criterionforum.org

Fletch F. Fletch wrote:Ah, sadly I don't have a multi-region player yet so the copy I gots will have ta do but thanks for the heads up anyway..

C'mon, I can't believe that anyone seriously interested in film is still bound by the shackles of region coding. This player is only $60 + $15 to ship.

ALL ABOUT THE PIVA DIGITAL PD-826
The Piva Digital PD-826 is a good, basic, and solidly built region-free DVD player. It will play all-regions DVD and will convert PAL to NTSC. It is a compact unit, which makes it perfect for tight places such as bedrooms, kitchens, and offices.

Thanks for the info. Yeah, I've been meaning to get one just haven't gotten around to it yet... d'oh!

I've never had luck with 5MinutesOnline.

Gordon McMurphy wrote:The Hour-Glass Sanitorium is also available, but has no subtitles. Bummer. I might order it, though. Visually, it stands alone. Bizarre, striking film from a fine filmmaker.

The one I got from them is subtitled in English. A recent upgrade?

leech wrote:Let me know how the DVD and the film is. This film looks amazing and exactly what I am looking for. On superhappyfun they say the WORLD ON WIRES disc doesn't have english subs.

Rumour is that this will be subtitled.

DAYS OF ECLIPSE *has* been subbed per superhappyfun.com

Did anybody order from Japanese New Wave? Any comments?

Holy crap, Super Happy Fun just e-mailed me telling me that they have a new, subtitled copy of Shuji Terayama's Emperor Tomato Ketchup.

I am in love.

Ashirg wrote:Did anybody order from Japanese New Wave? Any comments?

I took the plunge over the weekend, ordering Inferno of First Love and Diary of a Shinjuku Thief. I will keep you posted.

I haven't ordered from them, but I have a copy of their Death by Hanging release and it's very good -- great transfer (albeit nonanamorphic), good subtitles, and a nice set of text-based extras (mainly essays by Oshima). The transfer is sourced from the (unsubtitled) R2 release and I assume the same is true of the other titles. I just hope they do Three Resurrected Drunkards and Tales of the Ninja someday.

Since we're all asking for favors here

There are a couple of listings on eBay for a 3-DVDr set of the 8 hour mini-series Once an Eagle (based on the Anton Myrer novel) which starred Sam Elliott and Glenn Ford. The package looks ok, but reviews of the image quality vary dramatically. If anyone has information on this (***EXTREMELY RARE!!!!1!!*** #-o ) set's picture and if it can be obtained more cheaply than the 70$ the auctioneers are getting for it, please drop me a line.

You can order Once an Eagle from glennford.com for $55. It's apparently "made from the 16mm negative", though one would have thought that this film was shot in 35mm.

Enquire at: [email protected]

I have not seen this film, but it sounds very interesting and ambitious, with a great cast.

Thanks, Gordo. I'll put you on the Father's Day card.

Super Happy Fun has added english subtitles to World on Wires, available in two seperate discs for $10 each:

PART 1

PART 2

The subtitles are most likely yellow. I just ordered it, so I'll post my thoughts when I see it next week, hopefully.

SHF says no subs on part 2.

Oh, yeah; that's weird. Shit, I'd better email them.

This comes from a Super Happy Fun newsletter issued a couple of hours ago

Fans of sci-fi rejoice! Our good friend from Germany, murmelwurmel, has provided us with subtitles to the first part of Rainer Werner Fassbinder's German TV adaptation of Daniel F. Galouye's SIMULCRON-3, WELT AM DRAHT (WORLD OF WIRES). The basis for quite a few modern day sci-fi films such as THE MATRIX, DARK CITY, EXISTENZ, THE CELL, and OPEN YOUR EYES (THE THIRTEENTH FLOOR was another direct adaptation), WORLD OF WIRES is a must-see flick. We hope to have the subtitles to Part 2 done in the fall. But, for now, part one is availble individually for a reduced price. Enjoy!

