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

Imagine Tim Robinson shouting into a fast food intercom "6000 COSTUMES, 30,000 WEAPONS, 800 CHARIOTS, 8000 HORSES..."

Arrow Video is putting out a really nice package of both Conan movies (they're also being sold separately) and I'm seriously considering it.

https://www.arrowvideo.com/the-conan-chronicles-conan-the-barbarian-and-conan-the-destroyer-limited-edition-blu-ray/14976087.html

not in the uk. searching for 'conan' turns up 'children of the corn'

Yeah, Arrow doing a lot of North America only releases these days.

They’re essentially handling Universal’s legacy home releases on this front from what I can tell.

lol no

Happy to be wrong. Dr W kind of likes to give the impression.

yeh I bet he does!

https://vinegarsyndrome.com/collections/frontpage/products/little-darlings

Complete with the original theatrical soundtrack!

I got the huge VS Lost Films set for Christmas and have loads of opinions but the overriding one is this is not for normal people. (By which I mean even trying to explain some of what's in it is only possible by invoking other non-mainstream film makers so essentially only in its own language.)

With 2 to watch I genuinely think Rare Blue Apes might be my favourite though.

yeh that set is for people really deep down the rabbit hole!
in "I didn't know they were still going" news, Something Weird is closing down later this year.

It's also for people who aren't scared to say they didn't like things. I actually fell asleep during my first go at the hobo doc and didn't rate it much on the second go, and from limited reviews I'm not the only one (with one person saying they had a third go with the commentary which was worthwhile).

I'll have a go at trying to explain the films later.

in "I didn't know they were still going" news, Something Weird is closing down later this year.

― ( X '____' )/ (zappi), Friday, 5 January 2024 11:57 (one hour ago) link

It's sad! I'm glad I picked up some of their physical releases over the past couple of years, as they've been slowly phasing those out. It seems like they might have some sort of deal with Kino, though (as the latter has been releasing a bunch of SW's old exploitation titles under the Forbidden Fruit banner), so hopefully their font of Weirdness will remain available in some form or another.

I think all these Deaf Crocodile films are region a only
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zca9nCm8McY

https://www.indiewire.com/features/craft/blu-ray-labels-film-history-physical-media-1234950671/

Seems hard to argue against the notion that Vinegar Syndrome has moved right up alongside Kino in terms of the breadth and quality of their output

Would happily agree. Thanks to their partner labels alone I'm usually picking up four or five new releases a month.

I tell myself I have reined in my home video buying frequency (and am shoring up for the spring Criterion flash sale since I've got at least three codes and am pretty close to the $50 credit), but a glance at my shelf of recent acquisitions tells a different tale.

VS's Showgirls was probably the fastest I've preordered a disc, um, I guess ever?

Hahah right there with ya. Can't wait for the Phase IV one.

I know its rights etc. but VS discs are sometimes region free and sometimes Region 1 only.. and it follows no logic or reason across films.

I got around this by buying a multiregion DVD/Bluray player, so now there is no stopping me.

will likely spring for Phase IV for the new cut, but in the UK, shipping is not great unless I go for a few titles at once, and I am still going through my last order.

also now I'm multiregion, teach me about criterion flash sales and where to look for buying a bunch of their stuff to send to UK. ( I dont think they have a UK sale and no criterion channel here either)

Ohhhh, did not know about Phase IV. That is rad.

I would give so much more of my $$$ to these boutiques if they would take a page from Kino's book and occasionally have more for-real deep discount sales. The frankly unnerving volume of Kino titles in my collection is a testament to this.

Tsk, Old Lunch, I revived the thread the other day! :-D

Phase IV

That Indiewire article is great for sure but I would add to it the interesting and kinda more grassroots efforts focusing on silent films in particular, especially now that nearly all of the silent era is in the public domain. (I'm sure the silent movie thread on here has noticed this!) There are boutique labels there as well like Undercrank but also near individual efforts or very limited releases via a lot of Kickstarter efforts, and while some are more dedicated to basic preservation, a lot of them are remarkably good with higher end treatment, notes and supplements, etc. Redwood Films out of France has been really solid about all kinds of horror/horror adjacent titles in particular:

https://www.instagram.com/redwoodcreekfilms/

While Dave Glass's silent-era comedian collections have been awfully good too:

https://www.kickstarter.com/profile/reelcomedy/created

The frankly unnerving volume of Kino titles in my collection is a testament to this.

