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I wish I could directly answer these questions regarding the format. Hopefully in a few weeks Mondo Vision will be making an announcement regarding exactly what sort of shiny disc the release will be on

I hope that the CD includes the recently unearthed unused Andrzej Korzynski music for the film that Finders Keepers has released. There are some beautiful and atmospheric tracks within.

The soundtrack came directly from the reel to reel tape recently rediscovered by Korzynski. Because it can all fit on a single CD, all of the music provided by him will be on the disc. I'm not sure what Finders Keepers did with their release, but the Mondo Vision CD will come with all of the music we have. So, if they included something, that means MV almost certainly will, too.

David M. wrote:Hopefully in a few weeks Mondo Vision will be making an announcement regarding exactly what sort of shiny disc the release will be on :)

You're not denying it's not coming to Blu-ray like you did back in July of '09, which can only mean one thing: IT'S 100% CONFIRMED THAT "POSSESSION" WILL BE ON BLU-RAY (hooray!). \:D/ I didn't say it, David M. (if you can read between the lines of that silly happy face) said it on an internet forum. Spread the word! :wink:

Hypothetical question Dave M. (since we're spitballing/bullshitting at this point). If MV were to start releasing present and future Zulawski movies on Blu-ray (starting with "Possession"), did your mastering of the previous Zulawski MV movies allow for the possibilities of these transfers to be used for a future Blu-ray release? In other words, even if you encoded them to maximize DVD-9 NTSC, were the original transfers from the negative/interposivie masters (still on hard drives I presume) enough to strike future BD editions if MV contracted you to do so? We know you're an ace encoder for DVD, but how's your expertise/skill in the authoring of Blu-ray at either BD-25 or BD-50? Do you even know how to spell JAVA, or do you just drink that stuff? :) Just askin'. :-"

I think the question that you're groping towards is "are they HD telecines?".

Yes, but I'd assume any telecine transfer in 2008 (the year MV started releasing Zulawski titles) would have been HD to begin with just to yield as good a master as possible even if the end result was a 720x480 SD DVD presentation. I know MV cannot release all its Zulawski's on Blu-ray (how many copies of "On the Silver Globe" or "Boris Godounov" could they realistically hope to sell?) but, if they do decide to release "Possession" on BD plus a select few titles from the catalogue, I'd imagine "Szamanka" and "That Most Important Thing: Love" would be immediate candidates for the upgrade. Just checking if David M. started with quality telecine transfers (hopefully HD) when MV hired him to do these back in '07 as the one released screen-cap of "Possession" (in 1920x1080) indicates.

Then again, maybe MV didn't negotiate for the Blu-ray rights to these Zulawski movies. Criterion released the Josef von Sternberg Box Set on DVD only because (presumably) they couldn't get Paramount to agree to sign off on the BD rights. Even for a niche catalogue like Zulawski's 12 movies the BD rights might be too cost-prohibitive for MV to think its worth the trouble.

Don't they all say "Digitally Restored High Definition Transfer Mastered For Progressive Scan (Approved by Director Andrzej Zulawski)"?

The flea scenes from The Third Part of the Night are what Blu-Ray was made for

I would say that the cost of encoding and authoring on BD is no longer prohibitive for small labels, if you know what to use, or know someone who does.

The mandatory copy protection fees which the studios are forced into paying - for AACS, a system which has already been cracked - are still unfair, but I'd hope the installed base is there to tempt more small companies into hiring me to make BDs for them

Regarding the current Zulawski titles: it's difficult enough to find a good standard def source for many of them. The 4 released titles have been taken from D1 PAL masters. Of course, if I had my way, everything would be a scan from the original camera negative and released on BD, but the sad reality is, Mondo Vision are basically on their own with many of the Zulawski titles. They received no help whatsoever from any Polish cultural institution to put them out, and requests to do new scans often go ignored or are lost in bureaucracy. I don't know where the blame lies for that, if it's to do with Zulawski's reputation in Poland, or whatever.

Hopefully with the public interest shown in him at the recent retrospective, that situation changes and we can get some beautiful discs out of the older Polish films.

