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If your Swedish experience is of Bergman only and you want another take on Sweden society of the 1960s then check out SWEDISH LOVE STORY. It is unflinching and very realistic in its depiction of Swedish types. Maybe its my imagination but I cannot help but feel that Andersson is attacking the middle classes by showing the girl's parents as unhappy, unsatisfied and potentially dangerous [to themselves and to others] and the boy's as more accepting of their lot in life.

The young lovers are credible but this film tinges their growing love with bad future possibilities due to their immediate environment.

I'd like to see more from the 1964-75 period of Swedish cinema. Films like ANNA, BLUSHING CHARLIE & THE BOOKSELLER WHO GAVE UP BATHING deserve a new audience.

bigP wrote:Ken Loach's Route Irish has a May 23rd released date scheduled for both DVD and Blu.

Interestingly it is it's on pay-per-view Sky Box Office on the same day as its UK/IRL theatrical release...

You can also watch it online (country permitting, presumably).

Artificial Eye's upcoming Kenji Mizoguchi collection is not, in fact, a repackaging of old discs, but the UK DVD debut of Osaka Elegy, The Story of the Last Chrysanthemum, Sisters of the Gion and Utamaro and his Five Women.

Here's the pre-order from Moviemail. Out on June 27th.
Worth a double dip for "Utamaro" and "Chrysanthemums".

charal wrote:I'd like to see more from the 1964-75 period of Swedish cinema. Films like ANNA, BLUSHING CHARLIE & THE BOOKSELLER WHO GAVE UP BATHING deserve a new audience.

I agree that there is a lot of scope to release more of the, for lack of a better term, social realist Swedish films from that period. For example Lasse Hallström's films such as A Lover And His Lass and Happy We, both of which I liked more even than My Life As A Dog and especially more than the later US films Hallström has directed.

However the film I would most like to see on DVD or Blu would be Bo Widerberg's first feature The Pram - a fantastic, beautifully shot film about unplanned pregnancy and the way that lives get driven more by expediency than idealism which features the gorgeous Ingrid Taube and Lars Passgard (a couple of years on from playing Minus in Through A Glass Darkly). It's a film that really should be added to the cannon of great films of the 60s, where the social critique of a film like Cathy Come Home meets the tentative relationship of something like Il Posto (there's also a Kieslowskian Three Colours: Blue-esque moment involving a chandelier), and one that would particularly suit a Criterion edition.

Plus my copy recorded from television is wearing a bit thin after all of these years, so I need to upgrade!

Shohei Imamura's The Eel coming June 27th.

antnield wrote:Shohei Imamura's The Eel coming June 27th.

Sweet jesus, yes. More Imamura is always a good thing.

tojoed wrote:Here's the pre-order from Moviemail. Out on June 27th.
Worth a double dip for "Utamaro" and "Chrysanthemums".

TheHut has it for only £17.85, and free international shipping.

Murdoch wrote:free international shipping.

Oh, nice to see that they will continue with that. Shipping fees were restored for couple of days.

lubitsch wrote:Has anyone had a problem with the Beekeper DVD where the film jumps back to the chapter menu while entering the 7th chapter? I tried it on different players, always the same problem.

I had the exact same experience.

Just noticed that this Tarkovsky set is back on the release schedule. It had been originally scheduled for last fall, then canceled without any information ever being released. Does anyone know anything?

marnum wrote:

lubitsch wrote:Has anyone had a problem with the Beekeper DVD where the film jumps back to the chapter menu while entering the 7th chapter? I tried it on different players, always the same problem.

I had the exact same experience.

That's interesting to hear, I already asked them about a replacement, my mail was forwarded to two persons, but they haven't replied yet. I'll try again knowing that it's not a single problem.

lubitsch wrote:Has anyone had a problem with the Beekeper DVD where the film jumps back to the chapter menu while entering the 7th chapter? I tried it on different players, always the same problem.

Just gone and checked mine and have the same problem. I'll send in a message too. I'm not sure I've ever managed to get a hold of Artificial Eye in the past (I've tried a few times) but I'll certainly give it another whirl.

Oddly enough my copy of Beekeeper has the same issue but the issue only occurs when I opt to play the movie through chapter select - as I had done to immediately check this error when I heard of it. However, when I played the movie from the start using the Play film option (as I had watched it for the first time today) - not using chapter select at all - the error did not occur and I was able to play the entire thing without having it return to the menu.

hangman wrote:Oddly enough my copy of Beekeeper has the same issue but the issue only occurs when I opt to play the movie through chapter select - as I had done to immediately check this error when I heard of it. However, when I played the movie from the start using the Play film option (as I had watched it for the first time today) - not using chapter select at all - the error did not occur and I was able to play the entire thing without having it return to the menu.

And indeed this is the same case with mine disc. I guess many people started their discs via "Play film" and therefore never had any problems, but this also means that probably all discs are affected this way. Anyway it's a solution, thanks for finding it.
Artificial Eye on the other hand has the worst customer support imaginable. I got a reply to my first E-mail saying that it was forwarded to two addresses, but from then on mailing to all adresses had no result whatsoever, they simply ignored the issue even though I wrote that it's not a singular case and threatened to let Amazon know and write customer reviews preparing buyers that they won't receive any help from this firm. But no reply, never. Absolutely appalling attitude.

Yeah, I was going to post the exact same disgust for their service after someone questioned how good their customer service is. They did the same to me, I had emailed the general email and the home entertainment email concerning another issue, and they had forwarded it on to two email addresses, and they never even responded to my email. So I then sent another email to those two addresses a month later, and still had no response. I thought maybe it was just me being unlucky, but it seems like they are a waste of time. Poor customer service indeed!

Finally decided to watch "Pather Panchali" from the AE boxset.

Halfway through the movie, I thought, wow, Apu grows up quickly for a trilogy about a boy's life....

Realized that I was watching "Aparajito" (The 2nd film) instead. But the disc clearly was marked "Pather Panchali"

So my discs are switched, Disc 1 says "Pather" but has "Aparajito", disc 2 says "Aparajito", but has "Pather Panchali"

Did anyone else encounter this or did I miss a whole thread about it?

I'm not concerned about getting replacements or anything... But it's kinda like watching the Back to the Future Trilogy and starting with "Back to the Future Part 2" without realizing it was Part 2...

It's been awhile but I don't recall having any such issues with my AE set.

That's very odd. My set is fine and a couple of my friends who own the set have never mentioned anything.

Does anybody know how the AE Rohmer Moral Tales set compare to the Criterion PQ-wise?

willoneill wrote:Just noticed that this Tarkovsky set is back on the release schedule. It had been originally scheduled for last fall, then canceled without any information ever being released. Does anyone know anything?

It's now scheduled for May 23rd and has new cover art.




I really really really hope it has new transfers.

Cover is badass.

The phrase "Digitally restored" has now been removed from the Amazon description of this item. Does anyone know if this is a repackaging of the old issues, or new digitally restored versions?

If any new transfers have been made I'd expect them to be HD and debuted on Blu-ray, rather than in a DVD box set. Who knows though?

Busting for MIRROR, RUBLEV, NOSTALGHIA, THE SACRIFICE, and IVANS to be nailed on Blu-ray. I suppose IVANS could be a nice quickie upgrade from Criterion, the others require much more work and luck.