If - and it's a big if - Network do it, hopefully they'll release the restoration as they did with The Lodger, which got really shoddy treatment on that boxed set (like Downhill it didn't even have a score)
I'd rather The Lodger had had no score than that bizarre and jarringly inappropriate pop-ish soundtrack, complete with vocals, that Network saddled it with. Ultimately I had to watch it with the sound off. They could have at least included a second, traditional option, but they went so far in the other direction as to include two soundtrack cds, as well as providing zero video extras other than a documentary on the score itself!
Sure, but not every Blu-ray release has to be some massive rescue effort done at 4K from the negative, as Arrow proved with their Burbs release which looks gorgeous on the back of a 2K scan from an IP.
Absolutely right, but one might argue that the work done by Arrow would probably have allowed something flawless if working not on an IP but on the OCN.
But you're right : if it's very good, it's already a good thing, especially when on a budget.
Great to see another Hitchcock is being upgraded. If I remember rightly, that leaves only The Pleasure Garden, Downhill, Secret Agent and Jamaica Hill un-upgraded from Network's DVD set. They haven't released the ITV-owned Easy Virtue and Waltzes from Vienna on any format.
Waltzes from Vienna is coming out on DVD in June in one of their Jessie Matthews double-bills, though it's been available for years in France in a double-bill with Downhill (with orchestral score: Network's version was mute).
Absolutely right, but one might argue that the work done by Arrow would probably have allowed something flawless if working not on an IP but on the OCN.
But you're right : if it's very good, it's already a good thing, especially when on a budget.
It no doubt depends on many factors including film stock. Ideally, a good IP should be indistinguishable from the neg. I'm thinking the less perfect the original negative stock, the less there is to lose by dropping a generation. IP stock is by it's nature a superb quality film. Older IPs will vary more.
Does it even make any real difference in 2K? You can argue all it does is change the texture of the grain and doesn't lose any genuine detail. Obviously 16mm cases will have a bigger benefit in using the neg over IP, especially if the IP is an optical blow-up.
Waltzes from Vienna is coming out on DVD in June in one of their Jessie Matthews double-bills, though it's been available for years in France in a double-bill with Downhill (with orchestral score: Network's version was mute).
Thanks for the heads up!
I have to say that I don't think making a Hitchcock film only available in a Jessie Matthews DVD double bill is the best move - even if it is probably his worst and most obscure. Double billing it with a Hitchcock Blu would have been far preferable - even if it had to be included in SD/upscaled due to lack of an HD transfer. Hopefully they see fit to do that in the future.
I have to say that I don't think making a Hitchcock film only available in a Jessie Matthews DVD double bill is the best move - even if it is probably his worst and most obscure. Double billing it with a Hitchcock Blu would have been far preferable - even if it had to be included in SD/upscaled due to lack of an HD transfer. Hopefully they see fit to do that in the future.
It's far from his worst - Hitchcock later cited Champagne as his worst and I'd certainly rate Downhill lower. Its problem is that it's a studio assignment outside his usual comfort zone and favoured genre, a bit like hiring John Huston to make Annie: it's unambitiously okay on its own terms but doesn't stand a chance if judged against the director's real classics. But I'm not sure how much mileage you'd get out of it selling it as Hitchcock film (I believe the double bill of it and Downhill was the worst seller of Universal's Hitchcock DVD double-bills in France). But then I'm not sure if there's that much of a market for it as a Jessie Matthews film either.
It’s a fair bet that it would be completely forgotten today if it weren’t for its director, although even the notion of Alfred Hitchcock making a fluffy romantic musical comedy (co-written by his wife Alma Reville) about Johann Strauss the Younger trying to get his work published, his father’s approval and marry the baker’s daughter has only made it almost entirely forgotten, and only recalled as a brief side note to Hitchcock’s career. That said, taken on its own terms, this screen version of the ‘great success at the Alhambra, London’ (which had originally boasted musical arrangements by Erich Wolfgang Korngold) is no worse than most Jessie Matthews musicals of the Thirties. Awfully, awfully well-spoken and coming over as a cross between Joyce Grenfell’s prettier sister and a hamster, Matthews was Britain’s biggest musical star of the day (a claim, it has to be said, somewhat akin to being Baffin Island’s premier kangaroo boxer), but her character’s insistence that Esmond Knight’s distinctly uncomfortable Johann give up the music for a career in confectionary to keep him out of the clutches of Fay Compton’s scheming countess marks her out as a selfish nag who’ll probably make the poor bugger’s life hell for years to come.
