Fantomas: 5 Film Collection - January 5, 2016 from Kino Lorber

[oildude]

Fantomas: 5-Film Collection Blu-ray

From MisterLime of Kino Lorber:

Coming on Blu-ray January 5, 2016! A Kino Classics Release!

Louis Feuillade's FANTOMAS (5 Film Collection) Based on the phenomenally popular French pulp novellas, Louis Feuillade's outrageous, ambitious FANTÔMAS series became the gold standard of espionage serials in pre-WWI Europe, and laid the foundation for such immortal works as Feuillade's own Les Vampires and Fritz Lang's Dr. Mabuse films. René Navarre stars as the criminal lord of Paris, the master of disguise, the creeping assassin in black: Fantômas. Over the course of five feature films (which combined to form a 5 1/2-hour epic), Fantômas, along with his accomplices and mistresses, are pursued by the equally resourceful Inspector Juve (Edmund Bréon) and his friend, journalist Jerôme Fandor (Georges Melchior).

THE FILMS:
• Fantômas in the Shadow of the Guillotine (1913, 54 Min.)
• Juve vs. Fantômas (1913, 62 Min.)
• The Murderous Corpse (1913, 90 Min.)
• Fantômas vs. Fantômas (1914, 60 Min.)
• The False Magistrate (1914, 71 Min.)

SPECIAL FEATURES:
• Two audio commentaries by film historian David Kalat
• Two rare Feuillade films: The Nativity (1910) and The Dwarf (1912)
• Louis Feuillade: Master of Many Forms, a ten-minute documentary
• Gallery of Fantômas images

[oildude]

FYI - The pre-order on Amazon is currently 50% off.

[buffetfroid]

Ordered this morning.

[CBHampson]

Originally Posted by oildude

FYI - The pre-order on Amazon is currently 50% off.

On it!

[RodChester]

Surprised to see such a big discount on this already. It looks like a cool series and I've got my order in.

[Bucky]

So happy that I do not have to wait for a sale to pick this one up as this has been high on my wish list for a while.

[CBHampson]

Shipped!

[RodChester]

My copy is out for delivery now. Looking forward to watching this. Anyone know if this comes with a slipcover or not?

[UniSol GR77]

What about the sixties/seventies trilogy?

[zeze]

Originally Posted by RodChester

My copy is out for delivery now. Looking forward to watching this. Anyone know if this comes with a slipcover or not?

No slip on mine.

[Chouan]

Originally Posted by UniSol GR77

What about the sixties/seventies trilogy?

I suppose you are referring to the André Hunebelle trilogy. Which is available in Europe, the German release being the cheapest.

BUT there are no English subtitles, and none of the releases seem to be region free.

[Alfred E. Neumann]

The screenshots look great, I hope for a region 2 release or a german release.

[Greymattersplat]

I had to draw a line in my spending before Christmas, and have been kicking myself ever since for not pre-ordering this while it was still $25...

[Bucky]

My order arrives today. Looking forward to watching these over the weekend.

[UniSol GR77]

Originally Posted by Chouan

I suppose you are referring to the André Hunebelle trilogy. Which is available in Europe, the German release being the cheapest.

BUT there are no English subtitles, and none of the releases seem to be region free.

Glad it has been released anyway... is the transfer good?

[ikms]

Originally Posted by UniSol GR77

Glad it has been released anyway... is the transfer good?

The film elements look in great shape, but there might be some issues with the Kino BD presentation. The scroll credits "jump" visibly about once per second going up the screen (18->23.976 mistake, or a 25fps->23.976 mistake) which should not happen under any circumstance given they are digital recreations unburdened by legacy frame rates. There are also times within the first movie itself that the image has a similar "skip," yet other points where every moving character is overly smooth because they did a blend between discrete frames (!!!) to maintain cadence (if you frame advance you can see the doubled-images). That is something you sometimes see on NTSC DVDs where the master is a PAL-NTSC convert. I don't know what to conclude about all this. Criterion tends to do 18fps at 1080i / 60Hz to reduce judder (but I don't think they have intra-field blends), and Kino (Eureka as well) tend to do 23.976 or 24fps progressive by doubling up every third frame in the 18fps stream which creates a slightly jerky look. Kino has made mistakes dropping actual frames in past releases (notorious with Nosferatu), so how much of this is down to their hands-on decisions vs the master provided I cannot say. There is one other possibility which is that the film was shot variable frame rate to begin with and was adjusted by eye in post during the restoration. I have heard about that before with primitive era-silent films, and it would go towards explaining the apparent differences during sequences. Kalat's commentaries are (as always) incredible and worth the price of admission alone... but I wish to god somebody could produce the audio to a similar professional level during his home-recording sessions (or at least help a bit in post). The "pop" and AGC fade-out when he gets too hot on his mic gives me a headache!!!!

[Knaldskalle]

Third-party seller at Amazon has this new for $14.99 right now (+$3.99 shipping).

[DVD Phreak]

The music accompaniment on the Blu-ray sounds excellent, but there is no mention of who created it on the packaging. A lot of it sounds like familiar classical music, but somebody must have put them together. The back cover of Kino's 2010 DVD says the music is by "Catalogue Sonimage." That sounds like a music label. I finally got the answer from David Kalat's audio commentary. At about 14:20 of the first episode on the Blu-ray, Kalat says the Blu-ray (and DVD) uses "library music" (likely from Sonimage's catalog) assembled in 1998. Just want to put this info in here so that others can find it when they google it -- because I couldn't google anything at all on this topic.