Ken Russell on DVD

[HarryLong]

that indeed we make get 'The Devils;

Personally I don't think Warners will be happy until they have a big pit of quicklime & can dunk the negative & last remaining print into it.
They refuse to issue it on DVD & repeatedly refuse to license it to another company.
A few years back that were practically thrilled to announce that their archival print had worn out and would not be replaced.

[Lino]

Fantastic news! Ken Russell has expressed his wish to Digital Classics to record an audio commentary on the new Lisztomania DVD and Digital Classics in return is asking people to drop them a line over at this forum and ask just what would you like him to talk about! Go on and register yourself - this is a chance in a lifetime.

[MichaelB]

Less fantastic news - while the source print is in excellent condition and presented in the correct aspect ratio, the transfer is non-anamorphic. At least it is on the review copy - I can't vouch for the final release yet, and I hope at least that they'll add menus...

(On the other hand, the same label's Petulia is anamorphic, so I suspect this is the final Lisztomania transfer).

[Cash Flagg]

Ken Russell interview from DVD Outsider

[Person]

Ken Russell interview from DVD Outsider

He had never given a less than great interview. Total legend.

[antnield]

Network DVD look to be releasing Russell's 2002 'Elgar: Fantasy of a Composer on a Bicylce' (made for the South Bank Show) in June. No word yet on extras and no cover image, but listing on Amazon (if not Network's own website!)...

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Elgar-Fantasy-c ... 432&sr=8-7" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

[colinr0380]

Some screen captures from the new Second Sight disc of Aria, featuring the wonderful Russell segment. Interestingly in the commentary and documentary (which was produced by Severin, so there may perhaps be a Region 1 disc of the film coming from them) producer Don Boyd talks of Russell seeming too obvious a choice for the project, so it was left for Ken himself to call up and specifically ask to be included!

[Murdoch]

Oh hell yes! I held off on buying any of the previous releases because of the terrible transfers and wrong AR, I'll be snatching this up as soon as possible. Thanks, colin!

[MichaelB]

Aria is an excellent release - my only quibble is that there's a massive anecdote overlap between the commentary and the featurette (I'd favour the former, as there's a fair bit more detail). But the transfer is absolutely fine, and producer-approved.

[jsteffe]

colinr0380, thanks for posting those ARIA screen caps. The disc looks really nice. It's been years since I've seen the film, but now I'm game to watch it again.

On a side note, I feel really stupid for not figuring out earlier that Godard's segment is an extended homage to "Is There Anyone Here for Love" from GENTLEMEN PREFER BLONDES.

[colinr0380]

Aria is an excellent release - my only quibble is that there's a massive anecdote overlap between the commentary and the featurette (I'd favour the former, as there's a fair bit more detail). But the transfer is absolutely fine, and producer-approved.

I agree on the overlap and the commentary having more detail, though the documentary is nice to have for the interviews with Roeg, Russell, Sturridge, Roddam and Temple (no Godard of course!) even if Boyd can only repeat his anecdotes from the commentary. And I could listen to the ones about the producer's mounting, but ultimately unnecessary, panic over the Altman sequence or Godard reshooting his segment with his own money and then bursting into tears after screening it to an appreciative Boyd all day!

On a side note, I feel really stupid for not figuring out earlier that Godard's segment is an extended homage to "Is There Anyone Here for Love" from GENTLEMEN PREFER BLONDES.

I'd never realised that before! #-o I guess when there's that much nudity on display my brain cannot cope and just shuts down!

[BrianInAtlanta]

From Blic online:
http://www.blic.rs/culture.php?id=4854" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

Film miracle is a fusion of image and music
Author: Biljana Vuckovic

Subotica - This year’s winner of Aleksandar Lifka Award at the European Film Festival Palic is the renowned British director Ken Russell. His presence at the festival in Palic has been a great honor for the festival organizers, as well as for the audience, who also had an opportunity to see him at the projection of the cult film “Tommy” in the “Jadran” cinema hall in Subotica.

Accompanied by his wife Lisi Tribble and the director Dinko Tucakovic, he watched the film and then addressed the audience, recalling interesting situations from shooting of his most famous films.

“Ten years have passed from the last time I saw “Tommy”, it is permeated with opera composed by Puccini or Rossini. When I was 12, my parents bought me a film projector on which I played German films and composed music which would fit in. That was my first contact of melody and film and I think that only in the fusion of image and music does the film miracle happen. The strength of these two kinds of art prompted me to create a music film “Tommy” which I used as a kind of a personal story to such an extent that my daughter Victoria acted in it,” says Ken Russell.

Having been in a good mood from his arrival in Palic, Russell pointed out that his basic idea when he shoots films is to cheer people up.

“I shoot films in order to make people happy and to teach them something. One should always take the best from life and that is the reason why I salute films created in a positive way. Federico Fellini told me once in Rome that he is proud of being the Italian Ken Russell,” said Ken Russell.

[tojoed]

The Music Lovers on DVD in the UK in June.
I'm afraid I am not familiar with the publisher - Final Cut, so who Knows?

[antnield]

Here's their back catalogue - bit of an odd mixture, but I haven't sampled any of their discs.

[McCrutchy]

Let's talk about Whore, another of Russell's oft-neglected works on DVD. Is there a US DVD? Of course not, why would there be? Is there a UK DVD? Nope, not on your life.

