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Ugg, I wish that the films they have already released as singles weren't being shoehorned into these boxes.

It's particularly annoying too that I bought Ulysses Gaze in New Zealand only back in January (already a double dip), but I'm still pleased to see AE going all out with Angelopoulos. I'd speculate that this box, in particular, may see the remaining individual releases not too far down the line so holding off on it for a few months may be a safe option.

EDIT: Dates for the Angelopoulos sets have slipped back a month: Theo Angelopoulos Collection Vol 1 is now set for November 21st, whilst Volumes 2 and 3 are both set at the moment for December 5th.

We Need To Talk About Kevin Blu-Ray announced for Feb 13 - no specs as yet.

I've just received checkdiscs of the Angelopoulos Collection Volume 1. It's four discs, not five - The Travelling Players is all on one disc. Reconstruction (the only black and white film) is on a DVD-5, the other three on DVD-9s.

DVD transfers are 1.33:1 non-anamorphic for all the films, which I think are the correct ratios, though I haven't seen any of these before. (Of the Angelopoulos films I've seen, The Beekeeper is in Academy, though later films are 1.66:1.) Picture quality looks fine at a brief glance. Mono (2.0) sound of course. No extras.

I'll be reviewing these for The Digital Fix sometime between next week and the release date, though presumably certificates will be on the BBFC website by then - none of the four have been classified as yet.

A slight change to the Angelopoulos sets with Suspended Step of the Stalk now added to Volume 2 (according to the new artwork) leaving Volume 3 with just Ulysses Gaze, Eternity and a Day, The Weeping Meadow and The Dust of Time.

AE's 2012 line-up so far looks like:

The Theo Angelopoulos Colection Vol 3
Béla Tarr's Almanac of Fall
The Big Picture
Attenberg
Melancholia
We Need to Talk About Kevin
Andrea Arnold's Wuthering Heights

Almanac of Fall? That's a nice surprise, at least for me.

Theo Angelopoulos Collection 1 has been delayed to December 16.

kekid wrote:Theo Angelopoulos Collection 1 has been delayed to December 16.

I got that message too, but happy to say mine was dispatched today. Crossed wires and / or delayed stock, I guess.

bigP wrote:

kekid wrote:Theo Angelopoulos Collection 1 has been delayed to December 16.

I got that message too, but happy to say mine was dispatched today. Crossed wires and / or delayed stock, I guess.

Same happended to me as well.

Volume One of the Angelopoulos Collection reviewed by the Digital Fix.

Moviemail and Amazon are both listing The Theo Angelopoulos Collection: Vol. 2 with a January 9th release date now. Whether that's just a temporary place holder and it sends earlier, who knows?

Is there a reason why "Satyajit Ray: Volume 1" is out of stock everywhere? Out of print?

Sony DADC fire, most likely. I can't imagine that would be top of their list for a repressing.

Are there any reviews for Come and See floating around? i can't seem to find any. Is it better than the Nouveaux release? etc

I now have checkdiscs for the Angelopoulos Collection Volume 2, which I'll be reviewing for The Digital Fix in January. All discs are Region 0 PAL.

I wasn't sent a checkdisc of The Beekeeper, which is the one of the five films here to have been released previously, in 2010 when I watched and reviewed it. I suspect that the disc in the collection will simply be the old disc repackaged, though that means that it will be inconsistent with the other discs, i.e. without the uniform menu design, and with some extras (the trailer, plus those for three other Artificial Eye DVDs from 2007 and earlier).

As for the other films, it's one DVD-9 each as you might expect, even for Alexander the Great which approaches three and a half hours. Aspect ratio is 4:3 for the first three and 1.78:1 anamorphic for The Suspended Step of the Stork. (I should add that Landscape in the MIst, which I saw at an Artificial Eye press screening, was shown at 1.66:1 when I saw it then.) Soundtracks are Dolby 2.0 for all four - I'll find out if that's mono or Dolby Surround for the latest two when I watch the films on my main TV/sound system.

Also see the Angelopoulos thread regarding The Hunters in Volume 1, which is missing twenty minutes and apparently won't be corrected.

I did notice the running time discrepancy and left it as an unanswered question in my review. There don't appear to be any such problems with the discs in the second collection.

The new release of Kurosawa's Dersu Uzala isn't a simple re-package and comes with an improved presentation: DVD Outsider.

Amazon and Play are now listing the long-delayed Mizoguchi collection as coming out on both DVD and Blu-ray on 27th Feb.

The four films are Osaka Elegy, The Story of the Late Chrysanthemums, Sisters of the Gion and Utamuro & His Five Women.

Anyone know if this is legit? Seems an unlikely candidate for Blu-ray, particularly for Artifical Eye.

BrokenFace wrote:Anyone know if this is legit? Seems an unlikely candidate for Blu-ray, particularly for Artifical Eye.

No reason to assume otherwise: if HD masters exist of Ozu's 1930s films and Kurosawa's 1940s films (and they do), it's not a huge stretch to imagine that they also exist for Mizoguchi's back catalogue and that Artificial Eye can just pull them off the shelf.

Wong Kar-Wai aside, Artificial Eye haven't done many back-catalogue Blu-rays so far, but when the Tarkovsky DVD box came out they hinted that a Blu-ray project was in the works for "next year" - i.e. this year. So there's clearly some movement in that direction.

The most promising sign that this is legit is the pricing. The DVD set is currently priced at £16.99, the blu-ray set at £37.49 - if it was a merely a catalogue error you would expect the prices to be the same, instead the blu-ray set has received a highly plausible mark-up. Plus it would explain the delays the boxset encountered.

I've just heard direct from Artificial Eye: this is DEFINITELY a Blu-ray release.

Nice to have it confirmed. Blu-ray release of 2012?

I've expressed my disappointment with Artificial Eye's Blu-Ray output before but this makes up for it! Out of those I've only seen The Story of the Last Chrysanthemum but I've put a pre-order in, just to show my support. With this and the Three Colours Trilogy coming out within a few months of each other, I'm really excited about AE's 2012 releases.