Recent Film Restorations

[senseabove]

Info about the Austrian Film Museum´s restorations:
https://www.filmmuseum.at/jart/prj3/fil ... ode=active

A resto of Blind Husbands, from 35mm nitrate print, is listed as a work in progress.

There doesn't seem to be a press release about it, but the Silent Film Foundation also announced a restoration of Foolish Wives done in collaboration with MoMA as their opening night for this year's now-postponed festival.

[beamish14]

The Austrian Film Museum also recently restored Lav Diaz's 2001 film Batang West Side. A 35mm print was screened at the American Cinematheque in February with Diaz in attendance, and it looks fabulous.

The UCLA Film & Television Archive in collaboration with John Sayles have restored his film The Secret of Roan Inish. It is the 4th film of his that they have restored in tandem, and I love that Sayles and Maggie Renzi put up the money for these projects themselves. Like City of Hope, what happens with this restoration is Sony's call.

[Buttery Jeb]

The UCLA Film & Television Archive in collaboration with John Sayles have restored his film The Secret of Roan Inish. It is the 4th film of his that they have restored in tandem, and I love that Sayles and Maggie Renzi put up the money for these projects themselves. Like City of Hope, what happens with this restoration is Sony's call.

I think The Secret of Roan Inish got a confirmation of a future Criterion release around the same time as Matewan.

[Stefan Andersson]

News from Lobster Films re: their 2020-2021 season:

Restorations of
Le Bel Antonio
La Viaccia
L'avventura

A Duvivier Silents box with new restos of
L'agonie de Jérusalem,
Poil de Carotte,
Le mystère de la Tour Eiffel,
Maman Colibri,
La vie miraculeuse de Thérèse Martin,
Tourbillon de Paris,
La divine croisière,
Au bonheur des dames,
Le mariage de Melle Beulemans.

Poverty Row box - 1934 (new restos)
Woman in the dark,
Midnight (Call it murder),
Back Page

Love Affair (1939) in collaboration with MoMA (4K, from 35mm)

Also in collaboration with MoMA, a Lobster resto of (best existing element):
The Navigator
Plus bonus: Sherlock Jr.

Source: an April 7, 2020 post by "Emileduhomard", apparently a member or collaborator of the Lobster team, now working from the US:
http://www.dvdclassik.com/forum/viewtop ... &start=180

Post also says that
- 7 titles are planned for 2020-2021
- sales are decreasing and Lobster had contemplated shutting down physical media releases in 2020-2021, but now they are going ahead for this season also.

A subsequent post states that MoMA may have the single remaining 35mm print of Love Affair.

[tenia]

Emileduhomard has been Classik's insider for Lobster for quite some time now. I'm not sure what is his exact job at Lobster but he might be their PR person.

[hearthesilence]

Love Affair is huge as it's never been issued on DVD, much less Blu-Ray. (Coincidentally, I've only seen it projected at MoMA. Apparently it's their print that's been projected elsewhere in NYC.) If this gets it a physical media release, wonderful, though it was actually restored by the Film Foundation already.

[domino harvey]

Love Affair is PD, it’s been released on DVD more times than any title in this thread combined

[senseabove]

Also, I saw a print at the Stanford in their recent 1939 season, and while they don't list their print sources, I've never seen MoMA mentioned as one of them in any program pamphlets, promo material or write-ups, or by anyone I know... so I'm guessing there's at least one other print out there.

[hearthesilence]

Ah, you're right, completely misremembered. But none of those are taken from good source materials, correct? Unlike, say, His Girl Friday, I don't think there was a DVD release that made a new transfer from proper film elements.

Re: the film print at Stanford, did it mention the Film Foundation on a card in the beginning? Regardless, I was surprised the Lobster representative said that MoMA had the only print, so I was just taking their word for it.