Now, according to the admittedly dubious IMDb board for the film, a user had tested the Italian, German and Spanish DVDs of Whore and discovered the following:

The German, Italian, and Spanish DVDs (bar codes 4040316516884, 8032807012643, and 8420172046699, respectively)...Of the three DVDs only the Spanish DVD includes the English track. The German and Italian DVDs feature only the dubbed versions...Aspect Ratio: The German and Italian DVDs are 14:9 (1.56:1) and non-anamorphic. I don't know if this is the original aspect ratio. The unrated VHS edition and the Spanish DVD are 4:3 full frame (pan and scan, not open matte) except for the title sequence which is 14:9.

Further down in that thread is a post that the Russian DVD is anamorphic. A Cyrillic conversion later and I found the DVD at kniga.ru, the site I use to order Russian titles.

Note: It seems that all these DVDs (except the German edition, which is slightly cut), run 82 minutes in PAL, and would therefore be the NC-17 version and not the longer unrated version supposedly released on US VHS.

I was all excited to find that the Russians had released an anamorphic DVD of Whore, but there's some bad news. I received my copy and while it is technically anamorphic, it looks more like 1.56:1 anamorphic, and it appears that a 4:3 master has been blown up to achieve this. See the screencaps I made with VLC, first in "Default" AR and then in 4:3 AR:





















I find it weird that the image looks not only horizontally squeezed in 16:9, but vertically squeezed in 4:3. When I crop the borders off, I get image aspect ratios of 1.74:1 and 1.30:1 respectively.

For the record, this Russian DVD (EAN: 4607129150027) is packaged somewhat nicely, in a sort of crude digibook with an essay in Russian and a few pictures in a booklet glued to the cover flap. Additionally, it also contains the film's red-band U.S. trailer in 4:3 and in unsubtitled English, as well as a bunch of unsubtitled trailers for other films (in the Neoclassica collection, I presume) like Natural Born Killers (the Director's Cut), Abre los ojos, and Mad Dog Time. Be aware that there is a second, cheaper Russian DVD available that appears to only contain a Russian DUB track.

Both this Russian DVD (which is dated 2006 on the packaging but has .VOB files from January 29th, 2007) and a Czech DVD I found online have a Lionsgate logo on the back cover.

Curiously, there is now a second Italian DVD from 2011 (EAN: 8033109400527) that appears to have an English track, but the big news is that there is a forthcoming Swedish DVD, though I have no idea if it will be any better. Here's hoping it's from a different, better source and truly anamorphic.

[SASA]

any idea when that version of whore comes out? seeing as that company did the uncut china blue dvd, im hoping its the full version in the original aspect ratio.

from those screen grabs, it looks as if the russian dvd might be the original aspect ratio, as the 4:3 pictures look squashed.

either way, it would be nice to get this film as it was made (i dont have a video that can play the ntsc uncut vhs!). ken russell deserves better.

[McCrutchy]

any idea when that version of whore comes out? seeing as that company did the uncut china blue dvd, im hoping its the full version in the original aspect ratio.

from those screen grabs, it looks as if the russian dvd might be the original aspect ratio, as the 4:3 pictures look

Well right now, the Swedish distributor's site just says Q2, 2012 (as in Quarter 2, which should be April through June), so I'd guess we could see it by the Summer. It's also worth noting that they did their 2009 China Blue DVD some years after Anchor Bay had already released it uncut in 2002 as a SE DVD (it's known as Crimes of Passion in the USA) with extras.

I have to say though, I certainly don't think the Russian DVD is in any way approximating the OAR, because I think the Russian distributor simply took a non-anamorphic 14:9 image, stretched it, and cropped the black bars off the top and the bottom, adding bars at the sides perhaps to avoid the disaster of stretching the image itself to 1.78. When I watch this on my Pioneer Kuro in Dot-by-Dot mode, the black bars on the sides of the image are very obvious and also wrongly proportioned, with the one side bar being thicker than the other, and on that unit I can also shift the aspect ratio to 4:3 and, just like with the screencaps, no picture information is lost on any of the four sides. That tells me that this is a crop n' stretch job.

[yrazor]

The recent British edition (Odeon Entertainment Ltd.) of 'Mahler' is quite a treat. The print is anamorphic widescreen and much fresher than releases before.

[Dick Laurent]

The South Bank Show: Volume 1 (Ken Russell)

[criterion10]

Looks like Altered States will be getting a Blu-Ray from Warner this July...

[Dick Laurent]

The Fall of Louse of Usher UK release

[Calvin]

Japanese Blu-Ray of Mahler on June 8th

[McCrutchy]

Let's talk about Whore, another of Russell's oft-neglected works on DVD...the big news is that there is a forthcoming Swedish DVD, though I have no idea if it will be any better. Here's hoping it's from a different, better source and truly anamorphic.

The distributor's page has been updated to now show a Q4 2012 release date, and unfortunatly, they also list a 4:3 transfer with a 1.33:1 aspect ratio. ](*,)

[criterion10]

The distributor's page has been updated to now show a Q4 2012 release date, and unfortunatly, they also list a 4:3 transfer with a 1.33:1 aspect ratio.

Was the film originally shot in 1.33:1? And if it wasn't why on Earth would this company release it pan-and-scanned? DVD companies give me major headaches sometimes.... Oh, well. I'll probably still pick this up considering it will currently be the only DVD release of Whore.

[MichaelB]

Was the film originally shot in 1.33:1? And if it wasn't why on Earth would this company release it pan-and-scanned? DVD companies give me major headaches sometimes.... Oh, well. I'll probably still pick this up considering it will currently be the only DVD release of Whore.

Given how important the VHS and cable market would have been for a film like this in 1991, I think there's a strong probability that it was shot in open-matte 1.33:1 while allowing for cropping to 1.85:1 for theatrical screenings.