criterionforum.org

So this is what happened with Body Double, and feel free to move this to the other thread I guess.

SAE has some sort of system that tells it how many have sold (I guess it's not as simple as counting). Going into the last weekend before the first call of sold out, about half the run was sold. SAE on the Monday tells TT that it's down to a few hundred copies and they warn people as they did. They also went down to one copy per person (They had been at three). Hours later SAE reported back that there had been a glitch and there were really another 600 left, TCM upped their buy and then it sold out again, still in PreOrder (as today is the official release day). I believe it is also sold out at TCM as well now.

So no nefarious plot, just a computing/tabulating error.

Alamo Bay booklet art:

Drums Along the Mohawk booklet art:

Hooray! It's the long lost Leningrad Cowboys film.

Heads up: "There will also be 150 signed copies of THE DISAPPEARANCE (1977) signed by Stuart Cooper available with qualifying purchases of $100 dollars or more before shipping of TWILIGHT TIME titles. This is limited to one copy per customer. There will be an autgraphed page built at the time for customers to use to add this item to your cart." The promotion is available at 4 PM EST August 21st, the same time pre-orders for Drums Along the Mohawk and Alamo Bay go live.

Thanks for the heads up!

Already purchased The Disappearance, so I won't be interested in picking up a signed copy.

Anyways, in regard to the film, does anyone know which of the two versions Scott Cooper prefers? I know that the SD version on the disc is labelled as the "Director's Cut" and is quite different from the main presentation, but is it his preferred version?

I'm not the biggest fan of Ford's Drums Along the Mohawk, but it should look spectacular on Blu-ray, one of the really great colour films from the thirties. It saddens me then that Twilight Time has somehow managed to concoct a really terrible cover for it; it makes the film look like a made-for-TV prequel cash-in on Michael Mann's The Last of the Mohicans from the nineties.

In case anyone here thought they'd missed out on Twilight Time's Blu-Ray of The Big Heat-- it's the latest title to become magically un-sold out at Screen Archives. They appear to have about 90 copies left. Some might see that as reason to rush, but who knows when and where another case might turn up!

kingofthejungle wrote:In case anyone here thought they'd missed out on Twilight Time's Blu-Ray of The Big Heat-- it's the latest title to become magically un-sold out at Screen Archives. They appear to have about 90 copies left. Some might see that as reason to rush, but who knows when and where another case might turn up!

Wow, thanks for that heads up & the good fortune that I have today off & have the time to peruse the forum. I will finally make my first TT purchase today (Big Heat, Swamp Water & Rapture, maybe something else).

Another heads up, in shopping at SAE, I'm looking through the sale cd's....anyone who wants a free Titanic CD Soundtrack, act now (I noticed it while sorting sale items by price, it came up as 0.00).

Altair wrote:It saddens me then that Twilight Time has somehow managed to concoct a really terrible cover for it; it makes the film look like a made-for-TV prequel cash-in on Michael Mann's The Last of the Mohicans from the nineties.

Huh? If you're looking at the image above, that's the insert. The actual cover is a few pages back, and is among the best they've done.

Just went to look and it's gone again. Drat.

criterion10 wrote:Anyways, in regard to the film, does anyone know which of the two versions Scott Cooper prefers? I know that the SD version on the disc is labelled as the "Director's Cut" and is quite different from the main presentation, but is it his preferred version?

I believe the longer DC is his original, pre-release and preferred cut, not some later re-tooling.

When the film made it to cinemas, it was butchered by a "film doctor" and 15 minutes of this theatrical cut can be found on the disc as an extra. It evidently tossed the flashback structure of the film, leaving a lot of it nonsensical.

The main HD feature of the disc is a third cut that retains the original structure of Cooper's DC, but is a tad shorter. According to Cooper, he has no idea who cut it or where it comes from, but completely approves of it. Perhaps it was something similar to the At Long Last Love thing?

I'm impressed by SAE's international service. My copy of "Body Double" arrived in exactly 7 days and the package was marked as being worth 5$ for customs purposes.
(Sorry if this has been mentioned before).

tojoed wrote:I'm impressed by SAE's international service. My copy of "Body Double" arrived in exactly 7 days and the package was marked as being worth 5$ for customs purposes.
(Sorry if this has been mentioned before).

Not that impressive. I ordered something from importCDs late last Sunday and it arrived today, and they didn't try to extort me for postal insurance or overprice their product to the point that they have to commit fraud to stop the government from robbing me.

But I assume a typical importcds order is coming from within the U.K., hence the lack of customs label and the presence of a U.K. return address. I sometimes get stuff from them as quick as 3-4 working days.

EddieLarkin wrote:But I assume a typical importcds order is coming from within the U.K., hence the lack of customs label and the presence of a U.K. return address. I sometimes get stuff from them as quick as 3-4 working days.

It was shipped from California.

I was hoping that The Disappearance would be some sort of forgotten gem that I would be able to stumble upon, though it ultimately is worth nothing more than a single viewing, despite some positive assets that the film contains.

The film has a very European, arthouse vibe to it, much in the vein of the films of Jean-Pierre Melville. The editing of the film also lends to this, where flashbacks and present events overlap with one another, creating what is almost a haunting, dreamlike atmosphere.

Though besides this, I can't help but feel that The Disappearance could have been so much more. I particularly was disappointed by the ending, which is both predictable and stupid.

I can't say I was ever really bored while watching the film, though again, so many areas of the film could have been more interestingly developed.

Sorry if it was covered before, but which company licensed The Disappearance to Twilight Time?

It wasn't from a studio but a company in the UK, not sure the name of it.

I think it was Freeway CAM (formerly known as the National Film Trustee Company)

The Arts Shelf on Body Double

I really like The Other - very creepy, well-performed, beautifully made - but that Insidious/Orphan/Sinister (with a touch of CSI) over-contrast aesthetic is sooooo wrong for this film and just plain ugly. That font, too: [-X

It is a good film to have an isolated score for - a gorgeous, sensitive work by Jerry Goldsmith. The opening theme is a lovely melody & the scoring of the first scene where the kid and his grandma play "the game" is really, really impressive.

The original poster was creepy enough and that font was a great fit. Oh well.

From TT's Facebook page:

For those of you on a Brian De Palma kick...in the wake of Body Double only 600 copies of The Fury remain, and dwindling fast...