Twilight Time Discussion Thread

[SeanJoyce]

Originally Posted by Page14

(On a side note, my order from 5 days ago was delivered today. Not bad for using the cheapest delivery mode available on the Twilight Time website. And there was even a day of non-delivery within that 5 day span due to a postal day off yesterday).

Even the cheapest option is robbery. Nearly every other distributor or retailer rewards their customers for more purchases with free shipping, while TT decided to double-down on their extortion tactics.

[Mike_C]

Originally Posted by klauswhereareyou

I make it a point to see if he has a commentary on some of their titles I see that are on sale. I like his commentaries (or the ones he basically moderates) and have to assume that they'll never get put on any future releases if another label puts some of these films out.

A few of the Redman/Kirgo commentaries have actually been licensed out to other companies in the past. Eureka in particular.

[Gunsnroses092789]

Originally Posted by Mike_C

A few of the Redman/Kirgo commentaries have actually been licensed out to other companies in the past. Eureka in particular.

And Indicator. The Indicator releases of The Big Heat and The Chase have the TT commentaries.

[thatguamguy]

Isn't Sony one of the companies that says "You can produce additional extras for licensed releases if you want, but ultimately we own the extras"? Or is there an exception for Redman commentaries?

[DavidRoylance]

Darn it. I watched my TT Alexander the Great blu ray this evening. It's great apart from 2 glitches that occur at 1hr 18 into the film and another at 1hr 22. The glitches froze picture for a few seconds, then carried on. It is clear in both instances that dialogue is missing.

Has anyone else had this problem?

[Surge92]

Originally Posted by SeanJoyce

Even the cheapest option is robbery. Nearly every other distributor or retailer rewards their customers for more purchases with free shipping, while TT decided to double-down on their extortion tactics.

Agreed. It's almost the cost of buying another movie at the current sale prices. I ordered Short Night of Glass Dolls and 10 Rillington Place. I would love to be able to get the OOP Indicator version of the latter, but the TT will do.

[nitin]

The Crimson Kimono is yet another fascinating noir with some terrific character work. It is one of Sam Fuller’s more haphazard movies overall, the editing in particular seems a bit rough and clumsy in parts. And Fuller has about a dozen good ideas he wants to explore but never spends enough time with any particular one to really make the movie work as well as it could.

But it’s never less than interesting with the ideas it was dealing with way ahead of its time and still relevant, and there are a number of individual great scenes. The location photography also adds a lot of atmosphere and the central quartet of performers all bounce off each other very well, even when the script lets them down at times.

I saw it offIndicator’s blu is from the same pretty good older Sony HD remaster as the TT release, with only the odd optical looking a bit ropey (Fuller used a lot of them here for some reason). The dialogue seemed to be mixed a little on the low side but the track has plenty of range, especially when any of the score kicks in.

[Aclea]

Having found myself with four copies of the film over the years (including the DVD), Indicator's Crimson Kimono is definitely let down by the poor sound - something it shares with the Noir Archive Volume Three transfer (which also has much worse picture quality thanks to a very poor encode and, possibly, an older master). TT's version is the best presentation of the film itself thanks to a greatly superior soundtrack. Consequently, I've now got three copies I'm keeping even though it's far from my favorite Fuller* - one for the extras (Indicator), one for the other films in the set (Noir Archive) and one for the film itself (TT).

[* As with many of Fuller’s films, there’s some lazy plotting and filmmaking that he relies on a punchy running time to smooth over, not always successfully, and his habit of optically zooming into parts of the frame to turn a single take into two when he hasn’t got footage to cut to when he needs to trim excess dialogue is much to the fore (the increase in the grain field is a big giveaway). It’s also hard to buy into the murderer killing a stripper on a busy street and nobody noticing something that is blatantly obvious in the brief glimpse the audience gets, but then the two chases that bookend the film aren’t overly burdened by credibility.]

As far as picture quality goes there’s little to choose between Indicator and Twilight Time’s Bluray releases, but in terms of sound, TT’s is the clear winner – and I do mean clear. Indicator’s disc is set at a very low volume so you’ll have to crank the volume way up to make out the dialogue, but TT’s seems clearer and better balanced (and also contains the isolated score). In terms of extras, Indicator wins, carrying over the two TV spots (curiously billed on both releases as trailers but very clearly TV spots transferred at 1.85:1 instead of their original 1.33:1: the five second silence for local theater details at the end is a dead giveaway) and the full trailer from a 16mm source, losing the isolated score but adding several reels of raw interview footage with Fuller and Tim Robbins shot for The Typewriter, The Rifle and the Movie Camera and a stills gallery complete with posed publicity shots that seem to be trying to sell the film as a feelgood happy go lucky romantic comedy.

The trailers, like the poster, sell the miscegenation angle as if Shigeta were a vampire corrupting innocent young all-American white girls (‘YES, this is a beautiful American girl in the arms of a Japanese boy! What was his strange appeal for American girls?’). Someone obviously didn't get the memo from Fuller...

