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Ribs wrote:

FrauBlucher wrote:A 4k upgrade of Tarkovsky's The Sacrifice will be released May 15

fixed

Wording confused me there, as your post implied to me it would be a UHD!

A 4k restoration upgrade of Tarkovsky's The Sacrifice will be released May 15

double fixed

Legend of the Mountain coming from Kino.

Drucker wrote:Legend of the Mountain coming from Kino.

I really liked most of A Touch of Zen. But then it just sort of changed into something else near the 3/4 mark. I'm going to assume someone here has seen this. Is this similar?

If this is Rain in the Mountain also know as A Touch of Zen 2 then I would be willing to argue it as a better and more philosophical film. Probably the greatest cinematic treatment of Buddhism I have ever seen.

Raining in the Mountain is a different film shot around the same time. Legend is a more discursive movie with less action and a ghost story that Hu actually follows through on (unlike A Touch of Zen where he used it as a jumping-off point for something very different). There's still a Buddhist aspect but it feels more elemental in a way.

The Fanciful Norwegian wrote:Raining in the Mountain is a different film shot around the same time. Legend is a more discursive movie with less action and a ghost story that Hu actually follows through on (unlike A Touch of Zen where he used it as a jumping-off point for something very different). There's still a Buddhist aspect but it feels more elemental in a way.

I'll definitely pick it up then. Thanks for the information.

Backers of the Kickstarter campaign for Pioneers: First Women filmmakers just received a video update. Very tentative release date set for late September/early October and is now 6 discs instead of 5!

Extras for Kino's blu of the 4k restoration of Tarkovsky's The Sacrifice:

Kino wrote:DISC ONE:
BRAND NEW 4K RESTORATION OF THE FILM
Feature audio commentary by Layla Alexander-Garrett, Tarkovsky's translator on the set of The Sacrifice
Original Trailer
DISC TWO:
Directed by Andrei Tarkovsky - a documentary on the making of The Sacrifice (102 minutes)
Interview with Michal Leszczylowski, editor of The Sacrifice and director of Directed by Andrei Tarkovsky (32 minutes)
An illustrated booklet with excerpts from Tarkovsky's diaries and an essay by film scholar Robert Bird

The translator commentary sounds really interesting.

Luke M wrote:DVDBeaver on The Sacrifice

According to DVD Beaver, the new Kino Blu-ray from the 4k restoration runs 2:26, whereas the Artificial Eye Blu-ray runs 2:29. That seems like a significant discrepancy in the running time. If anyone ends up with both editions, I'd be interested to hear about the differences. Eventually my library will get the new Kino Blu-ray so I could do a comparison myself, but it wouldn't happen for another month or two.

PAL vs. NTSC? That's only three minutes which I'd bet indicate that speed up

dda1996a wrote:PAL vs. NTSC? That's only three minutes which I'd bet indicate that speed up

That can’t be the answer, partly because PAL-NTSC isn’t an issue with Blu-ray, but also because a 149-minute theatrical feature would lose six and a half minutes rather than three in that situation.

I watched William Cameron Menzies 50s horror movie The Maze in 3D last night and thought it was great fun. The 3D is very strong and the movie itself is atmospheric, quirky and charming.

I’d long read about this film in books about horror films as a sort of minor classic but never managed to catch it. Praised for its atmosphere and ridiculed for its denouement, I sort of knew what lurks in the maze, so I wasn’t too thrown off by the end. Yes, when finally revealed the creature looks far from scary and the explanation is silly but the end is also oddly moving. Something that struck me about the film is that by the end it is revealed that everybody is motivated by basic decency, something rare in horror films. Everybody’s intention is to help or save somebody else and that ultimately is quite affecting.

Spoiler

When the frog lord of the castle has been discovered and hops away in panic and shame, he is more tragic than scary, in a long tradition of misunderstood monsters.

