Artificial Eye / Curzon Film World

[Gregory]

Yikes, I knew the rights to the Melville and Buñuel films had gone back to SC, but I still managed to conflate those sets with the AE ones. (Lack of a convenient way to browse multi-film sets on the Curzon AE site doesn't help.) I haven't kept up with which sets from either label are worth owning, but I will surely have to pick up this Varda one sooner or later.

[Apperson]

In terms of the SC sets, I know that the Buñuel has got some controversy associated with it; the screen grabs for three of the Melville films in the set are on caps-a-holic (simply putting 'Melville' in the search bar) and as far as I can tell they look pretty great.

[JSC]

I've had the Agnes Varda collection for a while now and have seen all the films projected.
All of the films were from recent restorations and all of them look healthy. I'd also
like to recommend the Aki Kaurismaki set to those who are still on the fence. It is
pretty much his entire oeuvre (minus I Hired a Contract Killer) and most of the
picture quality of those films run from decent to excellent.

[McCrutchy]

For anyone considering L'Amant Double, I just received my copy, and while the subtitles are optional and it appears to port all of the minimal extras from the French BD, it's also an improper 25 fps (1080/50i) encode with a run time of 104 minutes (1:43:35). The German/Swiss BD is 24 fps and there is a (very sketchy) scan that looks like the French BD, which has it at 23.976 fps, and both discs run 108 minutes. To add a bit of insult to injury, the box has the original French title, but the subtitles on the film also contain the silly "Double Lover" translated title that put me off buying the US Cohen Blu-ray in the first place.

I guess this means I have to buy the Cohen BD, now.

[fdm]

(Cute with the double post, and doubly sad as well, since mine's already on the way. Think that as well as cutting down some, I'll hold off longer too from now on.)

[McCrutchy]

That (the double post) was a happy accident.

[AidanKing]

Artificial Eye appear to have decided to release Xavier Beauvois' The Guardians on DVD only. I wonder what criteria they are taking into account in making the decisions on which films to release on BluRay: presumably not visual ones in this case at least.

I imagine it's purely commercial considerations, so AE appear to be going down a different route from, for example, Arrow, who are generally releasing archive titles on BluRay only now and are sometimes even releasing new titles (such as Loznitsa's A Gentle Creature) on BluRay only too.

[Aunt Peg]

Artificial Eye appear to have decided to release Xavier Beauvois' The Guardians on DVD only. I wonder what criteria they are taking into account in making the decisions on which films to release on BluRay: presumably not visual ones in this case at least.

I imagine it's purely commercial considerations, so AE appear to be going down a different route from, for example, Arrow, who are generally releasing archive titles on BluRay only now and are sometimes even releasing new titles (such as Loznitsa's A Gentle Creature) on BluRay only too.

I'll be purchasing the US Blu Ray from Music Box of The Guardians. Such a great looking film deserves nothing less than the Blu Ray treatment.

[colinr0380]

Jupiter's Moon was another film that they rather strangely decided to release DVD only recently too.

[Caligula]

New pre-orders are up for The House That Jack Built, Disobedience, Dogman and Cold War. Links are for BD's, but pre-orders for DVD's are all available as well

[Skrmng Skll Th Thd]

Has the Jean Vigo set suddenly been pushed back a full year, or am I just now now noticing the "2019" at the amazon listing? Blu-ray dot com still lists the date as "2018" and I can't find any info on Curzon's own site.

[reaky]

For any UK members near a Fopp store, they currently have the AE Louis Malle set for £30.

[Calvin]

3 years after turning down Arrow's advances, Artificial Eye are finally releasing Krzysztof Kieślowski's A Short Film About Killing and A Short Film About Love on Blu-Ray this April 8th.

[Kauno]

Why not a double feature?

[domino harvey]

[Never Cursed]

For whatever reason, I thought you hated Dekalog, domino

[MichaelB]

Why not a double feature?

To expand on Domino’s reply, why a double feature? These are two of the more lucrative back-catalogue cash cows that Artificial Eye has access to at a time when physical media sales are dwindling rapidly - so what sensible reason would they have to effectively give one of the titles away?

[dda1996a]

For whatever reason, I thought you hated Dekalog, domino

If Domino hates Dekalog I can finally make up my mind whether to trust his opinions or not

[domino harvey]

For whatever reason, I thought you hated Dekalog, domino

I think the one with the father and daughter is a masterpiece and the one with the stamps is okay, don't care for the rest. Kim K here was Artificial Eye's end goal, not me ponying up!

[domino harvey]

For whatever reason, I thought you hated Dekalog, domino

If Domino hates Dekalog I can finally make up my mind whether to trust his opinions or not

I'm well aware I'm in the minority on these films, but you can trust my opinions in as much as they are legitimately mine. If I don't like the same things you like and vice versa, I could hardly be offended if you were to dismiss my takes on films you haven't seen yet!

[dda1996a]

I merely jest of course. And we've obviously disagreed before, lately regarding Inaritu. Im interested in reading what you don't like about this though. Probably my favorite series of all time.

[phoenix474]

Knowing AE's reputation I was a little iffy getting about getting the Varda set from them. To my surprise it's actually packaged very nicely (despite the infuriating spine situation that AE releases have) and the first two discs look magnificent. You could take the Cleo disc, change up the menus and draw a wacky C on the cover and it'd work perfectly as a standalone Criterion release.

Might have to get the Kaurismäki set next. They released all the films here in Finland individually on blu-ray, with hefty prices too...

[domino harvey]

Les dames du bois de Boulogne coming to Blu-ray in March

[nitin]

Should be the new 4k restoration so hopefully AE don’t botch the encode or something, I have been wanting to (re)watch this in good quality for a long long time.

[Finch]

Trades are reporting that Cohen in the US have bought Curzon/AE and plan further expansion.