Facets

[skuhn8]

Well, it looks like I will finally also be lowering the parades on this outfit (at least for a while)... I mean poor prints and transfers, high pricing and bad attitude is one thing, but... I finally get my paws on a copy of ...And Give My Love To the Swallows, I snap that little beauty out of its case, only to find the entire surface of the disc smeared in some thick encrusted opaque goo, as if someone had whipped out his one-eyed jack in an unguarded moment, and allowed it to leak its nectar of life all over the bloody disc (pardon me, if I am waxing poetically uncouth in this situation, but no other description quite seems to fit the bill on this disappointment)!

So now they're actually ejaculating on their product?! Next they'll be throwing a dose of anthrax in the case.

[Floyd]

I didn't read through the whole thread so this may be old news but I stumbled upon this when I typed in Google search "my girlfriend walks like Charlie Chaplin" which strangely enough is true, I was searching for others in similar situations. However, I found this.

I suppose you get to see the professionalism of Facets on display including features such as an Oscar live blogging rundown.

[MichaelB]

Well, it looks like I will finally also be lowering the parades on this outfit (at least for a while)... I mean poor prints and transfers, high pricing and bad attitude is one thing, but... I finally get my paws on a copy of ...And Give My Love To the Swallows, I snap that little beauty out of its case, only to find the entire surface of the disc smeared in some thick encrusted opaque goo, as if someone had whipped out his one-eyed jack in an unguarded moment, and allowed it to leak its nectar of life all over the bloody disc (pardon me, if I am waxing poetically uncouth in this situation, but no other description quite seems to fit the bill on this disappointment)!

I need to see this for research, and my copy's due to arrive in a few days - so I'll report back to see if it has the same problems!

[HerrSchreck]

FWIT, one of my students ordered Shattered and said it was the same version that Peter Knavel offers. I know Facets sometimes uses Grapevine (!) as a source, too.

Who is Peter Knavel, and where does he offer what he offers, and what does he offer? Does he offer any other of these german silent rarities? What did he say the print quality was?

[Scharphedin2]

Michael, actually it is glue (I think) that somehow has gotten on to the surface of the DVD in a semi-circular pattern. I would be surprised if this is a general problem. It has been an on and off project for me to find some clever way of removing it, but I have not been successful.

[vogler]

FWIT, one of my students ordered Shattered and said it was the same version that Peter Knavel offers. I know Facets sometimes uses Grapevine (!) as a source, too.

Who is Peter Knavel, and where does he offer what he offers, and what does he offer? Does he offer any other of these german silent rarities? What did he say the print quality was?

Should this be Peter Kavel (not Knavel)? His website can be found here. I have not bought anything from him but he seems to have a large amount of rare German & French silents amongst other things. I was going to contact him a while ago to see what versions of the Gance films he has, but I never got around to it.

We are your one-stop shopping for those rare & scarce titles not found elsewhere.

Rare and "Lost" Titles, Such as...
"Dr. Mabuse" - The Original Complete German 5 hour version
"J'Accuse" - Abel Gance's WW1 Anti-war drama - either silent or sound version
"Eyes Of The Mummy Ma" "Die Puppi" "The Tiger's Coat"
Conrad Veidt in: "Opium" + "Wilheim Tell" + "Cesare Borgia" + "A Walk in the Night" + "The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari" + "The Brothers Schellenberg" + "The Beloved Rogue" + "The last Performance"
"Hamlet" Asta Neilsin "Sir Arne's Treasure" "Anna Bolena"
"Tarzan & The Golden Lion" "Dante's Inferno" 1924 "The Burning Soil"
"Menschen Am Sontag" "La Roue" "Sodom And Gomorrah"
"A Page Of Madness"

We are your mail order source for silent titles you can't find elsewhere.
In order to keep our costs and prices down, titles can be ordered from our catalog. Send a buck ($1.00) (not an indian, just a dollar) which is refundable on your first order.

[HerrSchreck]

Ah, I think i recall seeing that site some years ago. SHATTERED not on the list though. OPIUM might be worth a whirl, as Bret Wood is probably not going to be coming out w this thru Kino as he once mentioned as a possibility, and I'm dying to see this film.

[MichaelB]

I watched And Give My Love to the Swallows last night, and I'd endorse its current position in the yellow category. (That said, it's clearly superior to the appalling Pearls of the Deep, but I've already said I think this should be an unarguable red).

Picture quality is closer to VHS than DVD, but the print is otherwise reasonable. There's a jump-cut splice that removes half a line of dialogue early on - since it's subtitled but not delivered, I'm assuming this is a technical glitch and not intentional. I'm also assuming that the heavily desaturated colours (green and grey are dominant) are also intentional - they certainly fit the overall mood. The picture is 4:3, but this seems to be correct. Sound is the original mono, and perfectly adequate.

The subtitles are the usual Facets yellow monstrosities (why do they have to be so damn ugly?), but they are at least reasonably in sync this time round. One caveat is that there's a fair bit of German dialogue with Czech subtitles, but the latter are impossible to read as Facets crudely plonks its own subtitles on top - but that's only an issue for people like me who have a smattering of German and Czech and are interested in how the two compare.

