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You're right, Person, he is. I assumed Volonte had a gut reaction against the drop, as criminals do, and (too late) rushed to where he knew the drop off point was to stop his partner.

Mr Sausage wrote:You're right, Person, he is.

No he's not. Mattei (Bourvil) is the escorting cop, Volonte is Vogel, his prisoner.

Antares wrote:

Mr Sausage wrote:You're right, Person, he is.

No he's not. Mattei (Bourvil) is the escorting cop, Volonte is Vogel, his prisoner.

I assume Person just had a lapse on the names. He's otherwise correct: the officer leading the sting at the end is the officer Volonte escaped from at the beginning.

There's always a remake in the works.

Why aren't they revamping the DVD of Le Cercle Rouge, as well, as they did with Solaris, in order to fix the situation with the color timing?

rrenault wrote:Why aren't they revamping the DVD of Le Cercle Rouge, as well, as they did with Solaris, in order to fix the situation with the color timing?

They are adjusting the color timing on the Blu-ray. The clock is ticking on their ownership of the rights to Le cercle rouge though, and they probably don't feel that the color timing is a significant enough issue to justify the cost of doing another run of the standard def version.

Is the clock really ticking though on their ownership? I could be wrong, but I'm beginning to suspect that Lionsgate's studio canal collection is a charade, along with the meridian collection. The studio canal collection hasn't announced any new titles, since September of last year, and the meridian collection, a specialty DVD line, which released, DIVA, a studio canal film, has only put out like 2 or 3 films. A side of thinks that maybe Lionsgate will have let criterion have a lot of these studio canal titles after all, because when you think about it, Lionsgate isn't losing out financially by allowing criterion to release films licensed to them. In the past, many of the studio canal films were released to criterion through Rialto, such as The Milky Way. Perhaps, Lionsgate will play the same intermediary role that Rialto played before. Lionsgate I think will realize it's not in their financial interest to release these films when they're incapable of competing with criterion. Their ability to put out a comparable product is unlikely at this point.

On the flip side, however, let's hope that if Le Cercle Rouge does go out of print criterion will do what they did with Pierrot Le Fou by flooding the market with pressings at the last minute to level the price.

Perhaps this DVD will be worth updating either way, especially because of the color timing, although I have heard rumors that Criterion, in fact, had the colors right but that everyone else had it wrong, and that it's assumed criterion faltered, because they're colors were so much different from everyone else's. Do we really know how Melville intended to color the film. Either way, I don't want to get into the habit of replacing DVDs with blu rays, not that I have that many criterions to begin with, just the films I love. The only other criterions I'm wondering about are L'Eclisse, L'Avventura, and the Eric Rohmer set, but bringing up those may be irrelevant to this discussion.

Criterion/Lee Kline admitted they screwed up Le cercle rouge's colour while defending the piss colouration of L'enfance nue.

Anyone info at all if Criterion will quickly re-release the SD with what ever transfer the blu will have? I'm just assuming they'll use the print with the proper color correction.

Also I still don't get the hubbub over the L'Enfance Nue transfer Criterion used. It looks better that way IMO than the crisp clearness of the MOC.

Will the release of Le Cercle Rouge on blu ray hurt the DVD's resale value, especially due to the messed up color timing?

I imagine that the people who haven't gotten around to picking it up yet and who aren't interested in the Blu are probably not too worried about the color timing issue.

And I guess if it goes out of print it'll still fetch a pretty penny if it's in good condition.

My other question is does studio canal actually have beef with criterion or do they just want to consolidate their North American distribution?

rrenault wrote:My other question is does studio canal actually have beef with criterion or do they just want to consolidate their North American distribution?

No, Studio Canal doesn't have a beef with Criterion. They decided about two and a half years ago to release their films themselves, and via Lionsgate in America.
They issued a press release to this effect long before the Criterion OOP kerfuffle.
It's just that a lot of people didn't cotton on quickly.

Blu-ray.com review.

Criterion:


StudioCanal:


Criterion:


StudioCanal:


Criterion:


StudioCanal:

Thank goodness for Criterion.

mfunk9786 wrote:Thank goodness for Criterion.

In this instance, why?

mfunk9786 wrote:Thank goodness for Studio Canal.

Fixed.

The Criterion looks much better to my eye - is there something I'm missing?

I think there is, if you have ever seen this film in the theatre. But, even then, to be fair, there are others who agree with you.
People will just choose the one that they prefer in the end. There's not a huge difference.

Huh?! As the reviewer, I too always thought the overall "bluish/green tint" was inherent to the source print and typical for the "cool" color scheme of particular this film.
Indeed, a can of worms...

I also like the Studio Canal version better, in the same way I preferred the BFI's tint to the Crit DVD. Along with the Tatis and Ozu titles with the exception of Early Summer, this is not a title that I'm going to double-dip for on the Criterion Blu.