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Excellent maneuver!

Quite glad to see that the old big studio titans (in this case, Warner/Fox) have given way to the smaller guys - who consistently do a better job. This new subforum couldn't come at a better time for me though! I've gone from: July '12 - owning zero Arrow titles, Aug '12 - owning The Funhouse Bluray to Dec '12 - owning basically every Arrow Video title.

Thus, within the span of a year they've gone from "somewhat known" in my books to perhaps my favorite UK label (hell, they're even giving Criterion a run for their money right now - certainly topped Criterion's Fassbinder, Time Bandits and Tin Drum efforts - just to name a few). My only complaint is that Arrow doesn't release enough titles (though they've steadily increased 2 fold since last year).

*prepares for inevitable Arrow speculation/suggestion/wishlist thread*

Minkin wrote:Thus, within the span of a year they've gone from "somewhat known" in my books to perhaps my favorite UK label (hell, they're even giving Criterion a run for their money right now - certainly topped Criterion's Fassbinder, Time Bandits and Tin Drum efforts - just to name a few). My only complaint is that Arrow doesn't release enough titles (though they've steadily increased 2 fold since last year).

There's been a definite increase in output - here's a comparison of Q1 in 2012 vs 2013:

(all dual-format unless otherwise stated)

2012
Jan: Black Sunday, Lisa and the Devil, Django Prepare a Coffin (DVD)
Feb: Camille 2000, The Lickerish Quartet, Score, Dead End Drive-In (DVD)
Mar: Deadly Blessing, Baise-Moi (DVD)
TOTAL: 9 (6 dual-formet, 2 DVD)

2013
Jan: Hell Comes to Frogtown, Hellgate
Feb: Cheeky, Frivolous Lola, The Killers (BD), Phantom of the Paradise (BD), Rabid Dogs
Mar: Blind Woman's Curse, Pit Stop, The Stuff, Sullivan's Travels (BD), White of the Eye
TOTAL: 12 (9 dual-format, 3 BD)

One reason for this increase in output is that Arrow took on more producers over the summer. I'm one of them, and while my schedule's pretty busy it's not unrealistically insane - on average, I'm personally overseeing one release per month, which gives me plenty of time to make them as good as I possibly can within my allotted budget. For instance, September to December is taken up with Night of the Hunter, The Long Goodbye, The Killers and Sullivan's Travels, with early 2014 completely dominated by Arrow's mystery Arrow Academy Q2 blowout.

Oh, and wish away! These threads will be regularly read by decision-makers at Arrow.

It's a pity they don't have the UK rights to The Driver. They did reply to my question on Facebook but didn't (wouldn't/couldn't?) say who owns it in the UK. I wonder if it's Fox themselves but if it was Fox surely they'd licence it out to the likes of Arrow or Second Sight as I can't see Fox caring too much about the film.

Minkin wrote:My only complaint is that Arrow doesn't release enough titles (though they've steadily increased 2 fold since last year).

We are on 4 releases a month on average (3 Video/1 Academy) we would love to increase Academy but it's quite a crowded market so we will be monitoring sales carefully, if the appetite is there we will do it!

Minkin wrote:*prepares for inevitable Arrow speculation/suggestion/wishlist thread*

We are happy to take suggestions! We are releasing some of our own personal favourites in 2014 and we can't wait to share them with you!

What about Altman's California Split, which I don't think has ever been released on home video in the UK? The Columbia DVD in the States notoriously suffered cuts due to music rights issues. If Arrow could bring out a complete version, I'm sure Altman fans would snap it up.

otis wrote:What about Altman's California Split, which I don't think has ever been released on home video in the UK? The Columbia DVD in the States notoriously suffered cuts due to music rights issues. If Arrow could bring out a complete version, I'm sure Altman fans would snap it up.

Still has some sort of issue unfortunately. We would love to do more Altman though!

Finch wrote:It's a pity they don't have the UK rights to The Driver. They did reply to my question on Facebook but didn't (wouldn't/couldn't?) say who owns it in the UK. I wonder if it's Fox themselves but if it was Fox surely they'd licence it out to the likes of Arrow or Second Sight as I can't see Fox caring too much about the film.

Couldn't. We don't know who has the rights unfortunately.

Here's a question.

How come Arrow decided to give Hellgate (a truly abysmal film) a blu ray release instead of putting it in the "Drome" range?

Bürgermeister wrote:Here's a question.

How come Arrow decided to give Hellgate (a truly abysmal film) a blu ray release instead of putting it in the "Drome" range?

You think Hellgate is abysmal but some (few admittedly) people don't. There are other reasons of course. Why did we release Surf Nazis Must Die? Again some people just like Troma films. We don't just release films we like or we think everyone is going to like but also it's about having a good relationship with licensors and producers. If releases like these can do ok there's a much better chance of our licensing their bigger titles, titles they might not willingly hand over to just anyone. As to why it's Video and not Drome - there's a HD master and we try and do everything in as best quality possible and Drome is a DVD only label. Why is there an HD master for Hellgate and not Dead End Drive In? We don't know, you'll have to ask Lakeshore!

Bürgermeister wrote:How come Arrow decided to give Hellgate (a truly abysmal film) a blu ray release instead of putting it in the "Drome" range?

Probably the master was up to snuff.

