British Film Institute (BFI) Discussion Thread

[Darby1985]

You're welcome for Comfort Of Strangers....I ordered the German digibook last week.

[rapta]

OMG, The Comfort of Strangers! I watched it on Netflix the other week and thought it'd be a nice one for reappraisal. Such a weird film but very atmospheric and Christopher Walken sends shivers up your spine. Another great chiller set in Venice too - would be an interesting double-bill with Don't Look Now, for example.

Anyway, any more Schrader on Blu-ray is only a good thing. First we get Hardcore and Blue Collar from Indicator, then Mishima from Criterion, and now this!

The Eye of the Needle is a surprising one. I thought it would show up from a UK label but had expected it to be Eureka Classics, Arrow Video or Signal One/Plan B rather than BFI. I guess anything can come from BFI though - they've handled a wide range of genres over the years!

Separate Tables has my interest, if only for Deborah Kerr, Rita Hayworth, David Niven and Burt Lancaster all in the same film! Coupled with The Children's Hour, it seems BFI are cornering the market for slight dramas from the 50's/early 60's (although a few still show up from MoC/Arrow Academy/Indicator from time to time).

Lastly, It Happened Here sounds interesting. Will likely grab that eventually, but the above titles I'm more likely to watch sooner in all honesty.

As for Tom Jones and The Knack..., nice they're doing separate editions of some of the Woodfall titles but I'm actually more intrigued to see Girl With Green Eyes and A Taste of Honey. Shame those haven't been listed separately (yet).

[Si Parallel Universe]

What a lovely slate of releases

[Fnord Prefect]

Nice slate.

It Happened Here and Arcadia definitely have potential for some very interesting extras. If enough contributors are still with us it would make for a fascinating making of on It Happened Here. With Arcadia being DVD only it no doubt means any featured archive films will be new to home video rather than the HD upgrades of material from their British Transport Films, Humphrey Jennings and Central Office of Information DVDs the BFI often use as bonus material.

For anyone on the fence re It Happened Here though more of a drama than docudrama it's broadly comparable stylistically to Culloden or even The War Games. If you liked either of them you'll probably find something to enjoy in this ultra-low budget passion project. As the BFI have chosen to release it on blu-ray it's nice to know good quality elements appear to have survived for such a niche title. A day one (and no doubt massive upgrade over the previous DVD) for me.

[Cremildo]

Originally Posted by Aunt Peg

Watched my copy the other night and the film it is as bad as I remembered to be decades ago. I had hoped the passing of time may have improved it. Off to the second-hand market it goes. Though must admit the extras are worthy.

I watched it on Sunday night and was glad I bought it. "Bad" is not a word I'd use to describe anything about it, though it's not a hidden masterpiece, either.

Originally Posted by BarnDoor

Some new listings have appeared on Amazon:


The Comfort of Strangers

It Happened Here

Tom Jones

Separate Tables

Arcadia (DVD)

Thank Gosh I won't have to import the expensive Criterion anymore.

The Schrader is a very welcome release.

[BarnDoor]

I hope MichaelB won't mind me quoting this post of his from another forum:

Originally Posted by MichaelB

In the current Home Cinema Choice, the BFI's Ben Stoddart confirms that a 4K restoration of Distant Voices Still Lives will be getting a Blu-ray release this October, and that the Woodfall box may be Volume 1 - but he deliberately didn't go down that labelling route because while Woodfall themselves are very keen indeed for a volume 2 to happen, there are a lot of complicated rights and materials hurdles to surmount first.

When someone mentioned Charge of the Light Brigade specifically, he replied:

Originally Posted by MichaelB

Ben specifically cites that title as a challenging one, so I wouldn’t get too excited just yet.

[knuckles96]

https://twitter.com/BFI/status/997524516678094848

[Si Parallel Universe]

Originally Posted by knuckles96

https://twitter.com/BFI/status/997524516678094848

La Belle et la Bete Yes please!

[rapta]

Originally Posted by Si Parallel Universe

La Belle et la Bete Yes please!

