Unauthorized Releases & Bootlegs

[Kinsayder]

SuperHappyFun are having some MPAA difficulties. They've been told to "cease and desist" on over 100 of their titles. I suppose it was only a matter of time...

[life_boy]

Sounds like I got Bigger Than Life just in time. I recieved the DVD in the mail yesterday. I'm assuming that this MPAA stuff will affect mainly the U.S. titles that were on the site?

[Theodore R. Stockton]

More likely things like the Star Wars trilogy (what other three?), which was from the laserdisc so from what I read on digital bits seems like it would only be a bit lesser quality than what is being released now only for cheaper (and with a free holiday special).

[The Fanciful Norwegian]

Not to mention stuff like The Promise, which has U.S. distribution and will almost certainly be released on DVD eventually. They usually remove such titles when the official DVD comes out, but they're asking for trouble by selling them at all as long as they have a U.S. distributor. And the "hoping to remove all items that may have strayed into the non-public domain arena" is pretty disingenous (I suspect the number of genuinely public domain titles on SHF can be counted on two hands) -- chances are they're just removing everything owned by MPAA member studios, which would still leave a decent selection.

[Steven H]

Did anybody order from Japanese New Wave? Any comments?

From "The Films of Oshima Nagisa" thread:

I just received the first six of their titles today (my first "unofficial" releases ever), and I am very impressed. The image and sound is as good or better than many other official releases of Japanese films that I own. Moreover, the whole presentation of the films show that the people putting together these releases have a very high love and respect for these films and the artists that created them.

Other companies could learn something from the subtitling, which is perfect in size and font, in white, and placed below the image for those films in letterbox.

For releases with little or no budget, they went the extra mile and included a lot of text materials, in at least one instance multi-media texts with excerpts from films interspersed in the essay (a format I have always really enjoyed, but which is not very often used).

Finally, the menus (or intros) to the films are beautiful (and must have been created by japanesenewwave) being a few minutes long on each disc, presenting the names of the main actors and technicians of the film over clips from the film in question accompanied by music from the soundtrack. It reminded me a little of the old practice of having "walk-in" music before beginning the screening of a prestige film at premier theatres. It sets the mood and creates excitement about watching the film proper.

Great initiative all around! Anyone with any interest in Japanese film art should do what they can to acquire these discs.

[Gordon]

Both parts of Fassbinder's World on Wires are now available with subtitles: Part 1 - Part 2

[exte]

I have American Boy, The Big Shave and Italianamerican courtesy of the laserdisc by Voyager. However, I'd love to get the rest. Yes, I know some of his NYU short films are already available on youtube, but if anyone has any other suggestions, I'd appreciate it. Thanks!

Scorsese Assembled: Collected Works, it contains many of his early films, as well as some rarities, including an excellent documentary from UK television. The complete lineup (2 DVDs):

* American Boy: A Profile of Steven Prince (1978): An hour long filmed interview with actor Steven Prince (he was the gun salesman in Taxi Driver) that is a real gem. In one scene, Prince tells a story that Tarantino would steal pay homage to in Pulp Fiction.

* What's a Nice Girl Like You Doing in a Place Like This? (1963): NYU student film about a writer suffering from writer's block.

* It's Not Just You, Murray (1964): Another NYU film. Extremely imaginative short, clearly influenced by several of his favorite European directors.

* The Big Shave (1967): Scorsese's allegory about the Vietnam War. A guy shaves, cuts himself, and bleeds a lot. Fairly powerful little film.

* Italianamerican (1974): Scorsese has dinner with his parents. One of Filmbrain's favorite Scorsese films. Simply wonderful.

* Martin Scorsese Directs (1990): 75-minute documentary from UK television. Contains interviews with De Niro, Pesci, Keitel, Spielberg, etc.

* In Search of Kundun with Martin Scorsese (1998): 90 minute documentary on the making of Kundun. This was available on the European Kundun DVD, but not the American.

[life_boy]

Is anyone familiar with Knoozles? Their DVD of Song of the South looks pretty good, but I don't know anything about them.

[Multi-Region]

Hmmm... Lake/Ladd DVD bootlegs:

- Film-Noir THE GLASS KEY, LINK

- Film-Noir THE BLUE DAHLIA, LINK

..."import"?!

[exte]

A Celebration Of Silent Film? Anyone?

The LD boxset goes for over $500+ on ebay...

[Theodore R. Stockton]

Anyone know anything about David Lynch's Rabbits? I really want to see it but don't want to pay too much for a burned disc from e-bay when he'll probably put it out himself eventually.

