Kino Lorber Studio Classics

[Shane Rollins]

Originally Posted by gudemameshiba

They're with the Goldwyn Trust, which currently has a deal only for distribution with Warner's, who therefore will not foot the bill for any needed restoration.

Well that’s a dick move. Where’s the list of titles entangled in this mess, so I know which movies I shouldn’t lose sleep over?

[Shane Rollins]

Originally Posted by Shanghai Express

I just checked my DVD statistics (which I never do) and I was surprised to see that I have only one Paramount DVD left to upgrade to HD: Sorry, Wrong Number. As for Universal there's only three left, far less than I would have guessed: For The Defense, Zaza, and Midnight. I hope that the good people at Kino can find it in their hearts to help me offload those DVDs eventually.

Lucky you that you only have DVDs that need to be upgraded. Some of us have tapes that we’re stuck with. None from Universal (but I’ll eventually find some), but Paramount has tons. Goodbar, Little Darlings, The Keep, The Godfather (chronological), the list goes on and on. I frankly envy your problem.

[Shane Rollins]

Originally Posted by SanCarolina59

It's been too long, but with today's announcement, here's an update on how the 1930s films are looking in the new Universal deal. I'll do one for the 1940s soon.

(ex-Paramount)

Kino has deals with both Paramount and Universal, so they will hopefully be the ones to redo For Whom The Bell Tolls for Blu-ray and 4K. The last Blu-ray is awful. Frankly, the DVD, laserdisc, and VHS all ran circles around the Blu-ray. That would be a Day One purchase for me.

[Mose Harper]

My second small order- placed literally within minutes of the close of the December sale- came in.




Had decided I wasn't going to get a second order off. Didn't need any more stuff, and did need to conserve funds for other expenses coming up.

Blecherman derailed my plans when he posted a clip from Shooting Stars.
I'd had my eye on it for several years, but could never commit. The clip finally sold me on it, and provided the necessary rationale for the whole order.

Haven't watched it yet, so I'm not sure whether to thank him yet, or not.
We'll see, I guess.

[Shane Rollins]

Originally Posted by goathead1

Metropolis will make its way into the public domain in the US on January 1st!

Next year will be the 100th anniversary of Metropolis so I am hopeful that Kino can release this on 4k since this is probably the next most likely silent film to be released on 4k.

Originally Posted by ij72

Has there been any indication of new restoration work on the film from the Murnau Foundation? Because PD or no, that's what it'd take for a worthwhile UHD, given the Foundation's combination of materials and (relative) resources...

Originally Posted by dvining

I've asked KLI more than once some general questions about PD and their business, and you're right, PD largely doesn't mean much to them because they need to negotiate with the owners of the best elements.

Metropolis going PD will just mean more labels releasing their own copies from low quality prints for the next few years.

Originally Posted by ij72

In other words, just like it was for much of the home video era, when the market was flooded with poor-quality releases of varying lengths.

Originally Posted by MifuneFan

It's highly unlikely we'll see a 4K release of Metropolis. From what I've read the 2010 "Complete Metropolis" restoration was done from 2K scans. And given the conditions of the elements, and the amount of work done for that restoration, it's doubtful anyone would re-scan anything at 4K. So, short of upscales, the Blu-ray is probably as good as it will get. It looks pretty impressive all things considered.

Originally Posted by Mikezilla3k

Except it's the Complete Metropolis fully public domain. Which means any company can now use and release the new restoration now.

Originally Posted by Egbert Souse

Hah, not a chance. Someone could release the American release version or one of the various old versions put together prior to the first 80s reconstruction , but anyone putting out the Murnau Foundation restorations would be rightfully sued. The score is firmly copyrighted, too. I would actually love to see a high quality version of the American cut, though.

