Obscure Cinema

Mother of Variety

Dario Argento's The Third Mother is clearly set to receive considerably more publicity than I had originally expected, certainly more than his last few films, as it is the featured title on the cover of the Cannes Film Festival 2007 issue of Variety. I've never bought Variety before (the bizarre abbreviations and grammatical oddities used in the publication's articles drive me up the wall, actually), but I'm definitely going to look into getting hold of a copy of this issue. Does anyone know of any online stores that are selling it?

As reported at Asia Argento fan site Ode to Azia, a three-minute preview of the film will be shown at Cannes on May 20th, along with a brand new print of Suspiria.

Credit for discovering this goes to Mannfan at Dark Discussion.

Update, May 14th, 2007 07:32 AM: Apparently, despite its prominent position on the cover, there's nothing about the film inside the actual magazine.

What's going on with The Third Mother?

Last Friday I posted the triumphant news that The Third Mother would be uncut after all, as per Dario Argento himself. Unfortunately, it now seems that there's more to the story than meets the eye, according to Alan Jones, arguably the one journalist who knows more about Argento than anyone else. As he says in his blog at FrightFest,

Distributor and producer Medusa reeled in shock at Dario's first cut of the supernatural shocker that went far beyond any extreme they imagined. Didn't they read the script? So they sent him back into the editing rooms to make it more 'mainstream', i.e. attractive to overseas buyers who they thought wouldn’t touch it with a barge pole in the original version. So far they've been right. The problems are all to do with the depiction of perverse sex in the witch gathering satanic scenes and one cannibal killing of a major character.

[...]

Argento is now in a standoff position with Medusa. He's not one to suffer fools gladly and is prepared to fight his corner. His reputation is still so great in Italy that it will be an interesting face-off. I hope for his sake, and ours, he wins and we see The Third Mother in all its gory and orgy glory.

I hope so too. People have been waiting for this film for 27 years - for it to finally emerge after all this time in a form that doesn't represent its director's intentions would be a travesty.

Discovered by Cookie at Dark Discussion.

What sort of noise does a goblin make?

Are you a fan of Goblin? Do you have a lot of money to fritter away? Then you might be interested in this 8-CD box set from Japan, featuring the scores to Profondo Rosso (2 discs), Suspiria, Roller, Il Fantastico Viaggio del Bagarozzo Mark, Zombi, Tenebre and Cherry Five. Myself, I doubt that I'd be prepared to spend this much money on music even if I could afford it, but I'm sure it will make a few collectors out there very happy. Incidentally, I do need to pick up the scores to Profondo Rosso and Tenebre, which for some reason are missing from my library of CDs.

Credit for discovering this little gem goes to Andrew Monroe at DVD Maniacs.

DVDs I bought or received in the month of April

• Casino Royale (R0 Finland, Blu-ray)
• Dragon's Lair (RA USA, Blu-ray)
• The Game (R0 USA, HD DVD)
• King Arthur (RA USA, Blu-ray)
• The Mario Bava Collection Volume 1 (R1 USA, DVD)
• A Scanner Darkly (R0 USA, HD DVD)

Somewhat slim pickings this month, and I note that the decline in my purchasing of standard definition titles continues, with only one actual DVD being bought. I wasn't sure whether or not to include Dragon's Lair, as it's technically a game rather than a film, but I suppose it's a borderline case, and, given the mechanics of how it operates and the inclusion of DVD-style bonus content, it ultimately makes the grade.

The Third Mother will be uncut, says Argento

Following the rumours that the upcoming The Third Mother would be cut by distributor Medusa Film before its theatrical release, director Dario Argento has himself weighed in on the issue, and here is what he has to say:

According to Dario, "La Terza Madre" won't be cut and there will be only one version for the theaters and the DVD. "These days, people are used to a cinema that's a bit stronger and more vivid, I don't think there will be any problems. It will be rated, but it's normal." In fact he says "I wasn't asked to do any cuts." So I hope this will stay this way and that nobody will ask him to cut anything.

Let's keep our fingers crossed that this remains the case.

