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So it seems the 2.5 hour documentary is not included on this set.

manicsounds wrote:So it seems the 2.5 hour documentary is not included on this set.

Gary Tooze wrote:Unfortunately no extras on the screener discs that I was sent.

(Emphasis mine)

Wow.... The Story of the Last Chrysanthemum looks so much better than I was expecting considering the supposed state of the materials. HD clearly benefits Sisters of the Gion and Utamaro and His Five Women here in particular... some shots have noticeably more detail (as well as the grain being tighter of course).... Glad AE took the risk and did this, I doubt anyone else, including Criterion, will put out any Mizo from this period in HD (apart from maybe 47 Ronin..).

The AE set won't include the originally announced documentary for the Mizo set, they have just said in reply to my comment on Facebook.

That sucks, I was going to sell my Criterion Ugestu with this set having the doc. did they give a reason?

Artificial Eye's recent releases have been awful for extras...

Have they ever been good on extras though? Outside of a few very new (at publishing time) titles I don't think I've ever seen them do extras beyond like a trailer or something similar.

knives wrote:Have they ever been good on extras though? Outside of a few very new (at publishing time) titles I don't think I've ever seen them do extras beyond like a trailer or something similar.

Some of the Bresson films (Pickpocket, L'argent) had decent extras.

A few more announcements:
L'Atlante and the Films of Jean Vigo - 2 DVD set (No mention of Blu-ray, or that these are anything other than Re-Issues) - May 14th
The Dardenne Brother's The Kid with the Bike Blu / DVD - June 25th
Michael Winterbottom's Trishna Blu / DVD - July 9th

So BFI isn't releasing those Vigo films afterall?

The Digital Fix on The Mizoguchi Collection.

Peacock wrote:So BFI isn't releasing those Vigo films afterall?

They never were - BFI Distribution handled L'Atalante theatrically, but that's a separate deal.

It's quite disappointing that the Mizoguchi set won't include the documentary.

Any disappointment massively outweighed by the fact that AE decided to release these great films on BD, and that the BDs appear to be about as good as could be hoped!

Indeed! I'm looking forward to Chrysanthemums in particular.

Yeah, I'm still keeping the Criterion "Ugetsu" so it's not a loss. (Sorry Eureka, didn't pick any of your titles yet), and even with 2 titles here being overlapped by the Criterion Eclipse set, it's still on my preorder list. Also thought about it, but as usual with other AE releases, no text material like booklets. (Although some older titles had text pages, like the Satyajit Ray releases)

The two-disc release of Legend of the Taira Clan (1955) from Films Sans Frontieres also include the Mizoguchi documentary. It is completely English-friendly.

Whats the picture quality like of that?

peerpee wrote:Any disappointment massively outweighed by the fact that AE decided to release these great films on BD, and that the BDs appear to be about as good as could be hoped!

I'm curious as to why they decided not to include it. Do they still have the rights to The Lady Of Musashino & The Life of Oharu?

They said 'they didn't have enough time' on Facebook.

perkizitore wrote:They said 'they didn't have enough time' on Facebook.

That's gotta be a joke... considering how long this boxset was up for pre-order....

manicsounds wrote:

perkizitore wrote:They said 'they didn't have enough time' on Facebook.

That's gotta be a joke... considering how long this boxset was up for pre-order....

But maybe that's the point. Considering the delays the set has already undergone, perhaps they didn't want to add yet another as they waited to secure the 1975 doc.

antnield wrote:But maybe that's the point. Considering the delays the set has already undergone, perhaps they didn't want to add yet another as they waited to secure the 1975 doc.

It's also entirely conceivable that the doc was one of the things responsible for the delay, and with the clock ticking on the rights to the main films they eventually said "sod it, let's release what we've got".

The Digital Fix on The Eel.

antnield wrote:The Digital Fix on The Eel.

Seems to confirm that AE has botched this release -- how could it have been unaware of the far better looking (and uncut) version used by Madman in Australia? Did they do no research at all?

I haven't seen them, but I keep hearing that the DVDs of the Mizoguchi Collection have been rendered as 1.33:1 within an anamorphic 16:9 frame -- ie. like 1.33:1 films are rendered on Blu-ray (but Blu-ray is 16:9 by default).

The problem with doing this is that DVD is a 4:3 format, and needs "popping" to 16:9. So the available 4:3 area is not being fully utilised by the film, instead it is squished, and the black bars are part of the image down the left and right.

Presumably this is a "new thing" to try and confront the vagaries of DVD players and 16:9 displays, but it's something that goes against 14 years of DVD authoring of 1.33:1 films, and it's definitely a step backwards qualitywise.

ie. All the more reason to get the Blu-ray! (if indeed they have been rendered this way on DVD).

peerpee wrote:I haven't seen them, but I keep hearing that the DVDs of the Mizoguchi Collection have been rendered as 1.33:1 within an anamorphic 16:9 frame -- ie. like 1.33:1 films are rendered on Blu-ray (but Blu-ray is 16:9 by default).

Presumably this is a "new thing" to try and confront the vagaries of DVD players and 16:9 displays, but it's something that goes against 14 years of DVD authoring of 1.33:1 films, and it's definitely a step backwards qualitywise.

Some DVD players, such as my Sony DVD recorder, require one to go into the core menu settings to set it for either 4:3 or 16:9. Presumably it won't be necessary on these discs.