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Received my copy of The Leopard blu ray. Seems like an incredible job with these original film elements.

BD50
Massive booklet
Transfer that gives a richer experience of the film than I had when attempting to see it live, without the blown-out colours, dirt and scratches, sound-pops etc. Grain seems a bit too subtle for my liking, considering how obtrusive it was at the cinema; seems like some noise reduction was used, but not too much, as detail is sharp as hell.
No HD-bump was possible, because of the nature of the original soundtrack, which sounds less harsh and in control than it did live.

Two rather interesting BBFC decisions today for future BFI releases.

Sick: The Life and Death of Bob Flanagan, Supermasochist - passed 18 uncut. This had compulsory BBFC cuts of 3:42 back in 2001 - Flanagan and his wife demonstrating their sadomasochistic activity and Flanagan nailing his own penis to a board. I wonder what changed the BBFC's mind - the running time would seem to correspond to an uncut version.

The Erotic Films of Peter De Rome - passed uncut at 18 for "strong real sex". Doesn't strong real sex in an intentionally erotic film make this a "sex work" and hence an R18 certificate? Or am I misunderstanding the rules here? (I'm not familiar with Peter De Rome's work.)

GaryC wrote:Doesn't strong real sex in an intentionally erotic film make this a "sex work" and hence an R18 certificate? Or am I misunderstanding the rules here? (I'm not familiar with Peter De Rome's work.)

Wouldn't artistic intent and overall context come into play with this? I would imagine that the BBFC draws a distinction between real sex scenes within a pornographic context (meaning it's only there to get people aroused) and real sex within a context of genuine artistic intent and storytelling and character development (the latter is presumably why 9 Songs got away with an 18 cert). I'm only supposing this because I haven't seen De Rome's films either.

This is one of the problems I have with the R18 certificate. You could argue that a film like The Devil in Miss Jones has artistic merit, yet it's still hardcore porn and rated R18. (Admittedly I haven't seen that one, but I know people have argued for its merit.) And something like Deep Throat undeniably has a place in film history and cultural significance - while undoubtedly being a "sex work" intended to arouse.

The Good Old Naughty Days is entirely made up of vintage porn from the early decades of the 20th century but the context it's put in is as a diverting novelty for broad-minded arthouse audiences. Yet that won't get a UK DVD release because it would receive a R18 and that would make its release commercially unviable - and I doubt the clientele of licensed sex shops would go for it.

And if a "sex work" happens to be softcore, then it gets an 18 with no restrictions on its sale other than age. You can find a whole shelf of these in HMV.

9 Songs divided audiences and critics (I was favourable) but it clearly wasn't intended as an arousing sex work, so an 18 without cuts was entirely justified in my opinion. (Take the sex out of context and you are in R18 territory, which happened to some deleted scenes from that film.)

I could go on.

BBFC screening of 9 Songs finishes...

"So, were you aroused?"
"Well...not really"
"18 then?"
"Yeah, I guess so. But is it art?"
"If it doesn't arouse you, what else could it be?"
"Hmm..."
"That's settled then."

Many readers of this section may not visit the thread on "All Region DVD Player Advice" under "International DVD" section, hence I would like to draw attention to a post I entered there. It relates to playing the Blu Ray version of the bfi's "The Leopard" on a modified OPPO 83. Any response from knowledgeable readers will be appreciated.

I'm glad to see you've abandoned your BFI boycott!

MichaelB wrote:I'm glad to see you've abandoned your BFI boycott!

I quite expected that response.
Now it would be even better if you had a view on the problem I have described. One of the forum members has expressed the view that when only some players have a problem with a disc, the problem usually rests with the DVD, not the player. If this is true of "The Leopard", perhaps you can draw appropriate people's attention to it.

I don't have the disc myself, and neither do I have a region-modified Blu-ray player, so I can't confirm any of this at first hand. But I'll make sure the technical supervisor is aware of the problem.

The only other incident I'm aware of where a BFI Blu-ray caused problems with some players was The Other Side of the Underneath and American PS3s - which was cured by a firmware upgrade to version 3.0. Is your player completely up to date, or does the fact that it's had a hardware modification mean that you can no longer upgrade the firmware? (This is all just speculation on my part, of course, but these are the questions I'd be asking first).