The Bill Lustig syndrome

Blue Underground boss Bill Lustig recently gave an interview to Belgian site Cultfilms en Kultfilms, in which he discussed a number of pertinent issues, including his own career as a director, the status of upcoming titles, and, perhaps most importantly, the company's future. Sadly, the news does not appear to be good: apparently the DVD market is currently at a stage where saturation is so high that it's impossible for obscure titles to compete against the big guns and make a profit.

Still, we do have some nice releases to look forward to, the main one for me being the upcoming special edition of The Stendhal Syndrome, which will replace the Troma monstrosity as the official American release of this often-underappreciated 1996 gem from Dario Argento. I previously expressed reservations, based on Blue Underground's track record of often not including Italian audio options for such films (and The Stendhal Syndrome is a film that needs to be experienced in Italian). Any fears can be laid to rest, however, as, according to Lustig:

Will you feature both the English and the Italian versions?
Yes - the English and the Italian. We just finished the transfer in high-definition under the supervision of the director from the composite, so it's the definitive version.

Let's just hope they remember to throw in English subtitles, unlike some of those multi-language Anchor Bay titles where the non-English dubs are essentially useless unless you speak the language.

Information has also been provided on the bonus content:

Would you consider letting Dario Argento do an audio commentary in subtitled Italian?
Well - no - we're not doing an audio commentary, but we're shooting an interview with him next thursday. Him and Asia and Guiseppe Rotunno, Sergio Stivaletti and the author of the book. We're shooting those interviews in Rome on the 18th and the 19th. And when I say 'we' - I'm not going to Rome, it's going to be David Gregory who works for me.

I'm slightly disappointed by the lack of a commentary (I had hoped that we'd get another of Alan Jones' excellent efforts), but the interviews sound excellent. Sign me up for this release.

Update, April 15th, 2007 10:02 PM: Apparently Lustig was misquoted in the original interview, so "director of the composite" should read "director of photography" (i.e. Giuseppe Rotunno).

DVD image comparison: Black Sunday

As you may have noticed, yesterday was Friday the 13th, and I celebrated in grand style by watching an 'orror film (as Letícia Román would say), in this case Mario Bava's Black Sunday with audio commentary by Tim Lucas, as found on the new disc in The Mario Bava Collection Volume 1 from Anchor Bay. This is a title that continues to leave me rather cold, as many of Bava's more celebrated films inexplicably do. It's beautifully shot, and Barbara Steele is magnificent (the perfect blend of horror and beauty), but it doesn't grip me in the way that The Girl Who Knew Too Much does. I suppose that, generally speaking, you could argue that this is because I prefer gialli to gothic horror, but that doesn't explain why my reaction to Blood and Black Lace is similarly lukewarm, or why Suspiria is my favourite Italian film, horror or giallo.

Anyway, I've put together a comparison between the old Image Entertainment disc (kindly supplied to me by Lee) and the new Anchor Bay one. It's so close that I'm not going to call it either way. The new Anchor Bay disc is minutely more contrasty than the Image version, giving the illusion of a slight detail boost, and some print damage has been cleaned up. Both exhibit noise reduction artefacts in the form of "crawling" grain during camera movement. As with The Girl Who Knew Too Much, the sound on both releases is effectively the same, although the AB version is 2-channel mono rather than single-channel. There is also little appreciable difference between the extras, although the newer release does gain a US trailer, TV spot and Barbara Steele biography while losing the rather informative text-based notes on the Italian version of the film. All things considered, they more or less cancel each other out.

Ultimately, if you already own the Image Entertainment DVD, I don't see much point in rushing out to pick up the Anchor Bay release. However, the fact that it is packaged in The Mario Bava Collection Volume 1 with four other Bava titles, many of which do contain noticeable improvements on their predecessors, means that many people will no doubt end up with this disc anyway.

Mother of spoilers - redux

Here's a piece of advice: DON'T click this link if you want to have any surprises at all when you finally get to see The Third Mother. Mariana at OdeToAzia.com has kindly translated the text of the article on the film which appeared in l'Espresso (see my previous post on the matter). This article, for some inexplicable reason, provides a synopsis for the entire film, including the ending. I glanced at it briefly, but stopped myself before I ruined too much. I'm providing the link here just in case you want to be completely spoiled, but I strongly advise against reading it.

