Studio Canal / Kinowelt / Optimum

[dustybooks]

The documentary "Jean Cocteau: Autobiography of an Unknown" from The Blood of a Poet and the short “La Villa Santo Sospir” from Testament of Orpheus are both available on the Criterion Blu of Orpheus. Not sure about the essays though.

Thank you, I probably should have checked that before posting!

[Finch]

Beaver on StudioCanal's 4k Don't Look Now

This does look impressive even on my non-HDR monitor/laptop screen. More titles like this might just tempt me to take the plunge.

[Lowry_Sam]

Searched this site, but surprised I couldn’t find a dedicated thread for Gaspar Noe’s Irreversible.It recently played in Venice in 2 cuts, the original & “the straight cut”. Anyone see the new version? Can’t imagine I would like it as it sounds like it undermines the premise of the film, but The Studio Canal press release states that both versions will be coming to blu-ray.

[tenia]

it sounds like it undermines the premise of the film

Noé explained that he thinks the "reverse chronology might have gotten the focus of too many viewers who then missed some aspects of the story. By telling it now in a normal chronology, it's all very clear but also darker. It was so far a concept puzzle, it's now a diptych, like an old disc whose B face is a less conceptual version of the A face, with more intelligible voices, making the words' meaning more fatalist."
In this regard, it seems to me that on the contrary, it shifts the film focus from its gimmicky premises to its main story (which, for me, has actually always got my main focus).

[Lowry_Sam]

I saw Irreversible at a midnight screening as part of a SF horror/cult film fest before it was released in the US (the announcement actually stated that it probably wasn’t going to get released in the US so this was likely to be your only chance to see it). The theater was completely full, they had to turn people away. They also prefaced the film with a warning that someone had fainted the night before at its North American premiere in NYC (which was probably because of the strobe effect/epilepsy connection not necessarily from the content) which only heightened the (mostly horror fans) expectations of the audience. Having not heard anything about the film (except that I knew it wasn’t a slasher film as perhaps some in the audience might have been expecting), I was completely blown away from the beginning (with the credits really alerting you to the premise of the film’s structure. It played out like a mystery similar to Memento from the previous year & liked (but thought could have been better), but was much more effective in its use of the narrative structure & so I found it to be much less gimmicky than Memento. However, after the film, in discussing it with others (Noe was supposed to be at the screening, but something came up & he couldn’t make it) it became clear that many people had missed particular details in the plot and this lead to a debate over whether the film was homophobic (and that it was people’s misunderstanding of the chain of events in the film that led to this debate). So I can see the impetus for Noe wanting to restructure it for a broader audience. But for me, I was just so taken in with the film because of its structure that I was a truly in awe, which I rarely experience anymore when I go to the movies.

[therewillbeblus]

Studiocanal will re-release a 4k version of Godard's Breathless in 2020.

[eerik]

I assume you are referencing Deadline.com's article which does not mention anything regards UHD discs. 3 of the 5 titles they mention as 2019 releases certainly were not released on 4K discs.

Edit: The Third Man did not receive any new home video release this year, the 4K restoration was released in 2015 with another theatrical releases this year. So yeah, the article is foremost about theatrical releases.

[tenia]

Canal's policy about HDR seems to only use/apply it if the restoration is done under the guidance of a technical reference from the movie.
I wouldn't say the article is mostly about theatrical releases, but rather just Canal's curation of their catalogue and then, well, it depends on the market. I would bet on Elephant Man getting a video release (possibly an UHD), and Irréversible is already confirmed on BD.
But it's not different from a presentation I've seen by TF1 about everything they have restored (and wow there's lot of them, but so few with distributors or video labels to get them out).

[TMDaines]

Are Kino's and SC's recent releases of The Holly and the Ivy Blu-ray cut? Beaver has the Kino at 80-81 mins and Amazon UK lists the SC at 80 mins, where three reviewers are lamenting the film being incomplete with "the children's nativity play attended by Ralph Richardson, and the scene in which Denholm Elliott leads some child carolers [...] still missing". Anyone know the history of this film and why these scenes are not present? Backchannels do have longer versions of the film too.