Just an ethical posturing:

I decided some years ago I would stop buying pirated DVDs mainly because I thought that the pirates were making a profit/living from a lousy profession.

Recently I amended my moratorium on purchasing pirated DVDs to exclude movies made more than 50 years ago (ala copyright: or the length copyright really should be).
I figure, if a movie is that old, it should now belong to the people. Culture is for everyone to enjoy.

One question might be: What about the companies that spend so much money restoring those old films you love so much?
Well, good question: Perhaps for every 9 pirated copies of Warner's 'Wizard of Oz' you buy, one should be legitimate, so to contribute to their restoration funds. Cause, Warner Bros. has been making money off that film for long enough! Or, you could make a cash donation stipulating the money should be used for restoration purposes only.

Is my thinking hackneyed? Let me know.

Let's not get personal here, I think it IS an interesting question. Fact is that most pirated copies are LOUSY quality compared to the original release (just compare an original Criterion to one of those Asian bootlegs), so nobody in his/her right mind would want to buy a pirated "Wizard of Oz" when there's an official release (possibly with extras) readily available. It's a different case when somebody puts out a print of a silent film like "The Phantom Carriage" which CRIMINALLY is not available as a official release. But even in such a case one knows that the print will not be restored and in all likelyhood does not look good at all. If one buys such a dvd it is surely only because one dearly wants to see that film at all. And I would re-buy it once there's a good official release out there, of course.

A borderline case would be if someone in the near future would pirate Bergman's "Farödokument" and "Dreams", as they will be only available officially in a 30dvd-Boxset which otherwise only contains films any Bergman devotee has anyway. In this case it would be a deserved rebellion against Tartan's policy of trying to exploit their costumers. But of course it would still be illegal, and those involved should be prepared to take the risk.

Tom you're not at all addressing the--essentially-- cinematic socialism this guy's talking about. If no studio disc is available for PHANTOM COACH and you buy one from Grapevine, then your scenario doesn't fit into Mr. Paradise's. I'd even say your Tartan scenario falls short, as it resembles what happened when Fox put SUNRISE out originally on disc, but only after you bought a bunch of others, sent in your "coupons", then got it... whereby I called Fox' public relations co as a 'reviewer" and got a free copy, completely unwilling and unable to wait for this absurd scenario to play out for a copy.

If a disc is PD, I don't think it qualifies for what this guy is talking about.

What Sal P above is talking about is a belief that he in essence "owns" the film if it's over 50 years old, even if it's a film that's had a fortune poured into it for restoration, i e WIZARD or CASABLANCA etc-- because he feels it "belongs to the people" "after 50 yrs"... which is an utterly bizarre line of reasoning. I think when a company actually treats these old films like gold and spends money to make them look wonderful for cineaste's like us, I think they have even more of a claim to their money than they do on new films, which, like all new mass market art products-- books, music, films-- are subject to robber baron setups where the creator receives a mere 10-15% of his own revenues MAX, and the corps receive the lions share, because they have a monopoly on mass distribution in tier one marketing positions which the artist-- even if he comes to the corporation with a ready product requiring very little post-production expense-- simply cannot access on his own.

HerrSchreck wrote:What Sal P above is talking about is a belief that he in essence "owns" the film if it's over 50 years old, even if it's a film that's had a fortune poured into it for restoration, i e WIZARD or CASABLANCA etc-- because he feels it "belongs to the people" "after 50 yrs"... which is an utterly bizarre line of reasoning. I think when a company actually treats these old films like gold and spends money to make them look wonderful for cineaste's like us, I think they have even more of a claim to their money than they do on new films.

Agree 100%

If, following Sal's reasoning, everybody had downloaded (for example) the first 10 cc releases from day one, from this the cc would have made no money and in turn they (and their associates) would have had no money to re-invest in restoration of other films. In this scenario the cc would end around spine number 10 and we would all have missed out.

If restoration was free maybe Sal would have a point, but it isn't, so he doesn't.