Originally Posted by Mikezilla3k

Not if they use new intertitles:

As is often the case, the story of Metropolis has a copyright wrinkle. The Complete Metropolis has its own copyright but, as reflected in its copyright registration, this copyright only covers newly added “English Intertitles” (title cards). The pre-existing silent footage and original intertitles from 1927 are out of copyright. And this is actually the second time that Metropolis has gone into the US public domain. The first was in 1955, when its initial 28-year term expired and the rights holders did not renew the copyright. Then in 1996 a new law restored the copyrights in qualifying foreign works. Metropolis, along with thousands of other works, was pulled out of the public domain, and now reenters it after the expiration of the 95-year term, with the once missing scenes available for anyone to reuse.

https://web.law.duke.edu/cspd/publicdomainday/2023/

Originally Posted by Mikezilla3k

Using a new score would be the norm anyway so that's not an issue.

Originally Posted by playingphysicist

I've seen some companies try to claim that restorations can be copyrighted separately but American copyright law does not recognize that. That summary of the law given there is accurate.

However, the rarity of the film makes it mostly a moot point since to have anything different you'd have to have access to the Argentinian and New Zealand prints needed to do a new release.

1. As for the elements, the 35mm elements - everything that was verified to exist as of 1998 - was scanned and restored at 2K resolution. From there, a 2K DI was created, and from that 2K DI the FWMS created a new physical negative, which was then preserved. In addition, from those new 2K files, they created new digital and physical copies of every print they had, in addition to the copies of the then-new restoration, which was released theatrically in 2001.

The 16mm elements were scanned and restored at an unknown resolution. I may - may - have heard that the 16mm elements were done in 4K, but don't quote me. Either way, the 16mm footage was then recombined with the 2K 35mm footage, for the final movie. While there is no solid confirmation of a 2K DI, with all the digital work that went into restoring the movie, and combined with the fact that 4K and higher were in their infancy, I'd be shocked if the 2010 restoration came from anything but a 2K DI.

The odds of the 2010 restoration of Metropolis on 4K are about 50/50, so that's what I'll address first. They have two options: upscale the current master, or restore the entire movie from scratch. Considering what they already did cost millions of US dollars and took nearly a decade, if the FWMS isn't working on it already now, a native 4K version of the restored Metropolis is out of the question. An upscale may happen, but considering all the complaints an upscale would cause, everyone involved would just assume that it wasn't worth the mess it would cause.

The 2001 restoration is most likely a no, even though the film looks better overall, because it's incomplete. It's ironic that when the footage was found, most still complained about the image quality, and preferred the incomplete DVD to the complete Blu-ray.

The 1984 Giorgio Moroder restoration (which is about 90% hated/10% not hated) is also most likely not going to happen, due to both the almost universally negative reception and the expense of paying off all the artists again, which would cost hundreds of thousands-millions.

As for some fly-by-night company dropping a shitty print on 4K, I think that's inevitable. Metropolis has been one of those titles that has been present on video ever since there was home video. The shit releases haven't stopped, they've just gotten less notable. Someone - I think VCI - will take whatever 16mm print they have laying around, drop it on a 4K disc (let's guess the time, I say 116 minutes), and call it Metropolis's worldwide debut on 4K. And it will suck.

2. As for the copyright issues, how I thought it was is that the movie itself is in the public domain, but the restorations that are copyrighted aren't. Nobody ever bothered to copyright the PD transfers, because no one cared about them. Moroder copyrighted his version. There were at least two copyrighted restorations before Moroder's and one after his that Enno Patalas did. The FWMS copyrighted their 2001 and 2010 restorations. The movie itself is out of copyright, but the work that was poured into it isn't. It's not however protected by the derivative work clause, so each copyrighted restoration stands protected on its own. All the individual scores are copyrighted, and even though the original Huppertz score is not copyrighted, the multiple recordings of it are.

People and shit labels can copy the crappy prints and get away with it because they're not protected. Then again, no one will buy them, so when some joker shows up with a Metropolis 4K in a few months, I don't think it will be a big seller, nor will it be a highly regarded disc. If someone drops one of the copyrighted restorations onto a disc and tries to sell it, they're getting sued.

