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The Narrator Returns wrote: Thu Sep 02, 2021 6:00 pm A secret, "never-before-seen" Soderbergh movie is premiering at this year's TIFF

Rumour has it that the never-before-seen Soderbergh film is actually his re-edit of Kafka.

Scattered reports out of TIFF say that the ex-Kafka, now known as Mr. Kneff, is now a silent film soundtracked by anachronistic, "Robert Zemeckis like" needledrops including

Spoiler

an orchestral cover of "Enter Sandman".

Soderbergh claims it's only titled Mr. Kneff because that matched phonetically with the lip movements of the actors when they said "Kafka".

There is no part of this so far that sounds good

It's the curse of Eros

I guess I’m happy for him that he’s finally turned it into something worth putting out into the world and can finally stop tinkering with it, but I liked the original just fine and none of these changes sound to me like improvements.

He's been messing about with the movie for nearly 20 years now, hasn't he? I was in grade 12 of high school when I first heard about Soderbergh's plans for a new version, because the news dropped not long after my high school English teacher mentioned Kafka was his favourite movie of all time. I thought it was a pretty weird choice for a favourite movie, and that was before I found out even the director himself wasn't into it.

Anyway, 20-ish years is just long enough of a creative process for a creator to become so lost that all real, living creative energy dies amidst the endless fussing and adjusting.

swo17 wrote: Sat Sep 18, 2021 5:36 am It's the curse of Eros

Does that mean we’re glad Antonioni is dead?

I wouldn't rule out that being what killed him

Amused to see that Soderbergh is still a rampant consumer of Below Deck. When it kept cropping up on his 2020 list I assumed it was research for Let Them All Talk. No such excuse this year!

Bummer his first newsletter since announcing the 4k blu ray box set (supposed to release last year) didn’t offer any status updates

Someone two months ago was kind enough to upload Soderbergh's elusive 1987 short "Winston" to the Internet Archive, both with and without Soderbergh's commentary from the sex, lies Laserdisc.

MOD EDIT It’s fine to let folks know where to find it, but do not directly link copyright violations

Soderbergh's most recent HBO flicks are getting physical releases, although these look to be MOD DVDs, and if "HBO Archive's" past pricing on these type of discs (like the Russell Davies series Years & Years) are any indication, not very cheap.

KIMI came out on July 5, and LET THEM ALL TALK and NO SUDDEN MOVE are both due on July 19.

Torn because I of course want to support physical releases and add these to my collection, but how little effort would it have taken to make these at least even BD-Rs?

Me too.

Like most of you, I have a few MOD discs in my collection, and I don’t think a single one has ever failed when I finally pressed play on it, but there’s some block I have about paying a premium price for what I irrationally assume is an inferior product.

I really wanted to own a copy of LET THEM ALL TALK, too, but I’m not spending over $30 on it.

They're all on DeepDiscount for $17.50

Selling any movie on standard-def DVD in the year 2022 is ridiculous.

I'm pretty surprised about this. Soderbergh is all about technology and releasing his films in the optimal form, and has a good working relationship with HBO. What happened here?

He was seemingly unaware of the recent Out of Sight 4K release from Kino until it came out, so there seems to be some crossed communication wires between him and the distributors lately

swo17 wrote: Wed Jul 06, 2022 5:20 pm They're all on DeepDiscount for $17.50

That's actually a pretty good price, but unfortunately for me, with exchange rate and shipping to Canada, it brings it all right back up to almost $30 a disc for me.

pzadvance wrote: Thu Jul 07, 2022 11:18 am He was seemingly unaware of the recent Out of Sight 4K release from Kino until it came out, so there seems to be some crossed communication wires between him and the distributors lately

Yeah but the Kino move makes sense to some degree- they’re a busy and seemingly impulsive company who usurp rights and announce releases quickly, I can see how their decisions and agile activity would exclude the filmmaker from conversations. This has happened before with public expressions of confusion and/or animosity from Rian Johnson and Lynch. HBO, on the other hand, has a movie deal with Soderbergh, and he’s spoken highly of their working relationship, so it feels odd that this same company that he’s actively producing content for wouldn’t consult him about physical releases. If anything, I’d expect Soderbergh to push for optimal physical formats for his films as part of their contract!