The Official Arbelos Films Thread

[Craig-Rogers]

Question for everyone...

What special features do you think truly add value to a blu-ray release? Which ones do you feel are a complete waste?

[EddieLarkin]

Always nice to see another insider. I hope you have a lot more catalog stuff planned for the future. Whilst I'm not in the slightest bit interested in your first 4 listings, I will buy the hell out of Belladonna of Sadness. Some more catalog anime would be welcome too of course.

Originally Posted by spiffnme

Question for everyone...

What special features do you think truly add value to a blu-ray release? Which ones do you feel are a complete waste?

Value (in order of preference):

Bonus films/shorts
Booklets with scholarly essays and new or old interviews with the creators, the bigger the better.
Scholarly commentaries (rather than just the actors waffling on about how much fun everything was).
New HD visual essays a la what you'd see on a Criterion release
New HD interviews
Restoration featurettes that actually interview the people involved and have them explain what went on.

Waste:

EPK featurettes (especially SD ones!)
Resoration featurettes that are basically just comparison videos.

[Craig-Rogers]

Thanks so much for the input! It's very helpful.

Restoration featurettes that actually interview the people involved and have them explain what went on.

Yikes! That would make me speak on camera! LOL

I too love those little booklets that come in some of the Criterion discs, glad to hear I'm not alone.

Can you give some examples of really well done restoration featurettes?

I promise you there are other restorations projects in the works - just nothing I can talk about yet.

I can say that we're all about the highest possible quality with our restorations. We've turned down jobs in which high quality elements were not available. Going back to the original negative is always our goal. We spent months convincing the rights holders to allow us to scan the original negative for Belladonna of Sadness. They offered to make a new print for us, but knowing the original negative was alive and well, that simply wasn't good enough. (I like to say "good enough - isn't") Finally they relented, sent us all of the original elements (picture and sound) and the 35mm negative has now been scanned at 4K at our facility.

[Craig-Rogers]

A good example of our "good enough - isn't" approach. We're currently restoring 20+ years of Death Valley Days episodes. The job was offered to at least two other facilities. How'd we get the job? We insisted on scanning and restoring the original 16mm reversal film elements. The other guys created a new dupe IN and restored from that. It's easier and faster to do it that way, but you lose so much resolution and color!

[EddieLarkin]

That looks very impressive. I hope we'll one day see the show on Blu-ray!

Originally Posted by spiffnme

Can you give some examples of really well done restoration featurettes?

This is basically the way to do it:

Mad World Roadshow Restoration - YouTube

Cinerama's "Seven Wonders of the World" Remastering and reconstructing - YouTube

The restoration story is explained in technical detail (instead of being dumbed down) over stills and video of the film elements and the work stations etc. And at least in both of these examples the speaker is just a voice over

[Yami]

Originally Posted by spiffnme

Question for everyone...

What special features do you think truly add value to a blu-ray release? Which ones do you feel are a complete waste?

I agree with Eddie's assessment of things, though I also appreciate related documentaries (if available) and introductions by a critic or the director.

[EDIT: And original trailers are always nice to see!]

I'm also really looking forward to Belladonna of Sadness - catalog anime titles haven't got much attention except for Ghibli, Akira etc. and even those are fairly lacking in the extras department. It's really impressive that you're taking the time and effort to give it a full 4K restoration from the negative and I'll certainly be pre-ordering it. More like that please (or European animation - I can only imagine the retina-searing imagery of Fehérlófia in HD)!

I see that Eiichi Yamamoto is still living, so it would be great if you could get him - or any of the other crew members (I'm thinking Gisaburo Sugii or Rintaro) to contribute an interview. For a booklet, maybe there's an appropriate extract of Yamamoto's fictionalised memoir 'Rise and Fall of Mushi Pro' or something related to the Jules Michelet source.

Your live action titles also look like they're worth seeing - I've read good things about Gangs of Wasseypur, Thou Wast Mild and Lovely and Butter on the Latch.

[chronoclast]

I don't have anything to add about extras but I'm very much looking forward to your BDs of Metalhead and Belladonna. I'm also interested in checking out Gangs of Wasseypur, Butter On the Latch, and Thou Wast Mild and Lovely.

If Belladonna is a success, please convince the folks at Gold View to allow you to restore Night On the Galactic Railroad too. That film is amazing and deserves better treatment then it's got in Japan. The BD there is sourced from an old dirty interlaced master and it looks like crap. None of the US anime studios seem interested in licensing it either.

