Mr. Bongo Films

[videozor]

Are any extras expected on either Hamlet or King Lear? Judging by Amazon's descriptipn both will be single-DVD editions

[MichaelB]

Has Mr Bongo ever offered extras on anything? Even what by general consent is its best release (Earth) was barebones.

[Michael Kerpan]

The best "extra" for Kozintsev's Hamlet and Lear is his own "The Space of Tragedy" -- out of print (and quite expensive now) -- but perhaps one can find it in a library. Really essential read ing for fans of his late films. Shakespeare: Time and Coscience is also good -- but is more about Shakespeare's stage works in Russia -- and not so much about his own films (written right before Hamlet -- and the book has a Hamlet film appendix of sorts).

[knives]

Has Mr Bongo ever offered extras on anything? Even what by general consent is its best release (Earth) was barebones.

I think there MO is barebones releases with two recommendations from their library on the back.

[Peacock]

One of their releases of I am Cuba has a documentary.

[MichaelB]

Are any extras expected on either Hamlet or King Lear? Judging by Amazon's descriptipn both will be single-DVD editions

Single DVD, non-anamorphic, barebones, and with subtitles outside the frame that get unavoidably cropped if you try to zoom the picture to fill a 16:9 frame. This would be pretty bad ten years ago, but is truly gobsmacking today - how the hell were these transfers considered releasable?

It's doubly embarrassing since my Ruscico discs really did come out ten years ago (at least - the copyright date on the back of the Hamlet box is 2000), and they're anamorphic and completely 16:9-friendly - their only drawback is that they split each film across two discs, but that's a very minor issue indeed by comparison. And it also proves that perfectly decent anamorphic masters exist - I'm playing Ruscico's Hamlet as I write this, and even though it's hardly state-of-the-art by today's standards it's way ahead of Mr Bongo's feeble efforts.

Christ, what a great film, though - I'd love to see a Blu-ray restoration, especially since the format seems peculiarly well suited to black-and-white Scope.

[perkizitore]

Are both to be avoided then, Michael?

[MichaelB]

It's rude just to say "well, duh" in isolation, so I'll mention the Pope's religion and the sylvan toilet habits of ursine mammals instead.

Actually, to be as fair as possible, if you're still running a 4:3 CRT, they probably look fine - the source prints are very clean. And I suppose there's a minuscule possibility that the checkdiscs they sent me aren't representative of the final product, but since they have finished menus I'm afraid that's not very likely.

[perkizitore]

There are much cheaper than the Ruscico discs, so my question is; are they so inferior that i should just fork out the extra cash for the Russian discs?

[MichaelB]

This is a full framegrab of the Mr Bongo disc, with a 16:9 frame superimposed so you can see the cropping situation:



And this is a grab from the Ruscico disc for comparison - I trimmed the black bars on the grounds of redundancy:

[Michael Kerpan]

There are supposedly even _better_ Hamlet and Lear transfers than the Ruscico ones (Krupny Plan, released domestically and without subtitles). Where on earth did _these_ turkeys come from?

[Ashirg]

Here is Krupniy Plan captures for Hamlet and comparison for King Lear (with Ruscico disc).

[Michael Kerpan]

Here is Krupniy Plan captures for Hamlet and comparison for King Lear (with Ruscico disc).

Oh my heavens! The Krupniy plan Lear looks gorgeous! Is this available in the West (even unsubbed)? Heartbreaking that the releases we have available suck in comparison.

[Jonathan S]

with subtitles outside the frame that get unavoidably cropped if you try to zoom the picture to fill a 16:9 frame.

With the framegrab you helpfully show, that has just a single line of text, my projector could probably cope since its zoom function comes with the ability to raise (or lower) the expanded picture (it's a fairly old, cheap projector, so I imagine many others and maybe TVs also have this device). As it's Scope ratio, this procedure probably wouldn't crop the top of the image - however, I think it would do so with a double line of text, of which I expect there are plenty! If only they'd started the subtitles directly under the film image....

EDIT: With double-lined subtitles on this release, is the first line in fact higher than on the single-line example shown?

[peerpee]

Shocking.

[neilist]

hmv.com is showing preorders for 'Restored Special Edition' versions of 'The Saragossa Manuscript' and 'The Hour-Glass Sanatorium' for February release next year, along with a release of Antonioni's 'Chung Kuo, Cina' documentary for March. I can't see them listed anywhere else yet, but I'm curious as to what differences there are between these new versions of the Has films and the ones previously released. What constitutes a Mr. Bongo 'Special Edition'; would extras be too much to consider?

[MichaelB]

The optimist in me is guessing that they're using the new Kadr restorations, unveiled on unsubtitled Polish DVDs earlier this year.

I bought The Saragossa Manuscript and it's an unrecognisable improvement on the Mr Bongo edition, for reasons itemised here.

But I wouldn't hold your breath for extras - the Polish DVDs offered an illustrated booklet essay, but nothing on the actual discs. In fact, has any Mr Bongo release featured any extras of any kind?

[ellipsis7]

The French Carlotta set of CHUNG KUO CINA is still the best legit edition, and even better there is a perfect high quality Chinese copy of it, with excellent optional English subs added on the main feature... These editions, and the Italian Feltrinelli run over 2 DVDs to contain the 3 parts plus extras... Mr. Bongo will struggle to fit the 3 parts on one DVD - they run nearly 210 minutes in total - at any where near decent standard...

[perkizitore]

It's interesting that there are 2 pre-orders for each of the titles mentioned above :-k

[MichaelB]

Personally, I wouldn't pre-order anything from Mr Bongo until someone posts framegrabs and supplies reliable technical specs.

[GaryC]

In fact, has any Mr Bongo release featured any extras of any kind?

For what it's worth, Memories of Underdevelopment had a stills gallery.

[Peacock]

And I am Cuba had a feature length making-of doc.

[neilist]

No, on the basis of their previous releases I certainly wouldn't blind pre-order anything from them either, but these just caught my eye since as far as I'm aware this is the first time they've gone to the trouble to reissue a film and also the first time they've promoted something as a special edition. I'm really not holding out for anything definitive from them, but there's the hope, maybe, I suppose...

[MichaelB]

I think it's a reasonably safe bet that these new editions will be the Kadr restorations - after all, they're available, and there's every possibility that the Kadr people contacted Mr Bongo themselves to offer them access to the masters, as I understand they've been pretty proactive with Second Run (which is bringing out their selection of the Kadr restorations, starting with Eroica early next year).

And if Mr Bongo lost all their unsold stock in the Sony DADC fire last August - highly probable, I'd have thought - then that's a pretty powerful incentive to do a reissue right there, as it wouldn't cost that much more than a straight repressing. After all, they already own the UK distribution rights, and they don't need to create their own master - even the existing subtitle files should be compatible without much (or even any) tweaking.

[Perkins Cobb]

The French Carlotta set of CHUNG KUO CINA is still the best legit edition, and even better there is a perfect high quality Chinese copy of it, with excellent optional English subs added on the main feature... These editions, and the Italian Feltrinelli run over 2 DVDs to contain the 3 parts plus extras... Mr. Bongo will struggle to fit the 3 parts on one DVD - they run nearly 210 minutes in total - at any where near decent standard...

Would you have any review or purchase links for the Chinese edition? I'm not coming up with anything on a quick Google.