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Slather it with DNR and they'll give it five billion fucking stars.

CSM126 wrote:Slather it with DNR and they'll give it five billion fucking stars.

Depends on the reviewer.

Watched Trans-Europ last night and it definitely seemed like a film. The grain was pretty exquisite.

Another PD title is getting released on Blu-ray via Kino: Amazon lists The Death Kiss (1933) as coming out on May 13th. According to the cover, this print comes from the Library of Congress and has the original hand tinted sequences.

warren oates wrote:Kino acquires Bruno Dumont's Camille Claudel 1915. Tentative woo-hoo, so long as they eventually release it on Blu.

Coming March 25, DVD only

I can't see for the life of me how that film doesn't warrant a Blu-ray, whereas, say, A Touch of Sin, does. The film looks and sounds great technically. And what more could they want in terms of marketability? Dumont's lead Juliette Binoche may well be the single biggest international art house star of the last few decades. In fact, there were some blue hairs in the theater where I saw it who had clearly come just to see her. I don't think grandmas in my 'hood are Dumont devotees.

warren oates wrote:In fact, there were some blue hairs in the theater where I saw it who had clearly come just to see her. I don't think grandmas in my 'hood are Dumont devotees.

To be fair, they're probably not Blu-ray devotees either.

Soda Pictures has the rights in the UK and they haven't announced a release yet. Fingers crossed.

Oh I saw that pun coming as I was typing initially. But, yeah, my point was that this film has a way broader audience than your typical Dumont joint. Broader still than most of the other art house films that Kino is currently releasing on Blu-ray -- like A Touch of Sin, Barbara, Shoot The Sun Down, etc. In addition to the oldsters, I saw much younger folks there too who were talking as if they'd come for the subject matter alone, because they were interested in Camille Claudel's story. It just seems like a really weird business decision on Kino's part.

I went to see a 35mm print of Nostalghia. It was typical Tarkovsky in the imagery and symbolism. I will hold off on buying Kino's version in hopes that Artificial Eye release it with bonus material. I can't understand why Kino drops the ball on supplements for the most part. What would it take to at least conduct a half hour interview with a Tarkovsky scholar. His films cry out for supplements to assist in the experience of enjoying his films and understanding Tarkovsky, himself.

It seems to me that unless Kino is handed supplements from some licensee, they won't spend to create their own.

I just got back from the screening at Film Forum myself (of a 35mm print of Nostalghia). I have to say, coming out of it, I have no idea really what that movie was about and found it incredibly hard to follow at all.

I should caveat by saying I'm sure the print has aged a bit. There were some black/white scenes with a green tint, and sometimes that green tint was stronger than in another scene with the same tinting. It certainly felt rare that the black and white was JUST black and white without a tint, but of course, the print surely has some age. With that said, I can say that the Kino Blu Ray certainly doesn't seem to have the same strength of colors as the print did. The green in the grass here was much stronger in the print. So was the green of the empty beer bottle being rained on.

Take this all with a million grains of salt. This was a print and not the restoration, and my computer surely isn't calibrated. But I figured I'd add my thoughts.

Drucker, I felt the same about the print. Some of the outdoor scenes, sans the fog, had some nice vivid colors.

I did know going in that it wasn't the resto, so my expectations weren't high.

Ha, I was also at Nostalghia today, albeit the 3:30 showing. I found the movie heartbreakingly beautiful at times, but I was a bit disappointed by the characterization of Eugenia, who seemed to be some sort of weird statement about Italian women or modern femininity or something? I don't know. The rest of the movie was lovely and mysterious and evocative, as I would expect from Tarkovsky.

To my eyes, the print had a fairly muted color palette for the most part, but I'd agree that the colors were brighter for the outdoor screen linked in that shot.

Matrix, I was also at the 3:30 screening in the back, as well.

Again, caveats about memory or calibration of monitor screens aside, look at The DVDBeaver caps, especially of the people swimming/bathing in the river. That blue hue that seems only evident in the Enter One DVD definitely matches what we saw, right? Maybe not that blue, but certainly a blue tint hue to those scenes.

matrixschmatrix wrote:I was a bit disappointed by the characterization of Eugenia, who seemed to be some sort of weird statement about Italian women or modern femininity or something? I don't know. The rest of the movie was lovely and mysterious and evocative, as I would expect from Tarkovsky.

