criterionforum.org

Coming in May, Stranger on the Third Floor

Could this finally be a decent factory pressed edition rather than the overpriced Warner BOD?

Has anyone already seen the new (and again unsubtitled?) DVD edition of Anthony Simmons' 'Black Joy' and can recommend it?

Did anyone buy Cobra Woman?

Yowza! Thanks George, didn't realize that was out! I was hoping Eureka had it.. but oh well. I'll pick her up and let you know how it is.
Oh here's a review from the Digital Fix

The Big Sky, Moviemail exclusive at the moment.

That's not the director's cut of The Big Sky though, right? Can anyone confirm whether the French Editions Montparnasse is the director's cut or not? amazon.fr has it as 122m, whereas amazon.co.uk has it at 140m...

I have the French set, it is the long cut (and the original release cut, hence the time listed) but adjusted for PAL it's like 133 minutes or something (I think-- whatever the running time, it has both cuts included)

I just received Nicholas Ray's Born To Be Bad, it's slightly better than the French DVD but it leaves a lot to be desired.

Interesting. But what does this French set look like? The Edition Montparnasse for sale on Amazon is a single disc in a slim-line case, not a set.

This one is the one you want, the other is just the first disc with the cut version of the movie. This thing comes in a double-disc digipak CD case inside a 10" record box with a big booklet and a pretty great, long interview with Todd McCarthy on the second disc, alongside the director's cut. I could take a picture of the packaging if anyone's really curious

A couple of tests (Dvd klassik and Excessif) are pretty damning on both versions' image quality; calling them a 'massacre' and 'exécrable'!?

We've all suffered through way worse watching VHS rips and bootleg copies of other films, the negative reaction is a little exaggerated so long as you know what you're in for

The Digital Fix on Marty Feldman's In God We Tru$t.

Just noticed that Odeon has put out a (hopefully anamorphic) Scope edition of Ninety Degrees in the Shade (1965), a film made in the UK by expatriate director Jiri Weiss. Anyone seen it? Sounds like it could complement both the BFI's Flipside catalog and Second Run's Czech releases quite well.

Perkins Cobb wrote:Just noticed that Odeon has put out a (hopefully anamorphic) Scope edition of Ninety Degrees in the Shade (1965), a film made in the UK by expatriate director Jiri Weiss. Anyone seen it? Sounds like it could complement both the BFI's Flipside catalog and Second Run's Czech releases quite well.

Not seen it but it does feature Rudolf Hrusinsky, the Cremator himself.

There's a review link on the previous page of this thread...

Whoops, thought I'd gone far back enough. A thorough review, antnield. Definitely confirmed for my next UK order.

Some of Odeon's August titles - some exclusives are now available in general stores:

My Forbidden Past (1951) - 08/08/11
The Set-Up (1949) - 08/08/11
My Brother's Keeper (1948) - 08/08/11
The Big Sky (1952) - 08/08/11
Quality Street (1937) - 08/15/11
Vivacious Lady (1938) - 08/15/11
Best of the Badmen (1951) - 08/15/11
The Seekers (1954) - 08/15/11
Experiment Perilous (1944) - 08/22/11

Did anyone pick up the "Summer Storm" release and want to comment? Better/worse than the VCI?

The Digital Fix on Vivacious Lady.

From Odeon employee 'richarde007', posting in Blu-ray.com's Witchfinder General thread:

...Just to let you know that indeed there are plans to release Blood on Satan's Claw next year and the master is beautiful....I can't say too much but I definitely would like to put out Pete's (Walker) films on Blu-ray. Our next Blu-ray hasnt been officially announced yet but is very likely to be First of the Few. Just a quick heads up, we're releasing Pete's The Comeback on DVD very soon from a brand new 16x9 pristine HD downconvert.

Oh man, I really disliked that film upon reviewing it recently. It came off as one of the most reactionary and sexually repressive films of the 1970s (while still not above using the titillation of sex).

Lovely score, however.

Do you mean Blood on Satan's Claw or one of the other ones mentioned?

Blood on Satan's Claw... It's like a Witchfinder General where Matthew Hopkins rides into town and saves the day.

I find it hard to compare the two films in a political sense, since they work from different premises. Witchfinder is essentially a rationalist work - its "witches" are powerless and innocent victims of the law - where as Claw presents a supernatural contagion, some of whose victims are also perpetrators of rape and murder. As others have pointed out, the judge in Claw is an ambiguous figure, himself warning that he'll use "undreamed-of measures" to stamp out the "plague" (though compared to the measures adopted in Witchfinder they seem tame!). The final freeze-frame on his staring eye, recalling the eyeball in the ploughed-up skull that started it all, suggests to me that the agent of the law is as bad as the evil he is eradicating (some even say the judge literally is, or has absorbed, Satan).

That said, I do think Claw is now an overrated film. I wasn't old enough to see it on first release, but it must have seemed refreshing compared to the increasingly jaded Hammer horrors of the early seventies (though, as you say, with similar opportunistic titillation). Its ambiguity is both its strength and weakness. The lack of explanations - much more "showing" than "telling" - increases its disturbing quality, yet the narrative doesn't really cohere in any meaningful way (it was based on three stories and originally intended as a portmanteau film) and it never stays long enough with one character for me to really care about any of them. I find the final scenes disappointingly weak. I agree the score - basically a brilliant set of variations on a haunting little folk theme - is its greatest asset.