Britmovie is quite unhelpful and NitrateVille is little more so.

[yoloswegmaster]

SC to release 'Nights of Cabiria' and 'The White Sheik' in Spring 2020.

[Matt]

SC to release 'Nights of Cabiria' and 'The White Sheik' in Spring 2020.

in the UK and Germany. The 4K resto of Cabiria appears to be already available on blu in Spain and Japan.

[movielocke]

SC to release 'Nights of Cabiria' and 'The White Sheik' in Spring 2020.

Perhaps those will be the first upgrades criterion releases this year as well, ala Virgin spring in the summer of the Bergman year.

I’d rather get I vitteloni and la strada though, first.

[hearthesilence]

The White Sheik, Nights of Cabiria and I Vitteloni are three of Fellini's best films, IMHO, and I'd welcome any of them as the first BD upgrades of the year. (Can't say I'm a fan of La Strada, but it's probably more popular than any of those three so I'm sure an upgrade will come relatively soon.)

[tenia]

I've seen a few caps of the Cabiria Japanese disc and yeah, it's Wax-o-vision. The grain seem to have been scrubbed into oblivion. The grading also seem problematic, with clipped highlights and the whole thing just seem completely over-exposed.
It's surprising, because Kadokawa also released Bresson's Le journal d'un curé de campagne in its new 4K resto and it seemed to be (again, on caps) tremendous. So I can't say if Cabiria's restoration is just FUBARed or if Kadokawa decided to toy with it pointlessly and destructively.

EDIT : found it, from the Film Forum 2020 program :

4K RESTORATION BY TF1 STUDIO IN PARTNERSHIP WITH STUDIOCANAL AND WITH THE SUPPORT OF THE CNC. RESTORED AT L’IMMAGINE RITROVATA LABORATORY, BOLOGNA

And here :

The 4K restoration and digitisation of NIGHTS OF CABIRIA has been made from new fine grains by TF1 STUDIO in partnership with STUDIOCANAL and with the support of the CNC

[hearthesilence]

Ugh. I guess I WON'T be selling my Criterion DVD after all.

FWIW, in late 2017 when MoMI held a program honoring Rialto, the one 35mm print shown was for Nights of Cabiria - it looked great, but it was also pretty worn and scratched around the reel changes. Would be a great shame if no good print of this circulates anymore in the U.S.

[Drucker]

I feel like the Fellini restorations we've seen are such a mixed bag, I shudder to think about the quality of the boxset. City of Women and Roma have the weird color timing. La Strada doesn't look amazing. Nights of Cabiria could very well be botched.

[The Fanciful Norwegian]

Do you mean the 2K restoration of La Strada from 2017 or the new 4K one?

[Drucker]

Probably the former, just commenting that the Studio Canal UK disc never seemed like reason enough to upgrade the Criterion DVD.

[L.A.]

The Elephant Man Collector’s Edition in April.

[M Sanderson]

Have they still got the U.K. rights to Masque of the Red Death? Rumours that it’s been remastered from 4k, so when are we going to see this?

[tenia]

If Cabiria has been done from a new fine grain master, there is no reason for it to look like this. And honestly, it just looks digitally filtered. Even dupes have a typically filmic grain.

Yes, I've seen some caps of Journal d'un curé, and it looks marvelous. It should be out in France through Studio Canal in March.

[Drucker]

Saw the 4k restoration trailer of Caibiria yesterday at Film Forum and can pretty confidently say that it doesn't seem to come from a new restoration, FWIW. It had scratches on it and pulsing brightness at various points.

[M Sanderson]

Villain (1971) with Richard Burton coming out on March 20; Vintage Classics.

No details regarding restoration work/fresh scans etc.

[M Sanderson]

Villain has now been confirmed as a new restoration.

[rapta]

If StudioCanal are releasing The Nights of Cabiria, why have BFI Video submitted it to the BBFC? Very odd..