[klauswhereareyou]

Originally Posted by nitin

The Crimson Kimono is yet another fascinating noir with some terrific character work. It is one of Sam Fuller’s more haphazard movies overall, the editing in particular seems a bit rough and clumsy in parts. And Fuller has about a dozen good ideas he wants to explore but never spends enough time with any particular one to really make the movie work as well as it could.

But it’s never less than interesting with the ideas it was dealing with way ahead of its time and still relevant, and there are a number of individual great scenes. The location photography also adds a lot of atmosphere and the central quartet of performers all bounce off each other very well, even when the script lets them down at times.

I saw it offIndicator’s blu is from the same pretty good older Sony HD remaster as the TT release, with only the odd optical looking a bit ropey (Fuller used a lot of them here for some reason). The dialogue seemed to be mixed a little on the low side but the track has plenty of range, especially when any of the score kicks in.

Enjoyable enough Fuller film. I thought the TT disc looked great when I watched it a couple weeks back. I also watched the TT Underworld USA and I want to say it looked even better than The Crimson Kimono one. Both TT discs are worth picking up if they ever feature them in another sale.

[koberulz]

No sale announced, but The Hot Rock, Don't Bother to Knock, and The Quiller Memorandum are down to $15 at SAE. Not sure about other titles, those three are the only ones I'm tracking.

[Will G]

Originally Posted by koberulz

No sale announced, but The Hot Rock, Don't Bother to Knock, and The Quiller Memorandum are down to $15 at SAE. Not sure about other titles, those three are the only ones I'm tracking.

Looks like every title is down to at least $14.95 atm.

[Rzzzz]

Yeah, it sure is. I just ordered these...



The shipping sucks ($12.00 for 5 titles). The total after shipping was $75. At $15 per title, I can live with that. I'm almost done with TT. Maybe 5 more if they get in the $10 range and I am done...

[Keymaster]

Originally Posted by Will G

Looks like every title is down to at least $14.95 atm.

Sweet!

Aside from The Egyptian, Our Man Flint, High Time, Demetrius and the Gladiators, and Love is a Many Splendored Thing, I now own all the Twilight Time releases, 335 in total, although I do have imports of a few of the titles.

There are gonna be even better SAE sales to come, considering the circumstances, but $15 is a fair price. I hope everyone else gets a chance to catch up too. And that this isn't some sort of SAE web site glitch.

[SeanJoyce]

Thanks y'all...just cleared out 6 long-time Wish List titles.

I agree with the above user. I've long stood behind TT and I really appreciate what they've done for movie collectors; my library would be sorely lacking without them.

But the shipping shenanigans was pretty much the last straw with me and I'll just snatch a items at clearance prices after they announce their inevitable foreclosure and call it a day.

[noirjunkie]

Originally Posted by Will G

Looks like every title is down to at least $14.95 atm.

I'll be waiting to see if they drop at TT's site, because I'm not going through SAE anymore.

[thatguamguy]

I agree that the shipping is too high, but it's also probably the last time I'm buying from a Twilight Time sale, so I'm just looking at it as a tip for years of service rendered. I got the last six in print movies on my wishlist. I still have some out of print titles that in theory I'd like, but not at the prices they go for.

[hariseldon]

If SAE put all the exact items on sale at $6/10/16 with FS at $50 people would be spiking the football and everyone would be thrilled.

So just pretend these are the prices and everybody can be happy instead of complaining about $5-8 titles

[noirjunkie]

Originally Posted by hariseldon

If SAE put all the exact items on sale at $6/10/16 with FS at $50 people would be spiking the football and excited out of their shorts. The same 5-10 item order would be the exact same price and folks would be thrilled.

It's late, but I don't think your math is completely correct. The problem is that with every additional item, they start tacking on additional charges, to the point that a ten-item order can cost nearly $20 to ship, which is patently ridiculous.

Perhaps all of the posts ragging on their onerous shipping charges would go away if they--and I'm about to propose a crazy idea, but bear with me--stopped marking up their shipping prices so much. Other labels like Kino are thriving by running regular sales with free shipping thresholds. SAE is spiking their shipping charges, and TT is about to go under. While that's certainly not the only reason, it's also an equation that doesn't take a genius to decipher.

For me personally, the last straw with SAE occured when I e-mailed them about the change in their shipping policy and got this e-mail in response:

You can thank the United States Postal Service for all your complaints and issues. We can’t force them to make things cheaper.

When I wrote them back and asked them why it was that they charged me $23 to ship a package that only actually cost them about $4 to ship, they unsurprisingly did not respond. Their customer service sucks, and I'm not rewarding that with more money.

[koberulz]

My three-item order cost $20 to ship, y'all are lucky.

[Dailyan]

Went with (if it'll go through):