Indications of Incoming Indicator Entertainments

[colinr0380]

One thing the Rollin set is going to likely include is that recent 112 minute documentary Orchestrator of Storms: The Fantastique World of Jean Rollin (NSFW) that played at Frightfest a few months back. A quick look at the cast and crew list on imbd shows all of the people you would expect to be involved present and correct.

[Glowingwabbit]

One thing the Rollin set is going to likely include is that recent 112 minute documentary Orchestrator of Storms: The Fantastique World of Jean Rollin (NSFW) that played at Frightfest a few months back. A quick look at the cast and crew list on imbd shows all of the people you would expect to be involved present and correct.

That was produced by Arrow. So we'll see.

[Maltic]

Talking head documentaries should be abolished. Just give of us the interviews raw.

[MichaelB]

Talking head documentaries should be abolished. Just give of us the interviews raw.

I assume that’s not a serious comment? I’ve had to suffer through numerous raw interviews when editing them, and I suspect if this became common practice the number of people willing to do them would swiftly dwindle to just Kim Newman and Tony Rayns, who really can deliver a perfectly structured and polished piece in one take.

I mean, it was quite fun watching film noir expert Frank Krutnik repeatedly mispronouncing Jules Dassin’s name and going “oh, bollocks!” and asking for a retake (he knew all along how Dassin’s name should be pronounced, but it’s incredibly hard not to Frenchify it when saying it out loud), but it would most likely have been an irritating distraction if I’d left it in. And I suspect Krutnik wouldn’t have been too happy either.

[rapta]

One thing the Rollin set is going to likely include is that recent 112 minute documentary Orchestrator of Storms: The Fantastique World of Jean Rollin (NSFW) that played at Frightfest a few months back. A quick look at the cast and crew list on imbd shows all of the people you would expect to be involved present and correct.

That was produced by Arrow. So we'll see.

I was doubtful when I saw that Arrow had produced it, but I'm listening to a chat with Fran Simeoni right now and he gives credit to James Blackford (Indicator) for originally suggesting the idea for the Rollin documentary to Fran/Kat...so you never know. I feel like UK boutiques are open to collaboration in these times (e.g. Arrow and 88 Films releasing Eureka titles in the US, Indicator releasing BFI titles in the US...)

Would seem a bit daft for Arrow to release it separately themselves, probably more sensible they just license it to Indicator for a fee (and then also offer it on Arrow TV)? So indeed, we'll see.

Anticipating March announcements to be either this week or next? I wonder if the UHD announcements are ready (I'm going to assume the Rollin set is UHD, maybe Dracula too).

[hearthesilence]

Talking head documentaries should be abolished. Just give of us the interviews raw.

I assume that’s not a serious comment? I’ve had to suffer through numerous raw interviews when editing them, and I suspect if this became common practice the number of people willing to do them would swiftly dwindle to just Kim Newman and Tony Rayns, who really can deliver a perfectly structured and polished piece in one take.

I mean, it was quite fun watching film noir expert Frank Krutnik repeatedly mispronouncing Jules Dassin’s name and going “oh, bollocks!” and asking for a retake (he knew all along how Dassin’s name should be pronounced, but it’s incredibly hard not to Frenchify it when saying it out loud), but it would most likely have been an irritating distraction if I’d left it in. And I suspect Krutnik wouldn’t have been too happy either.

Yeah, just a terrible idea all around. There's a radio program I used to stream that, for whatever reason, used to upload the raw uncut audio for those who wished to download. (I think this was a mistake on someone's part because it stopped after a short while.) It did nothing to help the listening experience except make you appreciate how many times they re-take something for clarity or enunciation or some technical issue.

[Peacock]

As Michael says; some talent are great but many aren’t! And often the charismatic people you’d expect to be good interviewees end up the worst talking on camera and vice versa…

It’s a fine art removing most of the pauses and um’s/ahs so it’s not unbearable to sit though - I often work with A listers who sound something like:

“The first…. film that I…. that I worked on…. with him was.. it was… I think The Mummy… but no wait…. I might be wrong…. but I think…. um… we first worked on that… together and then…. Sorry what was the question again?”


