criterionforum.org

Very good for the English version, slightly less good for the German one (without subs though you don't need them anyway). I guess it's the same as the excellent Studio Canal releases.

BTW here's a review for the Romy Schneider collection, and a stunning comparison how huge the difference between USA and France/Germany regarding her celebrity status is.

I posted a similar message in the Lists thread on German DVDs but realized that this might be the more appropriate thread. Sorry for the double post.

I noticed that nobody has mentioned Bernhard Wicki's 1959 film Die Bruecke (The Bridge). Does that mean that the German Kinowelt DVD offers subtitles? Does Kinowelt generally offer subs? If anybody could let me know, I'd be grateful. I'm planning a purchase from Amazon.de in the near future and want to minimize shipping costs as much as possible.

tryavna wrote:I noticed that nobody has mentioned Bernhard Wicki's 1959 film Die Bruecke (The Bridge). Does that mean that the German Kinowelt DVD offers subtitles? Does Kinowelt generally offer subs? If anybody could let me know, I'd be grateful. I'm planning a purchase from Amazon.de in the near future and want to minimize shipping costs as much as possible.

Kinowelt offers sometimes subs, but only German ones.
BTW Icestorm who has the rights to the complete GDR film production offers DVDs released in germany but also obviously specially aimed at the US market. The DVDs have only English subs, are Region 0 and NTSC!!! I picked some famous ones below.

ROTATION (6.97€ at the moment): Masterful analysis of the life in Third Reich by Wolfgang Staudte

DAS KANINCHEN BIN ICH: Gave the forbidden films of 1965 (almost the whole output of the year) the name "Kaninchenfilme"

DAS ZWEITE GLEIS

DIE LEGENDE VON PAUL UND PAULA: Most succesful film in the GDR history

KARBID UND SAUERAMPFER

DER DRITTE

lubitsch wrote:Kinowelt offers sometimes subs, but only German ones.

Too bad! Thanks for the information though, Lubitsch. I'll keep the Icestorm label in mind in the future.

In addition to what everyone else has said - I would highly recommend Mabel Cheung's excellent documentary on Jackie Chan's reuniting with his "lost family" in Taiwan - called Traces of a Dragon. I don't think this is available anywhere else right now and it has English subs.

Perhaps of interest:

The Dubini brothers' "doc" on Thomas Pynchon. Haven't seen it, but I think it's in English.

New also is Christian Petzold's Gespenster [Ghosts], which got some attention at Berlin and has, apparently, English subtitles. [The director is listed as one J.S. Bach. Now that's a movie I'd like to see!]

Melville's L'Aîné des Ferchaux (1963).

First time on DVD, I think.

Very well spotted, Kinsayder!

This site states:

Detailed Information:
Drama / Gangsterfilm, 105 Min.
Director: Jean-Pierre Melville
Actor: Charles Vanel, Jean-Paul Belmondo, Michele Mercier, Todd Martin
Film music: Georges Delerue
Original Title: L'Aine Des Ferchaux (1962)
Language: D, F
Picture: Widescreen

I assume that "D" and "F" stand for Deutch and Francais. No mention of untertitel, though. Don't all of these numbered SZ Cinemathek releases from Süddeutsche Zeitung lack english subtitles?

Kinsayder wrote:Melville's L'Aîné des Ferchaux (1963).

First time on DVD, I think.

Hmm, if anyone can find out if this has english subs, than it is quite possibly a must buy for me...i love melville!

It looks like SZ-Cinemathek's French titles have a German dub and the original French soundtrack with German subtitles only - at least, that's the case with these other recent releases in the same series:

Les choses de la vie
Hiroshima mon amour

The DVDs in this series only have English subtitles if the original language was English. Otherwise the subs are in German (and sometimes the original "foreign" language). If you have a particular title in mine, go to www.jpc.de and check it out. "Sprache" is language and "Untertitel" is subtitle.

Anybody know whether these r2de new releases have English subs?

