Arrow Films

[Zot!]

17th December
The Killing: Season 3
The Killing: Seasons 1-3

Is this the Danish TV show?

[MichaelB]

17th December
The Killing: Season 3
The Killing: Seasons 1-3

Is this the Danish TV show?

Yes. Which strongly suggests that season 3 will be on BBC4 before too long.

[colinr0380]

Yes. Which strongly suggests that season 3 will be on BBC4 before too long.

BBC4 are on the second part of their one off Wallander (the one which got remade as the opener of the Branagh series) and their re-showing of the first season of Borgen is on episode 9 of 10, so they are going to need a new series in a few weeks! It may be then!

On the Arrow titles, I'm quite interested in The Night Child - one of the many Exorcist rip-offs but which stars Nicoletta Elmi as the titular child and Joanna Cassidy and Richard Johnson (from Robert Wise's original version of The Haunting, and later to be in Zombie Flesh-Eaters but crucially the connection here is likely that he was in the other key Italian Exorcist rip-off, Beyond The Door, the year before!) as the parents! Apparently Edmund Purdom is in there too!

[stagefright50]

Now they've started DNR-ing the shit out of their covers!

Although I laughed, it's probably worth stressing that it's not Arrow themselves who apply the DNR - it's their suppliers. Arrow themselves would much rather work with unadulterated masters, and the likes of Rififi show what they're capable of when they're in that happy situation.

I only ever want to make you laugh.

Arrow folks, I appriciate everything you do. Just seemed like an easy target.

[manicsounds]

DVDBeaver on "Lady Snowblood 1&2"

[MichaelB]

Yes, that's a very fair reflection of what I saw.

I wouldn't be too fussed about the fact that both films are crammed onto one disc - the combined running time is only around three hours, and since the films are in Scope ratio there's less picture information to encode than there would have been if it they'd been in screen-filling 16:9.

[manicsounds]

And Blu-ray.com's review

Nice PQ and AQ scores.

[David M.]

Although I laughed, it's probably worth stressing that it's not Arrow themselves who apply the DNR - it's their suppliers. Arrow themselves would much rather work with unadulterated masters, and the likes of Rififi show what they're capable of when they're in that happy situation.

Don't forget the distinction between Arrow Films and Arrow Video, though.

[eerik]

Set your watches, Arrow Video January - February - March announcement will be Friday 26th October, midday UK time!
6 Dual Format, 3 DVDs. A slew of genres, extras, filmmakers new and old, artwork by 2 new artists and booklets for each!
Over 9 Dual Format/DVDs we will release 12 films!
One film of which we believe will be a version of a film seeing it's world premiere on home video

[Calvin]

They assured me a while ago that there would be some Academy titles released in Q1. Fingers crossed.

[MichaelB]

I daresay they'll be wanting my booklet copy for one of them, then. (The deadline was vaguely "this autumn").

[MichaelB]

Excellent - a deadline extension!

[Finch]

Arrow's Q1 2013 releases include Bava, Metzger & Craven:

Black Sunday including I Vampiri
Django Prepare a Coffin
Lisa & The Devil
Camille 2000
The Lickerish Quartet
Score
Dead End Drive-In
Deadly Blessing
Baise-Moi

[TMDaines]

Black Sunday looks a good package.

[Peacock]

Hey Arrow, if you're reading this... please don't crush the blacks on the Blu of Black Sunday. The Kino has no shadow detail (going by the caps online)... so do whatever you have to do to maintain the original dynamic range please!

[Forrest Taft]

I haven't seen it since my teens, but I remember really enjoying Django Prepare a Coffin, finding it one of the better Django knockoffs. Looking forward to seeing it again. Now if only someone could release Mario Camus' La collera del vento (aka Trinity Sees Red) starring Terence Hill and Fernando Ray, and all the worthwhile spaghetti westerns I once had on VHS will be out shiny discs.