That all said I personally do appreciate full length interviews as movie extras rather than just a bunch of boring sound bites.

[MichaelB]

If you go over to the BEHP website and listen to their as-recorded interviews with Jack Hildyard and Wolfgang Suschitzky, you’ll very quickly understand why they weren’t just slapped onto Indicator’s The Beast Must Die and Moments as supplied!

In Suschitzky’s case, I think I managed to retain almost every syllable that he uttered in the final edit, but the pauses between sentences (in some cases thirty seconds or more) made the original very heavy going indeed.

[Maltic]

For the record, yeah, I was half-joking. I'm aware that work usually goes into the "raw" interviews. Interview documentaries is just a pet peeve of mine. An absurd format really - snippets from a range of people turned into a supposedly coherent feature-length narration. It's also difficult to skip the boring interviewees when it's all edited together with many short clips.

[yoloswegmaster]

John Morrissey and Sam Dunn have confirmed on a podcast that there will be 4K releases of Jean Rollin titles, as well as UHDs of Italian Exploitation films and English-language genre films from the 70s.

[rapta]

John Morrissey and Sam Dunn have confirmed on a podcast that there will be 4K releases of Jean Rollin titles, as well as UHDs of Italian Exploitation films and English-language genre films from the 70s.

Interesting what he says in detail in the podcast...the English language titles Dunn mentioned he said "I won't say which country" which makes me think it could be, say, Australian genre films. Also more Mexican cinema to come, my guess is The Batwoman to start with and maybe more Santo as well. Curious which Italian exploitation they have, quite exciting! and obviously the mention of more 60's/70's US stuff is my personal catnip...

[MichaelB]

I can't reveal any more than Sam let slip in the podcast (which is here, incidentally), but 2023 is shaping up to be a very interesting year indeed, and for multiple reasons.

Although someone on Another Forum has already complained about the upcoming increase in foreign-language titles, which just proves that literally anything a label does is going to attract criticism from somebody!

[dwk]

It is interesting that their UHDs are going to be things they haven't really focused on. I have to admit that I haven't been too interested in owning much of the stuff they have been releasing, but I am hopeful that these UHDs will be more to my taste.

[ryannichols7]

what a stellar month to start the year! ordering the bundle for the very first time. Indicator of course release a broad range of films, but classic Hollywood is a corner I'm way into.

the newsletter hint has been confirmed to be...

SpoilerShow

The Curse of the Crying Woman (La Maldición de la Llorona) dir Rafael Baledón (1961)

[What A Disgrace]

Hopefully this interest in Mexican fantasy and horror cinema leads to a release of Macario! I've been wanting to see that film since I read the synopsis off of the TV (TCM, I believe), and I regret not calling out of work to watch it ever since.

[ryannichols7]

I trust after the first two sold out in the UK as quickly as they did (less than a year) that's something they'd want to move more of. definitely hope so, I find it very interesting and think it's a neat lane for Indicator to specialize in, I can't imagine any other UK labels going for this stuff

[MichaelB]

There are certainly more Mexican titles being planned than was the case a year ago when Indicator was still testing the water.

[reaky]

It’d be smashing if Indicator could branch out into Argentinian film too, and release the Film Noir Foundation restorations Flicker Alley have put out. Arrow Academy used to have a relationship with FA, but that may have bitten the dust.

[rapta]

It’d be smashing if Indicator could branch out into Argentinian film too, and release the Film Noir Foundation restorations Flicker Alley have put out. Arrow Academy used to have a relationship with FA, but that may have bitten the dust.

This would be great, in fact I'd fully support this whoever decided it was a worthwhile idea. You could actually see Eureka or Radiance considering it, if Indicator or Arrow weren't interested, but I'd be surprised since Noir has clearly sold so well for those labels (Indicator especially).

There are certainly more Mexican titles being planned than was the case a year ago when Indicator was still testing the water.

!!!