Mother of spoilers

Source: Dark Discussion

Mariana, who runs the Ode to Azia Asia Argento tribute site, has kindly scanned and uploaded a two-page article on the upcoming The Third Mother from the Italian newspaper l'Espresso. Apparently the text is extremely spoiler-intensive, even going so far as to give away the ending, so you may not want to look at it if you read Italian. Ignoring the text however, however, you can still enjoy the rather fuzzy and hard to make out photos from the film itself and the set, which showcase, among others, Asia Argento and the Mother of Tears herself, Moran Atias.

Composer Claudio Simonetti has also posted about the film on the forum for his web site, and Dark Discussion member Mannfan has kindly summarised some of the most important points:

- The music is done and the mixing of the Italian and English tracks has just been done.
- Simonetti worked almost 4 months on the soundtrack... there are some nods in this music to Jerry Goldsmith, Bernard Herrmann, Carl Orff... its style is classical and also a bit Gothic, especially in the use of choir... Simonetti is very proud of his music, one of his most beautiful and accomplished.
- The cinematography is dark but beautiful and full of colours in the same time!
- The film is full of actions and violence (Walter Fasano's editing is very good), with many different locations... the scene(s?) in the catacombs are very good.
- The film is full of Lee Wilson's digital effects and Sergio Stivaletti's effects.
- The witches are very, very sexy!
- There is one of Dario's most striking shots in his whole career, a 4 minute and 10 second sequence without cuts (?) when Asia's character is entering an old house.

Unfortunately, it's not all good news. The rumours of the film being cut by distributor Medusa Film are apparently true, and Nick from Dark Dreams has warned fans to expect a film that "will not be Dario's original vision". I just pray (not literally, of course) that a version that does represent what he wanted to make eventually sees the light of day on DVD.

The latest HD image quality rankings

It's been well over a month since I last posted by list of image quality grades for high definition titles, so I thought it would make sense to do it just now, while there seems to be something of a lull in other news worth posting.

Note that I've made a slight change to the rankings. From now on, if a title is available on both HD DVD and Blu-ray, and is known to have an identical encode, it will be listed under both. Broadly speaking, the same encodes have been used in every country of release, provided the same company owns the rights, but this is not always the case (for example with Casino Royale, where different edits necessitate different masters for different territories, or Serenity, where the UK release features a slightly more detailed transfer than its US counterpart).

10/10

• Corpse Bride (Warner, USA, HD DVD/Blu-ray)
• Casino Royale (Sony Pictures, USA, Blu-ray)
• Serenity (Universal, UK, HD DVD)
• Serenity (Universal, USA, HD DVD)
• Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire (Warner, UK, HD DVD)
• The Descent (Lions Gate, USA, Blu-ray)

9/10

• King Kong (Universal, UK, HD DVD)
• Babel (Universal, USA, HD DVD)
• Looney Tunes: Rabbit Hood (Warner, USA, HD DVD)*
• Children of Men (Universal, USA, HD DVD)
• A Scanner Darkly (Universal, USA, HD DVD/Blu-ray)
• The Bourne Supremacy (Universal, USA, HD DVD)
• The Adventures of Robin Hood (Warner, USA)
• Miami Vice (Universal, USA, HD DVD)
• Resident Evil: Apocalypse (Sony Pictures, USA, Blu-ray)
• Casablanca (Warner, USA, HD DVD)
• Kiss Kiss Bang Bang (Warner, UK, HD DVD/Blu-ray)

8/10

• Silent Hill (Sony Pictures, USA, Blu-ray)
• Kingdom of Heaven (20th Century Fox, USA, Blu-ray)
• Constantine (Warner, USA, HD DVD)
• Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow (Paramount, USA, HD DVD)
• The Devil's Rejects (Lions Gate, USA, Blu-ray)
• Unleashed (Universal, USA, HD DVD)
• Red Dragon (Universal, USA, HD DVD)
• Looney Tunes: Robin Hood Daffy (Warner, USA, HD DVD)*
• Land of the Dead (Universal, USA, HD DVD)
• V for Vendetta (Warner, USA, HD DVD)
• The Machinist (Toshiba, Japan, HD DVD)
• Sleepy Hollow (Paramount, USA, HD DVD)
• Million Dollar Baby (Warner, USA, HD DVD/Blu-ray)
• Flightplan (Buena Vista, USA, Blu-ray)
• Batman Begins (Warner, UK, HD DVD)
• Van Helsing (Universal, UK, HD DVD)

