Finch wrote: Thu Jan 01, 2026 9:26 pm
Great Silence LE is sold out. Wow.
And standard edition gone too... This is from Film Movement--are these people not a teeny weeny fearful of a potentially dreadful encode? I'd at least wait until reviews of their first 4K edition turn up.
EDIT: The screenshots provided on the VS website for The Dam Busters and The Great Silence seem fine, at least nothing of the sort one can observe from Shall We Dance?. Maybe Studio Canal does the encode for them?
Does anyone know if the Dirty Work set is ever being reprinted or is this like Existenz where they never announced it being OOP but it just didn't come back?
Finch wrote: Thu Jan 01, 2026 9:26 pm
Great Silence LE is sold out. Wow.
And standard edition gone too... This is from Film Movement--are these people not a teeny weeny fearful of a potentially dreadful encode? I'd at least wait until reviews of their first 4K edition turn up.
EDIT: The screenshots provided on the VS website for The Dam Busters and The Great Silence seem fine, at least nothing of the sort one can observe from Shall We Dance?. Maybe Studio Canal does the encode for them?
I think it's a safe bet Eureka might upgrade their edition, which would automatically be the better option
dwk wrote: Fri Jan 02, 2026 5:19 pmDon't Be Afraid of the Dark UHD is today's new announcement (Iconoscope sublabel) and confirms that VS has a deal with WB.
How did I know THAT is what they want to license from WB…
Iconoscope is a new Vinegar Syndrome sub label dedicated entirely to television, produced by long-time VS film scanning technician and restoration artist, Brandon Upson. With a focus on genre-based, English language (and possibly international) productions, Iconoscope will be preserving, restoring and releasing made-for-tv films, mini-series, and multi-season series ranging from well known big productions to more obscure, and even lost, regional rarities.
dwk wrote: Fri Jan 02, 2026 5:19 pmDon't Be Afraid of the Dark UHD is today's new announcement (Iconoscope sublabel) and confirms that VS has a deal with WB.
Their email specifies that they’ve licensed “nearly 40” titles. Hopefully more like this (Archive DVD-R rescue) and less like Arrow’s Shout Factory imitation
Ah, my bad. Not quite as promising then (does this make VS the second label to upgrade from WA Blu to boutique label after Criterion, or did Arrow do one too?)
Since VS does dual-format, unlike Arrow, I assume they will not be dipping into titles that are still in-print on Blu from Shout/Scream. So I could see them redoing something OOP like Night of the Lepus or Of Unknow Origin but not doing UHDs of, for example,Deadly Friend or Memoirs of an Invisible Man
I can't think of any WAC titles that Arrow has done yet, but Cliff said they have some and I know at least one that is getting a release from Arrow
dwk wrote: Fri Jan 02, 2026 10:13 pm
Since VS does dual-format, unlike Arrow, I assume they will not be dipping into titles that are still in-print on Blu from Shout/Scream. So I could see them redoing something OOP like Night of the Lepus or Of Unknow Origin but not doing UHDs of, for example,Deadly Friend or Memoirs of an Invisible Man
I can't think of any WAC titles that Arrow has done yet, but Cliff said they have some and I know at least one that is getting a release from Arrow
Demon Seed is a no-brainer. A title that went from pressed disc to WAC disc to WAC Blu-Ray.
In a perfect world they go after Don’t Go to Sleep, which WB never even released on DVD. Now that would be a great rescue job completely in the realm of the kind of thing they and their customers like
There are a ton of great tv movies of the week that have never been released on disc, but one upgrade from WAC MOD DVD I’m hoping for is 1973’s tight little gem of suspense, Dying Room Only, from Duel author Richard Matheson.
Cloris Leachman puts in a banger performance, verging on hysteria for practically the entire running time, and you can definitely see the roots of Jonathan Mostow’s Breakdown in it!
Need some stragglers to finally get on disc. Last Summer’s prime for Cinematographe—know Larry Karaszewski’s hinted at a release in the works. They could pull another Dirty Work and reconstruct Demme’s cut of Swing Shift, would be happy with that or The Stupids as a consolation.
okcmaxk wrote: Sat Jan 03, 2026 2:15 am
Need some stragglers to finally get on disc. Last Summer’s prime for Cinematographe—know Larry Karaszewski’s hinted at a release in the works. They could pull another Dirty Work and reconstruct Demme’s cut of Swing Shift, would be happy with that or The Stupids as a consolation.
