criterionforum.org

dmkb wrote:That box cover isn't all that horrible, but each of the individual covers look like they could induce brain damage.

Sweet Mother McRae, it's like staring at a TV test screen!

HerrSchreck wrote:I believe I heard elsewhere that their (CC's) Suzuki sales had been a major disappointment to them.

Where did you hear that? The HVE titles seemed to do very well and sold quite regularly at the Virgin Megastore here. They did enough for Janus to put another batch through Criterion, and that must have done well because a third batch followed. I could see Gate of Flesh and Story of a Prostitute not doing as well as the earlier titles, but other than that their release patterns suggest success.

DrewReiber wrote:

HerrSchreck wrote:I believe I heard elsewhere that their (CC's) Suzuki sales had been a major disappointment to them.

Where did you hear that? The HVE titles seemed to do very well and sold quite regularly at the Virgin Megastore here. They did enough for Janus to put another batch through Criterion, and that must have done well because a third batch followed. I could see Gate of Flesh and Story of a Prostitute not doing as well as the earlier titles, but other than that their release patterns suggest success.

come to think of it I think I read it here on a Jodorowski thread... and it was defintitely one of the latter titles-- FLESH I believe. I make no claim to the accuracy. Just mentioned I heard it as it might help.

DVD Planet has added listings for three upcoming Kino releases for April 18th:

Satyajit Ray's The Chess Players (1977) $29.95

and two films by Aleksandr Sokurov (both $24.95):

A re-release of Mother & Son (1997)

and the never-before-released The Second Circle (1990)
Jonathan Rosenbaum review

No details or artwork listed at this point.

facets.org lists some special features for Mother and Son and Second Circle:

Facets wrote:Mother and Son: Includes director interview and trailer.
Second Circle: Includes stills gallery and background featurette.

Looking forward to Second Circle. I saw it projected at the MFA a couple years ago, and it was one of the most beautiful films I've ever seen. However, it has the kind of beauty that could easily not come across on video, and I'm not sure Kino is up to the job of doing it justice given their track record.

KINO ON VIDEO AND KIMSTIM TO RELEASE TWO SUBLIME COMEDIES FROM DIRECTOR OTAR IOSSELIANI
“Iosseliani is a consummate filmmaker.â€

Looks like with Fox Lorber's Funny Games now out of print, Kino will be putting it out, May 16. Let's hope it has removeable subs.

denti alligator wrote:Looks like with Fox Lorber's Funny Games now out of print, Kino will be putting it out, May 16. Let's hope it has removeable subs.

Kino will actually be releasing FOUR Michael Haneke films on May 16th:

The Seventh Continent/Der Siebente Kontinent (1989) [Finally!]

Benny's Video (1992)

71 Fragments of a Chronology of Chance/71 Fragmente einer Chronologie des Zufalls (1994)

Funny Games (1997)

A look at the specs shows that at least three of these discs will contain 16-23 minute interviews with Haneke from 2005.

No word of a box set from Kino, but expect these to be ports of the R2 French releases from Gaumont/Columbia Tristar (GCTHV), which released a three-film box last October containing all these films except Funny Games. See review of box at DVD Times. Note that there are no English subs on the GCTHV box.

This news leaves me wondering whether Artificial Eye will be releasing the Gaumont films on DVD in the UK. They are currently distributing Caché in UK theatres, and previously released Code Unknown, The Piano Teacher, and Time of the Wolf on DVD.

Dammit! I recently ordered DVD-r copies of the German DVDs of The Seventh Continent and 71 Fragments of a Chronology of Chance from Super Happy Fun that had english subs added to them by the Super Happy Fun team. Bad timing, Gordo.

Kudos to Kino, though.

Gordon McMurphy wrote:Dammit! I recently ordered DVD-r copies of the German DVDs of The Seventh Continent and 71 Fragments of a Chronology of Chance

German DVD's? They aren't released in germany!

Regards,

Dennis

I assume they're ripped from the French DVDs. I have a sneaking suspicion the English subs are the fanmade ones some folks at Karagarga whipped up (which were translated from the French subs) but that's just a hunch.

Keaton wrote:

Gordon McMurphy wrote:Dammit! I recently ordered DVD-r copies of the German DVDs of The Seventh Continent and 71 Fragments of a Chronology of Chance

German DVD's? They aren't released in germany!

Regards,

Dennis

Sorry; for a minute there, I thought that this was July 1940.

Has anyone seen this film-- or scored the disc yet-- being able to recommend or not? Having both Pabst silents w Brooks, and knowing that G.W. maintained contact via his peripheral participation on the project, (and owing also it's obvious rarity), my interest is piqued.

Anyone with strong feelings in any direction on this film?

I see that Kino says the following about its forthcoming DVD of Aleksandr Sokurov's The Second Circle:

This Kino on Video edition has been newly restored, and the director himself has made additional cuts for pacing -- totaling about 5 minutes -- to make this the definitive, never-before-seen version of The Second Circle.

