Mr. Bongo Films

[Michael Kerpan]

Nice. Is {Kozintsev's Don Quixote} as good as his Shakespeare adaptations?

I like the film quite a lot -- and the Don Q-Sancho pairing of Nikolai Cherkasov and Yuri Tolubeyev is near perfect. But Moskvin's Sovcolor cinematography (though very good) is not quite as impressive as Gritsius's b&w cinematography in the two Shakespeare films. And this is one of the few Kozintsev films without a score by Shostakovitch (not sure why). So -- very worth seeing -- but not quite as good as the two later films.

[Calvin]

Going by BBFC classifications (I'm as surprised as you are!), Mr. Bongo will be releasing Boris Barnet's By the Bluest of Seas and The Outskirts

[colinr0380]

That seems pretty redundant if true given that MovieMail have been providing easy access to Ruscico's Hyperkino editions of both films.

[John Edmond]

Not if Mr. Bongo use the Ruscico transfers, dump the extras and reduce their price by 2/3rds (all quite likely).

[bigP]

It appears Mr Bongo will be putting out Santa Sangre in November. It might just be a mistake double entry, but I'm intrigued as to why HMV have two listings for this - I highly doubt we'll be seeing their first Blu-ray, but a special edition release like they did with Soy Cuba, perhaps?

[eerik]

Mr. Bongo goes Blu-ray with Santa Sangre. Their website also confirms it.

[Calvin]

Well, that's a surprise. Not only are they releasing Santa Sangre on Blu-Ray, the DVD edition has an extras disc. I'm cautiously optimistic - look at the turnaround Kino had.

[JamesF]

Mr. Bongo goes Blu-ray with Santa Sangre. Their website also confirms it.

And just as the Severin edition goes OOP (along with all of their other releases) - great news!

[knives]

It should be noted that the Severin edition is only temporarily OOP until they settle with their new distributor.

[Calvin]

I sent off an e-mail to Mr. Bongo, enquiring about their plans for Blu-Ray. The response was:

Many Thanks for your enquiry. We are indeed releasing Sante Sangre on DVD which is a first for us! Obviously it will introduce us to the process for releasing things on Blu-Ray which will give us more options on future releases but so far we are not planning on releasing the Bongo back catalogue on that format*. That said, we will register your interest and if enough people seem keen we may look into doing it in future.
Keep Enjoying the films!

*I singled out L'avventura, Falstaff and the Glauber Rocha films in my e-mail.

So, if you want to register your interest, give them an e-mail.

[peerpee]

It's probably best that they keep chipping away at DVD and try and get that right first, perhaps going back and reissuing a number of titles properly on DVD. A number of their discs have been absolutely appalling, not just slightly problematic, but truly rubbish. Their subtitling needs a big step up too.

[Calvin]

I would like to be a fly on the wall of Bongo HQ, just to watch the comedy of errors. However, going Blu could actually help them rather than hinder them as it would mean they don't have to do any of the dodgy NTSC>PAL conversions that blighted some of their discs.

[Kauno]

I like what they made with Earth (Zemlya), The Hourglass Sanatorium, The Brute (El Bruto), Company Limited (Seemabaddha) and The Stranger (Agantuk). I think Mr. Bongo should not vanish and fade.

[knives]

Susana and the Rocha's are also pretty good. They've fucked up plenty, but they've also done good and are improving.

[peerpee]

Let's hope they don't start uprezzing Digibeta to 1080i with ingrained subs then.

[knives]

Thank goodness for that as Isobel Elsom would say.

[GaryC]

I've just received review checkdiscs for two of Mr Bongo's forthcoming releases, Don Quixote and the Dovzhenko War Trilogy.

Firstly, the bad news: Don Quixote is in approximately the right ratio (I measured it at 2.40:1) but is non-anamorphic.

Two of the Dovzhenkos are in 1.33:1 as you might expect, though Earth is windowboxed. Arsenal is pillarboxed into a ratio of 1.20:1.

The soundtracks are all mono, which is to be expected. Oddly, Earth has a LPCM soundtrack while the other discs are Dolby Digital 2.0.

No extras on any of the discs.

[peerpee]

It's 2012 and they've released a CinemaScope film as a non-anamorphic DVD?

[Jonathan S]

Bad news indeed, but I'm not really surprised as their fairly recent issue of Kozintsev's Hamlet (and I assume King Lear) was also non-anamorphic.

Although it was mentioned on here that Hamlet could not be expanded to fill the screen width without losing the subs, I did find on my projector the subs and full picture could still be viewed by shifting the image upwards.

I assume the Dovzhenkos are straight reissues of their earlier individual releases?

[GaryC]

It's 2012 and they've released a CinemaScope film as a non-anamorphic DVD?

Transition Digital Media (a new label this year) did one worse - in 2012 they released a Scope film (Rebel from 1985) in 4:3 pan and scan, apart from the opening and closing credits which were letterboxed. That wasn't acceptable in 1999, let alone now.

[GaryC]

Bad news indeed, but I'm not really surprised as their fairly recent issue of Kozintsev's Hamlet (and I assume King Lear) was also non-anamorphic.

Although it was mentioned on here that Hamlet could not be expanded to fill the screen width without losing the subs, I did find on my projector the subs and full picture could still be viewed by shifting the image upwards.

I assume the Dovzhenkos are straight reissues of their earlier individual releases?

I can't comment as I never saw the earlier releases. I should add that Don Quixote's subtitles are in the picture area, so the picture can at least be zoomed.

[MichaelB]

Although it was mentioned on here that Hamlet could not be expanded to fill the screen width without losing the subs, I did find on my projector the subs and full picture could still be viewed by shifting the image upwards.

Fine if your projector/telly can do that, but I've yet to own a 16:9 set that can.

As for Don Quixote, this was what I said about the disc in my upcoming Sight & Sound review - nothing different from what's been said above, but great minds are clearly thinking alike:

Disc: The source print is surprisingly clean, it’s framed correctly in the original Sovscope aspect ratio, and the frequent colour shifts can probably be blamed on the effects of time on the Sovcolor process. But there’s no excuse for releasing a widescreen film in a non-anamorphic transfer well into the Blu-ray era: the only saving grace is that at least the subtitles aren’t cropped when the picture is zoomed to fill the screen.

[hearthesilence]

I just noticed that the new Chimes at Midnight DVD is only £7.99 on Bongo's official website. Shipping to U.S. is £3, so the total (£10.99) would be a little over $17 U.S.

I'm tempted to get it, but the aspect ratio is wrong, is it not? (1.85 instead of 1.66:1, shaving a bit too much - one reason some believe it's a knock off of the Studio Canal DVD that had to be pulled, correct?) A frustrating deal-breaker, it's tempting to get it anyway if the PQ is really that much better than anything else out there.

[peerpee]

They're not learning from their mistakes. There are anamorphic DVDs of these Kozintsev available in other parts of the world and as a last resort they could force an anamorphic encode from a non-anamorphic Digibeta (there are a number of decent releases that have done this).

Good friends call them "Mr Pongo", but they're such a bunch of clowns I think "Mr Bonzo" is more fitting.

[bigP]

Two Boris Barnet films in November: Outskirts & By the Bluest of Seas