The movie points towards two horror classics to come, The Shining of course but also to Robert Wise’s The Haunting. The scenes of something stalking the corridors at night are effective and creepy and reminded me of that film. I liked the cast too, apart from Richard Carlson they weren’t familiar to me. Veronica Carlson and Katherine Emery are likeable heroines, determined to get to the bottom of the mystery (though they still are required to scream and faint when coming across something scary)

While the film has obvious budgetary limitations (the various rooms of the castle appear to be the same few walls of a movie set moved around) William Cameron Menzies always keeps things visually engaging. He really knows how to use 3D without resorting to things flying at the camera (not counting a few typically stiff, period horror-movie bats). This film itself mostly looks pin sharp.

I’ll be sad when there will be no more 3D on blu-ray, especially for classic 3D releases like this. These 50s 3D movies are a revelation when having been converted from their anaglyph versions to modern 3D. They never have been seen like this.

MichaelB wrote:

dda1996a wrote:PAL vs. NTSC? That's only three minutes which I'd bet indicate that speed up

That can’t be the answer, partly because PAL-NTSC isn’t an issue with Blu-ray, but also because a 149-minute theatrical feature would lose six and a half minutes rather than three in that situation.

I stand corrected then. I thought there were still blu-ray that differ in regions because of speed-up

dda1996a wrote:I stand corrected then. I thought there were still blu-ray that differ in regions because of speed-up

I suspect you're thinking of issues where films shot for European television at 25fps (Dekalog, Berlin Alexanderplatz, the TV work of Alan Clarke and Ken Russell) have to be slowed down to 24fps to comply with the more restricted US Blu-ray specs. But that wouldn't apply to a film that's always been a 24fps theatrical feature.

I'm bemused by this running-time difference, because there's no question that the film originally played theatrically at 149 minutes. I'd understand if a new restoration was slightly longer, because of additional credits to do with the restoration, but unless DVD Beaver is misreporting the running time, it looks as though this is actually missing some footage.

(Although I wasn't particularly attracted to this version anyway - I saw the film numerous times in 35mm, and my memory of the colours suggests that the Artificial Eye disc is far more accurate.)

While there seems to be a clear upgrade in texture, the caps I've seen gave me some doubts about the grading. IIRC, it's not the only Tarkvoski restoration like this.

tenia wrote:While there seems to be a clear upgrade in texture, the caps I've seen gave me some doubts about the grading. IIRC, it's not the only Tarkvoski restoration like this.

I'm not pleased that the change in contrast has wiped out all of the cloud texture in the opening scene.

Roger Ryan wrote:

tenia wrote:While there seems to be a clear upgrade in texture, the caps I've seen gave me some doubts about the grading. IIRC, it's not the only Tarkvoski restoration like this.

I'm not pleased that the change in contrast has wiped out all of the cloud texture in the opening scene.

Yes, my heart sank when I saw the screencaps. I have the old Kino bluray and the Artificial Eye, and I'll stick with the latter. The old Kino bluray was bad - terrible encoding. This new Kino disc looks overly contrast-boosted to me (even though I've never seen it on film anywhere).

Lost Highway wrote:
I’ll be sad when there will be no more 3D on blu-ray, especially for classic 3D releases like this. These 50s 3D movies are a revelation when having been converted from their anaglyph versions to modern 3D. They never have been seen like this.

Thanks for the great review, I'm glad that you enjoyed it.

THE MAZE restoration is our first collaboration with Martin Scorsese and the Film Foundation: http://www.3dfilmarchive.com/the-maze

Polarized 3-D was first shown publicly in 1936. None of the 1950's 3-D features were anaglyphic originally, they were all shown in high quality, discrete polarized 3-D. A handful were converted to red/cyan anaglyphic in the 1970's and 80's. See myth number one for more information: http://www.3dfilmarchive.com/home/top-10-3-d-myths

Our next restoration is SANGAREE: http://www.3dfilmarchive.com/sangaree

Bob Furmanek
3-D Film Archive

Bob Furmanek wrote:

Lost Highway wrote:
I’ll be sad when there will be no more 3D on blu-ray, especially for classic 3D releases like this. These 50s 3D movies are a revelation when having been converted from their anaglyph versions to modern 3D. They never have been seen like this.

