GKIDS - Animated Films on Blu-ray

[celticmoon]

Originally Posted by Sinthetic

Surprised more people aren't talking about this range of animated films. What they have out already are some of the finest you can find outside of Ghibli (not including Poppy Hill) & Disney.

Kells is astonishingly made and stunning in HD. Chico & Rita is mature and exotic, well worth your time.

When A Letter to Momo and Ernest & Celestine come out, this will be at the top for me.

E&C is an absolutely beautiful story about a bear and mouse striking up an unexpected and forbidden friendship. It's extremely heartwarming stuff. Fantastic French film.

I totally agree. Only Kells and Poppy Hill have gotten a decent amount of talk in these forums. I'm not one of those people who discredit the big budget CGI films from the major American studios, as I do love a lot of them and think that a lot of them are so much more creative and clever than a lot of people give them credit for. But I also think people need to know how much of a range of styles and subjects animated films can cover, and GKIDS/Cinedigm provide the perfect entry level options.

I'd really like to see Ernest & Celestine. I figured it would be getting a decently sized theatrical run in the US, but I haven't seen anything about that yet. I'm guessing it will get its qualifying run for the Oscars if it hasn't already, and then get an expanded release if it gets nominated for Best Animated Feature.

Originally Posted by scamander

I would love to import some of their animated films, but unfortunately I can't find any info regarding the region locking on these discs. I even wrote to cinedigm a few weeks ago, but have never received an answer from them.

Can someone with access to these discs (especially A Cat in Paris, Tales of the Night and The Painting) check if they are region free? Thank you, your help is really appreciated!

Is there a way to tell besides sticking them in players from the various regions?

[scamander]

Originally Posted by celticmoon

Is there a way to tell besides sticking them in players from the various regions?

If you have a BD Rom drive as well as the software AnyDVD HD, you can check the region codes of the discs. While not 100% safe, it would be already a help though, if you would check the region information that is printed on the back covers and the discs themselves. If it says ABC it is (supposed to be) region free, while a single "A" means it's not working on European and Asian Blu-ray players. Sometimes the information isn't correct, but it's better than nothing. Thank you

[celticmoon]

Originally Posted by scamander

If you have a BD Rom drive as well as the software AnyDVD HD, you can check the region codes of the discs. While not 100% safe, it would be already a help though, if you would check the region information that is printed on the back covers and the discs themselves. If it says ABC it is (supposed to be) region free, while a single "A" means it's not working on European and Asian Blu-ray players. Sometimes the information isn't correct, but it's better than nothing. Thank you

I checked a couple of them, and there is no region information printed on the back cover or on the discs themselves. I don't have a BD-ROM drive, so unfortunately I can't help you with that.

According to the database on this site, however, Secret of Kells is listed as "region free," and A Cat in Paris is listed as "A, B (C untested)." The rest are listed as "A (B, C untested)."

If you look at some of the other Cinedigm releases in the database, some of those are also listed as either "region free" or "A, B (C untested)." While most are untested in regions B and C, none of them are listed as locked to region A. So I think there's a good chance that all of their BDs are region free.

I think it might be worth shooting them another email though to be sure.