As for the boycott comment - well, of course! If you make a great sweeping statement about how you're never going to buy a BFI disc ever again because of its (alleged) customer-hating policy, and then quietly confess that you have in fact bought at least one, this is practically begging to be highlighted.

Not least because I'm curious as to what changed your mind. Was it the realisation that because a majority of BFI Blu-rays are now region-free (unlike the entirely region-locked Criterion catalogue), they clearly are as "customer-friendly" as their contractual agreements with rightsholders permit, or MoC's admission that they've had to region-lock one of their discs, thus completely undermining your original argument?

MoC's admission that they've had to region-lock one of their discs, thus completely undermining your original argument?

In a few weeks, Eureka will have released 10 x BDs and *one* (licenced from Criterion, already with a Region A BD release in the US) has been region coded.

Michael, I've been trying to keep out of this, but seeing as you keep banging on about it; have lampooned MoC as the "Dr Wu" of the Blu-ray world; wrestle down every little punter comment as a veiled attack on the BFI; and generally spit feathers about it wherever you can -- I'd like to pick up on a point that's not been discussed yet....

You mention "contractual agreements with rightsholders". These contractual agreements sometimes, but not always, stipulate that the licenced territories must be region encoded for those specific territories. In both our cases this means UK & Eire and thus R2 or RB depending on the format.

What simply doesn't wash here is that encoding for R2 or RB does not solely protect the UK & Eire territory -- instead, that coding is for the entirety of Europe, so it does nothing to protect the 27 member states of the EU from each other's wares.

Furthermore, (and I couldn't believe this) it costs extra to region encode a Blu-ray (Sony require a fee), so the distributor is being unfairly lumbered with an extra cost to region encode their discs -- which in turn is completely ineffectual at protecting European territories.

This inbuilt obsolescence of region encoding within Europe renders the entire process unfair, costly, and pointless -- except to 'protect' Hollywood/USA -- it simply doesn't do what the licensor contracts require it to. To this end, I'm trying to persuade licensors that region encoding does not achieve what they think it does and is thus a complete waste of time -- but I'm losing the will to live. All that seems to matter is that it's the USA vs Rest of the World. Maybe I'm just slow to pick this up, but this is the crux of it, and this is what's always mattered.

The more British and European companies that stand up against region encoding, the more likely it is to go the way of the dodo.

Unfortunately, Criterion's policy is to region encode every Blu-ray no matter what.

As a punter, if I couldn't watch Criterion BDs, I'd be livid. I'm just glad I have a multiregion BD player. If everyone else did, this would be as small an issue as it has become with DVD and we wouldn't be discussing it.

Whoever's making multiregion BD players right now is going to have a great few years.

Some people have to stop whining about region coding of discs and go ahead and get themselves a multi-region player. BFI and MoC get my votes of excellent discs. I have 2 BFI BDs and 2 MoC BDs. Excellent stuff indeed. Don't be knockin'

I've had exactly the same problem with my Leopard disc in my modified Oppo 83. I work for the BFI and I took the disc to the DVD team (where it played perfectly on a Sony machine) - they gave me a second copy to try.
Michael I spoke to Ben Stoddart about it - I guess it might be an Oppo firmware upgrade issue, so I'll make sure I'm up to date before trying again with this second disc tonight. And I'll report back to Ben, although it's presumably an Oppo problem not a BFI authoring problem.

manicsounds wrote:Some people have to stop whining about region coding of discs and go ahead and get themselves a multi-region player. BFI and MoC get my votes of excellent discs. I have 2 BFI BDs and 2 MoC BDs. Excellent stuff indeed. Don't be knockin'

I'm a student and don't want to go right now Blu because I can't afford a multiregion player at the current price.
If there was no region coding on Blus then I'd probably get a uk player next week, and I know i'm not the only one

Aldi are selling a region-free blu-ray player for 60£, from 110£. Even the original price it's not bad, if you are spending money on Criterions/MoCs.