Tonino Guerra co-wrote the screenplay. His paws are all over Eugenia. She strikes me as a character that could have come from an Antonioni or Fellini film, whom Guerra wrote numerous screenplays for.

Drucker wrote:Matrix, I was also at the 3:30 screening in the back, as well.

Again, caveats about memory or calibration of monitor screens aside, look at The DVDBeaver caps, especially of the people swimming/bathing in the river. That blue hue that seems only evident in the Enter One DVD definitely matches what we saw, right? Maybe not that blue, but certainly a blue tint hue to those scenes.

Ha, I was in the very front row- Film Forum seating gives my bad knee serious pain if it's anything over 90 minutes. Yeah, I think I'd agree, but to my eye the shot a couple above it of Andrei lying on the bed looks more accurate in the Kino one- the extremes of the muted indoor colors seem mostly to have been best captured there.

FrauBlucher wrote:

matrixschmatrix wrote:I was a bit disappointed by the characterization of Eugenia, who seemed to be some sort of weird statement about Italian women or modern femininity or something? I don't know. The rest of the movie was lovely and mysterious and evocative, as I would expect from Tarkovsky.

Tonino Guerra co-wrote the screenplay. His paws are all over Eugenia. She strikes me as a character that could have come from an Antonioni or Fellini film, whom Guerra wrote numerous screenplays for.

Ohh, that makes a lot of sense. In my head that was some strange Russian stereotype of Italian women, because it certainly is a characterization unlike anything else I've seen from Tarkovsky.

Drucker wrote:Amazon is listing a June 10 release date for Antonioni's Vanquished on blu-ray.

I think's it's Kino distributing a Raro BR release as listed here...

Nostalghia $17.99 Not sure for how long.

L.A. wrote:Jess Franco's The Demons coming to Blu-ray in April.

DVDBeaver.

Just to brag/show that this can be done, I purchased Kino's Blu-ray Keaton set in November back when Deep Discount was offering it for $95.48. At the time, I already owned all of the individual Blu-ray releases except for Go West/Battling Butler and The Saphead, and so I listed them all for sale on half.com/Amazon marketplace. Four and a half months later I've now sold them all, and after factoring in seller fees, shipping costs, and the cost of the new set, I ended up making about $16 out of the deal, in addition to getting the extra films of course.

swo17 wrote:Just to brag/show that this can be done, I purchased Kino's Blu-ray Keaton set in November back when Deep Discount was offering it for $95.48. At the time, I already owned all of the individual Blu-ray releases except for Go West/Battling Butler and The Saphead, and so I listed them all for sale on half.com/Amazon marketplace. Four and a half months later I've now sold them all, and after factoring in seller fees, shipping costs, and the cost of the new set, I ended up making about $16 out of the deal, in addition to getting the extra films of course.

Did you factor in the trouble and time you had to spend on listing, packaging, sending, and (possibly) corresponding with potential buyers answering sundry queries? Similarly to you I purchased almost all individual Keaton releases and later considered buying the set and selling the BR's I owned. Although it's nicer to have the set, I gave up on the idea, but you are probably more efficient than me...

Yeah, I mean, I probably spent an hour or so in total doing all of that. It's up to you whether it was worth the effort.

Zaki wrote:

swo17 wrote:Just to brag/show that this can be done, I purchased Kino's Blu-ray Keaton set in November back when Deep Discount was offering it for $95.48. At the time, I already owned all of the individual Blu-ray releases except for Go West/Battling Butler and The Saphead, and so I listed them all for sale on half.com/Amazon marketplace. Four and a half months later I've now sold them all, and after factoring in seller fees, shipping costs, and the cost of the new set, I ended up making about $16 out of the deal, in addition to getting the extra films of course.

Did you factor in the trouble and time you had to spend on listing, packaging, sending, and (possibly) corresponding with potential buyers answering sundry queries? Similarly to you I purchased almost all individual Keaton releases and later considered buying the set and selling the BR's I owned. Although it's nicer to have the set, I gave up on the idea, but you are probably more efficient than me...

Yeah, given the time and trouble (and potential of something going wrong, like a lost shipment), I'd rather buy the extra films that I'd actually want.