criterionforum.org

A translation of the above link: the new 4K restoration of Miloš Forman's The Firemen's Ball is hitting Blu-ray next month.

And it seems that the much-delayed Blu-ray of Oldřich Lipský's Lemonade Joe is finally coming out in December.

Both appear to have English subtitles, but I haven't seen either at first hand yet.

Would love to see Ikarie XB 1 and Karel Zeman's work on Blu-ray as well.

Michael, do you know what this article says about The Joke? Google Translate seems to imply it's getting a Blu-Ray release.

My Czech is horribly rusty, but the impression I get is that it's about the screenings of The Joke and The Firemen's Ball at the then upcoming Karlovy Vary Film Festival, and speculating that this might lead to Blu-rays.

This is duly happening with The Firemen's Ball, which was a 4K digital restoration by the Czech National Film Archive, but I can't find any evidence that The Joke was anything other than a straightforward screening in honour of its lead actor Josef Somr.

I'd be delighted to be proved wrong, though - especially given what would be a colossal leap between the appalling Facets DVD and a hypothetical Blu-ray!

Of course we do have a middle between those two options now.

http://www.klapka.sk/sk/produkty/dvd/dr ... 40-60.html" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

http://www.klapka.sk/sk/produkty/dvd/dr ... potom.html" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

admira wrote:
http://www.klapka.sk/sk/produkty/dvd/dr ... 40-60.html" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

Any idea if this has English subs?

Can't find any confirmation one way or the other. My instinct is to assume none unless explicitly advised otherwise.

htshell wrote:

admira wrote:
http://www.klapka.sk/sk/produkty/dvd/dr ... 40-60.html" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

Any idea if this has English subs?

Yes

http://www.sfu.sk/download/ts-SFU_nove_ ... 102012.pdf" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

I'm grateful for Admira's links, but I wish he wouldn't make us do all the work. Especially because the overwhelming majority of us don't speak Czech or Slovak!

Anyway, the PDF document confirms that the Slovak Film Institute is readying a number of DVD releases, including:

3 x Juraj Jakubisko: a box containing The Prime of Life (Kristové roky, 1967), Birds, Orphans and Fools (Vtáčkovia, siroty a blázni, 1969) and I'm Sitting on a Branch and I'm Fine (Sedím na konári a je mi dobre, 1989). Subtitles in English and Slovak.

3 x Stefan Uher: a box containing The Sun in a Net (Slnko v sieti, 1962), Organ (1964) and Three Daughters (Tri dcéry, 1967). Subtitles in English and Slovak.

Dialogue 20-40-60 (Dialóg 20-40-60, 1968) - experimental Czech-Polish-Slovak portmanteau film by Zbyněk Brynych, Jerzy Skolimowski and Peter Solan. Subtitles in English and Slovak.

The Man Who Lies (L'homme qui ment/Muž, ktorý luže, 1968) and Eden and After (L'Eden et après/Eden a potom, 1970), a double-disc set of Alain Robbe-Grillet's two Slovak co-productions. Subtitles in English, French and Slovak.

They're also promising, without listing language options:

Tenderness (Neha, 1991), Martin Šulík's 1991 debut. I don't remember liking this much at the time, but given Šulík's growing reputation since then I'll give it another go - especially as it also includes some early shorts as extras.

6 x Dežo Ursiny: a six-film tribute to the popular Slovak musician and fimmaker ((Sanitrárovci, Gajdoš Antalík, O rakovine a nádeji, Dům matky Terezy, Obrázky z výletu za plot blázinca, Času je málo a voda stúpa)

A 1980s/90s Slovak documentary box set.

3x Paľo Bielik - Captain Dabač (Kapitán Dabač, 1959), Forty-Four Mutineers (Štyridsaťštyri, 1957) and Jánošík I-II (1962-3). (English subtitles are presumably a given, since they're already out as separate English-subtitled releases).

Thanks, both of you!

Those look great! I wonder if Birds, Orphans and Fools will be anamorphic this time out.

MichaelB wrote:I'm grateful for Admira's links, but I wish he wouldn't make us do all the work. Especially because the overwhelming majority of us don't speak Czech or Slovak!

Well said, I feel the same.

Jakubisko! I'd figured I'd be lucky to see one of his films in some wretched bootleg bought at enormous expense from GooglEbayExxonMobil just before I died. After reading Peter Hames I've had Jakubisko's name tickling the back of my brain.

bunuelian wrote:Jakubisko! I'd figured I'd be lucky to see one of his films in some wretched bootleg bought at enormous expense from GooglEbayExxonMobil just before I died. After reading Peter Hames I've had Jakubisko's name tickling the back of my brain.

His films go in and out of print, but I've amassed the vast majority on English-subtitled DVD over the years - the two that have eluded me thus far are The Deserters and the Nomads (1968, his international breakthrough) and Infidelity Slovak Style (1980).

But it might be worth keeping an eye on the Second Run threads - last thing I heard, they had their eye on him...

Michael, what about "Dovidenia v pekle, priatelia" ("See You in Hell, Friends")? Do you mean it IS available on an English-subtitled - or really any kind of - DVD?

