MoC Forthcoming, Wishlist, and Random Speculation

[Perkins Cobb]

Nonsense. If you have a Volume 1, you must have a Volume 2. Sorry Nick, you're gonna just have to take a bath on that one.

[Finch]

Another vote for more Naruse from MoC here although I don't care if it's another set or individual titles. The only regret is that it looks as though there won't be any Naruse either way for the whole of 2010 but I hope that any new Naruse titles get into the collection before MoC switch to Blu-only production.

[fiddlesticks]

I can't imagine that the pleadings of a couple dozen cinephiles posted anonymously in an internet forum will have any effect on a business decision made by Eureka.

But in case it does, MORE NARUSE!!!

[Tommaso]

Absolutely! As I said earlier this day in another thread, Naruse might put off some people (including me) at first, but once you re-watch the films and allow them to sink in, there's no doubt that these are very important films that simply need to be available in an English-friendly edition. But I fear very much that the votes of this forum's members might not be really representative. But on the other hand, I guess we once were partly responsible for convincing MoC to release "Vampyr", so yes, let's all vote here for more Naruse!

[What A Disgrace]

Its a written rule that if you do a Volume 1, a Volume 2 must follow.

Please? Just two titles?

[Michael Kerpan]

I think the reluctance to do more Naruse DVDs is based on MOC's certainty that these will be pirated even more promptly than those in the first set. I expect if MOC got even a dollar for every downloaded copy of their Naruse releases, that set would have made a LOT more money. Also, the fansubbed versions of TV broadcasts of the rarer films probably make DVD releases less feasible. HD versions of hese reasonably well-preserved Toho films would be a whole different matter. I just wish that it was possible for MOC to get out reasonably priced BRDs of more Naruse sooner (rather than later -- when BRD copying might become possible).

As much as I love Naruse's films, I would not release any more Naruse DVDs if _I_ were MOC.

[Tommaso]

I think the reluctance to do more Naruse DVDs is based on MOC's certainty that these will be pirated even more promptly than those in the first set.

Just in order to understand this correctly: do you think/know that the Naruse discs in Vol.1 have been more often pirated than other MoC films? If not, then the piracy problem should apply to all other MoC releases as well. And I can't imagine that anyone who is interested in Naruse would want to miss out on that 192-page book; I mean, this is not some early barebones MGM edition.

[Michael Kerpan]

I am only speculating. While true afficionados would not want to do without the book from MOC's Naruse set, there are probably (surely) quite a few people who are less fanatically devoted who might have bought that set a year or so after its release (when on sale at some place or another), had good quality rips not have been available by then.

In any event, there is not much high quality Naruse background material available -- so probably a second set would not be able to offer a similar lavish book as an inducement (and Catherine Russell's book is now readily available, and might not be avvailable for libera excerpting).

If the only way MOC has a chance at making money on Naruse is going the Blu-Ray route, then that's what I'd prefer them to do.

[tenia]

NARUSE VOLUME 1 sold well at first, but then completely tailed off. Which is worrying when you have a lot of stock in storage. I think if we'd released it on Blu-ray, the sales would have been more consistent over time (due to the difficulty and impracticality of copying Blu-rays).

Of course. It is well known that if a boxset tanks, it is cause of piracy... In fact, BR are only selling great cause of this difficulty (which is, in fact, not a great difficulty).

But, in a sense, you're making sense : not selling what you already have in store will prevent it to tank.

Seriously, I've read about your position on downloading, but do you really want to hold Naruse releases cause of this position ?
Like if it's all the fault of downloaders.

And not at all the fact that once all the people interested directly by the set had bought, there wasn't really anybody else left...

Of course, the set is fabulous (especially the book), but it's not like you would sell it forever, as if the average English (or worldwide buyer) like / know Naruse's movies, and, moreover, knows that they are released, etc.

That's what we call in France a 'cinéma de niche' : something that has only a very very limited market. So, of course, once the fans have bought it, there is nobody left.

[FerdinandGriffon]

I've gotten so much rapturous pleasure out of Volume 1 and its book that living without a Volume 2 just doesn't seem like an option. Single releases if necessary, but more Naruse!!

[Fan-of-Kurosawa]

Yes, we want more Naruse! I don't care if it is a box set or single releases. Just please, more Naruse. MOC's Volume 1 was great and it is a pity that it didn't sell well. And I am guessing that the BFI set had a similar fate and the individual Criterion release also. And that is why the Eclipse Naruse set is still MIA.
Shame, shame, shame

[fiddlesticks]

Seriously, I've read about your position on downloading, but do you really want to hold Naruse releases cause of this position ?
Like if it's all the fault of downloaders.

And not at all the fact that once all the people interested directly by the set had bought, there wasn't really anybody else left...