Cinematographe loves Demme so Swing Shift feels like a no brainer release.
okcmaxk wrote: Sat Jan 03, 2026 2:15 am or The Stupids as a consolation.
That is exactly the kind of worthless crap they’d produce a 60 dollar 4K hard box edition with three inner slip covers and a book for.
I genuinely love The Stupids and think the first half or so is some of the best material of John Landis’ career. It’s never had a did release since 1997
okcmaxk wrote: Sat Jan 03, 2026 2:15 am
Need some stragglers to finally get on disc. Last Summer’s prime for Cinematographe—know Larry Karaszewski’s hinted at a release in the works. They could pull another Dirty Work and reconstruct Demme’s cut of Swing Shift, would be happy with that or The Stupids as a consolation.
Cinematographe loves Demme so Swing Shift feels like a no brainer release.
Well, a release that includes the rough cut might be contingent upon the approval of Goldie Hawn and her producing partner. Still, WB seems to be more amenable to releasing cut material than Paramount
I’d be ecstatic to see Mike’s Murder get the love it deserves
I doubt Hawn would ever allow it while she's still around. Would love to be proven wrong though!
But if it does happen, there's a potential issue with the film elements: supposedly all the unused footage was destroyed, which would imply the time-code stamped VHS screener that leaked is the only surviving element for the excised footage, and even then all we have may be a VHS dub of a dub of a dub, etc. rather than a "first generation" copy (which would still look crappy, with the loss of detail, dynamic range and color and a very low resolution that's about half of "standard resolution"). Again, would love to be proven wrong, but I think we're out of luck unless someone absconded with a film element or someone at Warner got lazy and never bothered to destroy the footage (hey, it happened with Blade Runner - it's discussed in the exclusive bonus feature on the 5-disc "Ultimate Collector's Edition.")
If all that's true and someone wants to release it anyway, I would argue for a Frankenstein upgrade. When I compared both cuts (which have nearly the same running time), I posted that something like 80% of the picture in Demme's cut is still in the theatrical cut. That's a pretty good percentage, but one shouldn't misinterpret that as meaning the theatrical cut is very similar: even when using the same footage as Demme's cut, this footage gets more and more scrambled in terms of where it's used or how it's cut up as you get further into the movie.
Even though the PQ between sources will be noticeably different, how distracting that will be depends on the viewer. Personally, I know it doesn't bother me at all, and it doesn't take me out of the film as a viewer. If I had to explain why, I'd say it's because the lower-quality source is so poor that after a while, it's too much of a strain to watch it. It's annoyingly difficult to make out the details, whereas I completely relax when things switch to a proper source because everything's very clear and easy to make out. So even though there's a distinct change, it's for the better - I'm not straining for two straight hours trying to make out what I'm seeing, and there's no way I could enjoy any movie under those conditions. This is especially true when dealing with night scenes of which there's probably a dozen shots (some very long) in Demme's cut that will look so crushed and dark on the bootleg VHS tape that you can barely make out the action, if at all, while many of those same shots look perfectly fine in the theatrical cut, with facial expressions and skin tones completely visible.
James Flower said a few weeks ago that stuff like this is utter fantasy.
Major studios have become markedly more conservative in recent years (I can attest to this from my own dealings with them), and things like previously (legitimately) unreleased alternative cuts generate so much paperwork and legal expense that they’re literally not worth it when set against the likely returns from a boutique label sub-license.
One of the great myths in this business is that a rightsholder simply hands the master over to the licensing label, sits back and watches the money flow in, but it’s not like that at all.
Finch wrote: Thu Jan 01, 2026 9:26 pm
Great Silence LE is sold out. Wow.
And standard edition gone too... This is from Film Movement--are these people not a teeny weeny fearful of a potentially dreadful encode? I'd at least wait until reviews of their first 4K edition turn up.
I'm not even sure there's a true 4k master anyway. Previous BD releases from Eureka and FM were from 2k master(s ?), and when Canal released it on UHD SDR in France, it turned out the whole movie was from a 2k master too, save for its last 8 minutes... sourced from a 35mm exploitatiln print and strongly DNRed.