HerrSchreck wrote:Tom you're not at all addressing the--essentially-- cinematic socialism this guy's talking about. If no studio disc is available for PHANTOM COACH and you buy one from Grapevine, then your scenario doesn't fit into Mr. Paradise's.

Quite right, Schreck. The reason why I did not attempt to address what you call 'cinematic socialism' is that I agree with your points completely and find the idea of PD for films quite absurd. I only wanted to point out that there sometimes are cases where one simply is tempted very much to actually buy a pirated/unofficial copy,whether you normally are against bootlegs (as I am) or not. That's why I brought up the Tartan/Bergman example, which is completely unacceptable practice in my view. Just trying to get the discussion on a different plane, then.

I think SalParadise brought up the 50 yrs as there is indeed (or was: now it's 70 yrs) the international regulation that a work of art falls out of copyright after that timespan. What he did get wrong is that the 50 yrs apply to the death of the respective author, not the moment a particular work was created. In the case of film, the 50 yrs regulation would be very difficult to handle anyway. 50 yrs after the death of the director? Or the demise of the production company? The breakdown of the state (as, e.g. German films before 1945)? So, it's actually fruitless to try to legitimize bootlegging by setting up an imaginary date.

HerrSchreck wrote:Tom you're not at all addressing the--essentially-- cinematic socialism this guy's talking about. If no studio disc is available for PHANTOM COACH and you buy one from Grapevine, then your scenario doesn't fit into Mr. Paradise's.

Yes, there's a very significant distinction between 'pirating' and 'bootlegging' that often gets glossed over, not least by the copyright owners, who have a vested interest in blurring that particular boundary. See Clinton Heylin's terrific Bootleg: The Secret History of the Other Recording Industry for more info.

davidhare wrote: I personally will be buying the R-C discs, as I'm sure will many other people. The point is we're talking here -aren't we - about vitrtually totally otherwise inaccessible titles, not Chinese factory produced rips of the latest DTS HD blockbuster.

And the key difference is between an actual quantifiable loss to the rights holder (a potential sale of a commercially available item - and even this can be a murky business, as with the 'available only in colossally expensive and inconvenient form' Bergmans mentioned above) and no loss whatsoever (there's nothing to buy, so no potential loss, and in some cases - workprints, say - what's being trafficked will probably never be made commercially available).

Complicating all of this is the author's position. In most cases the actual creators of the property in question exercise little or no control over how it's exploited, and its exploitation (or, more to the point, its non-exploitation) generally fails to serve their interests. If commercial imperatives were the sole driver of distribution of their works, Gremillon and others would simply be forgotten.

Have any of you ordered films from this internet site? I find myself particularly interested in three films they currently have in stock as DVD-Rs.

Mystery of Oberwald (Antonioni)
White Dog (Fuller)
Hitler: A Film from Germany (Syberberg)

Can anyone comment on the quality of any one of these DVDs?

Thanks

Wittsdream wrote:Have any of you ordered films from this internet site? I find myself particularly interested in three films they currently have in stock as DVD-Rs.

Mystery of Oberwald (Antonioni)
White Dog (Fuller)
Hitler: A Film from Germany (Syberberg)

Can anyone comment on the quality of any one of these DVDs?

theres something important missing from your post...

[whisper]a link to the site[/whisper]

godardslave said:

theres something important missing from your post...

I guess it wasn't obvious enough placing it in the SUBJECT HEADING, so i'll grant you the postmodern approach http://www.lfvw.com

I've ordered a few titles from this place and found the transfers very good, plus they have some pretty hard to find titles and not that expensive compared to others mentioned on here - www.raredvds4sale.co.uk

So far have the following titles from them; Dear Antonioni, Orson Welles Story, Truffaut doc and Hitchcock interiviews (fascinating listen!), Scene by Scene series and a couple of the movies (Ace in the Hole, Greed, La Verite, widescreen edition of Sirk's A Time to Love and a Time to Die).

All have been impressive so far.


Cineman