Studio Canal / Kinowelt / Optimum

[EddieLarkin]

The Kino uses 2.0 as well, indeed mono audio tracks tend to appear as 2.0 more commonly than they do 1.0. They only way to tell is to listen to them and/or run them through Dolby if you have surround speakers.

[david hare]

If anyone is interested, I have received after a five week wait the Canal UHD disc of Le Cercle Rouge. Once again I agree with Remy the Blu Ray of this new remaster looks extremely good to my eyes, and the closest of all existing Bluray encodes to a theatrical screening. I owned the original Canal cardboard 2008 release which was blue-toned to buggery and it is now in the bin. This is more like the Criterion but better encoded with natural skin tones and reds, and better judged blue and green management in the scenes where decor and/or filters are playing with those colors. It's certainly worth buying the new Blu Ray alone if you're not UHD equipped.

I've just sampled the UHD with Dolby Vision on the 75 inch Panny. It's extremely good, and the UHD displays far greater depth, deeper blacks, better contrast and the DV seems to push the colors further sometimes surpsingly so even affecting slightly whites which sometimes look "cleaner" in the Blu Ray. But it's a very impressive image, and I think the best I've seen of the film so far. There's no suggestion that it has some kind of Eclair of Bologna LUT wash, indeed as far as I know the job was don by Hiventy. Playing it back through the Projector (Optoma UHD 65) with only default HDR it looks frankly awful. Even with HDR rebalance on the (Panny 820) player to allow "light environment" and better contrast it still crushes blacks, and lacks detail that's very clear on the DV layer encode. The blue/green color tones when they're apparent in the scene, become much more unpleasantly agressive, but other less pushed outdoors shots look the closest the HDR version can come to "good"

I have absolutely no idea how or in what formats Svet was watching this when he reviewed it. If he was only able to wtach it with HDR he 's done the release a disservice. I note with some concern not one singly other review in the Anglosphere.

[John Hodson]

That's interesting and not the only instance of a Canal encoded UHD disc where the DV layer is good but vanilla HDR not so much. I wonder what's going on? Thank you David; this will now go down on the to buy list.

[david hare]

It gets worse the more you watch the HDR encode. The second scene in the nightclub which opens with the African drums shot is overrun with banding and compression. It looks dreadful. There's more but point is made.

[EddieLarkin]

That's interesting and not the only instance of a Canal encoded UHD disc where the DV layer is good but vanilla HDR not so much. I wonder what's going on?

It's simply poor encoding practices. Something to do with them starting with the DV encode and auto deriving the HDR10 encode directly from it, rather than treating them as two separate works that need equal attention. Not surprising whenever David M handles a disc for them the HDR10 and DV encodes are both perfect. Indeed all else equal there is little difference between the two formats, certainly nothing that should be causing crushed blacks and wonky colours on HDR10. This will be more to do with how projectors handle HDR (poorly, which is why no projector so far can output in the Dolby Vision format).

[L.A.]

Link (Richard Franklin, 1986)

Beaver.

[yoloswegmaster]

Extras:
Shooting Mandabi - Silent Footage from British Pathé
Audio Commentary with Sembène! (2015) Filmmakers Samba Gadjigo and Jason Silverman
Interview with Alain Sembène
Interview with African film Curator and Consultant Keith Shiri
Discussion with Sembène Specialist and Author David Murphy
Conversation in Dakar with Author Boubacar Boris Diop and Sociologist Marie-Angélique Savané
Theatrical trailer
20-page booklet with brand-new essay from celebrated Sembène writer David Murphy

[L.A.]

Coming in June apparently. Curious which cut it will have.

[tenia]

Criterion used the Canal restoration so it should be the same. Or is there something that might specifically be cut in the UK ?

[L.A.]

According to DVD Compare

There appear to be two versions of the film:
- the international cut, running ~90 minutes
- the Senegalese cut, running ~105 minutes

If this is the case, would like to email Studio Canal and maybe ask them of the possibility of including both cuts. Who to get in touch though?

[Calvin]

I'm fairly certain that only the longer cut has been restored

[tenia]

The Criterion BD is about 92 min.

[L.A.]

The Frightened City (1961) coming to Blu-ray in April.

[PfR73]

Not sure where this should be posted, since it concerns The Elephant Man on both Studio Canal and Criterion discs -- but Studio Canal was apparently responsible for restoring the film, so here goes: there is a fadeout missing from the film discussed here on p. 19 onwards (scroll down for video comparisons):
https://forum.blu-ray.com/showthread.ph ... 28&page=19
A good example of a QC issue.
Thread also discusses a missing fade to white on Criterion´s Eraserhead (corrected), missing fade-in to the jitterbug sequence in Mulholland Drive (not corrected) and the soundtrack of Elephant Man.

Today, I've ended up comparing several releases of The Elephant Man, and this "fade" is not present on any of them. It is not on the original R1 Paramount DVD, the previous StudioCanal Collection Blu-ray, or the current Criterion & Studio Canal Blu-rays. Can anyone name a release that has actually has this fade?

[tenia]

The older SC release.
The lack of fade in the new 4k restoration is baked in the restoration and AFAIK no one has corrected it on video.

[PfR73]

What I'm saying is it is not present in the older SC Blu-ray release, or even the older Paramount DVD. This is not something that happened for the first time during the newest restoration. If there was truly a fade there at some point, it has been missing for almost 20 years. So I'm trying to identify if there is a specific release that has it.

[tenia]

Hum, I was convinced it was on the older SC BD release. It definitely was on at least a DVD release (not sure if US or European). I'll need to double check that.

[yoloswegmaster]

Studiocanal now owns the catalogue for Romulus Films. Some of the films in the catalogue include African Queen, Moulin Rouge, and Richard III.

[DeprongMori]

Studiocanal now owns the catalogue for Romulus Films. Some of the films in the catalogue include African Queen, Moulin Rouge, and Richard III.

There is a decent list of the Romulus Films in Wikipedia’s entry on “John and James Woolf”.

[rapta]

Studiocanal now owns the catalogue for Romulus Films. Some of the films in the catalogue include African Queen, Moulin Rouge, and Richard III.

Obviously both BFI and Eureka released some of these recently - The African Queen from MoC; Moulin Rouge, Cosh Boy, Beat the Devil, The Good Die Young, and Room at the Top from BFI. Apparently those are obviously all fine and currently unaffected by the deal since they had already bought a license, but I expect StudioCanal will continue releasing them on home video when their rights expire.

Good news for the other titles they didn't release yet though, hopefully some of them will make it to Blu-ray. The Story of Esther Costello, The Whole Truth, Term of Trial and Heavens Above! will surely be in the running.