I don't think they're holding off on more Naruse because of piracy, per se, but because they feel it is unlikely to make back its costs. Whether that's because of pirates or limited appeal or worldwide recession or global warming doesn't alter that analysis.

[tenia]

Seriously, I've read about your position on downloading, but do you really want to hold Naruse releases cause of this position ?
Like if it's all the fault of downloaders.

And not at all the fact that once all the people interested directly by the set had bought, there wasn't really anybody else left...

I don't think they're holding off on more Naruse because of piracy, per se, but because they feel it is unlikely to make back its costs. Whether that's because of pirates or limited appeal or worldwide recession or global warming doesn't alter that analysis.

Yes, I agree, but it sounds like the rights and the masters are ready, so it seems there has already been some money put for a second box set. But, I'm more reacting to this : "I think if we'd released it on Blu-ray, the sales would have been more consistent over time (due to the difficulty and impracticality of copying Blu-rays)."

As releasing old japanese B&W movies in BR at probably £50-60 would interest more people than just connoisseurs.

I'm French, maybe you know the DVD editor Carlotta. They've only released 2 BR. Godard's One+One and Fellini's Casanova. Very nice presentation, in digibook, and everything. They tanked. Directly. They tanked so much that MoC will be the first to release Sunrise in HD, even if Carlotta has been planning it for a loooooooooooong time. MK2. They released Les 400 Coups. Tank. They are both holding any HD released since.

So, honestly, even if it's Naruse (and I would say especially with Naruse), I reaaly don't believe that the sells (would have been better in BR than it was in DVD. Cause it just don't interest a lot of people. Unfortunately.

So, as I say, it's not, imo, the fact that DVDs are easily downloaded (I suppose, let's be ironic, that the Naruse boxset was a tied-in with Iron Man and Fast & Furious 3 for the most downloaded DVDs at the time), but more the fact that, once the connoisseurs bought it, there were nobody else interested.

And, to conclude, MoC should be real glad. In France, I don't think we would have sell more than 1 000 boxes. Wild Side released some in a box set (and now individually). I think they sold maybe 800 of the box.

I have some figures : some of the best sellers are The 36th chamber of shaolin with 15 000 sells, Fritz Lang's Indian-duo boxset with 6 000 sells, and a 3-movies from Kurosawa with 4 000 sells (High And Low, Stray Dog and The bad sleep well). And I think they may have sold about 1 000 DVDs of Gosha's Hitokiri. During 2007, they never ever achieve to sell their 'old' movies to the point they thought they would. Not once. Not with Shinoda's box, neither Uchida's, nor Kudo's.

They also released contemporary movies like Polanski's The Pianist. They sold 280 000 of them. See the difference.

[justeleblanc]

I surf illegal download sites all the time and I never came across the Naruse. Though if you say Naruse was heavily downloaded, was it downloaded by those in the US without the means of a multi-regional DVD player? If so, that shouldn't be what's hampering sales.

[domino harvey]

I believe Naruse is being batted around re: downloading thanks to the infamous "cumstain" thread, no?

[mikkelmark]

I'm French, maybe you know the DVD editor Carlotta. They've only released 2 BR. Godard's One+One and Fellini's Casanova. Very nice presentation, in digibook, and everything. They tanked. Directly. They tanked so much that MoC will be the first to release Sunrise in HD, even if Carlotta has been planning it for a loooooooooooong time. MK2. They released Les 400 Coups. Tank. They are both holding any HD released since.

If it's like that, then the bfi most be loosing lots of money?

Even though I have a region free blu-ray player, still most of the films I buy are dvd's. Not because I want to, but because the films I want only gets out on dvd. I should think that most serious film collectors have a blu-ray player by now, but I guess the problem is also that it costs more to make a blu-ray release than a dvd.

Most of my buys at the moment are either films I want in a format I don't really want, or a film I'm not that crazy about in a format I want, both are compromises.

[tenia]

I'm French, maybe you know the DVD editor Carlotta. They've only released 2 BR. Godard's One+One and Fellini's Casanova. Very nice presentation, in digibook, and everything. They tanked. Directly. They tanked so much that MoC will be the first to release Sunrise in HD, even if Carlotta has been planning it for a loooooooooooong time. MK2. They released Les 400 Coups. Tank. They are both holding any HD released since.

If it's like that, then the bfi most be loosing lots of money?

Fact is : I wonder how much money they're planning to do with Bill Douglas Trilogy on BR. Honestly, I'm really wondering how much it costs to release something like these movies in BR, and how much they're gonna sell.

[peerpee]

Just buy the bloody things in droves, it's a miracle!

