Odeon / Screenbound

[beamish14]

Curious how SP’s Moonlighting (1982) fares compared to the US disc.

So am I, because I definitely need to buy one of those. Although I suspect there's only one HD master.

This might be a great release. I believe Siskel & Ebert were huge fans and Siskel himself placed it on his decade's ten best list - for mainstream American audiences at the time, it was probably a significant endorsement. (When Raging Bull topped both of their lists, that was used for promotional copy far more than any other review.) I rarely hear it mentioned anymore, at least not in America over the past decade, so it could use a revival of some kind.

Skolimowski is definitely in need of a major revival, although recent films like Essential Killing and 11 Minutes have fared well. The latter was a Polish Oscar submission, and it shows that he hasn't lost an ounce of his idiosyncratic tendencies, and it's absolutely hilarious. His work is generally "out there", but even English-language films like King, Queen, Knave either never had DVD releases or are long OOP (The Lightship, which will maybe pop up on Paramount+ one day?). He had a huge retrospective of his works at Harvard a few years ago, and many of them subsequently screened at the Cinefamily in L.A.

[MichaelB]

Skolimowski on BD: Walkover (1965), Deep End (1970), The Shout (1978), Moonlighting (1982), Essential Killing (2011)

Skolimowski on DVD: most of the rest (including the two other 21st-century titles Four Nights with Anna and 11 Minutes), but many will be OOP and I had to make do with VHS dupes for King Queen Knave and Success is the Best Revenge.

No great loss with regard to the former (which Skolimowski has all but disowned), but I'd love to oversee a bells'n'whistles special edition of the latter, probably the only one of his post-exile films that completely recaptures the freewheeling idiosyncrasy of what he made in Poland from 1964-67. (Entirely predictably, as this must have been the toughest imaginable sell for its distributor, it died on its arse in Britain, barely opened anywhere else, and Skolimowski ended up losing his house - the one extensively featured in Moonlighting - over its complete commercial failure.) I enthuse about it at the end of this piece, but with caveats - anyone picking it as their first Skolimowski may well simultaneously make it their last.

[hearthesilence]

FWIW, Odeon's BD of The Harder They Come is almost an improvement over Shout! Factory's U.S. BD, mainly because Shout! Factory did a mediocre job. The bit rate for the Odeon disc is much, much lower, but it looks like Shout! applied some very noticeable DNR that made theirs look worse. However, the Odeon BD may have stretched the 1.66 image to 1.78! Pick your poison.

I have to say the Odeon BD is much more preferable. It can definitely be better - the low bitrate is pretty low and there are unfortunate artifacts like the "ringing" around the trees in the opening shot, where the ocean waves are crashing in the background. But the unfiltered texture looks great whereas the Shout Factory picture looks smeared and waxy, with some shots looking particularly bad - frustrating because Shout's edition is loaded with far more extras. (Goddammit, if Shout left the f-ing grain alone, it could've been perfect.)

What's really frustrating about the Odeon picture is the stretching - it wasn't too bad in close-ups, but in medium and especially long shots, you really notice how everyone is looking kind of squat. I wish there was option in my TV that can nudge things in to 1.66:1 - it's totally possibly (it's what you have on VLC player) but I doubt any TV set or BD player would ever have it.

[L.A.]

The Bitch / The Stud (Limited Edition Blu-ray Boxset) came out just recently.

[L.A.]

Maison Rouge, the genre arm of British label Screenbound Pictures, will bring to Blu-ray David Hamilton's Bilitis (1977), starring Patti D'Arbanville, Mona Kristensen, Bernard Giraudeau, Mathieu Carrière, and Gilles Kohler. The release will be available for purchase on September 6.

[Calvin]

Skolimowski's Moonlighting is only £4.99 (plus shipping) in their Black Friday sale. Voucher code EXTRA5 will take a few additional pennies off.