In America, it seems that Moroder's restoration will enter PD in 2080, the 2001 restoration will enter PD in 2097, and the 2010 restoration in 2106, unless the copyright laws are extended again.

[Shane Rollins]

Originally Posted by jmclick

[Show spoiler]My Five Favorite Kino 4K UHD Releases of 2022:



My Ten Favorite Kino Blu-ray Releases of 2022:



My Five Favorite Kino Boxed Sets of 2022:



HAPPY NEW YEAR TO ONE AND ALL!!!

Fun fact about Mamba, for anyone who doesn't know it. That is one of the few surviving films from the Tiffany Film Company. They went belly-up in the 30s, and David Selznick bought their assets.

Considering celluloid nitrate is very similar to gunpowder, his crew spread the film across tons of props and sets he no longer needed, including but not limited to the gate Kong smashes through in the original King Kong. He then had them unravel one reel off camera, and light the reel, sending all the films, props, and sets up in flames. He then sent Clark Gable and Vivien Leigh through the burning sets, and the end result was Rhett and Scarlett fleeing the burning Atlanta in Gone With The Wind.

Ironic how one of the greatest scenes in all of film came at the cost of thousands of other films.

[Shane Rollins]

Originally Posted by koberulz

I wish I was one of you people who was capable of psychically determining how good films are before watching them.

For the most part, significant amounts of praise or criticism, with all involved saying the exact same things, usually end up being right. It sounds a bit Orwellian, but in the context of film criticism, the critics and the fans have well over a 90% success rate. Two extreme examples, one being when almost everyone said that Citizen Kane is a masterpiece with great acting, a great screenplay, and camerawork, dialogue, a score, and narrative structure that pretty much dictated how thousands of other movies would be made, those claims wound up being spot on. Another extreme example, in the opposite direction, almost everyone has stated that Plan 9 From Outer Space is a turkey on stilts, with a terrible script, bad acting, effects that make 3rd grade Christmas pageants look cutting-edge, poor decision-making on the part of an incompetent director, and of course, the decision to sub in the director's wife's chiropractor for the film's "star" Bela Lugosi, who died early in the production. Those descriptions wound up being accurate too.

When hundreds if not thousands of people say that the sky is blue, and you look at it yourself and see that it's blue, eventually you start taking the thousands of people seriously. Maybe you wouldn't trust your kids or your money with them, but you'll listen to their two cents about a movie.

[playingphysicist]

Originally Posted by Shane Rollins

In America, it seems that Moroder's restoration will enter PD in 2080, the 2001 restoration will enter PD in 2097, and the 2010 restoration in 2106, unless the copyright laws are extended again.

In America, they entered PD with the film itself on Jan 1st, except the titles and scores used (though since Metropolis had a score written for it when it was released, some one else can just play the same music). Restorations are not copyrightable separately in the US.

[cloudnine]

Shane, I think you're mistaken about TWISTED NERVE being in some Mill Creek 50 film collection. Secondly, apparently you're not aware that Umbrella is releasing it in a few months in an all-region bluray.

[Shane Rollins]

When it comes to Ebert, what got me into him and all of professional film criticism was the bad reviews. All the hatred Ebert and others threw at certain movies is comedy gold, from Leonard Maltin's one-word response to Isn't It Romantic? (his answer was "No.") to Ebert saying how he "hated hated hated hated hated" North to Vincent Canby speculating that "It's as if Michael Cimino sold his soul to the devil for the success of The Deer Hunter, and the devil's just come around to collect" in regards to the failure of Heaven's Gate.

The best review ever though is Ebert's review of a little-known French movie called Un indien dans la ville (translates to An Indian In The City; redubbed and released here as Little Indian, Big City). That piece should have won him a Pulitzer, since...well just read it:

[Show spoiler]

“Little Indian, Big City” is one of the worst movies ever made. I detested every moronic minute of it. Through a stroke of good luck, the entire third reel of the film was missing the day I saw it. I went back to the screening room two days later, to view the missing reel. It was as bad as the rest, but nothing could have saved this film. As my colleague Gene Siskel observed, “If the third reel had been the missing footage from Orson Welles' 'The Magnificent Ambersons,' this movie still would have sucked.” I could not have put it better myself.