Sorry I'm being vague, BTW. When I do work like this for studios, I'm not normally allowed to talk about any of it. Mondo Vision are happy to let me discuss SOME of what's going on in public

During the BAM retrospective the curators that introduced the movies mentioned that many of the screened 35mm prints ("The Blue Note," "Boris Godounov," "Szamanka," etc.) came directly from Poland and had no English subtitled prints available, hence the live subtitling (many using the Zulawski/Bird translations made for the Mondo Vision releases). Some ("Boris Godounov") were in better shape than others ("The Devil"). You mean to tell me a non-profit museum like BAM can get these prints on loan but a for-profit company like MV can't get their calls returned? That blows, and makes me double-happy that I saw ten of Zulawski's 12 movies projected at NYC theaters over the past four months (and the two I've yet to see come on DVD's I own that were authored by you-know-who). \:D/

So David, that means 'No' to all previous Zulawski movies getting a true HD upgrade if MV goes Blu-ray, right? If all you got were SD PAL D1 masters for your DVD mastering then the original source is maxed out at 720x576 resolution. Theoretically you could master at 1920x1080 using the PAL D1 as sources, but then it's an upscaled/upconverted process (like what my upconverting player does when it synchs with my HDTV's de-interlacer with HDMI connection) and not a true HD mastering process (downscale conversion from a 2K/4K telecine transfer of original negative). I don't think MV would play the 'double dip with inferior/same master' game other companies play with its priced niche audience and would actually seek to re-master the titles in HD from a negative (if allowed) but that only means Blu-ray Zulawski's other than "Possession" are still a couple of years away minimum.

BTW, as I google/research info on all of these topics/resolutions/formats, I keep running into posts you've made on other internet forums over the years. You do get around, don't you Dave? :wink:

All this winking is starting to make me think I'm missing some significant secret message imbedded in your posts.
Are you a mason, dad 1153?
I'd call you just dad, but I'm worried you'd respond with another wink.

If you call me 'dad' I'll give you three big :shock: :shock: :shock: . :wink:

And we're kidding with David M. because he obviously knows more than he's telling (and he's told way more than we get from other compressionists working for the likes of Fox or Criterion) and I'm trying to bait him to tell us more. All I'm saying is that David didn't outright deny that there was work on a BD of "Possession" like he did back in 2009 when asked about when MV would release on BD. It's called reading the tea leaves, which is all I'm doing on a dull Friday afternoon as I count the hours to a midnight 35mm screening of John Carpenter's "Prince of Darkness" that I'll be attending at IFC Center. :)

I find it strange that Mondo advertise them as "Digitally Restored High Definition Transfer Mastered For Progressive Scan" if they're sourced from PAL D1 (which isn't HD, is it?). Do they mean that that the PAL D1 was sourced from an HD source?

^^^ Yes, anything that comes from a film source (whose resolution is much higher than current media allows; even 16mm at the very least matches the resolution of the Blu-ray format) will be be considered an 'HD transfer.' I wouldn't lose much sleep over it. 'Digitally Restored (the clean-up of the nicks and scratches of tape noise) High Definition Transfer (from the negative to an interpositive -for duplication purposes- print to the D1 PAL Master copies that were then used to source all the TV broadcast prints and MV's DVD) Mastered For Progressive Scan' (the work Dave did compressing-without-compromising-much the feature, audio, interviews, menus, etc. to maximize the DVD-9 format's 9.4 gigs of space to near-capacity) is technically accurate. Frankly, knowing what the original sources are, I'm doubly-shocked the MV DVD's came out looking as good as they did. And, given these are Zulawski movies (which, from a money perspective, would be the equivalent of worrying when Out On A Limb will be released to squeeze a few extra pennies from dumb teenagers that grew up in the 90's), beggars can't get too choosy with what we're given. Especially when what we get exceeds the standards set by even the likes of Kino and Criterion for their deluxe product.

I think that Mondo's work with Zulawski is the most important or certainly the most interesting director based project outside of the BFI and Ozu and they're doing an outstanding job.

TOUFFAN website (Mondo Vision's distributor) is up and running again. Everything except the Special Edition single-disk of "L’important C’est D’aimer" (not OOP, just no available copies at the moment for sale) is still available, including the Limited Editions.

I ordered these back a long, long time... (last week)... and the delivery was quick and safely/well-packaged. Then again, I ordered the four LE versions so maybe only people that spend close to 200 bucks get the special treatment. :) Glad to see they sorted out the DARSOO name thing... until next time. :wink:

So David, that means 'No' to all previous Zulawski movies getting a true HD upgrade if MV goes Blu-ray, right?

