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fatboyslim142 wrote:Is it possible for one company to own the rights to a film version (ie. shorter version) of a TV series & another one to own the TV series rights?

Absolutely, if the rightsholder wants to arrange things that way. It's entirely their call.

I believe this even happened recently in the US with Herzog's Death Row series.

knives wrote:I believe this even happened recently in the US with Herzog's Death Row series.

I don't think that's quite the same situation. Even though they arose from the same overall project, there's no overlap in content between Death Row and Into the Abyss.

But there are indeed lots of examples of the two versions not being licensed together, even though this more often leads to only one version being available in a given territory (e.g. Theatrical Vincent and Theo in the US; TV Vincent and Theo in the UK - same distribution with The Trip). It was rumoured that Out 1 and Out 1: Spectre were currently licenced to different US companies, but at this juncture that's still a moot point, not to mention a sore one.

EDIT: Pure speculation, but I wouldn't be surprised if rightsholders divide up the rights for different versions in the hope that they'll be able to sell both in the same territory (or extract more for a double whammy), but commercial realities mean that this is seldom a goer. Also, in the case of theatrical reductions, these will very often have been presold to a theatrical distributor (very likely the case with The Trip), and the attendant DVD release rights will already be tied up with that deal - which the original TV cut would never have been a part of.

MichaelB wrote:

fatboyslim142 wrote:Is it possible for one company to own the rights to a film version (ie. shorter version) of a TV series & another one to own the TV series rights?

Absolutely, if the rightsholder wants to arrange things that way. It's entirely their call.

I was wondering as I'd like to see someone release the TV mini-series version of Raul Ruiz's 'The Mysteries of Lisbon' in the UK otherwise I'll have to get the subtitled European DVD release.

fatboyslim142 wrote:I was wondering as I'd like to see someone release the TV mini-series version of Raul Ruiz's 'The Mysteries of Lisbon' in the UK otherwise I'll have to get the subtitled European DVD release.

Since the film has been released in the UK already, and only in the theatrical cut, I'd say that this ship has long since sailed. The Portugese edition is superb and completely English-friendly, so order away.

zedz wrote:

fatboyslim142 wrote:I was wondering as I'd like to see someone release the TV mini-series version of Raul Ruiz's 'The Mysteries of Lisbon' in the UK otherwise I'll have to get the subtitled European DVD release.

Since the film has been released in the UK already, and only in the theatrical cut, I'd say that this ship has long since sailed. The Portugese edition is superb and completely English-friendly, so order away.

In cases like this, there's a chance that someone like BBC Four might show the miniseries, but as zedz has said it's unlikely now that it would come out on disc in the UK. The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo (Swedish film version) and sequels were reissued on disc in their TV miniseries versions, but they have a much higher audience than a Raul Ruiz film, needless to say.

Sky Arts showed the miniseries version in the UK, so I doubt BBC4 has the rights.

All pre-October releases are 30% off at the VivaVerve shop! (The discount will be applied to the grand total when you check out)

MichaelB wrote:Sky Arts showed the miniseries version in the UK, so I doubt BBC4 has the rights.

They - BBC4 - actually turned it down much to our chagrin, hence the sale to Sky. So it's impossible that it will turn up on the BBC for a few years yet.

According to this tweet, NWF have acquired Winter Sleep for UK release, with a Blu-Ray to follow after theatrical.

newwavefilms wrote:Just to confirm Norte, the End of History will be released by us on DVD and Blu-ray Sept 29

So Cinema Guild declined to release a U.S. Blu-ray of this title due to the prohibitive costs of producing physical media that properly presented the visual quality consumers expect in an HD release for such a long film. How does New Wave plan to get around this issue? Will the film be split between two dual-layer 50g Blu-rays? Is there any way to juggle the bit rates and compression such that a single Blu-ray would be sufficient?

The Amazon listing says that New Wave's release will be on one disc. It's a 4 hr 10 min movie. That's probably pushing the limits of a Blu-ray disc but not necessarily going too far. It will be interesting to see the reviews.

I thought four hours was well within the range of a decent quality BluRay. Hasn't Criterion issued a number of Blus with that amount of video content?

EDIT: Quick selection of single disc Criterion Blus with way more than four hours of content:
Kagemusha (280+ minutes)
Marketa Lazarova (290+ minutes)
Nashville (280+ minutes)
Monsoon Wedding (360+ minutes!)

And The Last Emperor disc had its problems, but it somehow managed to accommodate over 250 minutes of HD material plus more than 2 hours of SD.

Looks great! Just out of curiosity, does a wide ratio like this generally mean that a BD can comfortably hold more or less content than usual?

I did not realize how special a BD of Norte: The End of History would be.

Pre-ordered from vivavere here.

Zavvi sells it for the same price plus shipping is cheaper or free (depending on location)

swo17 wrote:Looks great! Just out of curiosity, does a wide ratio like this generally mean that a BD can comfortably hold more or less content than usual?

More.

The more the 16:9-shaped screen is filled, the more space is needed. Which by the same token means that both Academy and Scope films need less space.

4 hours 10 mins of Scope will easily fit on a Blu-ray, especially if the film isn't especially fast-moving.

Too bad "Norte" has only 1 extra, a trailer...

MichaelB wrote:4 hours 10 mins of Scope will easily fit on a Blu-ray, especially if the film isn't especially fast-moving.

Do you mean that if there is more movement within the frame or movement of the camera in the film, the file size grows? Could you explain why that is?

Because video compression involves recording the differences between successive frames. So the fewer differences there are, the smaller the file will be.

(Although of course issues like film grain can complicate matters here.)

Actually this is an interesting point. It doesn't 100% hold true on BD (or any other media which requires instant access). On the 1080p/24 format, BD requires a whole image (I-frame) is sent once every second. Not hugely efficient, but it allows for cheap players.

Regarding space savings with letterboxed or pillarboxed content, it depends on the rate control method. If the level of quantization (which in this case means the amount of detail dropped for the purposes of compression) was constant, that would hold true. Disc space isn't an issue on BD though but when it is, almost everyone is using 2-pass variable bit rate which is the most efficient way of making sure the bits get spent where they're needed most. In other words, the bitrate is going to be set at a certain level (say 30mbps) anyway; if the content is letterboxed it just means that the actual picture is going to be quantized less (all else being equal) to meet the target rate since the black borders take up no space.

Although as an annoying aside: boxed-in content can actually need bitrate increases because of the difficulty of encoding the transition between the bars and the picture. You'll sometimes see the picture shifted up or down (or left or right) by a few pixels to better align to block boundaries for that reason.

BTW, if you want to see an example of media that doesn't have I-frames every second, go on YouTube and look at one of those videos which is music accompanied by a still image. Because the encoder sees the content isn't moving, and because the transmission system doesn't have to be limited by how much the laser can pull off the disc each second (it's limited by network bandwidth which is usually WAY worse!), the I-frame distance can be absolutely huge which as Michael suggests above is extremely efficient. It just means that you have to wait ages when you want to skip to a random point in the video for it to find the next I-frame. (Or if you're using VLC Media Player, it just starts decoding anyway and you see mispredicted images until the next I-frame).

Struggling to find a review for Caeser Must Die / Cesare deve morire:

A) Are the subtitles optional?

B) Are there any extras?

• DVD includes 40 minutes behind the scenes and interviews with the actors and directors.

C) Was this film released on Blu-ray anywhere?


Edit: I answered B through their website. Still looking for A and C.

I had seen Caesar Must Die when it screened in NY. A wonderful film. Kino put this out on DVD only. Typical.