[Stefan Andersson]

A 2020 release of Love Affair on DVD and Bluray is expected, according to info from MoMA - see post 5 here:
http://www.criterionforum.org/forum/vie ... hp?t=11637

Serge Bromberg of Lobster has been presenting Love Affair at several recent European festivals. Maybe this resto isn´t entirely new, only new to Lobster´s DVD release schedule.
https://festivalfilm1939.com/programmat ... lle-et-lui
https://festival-larochelle.org/node/10979

Here (p. 3) is a mention of the MoMA Love Affair resto, apparently made with the support of The Film Foundation:
https://www.cinematheque.fr/media/leo-mccarey.pdf (a Cinematheque Francaise McCarey retrospective, in cooperation with Lobster)
This PDF contains info about several other restored McCarey films.

A 2016 program note, mentioning a MoMA resto of McCarey´s personal print:
https://www.moma.org/calendar/events/2192

[domino harvey]

Ah, you're right, completely misremembered. But none of those are taken from good source materials, correct? Unlike, say, His Girl Friday, I don't think there was a DVD release that made a new transfer from proper film elements.

I think TCM’s version they aired was the best one circulating, and it wasn’t all that great, so yeah, it will no doubt be the first release to look good at least!

[senseabove]

I don't recall any Film Foundation card before Love Affair, but if it's not something I'm looking for beforehand or make note of afterward, I'm terrible at recalling those things...

[L.A.]

That Duvivier collection of silents is hopefully going to be English-friendly. [-o<

[beamish14]

Incredibly excited about this one: Caligula MMXX, a top-down, complete rehaul of Tinto Brass/Gore Vidal's Caligula employing the original script and camera negatives. Getting a Blu and theatrical release in the fall, fingers crossed. The restoration is being co-supervised by E. Elias Merhige (Begotten/Shadow of the Vampire).

If it's a success, I'm sure we'll finally get tie-in merchandise like these toys

[Zot!]

[/quote]

Incredibly excited about this one: Caligula MMXX

I first read that as Caligula IMAX....which sounded terrifying.

[Altair]

Honestly this could be very interesting - Caligula is not a good film by any stretch of the imagination, but a combination of what made it on screen and the behind the scenes drama does make it fascinating, and there are at least a handful of moments in the film which seem to gesture towards what Brass might have been thinking of.

[Stefan Andersson]

More info about Cohen´s resto of "Pandora and the Flying Dutchman":
http://moveablefest.com/the-reincarnati ... -classics/

[Stefan Andersson]

Scott MacQueen on the Mystery of the Wax Museum resto:
https://www.cinema.ucla.edu/blogs/archi ... t-macqueen

Before/after comparison:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_cont ... e=emb_logo

[Stefan Andersson]

News from "Emileduhomard" of Lobster Films about their upcoming Blu-DVD combo of The Navigator and Sherlock Jr -- translated from French:
Navigator comes from a master taken from a new 4K resto of MoMA´s nitrate print (best existing element), which Bologna has not had access to. Sherlock Jr. comes from a scan of an element of a generation and quality similar to the Cohen element.
Source: http://www.dvdclassik.com/forum/viewtop ... &start=195 - May 2, 2020 post

First news from 2020 Ritrovato: https://festival.ilcinemaritrovato.it/e ... cipazioni/
List of restorations to be announced later.

[academyleader]

Sorry to see all the cue marks disappear.

[Stefan Andersson]

Jeremy Thomas´s HanWay Films strikes distribution deal with Arrow -- 4K restorations of The Sheltering Sky, The Last Emperor, Naked Lunch, and more planned:
https://deadline.com/2020/05/hanway-las ... 202925239/

[Stefan Andersson]

Technical info on UCLA´s Laurel & Hardy restorations, including foreign-language versions and a fragment of The Rogue Song:
https://www.cinema.ucla.edu/support/laurel-and-hardy

[andyli]

Isn't The Last Emperor already 4K restored? What's the point of doing it all over?

[tenia]

IIRC, the previous restoration was performed for the 3D conversion with a 2.00 format. And (again IIRC) isn't very good looking.

[The Fanciful Norwegian]

The 3D version was 2.39:1, but from screencaps it looks (as you say) pretty bad. Here's a comparison of the Chinese and Italian BDs sourced from that restoration; the brightness on the Italian disc can be chalked up to the fact that it's meant to be watched in 3D, but the even greater brightness on the Chinese disc is absurd given that it's a 2D-only release.