful extras to compensate and it's really not that bad at all and hey, the Region A edition is super cheap on amazon.ca and... ahem.)

[Sloper]

Orlac - I'm friends with Scott (MisterLime) who hasn't posted here in years - I don't think you should call him a loser when he's not here to defend himself, not cool.

Remember when misterlime did post here, fighting the good fight for Olive?

[MichaelB]

Starting the good fight for Olive, as I remember - didn't he invade a generally pro-Olive thread with all guns blazing?