Studio Canal / Kinowelt / Optimum

[MichaelB]

Excellent news about La Guerre sans nom, as I've tracked down English subtitles for everything else.

UPDATE: ...and I've ordered the French box. I'll report full specs early next week when it arrives.

[mhofmann]

Got the French set today. Unless I made a mistake, this is what languages and subtitles look like:

[mhofmann]

Things I noticed at quick glance:
- 'La Guerre sans nom' is on one disc, with all its 4 hours. Encoding could of course be better. The second disc is some minor bonus material only.
- The pitch of the Studiocanal logo jingle at the beginning of 'Ça commence aujourd'hui' is noticeably off. No idea what this might mean for the rest of the film. The feature length matches what's listed on IMDb.

[MichaelB]

Very pleased to see all the French HoH subtitles - when watching French films, I generally prefer them to ones in English, a habit that started when I deliberately bought a French DVD of Ridicule because I (rightly) thought subtitles in French would be more linguistically useful than ones in English, given that the film is specifically about quirks in the French language and a parallel English translation is therefore needlessly distracting. My French is a long way from being fluent, but if spoken and written French are simultaneously combined I'm likely to get at least 95% of what's being said.

[kekid]

Both French and German boxes seem to be missing "Daddy Nostalgia" and "Round Midnight".
Are these available on Blu Ray anywhere?

[CSM126]

I believe Round Midnight is with Criterion, but obviously not released yet

[dwk]

I may be misremembering, but I recall Daddy Nostalghia being a pretty bad standard definition master when it was on the Criterion Channel earlier this year. So it is possible that there is no HD master (and no Blu-ray.)

[kekid]

Any indication that Criterion might release a Tavernier box in Region 1?
What are the likely options for their next big box?

[dwk]

No, Kino has released a number of StudioCanal's Tavernier titles.

[GaryC]

Very pleased to see all the French HoH subtitles - when watching French films, I generally prefer them to ones in English, a habit that started when I deliberately bought a French DVD of Ridicule because I (rightly) thought subtitles in French would be more linguistically useful than ones in English, given that the film is specifically about quirks in the French language and a parallel English translation is therefore needlessly distracting. My French is a long way from being fluent, but if spoken and written French are simultaneously combined I'm likely to get at least 95% of what's being said.

I did once years ago follow a film via French subtitles at the National Film Theatre (as was) - the film was Dreyer's Gertrud, in Danish, and the print had come from a French archive. That was in the last century and my French is very rusty now. So a set like this could certainly give me plenty of practice. Other than the English-language Death Watch, the only one that doesn't have English subtitles or French HOH subtitles is Des enfants gâtés, which is one I haven't seen before.

I'm not in a position to spring for this set just yet, and a little voice asks when I'm going to get the time to watch all of this, but I'm certainly tempted. There are films on here I've been wanting to see for years and I've been wanting a Blu of Sunday in the Country in particular for years too.

[tenia]

From what I gathered from the boxset trailer, I suppose some of the new restorations and it shows. I haven't been able to recognize in particular which movie stood out but I think it's Que la fête commence.

[mhofmann]

From what I gathered from the boxset trailer, I suppose some of the new restorations and it shows. I haven't been able to recognize in particular which movie stood out but I think it's Que la fête commence.

While a lot of the included films look like they're from older masters, Que la fête commence is from a newer 4K restoration and has been quite a bit Ritrovata'd.

https://imgur.com/a/s0T3EgI

[kekid]

Does anyone have external English subtitles for "Holy Lola"?
The ones I could find from open sources only go for part of the film.

[mhofmann]

Does anyone have external English subtitles for "Holy Lola"?
The ones I could find from open sources only go for part of the film.

I can find a set of subtitles (via OpenSubtitles) that seem to cover the entire film but that was split into two files, presumably for two CDs. Haven't tried synchronizing it to the set yet, but the overall runtime seems to roughly match.

