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Arrow, is your refrigerator running?

What's the UK rights situation with Blood for Dracula? Tempted to go for the Japanese BD but will hold off if there's even the remotest chance of Arrow getting around to it in the future.

Thanks for confirming Michael, I can buy the Shout Factory BD in good conscience then.

I wonder how many of the newly announced titles will suffer delays.

Bürgermeister wrote:I wonder how many of the newly announced titles will suffer delays.

Hopefully none of them, but some of the recent delays were due to problems at the manufacturing end that are impossible to predict.

But none of the newly-announced sets has packaging as complicated as the limited edition Withnail & I or the Six Gothic Tales box, so fingers crossed.

MichaelB wrote:packaging as complicated as the limited edition the Six Gothic Tales box

Won't it be a "simple" cardboard box in which are the 6 Amarays + the book, à la Borowczyk ?

tenia wrote:

MichaelB wrote:packaging as complicated as the limited edition the Six Gothic Tales box

Won't it be a "simple" cardboard box in which are the 6 Amarays + the book, à la Borowczyk ?

If you think the Borowczyk package was simple to put together, you're living in a dreamworld. I was petrified for several weeks between signing off on the big book in June and receiving photographic evidence in August that everything really did fit together as intended. Although we specified dimensions to a fraction of a millimetre, the fact that we were getting the books printed separately in Poland to save money meant that we had to be absolutely certain that they'd deliver what was asked for - even a millimetre out in terms of width would have been disastrous.

And if a package contains multiple discs, sleeves, etc., you have to be absolutely precise in the specifications - it's all too easy for things to go wrong at the manufacturing end.

Now that Arrow is launching in the US: How about Cockfighter? The BBFC is no longer an excuse . I'll take a Flight to Fury/Back Door to Hell-set too, though these are admittedly lesser Hellmans.

Arrow are a little wary of releasing US-only titles at present, given the obvious resentment shown by quite a few UK customers to the whole Arrow Video USA idea.

Although I suspect something like that might be greeted with more understanding, given that an uncut UK release is clearly impossible without a change in the law.

(But this is purely hypothetical: there are no plans to acquire or release it.)

In theory, could you issue a US release that wasn't region locked and sell it direct from a US location to the UK without having to get it certified?

MichaelB wrote:

tenia wrote:

MichaelB wrote:packaging as complicated as the limited edition the Six Gothic Tales box

Won't it be a "simple" cardboard box in which are the 6 Amarays + the book, à la Borowczyk ?

If you think the Borowczyk package was simple to put together, you're living in a dreamworld.

Whoops. My bad, then.

matrixschmatrix wrote:In theory, could you issue a US release that wasn't region locked and sell it direct from a US location to the UK without having to get it certified?

Certified where?

This js what currently happens with every release in existence, no? Releases only go through the proper procedures in the countries where they are to be sold, and are then bought and imported by people all around the world. Do you not import stuff yourself?

MichaelB wrote:Arrow are a little wary of releasing US-only titles at present, given the obvious resentment shown by quite a few UK customers to the whole Arrow Video USA idea.

I hope Arrow USA lasts longer than the Criterion dual format experiment.

I've had salads that lasted longer than Criterion's dalliance with dual format.

Screw Criterion! I'm collecting Arrows now!!!!

Are we changing the name of the board to Arrowforum?

No, we're changing it to the Hogan Forum

Drucker wrote:Are we changing the name of the board to Arrowforum?

I fully support that. No reason.

matrixschmatrix wrote:In theory, could you issue a US release that wasn't region locked and sell it direct from a US location to the UK without having to get it certified?

Yes. The region-locking might be a complicating factor, but if the rightsholder could be persuaded that they'd never get an uncut UK release, that might sway things.

Although of course they might demand money for the UK rights as well as the US ones in exchange for a region-free deal, which might complicate matters - I daresay it would depend on how popular the film was likely to be in the US and how many people were realistically likely to import it.

(Again, I cannot stress enough that I'm not speaking for Arrow here - merely thinking out loud.)

Given the success of the Kickstarter and willingness of consumers to snatch up future titles sight-unseen, has Arrow US given any thought to a subscription model like that of Oscilloscope or Drafthouse, with a flat rate for a future number of releases in your chosen format with the option to renew afterwards, &c?

Arrow has just won Label of the Year (for the second year running), Best Remaster (for Camera Obscura: The Walerian Borowczyk Collection) and Best Packaging (for Withnail & I) at the Home Cinema Choice Awards.

Vote for your favourites of 2014 - and maybe win stuff.

Does anyone else have Arrow's DVD of Visconti's Conversation Piece? I recently bought it (new from Amazon) but found it froze around the one hour mark and could not be resumed until several minutes later (start of Chapter 7). The replacement has the same fault, and I've tried both copies on four different machines, some of which can't even progress beyond the 50-minute mark. I'm guessing it's something to do with the authoring of the layer change.

I only watched it once, bought it quite a while ago (in '06). At the time I wrote "small glitch at 78:45". (I don't have ready access to it, else I'd give it a look-see for you.)

Next time I watch Conversation Piece, it will be the Raro blu-ray, for better or worse.

Definitely for worse. (That's one of the worst looking Blu-rays I've ever seen.)