Re: Jacques Rivette
Posted: Fri Apr 10, 2020 8:31 pm
I was delighted to get a good-looking Joan the Maid -- but shocked that the release was so barebones.
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Re: Jacques Rivette
Posted: Thu Apr 30, 2020 8:29 pm
Céline and Julie Go Boating will have its first-ever American release on the Criterion Channel May 28 alongside Paris Belongs to Us and La Belle Noiseuse
Re: Jacques Rivette
Posted: Sat Jul 04, 2020 5:48 am
Finally took a day to watch Rivette's excellent Joan the Maid, and I'm even more annoyed at Cohen for how little effort they're putting into their cache of Rivette licenses.
The subtitles are terrible, almost entirely obfuscating any subtlety in the language, frequently using simple word-for-word translations that make little to no sense in English, as if translated by a native French speaker who thinks they know English. There are simple non-native mistakes like asking someone, about their hair, "when was the last time you combed them?", but all too often more ridiculous mistakes like just leaving out words: at one point a woman comments that Joan's armor must hurt, and the subtitles have her response as "What hurts is not being there" for "What hurts is it not being there." The most succinctly egregious example of this sloppiness is perhaps when Joan is accused of making "arguments spécieux," which the subtitles translate as "spacious arguments."
I sincerely hope this and the rest of the Rivette restorations get a UK release from someone who gives one half a shit.
The subtitles are terrible, almost entirely obfuscating any subtlety in the language, frequently using simple word-for-word translations that make little to no sense in English, as if translated by a native French speaker who thinks they know English. There are simple non-native mistakes like asking someone, about their hair, "when was the last time you combed them?", but all too often more ridiculous mistakes like just leaving out words: at one point a woman comments that Joan's armor must hurt, and the subtitles have her response as "What hurts is not being there" for "What hurts is it not being there." The most succinctly egregious example of this sloppiness is perhaps when Joan is accused of making "arguments spécieux," which the subtitles translate as "spacious arguments."
I sincerely hope this and the rest of the Rivette restorations get a UK release from someone who gives one half a shit.
Re: Jacques Rivette
Posted: Sat Jul 04, 2020 9:40 pm
senseabove, I'm with you on this. I just watched Peppermint Soda yesterday on Criterion Channel and it is a Cohen title. There were misspellings and incoherent sentences that made little sense. I was equally frustrated with Joan The Maid which I bought. I'm already not buying Kino; crap, does one not buy Cohen titles that require subtitles?senseabove wrote: Sat Jul 04, 2020 5:48 am Finally took a day to watch Rivette's excellent Joan the Maid, and I'm even more annoyed at Cohen for how little effort they're putting into their cache of Rivette licenses.
Re: Jacques Rivette
Posted: Sat Jul 04, 2020 9:50 pm
Growing up with Hong Kong movies and their often bizarre English subtitles, this kind of thing leaves me a little nonplussed.
But didn't Cohen plan to release L'amour Fou at some point? It seems like that may have fizzled out.
But didn't Cohen plan to release L'amour Fou at some point? It seems like that may have fizzled out.
Re: Jacques Rivette
Posted: Sat Jul 04, 2020 10:50 pm
Upthread, there's some indication that a restoration and release of L'Amour Fou is in the works, but nothing concrete and no ties to Cohen that I've seen.
Cohen do have the US rights to these ten, with a * for titles they've released on disc and † for ones with restorations that have had limited theatrical presentations:
Love on the Ground (1984)
Wuthering Heights (1985)
The Gang of Four (1989)†
La Belle Noiseuse (1991)*
Divertimento (1992)
Joan the Maid: Part 1 – The Battles (1994)*
Joan the Maid: Part 2 – The Prisons (1994)*
Up, Down, Fragile (1995)
Top Secret (1998)
The Story of Marie and Julien (2003)
Plus three early Rivette shorts:
Aux Quatre Coins (1949) †
La Quadrille (1950) †
La Divertissement (1952) †
Cohen do have the US rights to these ten, with a * for titles they've released on disc and † for ones with restorations that have had limited theatrical presentations:
Love on the Ground (1984)
Wuthering Heights (1985)
The Gang of Four (1989)†
La Belle Noiseuse (1991)*
Divertimento (1992)
Joan the Maid: Part 1 – The Battles (1994)*
Joan the Maid: Part 2 – The Prisons (1994)*
Up, Down, Fragile (1995)
Top Secret (1998)
The Story of Marie and Julien (2003)
Plus three early Rivette shorts:
Aux Quatre Coins (1949) †
La Quadrille (1950) †
La Divertissement (1952) †
Re: Jacques Rivette
Posted: Sat Jul 04, 2020 10:59 pm
And my background being in literature, a lot of it translated and a lot of it poetry, makes me especially irritated by the flippancy with which translated subtitles are typically treated. It's a pet peeve... I'm used to a norm of translators who take especial care to carry over the subtlety, consistency, and consideration in the original. It baffles me that, for movies, subtitles are often treated as if they're secondary, almost inconsequential, as if plot and image are the only thing we need bother with.
