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Posted: **Tue Feb 25, 2014 9:38 pm**

JimmyTango wrote:

COFFRET DVD JEAN EPSTEIN, LE CINÉMA EN TÊTE

Co-published with Potemkin Movies
First 14 films of Jean Epstein, mostly unreleased on DVD.

The complete set will include three thematic boxes:

• The Albatros Productions (1924-1925): Le Lion des Mogols, Le Double amour et Les Aventures de Robert Macaire
• Productions Jean Epstein (1926-1928): Mauprat, La Glace à trois faces, La Chute de la maison Usher et Six et demi, onze
• The Breton movies (1929-1948): Mor-Vran, Les Berceaux, L’Or des mers, Chanson d’Ar-Mor, Le Tempestaire (droits Béatrice Costantini/Films du Trident) et Les Feux de la mer (droits Les Documents cinématographiques) et Finis Terrae (droits Gaumont).

Many of the films have been restored in HD and the silent films will be accompanied by unpublished original compositions signed by Aufgang, Karol Beffa, Neil Brand, Stephen Horne, Joakim, Krikor, Mathieu Regnault, Gabriel Thibaudeau (played by Octet France).

Supplements: the new documentary Jean Epstein, young oceans of cinema James June Schneider (co-produced by the French Cinematheque in 2011), presentations, unpublished interviews and an illustrated booklet.

Credit: http://www.cinematheque.fr" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

Amazing! Stand by for a massive re-evaluation of Epstein and French cinema of the 20s / 30s in general.

The inclusion of Finis Terrae is news, isn't it?

Posted: **Tue Feb 25, 2014 9:45 pm**

zedz wrote:The inclusion of Finis Terrae is news, isn't it?

And welcome news, at that! I think it's his masterpiece (among masterpieces).

Posted: **Tue Feb 25, 2014 9:49 pm**

Will this set have English subtitles? Has that been revealed yet?

Posted: **Tue Feb 25, 2014 9:53 pm**

zedz wrote:Amazing! Stand by for a massive re-evaluation of Epstein and French cinema of the 20s / 30s in general.

Though on the downside, you're no longer special for having seen Mor'Vran.

Posted: **Tue Feb 25, 2014 9:54 pm**

FerdinandGriffon wrote:
zedz wrote:The inclusion of Finis Terrae is news, isn't it?
And welcome news, at that! I think it's his masterpiece (among masterpieces).

It was always on the cards but the Gaumont release might have put it into doubt until they declined a HD release. Shame that Truffaz and Tiersen seem to have fallen off the composers list. Also at the risk of looking the proverbial gift horse in the mouth La belle Nivernaise would have been a welcome addition

Posted: **Tue Feb 25, 2014 10:08 pm**

swo17 wrote:
zedz wrote:Amazing! Stand by for a massive re-evaluation of Epstein and French cinema of the 20s / 30s in general.
Though on the downside, you're no longer special for having seen Mor'Vran.

i'm still special

Posted: **Wed Feb 26, 2014 1:22 am**

Restoration comparison...

Posted: **Wed Feb 26, 2014 3:58 am**

Can we just order this thing already?

Posted: **Wed Feb 26, 2014 10:07 am**

Posted: **Sat Mar 01, 2014 3:04 am**

Drucker wrote:Will this set have English subtitles? Has that been revealed yet?

And the answer is .....?

Posted: **Sat Mar 01, 2014 3:12 am**

Peut-être

Posted: **Sun Mar 02, 2014 8:55 pm**

Doesn't make sense to compare a pirated VHS scan you found on the web with the coming DVD...

Posted: **Mon Mar 03, 2014 9:34 am**

The scan is from a VHS copy of ''L'or des mers'' from Cinemateque Francaise while the comparison is from... http://www.cinematheque.fr/fr/musee-col ... stein.html" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

The DVD copy at the library probably isn't far off in quality.

Posted: **Tue Mar 04, 2014 1:42 am**

Potemkine wrote:[url=http://www.potemkine.fr/Potemkine-fiche-film/Coffret-jean-epstein-coffret-jean-epstein-/pa11m5pr13825.html]Sous titres : Anglais

[/url]

Posted: **Tue Mar 04, 2014 10:37 am**

Great. But what is this?

