Artificial Eye / Curzon Film World

[MichaelB]

I've just had a quick spin through Artificial Eye's new releases of Paradjanov's Legend of the Suram Fortress and Ashik Kerib.

As expected (because they've done this many times in the past), they're clones of Ruscico's PAL editions - with the crucial exception of Suram Fortress's soundtrack, which is thankfully in the original Georgian without the horrible, obtrusive Russian voiceover that even interrupted the music in my original Ruscico edition.

In other words, they're currently the best editions of these two films you can get - superior to Kino's because they're PAL originals and not NTSC conversions.

[Tommaso]

f Suram Fortress's soundtrack, which is thankfully in the original Georgian without the horrible, obtrusive Russian voiceover that even interrupted the music in my original Ruscico edition.

Does that mean that they restored the COMPLETE Georgian soundtrack, or are there still those three or four minutes with voice-over as on the new Kino edition (which they claim couldn't be restored because of destruction of source materials)? I would assume the latter, if you say that these are clones of the Ruscicos.

[MichaelB]

I don't know yet - I've only dipped into the disc so far, and won't be able to watch it in full until the weekend at the earliest.

[videozor]

In other words, they're currently the best editions of these two films you can get - superior to Kino's because they're PAL originals and not NTSC conversions.

Thanks for this info - I was about to order RUSCICOs from Ozon.ru

[zone_resident]

Beaver on Summer Hours

[MichaelB]

OK, I can now confirm that the Artificial Eye Legend of the Surami Fortress does have occasional snippets of Russian voiceover, from about 9:05 to 9:32, 55:59 to 56:28 and 57:45 to 1:00:43 - but the vast majority of the soundtrack is in Georgian.

So I'm now pretty certain that this is essentially a PAL version of the Kino disc - and therefore slightly superior because of the lack of PAL-NTSC conversion. In other words, not perfect, but certainly the best version that's out there at the moment.

[Hail_Cesar]

Can someone comment the AE edition of Dekalog versus the facets ? Wich one is better?

[MichaelB]

Can someone comment the AE edition of Dekalog versus the facets ? Wich one is better?

Artificial Eye. Both editions have burned-in subtitles, but the Facets appears to be a PAL-NTSC conversion, and has no extras, while Artificial Eye offers a 47-minute Kieślowski interview. I also suspect the Artificial Eye may be considerably cheaper, especially if you're based outside the UK.

Just out of interest, is there a single Facets edition of anything that's superior to a rival label's offering?

[Skritek]

Apparently they are releasing on Feb. 9:

Away With Words (Doyle, 1999)
Eagle Shooting Heroes (Lau, 1993)

[Hail_Cesar]

Apparently they are releasing on Feb. 9:

Away With Words (Doyle, 1999)
Eagle Shooting Heroes (Lau, 1993)

+
Wong Kar-Wai - Jet Tone Collection
The Laurent Cantet Collection
First Love - Litter On The Breeze

[The Fanciful Norwegian]

Away With Words and First Love are pleasant surprises -- the first is frankly overwhelming, more or less what you would expect from an untethered '90s-era Doyle; it's wearing after an hour and half, and truth be told, I was hard-pressed to remember more than a few minutes of the film after I finished it, but it's pretty fun eye and ear candy, and I suspect it can look better than the R2J disc I saw. First Love is a different animal, pitched about halfway between a Wong Kar-wai parody and pastiche (borrowing Doyle and a couple of Wong's actors) and works reasonably well as both, although mileage will vary based on your tolerance for Eric Kot (his voice is nails on a chalkboard even when he's not doing the "Eric Kot voice").

[What A Disgrace]

Artificial Eye is releasing some more things on March 23rd. Claire Dolan, Chocolat, Let's Talk About the Rain.

...

...and The Wind Will Carry Us.

[Oedipax]

Artificial Eye is releasing some more things on March 23rd. Claire Dolan, Chocolat, Let's Talk About the Rain.

