International Blu-ray and UHD Discs

[Drucker]

High marks for Le Bonheur from Pathe. Includes English subtitles and is region free!

[Finch]

Could come from MoC next year perhaps?

[Finch]

Suggested Bonheur to Eureka on Facebook and they replied "Thanks for the suggestion. No plans at the moment however" so the French BD it is for me.

[Drucker]

Thanks for the diligence. Will have to get it next time I order a bunch of stuff from Amazon.fr.

[eerik]

Divisa (Spain) is releasing Bunuel's Viridiana and Antonioni's Professione: reporter. No English subtitles but still good news I guess.

[rohmerin]

The reporter, legally is a Spanish film, and the Spanish version runs 10 minutes aprox. less than the original uncut print released by Sony.

They (Divisa) have put on the market The girl with suitcase, BUT it was so censored under Franco's regime that nobody is so brave to buy it.

Dessert of Tartas is out in France but with no Italian - language, only French (Gaumont).

[tenia]

Le désert des Tartares is not with Gaumont but Pathé. It is only in French because it is the shorter French cut, but has English subs.

[Drucker]

I don't know the best place to put it, so feel free to move.

Everyone in the USA should be keeping an eye over the next few weeks on the Euro and GBP as it might become a really great time to buy Blu-rays with the currency issues going on in the news. The European Central Bank has signaled possible stimulus money may be coming not unlike America has done with quantitative easing. And the GBP took a hit yesterday with the positive polling from Scotland that they are seeking independence.

Anyway, the needle hasn't really moved on this as much as the likes of CNBC would have you believe, but if things keep up in this direction over the next few weeks, there is certainly money to be saved for us in America.

[feihong]

I went ahead and ordered Professione: Reporter. Cut or not, it's still one of my favorite movies. I'm hoping it looks good.

[ellipsis7]

Well it doesn't look good I'm afraid... Amazon one star customer review of the PROFESSIONE REPORTER so called 'BluRay'...

HORRIBLE... LA PEOR COPIA EN BD HASTA LA FECHA
Posiblemente el Blu Ray con peor calidad de imagen hasta la fecha. No es HD. Es un DVD hinchado en un Blu Ray.

---roughly translated as...

HORRIBLE ... THE WORST BD COPY TO DATE
Possibly the worst Blu Ray picture quality to date. Not HD. It is a bloated DVD on a Blu Ray.

[feihong]

Aw, man. I cancelled that thing. Thanks for pointing that out.

[feihong]

I received a bunch of Shaw Bros blu rays from Germany today. The TVP Crippled Avengers, which I've been trying to track down for a long while, and a Koch Media blu-ray 4-pack that offers King Boxer, Eight Diagram Pole Fighter, The Sentimental Swordsman and The Kung Fu Instructor. I've taken a look at Sentimental Swordsman and Eight Diagram Pole Fighter so far, and they in fact look exquisite. Super-sharp picture quality, massive depth of field, rapturous color. Both discs have Mandarin and German language tracks, with only German subtitles. Grain is quite visible, and picture details like smoke and diaphanous veils (there's a lot of that in Sentimental Swordsman) are rendered with surprising beauty.

It's great to see good transfers of these. It's a shame that they can't seem to release with English subs!

[feihong]

The Kung Fu Instructor and King Boxer both look exquisite, sharp and colorful. It turns out it's Crippled Avengers, the one with the English subtitles, of course, which has the softest, grungiest picture quality. The disc still looks pretty awesome, but having seen the Koch Media ones first, it's clearly not the top prize here. Never thought I'd even see a high quality version of the Sentimental Swordsman.

[feihong]

The Korean blu-ray of 2046 arrived today, and I'm looking at it now. It might be because I'm tired, but the disc looks...weird. It has a lot of visible grain, but at the same time lots of shots look quite soft. When still shots are held for a while the disc almost looks interlaced. And in movement there's a lot of ghosting. There are some scenes with backgrounds like folding screens that seem to flicker as the camera tracks across these surfaces. The closeups, which should look ravishing, look both gritty and at the same time light on texture. Long shots are missing a lot of depth of field. It doesn't look wretchedly terrible, at least most of the time. It looks like there's more visual detail on display than on the Sony DVD. But it doesn't look like a modern blu-ray disc.