7/10

• Wolf Creek (The Weinstein Company, USA, HD DVD)
• The Exorcism of Emily Rose (Sony Pictures, UK, Blu-ray)
• Tears of the Sun (Sony Pictures, UK, Blu-ray)
• Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas (Universal, USA, HD DVD)
• The Mummy Returns (Universal, USA, HD DVD)
• Charlie and the Chocolate Factory (Warner, USA, HD DVD)

6/10

• Chicago (Buena Vista, USA, Blu-ray)
• Enemy of the State (Buena Vista, USA, Blu-ray)
• Perfume: The Story of a Murderer (Constantin Film, Germany, HD DVD)
• Fantastic Four (20th Century Fox, UK, Blu-ray)
• Lara Croft: Tomb Raider (Paramount, USA, HD DVD)
• Hostel (Sony Pictures, UK, Blu-ray)
• An American Werewolf in London (Universal, USA, HD DVD)
• Brokeback Mountain (Universal, USA, HD DVD)
• Troy (Warner, UK, HD DVD)
• Basic Instinct (Studio Canal, France, HD DVD)

5/10

• District B13 (Magnolia, USA, Blu-ray)

4/10

• American Psycho (Lions Gate, USA, Blu-ray)

* Found on the The Adventures of Robin Hood HD DVD.

DVD image comparison: The Girl Who Knew Too Much

I've put together a DVD image comparison, pitting the new Anchor Bay edition of The Girl Who Knew Too Much, found in The Mario Bava Collection Volume 1, with the older, out of print Image Entertainment release.

I've seen a couple of reviews describing the new transfer as a marked improvement on the old one, but I'm not sure why. The same master has clearly been used for both, although the Anchor Bay version has been subjected to some DVNR (digital video noise reduction). This has the result of cleaning up some of the more distracting damage on what was admittedly a very rough-looking print, but at the same time it also freezes the grain patterns, resulting in an image that, overall, looks more "fake" and digital than its predecessor. There's also a smidge more edge enhancement on the AB transfer.

Both discs feature pretty much the same audio and subtitles - the Image track is 1.0 mono, whereas the AB track is 2.0 dual mono, but this ultimately results in no appreciable difference. Like most gialli, The Girl Who Knew Too Much was shot with the actors speaking English and then post-dubbed. As a result, the Italian dialogue doesn't match the lip movements of the actors on screen. However, because the Italian and American cuts of the film are so different, matching up the English audio to the Italian cut would probably not have been feasible. In any event, it seems that rights issues have prevented the American version, entitled The Evil Eye, from being included on this disc, and those legal problems probably extend to the audio.

The clear winner, in terms of extras, is the AB release. The Tim Lucas commentary is excellent, and the John Saxon interview, while brief, is enlightening and entertaining. The Image disc does have a couple of filmographies not found on the AB release, but I doubt anyone will mourn their absence.

The Girl Who Was DVNR'd Too Much

My copy of The Mario Bava Collection Volume 1 arrived yesterday. Unfortunately, I didn't get a chance to go through it in depth (that probably won't happen till the holiday on Friday, or perhaps Thursday night), although I did rip the Tim Lucas commentary on The Girl Who Knew Too Much to my MP3 player, and listened to it today at work (which I can do when I'm doing data entry and licking stamps - it's a little harder to do when I'm on the phone to someone!). It's a solid, very interesting track and well worth listening to, although I don't think it's quite on the same level as the track on Blood and Black Lace, the only other Lucas commentary I've heard (to date). I'm a big fan of his style of mixing factual information about the cast and crew members, and the production, with his and other critics' interpretations some of the key elements in the films he discusses, and it's a format that I personally try to emulate in my (admittedly inferior) fan commentaries. (Speaking of which, I'd really like to do another of these one day, if I ever get the time.) There are quite a few blank spots in this track, in comparison with that of Blood and Black Lace, although it's possible that these only jumped out at me because I was listening to the audio without any visuals.