No extras, and the booklet says more about Jaromil Jires than the actual film - but it's certainly one of the better Facets discs I've seen recently.

(There is a Czech disc available, but this has no subtitles - and I'm afraid that's definite, as I found a scan of the back cover that leaves no room for doubt)

[alfons416]

do anyone know the quality of Jerzy Kawalerowicz NIGHT TRAIN (POCIAG)? i've been thinking of buying that for a while but i never trust facets..

[miless]

any news on Satantango?

[rumz]

via Patrick:

"No solid date just yet...summer is likely but I promise nothing at the
moment with this movie!"

[skuhn8]

via Patrick:

"No solid date just yet...summer is likely but I promise nothing at the
moment with this movie!"

At least that's a promise Facets can deliver on.

[sevenarts]

And Facets continues to be the single best reason to go region-free. Seriously, the AE set isn't even much more expensive than Facets' likely price for this set.

[MichaelB]

The good news is that Pearls of the Deep is now out on DVD in the Czech Republic.

The bad news is that I'm virtually certain that it doesn't have English subtitles.

Still, if I feel up to it, I could always try ripping the video file and adding the Facets titles - properly synchronised this time!

(It also has Ivan Passer's A Boring Afternoon, cut from the main feature prior to release - though almost certainly without English subtitles either)

[Steven H]

Facets will be releasing a collection of experimental animation by Tsuji Naoyuki on July 24th. The films presented will be Trilogy About Clouds (13min, 2005), A Feather Stares at the Dark (17min, 2002), Experiment (4min, 1997), Travel to the Lost World (10min, 1994), Wake Up (4min, 1992), and For Almost Forgotten Stories. Midnighteye.com had this to say about A Feather Stares at the Dark (in a review for an animation accumulation titled Thinking and Drawing):

Tsuji is famous for his unique charcoal art animation technique in which he draws on an easel and photographs the image, then partially erases what he has drawn and draws over it for the next frame. He repeated this process thousands of times over the course of eight years to create this dream-like film. Tsuji seems to take a stream-of-consciousness approach to his work, letting each image flow steadily into the next one fueled by the inspiration of the moment. The resulting film explores themes of sexuality, creation, and mythology in a way that reminded me of the oeuvre of Jean Cocteau.

Also, Dazed Digital has a little bit of Children of Shadows, Tsuji's newest film, as a flash video (not in the set, unfortunately, though I believe this film is available in a recently released collection from Parasol Unit). Just that little bit is enough to have me very excited for this set.

[Gregory]

A new Facets release, Hara Kazuo's Extreme Private Eros - Love Song, gets DVD Talk's highest rating!

[Scharphedin2]

The two Hara releases both look very strong, and they also come with nice booklets that are printed on glossy paper no less (as opposed to the also instructive "cine-booklets" included with many of their releases that look as if they had been run off on a xerox copy machine).

In fact, several of Facets recent releases have been of notably higher quality than many of the releases described earlier in this thread. The recent Sokurov string of releases have all been fine (of course they were taken from "Ideale Audience" releases, so I assume Facets is not to credit directly for the quality of these releases).

The Vlacil releases are also strong (for Facets at least) -- especially Valley of the Bees. And, again, The Fifth Horseman Is Fear was - to my eyes - a very nice transfer; and, I even felt that the slightly earlier release of The End of August at the Hotel Ozone was acceptable.

Someone with a stronger technical grasp on DVD authoring can possibly confirm or deny these assessments. I am loath to comment on these issues, because several people's impressions on discs have diverged so dramatically to my own in the past. The above therefore should be read merely as a comment on the relative quality of these particular Facets releases. They are absolutely among the nicest of the label's efforts that I own (and I own a few of their discs). And, the films are very interesting...

[Don Lope de Aguirre]

The two Hara releases both look very strong, and they also come with nice booklets that are printed on glossy paper no less

I have never heard of this guy... this all sounds very interesting indeed!

Where can I find more information on this guy?

Any word on the release of Goodbye CP?

[MichaelB]

Just to add to the general thumbs-ups concerning the Sokurov releases, I've just watched Elegy of the Land (containing Maria and Last Day of a Rainy Summer), and both were fine.

Or rather, to clarify: Maria was flat-out superb - a pin-sharp transfer of a lovely print, with the colours in the first half coming across particularly vividly. I really can't see how this could have been improved on.

By contrast, Last Day of a Rainy Summer looks as though it was taped off a terrestrial broadcast received via an unamplified indoor aerial (I haven't seen such ghosting since I had to make do with such a setup myself) - but my understanding is that it's a miracle that it survived (it's one of Sokurov's very early documentaries made for Gorky TV on absurdly limited resources) and that we're most unlikely to see anything better. And it makes no real difference to appreciation.

The other pleasant surprise was that unlike a homegrown Facets release the subtitles were white, typo-free, properly synchronised and optional. Not much in the way of extras, but there's some good contextual information on the disc as a PDF document.

[MichaelB]

...and I can also thoroughly recommend the Elegy of a Voyage and Hubert Robert: A Fortunate Life diptych.

