Vinegar Syndrome and Their Partner Labels

[swo17]

Look more closely at the mission statement:

Cinématographe is a new sub-label from Vinegar Syndrome that seeks to fill gaps in the canon of American cinema

In other words, bad movies by people that have made great movies

Don't really get the mean-spiritedness, Thieves Like Us a bad film? And Last Embrace is a great thriller, which is derided by some as Hitchcock-lite but stands up very well on it's own whilst tipping its hat to Hitch - the Cinématographe UHD looks wonderful also. Ferrara's Dangerous Game is mediocre but so is most Ferrara and it contains another combustible Keitel performance.

Nicholson directed three films and Goin' South is the most accessible of them, a joyous little film, certainly not bad. Red Rock West, a perfectly serviceable pot-boiler and Joyride was not on my radar but I really enjoyed it. The only one I have struggled with is Little Darlings which is of the genre I have always disliked.

The label's mission statement holds true your take on it is specious at best, just a lazy snipe, basically.

I was going to say I won't apologize for making a joke, but then I realized that would make me sound like JD Vance, so yes, I do apologize for this joke.

Also, Red Rock West rules

[tenia]

VS aren’t going to advertise a release as “an average coming-of-age film that has been mostly forgotten due to poor acting and pedestrian direction.” They are a business at the end of the day!

Oh no, they'd write it's one of the most looked-for long-lost movie from a self-made since-retired fantasmagoric director, 30 years in the making.
(And it's New York Ninja)

But again : yeah I know, but I think there's a spectrum between using the usual positive description "gorgeous, gem, classic" and focus on the one popular cast member, and then there are the kind of stuff above.
And I'm quite sure they don't even need that level of hyperboles to sell, at least not anymore (I mean, are people really going to take at face value Devil Times Five's description as "notorious not only for its savage violence and mean-spirited sense of humor, but as one of the greatest killer-kids films ever produced" and this will make them purchase it ? I'm not sure.

But again, it's part of their brand at this point.

Edit : or the "genre-defying, star-studded, major-studio inheritance-thriller-styled murder mystery"

[dwk]

New VS titles:
Cruel Britannia: Three Killer Thrillers From the UK (Craze/Penny Gold/Crucible of Terror)
Howling II UHD
Delirium: PHoto of Gioia UHD
An Eye for an Eye (VSA)
Bloodline (VSL)
Go Fish (Cinematographe)
Blonde on a Bum Trip (Distribpix)


and the Partner Labels
Asylum of Terror (VHSHitfest)
The Battle of CHile (Icarus Films)
THe Becomers (Dark Star)
Devi Danger (ETR Media)
Disco Boy (Big World Pictures)
Dogleg (Memory)
Ferocious Fukasaku:Two Films by Kinji Fukasaku (Wolves, Pigs and Men / Violent Panic Big Crash)(Film Movement
Flesh Freaks (Saturn's Core)
Hetel (Film Movement)
I Used to be Funny (Utopia)
Lourdes (Film Movement)
Lovely Rita (Film Movement)
Mary Jane's Not a Virgin Anymore and the Films of Sarah Jacobsen (AGFA)
My Heart is That Eternal Rose (Kani)
The Other Laurens (Yellow Veil Pictures)
See You Next Tuesday (Factory 25)
Spirit Riser (Art Label)
That guy dick Miller (Dekanalog)
When Tomorrow Dies (Canadian International Pictures)

Kani's MY Heart is that Eternal Rose includes

two episodes from celebrated TV series C.I.D. (1976) directed by Patrick Tam; shot by David Chung; written by Joyce Chan.

Season 1, Episode 3 "Two Teddy Girls"
Two sisters have taken to random muggings to fuel their independence. Without boyfriends and no longer in touch with their family, Officer Sum (Cheung Lui) struggles to track them down.

Season 1, Episode 14 "Dawn, Noon, Dusk, Night"
A rookie cop (Simon Yam) follows up on allegations of child abuse; a jaded officer (Cheung Lui) stakes out buildings for a peeping tom and finds something much darker; a veteran detective (Ho Bik Kin) sadly investiages a violent murder at an old age home; their supervisor (Wong Yuen Sun) struggles to let loose after a long day of being interrogated by the newly formed Independent Commission Against Corruption.