The UK taxpayer funds the BFI (via the UK Film Council) so thank the visionary BFI Video department and the UK taxpayer. This sort of thing could only ever have happened in Tarkovsky's Russia!

[Cinetwist]

I think the reluctance to do more Naruse DVDs is based on MOC's certainty that these will be pirated even more promptly than those in the first set.

Just in order to understand this correctly: do you think/know that the Naruse discs in Vol.1 have been more often pirated than other MoC films? If not, then the piracy problem should apply to all other MoC releases as well. And I can't imagine that anyone who is interested in Naruse would want to miss out on that 192-page book; I mean, this is not some early barebones MGM edition.

I think you have an extremely innaccurate view of the cinephile-downloader, typically a younger (but no less voracious) film fan. They don't give a damn about books and certainly wouldn't buy (and import!) a dvd for one. I've never minded torrents for undistributed films or ancient VHS rips and have always admired certain sharing communities like karagarga that only try to offer downloads for films that are otherwise impossible to see. But now I'm not so sure. It just fosters a culture where it's acceptable to download MoC rips too. From posting on other forums with a younger membership, I can tell you that it is completely normal to download films for the younger generation, or if you're located somewhere where you can't rent it.

I really don't know what the answer is, because downloading is never not going to be a problem. And as of now it's completely normalised and not just for mainstream films, which is the disturbing part. I could find a torrent for any dvd rip imaginable if I wanted to.

[tenia]

I think you have an extremely innaccurate view of the cinephile-downloader, typically a younger (but no less voracious) film fan. They don't give a damn about books and certainly wouldn't buy (and import!) a dvd for one. I've never minded torrents for undistributed films or ancient VHS rips and have always admired certain sharing communities like karagarga that only try to offer downloads for films that are otherwise impossible to see. But now I'm not so sure. It just fosters a culture where it's acceptable to download MoC rips too. From posting on other forums with a younger membership, I can tell you that it is completely normal to download films for the younger generation, or if you're located somewhere where you can't rent it.

I really don't know what the answer is, because downloading is never not going to be a problem. And as of now it's completely normalised and not just for mainstream films, which is the disturbing part. I could find a torrent for any dvd rip imaginable if I wanted to.

I've downloaded some movies, and I can tell you : the packaging, the physical product is a whole part of the buying. A feeling that a download will never be able to produce. That's why they are now so elaborate, by the way. Why the extras, the digipack, the booklets and everything ? It was for preventing downloading. And, honestly, it works with a lot of people, as I've seen so far. You're happy to have a nice piece of packaging on your shelves (that's why I like digipacks). The booklets and the artworks of collections like MoC, Carlotta, Criterion, Wild Side, the quality of their masters and their extras, that's something, as a whole, that a download will never provide. That's why I think that, if I have to download something, it will never be a movie from them, but more of a mass product, something that will already be bought by millions of people.

But, if this young peoples don't give a damn about a 200-pages book, for a DVD they would have to import, I don't think they even would download a non-dubbed movie at first. Especially a Japanese one. Especially an old one. Especially a B&W one.

I'm French, but I can tell you : paying £15 for the 2DVD set of Nosferatu, with the 80-pages book, that's something I will do in the next weeks cause it's cheap. It's unbelievably cheap. In France, it's something that would cost around 30€. With the currency change, I already own some Criterion (around a 100, including big frakking sets like the Cassavetes one). I could download them. It would cost me about nothing. But no, I choose to buy them, but 60€ in the Cassavetes set, having 15 days shipping, with a little chance for it to arrive in little pieces cause of the trip.

But, the fact is that paying £40-50 for discovering a movie, it's expensive. And, again, you can't expect everybody, especially the 'young generation' to be interested enough by Naruse to pay that amount in order to discover 3 of his movies (and I'm only 22). Even the connoisseurs don't always like them, so I can only laugh by thinking of a 16-old youngster going home after a Transformers screening and starting to download a Naruse movie.

So of course, there is a cultural problem behind all this (even if I think that it can help some movies to have a lot more visibility), but I honestly think that, if a release tank, or do not achieve to sell what it's supposed to, it's more cause it interests less people that it's supposed to than because it was downloaded.

When you're selling things that only interest 1 or 2000 people, you can't expect to sell 1 000 of them every year for 10 years.

The UK taxpayer funds the BFI (via the UK Film Council) so thank the visionary BFI Video department and the UK taxpayer.

That's what I thought. So it's like Carlotta and Wild Side. They can release things that only interest 1000 people cause they are funded by the government. So, in fact, they are also given money by the people who don't want to buy their releases.

[artfilmfan]

Count me in as one of those who firmly believe that if there is Vol. 1, there ought to be (at least) Vol. 2

Release them however you like, but do release them soon. And if only a couple of films will be cherrypicked, I hope one of them will be "Scattered Clouds". I think it will look wonderful in 1080p.