I've also had a look at the presentation of the disc itself. I must say that I really like the menus Anchor Bay have gone for with this, and presumably the other discs in the set. They're static and clearly laid out, but stylist and well-designed, with music from the film in question playing in the background. As far as the transfer is concerned, I get the impression that Anchor Bay have used the same rather tattered print that was the source of the old Image Entertainment DVD. I've no idea whether or not a more pristine source exists, but, to tell you the truth, I've always considered print damage to be a far less obnoxious artefact than the variety of types of digital interference that can be added at DVD level. The latter applies to this new transfer, which has been heavily noise reduced, presumably in an attempt to conceal the admittedly at times severe print damage, as well as slightly edge enhanced. The result is a transfer that looks superficially superior, and will probably fool a lot of the online review sites, but which in my opinion is not as good as its predecessor. I personally believe that restorations should either be done by hand (i.e. manually "painting out" individual instances of damage) or not at all. The film now looks a little too false and processed, at least based on the scenes I looked at. I'll give it a closer look when I get the chance, and will of course do a full image comparison, probably at the weekend, but for the time being, my judgement is that I prefer the Image disc for its presentation of the film itself, but prefer the new Anchor Bay disc for its excellent commentary.

April 1st Criterion extravaganza

The Criterion Collection, a continuing series of important classic and contemporary films, has just announced the addition of several extremely prestigious titles to their ever-growing library. Why, there's Problem Child, Manos: The Hands of Fate, Crossroads: A Britney Spears Tale, and even Road Trip! With prices ranging from $39.99 to $79.99, this is clearly an exclusive range, so which one will you be purchasing first?

DVDs I bought or received in the month of March

• Asterix and the Vikings (R2 UK, DVD)
• Casino Royale (RA USA, Blu-ray)
• Children of Men (R0 USA, HD DVD)
• The Devil's Rejects (RA USA, Blu-ray)
• District B13 (RA USA, Blu-ray)
• Perfume: The Story of a Murderer (R0 Germany, HD DVD)
• Peter Pan: Platinum Edition (R1 USA, DVD)
• Resident Evil: Apocalypse (RA USA, Blu-ray)

It occurs to me that I haven't received a a single standard definition DVD that I've actually paid for in over a month - Peter Pan and Asterix and the Vikings were review copies. This is a trend that I expect will continue in the foreseeable future: broadly speaking, I feel less and less compelled to actually pay money for standard definition titles. Obviously, it's a different story with something obscure like the Bava box set I ordered earlier this week, which I know is unlikely to come out in high definition in the near future, if at all, but by and large, I'm finding myself with increasingly little desire to buy mainstream titles on DVD.

HD happenings

This morning, I received a copy of the Korean Blu-ray release of Casino Royale from YesAsia. The Korean release, as you may be aware, is, unlike the US version, supposed to be uncensored. Warning lights should have gone off immediately when the disc booted in English and with exactly the same audio and subtitle configurations as the US disc I already own, and a brief glance at the black and white bathroom beating which opens the film confirmed my worst fears: whatever the state of the theatrical and standard definition DVD releases of the film in Korea, the Blu-ray version is the same butchered PG-13 rated cut released in America. Actually, it's the exact same disc, right down to the "Made in the USA" text on the label. Naturally, I'll be selling one of them as soon as possible.

Needless to say, I would still like to get my hands on an uncut copy of the film, but I won't be doing so until I've had explicit confirmation that a version exists on Blu-ray that hasn't fallen foul of the scissors of either the MPAA, the BBFC or the FSK (the body in charge of film and video ratings in Germany, who also saw fit to interfere with Casino Royale). Of course, the real culprit in all this mess is Sony for insisting on low age ratings, but, having seen the film in both its cut and uncut states, I have to say that I find the censors' editorial decisions to be rather silly. I mean, how can a shot of a bad guy grabbing Eva Green's leg elevate the film from PG-13 to R territory?

Je suis pissé, as the French would say.

