The Future of Home Video

[Adam X]

I only became aware of it after the fact, myself, through a filmmaker who used the platform to make some trashy shorts.

[domino harvey]

Introducing a new, revolutionary viewing experience. Vertical Viewing has launched on The Arrow Video Channel!

Yes, I too have seen the Hunger Games

[BigMack3000]

Is that also making fun of quibi?

[dwk]

Viacom buys 49% of Miramax and Paramount is set to take over distribution of its catalog. Hopefully Paramount will be open to licensing some of the Miramax titles to Criterion and Shout.

[colinr0380]

Maybe it could lead to The English Patient returning to Criterion!

[patreig]

Maybe it could lead to The English Patient returning to Criterion!

I hope not. Otherwise we will never get a 4K edition.

[dwk]

Most stuff is never going to get a UHD release and even if Paramount releases that film themselves, you'd be lucky for a pressed Blu-ray.

[artfilmfan]

Maybe it could lead to The English Patient returning to Criterion!

I hope so.

[FrauBlucher]

Netflix getting into classic arthouse cinema via streaming. Makes deal with MK2 for the French territory

[The Fanciful Norwegian]

I doubt anything like this will be replicated outside of France, where MK2 sells the rights to these films to local distributors (including Janus/Criterion); taking the streaming rights off the table by entering into their own bulk deal with Netflix would have a big impact on the perceived value of these titles and push away potential distributors. They can do it in France because MK2 releases their own catalog there.

[tenia]

They've actually been making video distribution deals with TF1 for quite some years, Potemkine a couple of years and Carlotta 1 year. It's been a long time IIRC since they last released somethikg directly themselves.

[MichaelB]

I was briefly excited by the news that dozens, possibly hundreds of Czech films were about to appear on Netflix, and then I realised that I was reading a Prague news site and that the deal was strictly local (in the UK, there are maybe two or three, all very recent).

On the other hand, I was pleasantly surprised to discover that the UK version of Amazon Prime really does have dozens of Czech films (I counted at least sixty), although in general they're not the famous 1960s ones - there's a heavy bias towards the last fifteen years.

(I've just written a piece for the BFI website about the current availability of eastern European films on UK streaming services, and have to admit that I found more than I was expecting to find - my spreadsheet totted up about 230 titles when I'd covered the main sources. But only about 20% were made in the 20th century, and there's strong evidence of catalogues being acquired en bloc - for instance, you can watch ten Krzysztof Zanussi films online if the mood takes you, but I could only find two Andrzej Wajdas and the only Kieślowskis were the post-1990 ones.)

[Luke M]

Well, Vine’s already come ‘n’ gone, and now we’re in the middle of the apocalypse.

TikTok has replaced Vine and it's better in just about every way.

[Drucker]

Well, Vine’s already come ‘n’ gone, and now we’re in the middle of the apocalypse.

TikTok has replaced Vine and it's better in just about every way.

No

[Michael Kerpan]

Some of us here are so old that they don't know what Vine is/was, much less Tik-Tok.

[tenia]

Things we could have perfectly lived without, but that seemingly some now can't.

[371229]

Some of us here are so old that they don't know what Vine is/was, much less Tik-Tok.

And some of us here don't care what Vine was or Tik-Tok is.

[Michael Kerpan]

And some of us here don't care what Vine was or Tik-Tok is.

That too....

[furbicide]

I came across this just now – looks like a number of French labels have been struggling badly as a result of COVID-19, and are asking for government assistance:

https://www.lesinrocks.com/2020/06/08/c ... vernement/

[tenia]

50, then 60, indie labels have indeed reminded the government not to forget them from the culture stimulus package. They've lost up to 75% of their sales compared to forecasts because they depend up to 70% on physical stores, and many labels delayed their march-april-may releases to june-july-august (some even to september). Based on the CNC Q1 figures, I've calculated that the overall physical video market dropped by about 45% in the last weeks on march, after the lockdown started (on march 17th), which I suppose is the kind of drop we'll have for Q2 here (though the lockdown was lifted mid-may).

The issue is that when physical sales plummetted, SVOD kept soaring : it was already representing 57% of the French video market in 2019, imagine what the lockdown split will look like (SVOD could weigh up to 75% of the market and the physical sales less than 20%).

However, SVOD is a structural competitor to physical labels, and that's not the point of this plea for help, which really has to do about covering the lockdown's loss of sales.

[dwk]

The Digital Bits is reporting that the rumors that Disney will no longer be releasing live action titles on 4K UHD are true.

[domino harvey]

Hope this stops people waiting for Criterion to board this train to nowhere

[Ribs]

I have extreme doubts about the validity of that article because it seems to view the fact no announcements of further titles after next month’s two as confirmation, when it has in itself been six months since the last set of titles. Like, you could have had this same panic in March about no more releases after Star Wars but, wouldn’t you know it, there’s two releases next month. And the article itself says they are hopeful to do releases of James Cameron’s titles as well - which would be exactly the same as all the other Disney catalog titles, which have been tied in to/alongside similar current releases, which seems to suggest it’s more “it’ll still happen?” It makes too much money to do countless rereleases of franchise or same filmmaker/star movies every time a new one comes out to stop.

[tenia]

Hopeful about releases from Cameron ? This is the site who has been saying for 10 years the restoration of Abyss was just around the corner and yet.

They also didn't get something as simple as a region code right, because their sources can be so all over the place, sometimes it's just Amazon's product page.

All this to say that I don't take The Bits' word for Gospel anymore.

[dwk]

All this to say that I don't take The Bits' word for Gospel anymore.

I don't either, but the Disney rumor has been floating around for a couple of weeks and was worth sharing.