BrightEyes23 wrote:Why is it that the Bresson "L'Argent" isn't available from any of the major e-tailers that I can see? I even emailed digitaleyes and they said they their supplier had no information on this title...kind of strange with the fact that there's review copies out already.
DVD Planet, Deep Discount, and Digital Eyes all use the same distributor, so that's why it's not listed with any of the three. New Yorker has always had distribution problems, as far as I'm concerned.
L'Argent is available for preorder from Amazon, DVD Empire, Overstock, and CD Universe.
DVD Planet responded this way to the absence of L'Argent on their website:
Thanks for the email. We no longer are going to carry any new titles from New Yorker.
Sorry we can't help you out with that one.
-DVDPlanet.com
Since they all use the same distributor, I'll assume that this also affects Deep Discount and Digital Eyes. I'll further speculate that New Yorker's wholesale prices weren't low enough, so the distributor dropped the company.
Jeez I wish New Yorker could get their head out of their ass and become a viable and reliable DVD producer.
I received New Yorker's L'Argent yesterday (from Overstock.com, since my usual etailer, Digital Eyes, is not stocking it) and watched it last night. To me, the transfer was even more disappointing than DVD Beaver's screencaps would indicate. Colors are dull, contrast is off (whites are washed out: notice the white laundry on the line at 1:15:45), and the image is quite soft. PAL-to-NTSC ghosting is present, and was noticeable to me in several scenes with movement. I also feel the subtitling leaves something to be desired in the translation (too literal and un-idiomatic, though I should really leave that judgement to someone who is more fluent in French than I am). To nitpick, there are also occasional annoying spaces between letters within words; I realize that the subtitles are player-generated, but I haven't noticed these gaps within words with any other foreign film DVDs.
I hope to listen to the Kent Jones commentary tonight---I have high hopes that it alone will justify the purchase.
FilmFanSea wrote:I hope to listen to the Kent Jones commentary tonight---I have high hopes that it alone will justify the purchase.
I received mine today as well and I'm a bit dissapointed. I should have trusted my instinct and gone with the french box. Now that I've committed though, I'll probably end up getting the artificial eye releases. The Jones commentary is nice. Oh, and Doug, I loved your review in Paste. Let's hope it brings more people into the world of Bresson. I plan on showing L'argent to as many people as I can. It's literally an amazing film, I think.
Maybe it's just me, but I found Kent Jones' L'ARGENT commentary to be AWFUL! For someone who's a supposed expert on Bresson, he had nothing of import to say - no insights, nothing. A classic example is when he says that he loves how Bresson changed the characters of the shop owners from what they were in Tolstoy's original story - then goes on to something else, not even bothering to explain why or how the characters were different!
I've heard Jones speak several times at the NY Film Festival and I've always found him to be lacking as a film "expert" - I'm still trying to figure out how he got that job!
Holy crap. I don't have any high hopes but I wonder if this will lead to New Yorker releasing some of other Straub/Huillet stuff they've been sitting on, like History Lessons, Moses and Aaron, Not Reconciled, and at least a few others I'm forgetting. And I've always been a bit puzzled Class Relations is MIA from home video given its rather well-known source material.
Ashirg wrote:Coming soon (according to DVD Empire)
The Chronicle of Anna Magdalena Bach
This is terrific news! I had the good fortune of seeing this once in London and, though I won't try to convince anyone that its not boring, it is a monumental film and now one of my most anticipated upcoming releases! Bravo New Yorker!
whatever happened to "Weekend" and "For Ever Mozart"? Any word of these just dropped off the face of the earth it seems. Not as if I think that their "Weekend" will be an improvement over the AE one, but it'd be nice to have "For Ever Mozart" on DVD...
BrightEyes23 wrote:whatever happened to "Weekend" and "For Ever Mozart"? Any word of these just dropped off the face of the earth it seems. Not as if I think that their "Weekend" will be an improvement over the AE one, but it'd be nice to have "For Ever Mozart" on DVD...
Weekend is still due on June 28th as far as I know (see my earlier post: I don't believe DVD Planet, Deep Discount, or Digital Eyes will be carrying New Yorker DVDs anymore).
There is potentially exciting news in the specs of New Yorker's Weekend release:
DVD Features:
* Available subtitles: English
*Available Audio Tracks: French (Dolby Digital 2.0) * Audio Commentary by Critic David Sterritt
* Interview with Raoul Coutard
* Mike Figgis on "Weekend"
* Biographies of Jean-Luc Godard, Cinematographer Raoul Coutard, Film Director Mike Figgis and Prof. Colin MacCabe
* Theatrical Trailer
* Scene Selections
Amazingly, New Yorker has provided audio commentaries on this disc and on the recent L'Argent! (I can't recall any commentaries on any of their other DVDs that I own.)
I'll be waiting patiently for the DVD Beaver comparison before I plunk down my money.
Thanks, I had been periodically checking dvdpricesearch and didn't see it. I think "Weekend" gets a netflix rental to hear the commentary and "For Ever Mozart" gets a blind buy, as I'm a Godard fanatic. Even if it's less than steller, hopefully strong sales of these will get New Yorker to release any more Godard they're holding on to!
They've released two very important films with original burned-in subs from the film print! As if the aesthetics and readability of that wasn't bad enough, it also usually portends of subtitling from an earlier era that is at least sparser and can often be of poor/misleading translation quality. Kind of a far cry from a Criterion improved subtitle translation.
Yeah, the Weekend cover is beyond piss-poor and you should complain, but maybe you should also bitch about the more serious problem here on Xala and Mandabi.
Darn it. And now someone just posted elsewhere on this site that they're releasing Angelopoulos's excellent Landscape in the Mist (1988).
Why must such important classic films be in the hands of dangerous bunglers?!? (Facets, this means you too!)
I just hope it's one of the babysteps forward and not the giant leap backwards with burned-in subs, etc.
I'd just like to say that New Yorker's VHS collection was excellent. I really hope they figure out the technical aspects of the DVD format really, really, really soon and start releasing these important films with the Criterion level of quality they deserve.