Barbara Albert's Nordrand
Michael Glawogger's Nacktschnecken
Michael Glawogger's Megacities

I guess you're refering to the new Austrian dvd releases (reasonably priced at 10 euro each). I bought Nacktschnecken (which isn't Slumming, but his earlier Graz-comedy. Slumming is better but is still to be released on dvd) in Vienna last week and it has indeed English subtitles. I didn't buyNordrand, but I seem to remember English subs on it as well. Megacities hasn't been released yet (but will later this month).

The three releases are part of a large series published by the Austrian newspaper Der Standard and The Austrian Filmmuseum - and consists of the 50 best Austrian films. 25 released in october - 25 will be released this month. Of the releases I saw most of them had English subtitles, so my guess is, that whenever festival subtitles have been available - they've been used.

Other titles include
Good News (Ulrich Seidl)
Der Raben
Praxis der liebe (Praxis of Love - Valie Export)
as well as an Austrian Found Footagec compilation (called Recyclying filmhistory)
Also the early nationalistic sci-fi 1 april 2000 from 1952 (which is the only one I found without any subs)

Of the 7 I bought all of the have been decent to good quality - and are highly recomended!

The complete list

Regarding subtitles, go to this link. Not all films have subtitles, but here is the exact list from the "Standard" web site.

mbowmanh wrote:If you have a particular title in mine, go to www.jpc.de and check it out. "Sprache" is language and "Untertitel" is subtitle.

Another site I've found helpful re "features", including subtitles, on r2de discs is cinefacts.de. Amazon.de is useless in these matters.

Based on the cinefacts info, I just ordered, from amazon, one of the Kluge two-discers: Abschied von gestern + Gelegenheitsarbeit einer Sklavin; Glasner's Der freie Wille; Glawogger's beautiful doc, Workingman's Death; and Watanabe's 19, which, surprisingly, according to cinefacts, has English as well as German subtitles.

I'm making an order from Amazon.de and just thought I'd resurrect this thread. (Their current shipping costs to Australia have gone down to exactly 14 euros, regardless of how many DVDs)

GESPENSTER, INNERE SICHERHEIT and soon to be released YELLA, all by Christian Petzold.

DEALER by Thomas Arslan

MARSEILLE by Angela Schanelec

MILCHWALD and FALSCHE BEKENNER by Christoph Hochhäusler

SEHNSUCHT by Valeska Griesebach

Complete sets of the Western TV series Bonanza (Seasons 1-5) are not available anywhere else in the world, AFAIK.

GESPENSTER, INNERE SICHERHEIT and soon to be released YELLA, all by Christian Petzold.

DEALER by Thomas Arslan

MARSEILLE by Angela Schanelec

MILCHWALD and FALSCHE BEKENNER by Christoph Hochhäusler

SEHNSUCHT by Valeska Griesebach

Do any of these have English subtitles? For that matter, does anyone know if the release of Syberberg's "Our Hitler" has subtitles? It lists languages as "German, English" but that may just be because portions of the film feature people speaking in English.

Alligator:

This has been posted elsewhere, but the Claude Lelouch Edition 1-5 series of box sets is terrific. Except for 2 films in Volume 1 and one in Volume 5, all of the movies have English subtitles.

I'm planning to get the newest Romy Schneider box at some point; it also comes with English subs.

One question for the rest of you mob: are those "Century Collection" sets at amazon.de, e.g. Meilensteine der Filmgeschichte: 40er Jahre, worth picking up? Are they English-friendly?

The DVDs featured in the "century edition" sets all feature the original English audio, some also English subs.
But they all are the single DVD versions.

golgothicon wrote:The DVDs featured in the "century edition" sets all feature the original English audio, some also English subs.
But they all are the single DVD versions.

Danke!

MARSEILLE, MILCHWALD, SEHNSUCHT and GESPENSTER do have engl. subs!

DIE INNERE SICHERHEIT does not have engl. subs!

Can't comment on DEALER and FALSCHE BEKENNER at the moment - don't have the discs by hand.

Silent Hill on HD-DVD

FERIEN by Thomas Arslan

Just ordered it - but have seen it on the big screen on its release / last summer! The DVD has engl. subs - another subtle film by the "Berliners".