“Little Indian, Big City” is a French film (I will not demean the fine word “comedy” by applying it here). It is not in French with English subtitles, however. It has been dubbed into English, a canny move, since the movie is not likely to appeal to anyone who can read. The dubbing means that awkward, hollow-sounding words emerge from the mouths of the characters while they flap their lips to a different rhythm. In an attempt to make the English dubbing match the length of the French dialogue, sentences are constructed backward and the passive voice pops up at random. People say things like, “You have a son--you hear?” The character speaking that last line is the mother (Miou-Miou) of a boy of about 12. She was once married to the film's hero (Thierry Lhermitte), but left him 13 years earlier, when she was pregnant, because he spent too much time on the telephone. She fled to the Amazon, and has raised her child while living with an Indian tribe. Now he has flown to the rain forest to find his wife, so they can be divorced and he can marry the most stupid woman on Earth.

The hero did not know he had a son--you hear? Now he meets him. The son, named Mimi-Siku (Ludwig Briand), wears a cute breech cloth, carries a bow and arrow, has a mask painted on his face, and kills snakes by biting them. His mother is an intelligent, sensitive soul who loves the environment and the rainforest. She is the only person in the jungle who speaks English (or French, in the original), so if her son learned to speak it, he learned it from her. I guess it was her idea of a joke to teach him pidgin English, so that he says things like, “Me no able read.” I guess she didn't teach him to read, either.

She is depicted as kind of a secular saint.

Mimi-Siku is so good with a blowgun that he can kill a fly with a dart, and often does so. He has a hairy pet spider. His father brings him back to Paris, where the movie gets worse. The father has a business partner who never knows what to wear and so always wears the same thing the father wears. Ho, ho.

They go to business meetings in matching ties. Hee, hee. The partner has a daughter, and soon the son is bouncing in a hammock with a nubile 12-year-old and telling his father, “Me like you--love only one female.” I doubt if the relationship will last, since the boy is prettier than the girl.

Later (or perhaps earlier, since it was in the third reel) Mimi-Siku climbs barefoot up the Eiffel Tower. This feat is handled so ineptly by the film that it has neither payoff nor consequence. He does it, and then the movie forgets it. Meanwhile, the father is doing a business deal with some shady Russians, who speak in dubbed accents and drink vodka and seem to be wearing Krushchev's old suits. The father's fiancee (Arielle Dombasle) chants mantras, plans a New Age wedding, and wants her guru to live with them. I think she's in such a hurry to get married because she's afraid the collagen injections in her lips might shift. By the end of the film, father and son have bonded, and cooked a fish by the side of the expressway. And the father has learned to kill a fly with a dart.

There is a movie called “Fargo” playing right now. It is a masterpiece. Go see it. If you, under any circumstances, see “Little Indian, Big City,” I will never let you read one of my reviews again.

Yeah, you don't really get more vicious than that.

[cloudnine]

Originally Posted by Shane Rollins

Lucky you that you only have DVDs that need to be upgraded. Some of us have tapes that we’re stuck with. None from Universal (but I’ll eventually find some), but Paramount has tons. Goodbar, Little Darlings, The Keep, The Godfather (chronological), the list goes on and on. I frankly envy your problem.

Little Darlings is coming out on bluray this year.

[Shane Rollins]

Originally Posted by cloudnine

Shane, I think you're mistaken about TWISTED NERVE being in some Mill Creek 50 film collection. Secondly, apparently you're not aware that Umbrella is releasing it in a few months in an all-region bluray.

https://www.blu-ray.com/dvd/The-Sens...ck-DVD/105152/

The back of the case even lists "TWISTED NERVE (1969) Color Haley Mills"

So either Twisted Nerve is PD in America or nobody bothered to enforce the rights. Either way, unless Umbrella's staff shows up high on meth for the next few months, their disc will run circles around MC's DVD.