Even if we did have all these HD masters sitting here on the shelf, MV would still need to decide there was enough demand for a BD release to go ahead. Of course, I'd love to see them.

Theoretically you could master at 1920x1080 using the PAL D1 as sources, but then it's an upscaled/upconverted process

Right, and it'd be nearly pointless to release that - although that didn't stop a company in Germany putting out an upscaled "My Nights"!

I find it strange that Mondo advertise them as "Digitally Restored High Definition Transfer Mastered For Progressive Scan" if they're sourced from PAL D1 (which isn't HD, is it?). Do they mean that that the PAL D1 was sourced from an HD source?

It depends on the film; that's true for some of them, but you'd need to ask MV's packaging guys what they meant by that precisely. Like you say, there are a ton of steps in the chain, and any one of them could be considered a high definiton mastering stage before final delivery on an SD DVD. It wouldn't be my exact choice of words, but the fact that the MV DVDs are not low-pass filtered (none of the discs I did for any studio, Mondo Macabro included, have been because I think it's silly) means that they produce higher resolution than nearly any other DVD, or that the motion vector calculations done to clean out dirt and scratches are done at a higher resolution... It's all statistics and marketing, and also remember that a great SD source that hasn't been lowpass filtered is actually going to look more "HD" than an HD source that's been run through the encoder on the default settings without much manual tweaking.

As an aside, just had to share one of those weird internet moments that occur when you don't quite type in a website address correctly: http://www.mondovision.com/

Would you like some vitamin tablets with your copy of Possession?

Maybe THAT'S what was wrong with Isabelle Adjani.

dad1153 wrote:TOUFFAN website (Mondo Vision's distributor) is up and running again.

Prices are lowered on all four titles: one-disc SE's are now $27.95 (down for $29.95) and two-disc LE's are $42.95 (down from $44.95). Free USPS media mail shipping (if you order directly from their website) still applies.

Andrzej Zulawski fans in San Francisco now have something to be excited about. YBCA is screening five Zulawski films from May 3rd until May 13th. All films screen in 35mm and consist of all of Zulawski's Polish films plus Possession. The partial retrospective also bears the most appropriate title thus far for a US Zulawski retrospective, From a Whisper to a Scream:

http://www.ybca.org/whisper-scream-disc ... j-zulawski" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

Chris, if you get a whiff of a Zulawski retrospective (or at the very least a "Possession" screening) anywhere near the Chicago, IL area, could you post it here and/or IM me letting me know? I have a group of cinema enthusiast friends in IL I want to introduce Zulawski to, and they're game-enough to seek out a Zulawski retrospective if one ever came there. Plus, since IL/Chicago have a huge Polish population, it'd make sense for a Zulawski retrospective to swing by. Please let me know when/if you find anything, thanks. :)

dad1153, I will certainly give you a heads up if I hear about any Andrzej Zulawski film screenings taking place in Chicago. Also, thank you for linking to blog posts of mine in recent time!

Tim Lucas writes about POSSESSION in his new screening diary blog.
http://www.vwpro.blogspot.com/2012/01/3 ... -1981.html" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

So how 'bout the upcoming releases? Three this year, yes? Possession, On The Silver Globe, La Note Bleue. News?

Out of the four Zulawskis I caught at the retrospective, ON THE SILVER GLOBE's print quality was the biggest surprise. It looked almost spotless in most scenes, with extremely rich colors. The current R1 DVD is an absolute travesty, and I'm so glad that Mondo will be rectifying this in the near future.

I attended every film during the Andrzej Zulawski retrospective and fully agree that the true visual quality of On the Silver Globe was a total revelation. The color scheme is so extremely vivid and beautiful. Assorted DVD releases of the film have been an abomination. In 2008 I went to a screening of On the Silver Globe at Anthology Film Archives. The print Anthology screened was full of faded, murky colors that paled in comparison to the print shown at BAM. Out of Zulawski's entire filmography, On the Silver Globe has been the most mistreated by way of unacceptable home video releases.

The Mondo Vision release can't come out soon enough. Beyond finally having a sure to be wonderful version of the film, the release will most likely contain some fascinating supplemental material as the story of the making of On the Silver Globe is quite incredible.