Mr. Bongo Films

[Calvin]

It's very disappointing as Mr. Bongo's previous Blu-Ray releases (albeit there are only two of them) are technically fine so I had hopes that they wouldn't regress back to the standards - or lack of - of their DVD releases.

While it's probably worth waiting for Criterion, Mr. Bongo did say that they are releasing a box set with extras later in the year so hopefully they're aware of this cock up and take steps to rectify it when it comes to re-authoring discs.

[Roger Ryan]

...I can now only hope the Immortal Story Gaumont restoration won't turn out too filtered.

Issa Clubb noted last month that Criterion has done its own HD scan of THE IMMORTAL STORY, so if the Gaumont restoration turns out flawed than it's likely Criterion will release an alternate.

[vidussoni]

Apparently they are also releasing Fellini's Casanova in the U.S. on August 7.

I thought for sure Criterion would've grabbed this.

[chatterjees]

Apparently they are also releasing Fellini's Casanova in the U.S. on August 7.

I thought for sure Criterion would've grabbed this.

I saw that listing last week and thought that there must be a glitch or something. I did not see any official announcement for Mr. Bongo coming to USA anywhere. blu-ray.com has done some random listings before. I could be wrong too. May be they are coming. There is another page for The Saragossa Manuscript Blu-ray.

[Gregory]

There are Amazon US listings for many Mr Bongo releases, and the release date will probably be bumped. I don't think this is a release specifically for the US market or there wouldn't be the BBFC labelling on the cover.

[solaris72]

Weird, there's also a Best Buy listing for Hourglass Sanatorium...$15, gonna pre-order and see what happens.

[kekid]

Does anyone know how the Bongo Blu Ray of The Immortal Story compares with the Gaumont version?

[tenia]

The Gaumont will only be released in a few weeks so it's hard to know yet.

[Calvin]

A Blu-Ray release of Tomás Gutiérrez Alea's Memories of Underdevelopment has been announced for February 17th.

[feckless boy]

A Blu-Ray release of Tomás Gutiérrez Alea's Memories of Underdevelopment has been announced for February 17th.

Review by dvdcompare. Mostly positive but, as per usual with Mr Bongo, questions about the encode's origin.

[peerpee]

Are people still giving these clowns money? Mr Pongo have been limping along like a lame, diarrhoeic horse since they began. They're a disgrace to the industry – and probably the last standing truly disreputable label in the UK.

[knives]

Anyone who bought the recent Welles blues from Crit are technically giving them money.

[peerpee]

Yes, that hook-up took my breath away. Which is why their abysmal business practices need to be more widely known. They're the biggest chancers on the block and they've proven time and time again they don't give a fuck.

[rapta]

Beaver review

I'll get it eventually, but will wait for it to drop to the £5-6 mark. You're right that Mr. Bongo don't really deserve our money - their home video arm has always felt like an afterthought, and especially since the whole Welles debacle I've been quite wary of them.

[bugsy_pal]

I have been tempted to buy a couple of Bunuel DVDs they released a while back - Susana and El Bruto - but have not pulled the trigger.

Not sure if there are any other English-friendly versions around...

[DeprongMori]

What exactly is so sleazy about Mr Bongo? It sounds like they are notorious. I had read that they issued things they weren't quite licensed for, but nothing beyond that. And if they were issuing things that they didn't quite have the licensing for, how in the world did they get their name all over Criterion's release of Chimes at Midnight?

[knives]

As far as I know the main problems are that they're overly obscure about who they are licencing prints from and that they have consistently avoided following the law with regards to the BBFC

[swo17]

They've also illegally offered their UK products directly for sale on Amazon US.

[kubelkind]

On the plus side, their music reissues are superb, the two DVDs I have are not bad (Hourglass Sanatorium and L'Avventura) and the Underdevelopment blu-ray costs a mere ten pounds. If you order direct, things are sent out quickly and efficiently. And they are actually releasing stuff like this, and not the gore/exploitation schlock which most UK labels seem transfixed by these days. Can't say I'm in tears about them defying the will of the BBFC either, if that is the case.

[swo17]

Well it directly hurts labels that play by the rules like Eureka, Arrow, BFI, Soda, New Wave, Artificial Eye, Indicator, etc.

[MichaelB]

It's not "defying the will of the BBFC", it's breaking the criminal law. The BBFC won't be affected either way, unless for some inexplicable reason all the majors decide to stop supporting them - the Board has always been a creation of the mainstream film industry.

[TMDaines]

I'll give an indifferent shrug with kubelkind on this one. There's lots of crap criminal laws that I don't agree with and breaking them is ethically fine and/or is victimless. Whether Bongo are undermining the BBFC for the right reasons or not, I don't know, but the sooner there is greater movement towards reducing their censoring influence, the better.

[MichaelB]

They're not "undermining the BBFC", they're (or were) trying to get away without paying them, which is in fact undermining every other boutique label that plays by industry rules. It makes no difference to the BBFC, so what effect is it going to have?

[TMDaines]

Why would we care particularly? You can make just as much of an argument that them not paying the BBFC means their releases are cheaper which means consumers have more money to spend elsewhere after buying their releases.

The BBFC are a bunch of parasitic censors and I feel for all of you who feel the need to engage with them in order to avoid leaving yourself open to criminal charges.

Publishers should be able to self-cert 18 and be done with it at the very least.

[MichaelB]

Why would we care particularly? You can make just as much of an argument that them not paying the BBFC means their releases are cheaper which means consumers have more money to spend elsewhere after buying their releases.

BBFC fees are unlikely to have much impact on the RRP, unless we're talking a really extreme case like Jacques Rivette's Out 1. The most likely scenario is that it might free up enough budget for an additional extra, although when Mr Bongo wasn't paying the BBFC their typical product was utterly barebones with dodgy transfers and subtitles, so the consumer clearly wasn't benefiting.

The BBFC are a bunch of parasitic censors and I feel for all of you who feel the need to engage with them in order to avoid leaving yourself open to criminal charges.

It's not that we "feel the need to engage with them", it's that we're legally compelled to in the same way that virtually any firm in any industry is compelled to deal with certain types of regulatory legislation - were I operating in the food or pharmaceutical industry, I suspect I'd be forced to jump through far more hoops. Personally, I find the fact that Sony has to be paid a hefty licensing fee per disc for the right to use the Blu-ray logo and encryption system to be rather more irritating - at least the BBFC has a discernible point in that its legal vetting can be genuinely useful (and much cheaper than hiring a specialist lawyer).

Publishers should be able to self-cert 18 and be done with it at the very least.

I completely agree, and I've been calling for such a system for literally decades. Just as I've been calling for the abolition of the ridiculous law that prevents R18 material from being posted from one UK address to another - abolish that law, and the possibility of curated UK special editions of films by people like Radley Metzger and Stephen Sayadian becomes a commercially viable possibility instead of a complete non-starter.

But as an industry professional, I have to abide by the existing criminal law, and my colleagues and I reasonably expect other companies to do the same thing.