[Shane Rollins]

Originally Posted by cloudnine

Little Darlings is coming out on bluray this year.

Link please?

[noirjunkie]

Originally Posted by Shane Rollins

When it comes to Ebert, what got me into him and all of professional film criticism was the bad reviews. All the hatred Ebert and others threw at certain movies is comedy gold, from Leonard Maltin's one-word response to Isn't It Romantic? (his answer was "No.") to Ebert saying how he "hated hated hated hated hated" North to Vincent Canby speculating that "It's as if Michael Cimino sold his soul to the devil for the success of The Deer Hunter, and the devil's just come around to collect" in regards to the failure of Heaven's Gate.

My favorite back and forths involving Ebert are:

1. His evisceration of all things Deuce Bigalow, in spite of Rob Schneider's protestations.
2. His rejoinder to Vincent Gallo, who called Ebert fat after Ebert tore apart The Brown Bunny. Ebert's response: "He is angry at me because I said his 'The Brown Bunny' was the worst movie in the history of the Cannes Film Festival. It is true that I am fat, but one day I will be thin, and he will still be the director of 'The Brown Bunny'.”

[whiteberry]

Originally Posted by Shane Rollins

Link please?

https://forum.blu-ray.com/showthread...4#post20733194

[SeanJoyce]

Learn. To. Use. The. Multiquote. Function.

[cloudnine]

Originally Posted by Shane Rollins

https://www.blu-ray.com/dvd/The-Sens...ck-DVD/105152/

The back of the case even lists "TWISTED NERVE (1969) Color Haley Mills"

So either Twisted Nerve is PD in America or nobody bothered to enforce the rights. Either way, unless Umbrella's staff shows up high on meth for the next few months, their disc will run circles around MC's DVD.

You may be right about MC's release but Umbrella (Australia) will do it right, remastered and in the correct 1.66:1 ratio. I believe they obtained it from Studio Canal.

[koberulz]

Originally Posted by Shane Rollins

For the most part, significant amounts of praise or criticism, with all involved saying the exact same things, usually end up being right. It sounds a bit Orwellian, but in the context of film criticism, the critics and the fans have well over a 90% success rate. Two extreme examples, one being when almost everyone said that Citizen Kane is a masterpiece with great acting, a great screenplay, and camerawork, dialogue, a score, and narrative structure that pretty much dictated how thousands of other movies would be made, those claims wound up being spot on. Another extreme example, in the opposite direction, almost everyone has stated that Plan 9 From Outer Space is a turkey on stilts, with a terrible script, bad acting, effects that make 3rd grade Christmas pageants look cutting-edge, poor decision-making on the part of an incompetent director, and of course, the decision to sub in the director's wife's chiropractor for the film's "star" Bela Lugosi, who died early in the production. Those descriptions wound up being accurate too.

When hundreds if not thousands of people say that the sky is blue, and you look at it yourself and see that it's blue, eventually you start taking the thousands of people seriously. Maybe you wouldn't trust your kids or your money with them, but you'll listen to their two cents about a movie.

Nope, you're not allowed to listen to other people's opinions.

[cloudnine]

Originally Posted by Shane Rollins

Link please?

The Kino Insider said it's coming in 2023 from another label so you know it's happening. What other Paramount titles are held up besides Goodbar, The Keep, The Godfather re-shuffle?

[whiteberry]

Originally Posted by cloudnine

What other Paramount titles are held up besides Goodbar, The Keep, The Godfather re-shuffle?

3 Ring Circus - The only Martin and Lewis movie never released on home video. It showed up in HD digitally in August of 2021.

There's also Young Lust which didn't even get a theatrical release. Who knows if its unavailability on home video is due to it reportedly being truly awful or if there is a legal reason.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Young_Lust_(film)
https://www.nytimes.com/1983/05/23/m...ox-office.html