UHD New Releases, Reissues and Upgrades

[Lowry_Sam]

It's too bad is films are spread out among a number of labels, if there's anyone who deserves a complete career overview box it's Tarkovsky.

[nicolas]

Curzon apparently licensed the recent 4K restorations of Nostalgia and The Sacrifice. If they manage to make a deal with Mosfilm, they’ve got a good chance at doing a complete 4K set.

[dwk]

Criterion currently has the UK license for the Mosfilm Tarkovsky titles. (Related question, can anyone in the west legally deal with Mosfilm right now?)

[Lowry_Sam]

can anyone in the west legally deal with Mosfilm right now?

Their films are freely available on Youtube (in the US).

[dwk]

can anyone in the west legally deal with Mosfilm right now?

Their films are freely available on Youtube (in the US).

Yeah, but that is different than, say, Deaf Crocodile licensing films from them.

[ryannichols7]

Curzon apparently licensed the recent 4K restorations of Nostalgia and The Sacrifice. If they manage to make a deal with Mosfilm, they’ve got a good chance at doing a complete 4K set.

Criterion hold the rights to the Mosfilm titles in the UK, and even then Andrei Rublev wasn't released in the UK due to cuts. not to mention the Mosfilm sanctions so I don't think this happens any time soon

[Lowry_Sam]

not to mention the Mosfilm sanctions so I don't think this happens any time soon

unless Mosfilms starts selling oil or gets the rights to Melania or Putin has a stake in Mosfilms, then Trump would wave any sanctions.

[andyli]

Side note: A supposedly 4k-sourced blu-ray of Stalker was released in Japan in 2024, but MosFilm posted the 4k stream online less than a year ago. It seems unlikely a Japanese company could licence it for physical release before MosFilm released it themselves.

It was released by IVC, a legit boutique label who will also do a Blu-ray of Solaris featuring the new 4K restoration this June. Mosfilm has been doing 4K scans since they acquired newer scanning equipment around the beginning of 2020s. I've not seen any evidence that the Japanese were not from those remasters.

[Lowry_Sam]

I think all the Tarkovsky films (and others like Come And See & War And Peace) on their Youtube channel are the newest 4k restorations.

[rrenault]

I think all the Tarkovsky films (and others like Come And See & War And Peace) on their Youtube channel are the newest 4k restorations.

MosFilm’s 4K stream of War & Peace is an upscale and clearly from the same natively 2K master Criterion released on bluray.

[nicolas]

Rider on the Rain (Kino) - caps. Terrible encode with strong blocking in highlights & darker areas and a red push in the master. Plaion (via LSP) is much better encoding-wise and they seemingly adjusted the grade when they did their HDR pass. It’s a fantastic disc.

[TVC 15]

I watched Criterion Point Blank this morning. I was worried because reviews said it had problems but it looked great. What is the problem with teal I don't get it and it was more than just Svet saying that.

[andyli]

It's the plague that people jump the gun just by looking at pictures made in dubious ways.

[Drucker]

I watched Criterion Point Blank this morning. I was worried because reviews said it had problems but it looked great. What is the problem with teal I don't get it and it was more than just Svet saying that.

For over a decade now, there has been a habit by which films are routinely restored and the color timing on the film has a heavy teal bias which blankets the film. An example of this is in Fox releases for many years before the Disney acquisition, and here is a good example from Desk Set. While I've never seen a release print of this film, I think the general consensus is that it leans too-blue and is reflective of modern color timing decisions, not ones that would have been made back then.

That said, having a teal bias, especially in specific scenes, especially in films from the 50s and 60s is to be expected. Films like Point Blank, Graduate, and Mean Streets have scenes that run hot and teal, but then become more neutral in the very next frame. People nitpick these frames without looking at the whole picture.

[Lowry_Sam]

In the captures I saw there's definitely a difference between Criterion's blu-ray and UHD with the blu-ray showing more teal. The UHD looks much better.

[tenia]

The issue with remasters like Desk Set's is that their gradings are like Ritrovata's : they're applied in a way that looks like a "one size fits all", and you get dozens of movies (I counted about 35 of them) that suddenly share the same color palette when they never really did so before.
It's possible that a couple of movies within this corpus should have such a color palette. It has been discussed for instance if The Girl Can't Help It should. But 35 movies ? That also include The Seven Ups, Big Trouble in Little China, and (IMO) The Return of Frank James.

[nicolas]

The Big Combo (Ignite) - 4K caps

[Lowry_Sam]

The Big Combo (Ignite) - 4K caps

That's quite a list of audio & subtitle options for a US indie label, was this all just ported over from an EU release? It's particularly odd that they have Scandanavian subtitles but no Spanish subtitles (probably the second most important for a US release after English).

[nicolas]

The Blu-ray.com database lists French and Spanish DVD and BD releases but I don’t see any prior German release. The film is available for streaming over here though, so if these dubs weren’t licensed, maybe they ripped the Spanish dub from the BD and extracted the German audio from the stream. The missing Spanish subtitles are odd as the Spanish BD apparently has them.

[Lowry_Sam]

But it's also odd that it has German audio, but no German subtitles.

[nicolas]

If they’re trying to appeal to buyers from Germany in particular, the dub is more important than subtitles as people over here predominantly watch films dubbed. I don’t think I’ve ever come across people threatening to boycott a particular 4K release when a dub was included but German subtitles were missing.

[MichaelB]

Similarly, Italian subtitles are as rare as the proverbial hen's teeth.

[rrenault]

This is interesting, because in France dubbing tends to be predominant with tentpoles, blockbusters, and IP fare while “auteur films”(which would include Neon/A24-type stuff on the one hand and Almodovar and NB Ceylan on the other) seem to be more commonly subtitled than dubbed.

[MichaelB]

I can’t speak for Germany, but when I briefly lived in a Italy in the mid-1980 pretty much everything was dubbed, including Kurosawa’s Ran. The few exceptions really stood out, like Down By Law, which was subtitled at Jim Jarmusch’s personal insistence, knowing that it was guaranteed to do well in Italy regardless, thanks to Roberto Benigni’s involvement. I saw it in Italy, and I remember a vocal reaction best described as “collective annoyance” when the first subtitle appeared.

[beamish14]

The Netherlands dubs nothing save for films that are aimed at young children. They also, not so coincidentally, have among the highest rights of bilingual/polyglots in Europe, with virtually all secondary students possessing conversational knowledge of English