Studio Canal / Kinowelt / Optimum

Vinegar Syndrome, Deaf Crocodile, Imprint, Cinema Guild, and more.
Post Reply
Message
Author
User avatar
tojoed
Joined: Wed Jan 16, 2008 11:47 am
Location: Cambridge, England

Re: Studio Canal/Kinowelt/Optimum

#826 Post by tojoed » Tue Sep 06, 2011 3:01 pm

Finch wrote: The only real howler they've put out this year is the Don't Look Now Blu.
... which I also bought, and though I'm sure you are right, it looks fine on my TV. Perhaps it looks OK because the screen size is only 42".

User avatar
MichaelB
Joined: Fri Aug 11, 2006 6:20 pm
Location: Worthing
Contact:

Re: Studio Canal/Kinowelt/Optimum

#827 Post by MichaelB » Thu Sep 08, 2011 9:36 am

At normal viewing distance on a 42" plasma, Don't Look Now looks great. It's a different matter from three feet away, but since I don't watch films like that, I'm more than satisfied.

Handily, the row over that disc gave me an unusually good advance impression of what I was in for, once I'd stripped out the hyperbole on both sides.

User avatar
mfunk9786
Under Chris' Protection
Joined: Fri May 16, 2008 4:43 pm
Location: Philadelphia, PA

Re: Studio Canal/Kinowelt/Optimum

#828 Post by mfunk9786 » Thu Sep 08, 2011 10:13 am

Couldn't agree more with that assessment.

User avatar
swo17
Bloodthirsty Butcher
Joined: Tue Apr 15, 2008 10:25 am
Location: SLC, UT

Re: Studio Canal/Kinowelt/Optimum

#829 Post by swo17 » Thu Sep 08, 2011 1:51 pm

You'd probably have to screw up a Blu-ray pretty badly for it to not still look great from 8'-10' away on a 42" plasma.

User avatar
zedz
Joined: Sun Nov 07, 2004 7:24 pm

Re: Studio Canal/Kinowelt/Optimum

#830 Post by zedz » Thu Sep 08, 2011 8:31 pm

I've watched Don't Look Now (on a 52" plasma from a sensible distance) and I found it quite disappointing and waxy. A very weird effect, actually, as it looked like it had simultaneously been artificially softened and artificially sharpened. So it was sharper than an SD image, but not in the sense of looking more like 35mm, more like up-rezzed SD or a poor source that had been scrubbed and boosted. Skin texture was especially badly affected. This meant it looked better than the DVD of the film I already had but not as good as a really good SD transfer (say the best of Criterion or the BFI) up-rezzed through my Oppo. I couldn't really recommend the disc.

User avatar
John Edmond
Joined: Mon Jan 18, 2010 8:35 pm

Re: Studio Canal/Kinowelt/Optimum

#831 Post by John Edmond » Thu Sep 08, 2011 8:59 pm

That weird contradictory effect struck me as well. It was like somebody had smeared grease over my TV and then decided to wobble a fly-screen in front of it. Unpleasant.

User avatar
manicsounds
Joined: Tue Nov 02, 2004 10:58 pm
Location: Tokyo, Japan

Re: Studio Canal/Kinowelt/Optimum

#832 Post by manicsounds » Fri Sep 09, 2011 7:49 am

"One From The Heart", November, DVD only?! (and missing the Coppola commentary)

"The Outsiders" in October, BD and DVD (no word if it includes the extended or not)

"The Conversation" in October BD and DVD.

I really wanted One From The Heart on BD with commentary... oh well.

User avatar
colinr0380
Joined: Mon Nov 08, 2004 4:30 pm
Location: Chapel-en-le-Frith, Derbyshire, UK

Re: Studio Canal/Kinowelt/Optimum

#833 Post by colinr0380 » Wed Sep 14, 2011 9:49 am

Optimum has just released (on DVD only and with fixed subtitles) Chris Marker's 1997 film Level Five. It was the first time I had seen it and it struck me as being a fascinating companion to Sans Soleil in the way it shows a fascination with Japanese society past and present and the way that we have a female narrator piecing together work left behind by their companion - a video game in this case rather than 'postcard footage'. I also particularly liked the way we jumped from her scenes isolated in her office with only her computer for company to a third person male narrator travelling Japan (her companion? or Marker himself? or someone else entirely? I was a little unsure)

Very much about memory, as in Sans Soleil, but memory of a particular event - the mass suicides on Okinawa at the end of the Second World War which in turn pushed the Americans towards dropping the bomb on Hiroshima. The framework with the female narrator is related to trying to finish a strategy computer game about the battle that her companion started before he disappeared (did he commit suicide himself?), which inspires a discussion of virtual and real experiences as in this quote:

"Strategy games are made to win back lost wars, no? Do you think a player would repeat history and learn he could only play his part one way. I tried the Marienbad game. After a few moves the computer said "I won already, but we may go on if you like". Death could say that"

I wonder what Marker makes of the Civilisation series of strategy games!


