Second Sight Films (UK)

[jsteffe]

Oh, I'm not under any illusions whatsoever that it'll look pristine or anywhere close - but it seems to me that every existing edition has specific defects that are relatively easily correctable.

If Second Sight addresses those problems and genuinely presents the materials in the best possible way that they can, I'll be cheering them from the rafters.

That's exactly how I feel about it. Needless to say, I'll be pre-ordering a copy.

[windowside]

Does someone here own the Picnic at Hanging Rock Blu?

My copy from Amazon came opened and i wanted to check if it really comes without any sort of booklet or chapter sheet.

[Nothing]

I have a feeling Second Sight don't shrink-wrap their discs (a good policy if so!) but I may be wrong.

[John Hodson]

Does someone here own the Picnic at Hanging Rock Blu?

My copy from Amazon came opened and i wanted to check if it really comes without any sort of booklet or chapter sheet.

Nothing in mine...

[MichaelB]

I don't think Second Sight does booklets as a general rule.

[windowside]

Thanks everybody.

The tray looked like it could have been a customer return and i wanted to be sure i'm not missing something, even if it was only a chapter index.

[MichaelB]

Well, I've got some pretty thrilling news.

I've only had a chance to skim it so far, but it's already clear beyond any doubt that Second Sight have finally broken the Colour of Pomegranates duck.

As expected, they're using the Sergei Yutkevich cut, but since the source materials are in infinitely better condition than the ones for the (so-called) "director's cut" featured on the Kino and Films sans Frontières discs, that can certainly be forgiven. A perfect edition would have both cuts, of course, but I accept that this may have been contractually impossible.

Until now, the OOP Columbia (Japan) disc was the benchmark for picture quality, but Second Sight's is distinctly superior. For starters, the magenta cast has been banished, the colours are noticeably more vibrant, and I think there's more visible detail in the picture too.

First of all, have a look at jsteffe's invaluable framegrab comparison between the four previous versions...

...and then have a look at the Second Sight equivalents. The subtitles are optional, but I thought I'd let you see what they look like - and also the way that they conscientiously identify the language being spoken. I've also added another three frames - and believe me, I was spoilt for choice!

I haven't had a chance to sample the extras yet, but with a commentary and two hefty-looking documentaries (one of which is five minutes longer than the main feature) it's clearly the winner for quantity alone. And since Daniel Bird knows his stuff, I can safely assume that the quality won't fall short either.

[andyli]

What's with the jaggie/aliasing in the Second Sight screenshots? Are they really part of the video encode or just caused by your screen grab method?

[MichaelB]

My screengrab method, probably. They look fine in motion.

[MichaelB]

I've just dipped into the long documentary, and our very own jsteffe is the first interviewee!

[David M.]

What's with the jaggie/aliasing in the Second Sight screenshots? Are they really part of the video encode or just caused by your screen grab method?

Not part of the video encode

[MichaelB]

Definitely not part of the video encode. You can absolutely trust me on this: it's the best this film has ever looked on DVD. It's not perfect, obviously - but even the usual issues with old Soviet colour films (fluctuating exposure, overall inconsistency) have been minimised to a greater degree than I thought was possible based on the earlier releases.

[What A Disgrace]

I am all itchy to own this, because my favorite Paradjanov is also the one with the most ugly presentation (until now!), but is there any chance at all of a Blu-ray release in the future?

[David M.]

MichaelB, hope you don't mind, but I uploaded some screen shots taken with DGIndex (which is just a 1:1 image from the encode without added aliasing) to the thread you linked to.

http://criterionforum.org/forum/viewtop ... 36#p350236" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

[MichaelB]

I don't mind in the slightest, and have deleted my own grabs. I'm very happy to endorse yours as an accurate impression of what's shaping up to be a fabulous disc (and I've barely scratched the surface so far).

[zedz]

(squeal of glee)

[GaryC]

Second Sight will be releasing Hal Ashby's last film 8 Million Ways to Die, just passed by the BBFC. This was a straight-to-VHS release in the UK, and that's how I saw it back in 1987. I don't remember it being a very good film. I do remember it being an unheralded benchmark in gratuitous swearing: there's one scene (a standoff in a factory) late on where it got so excessive that I burst out laughing. ("Fuck you, motherfucker!" "No, fuck you, motherfucker!" And so on. It's never appeared on lists of most-profane films such as this one, but it certainly belongs on there.)

[bigP]

November 14th release date for Dmitry Vasyukov's Happy People: A Year in the Taiga. I know nothing about this, sorry to say, but I'm sold on the trailer. I'm assuming IMDB listings are correct in placing Herzog in a co-writer / narrator capacity rather than Amazon's co-director slot?

[MichaelB]

(squeal of glee)

Too right. I've now watched the entire package, commentary, extras, the lot, and it's my DVD of the year by miles. Whatever comes out between now and Christmas, I can't imagine it dropping off my Sight & Sound top five.

I unreservedly apologise to Second Sight for being so cynically pessimistic earlier in this thread. In my defence, it was because the four previous attempts at presenting The Colour of Pomegranates on disc have ranged from mildly to severely disappointing, so it was reasonable not to expect miracles - but my God they've wrought them here.

The extras are unreservedly superb, and do exactly what great extras should - they offer tons of highly relevant, largely unduplicated information, and make the film far more accessible as a result, without in any way damaging its essential mysteries. They're also often very entertaining - I get the distinct impression that Paradjanov himself was anything but a po-faced aesthete, and the package has clearly been assembled in the same spirit.

There's a lovely story in the documentary about how Ukrainians have absorbed the wedding from Shadows of our Forgotten Ancestors into their own folklore, assuming the fetishistically-depicted rituals to be authentic - but in fact Paradjanov made the whole thing up. Pomegranates, too, has often been mistaken for some kind of ethnographic quasi-documentary (or at least historically plausible reconstruction of authentic Armenian folk traditions), something the Armenian anthropologist Levon Abrahamyan is at pains to correct both in the commentary and his contribution to the documentary.

[MichaelB]

The first five minutes of Daniel Bird's documentary The World is a Window.

[Calvin]

Les Enfants Du Paradis (Blu-Ray) - May 7th

[eerik]

Second Sight joins the Blu-ray steelbook club with The Return of the Living Dead.

[colinr0380]

I'm glad to see that it looks like they have gotten hold of "More Brains!" and all the extra features that were on the Region 1 DVD of that making of documentary and added them to the film. Although I suppose it is a kind of logical, no-brainer decision!

The most interesting thing I learnt from the documentary is that Brian Peck is the one actor who is in all of the first three films in the series, albeit in different roles each time (in an intriguing turn of events he also turns up on the X-Men commentary giving Bryan Singer someone to talk through the film with, and gets the opportunity to point out his cameo in the beach scene of that film!)

[MichaelB]

I still remember the first UK run at the Scala Cinema - they turned the stage in front of the screen into a graveyard for the occasion.

[perkizitore]

Is this worth buying?