Artificial Eye / Curzon Film World

[Jean-Luc Garbo]

Slightly slower from Amazon UK. Will I get hit with tariffs?

Not anymore. Has Orbit said tariffs are coming back?

[hearthesilence]

Slightly slower from Amazon UK. Will I get hit with tariffs?

Not anymore...

Then again (and I believe this is applicable to Amazon UK purchases shipped to the U.S.)...

U.S. to halt tariff exception for low-value parcels — a threat to eBay, Etsy trade

Americans shopping for second-hand, vintage or handmade items on platforms like eBay and Etsy will face steep customs duties on international purchases next month, potentially hurting trade on those peer-to-peer sites.

In a surprise move late Wednesday, U.S. President Donald Trump signed an an executive order to remove the "de minimis" duty-free treatment on parcels under $800 from all countries, starting August 29, bringing forward a change previously set for July 2027.

Currently, packages sent to the U.S. from outside the country that are valued at or under $800 are exempt from any import taxes, but they will soon face "all applicable duties."

Goods shipped through the postal system will face one of two tariffs: either an "ad valorem duty" equal to the effective tariff rate of the package's country of origin or, for six months, a specific tariff of $80 US to $200 US depending on the country of origin's tariff rate.

[denti alligator]

Ok, I guess that means ordering from Orbit would be better…?

[DeprongMori]

Ok, I guess that means ordering from Orbit would be better…?

Only until they need to restock any item. Any import sold by any US distributor will have a tariff applied to it before it gets to them, and that cost will certainly be passed on to the US customer.

Order now (before end of August) what you were thinking about picking up, because everything is going to get hellaciously expensive. (At least until the incoherent and absurd “policy” is changed yet again.)

[The Fanciful Norwegian]

Bear in mind that tariffs are assessed upon arrival at a port of entry (unless paid in advance), so buying something like the Haneke set (which isn't out until September) from an overseas retailer will require customs duty regardless of whether it was ordered before the 29th. With an importer like OrbitDVD it would depend on when they expect their orders to arrive, but for something with a mid-September street date I suspect they would factor the tariff into their price. For reference, the tariff on UK imports is 10%.

[eerik]

Doesn't Amazon handle all the taxes themselves when importing to the US? That's how it works when importing to the EU, but that might be thanks to the IOSS. It's been years since I've had to declare and pay anything myself, everything is included during the checkout process.

[DeprongMori]

As the de minimus tariffs loom, I’ve been considering grabbing the Béla Tarr | A Curzon Collection boxset before they hit. I’ve yet to find a good thorough pluses and minuses review of the box.

Of his films, I’ve only seen Sátántangó twice now, including once on 35mm, but don’t have it on disc. I have the Cinema Guild Blu-ray of The Turin Horse and the Criterion 4K UHD of Werckmeister Harmonies (which of course includes Family Nest in a modest HD transfer). Based on Sátántangó, I’m intrigued by his aesthetic, method, and themes, and I’ll likely do a dive into Werckmeister before I decide.

For those who already deep into Tarr in their own collections, are there too many compromised or missing works here, or other areas that give pause, or is it overall a good way to come up to date quickly (and assuming I’ll keep my UHD Werckmeister)?

[swo17]

The Curzon set is worth it for all the films it contains if you don't have them elsewhere. Family Nest looks much better than the Criterion. You may still want to keep the Arbelos editions for their slightly better encodes

[DeprongMori]

Thanks. I don’t have either of the Arbelos discs. (I also only have a 65” Sony A95L screen. Hopefully the Curzon discs of those titles are not significantly compromised at that scale.)

[GoodOldNeon]

Below are comments on the technical quality from nicolas:

To make it short, apart from Sátántangó and The Turin Horse, which are both the old discs sadly, all the others are new VDMS (Visual Data Media Services) encodes and they’re fantastic.

The biggest surprise was that The Man from London also received a master that looks like it was sourced from a 4K restoration. I’ve never seen / owned the film before and am unaware of how it looked in the past but grain is tight and textures are 4K-like except for torched, blown-out highlights (which does suggest an older master as advertised by Curzon but 2007 masters of indie films generally don’t have such dense detail) and an early instance of heavy banding during the film’s opening. Blacks are also not always inky deep but that’s definitely not due to a gamma error but a grading decision. Maybe, just maybe, they did the grade for HDR and carried it into SDR less gently than necessary. The banding here is the only encoding "issue" I noticed across all the VDMS encodes.