The narrator dives into the internet (via a virtual reality terminal called OWL: Optional World Link!) to do further harrowing research on the period. The internet (and computer scenes as a whole) are quite clunky but also charmingly dated in a way, feeling as if they capture that whole 'VR' period of cinema. There is also a great sequence of her wearing different 'masks', as if she is going to a high society ball, which is quite a novel way of talking about a user's avatar!

While the technology feels a little dated, the ideas in these internet sequences are just as relevant today: having to sift through mountains of often irrelevant information and the conflicting feelings of being annoyed at conversations with harassing people or people without useful information, and also the sense that you might come across some piece of information that may destabilise your whole world view, as when the narrator has a conversation with another person who may have known her companion, which makes her wonder how many other people he may have told about the computer game project.

There is also the idea that the information on the internet, by being unmediated, is both purer and more dangerous than official accounts. So the research into the Okinawa suicides becomes a kind of obsession and then a harrowing experience on finally finding the footage of one gentleman called Kinjo (talked of throughout the film) describing how he and his brother killed his parents and younger siblings in the face of defeat.

This makes it a much, much darker film than Sans Soleil. It is much more about loss and of impending death, and of the messages we leave behind, either intentionally or which get inferred from our absence. There is a scene in the film which starts off as quite funny, as the narrator relates a story about a parrot, Cocoloco, who lost its memory whilst talking at the same time to one of those silly parrot toys with a microchip in that responds to sound. As the narrator's voice gets lower though, the microphone in the toy parrot doesn't pick up the sound, so does not respond to her, which makes it seem as if it has lost its memory itself. What starts off as a rather silly joke becomes really quite moving, and it is beautifully performed by Catherine Belkhodja (according to the imdb she is apparently the mother of Maïwenn Le Besco, which was fascinating to note!), folding in this toy's actions into her internal monologue.

There's also quite a bit of documentary footage in here as well, travelling around what looks like a museum in Okinawa commemorating all of the scenes of suicide (with happy tourists taking commemorative photographs!) and interviews with, most notably, Nagisa Oshima.

There are also excerpts from a documentary film by Oshima (which does not appear to be listed on imbd) described in the credits as 'Les morts sont toujours jeunes. Cimetieres marins'. As might be inferred from the title the clips shown in Level Five appear to show divers searching the seas around Okinawa and showing some of the bodies from that time still underwater. There is also a quite strange clip from one of John Huston's war films (Let There Be Light) showing an American soldier undergoing regression under hypnosis to the events he witnessed on Okinawa.

It is an incredibly moving film enquiry into history, technology and how in some ways people are at the mercy of these large events and become almost powerless to act in a different manner (There is a very moving sequence showing a woman about to jump from some cliffs, who just before she jumps notices the camera. This leads to a discussion of whether the camera watching caused her to jump, as if she could not lose face or turn back without it being caught on film. How much does the presence of a camera or other recording device change, or reinforce, the events that are being captured?) If the audience can be lenient towards the somewhat dated presentation of technology (which I feel is quite charming in itself!), this is certainly an incredibly powerful piece of work.

djvaso
Joined: Fri Nov 27, 2009 6:00 am
Location: Serbia&Montenegro

Re: Studio Canal/Kinowelt/Optimum

#834 Post by djvaso » Wed Sep 14, 2011 5:09 pm

Lancée en 2009 à travers le monde, la collection s’enrichit prochainement de 2 grands classiques :
La Grande Illusion, à l’occasion du 75ème anniversaire de ce chef-d’œuvre de Jean Renoir
To be or not to be, à l’occasion des 70 ans de cette comédie satirique unique signée Ernst Lubitsch »

User avatar
The Fanciful Norwegian
Joined: Tue Nov 02, 2004 2:24 pm
Location: Teegeeack

Re: Studio Canal/Kinowelt/Optimum

#835 Post by The Fanciful Norwegian » Wed Sep 14, 2011 6:08 pm

colinr0380 wrote:There are also excerpts from a documentary film by Oshima (which does not appear to be listed on imbd) described in the credits as 'Les morts sont toujours jeunes. Cimetieres marins'.
Judging from the French titles, these are actually two different films:

Shisha wa itsumademo wakai (The Dead Remain Young)
Ikiteiru umi no bohyō (Graves at Sea / The Sunken Tomb)

The English titles come from Maureen Turim's book (which spends a bit of time examining The Dead Remain Young). I don't think they're official.

