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I bet they break up the Noir set, especially since they just announced standard slipcaseless versions of all of their initial sold out releases. I wish I'd waited on the Noir set since I only needed two of the films included, but ah well. The box is thicc af tho

domino harvey wrote: Fri Nov 20, 2020 3:38 pm My understanding is that every Imprint title is region free, FYI

Thanks! Didn't realize that

rapta, the only thing I would say about Hard Eight is that PTA will probably get involved in a restoration of some kind. I think he may have even mentioned it in the past when he was asked about a Criterion release for the film.

therewillbeblus wrote: Fri Nov 20, 2020 8:27 pm Yeah I'm banking on other companies picking up these titles, or most of them, at some point in the near future. I'm not interested in paying such steep prices (even with Deep Discount's codes) for what appear to be inconsistent quality transfers, though I have to admit the noir set is tough to ignore. I'm hoping some other company has enough passion for Alias Nick Beal to dole it out.

Indicator's upcoming Columbia Noir are scratching that itch for me personally (two out of four of the Imprint set are already spoken for), and I imagine we'll at least get Detective Story from Indicator/MoC/BFI in the near future. Eureka may be interested in Alias Nick Beal for their Classics range, since they covered something of a Universal B-noir recently (This Gun for Hire) and everyone loves Ray Milland (The Lost Weekend remains one of the best MoC selections, in my opinion).

FrauBlucher wrote: Fri Nov 20, 2020 8:31 pmrapta, the only thing I would say about Hard Eight is that PTA will probably get involved in a restoration of some kind. I think he may have even mentioned it in the past when he was asked about a Criterion release for the film.

I kind of always assume a revered director like PT Anderson - or Wes Anderson, Soderbergh, Fincher, Jarmusch, Linklater, Reichardt, Baumbach etc - will generally always approach Criterion when revisiting their back catalogue, if they can, so I'm not surprised to hear there's been talk of such a thing. A frustration so far with Criterion in the UK, however, is the lack of licensing from certain studios, Paramount being one of them (Fox another, but at least we got The Tree of Life before shit hit the fan). That is despite the fact that Universal now handle Paramount distribution, and we've had a number of Universal licenses ported over here to date (still no Traffic or The Breakfast Club though, nor any Sirk; and they ended up handing over The Game and Being John Malkovich to Arrow). In fact, Days of Heaven has been the sole title that has been tempting me to go region free, though that proposition feels like it would get more and more expensive what with Brexit coming into effect in January (I may still have to shell out for Region B-friendly copies of War & Peace, Come and See, Andrei Rublev and the Varda set eventually though).

therewillbeblus wrote: Fri Nov 20, 2020 8:27 pm what appear to be inconsistent quality transfers

There have been reports of rough transfers on a couple of titles but all the ones I've seen have looked pretty great

Yeah I have no doubt the duds are mostly outliers, and I'm hardly the first in line to bang on the door when a film uses an old master or whatever, but spending that much more money on movies warrants a stronger rationale than 'this company got to them first' for me. It's hard to justify $30+ on a single film or $100+ on a box set of four, especially when I've been spending tons of money this year on whatever blu-rays I want to watch following my library's temporary closure from CV (and now just feeling less comfortable going there) + Fox titles. I do appreciate the commentaries and may regret my decision if the ones I want most are delayed elsewhere, especially when I've been waiting forever for blus of Detective Story and Hard Eight to materialize. I'm curious to hear what people think of the special features/commentaries on those and/or other titles, for if they're great it might serve as the tipping point I need.

Beaver.... Hard Eight

FrauBlucher wrote: Tue Nov 24, 2020 6:45 pm Beaver.... Hard Eight

If you haven't seen the movie before, don't scroll down to the screencaps at the bottom, which give away the ending

New titles are:
Breakdown (1997)
The Bridges at Toko-Ri (1954)
The Bad News Bears (1976)
The Apostle (1997)
Five (1951)
Black Sunday (1977)

Pavel wrote: Fri Nov 27, 2020 1:10 amBlack Sunday (1977)

One of Frankenheimer's very best. Be interested to see how the transfer is - I seem to remember it looking pretty good on Netflix a few years ago. Hoping a UK boutique can wrangle this one off Paramount too!

Surely I can't be the only 70's kid in the forum who thinks that Ritchie's masterpiece finally making it to blu-ray, bare-bones though it is, is one of the announcements of the year.

Where are you getting that it’s barebones? There’s a new commentary track

Smile got announced?

domino harvey wrote: Fri Nov 27, 2020 3:05 pm Where are you getting that it’s barebones? There’s a new commentary track

You're right. I missed that.

Apologies if I’ve missed this, but is there a good place to order Imprint titles from for North Americans? I want Hard Eight in particular but cannot find a decent price.

DeepDiscount is offering it for $33, which might be your only non-direct option

Importcds has it too for slightly cheaper, both out of stock. I want to support this label but they seem pretty elusive compared to a lot of the other boutique labels.

Tell ya what, I was already gonna place an order meeting the shipping threshold, so I could add Hard Eight to my order and charge you, say, $30 shipped (assuming you live in the U.S.?) Only thing is you'd have to wait until February for them to ship all together.

Same offer goes to anyone else for any similarly priced title (for something like the noir box I'd have to charge more like $95). Wow, now that I write this all out, these are kind of expensive, huh?

I think this just comes down to the size of the market in Australia. Outside of the Hollywood studios, Umbrella, Accent & Madman are really the only other labels who’ve lasted the distance. And even then, they’re just as likely to release new titles on DVD-only, and any lofty plans for quality work with extras on an ongoing basis sadly tend to dry up over time. You’re effectively paying full retail by buying direct. Like buying Criterion discs for US$40.

I noticed JB Hi-Fi had some Imprint titles recently, and if you waited til they had a sale (they do 20% off sales a handful of times each year), the stars might align. I suspect Imprint only appears to be doing ok so far thanks to international sales. Not sure how long they’ll last though.

Wait for one of DeepDiscount's 10 or 15% off coupons and order then for ~$30. When I ordered from DD they were listed as Backorded but shipped almost immediately

I haven't ordered any Imprint titles yet from DD, but I have gone for quite a few backordered items recently and they've all shipped eventually after a few days or at most a few weeks. (If they really are out of product and are having to order more from Australia, I wouldn't be surprised if it took them a few weeks to get them in stock, but so long as they're still in print, there's no reason they shouldn't be able to source them.)

Eddie Muller’s commentary for Alias Nick Beal is recorded by himself at home and there’s even a funny moment where he edits in a different sounding praise of the label, indicating he said the wrong name first! It def sounds like he recorded it direct into his laptop microphone. He says he came out of retirement to record it, though!

I'm not sure if I'm reading that right, but could that audio-dissonance indicate that he recorded the commentary for another label as well, and needed to edit over it for the Imprint release?

That’s possible. My guess though, especially since Imprint advertises it as an exclusive commentary, is that he simply said the wrong label name (more than once I’ve mixed up Indicator and Imprint, for instance). The commentary is off the cuff one take, so his rudimentary edit is pretty transparent but also a necessity of the recording situation

You will also probably not be surprised to learn that a hard liner like Muller doesn’t consider the film a noir!

domino harvey wrote: Thu Dec 03, 2020 10:17 pm You will also probably not be surprised to learn that a hard liner like Muller doesn’t consider the film a noir!

Haha how not? I remember both stylistic noir qualities and themes in existential fatalism etc. - now I feel somewhat compelled to spend three figures to find out.

The supernatural element?