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vogler wrote:The first piece on the CD sounds purely Tibetan to me but there could be other elements. Coil, and a large number of other 'industrial' artists, were hugely influenced by Tibetan and other ritual musics. You probably already know that though.

What about track 6 on The Holy Mountain soundtrack. That one kind of reminds me of Zos Kia/Transparent era Coil. Scary.

Yes, you're right, I had the Tibetan association in my mind, too, but it's perhaps the fact that he mixed Japanese and Tibetan recordings together which gives it this somewhat 'avantgardistic/industrial' drift which reminded me of Coil and early C93. The other track you mention is also great, though I was a little let down by the chansonesque/spaghetti western orchestral music that pops up from time to time in the later tracks of that soundtrack. Well, it certainly all makes sense with the film itself.
And thanks for the 'Conversations with AJ' link!

I watched "Fando y Lis" yesterday night in its entirety, not being able to resist that film - hitherto unknown to me - any longer. Fascinating, although after the first viewing I found it not quite as intense as the two later films, and it somehow shows that he didn't have any script when he made it. I was very much reminded of Bunuel's "L'age d'or" in its indictment of religion and patriarchal society (apart from the surrealism itself), and also somewhat of Pasolini's "Teorema", though I wouldn't know how to precisely explain that latter association (and he couldn't have known that film, anyway). It was very funny to hear on the audio commentary how much he hated the actor who played Fando, and indeed, the acting is rather inconvincing, somewhat stiff.

Sadly, I don't have to take back anything I said in my earlier post about the image quality. Too high contrast (some whites are completely blown over), some scenes completely lack detail, and the whole image has a smeary look that you already pointed out with your screen caps. The production credits mention the people from Tartan, who release the set in R2 this month, too, and I wonder whether it was actually Tartan who made the transfer, and that what we see on the Anchor Bay disc is a PAL/NTSC-conversion, which would perfectly explain most of the problems with the image (whereas "El Topo" and "Holy Mountain" seem to be native NTSC). It would be interesting to know whether the image is better on the Tartan PAL disc (on the other hand it would mean that the Tartan discs of "El Topo" and "Mountain" might be less good than the Anchor Bay ones).

This is a very good dvd box set.

Excellent films, great packaging, very good special features, soundtracks and all at a reasonable price.

I made the guys watch The Holy Mountain last night before we started band practice.At first they started grumbling, and about ten minutes in they were as hooked as I was upon my first viewing.Jodorowsky's films are fucking great! =D>

I will probably get beat up. But what's the big fuss about El Topo? I saw it for the first time yesterday and I grew bored quickly, wanting to press the "eject" button but I sat through the whole thing. Jodorowsky worked very hard putting his personal imagery on film - oceans of red paint, litters of dead bunnies, etc - however the film suffered greatly from the lack of lyricism or rhythym that it seemed to cry for (think Pink Narcissus, just about every Bava film, or Mulholland Dr.). I thought I'd like it but I didn't unfortunately.

Michael,

Having (as of yet) not seen Pink Narcissus, or any negligible amount of Bava, could you expand upon why you were disappointed with El Topo (perhaps in the Jodorowsky thread in the Old Films board)? The film immediately vaulted into my top five (no surprise, I suppose, knowing me) and is, to my eyes, damn near perfectly realized.

But I would love to discuss.

-Toilet Dcuk

toiletduck! wrote:Having (as of yet) not seen Pink Narcissus, or any negligible amount of Bava, could you expand upon why you were disappointed with El Topo (perhaps in the Jodorowsky thread in the Old Films board)? The film immediately vaulted into my top five (no surprise, I suppose, knowing me) and is, to my eyes, damn near perfectly realized.

I felt similarly to Michael about El Topo, actually. I wouldn't say I was ever quite bored, but it certainly wasn't the revelatory experience I was expecting from my knowledge of Jodorowsky's comics and the rep of this film. Lots of great imagery in isolation, but I just didn't think it came together as a whole. It reminded me of some sort of Monty Pythonesque sketch show, except with rather more gruesome images. The final sequence in the frontier town rather redeemed the more sluggish rest of the film, though -- that segment of the film held together beautifully and wound up being very powerful. But this is, after all, just a subsection of the film as a whole.