A fairly lavish production, there are a few amusing bits of business, such as the Count automatically assuming Junior is a servant and throwing his hat to him without looking, while Hitch throws in the odd directorial flourish in an attempt to keep himself interested, and Edmund Gwenn’s vain, bitter and surprisingly nasty Strauss Senior adds some welcome darkness to the proceedings, but the most memorable thing about it is still the infamous scene where Strauss Jr composes The Blue Danube thanks to the rhythmic bread roll throwing and bagel stacking of the Ebersader bakers.
Upcoming Network Blu-ray Releases
Posted February 5, 2015 06:09 PM by Webmaster
Blu-ray MoviesBritish distributors Network will add five new titles to their Blu-ray catalog: Alfred Hitchcock's Sabotage (1936), Gus Van Sant's To Die For (1995), Peter Yates' Robbery (1967), Alberto Lattuada's Without Pity (1948), and Halas & Batchelor Collection
Sabotage
Celebrated for the macabre, tour-de-force plots and sublime twist endings that would come to define the very genre of suspense, Alfred Hitchcock is one of cinema's greatest auteurs, his career spanning six decades and over sixty films. Based on Joseph Conrad's The Secret Agent and starring Oscar Homolka and Sylvia Sidney, Sabotage is one of Hitchcock's most significant pre-war British films. Featured here in a High Definition transfer from original film elements, this classic early thriller has never looked better.
Karl Verloc, manager of a London cinema, is secretly involved with a gang of European saboteurs who are plotting a massive bomb attack in Piccadilly Circus. With the police already suspicious of Verloc, they place an undercover detective on his trail – can he bring the saboteurs to justice before they perpetrate their outrage on London?
Special Features:
Introduction by Charles Barr
On Location featurette, introduced by Robert Powell
Image gallery
STREET DATE: JUNE 1.
To Die For
Featuring a career-best, award-winning performance from Nicole Kidman as a relentless, malevolent news anchor with delusions of grandeur, this highly stylised neo-noir from Oscar-nominated Gus Van Sant won multiple awards – including a Golden Globe. This blackly comic tale is featured here in a High Definition transfer from original film elements in its original theatrical aspect ratio.
Fifteen minutes of fame was never going to be enough for Suzanne. Married to small-town restaurateur Larry Maretto, all she ever wanted was to be a high-flying anchorwoman on network TV. Blessed with more determination than ability, she plans her way to the top and will do absolutely anything to achieve her goals – but as Suzanne's ambition grows, her grip on reality starts to slide…
Special Features:
Original theatrical trailer
Image galleries (including deleted scenes)
TV Spots
Promotional material PDFs
STREET DATE: JUNE 15.
Robbery
Based on the planning and execution of criminal cause celebre The Great Train Robbery, this taut, meticulously researched drama stars Stanley Baker as a crime boss undertaking the heist of his career – with James Booth, Frank Finlay and Barry Foster among the gang he assembles.
Co-produced by Baker and directed by multiple-Oscar-nominated Peter Yates, Robbery is a classic of British Film – exceptionally scripted (winning a WGGB Award for Best British Screenplay), beautifully acted and sporting a legendary score by composer-arranger Johnny Keating. It is presented here as a brand-new High Definition transfer transfer from original film elements in its original aspect ratio.
Having successfully pulled off a daring jewel heist, Paul Clifton prepares to hit a mail train heading south from Glasgow. Several difficulties stand in his way, however, not the least of which is the police – who are hot on his tail and already in receipt of a tip-off about his next job…
Special Features:
Original Theatrical Trailer
Image Gallery
Promotional Materials PDF
STREET DATE: JUNE 22.
Without Pity
Co-written by a young Federico Fellini and directed by Alberto Lattuada, this award-winning film from the earlier years of Italian Neo-realist cinema stars John Kitzmiller as a black G.I. who opts to stay in Italy rather than return to a racially segregated U.S. after falling in love with an impoverished local girl.
While its groundbreaking theme of inter-racial love made Without Pity one of the most significant and daring films of the immediate post-War period, it was banned in the United States and, as such, has never received wider recognition for its frank, sensitive handling of a subject that for many years was still controversial.
A film that helped launch Fellini's career yet little-seen throughout the decades since its initial release, Without Pity (Senza Pieta) is featured here in a brand-new High Definition restoration from the original film elements in its as-exhibited theatrical ratio.
