Non-Criterion Boutique Home Video Discussion (Kino, Warner Archive, Arrow, Indicator, Vinegar Syndrome, Code Red, etc.)

Killer's Kiss included with The Killing...The Report included with Certified Copy...yeah...

I'd imagine with Criterion that it has to do with them gatekeeping what gets the official "prestige" of being included in the Collection, which kinda makes since for stuff like De Palma's Murder A La Mod (bonus for Blow Out) or the 30s version of Magnificent Obsession on the Sirk disc, but is pretty baffling choice when it comes to Permanent Vacation.

Killer's Kiss included with The Killing...The Report included with Certified Copy...yeah...

― Motoroller Scampotron (WmC), Wednesday, February 24, 2021 1:24 PM (three minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

YO

I'VE HAD THE REPORT THIS WHOLE TIME.....?

xxp Yeah that does make sense, it just feels like they should advertise them more, I mean I had NO idea Certified Copy came with The Report-- and I've had that disc for years!

But, then again, I don't read stickers!

My birthday present to you!

I love you

The studio killed the original UK Gaslight in various ways such as renaming it so as not to compete with the US remake, iirc..

Okay, MGM destroyed the negative at the time, and one or both versions were variously known as Angel Street and The Murder in Thornton Square.

Bonus films are indeed an awesome feature, though tbh I'm not sure I'll ever get around to the earlier version of Holiday

I haven't looked at the Warner Archive site in years, but I remember being wary because the DVDs (and maybe the blu-rays?) were sometimes DVD-Rs/MOD. The fact that a even some factory-pressed Warner titles from about fifteen years ago became unplayable over time helped sour me on buying Warner releases. But I also just rarely watch physical discs any more, unfortunately.

xxp Another bonus feature IIRC is The Traveler on Criterion's Close-Up.

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/08/21/arts/gaslight-movie-afterlife.html
J. Hoberman's overview.

xpost Warner Archive DVDs are, unfortunately, usually DVD-Rs and thusly not generally something I'm inclined to pay money for (except that I'm probably going to fold on the Forbidden Hollywood sets eventually). Their blu-rays, however, are legit manufactured discs and well worth checking out. They have so much good stuff.

I'm slapping myself just now because when I started this thread I knew I was forgetting to mention a major player and sure enough: Shout/Scream Factory is probably the most dominant boutique label in my collection. And sure enough: they're having a sale (on box sets).

https://www.shoutfactory.com/page/list/id/282131?utm_source=rejoiner&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=BOXSET+SALE+FEB+2021+-+FIRST+DAY&utm_content=BOXSET+SALE+FEB+2021

You see, this is how I blew through whatever stimulus money I received last year. Soooo many sales. It's a really easy way to go broke.

Olive Films puts out a lot of good stuff. Can't seem to find a proper home page.

https://olivefilms.com/

(doesn't show up on a Google search).

If you’re not buying the Maude box set from that Shout sale, seriously what are you doing in life?!

Lol

I was looking at the Barney Miller box.

Seeing that Homicide box, and remembering how ridiculously expensive the original season sets were back upon release in the early '00s: $80-$100 apiece (because of the music rights, iirc).

Wow, that is amazingly cheap, even at retail. Did they cut the music or something?

Looks like direct ports of the old discs.

When A&E did their complete series box, IIRC it was like $150-$200.

that
Tomorrow I'll Wake Up And Scald Myself With Tea film mentioned upthread fort mentioned in the guardian today in an article about a new (?) streaming service

https://easterneuropeanmovies.com/

which might be a bit off topic (being streaming) but looks interesting

(fuck autocorrect, you get the idea)

That does look great. I grumble about the big streaming services quite a bit but truth be told I could probably spend the rest of my life just watching old movies on stuff like this, the Cinephobe and assorted youtube accounts, without even getting into the Criterion channel.

the russian films are a separate (but related) website

and it has an interesting payment plan - $5 for a day, $15 for a week, $30 for a month, $100 for lifetime

you could probably get the cost per film down to $1 given a week and enough spare time (although probably avoid Satantango in that case!)

that's assuming this service lasts 2 years!

That's a great selection, quite a few I've loved and a good bunch I want to see, maybe someday.

Inspired by this thread I tracked down a complete list of Warner Archive releases, and wow! Need the third season of Young Sheldon on blu with no extras? They got you covered!

Come on, that's on par with dismissing Criterion because they released Armageddon. Every physical media company produces shitty loss leaders. Warner Archive is one of the few things I won't actively give WB shit for these days.

