Artificial Eye / Curzon Film World

[fdm]

(Cute with the double post, and doubly sad as well, since mine's already on the way. Think that as well as cutting down some, I'll hold off longer too from now on.)

[McCrutchy]

That (the double post) was a happy accident.

[AidanKing]

Artificial Eye appear to have decided to release Xavier Beauvois' The Guardians on DVD only. I wonder what criteria they are taking into account in making the decisions on which films to release on BluRay: presumably not visual ones in this case at least.

I imagine it's purely commercial considerations, so AE appear to be going down a different route from, for example, Arrow, who are generally releasing archive titles on BluRay only now and are sometimes even releasing new titles (such as Loznitsa's A Gentle Creature) on BluRay only too.

[Aunt Peg]

Artificial Eye appear to have decided to release Xavier Beauvois' The Guardians on DVD only. I wonder what criteria they are taking into account in making the decisions on which films to release on BluRay: presumably not visual ones in this case at least.

I imagine it's purely commercial considerations, so AE appear to be going down a different route from, for example, Arrow, who are generally releasing archive titles on BluRay only now and are sometimes even releasing new titles (such as Loznitsa's A Gentle Creature) on BluRay only too.

I'll be purchasing the US Blu Ray from Music Box of The Guardians. Such a great looking film deserves nothing less than the Blu Ray treatment.

[colinr0380]

Jupiter's Moon was another film that they rather strangely decided to release DVD only recently too.

[Caligula]

New pre-orders are up for The House That Jack Built, Disobedience, Dogman and Cold War. Links are for BD's, but pre-orders for DVDs are all available as well

[Skrmng Skll Th Thd]

Has the Jean Vigo set suddenly been pushed back a full year, or am I just now now noticing the "2019" at the amazon listing? Blu-ray dot com still lists the date as "2018" and I can't find any info on Curzon's own site.

[reaky]

For any UK members near a Fopp store, they currently have the AE Louis Malle set for £30.

[Ogre Kovacs]

I recently purchased The Aki Kaurismäki Collection blu ray and watched Calamari Union today. I noticed that there were no opening titles on the screen. The disc subtitles would appear (for example "Villealfa Films Presents" or "Written and Directed by") to translate non existent words. Anyone else have the set and seeing similar things? I cannot believe it is a specific disc error, but have not found any reviews commenting on this. Thanks.

[Adam X]

I don't remember from seeing the film a few years back, but YouTube has two different versions. Likely they used a clean version and no one noticed the absence.
With titles
Without

[Calvin]

3 years after turning down Arrow's advances, Artificial Eye are finally releasing Krzysztof Kieślowski's A Short Film About Killing and A Short Film About Love on Blu-Ray this April 8th.

[Kauno]

Why not a double feature?

[domino harvey]

[Never Cursed]

For whatever reason, I thought you hated Dekalog, domino

[MichaelB]

Why not a double feature?

To expand on Domino’s reply, why a double feature? These are two of the more lucrative back-catalogue cash cows that Artificial Eye has access to at a time when physical media sales are dwindling rapidly - so what sensible reason would they have to effectively give one of the titles away?

[dda1996a]

For whatever reason, I thought you hated Dekalog, domino

If Domino hates Dekalog I can finally make up my mind whether to trust his opinions or not

[domino harvey]

For whatever reason, I thought you hated Dekalog, domino

I think the one with the father and daughter is a masterpiece and the one with the stamps is okay, don't care for the rest. Kim K here was Artificial Eye's end goal, not me ponying up!

[domino harvey]

For whatever reason, I thought you hated Dekalog, domino

If Domino hates Dekalog I can finally make up my mind whether to trust his opinions or not

I'm well aware I'm in the minority on these films, but you can trust my opinions in as much as they are legitimately mine. If I don't like the same things you like and vice versa, I could hardly be offended if you were to dismiss my takes on films you haven't seen yet!

[dda1996a]

I merely jest of course. And we've obviously disagreed before, lately regarding Inaritu. Im interested in reading what you don't like about this though. Probably my favorite series of all time.

[phoenix474]

Knowing AE's reputation I was a little iffy getting about getting the Varda set from them. To my surprise it's actually packaged very nicely (despite the infuriating spine situation that AE releases have) and the first two discs look magnificent. You could take the Cleo disc, change up the menus and draw a wacky C on the cover and it'd work perfectly as a standalone Criterion release.

Might have to get the Kaurismäki set next. They released all the films here in Finland individually on blu-ray, with hefty prices too...

[domino harvey]

Les dames du bois de Boulogne coming to Blu-ray in March

[nitin]

Should be the new 4k restoration so hopefully AE don’t botch the encode or something, I have been wanting to (re)watch this in good quality for a long long time.

[Finch]

Trades are reporting that Cohen in the US have bought Curzon/AE and plan further expansion.

[dda1996a]

Great news! (Judging by being a non - US resident enjoying Cohen's films on Kanopy)

[AidanKing]

Unfortunately, I suspect that the takeover by Cohen is unlikely to be good news and is likely to have the effect of further diminishing the range and quality of foreign-language films that get released in the UK. From the recent advertisements for the considerably-delayed release of 'Parasite', which only mention distribution by Curzon, it looks like the sale might effectively herald the end of Artificial Eye as well, which isn't a surprise as, based on the trade press coverage, it looks as if the press release announcing the news mainly mentioned Curzon and didn't really refer to the, in my opinion, much more significant history of Artificial Eye as a distributor. I only hope that New Wave may have the resources to continue picking up the distribution rights to more radical films, as they appear to be trying to do now, or there is likely to be an increasing number of significant films that fail to get UK distribution at all.

I suppose, on a more positive note, the films released by Curzon in future are less likely to get DVD-only releases if the practice of Cohen in the US is followed.