These episodes of C.I.D were originally shot on 16mm reversal film, transferred to betacam in the 2000s and digitized in the early 2010s by Television Broadcasting Company (TVB).

[Peacock]

The Battle of Chile in HD! Incredible.

Violent Panic Big Crash, I wonder if Eureka will do this one soon? Glad I hadn’t bought the other title in this set yet just in case.

My Heart is That Eternal Rose will make many of us happy.

Not sure why the Sarah Jacobsen films are getting announced when they were already out from AGFA before, maybe a reprint.

[swo17]

Disco Boy is great, if a bit too similar to Beau Travail

[Finch]

Happy to see MY HEART IS THAT ETERNAL ROSE announced. I already got the other Fukasaku from Eureka so I'm going to get Violent Panic Big Crash from them instead if it gets announced.

[swo17]

I'm boycotting this Fukasaku release because they're keeping the US shops from stocking the Eureka

[Finch]

Grindhousevideo might have the Eureka. At least a few months ago, they were still importing the Radiance Szulkin set. I don't know if their policies have changed in the meantime.

[beamish14]

Isn’t the Sarah Jacobsen set identical in every way to the previous release of it?

[TechnicolorAcid]

Isn’t the Sarah Jacobsen set identical in every way to the previous release of it?

It’s the same but like the rest of their reprints it comes with a slip so there’s that.

[colinr0380]

A couple of things stand out from that release list: Go Fish is the debut film by Rose Troche and a seminal lesbian themed film of the 1990s, as well as an early film produced by Christine Vachon's Killer Films production company just after the initial Todd Haynes and Tom Kalin films established them. In the following years Killer Films would produce Safe, Kids and Mary Harron's debut feature I Shot Andy Warhol.

Co-writer and actress in Go Fish Guinevere Turner would go on to co-write with Harron both American Psycho, The Notorious Bettie Page and the more recent Charles Manson biopic Charlie Says, and also briefly appears in the funniest scene of American Psycho ("You actually listen to Whitney Houston? You own a Whitney Houston CD? More than one?"). And plays the love interest in The Watermelon Woman. Although Turner did also write the Uwe Boll adaptation of the BloodRayne video game, but we'll overlook that one!

And Blonde on a Bum Trip rang a bell, because a clip of it turned up in the "Reefer Madness" episode of Jonathan Ross's 1995 series Mondo Rosso! (NSFW)

[ryannichols7]

I'm boycotting this Fukasaku release because they're keeping the US shops from stocking the Eureka

we should all be doing this with all VS/Severin/etc who contribute to this absurd practice

[PfR73]

Users on the BR.com forums found a link on an artist's website, since taken down but viewable on a Google cache, of artwork for a release of The Keep that (per the URL) was commissioned by Vinegar Syndrome.

[beamish14]

Users on the BR.com forums found a link on an artist's website, since taken down but viewable on a Google cache, of artwork for a release of The Keep that (per the URL) was commissioned by Vinegar Syndrome.

Considering their amazing detective work in the Paramount archives with Phase IV, perhaps we’ll finally get deleted material

[MichaelB]

Although that film's always going to be an unfinished torso - when VFX genius Wally Veevers (whose CV includes 2001: A Space Odyssey) died mere days into post-production, he took with him the secret of what he was planning to do in one of the most crucial creative stages of a film like that. Michael Mann normally maintains a steely Kubrick-like control over every element of his films, but he had no VFX experience and so was happy to let Veevers do his thing - but precisely what "his thing" was, neither we nor Mann will ever know.

Which I suspect is why – highly unusually for him – Mann has never attempted to revisit The Keep beyond the theatrical release version; he knew that the latter was a massive compromise, but he was also all too aware that the film that he was trying to make will forever remain unrealisable.

