Studio Canal titles newly out of print

[Kinsayder]

I was reading an article in Le Monde about this. By all accounts, Clouzot's L'enfer sounds like one of the great unfinished masterpieces of the cinema.

There's a video interview with a very brief clip of one of the hallucination scenes here.

[HerrSchreck]

Shit, it looks like they disabled it before I could get to watch that clip.

[blindside8zao]

If Amazon (sorry) is saying for Quai des orfevres that it will take 1-2 weeks to ship, do you all think that actually means they don't have it? Le Corbeau is in stock there. I swiped up the other two titles at DVDPlanet. Quai seems to be the one title that's being a real pain to find on etailers.

[ellipsis7]

I wonder if this (story from Variety) has anything to do with current happenings...

Wed., Dec. 5, 2007, 8:03am PT

Sichler to leave StudioCanal Exec helped turn company around

Frederic Sichler, managing director for international production, acquisitions and development at StudioCanal, will ankle Dec. 31 for an unspecified international position.

StudioCanal prexy-director general Bertrand Meheut has urged him to retain close ties with the Canal Plus Group in future.

Sichler is credited with being integral to a turnaround in StudioCanal's fortunes since arriving in February 2003. He arranged an international library distribution partnership with Universal; the distribution of StudioCanal's library in the U.S. by Lionsgate; and the 2006 acquisition of British distrib Optimum, which accounts for more than 10% of the company's revenues.

[JabbaTheSlut]

If Amazon (sorry) is saying for Quai des orfevres that it will take 1-2 weeks to ship, do you all think that actually means they don't have it? Le Corbeau is in stock there. I swiped up the other two titles at DVDPlanet. Quai seems to be the one title that's being a real pain to find on etailers.

DVD Pacific has it in stock

[Narshty]

Presumably they're currently trying to renegotiate the rights to these titles from Lionsgate?

[blindside8zao]

I managed to get port of shadows and variety lights from dvdplanet last week (at least it says they've shipped). Supposedly the other two will ship from amazon in a week or two.

[geoffcowgill]

I just ordered Quai des Orfevres from Best Buy online. It was $21.99. Using some Reward Zone points, it only cost me $4.22. Port of Shadows also seems to be available for $25. We'll have to wait and see if I get it, but I would assume by this time if it were out of stock, their system would know. Anyway, if you're still trying to get ahold of these titles, you might want to look here.

[Tootletron]

These absolutely terrific Clouzots simply can't (or wont) go out of print, Criterion or no Criterion.

Quite. And it's not even as if the current Criterion editions are significantly better than the alternatives. In fact, the Criterion Corbeau is arguably worse than the Optimum edition.

I kind of dig the green tint Criterion's Corbeau had going for it. The picture itself has a bit to be desired.

The audio in certain spots, however, is downright awful. Certain scenes sound like they suddenly encoded everything to 128kbps or something - absolutely horrible. Those scenes didn't last too long, though.

Corbeau really could've used more music, in my opinion. I wasn't quite in the mood to watch it, but the opening theme got me into it. Never got a reprise. Got a little dry and boring at times.

How good are Port of Shadows and Quai des orfevre, considering my opinion of Le Corbeau?