[Felix]

I should think that most serious film collectors have a blu-ray player by now, but I guess the problem is also that it costs more to make a blu-ray release than a dvd.

Most of my buys at the moment are either films I want in a format I don't really want, or a film I'm not that crazy about in a format I want, both are compromises.

Eh, no... I am as serious a collector as it gets with a kevyip that needs warning lights for planes overhead but I do not have Blu-Ray and have no intentions of getting one. (And note that there are a lot of people even on this board who never went multi-region.) I went through all this with HiFi many years ago and you get into the law of diminishing returns. I knew lots of folk who used their records to listen to their Hi-Fi, not the other way round and I can see some people here going the same way. It is the film that matters, not the DVD. Yes, you see improvements but once you are on the treadmill they are never enough. If I were younger I would possibly go for it but I am not and I won't. Enough is enough and I find SD enough thanks. (I do find it ironic when some of the anti-consumerist brigade here quite happily go on about Blu-Ray.) MoC will lose sales to me when they go exclusively Blu-Ray but hopefully they and other labels will release their back catalogue on Blu-Ray and I can make a killing when people sell off their old SD editions, just like I did with Vinyl when everyone went to CD.

[Felix]

I've downloaded some movies, and I can tell you : the packaging, the physical product is a whole part of the buying. A feeling that a download will never be able to produce. That's why they are now so elaborate, by the way. Why the extras, the digipack, the booklets and everything ? It was for preventing downloading. And, honestly, it works with a lot of people, as I've seen so far. You're happy to have a nice piece of packaging on your shelves (that's why I like digipacks). The booklets and the artworks of collections like MoC, Carlotta, Criterion, Wild Side, the quality of their masters and their extras, that's something, as a whole, that a download will never provide. That's why I think that, if I have to download something, it will never be a movie from them, but more of a mass product, something that will already be bought by millions of people.

But, the fact is that paying £40-50 for discovering a movie, it's expensive. And, again, you can't expect everybody, especially the 'young generation' to be interested enough by Naruse to pay that amount in order to discover 3 of his movies (and I'm only 22). Even the connoisseurs don't always like them, so I can only laugh by thinking of a 16-old youngster going home after a Transformers screening and starting to download a Naruse movie.

Some excellent points here and in your other post tenia. I think the booklets do make an enormous difference, especially with MoC who excel at this and I have doubled dipped on a couple of titles simply for that (compare them with the horrendously overpriced BFI Film classics books, funded by the taxpayer and ripping the tax payer off...) Booklets are difficult to pirate, Blu-Ray may be difficult now but it won't be long...

I wonder how many actual sales MoC lose through downloading, no matter how many copies are downloaded. I doubt that such people would buy the discs, regardless of price or format. The Naruse may be an exception due to the strategy of releasing the films as a box and the associated pricing. Some may then have downloaded, checked them out, and decided they did not wish to proceed with buying; those people may have bought at least one DVD had they been released as stand alone discs. FFS, the vast, and I mean vast, majority of people out there have never heard of Naruse, however important he may be in Japan or on fora like these (the vast majority are only vaguely aware of Ozu or Mizoguchi). I have said before that I thought it was the wrong strategy but I also acknowledge that it is Nick running the label, not me, and what do I know about running a DVD label.

I did eventually buy both sets and would buy another but I waited until I saw them a lot cheaper online before I did dip. For the record, I do not download so have no pony to ride here (though I could do my own covers, etc, as I do repackage some legitimate releases if I do not like the cover or can find better information online to do my own booklets.) And if we are talking of lost sales, where do libraries fit in, or people who buy second-hand?

[James]

Okay, here are the two points I had written in short, although I'm not sure they even add to the discussion:

1.) I disagree with mark's assumptive, elitist comment than people who don't have Blu-ray players aren't serious collectors. I've only just become region-free.

2.) I honestly can't see any DVD company becoming exclusively Blu-ray. I know it may be difficult for such a small company to maintain both, but we must understand that sometimes they have to pick and choose which transfers are deserving of both or which are best just kept standard definition.

[foggy eyes]

I should think that most serious film collectors have a blu-ray player by now

Total fallacy. Of all the "serious film collectors" I know (apart from the people here, I suppose), I can only think of one who has gone Blu-ray. The others are either curious (but not bothered to upgrade), financially incapable (like me), or completely uninterested.

On a side note, I increasingly find myself watching things like VHS, LD or screen recorder rips of, er, "variable" quality/compression to get to the stuff that's nowhere near commercial digital mastering yet. My CRT does the job just fine for those - the movies take priority, and Blu-ray might as well be on other planet!