But it brings back memories. I haven't seen the film in a long time. The weirdness of parts of the film comes back to me watching this. What was Bird Thongchai McIntyre doing in this movie? I remember him appearing in just one shot. And yet he is prominently credited for his role.

[manicsounds]

As I know McIntyre had a more prominent role, but pretty much all of that was cut.

By the way, the Korean disc is interlaced, isn't it? Not a proper 24fps transfer....

[feihong]

I guess it must be interlaced. The package copy insists the disc is 1080p. But the movie inside looks both interlaced and maybe upconverted. When I look at the package more closely, I see it also says the film is 1.78:1, so that's how accurate all this is.

As I remember it, 2046 was originally meant to take place entirely in the future, so Bird would have had more to do. I remember reading that the Takuya kimura character was meant to be a hitman (the only trace of that is a scene where the faye Wong robot is dressing his wounds). It was only later that Wong decided to start adding the 60s scenes, and later still when he decided those scenes would take over the scenario. It's still weird to see McIntyre billed so prominently, and then showing up in only one shot. It leads you to expect he'll do something more significant; if anything, it makes his weird line reading come off very odd. In a way, I wish I could see a real wkw sci-fi movie--what was there works well enough to help make the movie great, but the sci-fi world in the film is really intriguing enough on its own to make a very worthwhile movie.

[Raymond Marble]

I'm sorry to hear that the Korean blu-ray is no good; we need a good HD release of this movie. As for Bird's prominence in the credits, of course Tony Leung was highly billed in most promotional materials for Days of Being Wild, despite only appearing in a tacked-on scene in the last minutes of the film. So, there is a bit of a precedent for this in wkw land, intentional or no.

[feihong]

I think it helps sales in regions where the actors are popular. They promote the pictures in advance using the actors clout to generate interest, but Wong will always cut the picture mercilessly, regardless. It makes Bird Tongchai McIntyre more of an oddity in the film for people who aren't familiar with him, but I suppose it gets more people into the theater in Thailand? Still, it seems to me like they're setting people up for disappointment. Bird doesn't even have a song in the finished film.

[eerik]

Divisa (Spain) will release Chaplin's Essanay shorts next month. Similar set was hinted by Flicker Alley.

[Drucker]

I don't know the best place to put it, so feel free to move.

Everyone in the USA should be keeping an eye over the next few weeks on the Euro and GBP as it might become a really great time to buy Blu-rays with the currency issues going on in the news. The European Central Bank has signaled possible stimulus money may be coming not unlike America has done with quantitative easing. And the GBP took a hit yesterday with the positive polling from Scotland that they are seeking independence.

Anyway, the needle hasn't really moved on this as much as the likes of CNBC would have you believe, but if things keep up in this direction over the next few weeks, there is certainly money to be saved for us in America.

For those keeping score, the exchange rate for dollar to Euro is now about .94. At this rate, it wouldn't surprise me if the dollar is worth more than the Euro in two months, and therefore, the best time ever for Americans to buy European blu-rays.

Apologies to those in the EU looking to buy Criterions though...

[whaleallright]

Amazon.fr still seems to be calculating the exchange rate at 1.2, not the .94 you mention.

[Michael Kerpan]

jonah -- you are looking through the wrong end of the telescope -- the dollar is still worth a bit less than a euro, so a euro is still worth a bit more than a dollar.

[feihong]

Has anyone seen the Korean blu rays of Swordsman or Meals on Wheels yet? I just noticed those for sale at YesAsia...but if they're merely ports of the HK blu rays, then I would rather avoid them. Can anyone speak to the quality of these discs?

[tenia]

It is indeed the best time for you guys to import (while in France it's worse than ever) : the Euro lost 22.5% in 12 months (something like this) VS the dollar. And the pound is strong too, on top of that. It has never costed me so much to buy Criterion titles, and now also Arrow and MoC discs.

[Drucker]

This trend won't be reversing anytime soon.