[MichaelB]

I'm sure I'll get round to synchronising them in due course, but my Tavernier set hasn't arrived yet.

[GaryC]

Of course, by the time I get hold of this and even watch any of it, we might know if StudioCanal have any plans to release any of these in the UK. I somehow doubt they'll go for an eighteen-film or even eleven-film set, especially as by my reckoning six of the eighteen haven't had UK commercial releases before so will need to be BBFC-certified. (Que la fête commence and La guerre sans nom have had UK television screenings, though. As the latter is a documentary, it may be able to be BBFC-exempted depending on its content - I haven't seen the film.)

[Matt]

SC UK also have a Jacques Becker title, 1945's Falbalas.

Trying to find someone who will ship it to the US without charging more for shipping than for the disc itself

I ended up ordering the French DVD+BD from Fnac. Shipping still cost more than the disc itself, but the disc is identical (includes French and German audio and French HOH, English, and German subtitles) and I received it ONE day after the street date.

[Pepsi]

Tavernier box (German).
https://www.media-dealer.de/index.php?c ... 3539690706

There's a picture of the back cover. It dosent promise good. Only one film has Englsih subs. If its accurate.

[MichaelB]

Things I noticed at quick glance:
- 'La Guerre sans nom' is on one disc, with all its 4 hours. Encoding could of course be better.

I suspect that last sentence translates as "The bitrate could of course be higher", because I'd argue that 25mbps is in fact absolutely fine for a film like this with lots of talking-head interviews and rostrum stills (the main feature file is a whopping 46.7 gigs), and a quick spin through the disc suggests that I'm unlikely to have any problems with it.

Very happy to confirm that the extras disc is 100% English-friendly as well, the extras in question being a 16-minute discussion between Bertrand Tavernier and co-writer Patrick Rotman, and a 50-minute interview with historian Vincent Martigny.

[Fiery Angel]

are there English-friendly extras with any of the English-friendly films?

[kekid]

Tavernier box (German).
https://www.media-dealer.de/index.php?c ... 3539690706

There's a picture of the back cover. It dosent promise good. Only one film has Englsih subs. If its accurate.

If you click on the "Specifications" tab in the table next to the graphic, you will see that Subtitles are provided in German and English.

[MichaelB]

are there English-friendly extras with any of the English-friendly films?

I haven't been through all of them yet, but Une Semaine de Vacances is completely English-friendly, including the making-of doc and the 25-minute critical analysis.

[eerik]

Didn't see it posted here yet, but it looks like Studiocanal are going to beat Kino Lorber with the 4K UHD release of Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy. German release is listed for 2nd December, will surely coincide with UK release.

[MichaelB]

Didn't see it posted here yet, but it looks like Studiocanal are going to beat Kino Lorber with the 4K UHD release of Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy. German release is listed for 4nd December, will surely coincide with UK release.

A very safe bet, I'd have thought, if only for economy-of-scale manufacturing reasons.

[mhofmann]

Things I noticed at quick glance:
- 'La Guerre sans nom' is on one disc, with all its 4 hours. Encoding could of course be better.

I suspect that last sentence translates as "The bitrate could of course be higher", because I'd argue that 25mbps is in fact absolutely fine for a film like this with lots of talking-head interviews and rostrum stills (the main feature file is a whopping 46.7 gigs), and a quick spin through the disc suggests that I'm unlikely to have any problems with it.

Sure, the bit-rate could be higher given the source material. More accurately, I should have said "the compressed video could be more transparent to the source."

Given that 4 hours of noisy footage are packed onto one disc, it actually looks fairly reasonable. This doesn't change the fact that there are compression artifacts everywhere and that I notice them very easily on my large-screen TV. One can even see where the I-frames are in many scenes (or at least I assume that's what's happening), due to a pulsing effect in the quality of the noise pattern.
I'm assuming that splitting the main feature onto two discs and/or more careful encoding could have avoided all of this.