"Format TV : 16/9 compatible 4/3"

Sounds as if they treated it like an HD transfer as you'd find it on a blu, without properly converting it to standard dvd. In other words: massive loss of resolution due to having to encode the black bars on the sides, too (and massive pictureboxing on a 4:3 screen). Hope I'm wrong.

Posted: **Tue Mar 04, 2014 2:10 pm**

French DVD's very often have that description: "16/9 compatible 4/3". I think it's just a piece of redundant information: Encoded 16/9, but will work on 4/3 too (which is obvious, but somehow the French need to explicitly state that).

Posted: **Tue Mar 04, 2014 2:23 pm**

Ah, okay. But I hope it's meant the other way round: encoded 4/3, but of course compatible to 16/9 screens. It it's encoded to 16/9, the result will be what I described above.

Posted: **Wed Mar 05, 2014 4:52 pm**

Even the French Blu-ray of Visconti's Leopard says "16/9 compatible 4/3", which supports the theory of a 16:9 release (because blu-rays are always 16:9 per default). And you're right, of course, that this means windowboxing. But I'm not concerned regarding the Epstein box. I can't imagine they would windowbox a DVD release like that.

Posted: **Thu Mar 06, 2014 1:32 am**

The Cinematek "Henri Storck" dual format box set is window boxed on the DVD's only. However the Eptein set is DVD only so I would like to think that this isn't the case.

http://www.cinematek.be/index.php?node= ... category=5" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

Posted: **Thu Mar 06, 2014 11:49 am**

Tommaso wrote:Great. But what is this?

"Format TV : 16/9 compatible 4/3"

Sounds as if they treated it like an HD transfer as you'd find it on a blu, without properly converting it to standard dvd. In other words: massive loss of resolution due to having to encode the black bars on the sides, too (and massive pictureboxing on a 4:3 screen). Hope I'm wrong.

Well, blu-rays aren't really anamorphic in the same sense as DVDs can be. That is the image is fixed to 16/9 and all aspect ratios narrower than 1.77:1 (most commonly 1.66:, 1.33:1 and 1.19:1) are presented within that frame with fixed black borders to the left and right.
I think MichaelB asked the question here somewhere: Are blu-rays of films in academy ratio viewable on old 4/3 tvs? My guess would be, maybe depending on the player. In the settings of most blu-ray players you can choose between 16/9 and 4/3 depending on your screen. But that is blu-ray players.
For a DVD producer to encode an academy ratio film onto a 16/9 DVD with fixed black borders to the left and right, and expect that to work flawlessly for all customers - quite a leap of faith. Hopefully this is just a typo.
Maybe technical expert David M can weigh in and sort it all out...

Posted: **Thu Mar 06, 2014 12:15 pm**

It doesn't work for any of their customers. Whilst only those with 4:3 sets would suffer the bordering on all four sides of the image, those with 16:9 sets would still suffer the huge waste of image resolution reserved for the black bars. The Artificial Eye DVDs of their Mizoguchi Collection are like this.

Posted: **Thu Mar 06, 2014 4:38 pm**

The same happened with the initial pressing of the German dvd edition of the restored "Metropolis", which was only called back and corrected after massive protests from customers. But still they didn't learn from it completely: the German dvd of Murnau's "Tabu" has the main film in the correct 1.19 ratio within a 4:3 frame, but the extra materials (outtakes etc, as on the MoC disc) are within a 16:9 frame even though of course these are 4:3 materials, too. So there are precedents for such practice indeed.

Posted: **Fri Mar 07, 2014 2:28 am**

Can anyone verify that the Epstein box is encoded 4/3, but compatible to 16/9 screens? I contacted Potemkine but didn't receive a reply.

Posted: **Sun Mar 09, 2014 3:53 am**

Whatever "16/9 compatible 4/3" is, I hope it's not like what I've experienced with the French 2-DVD set of Une Partie de Campagne (although on the box it says "Format 4/3"). With an Oppo Blu-ray player, Une Partie de Campagne is displayed horizontally stretched to fill up the wide screen of the 16:9 TV. I've tried different settings on the player and the TV many times but could not get the movie to display as 4:3 (except one time and I don't remember how I got there and I can't get there again).

Posted: **Mon Mar 10, 2014 12:00 pm**

I mentioned this before, but have found that some widescreen televisions have trouble showing non-anamorphic 4:3 DVDs in the proper ratio unless the output resolution on the player is reduced to 480p. At that resolution (which is all the resolution DVDs have anyway), the 4:3 image will be presented properly.

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