Carlotta Releases

[Michael Kerpan]

I wonder whether the Eureka set will be a significant upgrade of the Belgian DVD set?

[Big Ben]

I was told several years ago that some of Hou's films were made with mob money. That's a ludicrous statement I know but is there any veracity to it? The only Hou film I've seen is City of Sadness and that was froma VHS tape I managed to get from a third party seller. There's just a void with Hou that isn't there with contemporaries like Edward Yang or Tsai Ming Liang.

[The Fanciful Norwegian]

The two Era productions (A City of Sadness and The Puppetmaster) are owned by a guy who abandoned the film industry for real estate and supposedly just doesn't care about them anymore. They get occasional theatrical screenings, but these have to be authorized by Hou personally and must be purely not-for-profit.

[Adam X]

I was told several years ago that some of Hou's films were made with mob money. That's a ludicrous statement I know but is there any veracity to it?

I can't speak for Hou's films, but there's a history of the Triad's & Yakuza being involved in film production in Hong Kong & Japan respectively, so it's not unreasonable for the same to be true of Taiwan.

[Drucker]

Tweet about working on 4k restoration of The Last Movie.

[McCrutchy]

Mikio Naruse five film Blu-ray box set to be released on November 21st, 2018

According to DVD.fr, it will contain:

Sound of the Mountain (1954)
Flowing (1956)
When a Woman Ascends the Stairs (1960)
Yearning (1964)
Two in the Shadow (1967)

[ellipsis7]

Also Welles' LADY FROM SHANGHAI comes to BR on 16 November...

Antonioni's THE PASSENGER aka PROFESSION: REPORTER recently out on Carlotta DVD, BR & Coffret Ultra Collector, the last dual-format with a substantial book put together by Dominique Paini... As would be expected the transfer matches the Indicator release (which I also acquired), in terms of extras the notable additions are Lino Micciche's ANTONIONI VU PAR ANTONIONI and a lovely HD transfer of MA's early 1949 short L'AMOROSA MENZOGNA (aka LIES OF LOVE), about the world of the fotoromanzo (roman-photo), otherwise called 'fumetti' after the speech bubbles superimposed on the characters in the photos which are reminiscent of little puffs of cigarette smoke emanating from their mouths...

[eerik]

The three Frank Borzage silents (7th Heaven, Street Angel, Lucky Star) on Blu-ray are all out-of-print and mostly sold out, right? Amazon only has Street Angel available. Oh well, guess I missed them after years of hesitating and passing on deals. Damn shame these aren't available on BD anywhere else.

[NABOB OF NOWHERE]

FNAC has Lucky Star

[eerik]

FNAC has Lucky Star

Thanks for the tip, though FNAC only offers express courier shipping to Estonia, which would be way too expensive for just one item. However, I did some additional searching of my own and Potemkine had all three still available, with much more reasonable shippinng costs (~13 euros).

[dwk]

Carlotta is releasing John Carpenter's Christine on UHD in one of their big book sets in September.

[The Fanciful Norwegian]

Carlotta will release the recent 4K restoration of Flowers of Shanghai

[tenia]

They're showing it this evening at Lyon and should release it theatrically in early 2020. A physical video release should follow then.

[PfR73]

Has anyone here ever had a reason to contact Carlotta and been successful in doing so? I recently ordered their Blu-ray of Network specifically because their website states that it includes the documentary "By Sidney Lumet" as a bonus feature.
However, the disc arrived from Amazon about 2 weeks ago and the documentary is nowhere to be found on the disc. It just has the film and a trailer. I already own the US Warner & UK Arrow releases, so I don't need another copy of the film, I wanted the documentary.
I used the Contact Form on their website, but it's been like 2 weeks now and I have not received any response.

[tenia]

I supsect the page isn't done in an accurate manner enough because the doc' only is included in the bigger set with the book. It's never been on the regular BD release from Carlotta.

Amazon.fr shows the backcover of this standard release and indeed shows it doesn't have the doc.

Since you bought it from Amazon some weeks ago already, I wouldn't wait before preparing the return of this product.

[yoloswegmaster]

Carlotta will be releasing Francois Truffaut's Antoine Doinel series on 4K UHD in December.

[mteller]

If the Amazon listing is correct, looks like no English subtitles (not a surprise). But maybe it bodes well for a potential Criterion release? I've been holding off on the 400 Blows blu in hopes of a full set upgrade.

[Calvin]

The BFI will also be releasing them in early 2022. Format yet to be confirmed, but they do have their first UHD coming out in the next month.

[The Fanciful Norwegian]

The just-announced lineup of the Nantes Festival des 3 Continents includes a special section to mark Shōchiku's 100th anniversary. A number of the films there are credited to Carlotta, and while some have already been released by them and others (e.g. Record of a Tenement Gentleman, Harakiri), these don't have existing Carlotta BDs:

The Downfall of Osen (1935, Mizoguchi Kenji)
Love Under the Crucifix (1962, Tanaka Kinuyo)
Sisters of the Gion (1936, Mizoguchi Kenji)
The Yellow Handkerchief (1977, Yamada Yōji)

The Mizoguchis are being shown on film, so I'm not sure what that augurs for a BD release. Sisters of the Gion was released a while back by Artificial Eye, but The Downfall of Osen has no BD edition anywhere, which might be because Shōchiku only has it on 16mm (there is a less complete 35mm nitrate print in the collection of the Kobe Planet Film Archive that reportedly looks and sounds much better). The festival is also showing Shinoda's Demon Pond, which Carlotta has already announced for a Blu release in February.

[fiendishthingy]

Carlotta also has restorations of the six films directed by Kinuyo Tanaka. I know they all played recently at the Lumière Film Festival, and they're scheduled to be released in theaters in France in April 2022.

[Michael Kerpan]

Carlotta also has restorations of the six films directed by Kinuyo Tanaka.

I hope these make it on to home video.

[Stefan Andersson]

Tests of Carlotta´s Antoine Doinel box set, with comparison screencaps:
https://www.dvdclassik.com/test/blu-ray ... otta-films
https://testsbluray.com/2021/12/05/test ... ne-doinel/

[mhofmann]

Tests of Carlotta´s Antoine Doinel box set, with comparison screencaps:
https://www.dvdclassik.com/test/blu-ray ... otta-films
https://testsbluray.com/2021/12/05/test ... ne-doinel/

Contrary to what's mentioned in the second review, David Mackenzie/Fidelity in Motion does not seem to be involved with the encoding/mastering of these discs in any way. (At least not with the UHDs; the review seems to cover the Blu-ray edition.)
Instead it appears to be the work of a company called Com'on Screen. Unfortunately there are compression artifacts intermittently visible throughout the presentations - certainly a step down from the gold standard that FiM usually sets.

[tenia]

I covered the BDs only, since I'm not 4k equipped. I can confirm David M did the BD encodes.
According to DVD Classik UHD review, Hiventy did the UHD encodes.
Com'On Screen hasn't done Carlotta's encodes since quite some time, but are routinely doing the pre-mastering for them.

[mhofmann]

I covered the BDs only, since I'm not 4k equipped. I can confirm David M did the BD encodes.
According to DVD Classik UHD review, Hiventy did the UHD encodes.
Com'On Screen hasn't done Carlotta's encodes since quite some time, but are routinely doing the pre-mastering for them.

Thanks for the info! A bit strange that FiM didn't do the UHD encodes then - they would have come out better for it, I assume, even if they're not perfect as per your screenshots.