Thanks for the great review, I'm glad that you enjoyed it.

THE MAZE restoration is our first collaboration with Martin Scorsese and the Film Foundation: http://www.3dfilmarchive.com/the-maze

Polarized 3-D was first shown publicly in 1936. None of the 1950's 3-D features were anaglyphic originally, they were all shown in high quality, discrete polarized 3-D. A handful were converted to red/cyan anaglyphic in the 1970's and 80's. See myth number one for more information: http://www.3dfilmarchive.com/home/top-10-3-d-myths

Our next restoration is SANGAREE: http://www.3dfilmarchive.com/sangaree

Bob Furmanek
3-D Film Archive

A repertory cinema I used to go to a lot in the late 70s/early 80s had a retrospective of 3D movies. I remember that the B&W 50s movies I saw (Creature from the Black Lagoon and It Came from Outer Space) were shown anaglyphic while the one color film I saw, Flesh for Frankenstein was shown polarized. I don't pretend to be an expert on 3D but that's what my experience was, so they must have been converted.

Some films (Creature from the Black Lagoon, It Came from Outer Space, The Maze, Robot Monster, Spooks, The Mad Magician) were converted to anaglyphic 3-D in the 1970's for re-issue. Others (Miss Sadie Thompson, Bwana Devil, Gorilla at Large, Revenge of the Creature, Hondo) were converted in the 1980's for television broadcast. All were originally shown theatrically in Polaroid 3-D.

MichaelB wrote: Thu May 10, 2018 10:21 am

dda1996a wrote:I stand corrected then. I thought there were still blu-ray that differ in regions because of speed-up

I suspect you're thinking of issues where films shot for European television at 25fps (Dekalog, Berlin Alexanderplatz, the TV work of Alan Clarke and Ken Russell) have to be slowed down to 24fps to comply with the more restricted US Blu-ray specs. But that wouldn't apply to a film that's always been a 24fps theatrical feature.

I'm bemused by this running-time difference, because there's no question that the film originally played theatrically at 149 minutes. I'd understand if a new restoration was slightly longer, because of additional credits to do with the restoration, but unless DVD Beaver is misreporting the running time, it looks as though this is actually missing some footage.

(Although I wasn't particularly attracted to this version anyway - I saw the film numerous times in 35mm, and my memory of the colours suggests that the Artificial Eye disc is far more accurate.)

Hi all - the running time discrepancy comes from a difference in the running time of the opening credits. The new 4K restoration comes from French material - and the French credits run 3 minutes shorter than the Swedish credits. No footage is missing.

Kino will be releasing ten restored Hungarian films:

Variety wrote:Kino Lorber has announced that it has acquired North American rights for ten newly restored classics from the Hungarian National Film Fund- Film Archive.

The titles includes “Mephisto,” directed by István Szabó, which won the Best Foreign Language Film at the 1981 Academy Awards; “Colonel Redl,” directed by Szabó and a 1986 Academy Award nominee; Szabo’s “Confidence,” winner of the Silver Bear for Best Director at the 1980 Berlin International Film Festival and 1981 Academy Award nominee.

The others are “My 20th Century, directed by Ildikó Enyedi; and six films by Miklós Jancsó — “The Red and White,” “The Confrontation,” “Elektra, My Love,” “The Round-Up,” “Winter Wind” and “Red Psalm,”which won the Best Director award at 1972 Cannes Film Festival.

There's a lot of overlap with Second Run here, but I'll be happy to upgrade the Jancsó titles (assuming they're released on BD.)

... this is HUGE! Fantastic, how wonderful! Great on Kino.

I hope that they consider picking up Zoltán Huszárik's Szindbád (1971) again someday. It's one of the most beautiful color films ever made, and Kino used to distribute it years ago. It's ripe for rediscovery in the U.S.