(from: http://www.kino.com/video/item.php?film_id=803)

Cuts for pacing? Presumably that means that Sokurov has sought to speed up the narrative. Whatever next? Car chases? Still, the restoration is good news.

HAS ANYBODY SEEN PRIX DE BEAUTE YET?

A N Y ONE?

HerrSchreck wrote:HAS ANYBODY SEEN PRIX DE BEAUTE YET?

A N Y ONE?

Yes .
It's a remarkable and horrible film at the same time. First the good news it's shot in the fluid style of late silents and quite inventive. Additionally it continues successfully the modern female roles played by Brooks. If you like Brooks, there's no way to miss it.
The serious - and I mean really serious - problem is the sound dubbing. The film obviously exists also in a restored, silent version which doubtlessly is far superior. The sound version is again and again unevenly cut supposedly due to recuts for the sound version and the sound is extremely bad synchronized. Naturally almost the complete dialogue is forgettable and it is absolutely pitiful to see how it was dubbed over the silent pictures, it's the worst job of its kind I've ever seen.
Watching the film is a shifting experience between "That's beautiful and intelligent" and "Shut the F*** up!". I really wish Kino would do the silent version, I bet 100$ that as with Hitchcock's BLACKMAIL it's superior by a wide margin.

That's a decent enough nudge-- I think I'll grab it. Speaking of Kino I was noticing today on my new Film Forum (NYC) calendar re the elsewhere-mentioned (on this site) upcoming releases of PANDORAS BOX, Melvilles ARMY OF SHADOWS, REPULSION:

as opposed to PANDORA being a Janus release (as one might have expected owing to Lee Kline claiming a couple yrs back that this was forthcoming), it is being presented as a Kino International release (a newly struck 35mm print presented in conjunction w Geo. Eastman House). This tells me that this is probably the reason for the holdup-- if anything the two co's are tangled up for home vid rights distribution in the R1 zone a la VAMPYR. Janus distributed-- thru HVe-- "a Kino international release" of PAN-BOX in VHS years ago, the most convoluted rights attribution I've seen. And Kino always had this film in their 35/16mm reels catalog for revival cinemas.

Speaking of German silents what's keeping Flicker Alley with PHANTOM? Still no update from the early winter COMING SPRING 06 (changed from Fall 05 to Feb 06 then Spring 06).

Schreck, I believe Kino holds the theatrical/non-theatrical rights to "Pandora's Box," but Criterion/Janus still has the home video rights from the time Home Vision put the film out on VHS.

This wouldn't be the first time a Criterion DVD followed a theatrical re-release by Kino: both "Solaris" and "I Vitelloni" had similar roll-outs.

-BJ

Buttery Jeb wrote:Schreck, I believe Kino holds the theatrical/non-theatrical rights to "Pandora's Box," but Criterion/Janus still has the home video rights from the time Home Vision put the film out on VHS.

This wouldn't be the first time a Criterion DVD followed a theatrical re-release by Kino: both "Solaris" and "I Vitelloni" had similar roll-outs.

-BJ

Sure, that's pretty self evident (who has what). There's others aside from that. EYES WITHOUT A FACE was Kino's theatrically for years. What made it quite unusual was the 'A Kino International Release' coming back to back with the JAnus Films logo.

Jessica Rosner of Kino just posted this at the silent film newsgroup (are you reading HerrSchreck?):

Next we are releasing 3 more German silents
ASPHALT Directed by Joe May
WARNING SHADOWS Directed by Arthur Robinson
DR.MABUSE : THE GAMBLER ( 1922) new restoration from Germany
These will be released on 7/18
They won't be available for Pre-order till sometime in June
So please don't harass the video dept

Donald Trampoline wrote:Now, if we could only get some damn Sjöstrom!! (Luckily, I have at least seen some of his screened and one on VHS. But I like him better than Stiller even.)

Listening loud & clear DKMB.

Donald T, Warner has announced the Sjostrom/Gish THE WIND & SCARLET LETTER on dvd for later this year.

HerrSchreck wrote:

Donald Trampoline wrote:Now, if we could only get some damn Sjöstrom!! (Luckily, I have at least seen some of his screened and one on VHS. But I like him better than Stiller even.)

Listening loud & clear DKMB.

Donald T, Warner has announced the Sjostrom/Gish THE WIND & SCARLET LETTER on dvd for later this year.

Not to forget HE WHO GETS SLAPPED in the second Chaney collection, therefore there's only one still existing US-Sjöström film left. It's surely time for a release of the Swedish silents, BERG-EYVIND struck me as one of the best silent films ever, KÖRKARLEN is at least nicely shot.

Anyway I'm immensely grateful for the Stiller trio, I've JOHAN on a tape from TV and can finally fill one of the last big gaps in my silent cinema knowledge. Thanks Kino.