No man I'm not dismissing it, it's just that I mostly knew it as a purveyor of super niche old school Hollywood stuff and was surprised by their branching out.

Also Armageddon is totally Criterion-worthy what are you on about.

The Long Good Friday looks extraordinary in the new Arrow version. They even put together a fancy modern trailer which makes it look the bee's knees

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B90zNzyFk-w

Man i'd love to see this print at the movies.

xpost Ah, gotcha. Yeah, more and more they're also using WAC as a repository for tv seasons that otherwise don't get a wide physical release (I think they manufacture these things like 1000 at a time?). Which...I don't even know what tv shows are considered for a wide release anymore, since Targets and other major retail outlets have all but given up on physical media.

bought a cheap 2nd hand blu ray player recently, what are good online shops in UK to buy these kind of boutique releases?
is there a place with an upcoming release schedule?

I extensively use blu-ray.com. This is their new release calendar but you may have to tweak the settings to get UK-specific releases (hint: select yr country in the search bar, do a search, and the site should then rejigger their listings such that they're specific to your region).

Warning: that link is extremely dangerous, as I realize now that I hadn't checked it in a while and now I'm seeing a bunch of stuff that I didn't even know had been released and, well...bye bye, money.

if you put the name of something, (ie Tomorrow I'll Wake Up And Scald Myself With Tea), in a search engine and hit 'shopping' it'll list a bunch of places with it for sale, most of which are ebay and the rest of which don't look like places that would care about films, just about selling units (one of which even has "SKU" as a sort order in its list)

places like
base.com
hive.co.uk
www.moviesandgamesonline.co.uk
hmv actually have a good selection (and i have tokens)
wh smith

amazon also. and they are quite good for recommendations, just terrible at the details. (for example, the first two reviews say there are no english subtitles because they've merged all the reviews for all the different releases together)

Usually, unless I'm just dying to see a particular thing, I wait until the boutiques offer a sale. Most of them do a couple times a year and the prices are often pretty good, and if you stay on top of things you'll find out about limited releases that are usually dropped during the sales (which I will endeavor to use this thread to hype when they pop up).

ta, blu-ray.com looks dangerously useful. funny seeing what is available and what isn't
I've only used amazon so far, they had a load of Ozu for £6.99 each the other day so grabbed a few

dismissing Criterion because they released Armageddon.

― Chokeslamming A Memory (Old Lunch), Sunday, February 28, 2021 2:18 PM

I missed this shitstorm and all the accompanying death threats

Why tf did Shout price the complete Pee-Wee's Playhouse box set for $35 on DVD and $150 on Blu-ray???

pixels aren't free

I dunno, I was waiting for the blu-ray but just wound up getting the old DVD season sets once I saw their MSRP. I guess there's a bunch of new special features but it wasn't worth the expense to me.

it's $90 on Blu-Ray, the $150 one probably came with bow tie or something

Now a big huge Kino sale (500+ titles, many @ $10 or less, lots of good stuff): https://www.kinolorber.com/list/view/code/march-madness-sale-2021

And then I think the Warner Archive sale starts tomorrow.

Sorry, wallet.

Just in time for the stimmy check

I bought Last Year at Marienbad and Transylvania 6-5000

Limited myself to just 4 because I've actually been going pretty hog-wild on Indicator/Arrow since getting a region-free player for the first time in a decade.

The Mortal Storm
The Best Years of Our Lives
On Dangerous Ground
Waiting for Guffman (I somehow keep losing this one to lendees)

I checked out several of 88's roman porno releases and didn't find them especially memorable, sorry to say. Was hoping for something a bit more stylish. 88 Films really needs to do more trailers on youtube but I know these films present a bit more of a challenge. But really it's still very do-able to make a short trailer.

Every fan of weird-ass japanese films needs to see Pinocchio 964, I don't have their recent release but definitely get it if you haven't seen it.

They released Mika Ninagawa's two most famous films: Helter Skelter and Sakuran. They look really striking but I've been slightly hesitant, I don't know why, they have good reputations.

Them releasing Jane Campion's Holy Smoke is a little head scratching.

Also, Stanley Kwan's Center Stage.

Did anyone see Gate Of Flesh?

Djeng does seem to be all over these things. He is to HK cinema commentaries what Kim Newman is to horror. But Djeng seems good when he's pared with someone else, though, like F.J. DeSanto on some of those 88 sets.