[Orlac]

The thing that always amazes me about The Keep is that it features a Tangerine Dream cover of "Walking in the Air" from the then brand-new UK animated short film The Snowman - a film that reduces me to tears to this day.

It is a shame that Mann's film isn't a very good adaption of the novel, but as a visual and aural experience, it's fascinating.

[CSM126]

The thing that always amazes me about The Keep is that it features a Tangerine Dream cover of "Walking in the Air" from the then brand-new UK animated short film The Snowman - a film that reduces me to tears to this day.

That’s it. I’m sold.

[beamish14]

Although that film's always going to be an unfinished torso - when VFX genius Wally Veevers (whose CV includes 2001: A Space Odyssey) died mere days into post-production, he took with him the secret of what he was planning to do in one of the most crucial creative stages of a film like that. Michael Mann normally maintains a steely Kubrick-like control over every element of his films, but he had no VFX experience and so was happy to let Veevers do his thing - but precisely what "his thing" was, neither we nor Mann will ever know.

Which I suspect is why – highly unusually for him – Mann has never attempted to revisit The Keep beyond the theatrical release version; he knew that the latter was a massive compromise, but he was also all too aware that the film that he was trying to make will forever remain unrealisable.

Whenever Mann talks about the film publicly, as he did at a masterclass held at Loyola Marymount in Los Angeles, Veevers’ death and its impact on the film is pretty much all he’ll say. I adore it, extreme flaws and all, as it works beautifully as an exercise in pure mood and ambience

Interesting to note that he walked from directing Breathless to make it, and Orion somewhat reluctantly gave said film back to co-writer Jim McBride

[dwk]

Seems F. Paul Wilson confirmed that VS is releasing The Keep and he recorded an interview for the release.

[Mr. Deltoid]

Seems F. Paul Wilson confirmed that VS is releasing The Keep and he recorded an interview for the release.

I suppose this will be the emblematic Vinegar Syndrome release when it eventually drops; the company's commitment to polishing turds will have reached it's zenith!

[luxta]

October will be another memorable feast of horrific delicacies, including the maggot-filled Shaw Bros. giallo, CORPSE MANIA (1981) on UHD, our next FORGOTTEN GIALLI collection which will assemble three deeper cut and highly stylized genres entries from the 80s (all Blu-ray debuts), plus another entry in our ongoing quest to unearth and release every never-on-disc 80s slasher, and finally a world UHD debut of an unquestionable masterpiece of macabre 70s cinema.

I would like to see The Possession of Joel Delaney.

[What A Disgrace]

It's worth mentioning that CIP's release of When Tomorrow Dies includes an entire other Larry Kent feature film, Mothers and Daughters, as a supplement.

[dwk]

Magnolia is now an OCN Partner Label

OCN Distribution, sister company of genre-centric home video label Vinegar Syndrome, has brokered a deal with American indie film distributor Magnolia Pictures, as well as their genre imprint Magnet Releasing, to distribute several of its titles on Blu-ray and 4K UHD. Following Vinegar Syndrome’s Blu-ray release of Prano Bailey-Bond’s 2021 film “Censor,” the first Magnolia release to be distributed by OCN is the horror comedy “Murder Party,” the debut of “Rebel Ridge” director Jeremy Saulnier.

According to a Blu-ray.com forum post by VS/OCN's Justin LaLiberty "This is very much centered around upgrades, not new titles"

[Finch]

Would be nice if they upgraded Shoplifters from DVD to Blu.

[ryannichols7]

so basically any US label or indie studio that isn't Criterion, Kino, or Shout is going to continue to come under the umbrella over this predatory, scummy company. this fits as Magnolia are a company with their own set of terrible practices! love how a Palme d'Or winner by a regarded director is still relegated to DVD in the states, how they buried We are the Best!, etc

glad whatever UK company put Shoplifters out did so, and I'm glad Arrow was able to get the Moodysson. I'll buy Melancholia on 4K if they put it out, but I wouldn't be pleased that Vinegar Syndrome is getting a cut of it. what dirt does this label have on seemingly everyone in the home entertainment business? genuinely wondering at this point