Presentation is virtually identical to the above (extras include another PDF booklet and three short Sokurov video interviews, one of which features him enthusing about J.M.W.Turner's paintings - hardly a surprise that he's a fan), and subtitles are white, typo-free, properly synchronised and optional.

As for the main transfers, I can't see how they can be much better - they're both video sourced, but you wouldn't expect anything else for Elegy of a Voyage (which relies on video post-production effects). The notes admit that a superior transfer of Hubert Robert is possible, but it requires going back to the original 35mm materials - and, to be honest, the DVD transfer looks just fine: any slight image softness hardly hurts material that's supposed to look hazy and ill-defined.

Artistically, it's also a more satisfying package in that both films are well worth seeing - in the other set, Maria is superb, but the Gorky TV short is strictly for completists only.

[Scharphedin2]

...and I can also thoroughly recommend the Elegy of a Voyage and Hubert Robert: A Fortunate Life diptych.

I was really happy to read your endorsements of these Sokurov titles, Michael. Earlier in this thread, I almost felt bad to having participated in recommending some of Facets' releases that you and others subsequently felt disappointed with. It was therefore with a few second thoughts that I posted on the recent Facets releases above. Have you by any chance seen any of the other releases -- Fifth Horseman, the Hara films and/or Valley of the Bees? I should add that The End of August at Hotel Ozone is the weakest of these titles (closer in quality to Facets' earlier releases than to the Sokurov discs -- still, to me, worth a look).

Don Lope -- If there is any way that you can get in touch with the people who were involved in releasing the Japanese New Wave discs, they created a huge pdf booklet on Hara in connection with their release of The Emperor's Naked Army. I have not seen CP or Private Eros yet, but the general impression that I get is that Hara's films are extremely personal documentaries. There is very much a "japanese new wave" sentiment at play in his work. Maybe someone else in the forum with greater viewing experience of the films, and overview of Japanese film (documentary) history can help place Hara in context, and draw parallels to other filmmakers. But, do see if you can get your hands on the booklet by JNW.

[MichaelB]

Sorry, here's another one I watched recently: Innocent Sorcerers.

I'd endorse its current "yellow" rating in that it is at least watchable: the subtitles clearly haven't been proofed properly (sometimes they spill over onto the next line, and on at least one occasion this happens twice, producing a horribly ungainly four-line subtitle), but they are at least properly synchronised and optional (and white) - so on that score they're a vast improvement on rather too many other Facets DVDs.

The picture is pretty crappy - think murky VHS - and the source print was in none too great condition to begin with but it's never seriously unwatchable. The transfer's biggest problem is that it's got the worst PAL-to-NTSC conversion judder that I've ever seen - every time there's a pan or any other kind of sideways movement, it's as though a silent earthquake momentarily hits the screen.

Intriguingly, Glenn Erickson's DVD Savant review concludes:

Also, the image exhibits an odd speed adjustment every few seconds, a flaw that repeated on two players. I hope it doesn't appear on final product, or there will be a lot of returns. Someone needs to tell Polart Video that the DVD market expects higher quality. Carefully remastered imports from other companies are priced much lower. Note, 6.16.06: Readers have written to tell me that final discs do not have this stutter problem. Facets has promised to send me only final product screeners from now forward.

...yet my copy was clearly a final release version, appears to be 100% legitimate, and has the same problems.

That said, I'd still go with "yellow" overall, to acknowledge the better-than-average subtitles - but it's a pretty sad state of affairs that a disc like this should be considered one of Facets' more successful efforts!

[petoluk]

The good news is that Pearls of the Deep is now out on DVD in the Czech Republic.

The bad news is that I'm virtually certain that it doesn't have English subtitles.

Still, if I feel up to it, I could always try ripping the video file and adding the Facets titles - properly synchronised this time!

(It also has Ivan Passer's A Boring Afternoon, cut from the main feature prior to release - though almost certainly without English subtitles either)

Michael, unfortunately, you're right. The Czech Pearls of the Deep DVD is not English friendly. If you're interested, there's a comparison between the Czech DVD & the Facets version here...

Cheers!

Peto

P.S. Besides Passer's A Boring Afternoon, there's also Juraj Herz's short film SbÄ›rné surovosti (according to this page, the English title should be Scrap Brutalities) on the Czech disc.

[MichaelB]

Thanks for that - and also for confirming that aside from the subtitles this is clearly a significantly better transfer. I'll probably buy it anyway for the superior picture and the shorts - you never know, it might encourage me to brush up my appallingly rusty Czech!

(I did actually study the language seriously for a year - with a proper teacher and everything - but not so you'd know...)

[petoluk]

Not at all, Michael, and - as the Sirius Cybernetics Corporation door in Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy would say - glad to be of service.

I saw quite a few of your older posts today, and it seems to me you like Czechoslovak cinema, don't you?

A bit off-topic, maybe, but if you're interested, I've got a dozen (or 2) of rare Czechoslovak films recorded from the digital satellite broadcast - great quality! There are obviously no English subtitles, but if you brush up your Czech, as you said... Drop me a PM, if you want to know more, OK?

Cheers!

Peto