There's better news all round for the HD DVD camp, however. After a slow few months, sales figures are continuing to rise. Cue the Blu-ray camp once again claiming that the Amazon.com sales figures are meaningless - funny how the boot was on the other foot a couple of weeks ago when the Blu crew had a clear lead. Meanwhile, I received a review copy of the HD DVD/DVD combo release of Children of Men, and I'm pleased to report that it features an excellent transfer and a top notch audio mix (only Dolby Digital-Plus 5.1, no TrueHD, but I doubt many people will complain when they hear it). In fact, I'd go so far as to place them both in the lower 10/10 band, or at the very least upper 9/10. The film is brilliant too. I wanted to see this when it was on at the cinema, but, as is usually the case, I never got around to going. Watching it in high definition with an excellent transfer on Lyris's brand new 5.1 setup is, I suppose, the next best thing. I highly recommend checking it out if you get the opportunity, although a glance at the DVD side of this combo release reveals that the standard definition transfer is, erm, not very good.

A big box of Bava

To celebrate my final day of freedom (I start a full-time job tomorrow - eek!), I decided to head over to DVD Pacific and pre-order the upcoming The Mario Bava Collection Volume 1 box set, released by Anchor Bay on April 3rd. This five-disc set includes Black Sunday, Black Sabbath, The Girl Who Knew Too Much, Knife of the Avenger and Kill, Baby... Kill!, three of them with commentaries by famed Bava scholar Tim Lucas. I already have the old Image Entertainment DVD of The Girl Who Knew Too Much, and a copy of Black Sunday, but I have nothing against picking up new versions of them, especially with the addition of commentaries and, hopefully, improved transfers. DVD Savant has posted a review of the set, and it sounds like a top-notch release. I know that Dark Sky Films had their own version of Kill, Baby... Kill! due for release until it was suddenly and mysteriously pulled, and that it featured a Tim Lucas commentary not included on this Anchor Bay version, but I'm not sure I want to scour eBay in the hope of finding one of the few rare review copies that made it out before the cancellation delay.

Update, March 27th, 2007 08:27 PM: As Tim Lucas points out, the Dark Sky release has not officially been cancelled, merely delayed with no current new release date.

Perfume: The Story of Rampant Filtering

About a week ago, I ordered a copy of the recent German HD DVD release of Perfume: The Story of a Murderer from Amazon.de. It's the latest film from Tom Tykwer, and it tells the story of a young man who, driven to create the perfect perfume, starts knocking off young ladies. As you can probably guess, it's somewhat different from Run Lola Run, the film for which Tykwer is best known. For one, it's a period drama set in 1700s France, and as such doesn't have any insane video game/music video editing and visual styling (although it does have some pretty whacked out moments). Anyway, it arrived today, and it's basically a watchable enough film, although heavily flawed. It's both over-long and tonally very inconsistent, and suffers from a rather underwhelming performance by the lead, Ben Whishaw. I wouldn't call it a must-have by any means, but I found it rather intriguing, and it certainly makes a change from the Men & Guns type of films that tend to be released on both high definition formats.

Unfortunately, despite some positive advance word, I have to report that the transfer is rather disappointing. While I was watching it, I thought it looked rather soft and underwhelming, but fairly watchable. Some distracting noise reduction artefacts are apparent, but no problems with the compression. Then, I switched to the extras menu and selected the theatrical trailer, which is presented in full 1080p high definition (a feature that more HD DVD titles need to have). One word: wow. The trailer looks so much better - so much crisper and better defined - that it blows away the transfer of the film itself. I'm really getting sick of this. It happened all the time with standard definition DVDs (The Lord of the Rings films being particularly egregious examples), but I really would have expected better from studios producing high definition content. There's no excuse for it apart from plain old stupidity. Seriously, if the transfer of the film had looked like that of the trailer, it would have been a 10/10 easily, perhaps even knocking Casino Royale and Corpse Bride off their respective thrones. As it is, though, this is a very low 6/10 and a very high disappointment.

The Blue Underground Syndrome

Source: Dark Discussion

We've not heard much from cult DVD producers Blue Underground recently, barring a few Argento and Fulci re-releases, with news so quiet that many people began to speculate that the company might be on the verge of folding. On a recent webcast interview at Deadpit.com, however, head honcho Bill Lustig let slip some morsels of information, the tastiest of which was the news that the company plans to release a 2-disc special edition of The Stendhal Syndrome, Dario Argento's best film of the last two decades, in August. For Region 1-restricted American fans especially, who currently have to make do with Troma's monstrosity, this is huge news. For the more fortunate, a good but not brilliant 2-disc release has been available from Italy since late 2003, but even so I'll be all over this if Lustig and co are able to deliver on the bonus content, and perhaps even issue a better transfer.