...

...and The Wind Will Carry Us.

Ooh! Excellent news. Very much look forward to the Kiarostami and a surely-anamorphic Denis.

[The Fanciful Norwegian]

Given their track record, is there any reason to think The Wind Will Carry Us won't just be a straight port of the (six-year-old) MK2 release?

[foggy eyes]

Given their track record, is there any reason to think The Wind Will Carry Us won't just be a straight port of the (six-year-old) MK2 release?

Taste of Cherry was, so I doubt this will be different. I haven't actually bought the Mk2 yet (despite the fact that it's been around for half a dozen years), so I hope they port over the second disc of extras too.

[DignanSWE]

Just wondering about the 'A Man Escaped'-dvd-cover. My copy has the same image as the VHS-edition listed at Amazon (and not this image). I prefer the one without Jost.

[jsteffe]

Thanks for answering this, MichaelB. You can ignore my question in the Ruscico thread, since you've answered it here.

I have the older Ruscico PAL edition, and I assume the picture in the Artificial Eye is identical. If that's the case, the Kino NTSC disc *may* be slightly softer if you do a side-by-side comparison, but I find the difference barely discernible. Otherwise the PAL-NTSC conversion on the Kino disc is actually quite good. If you already own the Kino, the Artifical Eye is probably not worth the upgrade.

OK, I can now confirm that the Artificial Eye Legend of the Surami Fortress does have occasional snippets of Russian voiceover, from about 9:05 to 9:32, 55:59 to 56:28 and 57:45 to 1:00:43 - but the vast majority of the soundtrack is in Georgian.

So I'm now pretty certain that this is essentially a PAL version of the Kino disc - and therefore slightly superior because of the lack of PAL-NTSC conversion. In other words, not perfect, but certainly the best version that's out there at the moment.

[zone_resident]

DVD Times on The Banishment and Times and Winds

[Hail_Cesar]

Is it me or AE site isn't updated very often? :-k

[charulata]

Yes. The Artificial Eye site is pretty hopeless.
It hasn't had a refresh for years.
Anyone using a non-skippable splash screen and a home page that is a single image with some mapped links is doing themselves no favours.
My guess is that they have no real content management system so find it very difficult to update the site regularly.
A quick glance at the source code indicates a lack of stylesheets and non-accessibility compliant design and HTML etc. etc.
Nasty.

A real pity given the interest of many of their releases...

[colinr0380]

DVD Outsider review of The Banishment.

[charulata]

Emm that review states "no sign of compression artefacts" which is not quite true.
The transfer is good but not perfect.
The weirdness noted in the DVD Times review is definitely present. Somewhat glad to see it confirmed by someone else since it is pretty strange.
Some more full size captures here (although not trying to highlight these minor transfer issues).

[foggy eyes]

Emm that review states "no sign of compression artefacts" which is not quite true.
The transfer is good but not perfect.
The weirdness noted in the DVD Times review is definitely present. Somewhat glad to see it confirmed by someone else since it is pretty strange.

Those captures look pretty underwhelming to me, and absolutely nothing like the lovely, silvery 35mm print I saw. For such a recent film, surely the transfer should have been a lot better.

Thanks for the reminder about Alexandra, Colin.

[colinr0380]

That's OK! Sorry, I had taken my message down in the meantime when I realised ellipsis7 had already mentioned the release of the Rohmer film on the last page. Very much looking forward to Alexandra too though!

[MichaelB]

Those captures look pretty underwhelming to me, and absolutely nothing like the lovely, silvery 35mm print I saw. For such a recent film, surely the transfer should have been a lot better.

I've just e-mailed Noel Megahey to ask if they are in fact framegrabs or distributor stills, because he's tended to favour the latter in his other reviews. I'll report back when I hear from him.

(UPDATE: That'll teach me not to read the review properly first! They are actual framegrabs, as acknowledged in the text - though he does say he went out of his way to capture a perceived defect.)