RE "Deserters" - SFI confirmed to me some time ago they had it scheduled for restoration / DVD release in 2013. I actually bought a DVD-R of "Deserters" from them, sourced from a print with correct colors (the version "available" on the net, a recording from an Italian TV broadcast, has got the colors all over the place) but otherwise unrestored for whopping 130 EUR! "Patience" is sadly not one of my virtues.

Anyway, FWIW, I've a very nice copy of "See You in Hell" and a passable one of "Infidelity" recorded off Slovak TV (digital broadcast) - there are of course no subtitles, but if you (or somebody else here) are "desperate" to see the films, feel free to PM me...

petoluk wrote:Michael, what about "Dovidenia v pekle, priatelia" ("See You in Hell, Friends")? Do you mean it IS available on an English-subtitled - or really any kind of - DVD?

You're right, that's another one - I've only seen the generous clips in the Golden Sixties episode on Jakubisko.

I saw The Deserter and the Nomads in 35mm about twenty years ago in one of Peter Hames' Czech retrospectives - my first Jakubisko, and one of my earliest Czechoslovak films. And probably, come to think of it, my first Slovak one, though I don't think I was especially conscious of the distinction at the time.

feihong wrote:I wonder if Birds, Orphans and Fools will be anamorphic this time out.

I just had a look at the new SFI DVDs - as I expected, the two Jakubisko films previously released in the two Slovak Cinema of the 60's collections were just repackaged for this Jakubisko 3-disc set, hence they're the same 4:3 letterboxed encodes [one of the people involved in the restoration of the SFI titles told me that the masters they delivered to SFI were all in the 2k format, and that the SD encodes (with no anamorphic enhancement for any of the widescreen titles) were created by the SFI themselves]. "Sitting Pretty on a Tree" was 4:3 to begin with, so there's no problem there...

On the other hand, "Dialogue 20-40-60" and "Eden and After" are 1.66:1 anamorphic; "The Man Who Lies" is again 4:3, which is the correct AR for this film.

I hope to have the comparisons of "Sitting Pretty on a Tree" (SFI vs. the older Czech edition), "Eden and After" and "The Man Who Lies" (SFI. vs. the Italian releases - those feature the original French audio, SFI only offers Slovak "dubbing" - I actually prefer the latter, not on account of being Slovak , but because most of the actors in these French-Slovak co-productions were Slovak) up @ DVDFreak by the end of this week.

Oh, and one more note RE "Sitting Pretty on a Tree" - it's the 121-minute cut, while the older Czech edition featured a shorter version (108 minutes) presumably re-cut by Jakubisko himself for that particular DVD release (those Czech DVDs were produced by his own company Jakubisko Film); also the color-timing of the shorter version is different...

petoluk wrote:as I expected, the two Jakubisko films previously released in the two Slovak Cinema of the 60's collections were just repackaged for this Jakubisko 3-disc set, hence they're the same 4:3 letterboxed encodes [one of the people involved in the restoration of the SFI titles told me that the masters they delivered to SFI were all in the 2k format, and that the SD encodes (with no anamorphic enhancement for any of the widescreen titles) were created by the SFI themselves].

That is a little bit of a bummer. Thanks for taking the time to find that out, though!

Karel Zeman films on DVD with ENG subtitles.

http://www.muzeumkarlazemana.cz/Muzeum_ ... vinky.html" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

The gist:

Three Karel Zeman films are coming out on DVD over the next couple of months, namely:

27 November: Journey to the Beginning of Time/Cesta do pravěku (1955)
5 December: Invention for Destruction/The Fabulous World of Jules Verne/Vynález zkázy (1958)
10 January: Baron Munchausen/Baron Prášil (1961)

Extras and English subtitles are promised.

What's much less clear is how easy they are to obtain: initially, they seem to be being sold exclusively in the Karel Zeman Museum in Prague and through newsagents via a tie-in deal with the newspaper Mladá fronta Dnes, with more conventional distribution promised at a later date.

petoluk wrote:I hope to have the comparisons of "Sitting Pretty on a Tree" (SFI vs. the older Czech edition), "Eden and After" and "The Man Who Lies" (SFI. vs. the Italian releases - those feature the original French audio, SFI only offers Slovak "dubbing" - I actually prefer the latter, not on account of being Slovak , but because most of the actors in these French-Slovak co-productions were Slovak) up @ DVDFreak by the end of this week.

Takes longer than expected - I got stuck on "Sitting Pretty on a Tree", trying to find out what exactly the differences between the two cuts are (and having found the first 100, I couldn't just stop, could I? ), but here's at least "The Man Who Lies"...

Jakubisko's Sitting Pretty on a Tree [old Czech DVD vs. Czech TV broadcast vs. Slovak Film Institute]

MichaelB wrote:The gist:

Three Karel Zeman films are coming out on DVD over the next couple of months, namely:

27 November: Journey to the Beginning of Time/Cesta do pravěku (1955)
5 December: Invention for Destruction/The Fabulous World of Jules Verne/Vynález zkázy (1958)
10 January: Baron Munchausen/Baron Prášil (1961)

Extras and English subtitles are promised.

What's much less clear is how easy they are to obtain: initially, they seem to be being sold exclusively in the Karel Zeman Museum in Prague and through newsagents via a tie-in deal with the newspaper Mladá fronta Dnes, with more conventional distribution promised at a later date.