Was already announced months ago but has finally been confirmed with extras:

• High Definition transfer from the 4K restoration of the film which was premiered at Cannes
• Audio commentary with cultural historian Sir Christopher Frayling
• Dreams of Cocteau: The Adventure of Beauty and the Beast (2013, 49 mins): documentary featuring interviews with author Dominique Marny, Prof. David Gullentops, Serge Toubiana, and Ellen Schafer
• Deleted scene and alternate audio clips (7 mins)
• Christian Bernard and Jean Cocteau: Two Magicians (2013, 27 mins): documentary film focusing on the production history of La Belle et la Bête
• Fully illustrated booklet with new writing on the film, and full film credits

So more likely to actually show up this time! Looking forward to that one - I sold my DVD copy in anticipation.

I'm also very much up for The Comfort of Strangers. I don't often pre-order BFI titles but would definitely consider getting these two on day one. I'm also keen to see Separate Tables and Eye of the Needle but happy to wait a bit longer for those.

The only announcement not leaked by the Amazon listings the other day was The Man from Mo'Wax. Sounds like an interesting doc and I had already heard about it last year but not sure I'd take a punt on it for £25. Might just get a reissue, assuming the limited edition version sells out (you never really know with these things). Cool that they're doing custom packaging for that one.

[Si Parallel Universe]

Yes indeed but then seemed to drop off the radar. Great to see artwork and extras confirmed at long last

[The Beek]

If anybody is interested, a longer version of my recent interview with Ben Stoddart from the BFI about the Woodfall Films boxset and loads of other Blu-ray bits and pieces (mentioned a few posts above by BarnDoor) is now live on the Home Cinema Choice website.

[Bruce Morrison]

Apologies if I've missed this, but have the BFI announced details of the extras on their release of 'The Children's Hour' (due on 18th June)?

Edit: OK I found the details on Amazon - apparently it has a commentary by Neil Sinyard and a trailer.

[BarnDoor]

Originally Posted by The Beek

If anybody is interested, a longer version of my recent interview with Ben Stoddart from the BFI about the Woodfall Films boxset and loads of other Blu-ray bits and pieces (mentioned a few posts above by BarnDoor) is now live on the Home Cinema Choice website.

Indeed, and there were some fascinating snippets in there beyond the stuff already mentioned. This is a really great interview, not least since you ask the kind of questions I would have lol! Thank you for asking a Ghost Story for Christmas Blu-ray upgrade, though I was disheartened by the response. A few years ago (around the time of the DVD release I think) a member e-mailed the BFI and was told that the BBC do hold the original materials for these. It seems Ben is referring to the BFI's archives in this instance, though hopefully the BBC would be willing to grant them access to their materials if they pursued a Blu-ray release.

Elsewhere, this was particularly intriguing:

As for the future of Flipside, there are a few titles I’m looking at, a couple that I think will work really, really nicely. They’re not in the schedule at the moment because we’re just inking the deal. There’s another release I’m looking at for around Halloween-time, which is down the lines of folk horror type stuff. It’s basically a double bill, sort of like we did with Duffer and The Moon Over the Alley. Almost feature-length kind of things; that sort of 40-, 50-, 60-minute length where you need something else to bump it up really. But there’s one film that has not been published anywhere yet, and we own the material. And another film that, I think, is on Player, but hasn’t really been done very well. And we have all the original film materials.

So, like I said, we’re trying to do something along the lines of witchcraft, folk horror sort of stuff. It’s something I think would be really cool to do around Halloween. A couple of the films on there, they’ve been screened in East London film clubs and they’ve done really well. They’ve definitely got a bit of a cult following.

Whatever it is I really cannot wait for this. Perhaps stuff like The Lake and so forth, though most of the ones I know of are about half hour.

This however was quite distressing, I really wish Susan Hill would relent on this (I imagine she's still the one holding it up?):

It reminds me of the situation with the ITV adaptation of The Woman in Black (1989). I’d heard a story that there was some sort of stipulation preventing the release of that on video, or whatever, in the UK while the stage production is till running.

Yeah, we went after that one, too. One of the members of my team, she loves all of that ghost story stuff. She was constantly banging on about The Woman in Black. “How come it’s never been out?” “It’s really amazing, we’ve got to do it.” She was a huge fan, and we were keen to do it.