This was just an especially egregious case because it's obvious they didn't have an English speaker even glance over the subtitles for grammatical sense, much less sync them to the movie to make sure they make sense in context. And it's like that for 6 hours...
This was just an especially egregious case because it's obvious they didn't have an English speaker even glance over the subtitles for grammatical sense, much less sync them to the movie to make sure they make sense in context. And it's like that for 6 hours...
Re: Jacques Rivette
Posted: Mon Jul 06, 2020 2:35 am
That's really disappointing to hear. That kind of thing really annoys me too.
Re: Jacques Rivette
Posted: Thu Jan 14, 2021 12:45 am
The 4K restoration of Gang of Four is up on Amazon Prime, for anyone with access to the Cohen Media Channel. Not sure what's taking them so long to get it out on Blu-Ray.
Re: Jacques Rivette
Posted: Sat Mar 20, 2021 9:51 pm
I won't be getting Joan The Maid on Cohen, based on what I read here (and at Amazon) regarding the subtitling. But what did I miss about Kino? (Pont du Nord)headacheboy wrote: Sat Jul 04, 2020 9:40 pmsenseabove, I'm with you on this. I just watched Peppermint Soda yesterday on Criterion Channel and it is a Cohen title. There were misspellings and incoherent sentences that made little sense. I was equally frustrated with Joan The Maid which I bought. I'm already not buying Kino; crap, does one not buy Cohen titles that require subtitles?senseabove wrote: Sat Jul 04, 2020 5:48 am Finally took a day to watch Rivette's excellent Joan the Maid, and I'm even more annoyed at Cohen for how little effort they're putting into their cache of Rivette licenses.
Re: Jacques Rivette
Posted: Sat Mar 20, 2021 11:13 pm
I'd assume headacheboy was just referring to Kino's general lack of QC, not to anything specifically wrong with any of their Rivette discs.
Re: Jacques Rivette
Posted: Sat Mar 20, 2021 11:32 pm
Have you tried emailing Cohen? Maybe even Gavin Smith, though you'd think he'd notice and complain. They do have good people working for them, so it's baffling shit like this can happen.senseabove wrote: Sat Jul 04, 2020 5:48 am Finally took a day to watch Rivette's excellent Joan the Maid, and I'm even more annoyed at Cohen for how little effort they're putting into their cache of Rivette licenses.
The subtitles are terrible, almost entirely obfuscating any subtlety in the language, frequently using simple word-for-word translations that make little to no sense in English, as if translated by a native French speaker who thinks they know English. There are simple non-native mistakes like asking someone, about their hair, "when was the last time you combed them?", but all too often more ridiculous mistakes like just leaving out words: at one point a woman comments that Joan's armor must hurt, and the subtitles have her response as "What hurts is not being there" for "What hurts is it not being there." The most succinctly egregious example of this sloppiness is perhaps when Joan is accused of making "arguments spécieux," which the subtitles translate as "spacious arguments."
I sincerely hope this and the rest of the Rivette restorations get a UK release from someone who gives one half a shit.
Jacques Rivette
Posted: Sun Mar 21, 2021 7:53 am
That reminds me of cleaning up the subtitles on the big Taviani Brothers interview for the Arrow box from the Cohen-supplied ones.
There wasn’t anything technically wrong with the translation, as it happens - it was both in perfectly idiomatic English and a broadly accurate rendition of the original Italian - but it became pretty clear fairly early on that the translator wasn’t a cinephile.
For instance, at one point one of the Tavianis refers to “Rossellini’s film about the doctors”, which had me wondering what film he could be talking about - and I eventually gleaned from the context that it must be 1972’s miniseries L'età di Cosimo de' Medici, which isn’t about doctors, but is about the Medici family. The Italian for “doctors” is “medici”, plural of “medico”.
There wasn’t anything technically wrong with the translation, as it happens - it was both in perfectly idiomatic English and a broadly accurate rendition of the original Italian - but it became pretty clear fairly early on that the translator wasn’t a cinephile.
For instance, at one point one of the Tavianis refers to “Rossellini’s film about the doctors”, which had me wondering what film he could be talking about - and I eventually gleaned from the context that it must be 1972’s miniseries L'età di Cosimo de' Medici, which isn’t about doctors, but is about the Medici family. The Italian for “doctors” is “medici”, plural of “medico”.
Re: Jacques Rivette
Posted: Sun Mar 21, 2021 12:04 pm
It's a dub rather than a subtitle, but I love this one from Night of the Bloody Apes - "‘I’ll say that’s absurd. The proofs are circumstantial. It’s more probable that of late, more and more you’re watching on your television, many of those pictures of terror.’"
