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manicsounds wrote:I'm guessing "The Blue Angel" doesn't count since you're thinking of the Paramount via Universal titles?

Precisely. Though the MOC Der Blaue Engel is quite beautiful, I want Blonde Venus in 1080p!

That looks gorgeous, about as good a transfer as one could hope for, and a relief after the slightly disappointing Touch of Evil transfers. Good price at Amazon now, too!

bdlover wrote:slightly disappointing Touch of Evil transfers.

Said no one ever.

There's nothing specifically 'wrong' with the Touch of Evil transfers - no obvious DNR, manipulation, etc - but you can see that they were struck from old masters on an out of date telecine machine. It's the best release out there right now, but when this makes its way to Region A I guarantee we'll see a significant improvement in image quality. By comparison, The Tarnished Angels looks as good as I can imagine it ever looking on blu-ray.

david hare wrote:But there's no way Universal will release ToE in anything other than 1.85, and only in the final 98 revision. MoC's Touch will remain the only authoritative version anywhere.

Unless, of course, Criterion gets it. Universal has at least been willing to give us both cuts before on DVD, but not in both ARs.

Having read all the arguments and seen all the versions, I prefer it at 1.85:1, but maybe we shouldn't re-open that old can of worms

Keep in mind that a March 5th TIME article noted that TOUCH OF EVIL was undergoing an in-house restoration this year at Universal. According to the article, Universal only commits to restoring three-to-five titles a year (HIGH PLAINS DRIFTER and DOUBLE INDEMNITY were the other two mentioned). Given that, I think the film is staying with Universal.

Roger Ryan wrote:Keep in mind that a March 5th TIME article noted that TOUCH OF EVIL was undergoing an in-house restoration this year at Universal. According to the article, Universal only commits to restoring three-to-five titles a year (HIGH PLAINS DRIFTER and DOUBLE INDEMNITY were the other two mentioned). Given that, I think the film is staying with Universal.

I wonder if this is an example of letting another label test its commercial viability, then deciding that there's a market out there wanting this release. That recently released top 10 selling MOC disc list had this film present.

How anyone could have a negative word about the MOC release, quite possibly the best release of an Orson Welles film, is beyond me.

Drucker wrote:How anyone could have a negative word about the MOC release, quite possibly the best release of an Orson Welles film, is beyond me.

Criterion's 3-disc "Mr Arkadin" is a contender.

Getting things back to "Tarnished Angels", are all these video extras (including vintage interviews) exclusive to the MoC? Did they make these new interviews themselves? It's been common for them to use existing French/Criterion etc extras on their discs, and very rarely make their own (cost-wise).

Drucker wrote:How anyone could have a negative word about the MOC release, quite possibly the best release of an Orson Welles film, is beyond me.

MoC did the best they could with the materials they had access to, but:

Michael Daruty in TIME wrote:These days, we’re using high-quality pin-registered scanners that capture at 6K resolution. For the DVD release, we probably used a high-definition telecine device — which was great technology at that time, but nothing like what we’re using now.

sorry for the slightly technical "out of topic", but do you have some playback problems with this blu-ray ?

I can play it on my stand-alone blu-ray player which is an Oppo (multiregion)
but I can't play it on my stand-alone blu-ray player which is a Sigmatek (multiregion player; a variation of a model which Gary Tooze uses on dvdbeaver).

there's no menu, nothing only the "Sigmatek" logo. The disk starts to load - the blu-ray shows "loading" on its digital LCD screen but nothing shows up. No menu.
And since MoC locked their blu-ray in region B, I can't use the "title" button, or try to go to title "2", etc... "forbidden" appears on screen...
I've tried to bush "stop" button then "play", but it shows "loading" on the LCD screen of the player and nothing appears.

At first I was thinking that my Sigmatek was still in region A (since it can play Criterion). But when it's turn off it becomes region B (and I can play on it all French blu-ray, even those in 1080i, etc...)
So I've tried to play a MoC which I knew was locked "region B" (Silent Running). I saw the "sorry" message about the region B locking. And turn off and play again Silent Running. It worked just fine. So I was sure that my player was in region B status, but the "Tarnished Angels" can't be played at all.
No menus, nothing.
So what did they add for protection ? (my Plasma screen is set in PAL format as well as the Sigmatek blu-ray player)
if you have a hint or something; it's very frustrating... ](*,)

at least I can play it on my Oppo but I can share it with my mother which has the Sigmatek now...

Rupert Pupkin wrote:but do you have some playback problems with this blu-ray ?

No problems with playing it on either of my players. I've just got a cheap multi-region Technika and a cheap multi-region Toshiba but both had no worries.

bigP wrote:

Rupert Pupkin wrote:but do you have some playback problems with this blu-ray ?

No problems with playing it on either of my players. I've just got a cheap multi-region Technika and a cheap multi-region Toshiba but both had no worries.

thanks- disk plays just fine on my Oppo
no scratch on the layer of the disk
perhaps it's a firmware incompatibility with the Sigmatek...

Does anyone know who has drawn that cover?
it doesn't say anything in the booklet.

The same image is used in an old poster (Spanish), so it could be original art work.

It is part of the original artwork. If you look closely at the U.S. poster, it's a detail in the upper right hand corner.