[colinr0380]

I'm not sure that I want to know this but I presume that Baise-Moi will remain the slightly edited version - i.e. the one without the rather insensitive hardcore shots in the midst of the gang rape scene.

[MichaelB]

A 1080p trailer for Arrow's upcoming Zombie Flesh Eaters, sourced from their new 2K scan directly from the original camera negative - I understand the transfer was formally signed off yesterday.

I'll be very curious to see this one - Arrow's Italian releases are often hampered by having to rely on mastering decisions made in Italy outside their control, but with this one they've directly supervised the entire process from camera negative to final encode.

Amusingly, restoration guru James White also worked on The Passion of Joan of Arc a few months ago, though the films don't have much in common apart from prolonged close-ups of women in a state of some distress.

[Stefan Andersson]

Re: Arrow´s upcoming Euro releases -- for future releases I suggest:

Django il Bastardo w/ corrected editing of main titles (it´s supposed to be edited wrongly on some existing DVD releases)
Lunghi Giorni della Vendetta - supposedly a good Western, but very seldom mentioned. The X-Kult DVD had the long version in the wrong aspect ratio and the short version in correct 2.35.
All the Colors of the Dark
Case of the Scorpion´s Tail
Caltiki
A wave of Barbara Steele´s Italian horror movies
House that Screamed - Italian 70´s horror movie starring Lilli Palmer

[MichaelB]

I'll be very curious to see this one - Arrow's Italian releases are often hampered by having to rely on mastering decisions made in Italy outside their control, but with this one they've directly supervised the entire process from camera negative to final encode.

I have now seen this one, and the difference between it and Arrow's previous Italian exploitation efforts really is quite startling - very possibly a benchmark for how to do these things properly in future.

In banishing the involvement of Italian facilities houses and their deeply unwanted digital interference, physically getting hold of the original camera negative and putting BFI/MoC technical guru James White in charge of the entire scanning and restoration process (along with our own Nick Wrigley and David Mackenzie, he's one of the people I most trust to get this sort of thing right), Arrow ensures that we really are getting the film pretty much exactly as Lucio Fulci and Sergio Salvati shot it, once you allow for the inevitable side-effects of compression and resolution reduction.

But with a bitrate hovering in the mid-30s (a fair bit above the high-20s bitrate of the Blue Underground release, if the Beaver's charts and my PS3 can be trusted to supply matching data), the encoders have clearly gone out of their way to reflect the 2K master as closely as they could. I doubt pushing the bitrate higher would have achieved much, because the Techniscope framing means that they're only using part of the full 16:9 image in the first place.

I also like the way they use seamless branching to give you either Zombie Flesh Eaters, Zombi 2 or Zombie, depending on which version you're fondest of - though aside from opening and closing credits every version is identical: they don't go down the nostalgia route quite as far as reproducing the original BBFC-scissored UK theatrical release!

I greatly enjoyed the extras too: personal favourites were the Alan Jones/Stephen Thrower commentary, the Ian McCulloch interview (he's not the film's biggest fan, which makes it that much more entertaining) and the guided tour of makeup and effects guru Gino de Rossi's career and his workshop, but there's lots more there.

[MichaelB]

Thankfully, the first two reviewers to tackle Zombie Flesh Eaters agree with me - SciFiNow gives it a five-star rave, while the official AV Forums review reckons that the new Arrow transfer is a distinct improvement on the already acclaimed Blue Underground disc.

[manicsounds]

DVDBeaver compares Zombie Flesh Eaters

Blu-ray.com reviews it as well

[MichaelB]

Ian McCulloch and James White discuss the Zombie Flesh Eaters restoration in this AV Forums podcast.

[TonyleStephanois]

We thought it might be of interest that our entire Arrow Academy collection is on sale right now as well as our Russ Meyer collection and many Arrow Video titles.

[antnield]

The Digital Fix reviews Zombie Flesh Eaters.