[Faux Hulot]

Say, would anyone happen to know who's offering a bootleg of Bye Bye Braverman on DVD? A recent posting by Filmbrain reminded me how much I enjoy that film, but Mr. FB was understandably reticent to reveal his source.

[Multi-Region]

Wow... these are ALL bootlegs: LINK?

[davida2]

Did anybody order from Japanese New Wave? Any comments?

They've shut down, unfortunately - I was waiting for tax returns to order... This is very upsetting to me, the R2 sets of this stuff are way, way out of my price range.

[HerrSchreck]

Anybody know anything about this boot of Kinugasa's A PAGE OF MADNESS from super happy fun?

Rosenbaum gives it a seeming thumbs up here on Cinema Scope.

[Steven H]

It's a DVDr dub of the VHS that's been floating around for a while. It's in pretty bad shape. It's a brilliant film, and I hope some company tackles it and Crossroads soon, because the version that's floating around is painful to look at.

[HerrSchreck]

I know, I can't believe nobody's gotten around to this yet. If it's that old sub-Grapvine VHS then, gasp, maybe even (maybe) Facets ("forgive me father for I have sinned, I have mentioned Facets in a salutary sentence..." "GET THE FUCK OUT MY CONFESSION BOOTH YA LOUSY PIECE A SHIT!") could do better. Ugh.

[Steven H]

I know there are people at MOC that love this film, and restored prints are floating around of Crazy Page (and Crossroads), shown in San Francisco last year, I think. Sounds ripe for the picking. There's probably some bizarre Japanese company stipulation holding back a release (and a real or imagined lack of interest for Japanese silents.)

I'll shoot an email off to Digital Meme, which seems explicitly devoted to this sort of cinema, about those titles specifically.

[Cineman]

I realise this posting may not be looked on favourably by some out there, so apologies in advance, but the site http://www.raredvds4sale.co.uk" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false; is selling a number of rare gems from the old BBC "Play for Today" series, the vast majority of which are excellent quality and taken direct from BBC masters (timecoded versions). The site lists a total of 18 rarities from Alan Clarke, plus a number shown on the coming soon page from Leigh, Loach, Frears, Joffe etc.

I know that some folk on here are not happy about sites selling "bootleg" DVDs, but when it comes to rare TV stuff like this, the like of which is highly unlikley to ever see the light of day with an official release then if this is the only chance you can get to see them, then why not!

[Matt]

I agree that it's awfully nice to get some of these films that would be otherwise impossible to see, but I'm troubled by this guy selling copies of other films (and CDs) that are readily available in legit versions. I mean, do you really want to take money out of Arvo Pärt's pocket by buying the "unreleased" Gerry soundtrack when you could just buy this?

Even so, Alan Clarke's Christine will be mine.

[Gregory]

(I'm not seeing that Gerry soundtrack.)
It's also too bad he doesn't have more description of them that would give some idea about the relative picture quality and so on. For example it's great that a few of the Frederick Wiseman titles are available that way to individuals, but I know at least one of those has forced French subtitles.

[planetjake]

Have any of you ordered films from this internet site? I find myself particularly interested in three films they currently have in stock as DVD-Rs.

Mystery of Oberwald (Antonioni)
White Dog (Fuller)
Hitler: A Film from Germany (Syberberg)

Can anyone comment on the quality of any one of these DVDs?

Just got A Film From Germany. The film is indeed spread out over 3 discs. The first disc is about 90 minutes long, the second about 120 minutes and the third is roughly 3 hours long. The quality of the image is watchable. It's a simple VHS rip, nothing more, nothing less. On my TV it seems that a little bit of the subtitles are cut off, but this is generally not a problem. I would think this is about the same quality VHS rip that's available on Syberberg's website (for free no less). SO in the end I would opt for the free download (if you have a couple of days to spare).

[Anonymous]

Is Bresson's UNE FEMME DOUCE available anywhere?

[Kinsayder]

Super Happy Fun used to have an English subbed version before they pruned back their Bressons. Might be worth sending them an email.

[Awesome Welles]

I don't know if anyone has come across this guy before but his DVD's are pretty good, if you email him and ask him what the quality is like he will give you a pretty good description, i.e. video tape quality, DVD quality etc.

The selection is only of Japanese films. Prices, if memory serves, are $14.99 plus about $5 to the UK, he's in France (but writes perfect English) so I'm not sure on shipping anywhere else.