Now that the Kino imprimatur doesn't automatically mean "dodgy if not outright shitty video transfer" (at least on silent film landmarks), the biggest roadblock I have with them is the seeming total lack of curation. I get people being more completist with a Criterion or an Arrow or a Vinegar Syndrome. But I look at some people's Kino libraries and think, "You can't possibly want/need every single one of those titles ... can you?"

Well, when they do those sales with discs running from $5-10 apiece, and you need to drop $50 on an individual order so you don't get screwed on shipping...an they can't always be all winners.

Yeah, their offerings are all over the place but I've had pretty good luck by doing some research before diving into the sales. I've gotten a ton of great stuff from them that I probably would've never even known about or had a chance to see if they hadn't put out a dirt-cheap Blu-ray of the thing. It probably helps if you have an affinity for both fine cinema and total garbage.

The Big Bus, Moving Violations, and Blind Fury are definitely all winners!

I mean, I consider The Apple a winner so

I enjoy kino's chaotic neutral approach

The Big Bus, Moving Violations, and Blind Fury are definitely all winners!

kinda surprised they haven't released Midnight Madness on Kino yet

I enjoy kino's chaotic neutral approach

Heads up for people buying the Phase IV 4k/blu- the guy at Vinegar Syndrome who reassembled the original cut(s) says that the Saul Bass shorts that VS didn't carry over from the 101 Films UK release are being cleaned up and should be released within the year by another, as yet unnamed label

Kino Lorber March Madness Sale: https://kinolorber.com/collection/march-madness-sale-2024

Deep Discount is doing a BOGO sale on titles from the defunct Olive Films label through Friday. Lots of vintage Hollywood genre films and oddball stuff. Not sure how many of these will get picked up by other boutiques, so this might be one of your last shots at scoring these on disc.

https://www.deepdiscount.com/deep-olive-films-bogo-sale/b233819

Got some things I pre-ordered after Xmas from Radiance today

https://i.imgur.com/PSqkP6D.jpeg

Finally, L'amour fou!

xp I'm surprised Deep Discount has so many left in stock. That company officially closed up shop last summer.

Whew, I thought you meant Deep Discount for a second. Olive, though.....ehhhhh. It's telling that I didn't even notice they were gone. They released a lot of titles I wanted to buy, but their stuff was always overpriced, and their minimal effort, bare-bones discs were always of the late-'90s 'treating an interactive menu as if it's a special feature' variety, so I'm not exactly despondent over the loss.

They might have dumped a bunch of their stock on DD, who are merely one arm of a huge online physical media retail empire (encompassing Critic's Choice Video and Collector's Choice Music amongst others).

I ended up not getting anything from that sale because almost everything I wanted was already backordered.

I buy from Deep Discount pretty regularly, as well as their CD site, import-cds.com.

Yeah, Olive was pretty disappointing. Really wish that wasn’t the case because there aren’t many boutiques and they were even based in Chicago (I passed by their office all the time the short time I lived there) but you could find most of the same titles in better quality with better presentation from UK boutiques. They did up their game with their Signature series but that should have been their baseline.

Olive walked so Kino Lorber Studio Classics could run.

Kino doesn't have their shit together either. They really need to work on their QC. They put out so much stuff, I feel like they rush them out the door without taking the time to check everything over. Their UHD's have been really hit-or-miss for that reason, like the sloppy, quasi-stereo output on the original mono soundtrack on The Manchurian Candidate (the original 1962 film, not the remake) or the massive fuck-up on The Silence of the Lambs. They usually refuse to fix these things when they're called out.

Olive walked (poorly) so Kino Lorber Studio Classics could run (also poorly).

Self-Fix

I want to get the Saul Bass giant ant sci-fi movie blu-ray but it's probably not worth buying a Blu-Ray player just for that

(were they giant? i thought they were normal size)

Them Phase IV Ants

Ha, I don’t know, the poster/cover art I’ve seen made them look huge

Regular sized ants but they make it up in volume.

spoilers, sorry

I want to get the Saul Bass giant ant sci-fi movie blu-ray but it's probably not worth buying a Blu-Ray player just for that

I dunno. I could make a case that Phase IV is the perfect reason to get a Blu-Ray player