Radiance Films General Discussion & Wishlist

[Lowry_Sam]

Le Pont du Nord has been with Janus and Criterion have had it (the 4k restoration I assume) opening with a crazy C for a while now.

[Peacock]

Hopefully Pont du Nord will include Paris s’en Va to make it a little bit more worthwhile.

[malachi_lui]

It’s interesting they’re releasing Le Pont Du Nord, since Eureka have already released it on bluray in the UK, even if their edition is out of print. Radiance tend to avoid films that have already been released on bluray by other high-profile Anglosphere boutiques.

Yeah, would be massively disappointed if it were to be this.

Far from a massive disappointment for me, who's more recently gotten into this stuff and has a lot of Rivette on disc except this one has been OOP and expensive for a while. I'm always happy to see things back in print especially if the transfer is an upgrade over what was previously available. Not everyone has been around or collecting for as long as some of you have so what might be redundancy for you is exciting and convenient for others.

[Michael Kerpan]

How long has that Eureka Pont du Nord been effectively out of print? Seems like a LONG time.

[Finch]

Some updates on our October titles:

Transmission's release of Who Can Kill A Child? (UHD + BD LE) has been provisionally moved back to 7th December. We were unhappy with the provided restoration and have undertaken more work to get it looking the best that it can. This revised date is an estimate as we enter a busy period at our factory, and we will endeavour to get this release to you as soon as possible.

We have also reviewed our internal workflows and delayed future restorations to prevent such delays again, especially as we will be taking on more restorations than ever in 2027, some of which will take the complex leap from having no prior release to Blu-ray or DVD-only to 4K UHD.

We have also been informed of delays to the UK release of Fantastique: The Dreams and Nightmares of French Cinema (LE), although these are relatively minor packaging issues at the manufacturer, and should be ready in the next few weeks.

The US/CA retail dates for Fantastique and Planet of the Vampires (UHD) has been pushed back to 2nd November, although stock may ship earlier than this.

We apologise for these delays and thank you for your patience.

The rest of October's release titles - The Monster, Visitor Q, La marge and Planet of the Vampires [UHD Upgrade] - are all shipping from our UK storefront now

[pzadvance]

Yang Li-kuo’s ‘The Dull-Ice Flower’ Set for U.S.-U.K. Release as London-Based Distributor Radiance Films Picks Up Eight Taiwanese Classics

The deal, unveiled at Lyon’s International Classic Film Market (MIFC) on Thursday, includes Hou’s “A Time to Live and a Time to Die” (1985) and “Dust in the Wind” (1986), alongside three films by Tsai: “Rebels of the Neon God” (1992), “Vive L’Amour” (1994) and “The River” (1997).

Also included are “In Our Time” (1982), a landmark anthology of the Taiwanese New Cinema movement, Chang Yi’s “Kuei-Mei, a Woman” (1985) and Yang Li-kuo‘s “The Dull-Ice Flower” (1989). The latter will be released in both the U.K. and U.S., while the seven other titles are U.K.-only acquisitions.

[rapta]

Excited for the Hou and Tsai titles especially, but the other three sound interesting too. One of the directors of the anthology is Edward Yang, hopefully they can get at least one more of his at a later date!

[hearthesilence]

How are the Taiwanese Blu-rays of the Tsai films? (I think the relevant titles are packaged in a set.) Are they supposed to be good?

[criterionsnob]

They're okay, but definitely a lot of room for improvement.

[The Fanciful Norwegian]

Vive l'amour and The River got 4K restorations within the last couple of years, so the Taiwanese Blus aren't representative of what Radiance will be putting out. But I haven't heard anything about a recent restoration of Rebels of the Neon God. The Taiwanese Blu was decent enough—it didn't have the exaggerated, digital-looking grading that the CMPC applied to some of their early HD masters, and it wasn't blatantly DNRed—but it shows its age and I'm not alone in that feeling. AFAIK all the other BD releases out there use the same master. I would give the same evaluation for the existing masters of the two Hou films (excepting the first HD master of Dust in the Wind, which was redone with better results a few years later for the boxed reissue alongside The Time to Live and the Time to Die).

The one I'm most concerned about is In Our Time. The Taiwanese BD looks very rough and Carlotta's release last year (from the same master) wasn't much better—there are apparently issues with the elements, but the big problem is very heavy DNR, applied in an inconsistent manner that suggests it might be baked into the master. The Taiwanese BD of Kuei-mei, a Woman is a waxfest, but since there's no other release to compare it to, I have no idea how much of that is down to the master versus the encode. (I'm pretty sure it also has a gamma bug, but that should be easily fixable.)

My hope is that there are some new remasters among these titles that aren't ready for announcement yet. And it's interesting that only The Dull-Ice Flower is a dual-territory title—the Tsais are obviously spoken for in the U.S. and Janus was credited for a theatrical screening of In Our Time a few years ago, but unless I missed them, there haven't been any signs of a U.S. distributor picking up the Hous or Kuei-mei (which TBH feels more like something that would come from Kani than Janus or Film Movement). Of course Radiance's acquisitions budget could be a factor here as well.