criterionforum.org

I know, no more extrapolating the glorious visuals.

The Girl Who Knew Too Much in HD? Be still my heart.

VCI has Blood and Black Lace. Yesterday they posted the following on their Facebook page

BLOOD AND BLACK LACE, definitely yes. We are working on it. We are having some issues with the current Italian owners of the film and the negative. Once we can secure a new HD master, then we will be moving the project into high gear.

VCI also has The Whip and the Body and yesterday they posted this on their Facebook page

...we are actually trying to put an HD release project on WHIP together. It was also suggested by another colleague that we try to dub in Mr. Lee's voice, which would be a spectacular accomplishment. Can't promise anything yet, but we are on it. Cross your fingers!

Nice, thanks dwk.

Excellent news on the Bava titles: hope they follow soon with Kill Baby Kill and Black Sabbath as these are the two I want the most.

Bird of Paradise bluray.com review

I especially love this:

[quote=Casey Broadwater]Like most titles in the public domain, Bird of Paradise has been subject to some underwhelming home video releases in the past, so it's great to see that Kino Classics has given the film such a wonderful Blu-ray presentation. The disc's 1080p/AVC-encoded transfer has been newly mastered from an original nitrate 35mm print that was preserved by the George Eastman House Motion Picture Department. Note, though, that I used preserved and not restored. There's been little-to-no digital clean-up of the 80-year-old print, but I'm fine with this hands-off approach. The minor specks and scratches you'll see here are rarely--if ever--distracting, and the image is reproduced faithfully, with no texture-robbing noise reduction or halo-inducing edge enhancement. The picture is plenty sharp on its own, with appreciable fine detail in close-ups and an overall level of clarity that easily bests prior standard definition editions. Just as importantly, the film's monochromatic gradation has been treated carefully; blacks are deep without crushing too much shadow detail, white are bright but not overblown, and there's a rich spectrum of grays in between. Finally, I didn't spot any overt compression issues--the film sits with room to spare on a single-layer, 25 GB disc. Another strong Kino Classics transfer.
[/quote]

Rating? 3.5 stars.

The PQ on Bird of Paradise is great all things considered, but it has easily the roughest soundtrack I've heard on blu and I typically don't notice this. I'm sure it is a case of materials, but the movie sounds in stark contrast to how it looks.

August announcements:

From KINO CLASSICS:
8/7 - SEBASTIANE (1976, Derek Jarman, Blu-ray only)
8/7 - THE TEMPEST (1979, Derek Jarman, Blu-ray only)
8/14 - LES VAMPIRES (1915-1916, Louis Feuillade, DVD & Blu-ray) [2-disc DVD/Blu-ray sets, mastered in HD from 35mm film elements restored by the Cinémathèque Française and accompanied by a new musical score by the Mont Alto Motion Picture Orchestra]
8/14 - KORCZAK (1990, Andrzej Wajda, DVD & Blu-ray)

From KINO LORBER:
8/21 - POST MORTEM (2012, Pablo Larraín, DVD & Blu-ray)

From ALIVE MIND CINEMA:
8/7 - FOREIGN PARTS (2011, Véréna Paravel & J.P. Sniadecki, DVD only)

From REDEMPTION FILMS:
8/21 - BLACK MAGIC RITES (1973, Renato Polselli, DVD & Blu-ray)
8/28 - THE LIVING DEAD GIRL (1982, Jean Rollin, DVD & Blu-ray)
8/28 - TWO ORPHAN VAMPIRES (1997, Jean Rolin, DVD & Blu-ray)

Timec wrote: 8/14 - LES VAMPIRES (1915-1916, Louis Feuillade, DVD & Blu-ray) [2-disc DVD/Blu-ray sets, mastered in HD from 35mm film elements restored by the Cinémathèque Française and accompanied by a new musical score by the Mont Alto Motion Picture Orchestra]

\:D/

Glad that Les Vampires finally has a release date. Korczak is a nice surprise.

I just hope they don't screw up the Les Vampires's subtitling. While I can live with English intertitles, Kino's previous digital replacement of any diegetic French text looked atrocious.

Kino wrote:In response to your questions:

Our upcoming release of LES VAMPIRES will have English intertitles only, for two reasons:

1. The titles on the film are not original; they were created in the late 1980s.

2. Since the film is seven hours long (and already spans two discs), creating a dual edition would have been (sadly) cost-prohibitive for us.

That said, we plan to include original French intertitles whenever possible on future releases.

Hopefully by 'French intertitles' they mean 'foreign intertitles' but this is good news for all.

But yeah it's a real shame about the replaced intertitles, especially for something like this where the French text is manipulated a couple of times like a Murnau or Eisenstein (the reason I didn't pick up their Strike blu..)

John Edmond wrote:I just hope they don't screw up the Les Vampires's subtitling. While I can live with English intertitles, Kino's previous digital replacement of any diegetic French text looked atrocious.

Just to be clear, in January, Kino said via Facebook that they would be replacing the French intertitles with English ones, just as Image did on the prior US DVD release in 2000. I would assume they will be using the same elements used in the 2008 French (Gaumont) and UK (Artificial Eye) DVD releases, though Kino appears to be the first to release this serial in Blu-ray format.