[lolwut]

I'm definitely getting Gangs of Wasseypur!

Originally Posted by spiffnme

Question for everyone...

What special features do you think truly add value to a blu-ray release? Which ones do you feel are a complete waste?

I usually just check to see if there are outtakes, on-set footage, and makeup effects (horror).

[Jaymole]

Thanks spiffnme for posting on this forum and asking for our opinions.

For me, my favorite extra will always be documentaries on the making of the film and insights by those involved and by critics/historians. Commentaries are hit and miss with me, but a good one is always a must listen. Sometime I find commentaries by historians/critics to be more interesting that the people involved in the making of the film.

[asmodeux21]

I'm really excited about "Belladonna of Sadness". I hope we get a quality blu ray release with nice details, colors, and texture/grain. Also, please include optional subtitles. For those who have not seen the movie, it's amazing and one-of-a-kind!

[deepbreathsanddeath]

I love seeing insiders get involved with the public. We're the ones paying for the product afterall.

I love booklets, really informative audio commentaries that aren't just a lot of back patting, new interviews and feature length documentaries.

I also really love detailed restoration documentaries. The one on A Trip to the Moon's blu-ray release is AMAZING! It's about 60 minutes long I think and highly informative.

Ultimately if I have the option between getting an exhaustive amount of extras that are only mediocre or getting just a few things that are highly informative and interesting, I'll go with the latter.

You guys sound on the ball but one thing I'm not a fan of is getting a lot of content squashed on one disc. If there's a lot there, please spread it appropriately across multiple discs to avoid compression issues.

[EddieLarkin]

Yeah, something that's becoming more and more talked about (for better or worse) these days is how a label deals with compression, particularly when they're working with a modern transfer of original elements (like you are with Belladonna of Sadness), that features a very fine grain structure (which I imagine Belladonna of Sadness will have). More than just a high bit-rate, an appropriate algorithm is required. Films with fine grain structures on Blu-ray should not look like this:

http://www.caps-a-holic.com/hd_vergl...ess=#vergleich

Mouse over to see how they should look! Despite that, it's the crap one that has a higher bit rate and bigger file size (demonstrating that space is not the key issue).

[Andrew-Kenneth]

Interested in Gangs of Wasseypur.

I own this indian Wasseypur box-set which is marred by disappointing picture quality.



I hope the Cinelicious version will improve on this transfer.

(btw; will Cinelicious releases be region locked?)

[Dragun]

I'm glad I skipped the awful Indian release of Gangs of Wasseypur and the German release that had a good transfer but no English subtitles. I'll be buying this for sure.

[Craig-Rogers]

Originally Posted by Andrew-Kenneth

Interested in Gangs of Wasseypur.

I own this indian Wasseypur box-set which is marred by disappointing picture quality.



I hope the Cinelicious version will improve on this transfer.

(btw; will Cinelicious releases be region locked?)

Direct from the boss-man... "It (our Gangs release) will be sourced from the DCDM 2K 16-bit TIFF masters. I can't comment vs other releases."

I believe it will be region A/1 only.

[lolwut]

Originally Posted by lolwut

I usually just check to see if there are outtakes, on-set footage, and makeup effects (horror).

Also trailers. I always watch the trailers for a film after I finish.

[AaronJ]

I agree with most of what others have said concerning extras. I especially like commentaries by either the director and/or screenwriter, or by scholars.

I will say, though, that the completely off the wall commentaries by various people involved can be pretty damned entertaining. The commentary on the Resident Evil disc is a perfect example.

[puddin]

I'm very excited about Belladonna of Sadness.

To echo EddieLarkin, my top preference is Bonus films/shorts.

What I also like, and technically not on-disc extra's, are reversible cover art on the sleeve (like Arrow Video) and numbered spines (like criterion/plain archive).

[drauch]

Originally Posted by puddin

I'm very excited about Belladonna of Sadness

Wow, same here! Never thought I'd see the day this would have an English-friendly release.

[Craig-Rogers]

This guy just popped in today to see the work we're doing on one of those "cool but I can't talk about it yet" projects.

Gotta admit I was proud as hell to hear him say "That's the best I've ever seen [redacted] ever look."



Believe me...it kills me I can't share more yet!