119 Withnail and I

[tenia]

That'd be a very welcome development for non-natives like me !

[andyli]

Another thing I was surprised to notice is that Criterion seems to have started providing SDH subtitles for everything on their discs with Withnail & I, including English-language commentaries and bonus features. They retitled the SETUP menu to SDH and when this is activated the respective subtitles appear for each program. This applies to both Withnail and How to Get Ahead in Advertising.

This is a significant advancement on the subtitle front. Naturally blu-ray.com's reviews for both titles do not acknowledge it and still say the bonus features are "not subtitled".

Given Withnail & I and How to Get Ahead in Advertising are both HandMade titles I wonder if it's only a thing for them. It would be very interesting if they did this for the next in the pipeline: The Three Musketeers + The Four Musketeers with a 2.5 hour long documentary. The additional subtitling work must be huge (maybe not so much if AI tools are employed?)

[cdnchris]

Killer of Sheep and the Musketeer set has them, so it might be a thing going forward.

[Finch]

As someone with hearing issues, I'm thrilled that Criterion appear to be doing this for all releases going forward but as MichaelB said elsewhere, the subtitling costs are higher than most people (myself included at the time) realise, so between that, the addition of commentaries and more bonus features, and them rehiring everyone they had to let go (in late 2023?), their acquisition by Steven Rales evidently resulted in a rosier financial outlook. Everybody wins.

[colinr0380]

Something that I noted relating to both Withnail & I and How To Get Ahead In Advertising is that David Dundas composed the score for both - Dundas is perhaps more famous for composing the Fourscore theme that opened Channel 4 television in 1982 and played before the beginning of programmes on that channel until 1992.

(Although he also composed for the film Private Road, put out by BFI in their Flipside series a while back, and has an acting role as the class teacher in the 1980 Children's Film Foundation film Avalanche!)