Palisades Tartan

[PhilipS]

An old Japanese custom was to hang a broom upside down, meaning no visitors are wanted today. There's also a saying to the effect that hanging a broom upside down at the back will make unwanted visitors go away.

[feckless boy]

Talkative ryokan-keeper Mrs Sasaki pays a surprise visit to the Hirayama residence. Treats the maid tactless and rants incomprehensibly in kyoto-ben.

Question is: why is the broom upside down? Just a coincidence?

[MichaelB]

I've just had a quick spin through Tartan's first Pasolini box, and report on it in more detail in the separate Pasolini thread.

In a nutshell, a very pleasant surprise all round.

[foggy eyes]

Tartan have announced Sergei Eisenstein Volume 1 for a May release:

Volume 1

Strike (1924)
Battleship Potemkin (1925)
October (aka Ten Days That Shook The World) (1927)

Future Eisenstein sets are currently scheduled for July and September…

Volume 2

Alexander Nevsky
Bazhin Meadows
Ivan the Terrible (Pts 1 & 2)

Volume 3

Time In The Sun
Que Viva Mexico!
Mexican Fantasy

[Gropius]

Tartan have announced Sergei Eisenstein Volume 1 for a May release:

Ah, and it includes the new Strike soundtrack by the contemporary composer Ed Hughes, which I've heard is quite interesting.

[Michael Kerpan]

No General Line (Old and New)?

[Tommaso]

They say there will be the original soundtrack for "Potemkin". I only hope that it will be the Meisel score, not the later Mosfilm compilation from Shostakovich's symphos. Vol.1 would be a truly excellent buy if they manage to get a significantly better print of "Potemkin" than the Shepard one and included the Meisel score.

What is "Time in the Sun", btw? Another version of "Que Viva Mexico"? Not a bad idea to put "Que Viva" and the alternative "Mexican Fantasy" out in one collection.

[foggy eyes]

Just stumbled across a welcome extended review of Tartan's Jodorowsky Collection in the new issue of Sight & Sound:

Viewed on the bootlegs that circulated before, El Topo seemed to be set in a bland world of sand and earth tones. Now it is dominated by a searing cartoon-like blue sky and enlivened by stabs of brash colour. Even on poor nth-generation copies, The Holy Mountain held a hallucinatory fervour. In its remastered form, it's dazzling: every colour is intense, from the green of mountain grass to the flesh of crucified lambs.

Even though S&S is not the most alert of publications to the quality of DVD transfers, I'm assuming that these are as excellent as we have hoped.

[ellipsis7]

Guardian article mention the DVD release here.

Bergman's SAWDUST AND TINSEL comes to Tartan on June 11th...

[domino harvey]

Bergman's SAWDUST AND TINSEL comes to Tartan on June 11th...

oh man, FINALLY =D>

[alfons416]

i've just heard that Tartan will release Victor Sjöströms Körkarlen (The Phantom Carriage)!!! that is really great news. apparently it has been announced with their release of another nordic silent; Häxan (By Benjamin Christenson)

[meanwhile]

Häxan, Sawdust and Tinsel and The Devil's Eye are all now scheduled for release on 23rd July.

[addz]

As I said in another thread, I'm very much looking forward to Haxan as I've been meaning to pick it up for a while.

I almost bought the Criterion but decided to hold out in case MoC added it to their collection. I have every faith that Tartan will put out a fantastic release though.

[foggy eyes]

DVD Times review of the Jodorowsky set.

[Tommaso]

It seems as if the Tartan "Fando y Lis" looks as bad as the Anchor Bay, then, although it was assumed that the problems of the latter stem from PAL/NTSC-Conversion, which shouldn't apply to the PAL Tartan, of course. So, someone really messed up the transfer already at an earlier stage....

[vogler]

It seems as if the Tartan "Fando y Lis" looks as bad as the Anchor Bay, then, although it was assumed that the problems of the latter stem from PAL/NTSC-Conversion, which shouldn't apply to the PAL Tartan, of course. So, someone really messed up the transfer already at an earlier stage....

In the comments under the review My Eyes! wrote "Unfortunately, the only source material for FANDO & LIS made availability to Tartan (as well as to Anchor Bay in the US) was the NTSC master used for the aforementioned, now-deleted Fantoma DVD, since no prints - as far as I'm aware - exist. However, a comparison between this new Tartan version and the older Fantoma one should make it apparent that Tartan went to some lengths to digitally improve the image quality here (endeavouring mostly to reduce the 'flickering' that was present on the Fantoma edition)."