--

Werckmeister and Damnation in particular have 4K-quality textures. The Outsider and Family Nest also look fantastic and the latter is a GIGANTIC improvement to one of the most horrifying Criterion encodes after they negates this film to a bonus feature.

I’m very happy with this set and Curzon’s quality. They listened to our feedback and complaints and this is how all of their discs should look like. (But still, they should’ve gone the extra mile and updated their 2020 MPEG-2 Sátántangó encode to make it perfect).

--

Sátántangó and The Turin Horse are both Curzon’s old discs and the former in particular looks dreadful. The Arbelos is in another league compared to the Curzon as they split the film on two discs. Turin Horse looks okay but it’s nothing to write home about. All the other feature films were newly encoded for the set and they look very nice.

[MichaelB]

I already had the Arbelos Damnation and Sátántangó, the Artificial Eye The Turin Horse and the Carlotta box (Family Nest, The Outsider, Damnation again and Werckmeister Harmonies), so I just ended up buying the 4K of Werckmeister Harmonies, which comes with Autumn Almanac, as I just couldn't justify the price of the Curzon box given the huge overlap.

Granted, there was an equally huge overlap with the Peter Strickland box, but I reckoned that the chances of the short films in particular getting a separate release were close to nonexistent, which isn't true of The Man from London (which in any case is a long way from my favourite Tarr).

[TMDaines]

Think I'll definitely flip all my Haneke Blu-rays to buy the big boxset, then inevitably get upset when films get individual 4k releases somewhere.

[MichaelB]

I'm honestly not sure I'd be that fussed. Especially not with something like Hidden, which is only natively HD resolution to begin with.

But even with the others, it seems to me that The White Ribbon is the only really obvious title to benefit from a 4K UHD upgrade.

[Aunt Peg]

I really didn't care for the Umbrella packaging. Not that dissimilar to the Criterion Pasolini box set.

How is this box set set out?

[Zot!]

it seems to me that The White Ribbon is the only really obvious title to benefit from a 4K UHD upgrade.

Isn’t White Ribbon a case of heavily processed 2k DI? I read an interview with the DP and he was really chatting up the digital post process as being part of the film’s overall look.

[MichaelB]

In which case scratch that off the list!

[nicolas]

Central Station and The Crimson Rivers 4K releases announced for October. The latter has the following extras:

- New interviews with Thierry Arbogast and Jean-Christophe Grangé
- Commentary with Mathieu Kassovitz, Jean Reno and Vincent Cassel
- The Investigation - a behind-the scenes documentary
- Featurettes
- Original Theatrical Trailer

[nicolas]

Jean Vigo 4K collection coming on November 28.

[ryannichols7]

can't say I had that on the bingo card!

[rrenault]

Considering the Criterion's Complete Jean Vigo was a typical standalone $40 MSRP release, due to how sparse his filmography is, I'm not sure what's behind the high price tag for the preorders of the Curzon 4K release.

[DeprongMori]

Who knows? It looks like Janus still has rights, so an upgraded Vigo set may be coming from Criterion yet, though their slavish attachment to releasing exactly the same supplements on their upgrades may end up a detriment here.

[domino harvey]

Why are the extras a detriment? I recently revisited the Criterion Vigo set and was extremely impressed by the quality of supplements - Zero de conduite in particular had one of the most helpful and informative commentaries I can recall

[Beloved Aunt]

Because we're greedy.

[ryannichols7]

the 14 year old Criterion extras are truly excellent, Michael Temple's tracks are all really good. but I tend not to buy the Criterion upgrade if there's a region B one in good hands, since they generally don't offer anything new on their upgrades besides the stellar new transfers. so if Curzon provide some cool, unique extras here then I will go for their release in order to offer something different

if Criterion was more willing to provide new extras I'd probably grab a lot more of their upgrades

[DeprongMori]

Why are the extras a detriment? I recently revisited the Criterion Vigo set and was extremely impressed by the quality of supplements - Zero de conduite in particular had one of the most helpful and informative commentaries I can recall

Agreed, the supplements are fine. But… If only the “feature” is upgraded to 4K UHD in a release from Criterion, but the Blu-ray remains exactly the same, I usually end up picking up another label’s 4K UHD for the film instead. Mostly, in this case, I’m curious about seeing Tournage d’Hiver, which I suspect would not be included in a Criterion upgrade.