criterionforum.org

As strange as it may sound, the Criterion transfer has a lot more detail. In darker sequences there is a massive amount of detail that is wiped out on the Gaumont transfer, which isn't surprising at this point as many of their catalog transfers are filtered across the board. The filtering has also affected the dynamic range as well as various color tonalities. You can see how drastic the discrepancy can be here:

1. Gaumont (New transfer)
http://www.blu-ray.com/movies/screensho ... osition=13" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

2. Criterion (Old transfer)
http://www.blu-ray.com/movies/screensho ... osition=12" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

So The Aristocrats and Marie-Antoinette have English subs, according to Blu-ray.com and Amazon. Sadly not Les Patates or Eugenio, which looked interesting.

Are there any reviews for their Papatakis blu-ray set?

perkizitore wrote:Are there any reviews for their Papatakis blu-ray set?

Sadly, I won't be reviewing the set for Retro HD because we didn't received any check discs for it (unfortunately, Gaumont hasn't sent us anything since October). Maybe Svet will get some and review the set for Blu-ray.com.

Is there a good option for an American to import DVDs from France apart from Amazon (which I don't like, but often resort to for import DVDs) or eBay (which I've gotten a few too many bootlegs as a result of)? I ask this as I'm looking into importing a set or two of Gaumont's Michel Deville releases.

Daaveedee is a good stateside distro. You'll pay a premium, of course, but often once international shipping is (or rather, isn't) factored in, it's not as big a sticker shock as it seems.

Also to take into consideration is that La Poste has just hiked its international tarif up by 12%. A single DVD costs 7 Euros to the US for example

If anyone picks up Atlantic City, please post thoughts on the presentation. Or if anyone sees a review, a post of it would be kindly appreciated.

I have check discs from Gaumont for the 3 latest Malle which I need to review very soon, so I should be able to give a quick feedback within the next days (hopefully).
Worst case, I'll just post a few screen caps.

Can you confirm if Atlantic City and Black Moon have English soundtracks? Amazon.fr say they have just French tracks. And if they do, can they be played without French subtitles? Thanks.

There are both French and English tracks for Atlantic City & Black Moon.

Ah, many thanks.

tenia wrote:There are both French and English tracks for Atlantic City & Black Moon.

When playing the films in English are there forced subtitles?

Shucks, I should have checked that at the same time.
Most likely are optional (I can't recall a Gaumont BD having forced subs), but I'll double check tonight.

tenia wrote:Shucks, I should have checked that at the same time.
Most likely are optional (I can't recall a Gaumont BD having forced subs), but I'll double check tonight.

Thanks so much.

I confirm subs are optional. The menu allows you for both titles to choose both the soundtrack and the subs (or whether you want some or not).
The only subtitles available are French and French SDH.

tenia wrote:I confirm subs are optional. The menu allows you for both titles to choose both the soundtrack and the subs (or whether you want some or not).
The only subtitles available are French and French SDH.

Thanks so much Tenia.

I'll order these along with Cosmos with is also English friendly with optional subtitling.

Somebody asked me about it, but I thought this might interest other people as well :

I only had a quick look at Black Moon this morning. It looks quite good in terms of PQ and grain management, in line with most of the Gaumont 2K Eclair-made restorations. Looking at blu-ray.com's screen caps of the Criterion, I'd say it looks finer and it's the usual "more recent restoration VS older restoration" competition. The Criterion seems coarser (again, judging from the caps).
However, the Gaumont certainly looks much warmer than what I'm seeing here for the Criterion. It's not annoyingly yellow, but it's certainly more yellow and warmer as a whole. I have no idea what is correct.

I'd tend to say you can probably go ahead. Maybe the color timing could be a concern, but otherwise, I don't think the PQ will disappoint you.

The extras on both Black Moon and Atlantic City are quite short, though. Apart from the trailers, there only is a 20 min documentary for each of them. Gaumont's docs used to be about twice as long.

I had a look at Atlantic City, and it looks rather good too. It has less of a color timing bias, though it seems a tad cold and a bit too bright to me. Otherwise, it's fine.

Les amants is unfortunately another Gaumont / B&W Malle disaster. It's not bad as Lift to the Scaffold which was combining poor compression and green chroma issues, but it has the poorest black restitution I've ever seen. DVD Classik have posted some screen caps and mine match theirs : every single black elements in the frame (being in a normally lit shot or a low-lit one) is crushed to death, to the point any low-lit shot looks like an undescriptible blob. It doesn't have the chroma issues however.

The Lovers also have compression issues, but much less severe. However, it has the same chroma issues visible on Lift to the Scaffolds.

I have absolutely no clue what is going on on these titles that they have to get such appallingly bad encodes which are nowhere like what Gaumont have been doing so far. They had issues with black levels, but never so much with encodes, and I failed to understand why specifically Malle's B&W movies are getting beaten like that.

Out of curiosity, who actually conducted these restorations? Assuming they are in fact restorations...

tenia wrote:I had a look at Atlantic City, and it looks rather good too. It has less of a color timing bias, though it seems a tad cold and a bit too bright to me. Otherwise, it's fine.

It is not a particularly warm looking film. It has that 70s film stock look. It's kind of cool with slightly muted colors. I guess the Gaumont restoration engineers thinks it was a bright film. I don't remember it being that way.

jsteffe wrote:Out of curiosity, who actually conducted these restorations? Assuming they are in fact restorations...

They obviously are recent 2K restorations, more likely conducted at Eclair for/by Gaumont. No additionnal info is available, sadly.

Can anyone confirm that is the Coffret Nico Papatakis Blu-ray set English-friendly?