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Terrible article. How does buying Tartan UK's library give Palisades the U.S. rights to those films? I guess we should hurry up and grab those Criterion Bergmans, since by this guy's logic, Palisades Media owns all the rights now. And how utterly predictable that Battle Royale is the one Tartan UK title he wants to see in the States. (Yeah, I know, it's CHUD...)

And I hope that "releases will start back up in the Winter with the Asia Extreme collection" means they'll be reissuing existing Asia Extreme titles, and not picking up even more bland-ass J-/K-horror titles of the sort that helped put Tartan out of business in the first place. I honestly wish they'd just dump the whole Asia Extreme "brand", but there are people out there who genuinely treat it as a sign of quality (!) and it probably makes business sense to keep it around.

The Fanciful Norwegian wrote:Terrible article. How does buying Tartan UK's library give Palisades the U.S. rights to those films? I guess we should hurry up and grab those Criterion Bergmans, since by this guy's logic, Palisades Media owns all the rights now.

See my previous post above... NY based Palisades acquired Tartan USA's library in May, now in July they've acquired most of Tartan UK's library, and say they're planning marketing and delivery synergies and economics of scale etc. between the two territories for future releases... I suppose this means they can master from the same film materials in both PAL and NTSC, but then share common packaging, advertising, extras etc. in UK and USA, a similar stategy to many of the big studio releases....

Yes, but they can only do that with the titles for which they have both the U.S. and UK rights. Unless either Tartan USA or Tartan UK was sitting on the U.S. rights to Battle Royale (which makes no sense), this deal will have no effect on its availability in the U.S. By the same token, I doubt Palisades will be releasing Red Road or 12:08 East of Bucharest in the UK, since Verve and Artificial Eye have the rights there.

And as for sharing resources like extras, transfers, etc., well, sure, I'd expect them to do so (at least where they can), since that's what Tartan UK and Tartan USA were doing before they closed up shop -- often to their mutual detriment (some Tartan UK titles were simply bad PAL conversions of their Tartan USA equivalents and vice-versa). I'd like to see Palisades go back and fix some of those issues -- the R1 Battle in Heaven, for example, is clearly not a native NTSC transfer -- but I fear they're just going to reissue the same discs with slightly different packaging. We'll see.

Vivendi has acquired the US rights from Palisades for the Tartan catalog.

Does Vivendi even have a label? I can't recall ever hearing their name in any sort of dvd discussion before.

Just from brushing through their catalog, it seems their stock-in-trade is direct-to-dvd movies thus far.

kaujot wrote:Just from brushing through their catalog, it seems their stock-in-trade is direct-to-dvd movies thus far.

With worrying titles like 'See Dick Run'! Though Bellydance: Lebanese Pop Choreography sounds like it has some interesting qualities!

Another important thing to note is the release of Tunnel Rats (aka the post-Postal Uwe Boll film).

From Screen Daily... Metrodome will be releasing Thirst in the UK for Palisades.

Metrodome also has exclusive rights to represent Palisades Tartan’s VOD and TV library in the UK

I wonder if this includes home entertainment rights, Palisades don't seem to be too active on that front.

They're now called Palisades-Tartan, according to this DVD Times report. They will be releasing DVDs and Blu-Rays, some in association with Metrodome.

On October 5th two Korean films The Uninvited and Blood Rain on DVD.

tojoed wrote:On October 5th two Korean films The Uninvited and Blood Rain on DVD.

I'm confused. I was told by someone with industry knowledge that Tartan went out of business by saturating the market with new Asian horror/thriller films. So their re-entry into the marketplace is with Asian horror/thriller films?

I thought they made a come back as Palisades Tartan a few months ago by releasing P2? I'm not really a fan of the recent cycle of French horrors in general, but didn't find anything particularly interesting (or realistic) about this US set film directed by a protege of Alexandre Aja.

I thought it was funding the Haneke remake that finally killed the old Tartan. I'm sure whatever generic Asia Extreme title they put out next is gonna outsell Silent Light anyway.

Cinetwist wrote:I'm confused. I was told by someone with industry knowledge that Tartan went out of business by saturating the market with new Asian horror/thriller films. So their re-entry into the marketplace is with Asian horror/thriller films?

The Asian Extreme sub-label was Tartan's most profitable venture. But they over-extended themselves into the US, getting into a problematic partnership with a sub-distributor, and were virtually frozen out by City Screen in the UK (with a general downturn in the arthouse sector on top) - and then staked it all on the Funny Games remake.

It'll be interesting to see if this new incarnation is anything like as bold as the original (I fear not).

The first lot of Palisade/Tartan blurays gets released on Monday 2nd November here in the UK. Titles are as follows:

(re-releases of the previous Tartan blurays)
Black Book
The Proposition

(new bluray releases)
36
A Tale of Two Sisters
Lady Vengeance
Sympathy for Mr Vengeance

I do hope the Vengeance films have been given good transfers, but knowing me I'll probably buy them anyway.

Do they own any pre-1960 films aside from Seventh Seal? I find it hard to get excited about all these recent ones.

Tartan actually released most of Bergman's films (this license was recently extended) and there's a fair amount of pre-1960 titles in there. They also did four volumes of Ozu, including some of his '40s-'50s work -- although vols. 1 and 2 seem to be OOP. Plus The Phantom Carriage and the Eisenstein box.

Well, the boxed set is on sale now, if anybody wants it.

Actually, it's been OOP for some time - only one person is selling it at present through Amazon Marketplace, and that's for many times the original RRP.

In fact, if people really are paying that kind of money for it, I'm half tempted to sell mine!

Does anyone know whether the Tartan release of Respiro has optional subtitles? It has multiple audio options but no where does it say if the subtitles are optional or not. If not I'll add it to my "Buy in Italy" list.

Ki-Duk Kim's Breath is being released on 28th June. I'm keeping my fingers crossed that we might see Time and Beautiful on the horizon shortly afterwards.

In September they are re-releasing their Eisenstein Volume 2, currently out of print.

bigP wrote:Ki-Duk Kim's Breath is being released on 28th June. I'm keeping my fingers crossed that we might see Time and Beautiful on the horizon shortly afterwards.

Here is Time!

New Eisenstein box set coming out on September 20th. Can't wait for this one.

(Moviemail is selling it at double the price!)