[alacal2]

Having just caught up with the podcast I was slightly disappointed to hear that there will not be as much British stuff compared to last year. Is this an indication that this particular market is getting more difficult to access? Certainly, John Morrissey expressed some regret.

[Drucker]

Having just caught up with the podcast I was slightly disappointed to hear that there will not be as much British stuff compared to last year. Is this an indication that this particular market is getting more difficult to access? Certainly, John Morrissey expressed some regret.

I think it's just an indication that COVID messed up the release schedule, and things were rearranged which were easier to produce extras for (per comments like MichaelB's). I wouldn't take any given month's announcements to mean any definitive change of expectations in terms of what Indicator are focusing attention on.

[MichaelB]

There was a disproportionate amount of British stuff last year, in large part thanks to Covid lockdowns playing havoc with the 2020-22 schedule - if you look at the spine numbers, it's clear that the Pemini box and Voices should have come out much, much earlier than they eventually did.

Basically, when the lockdowns started, it became very clear very quickly that projects that needed a lot of hands-on work (especially anything that involved handling original vault elements or doing original filming, especially if elderly and otherwise Covid-vulnerable people might be involved) would have to be delayed, whereas projects that could be worked on remotely (i.e. where all the features and most of the extras came from already digitised masters, and the other extras involved original writing or self-recorded commentaries) were significantly accelerated - the Columbia Noir boxes being excellent examples.

So while it's true that there won't be nearly as many British films out in 2023 as there were in 2022, there'll certainly be some. Not least because, as Sam Dunn confirmed in the podcast, this is very much a personal mission for all of us - there's still far too much out there that's unreasonably hard to see right now. Sometimes in any form, never mind decent copies - I don't think there were even bootleg copies of the Pemini films doing the rounds before that box came out (they'd have to have been sourced from 1970s TV broadcasts), and a huge chunk of Michael J. Murphy's output was effectively inaccessible unless you were a personal friend of his and could persuade him to give you a private viewing. And it's projects like that which, for all the whopping amount of work involved in beating them into releasable shape, are often the most creatively and personally satisfying ones to work on, as they're adding to our understanding of British film history rather than just recycling or enhancing it.

[MichaelB]

Mind you, fewer British films were released in 2022 than might have been the case, thanks to the Michael J. Murphy box being delayed until 2023! And of course that means that the total number of British features coming out in 2023 is already a record (and Murphy's films won't be the only ones; at least eight British features are being prepped for release over the next few months), but I can see how that might constitute cheating.

Review copies of the Murphy box are now in circulation, so hopefully independent reactions will start to appear before too long. I'd be intensely mistrustful of anything purporting to cover the entire box that appears this week, unless the author has absolutely no life and can get by with minimal sleep, but hopefully there'll be some decently conscientious reviews emerging before the actual release date.

[alacal2]

Thanks Michael, that's reassuring. I've always regarded the British films as Indicator's calling card!

[MichaelB]

It's worth noting that before he jointly created the Indicator label with John Morrissey in 2016, Sam Dunn was head of BFI Video Publishing for the better part of a decade, and it was he who was very heavily involved with the fairly marked shift towards British DVD and Blu-ray releases circa 2008, as well as the BFI Flipside strand (or at least its physical-media incarnation). The Alan Clarke project was very much his baby as well.

And there are three former BFI staffers on the Indicator team (Sam, James Blackford, myself), and Anthony Nield has a long and distinguished track record of championing obscure and neglected British cinema, to the extent that his reviews are sometimes the only substantive ones that you'll find anywhere, so his credentials as a British film devotee are rock-solid too.

An excellent example of this is 90° in the Shade, which never got British theatrical distribution, had an almost invisibly low-key UK premiere over a decade later on television (in what was bound to have been a pan-and-scan truncation) and which only emerged in its original 2.35:1 form courtesy of Odeon's DVD release circa 2011 - which was also largely ignored aside from Anthony's lengthy Digital Fix review. Which really was the oldest genuinely substantive English-language piece that I could turn up about the film when I started doing serious research for the Indicator disc's commentary.

So even if there's a slight shift away from British films in 2023, please rest assured that they're very much still on the agenda.