This person thinks that the Tartan looks better than the Fantoma. If this is true then it makes it impossible to understand how Anchor Bay managed to mess it up so badly. I'd be interested in seeing a screenshot comparison between the Tartan and the Anchor Bay. If Anchor Bay really did use the Fantoma master then why does their dvd look like shit? I still have a feeling that the Fantoma may be better than both but I could certainly be wrong. The Tartan may be good.

[Tommaso]

In the comments to this review, someone also points out that Tartan combined "F&L" with "La Cravate", and gave the documentary its own disc. This is another point I don't understand with the Anchor Bay. Putting "F&L" together with "La Constellation" on one disc (and leaving the fourth disc almost empty) indeed means an unnecessary loss of bitrate, although this alone doesn't explain the problems, too. "La Cravate", btw, does look really excellent, and I think it's a great little debut film...

A comparison between the Anchor Bay and the Tartan would be highly interesting indeed, but the first comparison to be made is the price: at least for European customers ordering from cd-wow, the Anchor Bay (currently at 30,54 Euros) costs less than half the price of the Tartan, and unless the Tartan "Fando" is MUCH superior, the Anchor Bay should be the obvious choice.

[pro-bassoonist]

Taxidermie

Street date: August 13th.

Pro-B

[Lino]

Can't wait to rewatch this one! Definitely still the best movie I've seen this year.

Artwork

[colinr0380]

According to the latest MovieMail catalogue Tartan will also be releasing later a DVD of Battleship Potemkin with the Pet Shop Boys score. Sounds similar to what the BFI did with the Michael Nyman Man With A Movie Camera score.

[Awesome Welles]

I have typed up some info from RRP Magazine, as follows:

Release dates for Tartan's Eisenstein boxsets

Tartan Sergei Eisenstein Box 1 (23/07/07)
Volume 2 Historical Epics (27/08/07)
Volume 3 Mexico (No date yet)

Ed Hughes has done the soundtracks for the Eisenstein boxes

Haxan is coming in on August 13 followed by The Phantom Carriage in December, they will include brand new soundtracks and some "hefty restoration work". The soundtrack for Haxan includes music by Geoff Smith performed on a hammered dulcimer and Bronnt Industries Kapital - "kind of electronic, vaguely electro acoustic sound" says Tartan's Sam Dunn. The Phantom Carriage features an original soundtrack from KTL, a project featuring drone metal innovator Stephen O'Malley of Sun0))) and "computer noise man Peter Rehberg (PITA)."

In addition a lot of effort has gone into remastering the films and not having "those cheesy 70s and 80s video generated title sequences that replaced the original Russian ones. They are going to have something a lot more sympathetic, even if we have to go to the lengths of recreating it." Said Dunn.

"We've been working very hard on the restorations. We've gone so far as to as to consult with experts for things like Eisenstein's original hand painting of the flag at the end of part three of Battleship Potemkin. We've digitally simulated that so that's the first time that's made its appearance on DVD." - Dunn

Make of it what you will. The simulation of the flag sounds interesting I wonder what it'll look like. I am tempted to preorder the sets but I really don't like the sound of the soundtracks (no pun intended). I think I'll give them a wait and see for reviews.

[Person]

If you order Hexan from Play.com you, get a free Haxan t-shirt!

[Subbuteo]

Just imagine the girls you would pull wearing a Haxan t-shirt

[colinr0380]

Perfect for death metal concerts!

Somehow I managed to win a competition a couple of months ago and received a T-shirt promoting the release of the Vincent Cassel Satan film on DVD by Tartan. Apart from the weather in this part of the world not being the best for wearing a T-shirt right now, I'm also trying to figure out if there are any other social occasions than metal concerts where it would be appropriate to wear something with the word Satan written in a blood red dripping font!

[tavernier]

Somehow I managed to win a competition a couple of months ago and received a T-shirt promoting the release of the Vincent Cassel Satan film on DVD by Tartan. Apart from the weather in this part of the world not being the best for wearing a T-shirt right now, I'm also trying to figure out if there are any other social occasions than metal concerts where it would be appropriate to wear something with the word Satan written in a blood red dripping font!

Is George W. Bush coming to your area soon?