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Lionsgate: Roberto Rossellini Collection

Posted: Sat Aug 30, 2008 2:11 am
by justeleblanc
Announced for November 11 (cover)

Films include:
Dov'e La Liberta...?
Era Notte A Roma

Posted: Sat Aug 30, 2008 3:12 am
by domino harvey
Damn right =D>

Posted: Sat Aug 30, 2008 8:11 am
by Tommaso
Brilliant! But why only two films? Sigh...I remember that massive Renoir set....

Posted: Sat Aug 30, 2008 3:03 pm
by Jeff
Tommaso wrote:Brilliant! But why only two films? Sigh...I remember that massive Renoir set....
Those are likely the only Rossellini films they own the rights to.

Posted: Sat Aug 30, 2008 3:49 pm
by justeleblanc
This is a nice surprise for sure. I'm also anticipating a release of Stavisky in 2009 (hopefully with an interview with Sondheim, but probably not).

Posted: Sat Aug 30, 2008 6:26 pm
by ellipsis7
May not be such a nice surprise after all - what Studio Canal supplied to their UK/IRL offshoot Optimum for their ERA NOTTE A ROMA DVD earlier this year was dire to say the least - soft, bad print, cropped & letterboxed... As they will also be supplying Lionsgate with materials under their deal, it may be too much to hope for something better... Let's wait and see....

Posted: Tue Sep 02, 2008 5:27 am
by justeleblanc
ellipsis7 wrote:May not be such a nice surprise after all - what Studio Canal supplied to their UK/IRL offshoot Optimum for their ERA NOTTE A ROMA DVD earlier this year was dire to say the least - soft, bad print, cropped & letterboxed... As they will also be supplying Lionsgate with materials under their deal, it may be too much to hope for something better... Let's wait and see....
Dunno. Optimum's SENSO was also quite bad, but Criterion will be releasing the new print of it next year... so maybe Optimum just jumped the gun on both releases.

Posted: Tue Sep 02, 2008 8:49 am
by ellipsis7
justeleblanc wrote:
ellipsis7 wrote:May not be such a nice surprise after all - what Studio Canal supplied to their UK/IRL offshoot Optimum for their ERA NOTTE A ROMA DVD earlier this year was dire to say the least - soft, bad print, cropped & letterboxed... As they will also be supplying Lionsgate with materials under their deal, it may be too much to hope for something better... Let's wait and see....
Dunno. Optimum's SENSO was also quite bad, but Criterion will be releasing the new print of it next year... so maybe Optimum just jumped the gun on both releases.
Maybe, but Optimum is owned by Studio Canal, so they are an organic whole... It's good to see SENSO due to come out on Criterion, showing that there are exemptions to the Lionsgate deal with Studio Canal... One confounder also is that Optimum released a dire version of ELENA AND HER MEN in their recent Jean Renoir box set long after Criterion released a perfectly lovely version in the JR STAGE AND SPECTACLE set... But I agree - we must live in hope!...

Posted: Tue Sep 02, 2008 9:12 am
by Scharphedin2
ellipsis7 wrote:
justeleblanc wrote:Optimum's SENSO was also quite bad, but Criterion will be releasing the new print of it next year... so maybe Optimum just jumped the gun on both releases.
...It's good to see SENSO due to come out on Criterion...
I like how these news of a DVD release of the restored print of Senso is just kind of passed along under the breath. Is Criterion really releasing this?! That would be fantastic! Is this for certain, juste?

Posted: Tue Sep 02, 2008 10:04 am
by rohmerin
Great. =D> =D> =D>

Posted: Tue Sep 02, 2008 12:18 pm
by justeleblanc
Re: Senso

Yes yes, I posted this maybe a month ago in the Rumors and News thread. Very exciting news indeed! Coming in 2009.

Posted: Thu Oct 02, 2008 9:33 pm
by tubal

Posted: Tue Oct 07, 2008 8:36 pm
by wpqx
shame there aren't any listed special features, but at least those two films are new to DVD and certainly welcome to any Rossellini-phile.

Re: Roberto Rossellini Collection

Posted: Tue Nov 04, 2008 12:29 pm
by Tommaso
Beaver.
Sounds pretty bad :(

Re: Roberto Rossellini Collection

Posted: Wed Nov 05, 2008 11:52 am
by Oedipax
Tommaso wrote:Beaver.
Sounds pretty bad :(
Tag Gallagher's takedown of the Lionsgate copy is pretty enjoyable. He doesn't even mention the most glaringly obvious inaccuracy: to the best of my knowledge, André Bazin was never a "legendary French director," but rather a legendary French film critic!

Re: Roberto Rossellini Collection

Posted: Wed Nov 05, 2008 12:27 pm
by Tommaso
Yes, this made me smile, too. However, I could have lived with that and more if only the "Era notte" transfer wouldn't be the mess it seems to be. I wonder where an accaptable English-friendly version could come from now. Australia remains the last straw, but I don't have a lot of hope for it.

Re: Roberto Rossellini Collection

Posted: Tue Jan 06, 2009 8:13 am
by GringoTex
Era notte a Roma is the strangest Rossellini I've seen. For the first 2/3, it's seemingly a return to "normalcy" for Rossellini (after his radically modernistic 50s work): a straightforward and tightly structured WW2 suspense tale. And then in the final 1/3, the whole narrative seemingly disintegrates into pieces of many other different stories: old characters vanish; new characters and settings and plotlines suddenly appear. I've read that Rossellini purposefully did not shoot certain scenes in his scripts to avoid being enslaved to the narrative. I don't know if that's true or if that's what's happening here. to But a sense of moral certitude placates the whole through Rossellini's brilliant, effortless long takes. I need time to wrap my head around this one.