I meant the Swedish Sjöstrom films. (The American ones are much easier to see-- screened more often and show on TCM in good copies. Not that I will complain about their being released on DVD.)

Such as KÖRKARLEN/The Phantom Carriage (which I saw a VHS that I think was too short a version, but I really liked the film); BERG-EYVIND (The Outlaw and his Wife) which is excellent; KISS OF DEATH (Dödskyssen), which is decent; and the two Stiller-directed Sjöstrom-acted THOMAS GRAAL'S BEST FILM and THOMAS GRAAL'S BEST CHILD; and lots of his other stuff! There's so much! Seeing The Outlaw and His Wife on Kino VHS just made me yearn to find so many more of his films, and there's just been nothing since (of the Swedish).

HerrSchreck wrote:

tryavna wrote:

denti alligator wrote:So Herr Schreck, what are some of the finest Kino releases of silents, in your opinion? I'm not sure I could name one that has fully impressed me.

I'm not HerrSchreck, but have you taken a look at the three titles that make up Kino's "Erich von Stroheim Collection"? IMO, they're all pretty impressive for when they were released (2002, I believe), especially Queen Kelly. Those three titles are about the only instance where I can't imagine any other company doing a better job -- except for perhaps making all three available in a box set, with some of the extras on a fourth disc. (But then again, I can't imagine Kino making much money on any of these titles anyway, so I can't imagine a box set being economically viable for them.)

Oh and by the way, I love the Von releases, though I would say one thing: due to the poor quality of the MoMa/AFI elements, I thought that BLIND HUSBANDS & FOOLISH WIVES (Christ that movie never gets the credit it deserves, nor does GREED, at least not anymore) could have benefited from being encoded at a higher bitrate than the 4.0-5.0mb/s rate, to give the image a bit more of a photpgraphic look and depth. Having THE GREAT GABBO & THE MAN YOU LOVED TO HATE, was a decent trade off though.

Fucking GABBO... what a hilariously odd film.

I just watched the BLIND HUSBANDS/GREAT GABBO DVD and was in Stroheim ecstasy. BLIND HUSBANDS is such a simple story, but there's just something exquisite about his mise en scène-- the acting (which he must have spent a lot of time on with the actors), subtle choices of camera shots, pacing. Then with no expectations I watched GABBO, and wow, that was great. Stroheim's performance is very good. I also liked Betty Compson in it. It's a pretty elaborate 1929 musical by a seemingly no-name production company. Sono-Art World Wide Pictures, Inc. I believe it was.

The BLIND HUSBANDS quality left something to be desired (I see that other thread about the German Filmmuseum edition), but the quality of GABBO was excellent. I thought the original sound recording in GABBO was pretty good. The dialogue, even though presented kind of straightforward and theater-like, kept me engrossed. It was better written than some films from that era. (And less well than some others, I'm sure.) BLIND HUSBANDS quality, though, is primarily a problem of the elements, I imagine. (I think my small-ish tube won't notice the bitrate improvement that much, but every little bit helps.)

For once the KINO extras were decent. There was a decent bit of info and materials on BLIND HUSBANDS and a few little tidbits on GABBO. Although I wanted more on GABBO-- such as how the production came into existence and maybe some comments on the historical place of those dance sequences, in comparison to say Berkeley or the films that were out at the same time. Guess I can rent the original BROADWAY MELODY for the comparison from the same year (1929).

Shame about the lost color sequences and most of all the missing dancing OTTO (Gabbo's ventriloquist puppet) scene!!! I know we get to see a tiny clip of it, but, man, that must have been something. A really great, captivatingly strange movie. More satisfying to me than the later sound film THE GREAT FLAMARION where von Stroheim played another crazed theatrical performer.

Did anyone recognize the man in the couple who is always overhearing and chatting about GABBO next door? That looked a bit like Jackie Coogan's father (Jackie Coogan, Sr.), who can be seen in Keaton-Arbuckle-St.John films such as Back Stage and The Hayseed. IMDB does not list who played either of the couple's parts. (Maybe will have to dig something up like that AFI catalog or whatever it is.)

Donald Trampoline wrote:(Maybe will have to dig something up like that AFI catalog or whatever it is.)

The free, online Turner Classic Movies Database includes all of the data from the AFI Catalog.

A handful of Kino titles are now out of print:

Careful (Special Edition)
East Side Story
Institute Benjamenta
Leather Boys

I would not try to snap up Careful and Benjamenta out of panic. Those are Zeitgeist Films titles that were distributed before Zeitgeist had their own DVD operation. I would expect they will be reissued by Zetigeist (hopefully in better editions) soon, particularly because both Maddin and the Quays have new features awaiting release.

East Side Story is OOP because Kino lost the rights to it.

Don't know the story behind Leather Boys.