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They may have the clips, but the DVD itself has been delayed in typical fashion until Feb 2008 and the double edition with The Image Makers seems to have been aborted (they still have it on amazon, but play.com and others hhave removed it) - what's the reason for the delay this time?

I recently received an email from one of the guys at Tartan, here's what he said:

Thank you very much for your comments regards The Phantom Carriage. We are still releasing the 2 disc set with the Image Makers and the date is now February 11th 2008. I apologise for all the delays surrounding this title but we want to get it looking the best it can before releasing it.

There are no plans at the current time to release any Pudovkin titles although I think we still have the rights to Mother.

Oh well, at least I've got my order in with MovieMail!

However this reminds me - did Tartan ever release Blood and Bones, which I remember them advertising (I think I even pre-ordered that one from MovieMail a year or so ago!)

I just got THE RITE at a reduced price from Amazon. In the booklet it says this film was filmed after SHAME in just 7 days. This is at odds with the info from this site http://www.bergmanorama.com/films/rite.htm which puts it just before SHAME but released after (in 1969).

Can anyone confirm the dates from another source?

Well... Re. THE RITE

"There's always such a lot of pretentiousness surrounding films. Such a lot of apparatus. Shooting takes forty-five days, fifty days, sixty-five days. For Fellini it takes twenty-eight weeks and there's a hell of a hullaballoo and cost God knows how much. So I thought: Hell, I'll gather four of my close friends and we'll rehearse for four weeks and then we'll shoot it. I figure out I'd be able to shoot it in nine days."
- Ingmar Bergman in Bergman on Bergman

Official site here although no definitive info on production order, but confirms screening dates as SHAME (1968) & THE RITE (1969)...

Images: My Life in Film puts SHAME (1967) first then THE RITE (1967), with premieres respectively in 1968 & 1969...

TV screenings:

THE RITE: TV-screening: 1969-03-25 Sweden 72 minutes
1973-08-01 TV2 Sweden

SHAME: TV-screening: 1986-05-29 TV1 Sweden 99 minuter - Theatrical - Release date: 1968-09-29 Spegeln Stockholm Sweden 103 minuter
1968-09-29 Camera Täby Sweden

I believe the Rite was filmed for TV, so it may have been seen before Shame but not released theatrically until much later.

DVD Times review of The Phantom Carriage / The Image Makers is here.

On June 23 Tartan will release a boxset of Fukasaku films.

Collection of three early classics from renowned Japanese filmmaker, Kinji Fukasaku, director of BATTLE ROYALE. Includes BLACKMAIL IS MY LIFE, BLACK ROSE MANSION and IF YOU WERE YOUNG.

DVD Times reviews of I, Pierre Riviere... and Back to Normandy.

Has anyone seen any of René Allio's films and have any comments on this director?

colinr0380 wrote:Has anyone seen any of René Allio's films and have any comments on this director?

I've seen René in 'Allo 'Allo. Not sure it's Criterion material. Eclipse perhaps.

Any ideas what's happened to the 2nd Eisenstein Collection? IIRC it was put back from September-October last year to 28th April this year, which has come and gone with no Sergei... Have emailed Tartan, but no response yet.

The R0 PAL Silent Light has amazing picture quality.
I've even been watching it on my HD computer monitor and it looks fantastic (which is especially interesting since the special features and even the menus are compressed to shit... hell, a lot of DVD's look terrible on that thing).

I wonder what will happen to their Reygadas holdings?

I may as well break down and get the Uk Silent Light now.

Cold Bishop wrote:I may as well break down and get the Uk Silent Light now.

it is R0

Come on CC Taxidermia.

kaujot wrote:Come on CC Taxidermia.

By all accounts the Hungarian two-discer is pretty phenomenal - and English-friendly.

domino harvey wrote:the US branch of Tartan has been shuttered

I'm surprised by this news - I thought that since the US arm was releasing some films that Tartan UK had not (rather than purely reissuing from the UK back catalogue) that it was in a pretty good state. Apparently not.

Any recommendations for titles that are particularly good and worthwhile, and not available from the UK arm? In the interest of securing these, before they are sold out from the e-tailers.

MichaelB wrote:

kaujot wrote:Come on CC Taxidermia.

By all accounts the Hungarian two-discer is pretty phenomenal - and English-friendly.

I can now confirm this - it's a superb two-disc set that's mostly English-friendly, bar the deleted scenes and commentaries. But most of the other extras have English subtitles.

Any chance of some pictures on the famed packaging?

Edit: I decided to actually do some work myself for once. Shocker, I know.

Yup, that's the one!

I would have to put it up there as about the best-looking and most inventive DVD package I've ever seen.

And I've now converted my computer's DVD drive to region-free status. I don't know why I never did it before. Took me like 5 minutes.