Severin Films

[rapta]

Cool announcement, will it be region locked I wonder? I alerady have Anti-Worlds' release of Earwig, but BFI didn't release The Ice Tower on disc at all, which I was disappointed about as it was one of my favourite films from last yearr. I was hoping someone in the UK might try and get Evolution at least, but nothing yet (since it was with Metrodome before, 101 Films might have it).

[dadaistnun]

Full specs are up on Severin's site now. To quickly answer two questions upthread: no La Bouche de Jean-Pierre and it is region A locked.

Innocence
Introduction By Lucile Hadžihalilović
Short Film DE NATURA With Introduction By Lucile Hadžihalilović
Short Film NECTAR With Introduction By Lucile Hadžihalilović
Innocence Explained By Actress Zoé Auclair
Video Essay By Alexandra Heller-Nicholas
Q&A At The IFC Center
Trailer


Evolution
Introduction By Lucile Hadžihalilović
Discussion Between Cinematographer Manu Dacosse And Director Lucile Hadžihalilović
Interview With Writer Alanté Kavaïté
Trailer


Earwig
Introduction By Lucile Hadžihalilović
Interview With Lucile Hadžihalilović
Interview With Co-Writer Geoff Cox
Interview With Cinematographer Jonathan Ricquebourg
Trailer


The Ice Tower
Introduction By Lucile Hadžihalilović
Interview With Cinematographer Jonathan Ricquebourg
Interview With Lucile Hadžihalilović By Beatrice Loayaza
2 Q&As At The IFC Center
Video Essay By Alexandra Heller-Nicholas
Trailer

[therewillbeblus]

Excellent, De Natura is a terrific short

[swo17]

This is great but it's not quite a "full filmography box set" as initially promised. I think there are 2-3 other shorts missing on top of her mid-length feature debut

[Jean-Luc Garbo]

What terrific news! I was aware that Yellow Veil had the rights to THE ICE TOWER so I was sure a bluray was forthcoming but a box set is even better! I can retire my old HVE dvd of Innocence and Shout! blu of Evolution. Earwig is much slighter than Catling's novel but I love both so you're in for a treat if you haven't seen or read them. Severin's site has no restoration specs which gives me pause but I don't recall the transfers of the the first three really looking bad. Innocence was dvd of course so that needs the audiovisual bump.

[colinr0380]

Very excited about all the announcements for the month (love that the Jimmy Sangster set comes with the option of a reprint of the official novelisation of Lust For A Vampire! I'm assuming that most of the passages are going to be describing bodices!) but the Lucile Hadžihalilović set is great for the opportunity to upgrade Evolution from its UK DVD edition and getting The Ice Tower on disc.

The Daily Mail's Chris Tookey dismissed Innocence as "pretentious piffle for paedophiles", the kind of comment that reveals rather more about its author's mindset than anything in the actual film.

A few years earlier, the same critic attempted to describe just how morally appalling David Cronenberg's Crash was by complaining that the film's characters "experiment pleasurably with gay sex, lesbian sex, and sex with cripples"—an even more self-revealing comment that managed to be about ten billion times more offensive than anything in the film.

(My girlfriend at the time was disabled, and she loved Crash precisely because it depicted people like her as having sexual agency, something that most films shy away from.)

I remember being quite surprised by that specific Tookey reaction at the time even when I was only in my mid-teens, mostly because I had both read William Horwood's excellent novel with a main character who has cerebral palsy, Skallagrigg (which in one sequence has a moment of a prostitute being smuggled into the 1920s institution he has been left in, in order to, um, relieve the main character's tension by hand. Let's see the latest series of Call The Midwife do that as the premise of an episode! ) and even more notably had already been made into a feature by the BBC in their Screen Two series in 1994! So to have that aspect be the specific thing singled out to go after Crash for seemed rather like Tookey was reaching for things to get incensed about more than anything.

[brundlefly]

I wonder if 52 minutes out of the promised four hours of extras will be her 1996 film La Bouche de Jean-Pierre? I only saw it once, when it was close to brand new (certainly the late 1990s rather than later), but I remember being very impressed.

Would have been nice for both the upgrade and shelf space. But at least in the U.S., Pathfinder's 2012 DVD is still available.

[Peacock]

The two missing titles are the only ones produced by Noe’s production company,..

[Mr Sausage]

At least one of the missing shorts is pornographic, which might have something to do with it.

[swo17]

Severin releases pornography

[Mr Sausage]

Nevermind!

[mteller]

The Hadzihalilovic set is release of the year for me. Innocence is one of my all-time favorites and I love the other three as well. Pre-ordering immediately.

[colinr0380]

Severin releases pornography

Out of context pull quote of the year!

[denti alligator]

This is great news, and I’ll probably order it, but the missing debit and shorts plus lack of 4K is a little disappointing.

[MichaelB]

A UHD box set would have been a serious commercial gamble—and not really a realistic one; it would unavoidably have significantly increased the RRP, and just how big is the market for something like this?

[dwk]

A UHD box set would have been a serious commercial gamble—and not really a realistic one; it would unavoidably have significantly increased the RRP, and just how big is the market for something like this?

I am not saying this would sell as well, but just as a price comparison. The Emmanuel set has 9-discs, with 4 films each on a UHD and Blu-ray, an extra Blu-ray of extras , 2 CDs and Severin is selling it for $136 (MSRP of $189.95.)

I listened to the Severin podcast to see if they mentioned anything about the missing shorts on the Hadžihalilović set (they didn't say anything, unfortunately) and they said that Yellow Veil did all the work producing the set, so I don't really know why they bothered partnering with Severin.

[domino harvey]

Surely you also see the difference between these pictures and extremely famous erotic movies that are borderline mainstream films

[dwk]

Yeah, that is why I said

I am not saying this would sell as well, but just as a price comparison.

Going UHD for the four films would have nearly doubled the price, and I fully understand why they went Blu-ray with this set.

[MichaelB]

It’s the same reason why Indicator abandoned plans for a Jean Rollin UHD box set at a very early stage: there was no viable way they could have charged less than an eye-watering price and still broken even.

[49CHOMPS]

I listened to the Severin podcast to see if they mentioned anything about the missing shorts on the Hadžihalilović set (they didn't say anything, unfortunately) and they said that Yellow Veil did all the work producing the set, so I don't really know why they bothered partnering with Severin.

OCN may be unable or unwilling to produce boxsets for partner labels.
Severin regularly makes 4-film boxsets, this could be all Yellow Veil needed from them.

[dwk]

OCN may be unable or unwilling to produce boxsets for partner labels.
Severin regularly makes 4-film boxsets, this could be all Yellow Veil needed from them.

Fun City and Deaf Crocodile each did a boxset while they were at OCN., but I suppose that could be the case.

[SSF]

Severin’s FB feed today states that three more Greenaway films are coming in 4K.

[senseabove]

Excellent news, but please lord, please let them be more careful with the encode on these!

I assume we'll be getting Draughtsman's Contract, since that has a French UHD already, and A Zed & Two Noughts. If they've finally figured out The Cook's rumored materials problems, that'd be wonderful news, but I suspect the third will be something less exciting...

[Lowry_Sam]

So we've given up on Criterion for Cook? It's played at random theaters locally in the past year, including major chains, which made me wonder if there had been a 4k restoration.

[colinr0380]

The Baby of Mâcon would be great to have an opportunity to see again. Or the Tulse Luper trilogy for the first time.