STREET DATE: JUNE 8.
Halas & Batchelor Collection
Highly influential and internationally acclaimed, the fondly-remembered work of husband-and-wife animation team John Halas and Joy Batchelor encompassed children's series, public education films and adverts, and they were affectionately referred to as 'the British Disney'. This collection of short films will both remind and reinforce how stunningly innovative, whimsically humorous and subversively entertaining their four decade body of work actually was.
From an uncannily prophetic, Oscar-nominated satire on technological overkill and automated gridlock (Automania 2000) to the adventures of two paper-cutout canines (Snip and Snap), the films present wide-ranging content in a gloriously inventive fashion. Drawn from an archive that includes numerous international award winners, these animated gems have been newly transferred in High Definition from the original film elements; all showcase the beguiling humour, questing yet playful spirituality and sheer technical brilliance that characterised the studio's output, serving as both an introduction to and celebration of a unique body of work that is ripe for re-evaluation.
CONTENT:
The Magic Canvas
Flying Free
The Owl and the Pussycat
Figurehead
The History of Cinema
Foo-Foo: The Stowaway
Habatales: The Cultured Ape
Snip and Snap: Top Dogs
Hamilton the Musical Elephant
Automania 2000
DoDo - The Kid from Outer Space: The Kidnapped Kid
Tales from Hoffnung: The Symphony Orchestra
Flow Diagram
The Question
Children and Cars
Butterfly Ball
Autobahn
Dilemma
STREET DATE: JUNE 29.
Hopefully that means widescreen, not the 4:3 ratio that was on the DVD.
It should be approximately 1.75:1 for a 1967 British feature. Chances are they'll go with 1.66:1 which is close although Network do have form for presenting the more accurate theatrical ratio of 1.75:1.
To Die For by Gus Van Sant? Awesome! Never seen that one but Joaquin Phoenix was in it. I'll definitely get that one assuming the transfer is tidy!
Without Pity sounds interesting too, will keep an eye out for both of those plus the already-announced Laurel & Hardy film!
I really need to see To Die For again to re-evaluate it. I absolutely adored Drugstore Cowboy, My Own Private Idaho and Even Cowgirls Get The Blues on first viewing, but To Die For left me stone cold. I think at the time I felt that Van Sant had abandoned his indie roots and sold out to make a lightweight commercial film. Of course he went on to make many more mainstream movies, but I'm glad he's gone back to making smaller films in recent years, like Elephant and Paranoid Park.
It's far from his worst - Hitchcock later cited Champagne as his worst and I'd certainly rate Downhill lower. Its problem is that it's a studio assignment outside his usual comfort zone and favoured genre, a bit like hiring John Huston to make Annie: it's unambitiously okay on its own terms but doesn't stand a chance if judged against the director's real classics. But I'm not sure how much mileage you'd get out of it selling it as Hitchcock film (I believe the double bill of it and Downhill was the worst seller of Universal's Hitchcock DVD double-bills in France). But then I'm not sure if there's that much of a market for it as a Jessie Matthews film either.
I have no strong feelings for it either way. I'd certainly put it down as lower tier Hitchcock, but I don't think it's worse than Champagne or even Family Plot. It would probably be a low seller no matter how its marketed, but I'd be surprised if there was a bigger market for Jessie Matthews than anything with Hitchcock's name.
I suggested to Network that they release it on Blu-Ray as a double bill with another Hitchcock film that they're yet to upgrade - they thanked me for the suggestion so if others do the same there's more of a chance of it actually happening.
It's probably the time when it will be available to order at the website (Network rarely does pre-orders, they usually accept orders starting on the release date).
And count me in as interested on this release as well.
I really need to see To Die For again to re-evaluate it. I absolutely adored Drugstore Cowboy, My Own Private Idaho and Even Cowgirls Get The Blues on first viewing, but To Die For left me stone cold. I think at the time I felt that Van Sant had abandoned his indie roots and sold out to make a lightweight commercial film. Of course he went on to make many more mainstream movies, but I'm glad he's gone back to making smaller films in recent years, like Elephant and Paranoid Park.
I'm patiently waiting for Last Days. I know this is a pretty well hated film but I love it
I was supposed to receive my copy of Raise The Titanic from Amazon today, but I didn't hear the courier (or they didn't make their presence very well known) and I had a failed delivery
I was supposed to receive my copy of Raise The Titanic from Amazon today, but I didn't hear the courier (or they didn't make their presence very well known) and I had a failed delivery
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