peerpee wrote:Michael, I've been trying to keep out of this, but seeing as you keep banging on about it; have lampooned MoC as the "Dr Wu" of the Blu-ray world; wrestle down every little punter comment as a veiled attack on the BFI; and generally spit feathers about it wherever you can --

To be fair, my 'Mr Wu' comment was made several months ago, as a reaction to the way people were endlessly praising MoC's Blu-ray line-up and enlightened approach to region-coding at a time when you'd released just one title and announced just one more. So the lampoon wasn't actually of MoC (just as Orson Welles' original story wasn't an attack on the actor playing Mr Wu) so much as the people who were using MoC's then barely-extant line-up to bash the BFI, basing their arguments largely on wishful thinking rather than demonstrable reality (at least at the time).

But even then, I made a point of stressing that I was greatly looking forward to seeing what you'd come up with - and indeed I watched the Blu-ray of Soul Power only last night.

You mention "contractual agreements with rightsholders". These contractual agreements sometimes, but not always, stipulate that the licenced territories must be region encoded for those specific territories. In both our cases this means UK & Eire and thus R2 or RB depending on the format.

What simply doesn't wash here is that encoding for R2 or RB does not solely protect the UK & Eire territory -- instead, that coding is for the entirety of Europe, so it does nothing to protect the 27 member states of the EU from each other's wares.

Of course not - that's one of the unarguable benefits of being in the EU! From what I hear, the original plan with DVD region coding was to subdivide Europe into multiple regions, but this was completely impossible within the terms of single-market legislation. (Mind you, I've always suspected the 1984 Video Recordings Act is equally incompatible...)

The more British and European companies that stand up against region encoding, the more likely it is to go the way of the dodo.

But do you actually believe that? It certainly hasn't happened with DVD - what's far more likely is that the likes of The Leopard won't get licensed at all to a third party, and either remain unreleased, or Fox will do it themselves, probably not to anything like the same labour-of-love standard. And the customer loses out, because it means great films simply don't get released - so I'd argue that the best solution is to bite the region-coding bullet where necessary and go multiregion at the player end.

Unfortunately, Criterion's policy is to region encode every Blu-ray no matter what.

I know, which is why I was so incensed by Kekid's original call for a boycott of all the BFI's DVD and Blu-ray product on the grounds that it was allegedly the only company that was behaving in such a discriminatory fashion, which was blatantly untrue on at least two levels. As Zedz rightly pointed out at the time, if you're going to protest against what you see as an exclusionary policy, you have to be consistent - favouring companies that undoubtedly do have an exclusionary policy (there's no contractual reason I can see that prevents Criterion from making quite a few of their BDs region-free if they wanted) just because you're not one of the customers being excluded renders the original argument pretty worthless.

But what's become clear over the months since that original argument is that the BFI and MoC are largely singing from the same hymn sheet - which was what I suspected at the time, but didn't have the supporting evidence back then.

edit: apologies to all, this is so embarrassing. It was my TV. The Leopard BD is immaculate, in a grainy film-like way. Explained in another edit. Search this thread for "Cinema Smooth."

Spoiler

These posts have gotten too long to quote, but in the light of MichaelB and peerpee being on the same page here, I'd like to raise an issue of BFI and MoC disc comparison. I don't have screencaps to help illustrate my query, because I'm not tehnical minded enough, but my satisfaction with The Leopard BD is nowhere near my satisfaction with the Sunrise BD.

The BFI have presented The Leopard in a transfer that seems to cope awkwardly with movement within frame, which is not smooth; suggesting a distracting element, perhaps noise reduction, something which MoC vow not to use (and it shows), particlarly in two of their products I watched recently, Vampyr DVD and Sunrise BD. *

And * as a side note, can I point out that someone in charge at BFI seems to be selecting their new blu ray projects based not on artistic/entertainment quality, but on how much tits and ass they contain. A glance at the BFI blu ray booklet that came with The Leopard (their most recent release) reveals they've released as many Flipside BDs (their TnA line) as main line releases. And their main line releases have featured movies with nudity as well: Pasolini's Trilogy of Life, eg. For every deserving title, a la Red Desert or The Leopard, we see five titles which appear to have beat out the more deserving competition based on T and A.