I'm not a fan of commentaries that come from people with a nebulous pedigree, at least to me. Like, "James Mudge, Hong Kong Film Critic At easternKicks," that means nothing to me, though his commentary on "Armour of God 2" seemed fine, and he wasn't afraid to point out the long boring stretches of nothing, or inappropriate jokes or whatever. Lots of youtubers, podcasts hosts, bloggers show up offering commentaries, but I just don't recognize them by name. Unlike, say, Ian Christie or David Kalat or Stephen Prince or some of those Criterion standard bearers.

this thread has prompted me to check radiance website and they've got a sale on at the moment. i've been holding off for a while rather than buying full price films that i then don't watch so i had quite a few on my list... 6 in fact, £52 total

I checked out several of 88's roman porno releases and didn't find them especially memorable, sorry to say

curious if you tried girl hell (1977) ? that one is pretty stylish and even moving imo

i also like the watcher in the attic, mostly because watching in the attic is such creepy concept, one soon perfected in gary busey’s hider in the house (not really don’t watch that one lol)

Girl Hell might have been the highlight of the bunch but I didn't feel strongly about it

fair enough

i also like the watcher in the attic, mostly because watching in the attic is such creepy concept,

Is this based on that Edogawa Rampo book? Cause that's creepy as fuck, indeed.

I think it's a blend of a few Rampo stories, it has the human chair in it too.

Like, "James Mudge, Hong Kong Film Critic At easternKicks," that means nothing to me, though his commentary on "Armour of God 2" seemed fine, and he wasn't afraid to point out the long boring stretches of nothing, or inappropriate jokes or whatever

Saw this guy talk about Taoism Drunkard for twenty minutes on the Eureka disc yesterday. Seems to know his stuff and has a pleasant scottish voice, good enough for me!

Anyway, I do think it's an interesting discussion, and something I think about whenever I read/hear *any* translation. What am I missing? How close is it getting?

― Josh in Chicago, Saturday, June 27, 2026 12:35 PM (two days ago)

so hi i have Opinions lol

(i like "le ton beau de marot" and hofstadter isn't a linguist, his understanding is limited and flawed in certain ways... his perspectives are interesting, but he doesn't represent a mainstream academic view of translation, i'll just say that.)

this is a particularly interesting topic because there are concepts that are constructed within a certain cultural context liiiiike, uh... gender

the way gender is understood is something that's changed significantly over the past 30 years in the US, and the way it's understood in other cultures is _very often distinct_ from western understandings. one of the reasons i am patiently waiting for a boutique label to release the mandarin print of Swordsman II in the US (there's a German blu-ray with a copy) is because of Brigitte Lin's character, Dongfang Bubai. Bubai is the villain of the film - I wouldn't say it's, like, a positive representation of gender non-conformity or anything - but it's INTERESTING and Brigitte Lin is, I mean, she's fucking awesome.

There are a LOT of ways that representation can be handled in translation. One of those ways would be to, like, treat Bubai as being "transgender" and lean into a bunch of transphobic tropes. Well, this would be bad, but it would also be a misrepresentation of the film! There is this tendency to want to impose Western norms on films where it doesn't apply, and even when well-intentioned, I don't think it's necessarily good. There's a 2013 Japanese film that's translated into English as "The Clan's Heir is a Trans Woman". Well this translation is ABSOLUTELY not accurate - the Japanese title is "Nidaime wa Newhalf". Newhalf is... I'd call it a slur, others might disagree, but it's _not_ a value-neutral term. The Japanese word for "transgender" is, uh, "transgender". There's not really any other word in Japanese that represents that concept.

This was... particularly in manga fan-translation circles, this was a BIG deal in the early 2010s, when the term "trap" was widely used as a translation for, I think, "otokonoko". A number of people put a good deal of effort into pointing out that "trap" is just not an accurate translation of that word. The term "trap" carried a connotation of deceit which is simply not _present_ in the original term.

So yeah, it comes up a lot, and it comes up not just in terms of translation, like Dongfang Bubai in Swordsman II, but simply dealing with, for instance, how to understand Lou Reed's partner Rachel Humphreys in relation to gender. Hell, it's something that's directly affected my life - when I was young, I didn't really have access to any words that described my gender identity.

Well, I mean, all of this is just one _tiny_ minor subset of the issues that crop up in the process of translation (which, as Casey Brienza argues, persuasively IMO, is better termed "domestication").

I can't speak to the specific case being discussed above... it's just a really important and interesting topic to me!

huh, I've only heard the term "newhalf" in passing and didn't know it had negative associations. I just assumed it came from the same place as "newtype" from Gundam that describes people who've developed psychic abilities & are seen as the next evolution of humans, so "newhalf" were the next evolution in gender