criterionforum.org

A couple new surprise site exclusive limited editions have appeared on Shout's website:
Bluebeard (1972)
Dead Space

I only recently learned that Caged Heat had received a limited edition Shout Blu-ray at some point (there's no current record of it on their site, but you can find copies on eBay). Does anyone know of any other noteworthy titles that have received similar treatment and are worth looking out for?

To the best of my knowledge:
Shout's website exclusive Blu-rays that are sold out:
FEAR CITY
DEATHSTALKER / DEATHSTALKER II (Double Feature)
UP FROM THE DEPTHS
MESSAGE FROM SPACE
TIMEWALKER
THE VELVET VAMPIRE
STREETWALKING
CAGED HEAT / JACKSON COUNTY JAIL (Double Feature)
DEATHSPORT
ATTCK OF THE CRAB MONSTERS
THE TERROR WITHIN / THE TERROR WITHIN II (Double Feature)
TWICE DEAD
AMAZONS / BARBARIAN QUEEN (Double Feature)

Shout website exclusive Blu-rays that are still available:
THE BIG BUST OUT
BIG BAD MAMA / BIG BAD MAMA II (Double Feature)
CRAZY MAMA / THE LADY IN RED (Double Feature)
BLUEBEARD (1972)
DEAD SPACE

Thanks! Caged Heat looks great by the way, and is in the correct ratio unlike any of the DVD releases I believe

dwk wrote: Tue Aug 10, 2021 2:52 pmDeadly Friend

Extras

NEW HD 2K Scan Of The Film From The Interpositive
• NEW Hey Sam, Nice Shot – An Interview With Actress Kristy Swanson
• NEW Written In Blood – An Interview With Screenwriter Bruce Joel Rubin
• NEW Robots, Ramsey And Revenge – An Interview With Special Makeup Effects Artist Lance Anderson
• NEW Samantha’s Symphony – An Interview With Composer Charles Bernstein
• Original Theatrical Trailer (In English, Spanish, And German)
• Original TV Spots

Why not from the original camera negative though? Surely it must survive(?). :-k

Warner-licensed titles are scanned in 4K from the camera negative usually only if it's a major enough title or the existing interpositive isn't high enough quality.

Doesn't it have to do with saving time regarding the color-grading ?

Shout/Scream's December slate:
Lady in a Cage
Trog
Going Berserk
No Way to Treat a Lady
The Vampire Lovers (Collector's Edition)
Bulletproof

Scream look to have messed up with the audio on their Halloween UHD, including a fake-lossless version of the original mono rather than the true lossless track as included on their previous Blu-Ray release.

It's been semi-confirmed by a Shout Factory Insider on the blu forums that they a 4K UHD release for The Howling will be coming next year.

Some January releases are starting to leak:
The Awkakener (2018)
Cool World (1992)
Whispers in the Dark (1992)
The Temp (1993)

dwk wrote: Fri Oct 29, 2021 8:18 pm Whispers in the Dark (1992)

One of the best of the sexually-charged noir throwbacks of the 90s. Wow, never expected it to be any label’s priority! Here’s my write up from the Noir List

domino harvey wrote: Thu Aug 13, 2015 7:01 am
Whispers in the Dark (Christopher Crowe 1992) An erotic thriller which goes for broke into some rather insane tangents as it explores a therapist whose sexually-voracious patients start dying in a rather incriminating fashion. Part of the early 90s' dalliance with sexual dramas, this film has a bad critical rap (Siskel named it the worst film of the year and spoiled the ending on air out of spite) but I was surprised at how much I found myself getting sucked into it. It's a silly film on paper, but the movie plays everything straight with the kind of snowballing terror of the best noirs, and the way it attacks psychotherapy from a new angle is fitting with the best classical works of the genre while still finding a fresh spin on the material. Recommended.

It's also a pretty honest examination of the struggles therapists go through embedded within a ridiculous narrative, mashing together absurdist views of therapy with hyper-realistic perspectives of the provider tasked with caring responsibility, unethical shark-jumping content with sobering attention to the emotions behind ethical dilemmas. It's always a pleasure to watch a filmmaker utilize wild extremes to arrive at something that works. Anyways, my writeup:

therewillbeblus wrote: Sun Feb 14, 2021 7:52 am Whispers in the Dark: Ethical therapy violations aside (and I don't mean the obvious ones, but moreso the dual relationship stuff) I thought this was pretty great. Not that the film has any interest in the realities of therapy of course, but strictly to use the Freudian psychodynamic model of repression and awakenings to insight in order to bridge the noir and erotic thriller genres (it doesn't exactly have a stake in portraying the ethics of any profession, come to think of it). Annabella Sciorra is great as our protagonist, who is a fleshed-out, relatable human being and I appreciated the film's willingness to treat therapists as imperfect and often in therapy themselves, in addition to exploring the countertransference in relating strongly to patients- even if these are naturally used to fit the genre's wilder deviations. This has a great cast too, full of wonderful parts for future stars- especially a few of her clients (so this is how Unger got her part in Crash!) and I admired how Sciorra weighed priorities in her own juncture between self-preservation and empathy for these clients once shit hit the fan. This is a film that meditates on the intricate psychology of a good person in the human services field when facing a crisis of their own, repurposing said complexity into clichés which work as narrative spaces to examine triggers for acute emotions.

Spoiler

I guessed the twist pretty early on, which accentuates the countertransference between therapist-client to the extreme, but at least it makes the ethical violation make sense!

