Olive Films

[Ashirg]

I guess The File on Thelma Jordon is no longer coming from The Criterion.

[triodelover]

All the money scraped up by not hiring a subtitle man finally affords them a 4k scan.

Well, that and charging a MSRP of $24.99 each for four of the Three Mesquiteers series. Not bad for 55-minute B-western fillers for Saturday matinees that I saw in the 50s for 25¢ along with all the cartoons, a serial and the main feature.

[Calvin]

Please consider spending just 1 minute of your time asking Olive to include a visual essay from Tag.

Also, they now respond to comments on their Facebook page if that's an option for you.

[Drucker]

Triodelover goes to Yankee stadium and buys Cracker Jacks for a nickel, as well.

Sorry couldn't resist, friend.

[triodelover]

Triodelover goes to Yankee stadium and buys Cracker Jacks for a nickel, as well.

Sorry couldn't resist, friend.

It's quite alright, but I wouldn't be caught dead in Yankee Stadium. Ebbetts Field is another matter.

I *think* you got the point, however.

[domino harvey]

It's In the Bag! (1945) and Donen's Indiscreet (1958) on Blu in January

[captveg]

It's In the Bag! (1945) and Donen's Indiscreet (1958) on Blu in January

Also, announced for January the other day but not mentioned in this thread:

Cujo (1983)
Frontier Horizon (aka New Frontier) (1939)
King of the Pecos (1936)
The New Frontier (1935)
Ticks (1993)

[captveg]

Three more for January:

Don Giovanni (1979) - "In Italian with optional English subtitles. Restored in HD"
Les misérables (1958) - "In French with optional English subtitles. Restored in HD"

These are licensed from Gaumont

Source

Trust (1990) - "REMASTERED IN HD FROM THE FILM’S ORIGINAL NEGATIVE - HD TRANSFER SUPERVISED BY DIRECTOR HAL HARTLEY

Includes
Upon Reflection: The Making of “TRUST”
Interviews with Adrienne Shelly, Martin Donovan, Hal Hartley and Line Producer/Assistant Director Ted Hope
Interviews conducted by DJ Mendel"

I believe this is a Republic title licensed from Paramount, but I may be wrong about that.

Source

[warren oates]

Trust! Woo-hoo! Best Olive announcement ever! For all the classics they've released, none of them matter to me as much as this one. I have younger friends and relatives who've never heard of Hal Hartley, as too many of his best films are out of print in the U.S. I was hoping Olive would pony up or that Hartley would get the rights back himself, but this is really the best of both worlds, as Possible Films has repeatedly stated that self-produced/distributed Blu-rays make no financial sense for them -- yet Hartley apparently gets to approve this transfer. Great news.

[Jean-Luc Garbo]

Great news indeed. One of my favorite Martin Donovan performances, too. My mom loves Adrienne Shelly and she's never seen this one. It'll be great to get her a copy. It's been years since I last watched it so I'm due for a fresh viewing. Those extras are a welcome sight.

[CSM126]

Trust! I've had my fingers crossed for that for so long now. Buying at least two copies: one for me and one for a friend whom I introduced to the film via my well-worn VHS earlier this year (she fell in love with it, no surprise).

[domino harvey]

Whoa, Olive went MOC/Criterion and offers Frank and Panama's the Trap in two aspect ratios

[knives]

Awesome, which aspect ratio do you prefer?

[domino harvey]

I saw it in full-screen, which like most Paramount titles of the era looked like unintended open-matte to me. I imagine it will look "right" in widescreen, though the emptiness of the open-matte does work in the film's tonal favor!

[swo17]

Beaver makes it sound like the widescreen option here is just a 16:9 zoom-in on the open matte presentation. Which I literally can do myself by just pushing a button on my remote.

[captveg]

Beaver makes it sound like the widescreen option here is just a 16:9 zoom-in on the open matte presentation. Which I literally can do myself by just pushing a button on my remote.

Yeah, but he also says 1.78:1 is a "bastardization" of 1.85:1, which is definitely hyperbole.

[The Fanciful Norwegian]

Beaver makes it sound like the widescreen option here is just a 16:9 zoom-in on the open matte presentation. Which I literally can do myself by just pushing a button on my remote.

You would also sacrifice considerable resolution by doing so. The only proper way to do this would be to do two separate HD scans -- one matted, one unmatted -- or a 4K open-matte scan that could be downscaled to HD Academy and HD widescreen versions. Olive did a new 4K transfer of The Trap, so they presumably took the second route.

[The Fanciful Norwegian]

First, no Olive obviously aint in the ballpark for doing 4k scans and spending hundreds of thousands on new harvests and encodes. So live with this one for now darlings.

Scott Peck (a.k.a. "misterlime," who I believe used to post in this thread and clearly has some connection with Olive) has stated on HTF that The Trap, Shanks, The File on Thelma Jordan, and The Quiet Man all got new 4K scans and these are serving as the basis for the Olive releases. He didn't actually say Olive themselves did the scans, so I misspoke there--they may have just come as-is from Paramount, though Olive may have been involved as well. Obviously Olive couldn't foot the bill by themselves, and I didn't mean to imply they did. But unless something changed, The Trap is from a 4K source.

That said...I didn't realize before that The Trap was actually a Vistavision film. In that light it does seem strange that the widescreen version is (at least to judge from the single comparison on DVD Beaver) a matted version of the Academy image. Shouldn't an Academy version of a VV film be cropped on the sides relative to a widescreen version? I don't know the ins and outs of VV, but if the widescreen version on the is a more-or-less accurate version of what was meant to be shown in theaters in 1959, that means they only meant to show a small rectangle extracted from the middle of the negative, cropped on all four sides.

[Frankinho007]

Coming in February:

[knives]

Nice to see more Collison released on disc.

[Stefan Andersson]

I´d like to see The Assassination Bureau on Blu from Olive. Nobody seems to request this film on Blu.

[captveg]

Some more Feb titles (exact date TBA):

[Jeff]

Fantastic news on the Altman! I'm assuming this is the new Film Foundation/UCLA restoration.

[Gregory]

I was wondering if anyone else has thoughts on the transfers in the Preminger set. I've watched Hurry Sundown and Skidoo and was amazed by how inconsistent they transfers are, ranging from one shot to another from fine picture quality to very sub-DVD blurriness and bad jerkiness in panning and tracking shots. What has me most curious are the intermittent but very brief delays, almost like a couple of repeated frames, visible whenever motion should be smooth — a distracting, irregular hiccup in the image, even as the soundtrack continues uninterrupted, throughout both films. Sorry if I'm not describing this clearly. DVD Talk (Stuart Galbraith) and Blu-ray.com (Jeffrey Kauffman) both gave these two discs 4/5 stars for video quality. From what I'm seeing, these were either botched or arguably not worth the upgrade to blu-ray. I understand if there were unavoidable deficiencies in the source masters, but the little hiccups in the motion of the films makes me wonder what went wrong. Haven't watched Such Good Friends yet , but I'm made to understand it'll look even worse than the first two.

[matrixschmatrix]

The Running Man seems odd- has there been an Olive release that already had a region A blu before?