We went to ITV and spoke about it. Whilst the conversation was a positive one, it did indeed turn out that there was a restriction in place, perhaps for the reason you've mentioned and that pretty much ended the conversation. It’s a real shame, I think it’s a legitimate jewel in the crown for TV horror.

Sigh. Still, it's good to know they have someone on the team batting for this kind of stuff. And Ben's comments here were also very encouraging:

The BBC did a lot of that kind of supernatural, ghost story stuff. So there are opportunities with other things they have of a similar ilk. And we’ll be renewing the ones we already have from the BBC, we never want to let those go. They do very well for us and, consequently, for them.

[BarnDoor]

On further investigation I'm wondering if one of the titles for that proposed BFI release may be The Sex Victims (1973), which runs 37 minutes and is on the BFI Player. Moreover, a search of their collections reveals the BFI hold a 35mm Colour Positive.

[The Beek]

Thanks for the kind words, BarnDoor. Glad you enjoyed it. I certainly had a blast doing it - even if transcribing our full chat (clocking in at over 26,000 words) and then editing it down into something more manageable took a hell of a lot longer than the three hours Ben and I actually spoke for.

[Fnord Prefect]

Shame about Woman In Black. Had as feeling some sort of contractual snafu was holding it up as I'd have expected someone, probably Network, to have put it out years ago. Especially with the release of the 2012 (?) Hammer version.

Though contrary to the interview it was released in the UK (on VHS in the early 90's) WIB is, along with 1984 and Year of the Sex Olympics, one of the last major Nigel Kneale works decades OOP or never even available on home video.

Now off to properly read the interview itself.

[Cosmo Valdemar]

[QUOTE=BarnDoor;15100554 Whatever it is I really cannot wait for this. Perhaps stuff like The Lake and so forth, though most of the ones I know of are about half hour.[/QUOTE]

I'd always hoped that Lindsey C. Vickers' 'The Lake' and the feature-length 'The Appointment' would make a nice Flipside package; sadly I can't detect that from Ben Stoddart's comments.

[rapta]

Originally Posted by The Beek

Thanks for the kind words, BarnDoor. Glad you enjoyed it. I certainly had a blast doing it - even if transcribing our full chat (clocking in at over 26,000 words) and then editing it down into something more manageable took a hell of a lot longer than the three hours Ben and I actually spoke for.

Good read! Did you happen to ask about any Japanese stuff? I think I asked a couple of years ago and was told they didn't have anything planned, but then An Actor's Revenge came out of nowhere. I wonder if they had considered more Kurosawa, for example, or maybe even some Naruse?

[oddbox83]

Originally Posted by Fnord Prefect

Though contrary to the interview it was released in the UK (on VHS in the early 90's) WIB is, along with 1984 and Year of the Sex Olympics, one of the last major Nigel Kneale works decades OOP or never even available on home video.

Probably would be DVD only, but I'd be all over a colour restored YOTSO like a venereal rash.

[BarnDoor]

Originally Posted by Cosmo Valdemar

I'd always hoped that Lindsey C. Vickers' 'The Lake' and the feature-length 'The Appointment' would make a nice Flipside package; sadly I can't detect that from Ben Stoddart's comments.

The Appointment would be a great choice for Flipside, hopefully they get round to it at some point.

I'm not sure how many of these qualify given the specific discussion of folk horror (his application of the term may have been fairly loose), but mention of the films in question screening in London called to mind the 'Short Sharp Shocks' Flipside strand they did some years back, in which Twenty-Nine (1969 - 26mins), The Lake (1978 - 33mins), and Panic (1978 - 20mins) were screened. I think The Lake would qualify as folk horror, not sure about the other two. I mentioned The Sex Victims (1973 - 37 mins) before, that's a possibility based on the BFI Player comment. The Dumb Waiter (1979 - 16 mins) and Dark Water (1980 - 30mins) are two other horror shorts which might be considered, but again, the synopses hardly scream folk horror.

Is there a resource or list of these old British theatrical horror shorts? Information seems to be thin on the ground.