User avatar
colinr0380
Joined: Mon Nov 08, 2004 4:30 pm
Location: Chapel-en-le-Frith, Derbyshire, UK

Re: Studio Canal/Kinowelt/Optimum

#836 Post by colinr0380 » Wed Sep 14, 2011 9:03 pm

Ah, that explains it! Thanks Fanciful Norwegian!

User avatar
eerik
Joined: Sun Mar 22, 2009 4:53 pm
Location: Estonia

Re: Studio Canal/Kinowelt/Optimum

#837 Post by eerik » Tue Sep 20, 2011 3:42 pm

Image Image

User avatar
manicsounds
Joined: Tue Nov 02, 2004 10:58 pm
Location: Tokyo, Japan

Re: Studio Canal/Kinowelt/Optimum

#838 Post by manicsounds » Mon Oct 03, 2011 11:59 pm


connor
Joined: Thu Jul 29, 2010 2:03 pm

Cold Mountain (2003)

#839 Post by connor » Sat Oct 08, 2011 5:38 pm

Anyone check out the brand new Optimum UK bluray of Cold Mountain? I'm wondering if it's an improvement on the pretty-terrible Region-A version but can't find any reviews...

User avatar
manicsounds
Joined: Tue Nov 02, 2004 10:58 pm
Location: Tokyo, Japan

Re: Studio Canal/Kinowelt/Optimum

#840 Post by manicsounds » Sat Oct 08, 2011 7:27 pm

Considering the treatment given to The Talented Mr Ripley and The English Patient Blu-ray, I wouldn't expect it to be good...

User avatar
domino harvey
Dot Com Dom
Joined: Wed Jan 11, 2006 2:42 pm

Re: Studio Canal/Kinowelt/Optimum

#841 Post by domino harvey » Sat Oct 08, 2011 7:46 pm

What's so bad about the Canadian Blu-ray? Looked okay to me when I watched it a few months ago

User avatar
manicsounds
Joined: Tue Nov 02, 2004 10:58 pm
Location: Tokyo, Japan

Re: Studio Canal/Kinowelt/Optimum

#842 Post by manicsounds » Sun Oct 09, 2011 11:44 pm

I don't know about the Canadian discs, but the UK Ripley disc and UK English Patient disc are not getting stellar marks, average at best.

User avatar
bigP
Joined: Thu Mar 20, 2008 10:59 am
Location: Reading, UK

Re: Studio Canal/Kinowelt/Optimum

#843 Post by bigP » Sat Oct 15, 2011 8:33 am

In the Realm of the Senses gets a strong review at Blu-ray.com. Feeling some relief on this one. No review up yet for Empire of Passion, but I assume it's also going to be of high quality.
Blu-ray.com on Merry Christmas Mr Lawrence.

User avatar
colinr0380
Joined: Mon Nov 08, 2004 4:30 pm
Location: Chapel-en-le-Frith, Derbyshire, UK

Re: Studio Canal/Kinowelt/Optimum

#844 Post by colinr0380 » Sun Oct 16, 2011 6:04 pm

Here's another review of the Quatermass and the Pit Blu-Ray from DVD Outsider (as much as I like Brian Donlevy's insouciance in the earlier films, Andrew Kier has to stand out as the best screen Quatermass! Though I have not yet had a chance to see what John Mills did with the character in the late 70s TV series)

By the way Icon Entertainment have 'coincidentally' released a bunch of Hammer films on DVD in the UK this month including Captain Kronos, Vampire Hunter, and The Abominable Snowman. Well timed with the Quatermass and the Pit Blu-Ray is a double bill of the feature film versions of The Quatermass Xperiment and Quatermass II, along with a separate release of the other Hammer sci-fi horror that while not being as well known as the Quatermass films is just as good - X The Unknown.

Jonathan S
Joined: Sat Jun 07, 2008 3:31 am
Location: Somerset, England

Re: Studio Canal/Kinowelt/Optimum

#845 Post by Jonathan S » Mon Oct 17, 2011 2:25 am

I read on Roobarb's Forum (currently unavailable) that most of the Icon releases are terrible quality (cropping, ghosting, print damage), vastly inferior to the previous UK DVD releases. (I haven't seen the Icons myself but the frame comparisons with the DD issues which I do have looked conclusive.) If I recall correctly, The Abominable Snowman is the exception and Captain Kronos was taken from the "wrong master" and is being repressed.