Peacock wrote:

Kino wrote:In response to your questions:

Our upcoming release of LES VAMPIRES will have English intertitles only, for two reasons:

1. The titles on the film are not original; they were created in the late 1980s.

2. Since the film is seven hours long (and already spans two discs), creating a dual edition would have been (sadly) cost-prohibitive for us.

That said, we plan to include original French intertitles whenever possible on future releases.

Hopefully by 'French intertitles' they mean 'foreign intertitles' but this is good news for all.

But yeah it's a real shame about the replaced intertitles, especially for something like this where the French text is manipulated a couple of times like a Murnau or Eisenstein (the reason I didn't pick up their Strike blu..)

This is (partly) good news but I don't understand Kino. They seem to be thinking that they would need more than two discs to give us the original language intertitles too and presumably they would then be transfering the whole film again. Do they not know how to seamlessly branch? It's really not that difficult.

Seamless branching is not always seamless on all players, often inserting tiny pauses with each branch, and I can't imagine what an expensive authoring nightmare it would be to have the film switching back and forth for every single intertitle.

That expensive nightmare is done by divisared on a regular basis for their silents. And I can't imagine that this small Spanish label has funds in overabundance. No pauses on my three players on any of these discs, btw. But perhaps I'm just lucky there.

Matt wrote:Seamless branching is not always seamless on all players, often inserting tiny pauses with each branch, and I can't imagine what an expensive authoring nightmare it would be to have the film switching back and forth for every single intertitle.

It's only on this forum I've ever seen people mention problems with seamless branching - and never with any concrete examples, despite this process often being used on dozens, if not hundreds, of mainstream releases a year to allow different cuts of films to be shown and to weave different logos and messages before and after features.

And I've got no idea where the great expense comes in considering some of the smallest labels out there are utilising this technique. I can't even think of why it would be more expensive than subtitling.

TMDaines wrote:never with any concrete examples

TMDaines wrote:often being used on dozens, if not hundreds, of mainstream releases a year

TMDaines wrote:some of the smallest labels out there are utilising this technique

Any examples you'd like to share?

Matt wrote:

TMDaines wrote:never with any concrete examples

TMDaines wrote:often being used on dozens, if not hundreds, of mainstream releases a year

TMDaines wrote:some of the smallest labels out there are utilising this technique

Any examples you'd like to share?

Sure, but I don't see why you need to be rude to Tommaso and ignore him:

Tommaso wrote:That expensive nightmare is done by divisared on a regular basis for their silents. And I can't imagine that this small Spanish label has funds in overabundance. No pauses on my three players on any of these discs, btw. But perhaps I'm just lucky there.

Here's some of those Tommaso is referring to which I also own personally Das wandernde Bild, Madame DuBarry and Geheimnisse einer Seele. The types of films I usually buy don't usually have any need for seemless branching so I'm struggling to think of any others I have.

If we're talking blockbuster films then you have the likes of Avatar, Cars 2 and Gladiator to name but three releases that had seamless branching.

TMDaines wrote:It's only on this forum I've ever seen people mention problems with seamless branching - and never with any concrete examples

Any SIMPSONS disc I have that attempts to branch to a deleted scene mid-episode brings my player to a screeching halt whilst it tries to figure out what to do.

But as long as strange licensing issues don't get in the way then just subtitling the original intertitles is surely the best option - I can't think of why seamless branching would ever be a good idea for intertitles...

Matt wrote:

TMDaines wrote:often being used on dozens, if not hundreds, of mainstream releases a year

Any examples you'd like to share?

Almost every Hollywood animation uses seamless branching on some level. I have few discs with me at the moment so I did some checking.

Toy Story 3 is split into 47 files.
The Incredibles is split into 25 files.

TMDaines wrote:It's only on this forum I've ever seen people mention problems with seamless branching - and never with any concrete examples, despite this process often being used on dozens, if not hundreds, of mainstream releases a year to allow different cuts of films to be shown and to weave different logos and messages before and after features.

I think it's acknowledged by the authoring company that one of the Apocalypse Now cuts has a line missing on the soundtrack when branching a certain way. But was an accepted shortcoming to allow for the multiple versions.

I've noticed some DVD releases have subtitles that appear in the middle of the screen over an entirely black background, such that they completely cover up the original inter-titles. It might be a bit silly, but they could always just do 2 different types of subtitles, small ones at the bottom for purists, or big ones that block out the original inter-title for people who prefer it that way. Of course they would have to resort to traditional subtitles for all the parts where characters read from a note or card.

Just pre ordered the SEBASTIANE blu.

Someone needs to do a mash up of this and BORN THIS WAY with one of Sebastiane's monologues cut into "It doesn't matter if you love him or capital H.I.M.".

Any news of a remaster of Chabrol´s Les Bonnes Femmes? Maybe including a restoration of the 20 mins. (according to a footnote to an article on the Senses of Cinema web site) Chabrol allegedly cut after negative reactions following the 1960 Paris opening. Producer Charles Bitsch has apparently located the missing footage but I can´t find any French news of a restoration.