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I would've bought standalone releases for five of these films. The other one I haven't seen yet.

I guess this is the Mystery box at noon, from the New Year's drawing.

giovannii84 wrote:I guess this is the Mystery box at noon, from the New Year's drawing.

...

Apparently today is the day that people around the world decided to actually find the remaining clues from the drawing that we'd missed.

htom wrote:Pădurea spânzuraților (Forest of the Hanged) [Romania 1964] d: Liviu Ciulei

The current Romanian DVD (with English subs, no extras) didn't look like a restoration to my eyes and was wondering has this been restored at all. After seeing this article, not very good reading.

For whoever updates thread titles: Box No. 2 includes Spine #'s 873-879.

Got it, should've looked at the pages for the individual films.

For those playing along at home, here are the WCP titles that currently remain to be released:

After the Curfew
The Night of Counting the Years
Alyam, Alyam
The Boys from Fengkuei
Downpour
The Eloquent Peasant
Kalpana
Manila in the Claws of Light
Memories of Underdevelopment
Raid Into Tibet
The Color of Pomegranates
The Treasure
Two Girls on the Street

Plus:

But Film is My Mistress
Forest of the Hanged (1964)

Forest of the Hanged + Alyam, Alyam are both still being restored. Thus that "current Romanian DVD" is not going to be from the WCP restoration. Anyone know if there's been any update to the two above restorations and whether anything else is being planned? I think a sponsor must have dropped out of the project, as the number of restored films has really fallen behind. When do they even announce new titles? It was originally at Cannes, then Venice?

The restored Alyam, Alyam played at MOMA in 2015: https://www.moma.org/calendar/events/1504?locale=en" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

Limite is part of the new box.

Don't care about discounts or sales. I have been waiting a looooong time for this.

... and the other films aren't so bad, either. %^D

\:D/

I emailed the Film Foundation about Forest of the Hanged a year and a half ago and they said that the restoration is on hold. I have heard it has to do with the Romanian film authorities not cooperating.

Hmm, this is tough. I should buy this on principle, but having already picked up a number of the UK WCF releases, I'm tempted to hold out for some of these from BFI or MoC. That said, nobody in the UK seems to have picked up A Brighter Summer Day yet, so who knows how long Taipei Story might take. I could see MoC doing a solo Limite, but that might be a while too.

I'm a bit :-k because
do you think that Manila in the Claws of Light will get an individual release... ?
I was also really interested by the Edward Yang movie and "Insiang" (which I expected to be released as a bonus with Manila (like they did for Soderbergh "The Underneath") - Not that all the movies are not interesting, but with the dual-DVD/BR format this box set will be really (too much) expensive for me... and there's MoC/Eureka combo - the screenshots looks really promising. Although I like the concept of this "eclectic" selection a Lino Brocka small box set would have been much more appealing and cohesive for me....

I'm not sure that there'll be some significantly different quality (bitrate, encoding) between the UK and US Criterion transfer. From what I remember from the M.Scorsese's World Cinema Project box set vs the UK the quality was almost the same (especially "Dry Summer")... But I could be wrong... (currently the volume 1 of the UK box set is really interesting). My major interest in the volume 1 was "Dry Summer" because I had a little weakness for the pretty turkish girl with the ponytails... (not that "Trance" was not interesting, but it was just something else... hum)

Limite, finally! It's disappointing that it won't include O Mar de Mário or Onde a Terra Acaba, two documentaries about Peixoto and the film. I'd love to think that it'll get a standalone release from one of the UK labels, but I'm not holding out much hope.

swo17 wrote:For those playing along at home, here are the WCP titles that currently remain to be released:

After the Curfew
The Night of Counting the Years
Alyam, Alyam
The Boys from Fengkuei
Downpour
The Eloquent Peasant
Kalpana
Manila in the Claws of Light
Memories of Underdevelopment
Raid Into Tibet
The Color of Pomegranates
The Treasure
Two Girls on the Street

My dream WCP3:
The Night of Counting the Years
The Boys from Fengkuei
Kalpana
Manila in the Claws of Light
Memories of Underdevelopment
The Color of Pomegranates

Not WCP titles but something similar that I would love to see on home video: the oldest surviving Myanmari film Mya Ga Naing / The Emerald Jungle (1934) and the Pakistani classic Jago Hua Savera / The Day Shall Dawn (1959).

Second Run is probably more likely to release those if anyone is.

Is this the first time Taipei Story has appeared on home video at all, or was it briefly on VCD? All I know is that the only copy circulating online to date looks like it was transferred in a bowl of pea soup. I am very thankful it's been rescued.

There was a VHS release from which all the circulating bootlegs are ultimately sourced. It never got a VCD, much less a laserdisc a la A Brighter Summer Day.

Have Criterion said anything about how they plan to handle the burned-in subs on Mysterious Object at Noon?

soundchaser wrote:Have Criterion said anything about how they plan to handle the burned-in subs on Mysterious Object at Noon?

WCP did a pretty amazing job with a similar problem with The Housemaid. Can that not be done for Mysterious Objects as well?

My assumption is that's part of why it's being put into a box; less reason to complain for a not great presentation if it's with five other projects that look great.

HitchcockLang wrote:

soundchaser wrote:Have Criterion said anything about how they plan to handle the burned-in subs on Mysterious Object at Noon?

WCP did a pretty amazing job with a similar problem with The Housemaid. Can that not be done for Mysterious Objects as well?

It's likely to look similar to Second Run's presentation. The Korean Film Archive handled the restorations for The Housemaid and more recently Aimless Bullet, also afflicted with the same problem. According to the liner notes for the release of the Aimless Bullet disc, the problem was more severe and they actually solved this by involving a special effects house (rather than sticking to traditional photochemical or digital restoration tools). The results are pretty seamless considering the available materials.

I watched Law of the Border on filmstruck.

The film is in a pretty dire state, even after the restoration, as the opening card explains this is from the only surviving print.

I was not blown away, some of the editing feels pretty primitive. I also found the story somewhat hard to follow in details, mainly because I kept wondering why it was they needed to smuggle sheep across the border. Not to worry though, the broadstrokes are that there are rich folks who wish to smuggle sheep and their are guides who smuggle the herd across a porous, mine filled border and there is a local military appointee who wants to stop the smuggling and a local educator who wants to build schools. things play out about like you would expect, so even if things are jumping about, they always land back in the same track.

On the other hand, its a turkish gangster-western, which ought to be as interesting as that description sounds. The film has interesting ideas about education, class and the cycle of poverty that are well expressed (if often didactic), and it has an especially resonant final shot.

I was certainly surprised at the showdown that wraps up the final fifteen minutes of the film. I wasn't expecting the film to go that direction, but it was certainly narratively satisfying to have this Big conclusion, I can imagine that this made the film immensely popular with local audiences in its initial release.