Personally though, I've never bought a single Drome title. It has always felt like an Arrow "Essential Arthouse" line. Some might like the budget aspects, but I'd rather see a film get the full Arrow treatment - plus most are DVD only (and some have gone from Drome to Arrow Video blu... Django Prepare a Coffin - thus it's often better to wait). I would rather have Arrow not bother at all with the Drome line and instead bring out an additional full-spec blu title (even if that only means one additional title every few months). So in answer to the original question - I'll most likely blind buy Hellgate, but I wouldn't bother with it if it were a Drome title. Edit - or what TonyleStephanois had to say.

Thanks for the response to my previous ramblings! I feel the speculation thread could get dangerous (I had top stop myself before I started making a list of several hundred titles). I guess I'll make my suggestions broad then: Roger Corman catalog (things like Star Crash, etc), Troma catalog *doges flying fruit* (Toxic Avenger series, etc - though I'm rather partial to Blood Hook - filmed in my friend's hometown - they still talk about it around those parts of Wisconsin), and (given my interest in censorship and banned films) - any of the DPP 39 (or expanded 74 titles), or any of movies that are banned in Germany. I also haven't bought any Scream Factory titles - in hopes of an eventual Arrow Video edition (so any of those will be just fine). On more specific titles, I'm fully assuming (speculation) we will soon be seeing Dr Goldfoot + sequel (Bava), Abominable Dr Phibes + sequel, and Escape from New York (+ sequel?).

As for the Academy line... Oh dear, I feel like we could be here all day.

I still need to extract the discussions of Les Diaboliques, The Garden of the Finzi-Contini, Il Generale della Rovere, The Killers,Miracle in Milan, Il Tetto, Battle Royale, Phenomena, and probably a dozen others. It's just a bit time consuming, but I'll get to some more this afternoon. This section will probably continue to evolve over the next couple of days. Thanks, Michael, for that great Arrow Academy index.

domino harvey wrote:Wait, does the title of this thread give away that De Palma is the director who's getting the boxed set treatment?

I originally started pulling out individual threads for the De Palma titles, but Arrow has referred to them as a collection, so I merged them. I did the same for Tinto Brass, and should probably do it for Dario Argento and Mario Bava. Anyone else?

Jeff wrote:I originally started pulling out individual threads for the De Palma titles, but Arrow has referred to them as a collection, so I merged them. I did the same for Tinto Brass, and should probably do it for Dario Argento and Mario Bava. Anyone else?

Thank you, Jeff, for sorting this. If discussion is there, collections include Dario Argento, Lucio Fulci and Vincent Price. There are others but individual threads may be better for those.

Oh man, White of the Eye! The rest of them are just icing on the cake after that.

Edit: This is 6 days old! Why didn't anyone tell me?!

In this latest Arrow blog post, James White and David Mackenzie talk about the transfer and encoding process.

Is someone from Arrow monitoring the forum?

I placed my first direct order on November 2nd. On the website, I'm unable to find that order or its status, or even any evidence that the order exists. However, I have the email confirmation, and I've just attempted twice to request assistance at [email protected] -- to no avail, as both messages have bounced:

[email protected] via emea01-db3-obe.outbound.protection.outlook.com
3:01 PM (4 minutes ago)
Reply
to me
Delivery has failed to these recipients or groups:

[email protected]
The email address you entered couldn't be found. Please check the recipient's email address and try to resend the message. If the problem continues, please contact your helpdesk.

----

I had typed the address on the first attempt, so on the second attempt, I used the link provided in the order confirmation. No mistake there as far as I can tell. I love Arrow, but this direct relationship is not exactly off to an auspicious start.

Try one of these two email IDs (very friendly and helpful) -
Laura Winsol ([email protected])
Nicole Huges ([email protected])
You can use their FB page too, but most probably they will provide you with the above mentioned emails.

Don't worry about not finding any evidence for your orders at their website. That's how they roll. Just keep the emails you received when you placed the orders. You can just forward the order confirmation email to any of these two ladies as reference and state your problem.

I hope this will help.

Much like MoC, their website is bit amateur. But Nicole helped me find an order recently that hadn't turned up, sorted it all in a jiffy.

If you want a general email address rather than a specific named one, [email protected] worked for me.

There's a new release of Inferno listed for next month, did we know about this?

Michael/David/Tony, do you know if it will be the same disc from 2010? A new encoding/authoring job would be great, considering:

http://www.caps-a-holic.com/hd_vergleic ... 84#auswahl" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

The upcoming release of Tenebrae is definitely restored, but I guess since it has not been mentioned anywhere, Inferno is just a repackaging.

I'm certainly under the impression that Inferno is a repackaging, but I'm not involved with this release.

It appears as if they've dropped the entire second disc of extras as well.

Minkin wrote:On more specific titles, I'm fully assuming (speculation) we will soon be seeing Dr Goldfoot + sequel (Bava), Abominable Dr Phibes + sequel, and Escape from New York (+ sequel?).

Abomnable Dr. Phibes is coming, got a postcard for it in my Lifeforce Steelbook

I got a postcard for...The Delta Force!

Orlac wrote:I got a postcard for...The Delta Force!

I'm actually going to buy that.

The good stuff just keeps on coming - Arrow just tweeted they're doing Withnail & I (release TBC)! Can't wait for payday & getting to chip in on the Borowczyk Kickstarter