Some other Shout Factory titles up for pre-order at Bullmoose:
Trekkies (25th Anniversary)
Liar Liar
The Message (1977) UHD
Lion of the Desert (1981) UHD

dwk wrote: Sun Oct 31, 2021 6:34 am The Message (1977)UHD

Hadn't heard of this one but it sounds very interesting: a biopic in which the subject is never actually depicted on screen!

domino harvey wrote:
a biopic in which the subject is never actually depicted on screen!

And for good reason, as I'm sure you figured!

I'm not familiar with the other UHD title announced but see it's the same director. Interesting picks for the format.

dwk wrote: Sun Oct 31, 2021 6:34 am The Message (1977) UHD

Wow, this sure is an unexpected blast from the past!

I used to own a version of this dubbed in Persian and separated into three CDs. The funny thing about the dub was that it corrected a lot of mistakes in the film according to Shia's version of the history (which I believe is more accurate). For example, iirc there is a scene in the film where the narrator says something along the lines of "The first sword of Islam belonged to Abu Bakr" while in reality it actually belonged to Ali ibn Abi Talib.

I assume this is sourced from the 4k restoration done a few years ago by Front Row Filmed Entertainment (trailer, featurette) which had a theatrical run but wasn't released on any other format. It's a huge improvement over the previous Blu-ray as it's in the original 2.39:1 aspect ratio (the previous release used a shitty old master created for TV in 16:9, Beaver) and has far more accurate colors.

Akkad actually shot two versions, one with the English cast and one with Arabic cast. Both versions were restored by Front Row so it would be great if they could include the Arabic version as well though they are almost identical in story and dialogue and share the same sets.

domino harvey wrote: Sun Oct 31, 2021 6:45 am a biopic in which the subject is never actually depicted on screen!

It comes off as ridiculous and off-putting to a lot of people but I think it was ok for the most part. After all it's the only way this could have been made without triggering people. And the film in general is a far more interesting and grounded take on Islam's history than Majid Majidi's cringefest, Muhammad: The Messenger of God. Even in Iran, people prefer Akkad's version to Majidi's and it annually airs on TV on the prophet's birthday.

A Tempted Christ wrote:

domino harvey wrote: Sun Oct 31, 2021 6:45 am a biopic in which the subject is never actually depicted on screen!

It comes off as ridiculous and off-putting to a lot of people but I think it was ok for the most part. After all it's the only way this could have been made without triggering people.

I recall it being awkward and a bit rough at first, at least the English version, I didn't know there was another and never saw that one. If I recall correctly (and it's been a long while, so I may be misremembering) you also don't hear Muhammad speak, so it's dependent on a narrator and everyone around in the scene conveying all of the information, some of the actors, even Quinn, bordering on mugging for the camera. Once you get in to the groove of it I recall it going smoother.

I don't know anything about the production, but it felt like a passion project so it was easy to forgive any awkwardness as it was about the only way to pull it off.

I also saw the English language version several years ago and these were my notes from Letterboxd, which I’m sharing because my mind is so thoroughly blown that I’ve seen a movie Domino hasn’t:

A defiantly old-fashioned religious epic tracking the story of Muhammad, though in accordance with the tenets of Islam the prophet is never actually shown. (Not here to question or challenge that but it certainly makes it dramatically awkward when characters address the camera in his place, creating the weird Circlevision 360-like implication that we the audience are Muhammad.) This is long and florid and hyper-serious, but as someone raised on movies like this it actually is comforting in its dryness, though my interest wanes as battles and action take over the narrative. Refreshing to see a film of this size earnestly address a religion besides Christianity, but it really does feel at least twenty years older than it is. Also saddened to learn that the director, Moustapha Akkad, was killed in 2005 in the Jordan hotel bombings, a sad contrast to the movie's peaceful message.

cdnchris wrote: Sun Oct 31, 2021 7:05 am

domino harvey wrote:
a biopic in which the subject is never actually depicted on screen!

And for good reason, as I'm sure you figured!

I'm not familiar with the other UHD title announced but see it's the same director. Interesting picks for the format.

Here's the most amusing aspect of all of this: if the name of director Moustapha Akkad rings a bell, he went on to executive produce all the Halloween films up to 2002's Halloween: Resurrection, the first of which took that technique of a POV of an unseen character into quite different territory!

It’s actually a really great movie. I hope they include both versions. Akkad himself is a really interesting character who died in an unfortunate way connected to Bush’s war.

Two new limited editions are up for sale at Shout's site:
Bury Me An Angel
Angel's Hard As They Come(co-written by Jonathan Demme)

So regarding Evangelion, it appears that the original dub/sub options only appear on the LE, which is continually OOP or going for ~$175... does anyone own that set or the standard edition sold by Shout! that was just released, who can comment on the differences? I'm skimming reddit but it's exhausting and uninformative. Either way, what an obnoxious ploy to sell those sets and screw over tons of fans in the process

Is this the first time Alligator is coming out on HD in the US? What from afar seems like a schlocky film about an alligator that mutates after being flushed down the toilet is actually one of the breeziest and funny satires of that type of low-budget Roger Corman fare. It benefits tremendously from an excellent script by no greater than John Sayles whose experience making those types of movies makes him perfect to poke fun at it. Henry Silva has an incredible role as a racist hunter who approaches the streets of Los Angeles as though he’s in unexplored Africa. And Robert Forster is one of those actors I’ll watch in anything as his presence is just so warming and joyful to me. It’s easily the most fun movie of its type and the upgrade is major in my eyes.