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Anyone know how Force of Evil compares to the Olive disc?

Refuse to believe this is anywhere close to selling out. We've been here many times before with Arrow's funky distribution.

Here's Beaver.

From the looks of it, every disc is slightly better, in the way that MOC and Arrow discs always improve on Olive/Kino discs with a more accurate encode, but nothing substantial. The Dark Mirror is the exception, where there is a dramatically better presentation, with more grain and un-squished faces.

TMDaines wrote:Refuse to believe this is anywhere close to selling out. We've been here many times before with Arrow's funky distribution.

Very odd hill to die on, considering Arrow confirmed it is properly sold out from direct sale.

Drucker wrote:Here's Beaver.

From the looks of it, every disc is slightly better, in the way that MOC and Arrow discs always improve on Olive/Kino discs with a more accurate encode, but nothing substantial. The Dark Mirror is the exception, where there is a dramatically better presentation, with more grain and un-squished faces.

Thanks! Toggling back and forth at the screencaps zoomed in at 100%, it looks like the same transfer was used for the Olive and Arrow discs for Force of Evil, but with Arrow, they chose to encode it darker, maybe a half stop or so. I kind of like the darker look, but if you look at the areas where it was already dark on the Olive disc, I'm not sure I would say Olive is "too light" either. (Going darker also brings out the grain more in the light and gray areas.) It may just be a matter of taste. The bit rate on the Arrow disc is quite a big step up from the Olive though, that alone may make it look far better in motion.

Could it be a difference in gamma maybe ? I believe that in the past, like for The Burning, this kind of difference was explained by that.
On the technical matter of things, yes, the darker look of the Arrow makes the grain pops up a bit more because of the stronger contrast.

TMDaines wrote:Refuse to believe this is anywhere close to selling out. We've been here many times before with Arrow's funky distribution.

I reckon so too, but don't really wanna risk it. Had it pre-ordered from Zavvi but they still haven't dispatched despite me ordering over 2 weeks ago now (release date was last Monday). Might have to get it elsewhere if it doesn't shift in the next day or two.

Knowing my impatience though, this will be around for a few more months yet. I remember a similar scare with Dekalog, and look how long that lasted. And there was a similar scare with The Taisho Trilogy more recently, but that's in stock everywhere now, including direct via Arrow.

But in none of those cases did Arrow directly say something was selling out. The Taisho thing was exacerbated by people dimly thinking that the 95% sold out Suzuki set was suppoesd to be the other one, but Arrow stopped providing Academy limited status updates a year ago and have shown no signs of changing that. The Taisho trilogy will remain easily accessible because there's a US release doubling the print size that probably sells slower. This is gone. Arrow said so. If you don't think this set would move far quicker than any of the other Academy sets, you're being misguided.

My order of this and the BFI Rivette Blu from Amazon actually arrived in less than a week via UPS (with cheapest shipping), so even the shipping is quicker than Arrow when buying from Amazon

Placed order on Amazon last night and it already shipped to arrive by December 11...

Ribs wrote:

TMDaines wrote:Refuse to believe this is anywhere close to selling out. We've been here many times before with Arrow's funky distribution.

Very odd hill to die on, considering Arrow confirmed it is properly sold out from direct sale.

Didn't this happen with Dekalog too?

Ribs wrote:But in none of those cases did Arrow directly say something was selling out. The Taisho thing was exacerbated by people dimly thinking that the 95% sold out Suzuki set was suppoesd to be the other one, but Arrow stopped providing Academy limited status updates a year ago and have shown no signs of changing that. The Taisho trilogy will remain easily accessible because there's a US release doubling the print size that probably sells slower. This is gone. Arrow said so. If you don't think this set would move far quicker than any of the other Academy sets, you're being misguided.

Not formally, as in via announcements on Facebook and Twitter; hence my comment that Four Film Noir Classics will likely be a similar situation to Dekalog. Of course, it'll likely sell out quicker than Dekalog being that this is a set of popular noirs, and limited to 2000 copies rather than 3000, but I reckon it'll still hang around far longer than a week or two after release date - it'll do well, but it isn't The Thing, Carrie, Videodrome. It's still an Academy title, and how many of those have gone OOP? Only a few, if memory serves. I don't think it is 'gone' quite yet, just sold out direct, and may come back in stock if they recall excess copies from retailers.

Anyway, my copy should be on its way in the next few days (Zavvi have taken payment) and if they screw up I'll order from Amazon (HMV a last resort). Interesting they haven't made any statements anywhere about the duplicate title fault; some people have been receiving this set with duplicate copies of The Dark Mirror and therefore Force of Evil missing (disc and artwork). Perhaps they're confident enough that only a handful have been affected and therefore no 'public' comment is necessary.

PS: in regards to The Taisho Trilogy, based on this comment from the relevant thread, I think it's safe to say it's still doing pretty well. Maybe not OOP well but glad to hear it's not entirely a misfire. I haven't dug in yet but it's a beautiful set.

In case folks missed the note: this is currently in stock on Amazon.co.uk.

The Arrow website shows this In Stock for £50. (Though it also says Sold Out in the upper corner.)

https://arrowfilms.com/product-detail/f ... at/FCD1627" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

Individual releases planned for June 11th for Force of Evil & The Dark Mirror, and June 25th for The Big Combo & Secret beyond the Door.

Excellent - they're all worth seeing, but the only ones I'd really return to are Force of Evil and maybe The Big Combo which is why I balked at buying the box set.

Volume 3 coming out in August.

I already have the Criterion release of Ride the Pink Horse, so is it worth purchasing this for the other 3 films?

Calcutta is truly awful

I found Calcutta to be lackluster, except for an unusual femme fatale and a fun appearance by Edith King. However, the transfer I saw was murky as hell, so grain of salt. Haven't seen the other two.

yoloswegmaster wrote: ↑

Fri May 26, 2023 9:15 am

Volume 3 coming out in August.

I already have the Criterion release of Ride the Pink Horse, so is it worth purchasing this for the other 3 films?

It depends how much of a stickler you are in your definition of "film noir." The Female Animal is a woman's picture--aging star Hedy Lamarr meets extra George Nader and decides to make him her kept man. Nader struggles with self-respect as a result. Jane Powell then shows up (as Lamarr's adopted daughter) and makes a play for Nader. Is any of this exciting your noir instincts?

The other two are closer in definition to what people usually think of as film noir. Neither is all that great, though.