This just smacks of the advertising strategy of using sex to sell; they tried it with Belle du Jour, Lolita the novel, and a lot of Frech new wave stuff; they marketd it as tittilation, and watched their arthouse uncommercial product become a niche moneymaker.

* sections edited to accomodate Schreck's comments.

I'm surprised this argument has been playing out as long as it has.
Region coding is [increasingly] ineffectual.
Regarding BD region-coding, MOC and BFI are doing what they can; the CC, sadly, is not. Kekid's boycott was just silly and hypocritical.

But, Ben, you're going to fault the BFI from a standpoint of prudishness? I protest! More 1080p tits/ass!~ But, seriously, I don't believe the BFI has stated a mission statement proclaiming the release of world-renowned classics exlusively. The flipside sub-label is not for everyone, but hats off for bringing some of these wonderful titles to light. Bed Sitting Room anyone?

Ben, where did you come up with the idea that frame judder is a hallmark of noise reduction? If that were the case most of the discs we watch would be flying all over the place.

Frame judder more than anything is the result of an old print that's shrunken over time jumping around in the telecine gate... it's a very expensive (or was a very expensive) issue to correct in the digital suite.

I find the whole dilly of dvd label personnel having at one another way uncool. Yesterday I put up but took back down for desire NOT to spark a shitstorm of defensive european voices a comment registering my distaste with craig's sniping at Kino's Lubitsch In Berlin release, praising the quality of the release vs Kinos. I think it's absolutely fabulous that you guys are very slow and meticulous with the quality of your limited output and try to go the extra mile via the extra amount of focus on such a small line... but I think "Subtitles are better than Kino's" or "Transfer is superior to this or that label" are comments appropriate to customers and reviewers, not label personnel/producers. IMagine Dennis Doros at Milestone or Massino at Flicker A, or god forbid Krim at Kino or Becker at CC saying "New improved transfer and subtitles better than the BFI disc," or "Title given better treatment than the MoC," etc. There's no law against it, for sure, and it's only appearances and an unwritten karmic sort of a rule I'm mentioning-- but it seems to me all you guys are in the same boat, some of you are in a boat that was built by some of your very brave comrades who took a risky ride into those waters years ago and tilled the ground for you, and tearing each other down directly on forums.. ah, it just feels uncool. But feel free to ignore my opinion.

edit: ignore this post. It was my TV. Explained in an edit to a later post in this thread.

HerrSchreck wrote:Ben, where did you come up with the idea that frame judder is a hallmark of noise reduction? If that were the case most of the discs we watch would be flying all over the place.

I may be misusing the term judder; all I know is the BD seems to have part of the equation I noticed in Gladiator, Longest Day etc, without a complete waxing of surfaces (though perhaps with some detail loss). My initial comments on the disc were mainly emphasising the disc's positivies, but there is still this final issue I have with the way it moves; not of the edges of the frame moving, as in (what I understand from your remarks to be) telecine judder, but of objects moving within the frame, or during pans; particularly in large outdoor shots where grain would normally be more prominent.

MichaelB wrote:I made a point of stressing that I was greatly looking forward to seeing what you'd come up with - and indeed I watched the Blu-ray of Soul Power only last night.

Another region-free Blu-ray

The more British and European companies that stand up against region encoding, the more likely it is to go the way of the dodo.

But do you actually believe that?

Of course I do. The main dynamic in all this is the relationship between the various licencees and the licensor. What's happening at the moment is that licencees are bitching to the licensor about another licencee because foreign product is impinging on other territories, and the only way the licensor thinks they can counter this is by insisting on region coding (which doesn't work). Vicious circle.

We need a level playing field. I can buy an American edition of MOBY DICK with notes and nice typography, I can buy a Japanese CD reissue of a PHAROAH SANDERS album, but I'm being prevented from buying an American Criterion BD of Polanski's REPULSION, because...? -- Film, as an artform, has had a rough deal here for too long.

The more that consumers understand the politics and dynamics of why 'regions' exist, and the more we talk about it, the more this sorry mess will go away. Currently, it's a circle of fear which helps hardly anyone.

It certainly hasn't happened with DVD -

It doesn't matter with DVD anymore because the region encoding is so easy to get around. It's not an issue.