Re: Jacques Rivette
Posted: Sun Mar 21, 2021 2:53 pm
I really wasn't that put out by the subtitles. Yes, they were occasionally garbled and I have enough
working knowledge of French to know when they were off, but I don't think you should refrain from
getting Joan the Maid on that issue alone. I thought it was a good restoration, and there probably
won't be another stateside release of it anytime soon.
And yes, I agree. There should be quality control when it comes to subtitling, but I can still remember
when subtitles were not only burnt in, but often reduced (usually to cut down on expense) to a few basic
sentences to explain the essence of the dialogue in a scene rather than capture every nuance of the language.
The first time I saw Antonioni's L'eclisse it was a third-generation VHS dub of a bad print with poor
subtitles and I was still blown away by the film (although admittedly Antonioni's films are not quite as
dialogue heavy as others).
Even so, I tend to count my blessings to some extent.
working knowledge of French to know when they were off, but I don't think you should refrain from
getting Joan the Maid on that issue alone. I thought it was a good restoration, and there probably
won't be another stateside release of it anytime soon.
And yes, I agree. There should be quality control when it comes to subtitling, but I can still remember
when subtitles were not only burnt in, but often reduced (usually to cut down on expense) to a few basic
sentences to explain the essence of the dialogue in a scene rather than capture every nuance of the language.
The first time I saw Antonioni's L'eclisse it was a third-generation VHS dub of a bad print with poor
subtitles and I was still blown away by the film (although admittedly Antonioni's films are not quite as
dialogue heavy as others).
Even so, I tend to count my blessings to some extent.
Re: Jacques Rivette
Posted: Sun Mar 21, 2021 9:24 pm
Yes, I might reconsider. After carefully going through this thread one comes to the realization that perfect editions of all these films is a pipedream.
Re: Jacques Rivette
Posted: Sun Mar 21, 2021 10:57 pm
Unless I missed something in other threads, the Studio Canal release of La Religieuse was a disaster on the colour grading front, and then Kino simply repeated it soon after?senseabove wrote: Sat Mar 20, 2021 11:13 pm I'd assume headacheboy was just referring to Kino's general lack of QC, not to anything specifically wrong with any of their Rivette discs.
Re: Jacques Rivette
Posted: Mon Mar 22, 2021 12:13 am
Correct. Thoroughly awful, revisionist color timing.Noiretirc wrote: Sun Mar 21, 2021 10:57 pmUnless I missed something in other threads, the Studio Canal release of La Religieuse was a disaster on the colour grading front, and then Kino simply repeated it soon after?senseabove wrote: Sat Mar 20, 2021 11:13 pm I'd assume headacheboy was just referring to Kino's general lack of QC, not to anything specifically wrong with any of their Rivette discs.
Re: Jacques Rivette
Posted: Tue Mar 23, 2021 12:05 pm
New restorations of Up, Down, Fragile and Secret Defense will be getting a DVD/Blu-ray release from Potemkine in France, on June 15.
Re: Jacques Rivette
Posted: Tue Mar 23, 2021 12:51 pm
No English subs, I suppose?
I could have sworn there was supposed to be a deluxe, extras-laden French release of Joan the Maid. I wonder whatever happened to this?
I could have sworn there was supposed to be a deluxe, extras-laden French release of Joan the Maid. I wonder whatever happened to this?
Re: Jacques Rivette
Posted: Tue Mar 23, 2021 2:51 pm
FINALLY — hopefully Cohen releases aren’t too far behind, but I’m happy to import these in the meantime.
Re: Jacques Rivette
Posted: Wed Mar 24, 2021 12:32 am
Amazing news! No word on the Potemkine site re: English subtitles, but most of their releases (with a few very notable exceptions) don't have them:
https://store.potemkine.fr/dvd/34532778 ... s-fragile/
Up, Down, Fragile is one of my absolute favourite Rivette films, so I'm also quite tempted to get hold of this regardless.
https://store.potemkine.fr/dvd/34532778 ... s-fragile/
Up, Down, Fragile is one of my absolute favourite Rivette films, so I'm also quite tempted to get hold of this regardless.
Re: Jacques Rivette
Posted: Wed Mar 24, 2021 1:04 am
I have the Arte DVD of Haut bas fragile (from the old Rivette box set) -- which looks pretty good.
Re: Jacques Rivette
Posted: Wed Mar 24, 2021 2:12 pm
Confirmed via Potemkine rep: no English subtitles on the Up, Down, Fragile disc. 
Re: Jacques Rivette
Posted: Wed Mar 24, 2021 2:15 pm
These will undoubtedly be announced by Cohen soon, no need to shed those tears!