For Quatermass and the Pit, I always find the claustrophobia and detail of the original BBC serial much more powerful - I also prefer Andre Morell as Quatermass to either of Hammer's actors!

User avatar
colinr0380
Joined: Mon Nov 08, 2004 4:30 pm
Location: Chapel-en-le-Frith, Derbyshire, UK

Re: Studio Canal/Kinowelt/Optimum

#846 Post by colinr0380 » Mon Oct 17, 2011 12:33 pm

A shame about the quality of the Icon discs, especially because I was mostly excited for X The Unknown.

I haven't actually seen the TV version of Quatermass and the Pit - I'll have to try and track down the DVD, if its not OOP.

User avatar
antnield
Joined: Tue Jun 28, 2005 1:59 pm
Location: Cheltenham, England

Re: Studio Canal/Kinowelt/Optimum

#847 Post by antnield » Mon Oct 17, 2011 12:40 pm

Hammer posted on their website about the quality of the new DVDs...
UPDATE 13 Sep 2011:
Prints/masters used (to the best of our knowledge):

All Dick Barton films
Icon editions use unrestored 1.33:1 UK prints 4x3
DD editions use the same prints

The Quatermass Xperiment
Icon edition uses an unrestored 1.33:1 UK first-release "Xperiment" print 4x3
(Icon edition was planned to use an unrestored 1.33:1 UK re-release "Experiment" print 4x3)
DD edition used restored 1.33:1 UK first-release "Xperiment" master 4x3 (lost in VDC fire)

X The Unknown
Icon edition uses an unrestored 1.33:1 UK print 4x3 including original BBFC card
DD edition used an unrestored (though better condition) 1.33:1 US print 4x3 (master lost in VDC fire)

Quatermass 2
Icon edition uses an unrestored 1.33:1 UK print 4x3
DD edition used the same unrestored 1.33:1 UK print 4x3

The Abominable Snowman
Icon edition uses the restored "Hammerscope" 2.35:1 UK print (presented 16x9) including original BBFC card
DD edition used the same print (without BBFC card)

Captain Kronos Vampire Hunter
Icon edition erroneously used 1.33:1 unrestored UK print 4x3
Icon edition re-pressed will use restored 1.66:1 UK master 16x9
DD edition used the same restored 1.66:1 UK master 16x9

Jonathan S
Joined: Sat Jun 07, 2008 3:31 am
Location: Somerset, England

Re: Studio Canal/Kinowelt/Optimum

#848 Post by Jonathan S » Mon Oct 17, 2011 1:19 pm

colinr0380 wrote:A shame about the quality of the Icon discs, especially because I was mostly excited for X The Unknown.
I haven't actually seen the TV version of Quatermass and the Pit - I'll have to try and track down the DVD, if its not OOP.
Although the original DVD of the TV Pit is long OOP, there's a very good Quatermass Collection with a superior transfer of the series, the complete TV version of Quatermass II and the surviving episodes of Quatermass Experiment, plus various extras.

Hammer's info on the Icon releases is useful but, judging from the frame comparisons I saw, the differences are more marked than their "restored/unrestored" comments suggest. Icon's X the Unknown appeared heavily cropped at the sides, removing figures from the frame edges in longer shots.

User avatar
bigP
Joined: Thu Mar 20, 2008 10:59 am
Location: Reading, UK

Re: Studio Canal/Kinowelt/Optimum

#849 Post by bigP » Mon Oct 17, 2011 1:57 pm

Blu-ray Definition.com on Empire of Passion. Received mine through the door today and gave both this and In the Realm of the Senses a quick spin and both look fantastic. The cover artwork and the slipcovers are absolutely gorgeous too. Looking forward to watching them through with all the extras asap.

User avatar
Lazertron
Joined: Sun Jun 21, 2009 5:26 pm
Location: Austria

Re: Studio Canal/Kinowelt/Optimum

#850 Post by Lazertron » Fri Oct 21, 2011 4:32 am

Jonathan S wrote:Although the original DVD of the TV Pit is long OOP, there's a very good Quatermass Collection with a superior transfer of the series, the complete TV version of Quatermass II and the surviving episodes of Quatermass Experiment, plus various extras.
I managed to snatch up a copy of the BBC TV DVD when I was vacationing in Manchester last year for 2 Pounds or so at a second hand store, so I guess I was pretty lucky. I have yet to watch this one but I did watch the 1967 Blu-ray release yesterday evening, which was a very pleasureably experience. Can't wait now to see the seemingly more claustrophobic 1958 version.

Post Reply