On the other hand, I watched The Holy Mountain the next night, and found that it was everything I was expecting from Jodorowsky, and was utterly blown away by it. Maybe it's just that the tarot and the mystical ideas he was communicating here have an inherent structure that held things together more solidly, but in this case, the film definitely added up to so much more than the semi-random procession of bizarre images that is El Topo.

I moved the content of this post over to the dedicated Jodorowsky thread in the "Old films" section, just in case anyone's irritated.

I'm playing over on the Old Forums Jodorowsky thread. But I'm already keen to the wide array of readings and opinions.

-Toilet Dcuk

Finished watching all the films in the set and ran through the soundtracks. THM has an incredible soundtrack as mentioned above, definitely one that would make you want to kill yourself if you heard it on bad acid. Also i'm not impressed with the Fando Y Lis transfer, but its something I talked myself into living with. Great job Anchor Bay, hopefully this set can introduce Jodorowsky to a new generation again!

I've noticed that the runtime for La Cravate is 20mins on the disc, but IMDb lists the runtime as 40mins.

Anybody know if the version in the set is the original uncut version?

Dvd Beaver comparison Tartan vs Anchor Bay. Apparently, far less contrast boosting on the Tartan "Fando". The Tartan caps look definitely superior to me, though the Beaver reports NTSC/PAL-ghosting on the Tartan. What?? And no complaints about the Anchor Bay in this respect??

Less contrast in general on the Tartan, but with the other two films I like the more intense colours on the Anchor Bay.

And no complaints about the Anchor Bay in this respect??

The master was NTSC, so there's not going to be complaints about NTSC disc of NTSC transfer.

From the dvdbeaver review.

"Restored by ABKCO, who have spent more than two years on it, the image is amazing, considering the source and age."

What? Must have been two years making it worse because the Fantoma looks far better. The age has got nothing to do with it. I've seen much better transfers of films from the 1920s. According to Fantoma, the source for their dvd was the original 35mm negative.

"The two releases identical, except that Tartan R2 appears to be an PALified NTSC version (interlace ghosting) and not a true PAL version, as the two other films in the box. Again, AB has more contrast than Tartan."

If the screenshots are anything to go by then they look very different indeed. The Tartan does appear to be much better and closer to the Fantoma dvd. It is what it looks like in motion that will be crucial here though.

I can't help wondering if Henrik Sylow has actually seen both these dvds. The AB Fando y Lis is one of the worst transfers I have ever seen in terms of movement. A dreadful amount of ghosting, and I'm not even very picky about these things generally. It sounds like he's only seen the Tartan and is just using Gary's screen caps for comparison. I've just learned not to take any notice of dvd beaver reviews (well actually I didn't just learn that). This review is not going to be any help to anyone.

Ashirg wrote:

And no complaints about the Anchor Bay in this respect??

The master was NTSC, so there's not going to be complaints about NTSC disc of NTSC transfer.

Tommaso is referring to the dreadful 'ghosting' on the Anchor Bay. It shouldn't be there but it is.

Ashirg wrote:The master was NTSC, so there's not going to be complaints about NTSC disc of NTSC transfer.

vogler wrote:Tommaso is referring to the dreadful 'ghosting' on the Anchor Bay. It shouldn't be there but it is.

Precisely. I wonder whether all the reviewers were so blown away by the "El Topo" and "Holy Mountain" transfers that they didn't bother to give "Fando" a closer look. Well, at least this reviewer mentions it, also assuming PAL/NTSC conversion to be the source of the problem, and states: "In some scenes, it's almost impossible to watch because of the transfer problem!" Well, that's a tough way to put it, but somehow I feel sympathetic to that. Incidentally or not, unlike the two other films, the "Fando" transfer was NOT expressedly approved of by Jodorowsky.

vogler wrote: I've just learned not to take any notice of dvd beaver reviews (well actually I didn't just learn that). This review is not going to be any help to anyone.

Well, I think there is a difference between the reviews by Gary and those by other people writing for the Beaver. Not wanting to bash the Beaver in any way (I'm very happy something like this exists at all), it seems to me that Gary has a little more viewing experience and/or is more critical in general, which is a good thing in my view. In any case, we have the screen caps to tell the story, although ghosting isn't very well to represent this way of course. But colours are, and I wonder where these differences come from. And I'm even more unhappy about the contrast boosting and the resulting 'speckled' look especially of the desert scenes on the Anchor Bay "Fando" than about the ghosting.