But what's become clear over the months since that original argument is that the BFI and MoC are largely singing from the same hymn sheet - which was what I suspected at the time, but didn't have the supporting evidence back then.

As skuhn8 says, we're both doing what we can.

HerrSchreck wrote:I find the whole dilly of dvd label personnel having at one another way uncool. Yesterday I put up but took back down for desire NOT to spark a shitstorm of defensive european voices a comment registering my distaste with craig's sniping at Kino's Lubitsch In Berlin release, praising the quality of the release vs Kinos. I think it's absolutely fabulous that you guys are very slow and meticulous with the quality of your limited output and try to go the extra mile via the extra amount of focus on such a small line... but I think "Subtitles are better than Kino's" or "Transfer is superior to this or that label" are comments appropriate to customers and reviewers, not label personnel/producers. IMagine Dennis Doros at Milestone or Massino at Flicker A, or god forbid Krim at Kino or Becker at CC saying "New improved transfer and subtitles better than the BFI disc,"

Shreck, we're in a forum here, speaking as ourselves, hence "peerpee" and "evillights". Both Craig and myself are self-employed freelancers, we post as punters in this arena in our spare time, and yes we do mouth off -- but we make no apologies for calling a turd a turd. It's an unusual set-up I know, but we're not posting these comments on the MoC website, tweeting them, or putting it on the package. There's a difference.

We were directly asked what the differences were between our forthcoming LUBITSCH set and the Kino set. The rewritten, Americanised intertitles on the Kino are bad and mangle the films.

Anyway -- wrong thread.

So then I'll second juste'leblanc's request over on the apprpriate thread for a strong comparative example.

Anyhow, thank goodness so many of those turds from FWMS/Transit are committed to by your comrades across the pond, for theatrical as well as home vid (and for so so many titles), otherwise they'd likely be arriving in R2 in lesser restorative shape, if at all.

If they were "committed to" with more care, and with a bit more respect for the filmmaker and the original language in which they were made, I'm sure they'd sell more across the pond and FWMS/Transit might then be able to fund HD restorations of everything.

HerrSchreck wrote:Anyhow, thank goodness so many of those turds from FWMS/Transit are committed to by your comrades across the pond, for theatrical as well as home vid (and for so so many titles), otherwise they'd likely be arriving in R2 in lesser restorative shape, if at all.

I was about to respond to your initial comment, but Nick pretty much said what I had to say.

And yet: I don't understand why your tone is so histrionic. "thank goodness so many of those turds from FWMS/Transit..."? — come again? How are we even supposed to respond to this? There's nothing Nick wrote that suggested he was referring to the films/properties themselves as "turds" — if we thought they were anything less than great, we wouldn't pursue the licenses. But with the aid of your irrepressible sarcasm, you've taken a remark about the presentation of a particular release, and conflated it with a hypothetical about the films themselves, and done so on a public forum.

The fact of the matter is that many of the technical and sometimes presentational issues of the films released by certain labels can be resolved at some point along the timeline of a project with a phone call, or an email, and multiple follow-ups to either. More often than not, it really is that simple, and has nothing to do with 'who has a larger budget'. A filmmaker-favorite of many of us here once put it very succinctly: "You either care, or you don't." Thankfully, there are a few labels (and more to the point, people overseeing projects for those labels) who do care, and care a great deal.

HerrSchreck wrote:So then I'll second juste'leblanc's request over on the apprpriate thread for a strong comparative example.

I'm going to post a "comparative example" over at the LUBITSCH IN BERLIN thread with regard to the subtitles. You can decide whether it meets your criteria for being strong enough. But since your tone is already suspicious, let me state ahead of time that if you feel the translation differences don't personally warrant updating your editions of these films (the inclusion of the original German intertitles aside), it's your prerogative.

ck.

david hare wrote:I recently sent some directair burns (of the rarest remaining Mexican Bunuels) to Blake Lucas from PAL sources and as an afterthought I mentioned they were PAL. He doesnt have a multi region player!

He doesn't have a "multi-system" player? -- Does he have access to a computer? Computers worldwide seem to handle PAL/NTSC fine.