Of course, if they don't include the superior Italian dub (which features Asia Argento's own voice) then I would personally consider the disc more or less worthless, as the film is incredibly painful to watch in English (and is also missing a couple of minutes of footage only found in the Italian print). Blue Underground were kind enough to include Italian audio for their 2005 2-discer of The Bird with the Crystal Plumage, and also for Paolo Cavara's The Black Belly of the Tarantula, but it must be said that, as far as including Italian audio is concerned, their track record isn't all that great. Still, here's hoping.

Stay tuned for more information as it becomes available.

Mother of Scissors

Source: Dark Discussion

According to a news post on Dario Argento's Profondo Rosso shop web site, The Third Mother's distributor, Medusa, have not only delayed the film's release date to October 31st (so they can have a Halloween-themed advertising campaign), but are also demanding cuts to the film's more violent scenes and effects. This sort of thing truly beggars belief. Did Medusa seriously think that the sequel to Suspiria and Inferno wouldn't be violent? What is the point of this? This isn't even a censor attempting to cut things, just a bunch of meddling executives sticking their oar in.

I suppose the best course of action right now is to hope that the news becomes widespread and a backlash from angry fans convinces Medusa to rethink their decision. Failing that, we can only hope that it will eventually surface in an uncut form on DVD. This really is the story of Argento's career, isn't it? Something tells me that something is seriously wrong with the way people think when Pelts can be screened on American television without any cuts, but what has got to be one of the most highly-anticipated sequels of all time for the Euro-cult crowd looks set to be butchered at the whims of a bunch of people in suits.

So who's in on this HD DVD thang?

With no new HD DVD releases in the US until near the end of the month, it's sometimes a little tempting to think that Toshiba and their buddies have forgotten about us (and this is not help by the jeering of the Blu-ray fanboys, who seem to be in high spirits about the fact that Amazon has a Blu-ray sale on, which is causing titles to fly off the shelves). Therefore, this post is for any HD DVD-only people who are currently feeling a little down in the dumps. This morning, I came across a link to a PowerPoint presentation with Toshiba's name plastered all over it, presumably intended as a morale booster for current HD DVD partners, as well as an advertisement for any companies considering joining the party. Anyway, it gives some rather insteresting details regarding the state of the format at the moment, and what we can expect in the next year or so.

HD DVD supporting hardware manufacturers:
Toshiba
Onkyo
Meridian
Shinco
RCA
Jiankui
Liteon
Alco
Microsoft
Hewlett-Packard
Acer
LG
Fujitsu-Siemens
Samsung
Alpine
NEC
Broadcom

HD DVD encoding partners:
Toshiba
Microsoft
Memory-Tech
DTS
Dolby
Ulead
Sonic
Plasmon
Datarius
Singulus Technologies

HD DVD authoring and disc replicators:
Imagion
CMC
Digital Media Production
DVDPartners
Infinia
Deluxe Digital Studios
Technicolor
Sonopress
Cinram
MPO
QOL
Duplico

HD DVD supporting distributors:
Paramount
Universal
Warner
Eagle Rock
DVD International
Studio Canal
Pathé
France Télévisions Distribution
LCJ
Wild Side Video
2 Entertain
Imagion
EMS
Universum Film
Kinowelt
Nixbu
Opus Arte
SPV
Optimum
Momentum
Twister
ILC
PIAS
Filmax
DeAPlaneta
Sandre Metronome
Cecchi Gori
Contantin Film
Concorde
Inakustik

Projected number of titles by end of 2007:
UK/Ireland: 250
France: 270
Germany/Austria/Switzerland: 250
Spain: 180
Italy: 170
Benelux: 200
Nordic countries: 200

If you have PowerPoint, I strongly urge you to check out the full document. It's full of lots of interesting information about available and upcoming hardware and titles, including a lot of stuff that, to the best of my knowledge, hasn't been replicated elsewhere. For instance, did you know that Wild Side Video in France (I think) is planning to release Pan's Labyrinth on HD DVD in April?

And yes, that's right, Samsung are getting on board the HD DVD gravy train, at least as far as laptops are concerned. Perhaps this is a direct result of Sony throwing them under the bus last year during the whole Blu-ray image quality debacle?