Tommaso wrote:but with the other two films I like the more intense colours on the Anchor Bay.

I have a feeling this could be largely down to different settings when taking screen caps. I get very different results from Gary when taking captures of the Anchor Bay El Topo. In fact my Anchor Bay El Topo shots are very similar to Henrik Sylow's shots of the Tartan. I took my screen capture below with colour profile set to original i.e. no manipulation.
Here is a comparison.

DVD BEAVER - ANCHOR BAY


VOGLER - ANCHOR BAY


DVD BEAVER - TARTAN


However if I set my colour profile to vivid, which quite drastically raises the colour saturation, brightness and contrast, then I get very similar results to Gary.

DVD BEAVER - ANCHOR BAY


VOGLER - ANCHOR BAY (Vivid colour profile)


The bottom line is that I'm not sure the screen caps accurately represent the colours or contrast of the dvds. I think the difference between the Anchor Bay and Tartan is actually only very slight. I could only be sure if I had the Tartan dvd for comparison though.

The DVD TIMES review states that the Tartan release of both "El Topo" and "The Holy Mountain" aren't PAL-ified NTSC transfers:

DVD Times wrote:The Fando and Lis transfer is a standards conversion whilst the other films on the set are all given proper PAL transfers.

If this is true, and given that "Fando" at least looks better in the Tartan screen-caps, I wonder if the Tartan set isn't the better way to go? Additionally, it appears that "La cravatte" and "La Constellation Jodorowsky" are included on the same disc in the Tartan set, which strikes me as a better choice than AB's decision to put the feature-length doc on the same disc as "Fando". Arguably, the Tartan cover art is a bit more interesting, but I'd like to see the spine before committing.

Anyway, there's more talk of this in the Tartan thread.

Edited for mindlessly attempting to cover ground already covered!

foggy eyes wrote:Beaver review of the Jodorowsky set. The Tartan Fando Y Lis does look considerably better than the Anchor Bay. And what are we to make of the colour and contrast differences in El Topo and The Holy Mountain across both sets?

You may want to scroll up and take a look at the posts above yours.

mogwai wrote:You may want to scroll up and take a look at the posts above yours.

Indeed. #-o

More screen caps of the Anchor Bay Jodorowsky dvds. All taken with original colour profile and no manipulation.

Thanks, indeed they look almost exactly like the caps of the Tartan as posted by the Beaver. Must we then assume that there's then also no difference regarding the contrast in the Tartan "Fando"?

Tommaso wrote:Must we then assume that there's then also no difference regarding the contrast in the Tartan "Fando"?

I'm working on it now. I think there are differences with Fando though. Of course we can't be 100% sure of anything because we don't know what software and settings Henrik Sylow used to take his Tartan screen caps. I'm fairly sure his captures are accurate though, with no manipulation. I could only be 100% certain if I had a copy of the Tartan - unless someone else is able to take screen caps of the Tartan using Power dvd player with colour profile set to original - image size 720x540 for El Topo and 800x450 for Holy Mountain. Even then I'm not sure it would be 100% accurate using different computer systems. Like I said before, if I use the vivid colour profile then my caps look exactly like Gary's. I have tried this with all of them.

That's the thing about digital video; unlike film it has no fixed colour, it is whatever you set your player or monitor to (I think I stole the gist of that comment from Stan Brakhage). I think often we talk about how accurate the colours of screenshots represent what we have seen projected or on previous video versions, but are we sure that the monitor we are using to look at the screen caps is accurate. If I change my monitor settings just a fraction then everything looks utterly different. Likewise with taking screencaps, it wouldn't take much adjustment to end up with a bright purple tinted screen capture.

vogler wrote:That's the thing about digital video; unlike film it has no fixed colour.

Since when has film had fixed colour?

MichaelB wrote:

vogler wrote:That's the thing about digital video; unlike film it has no fixed colour.

Since when has film had fixed colour?

Fixed at any one given time, although it changes over time. Or are you saying different projectors give different results concerning colour.

vogler wrote:

MichaelB wrote:

vogler wrote:That's the thing about digital video; unlike film it has no fixed colour.

Since when has film had fixed colour?

Fixed at any one given time, although it changes over time. Or are you saying different projectors give different results concerning colour.

Well, that's true as well. I've been in cinemas with dual-projector setups where it's been obvious when they've switched projectors, as the colour temperature visibly alters.