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

The notion was floated a while back of starting a thread to cover the myriad of non-Criterion boutique physical media distributors, and this bit of (potentially sad? although opinions are divided as to what it actually means) Warner Archive news finally prompted me to undertake the daunting process of clicking 'New Question':

QUE SERA SE-SAVINGS!
2021 is here, and with it comes change. So we and our friends at the Araca Group that manage WBShop wanted to say thank you for your support with a final 4 for 44 sale! Start your lists and get ready to save on the weekend of March 12th, 2021! See you then!

Oh good, that sale's still like three weeks away.

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

https://www.deepdiscount.com/olive-films/b236587

A small and arthouse-centric Kino sale started today alongside Criterion's: https://www.kinolorber.com/list/view/code/feb-brrr-ary-sale_2021

xpost I appreciate the titles that Olive releases but I'm not crazy about the fact that they're mostly bare-bones releases (usually just the film itself).

Agreed. Olive releases tend to make me frustrated Criterion or someone else didn't get them.

Sometimes I stream from Kino Now, does that count?

Weekend before last I watched some Hungarian mind game thriller that I liked, title is really long and hard to remember.

Huh, I didn't even know they had their own streaming service. It seems like a lot of their physical releases wind up streaming on Criterion Channel.

Wait, I misspoke. Kino Lorber does have its own streaming service called Kino Now, but I streamed PREPARATIONS TO BE TOGETHER FOR AN UNKNOWN PERIOD OF TIME from Film Forum.

Really hope that's not really the final Warner Archive sale! I didn't buy that often, but it was a nice thing to have around.

Streaming the latest Philippe Garrel from Film Forum now before it goes away.

xpost My understanding is that WB is parting ways with the company that runs WB Shop. There has been speculation running the gamut from 'so this is just the final 4 for $44 with that particular distributor' to 'so this means that WB is shuttering Warner Archive altogether'. Given that WB often demonstrates the sound business acumen of a downed power line whipping madly across a roadway, the real answer could fall anywhere within that continuum.

I recommend this Philippe Garrel film.

I'm sad about the possible demise of WB Archive but to be honest I could never be bothered with bare bones releases, even if the transfers are very good. Without the contextualization I'd rather just stream it or, in the before times, wait until it hits a repertory cinema.

Can heartily recommend the first volume of Indicator's Columbia Noir boxes. Bought it kinda expecting scraps, but the overall level is actually pretty good, and Drive A Crooked Road might make it on a hypothetical list of my all-time fave noirs.

Second Run is another one to look out for - they specialise in Eastern European cinema, so I end up giving them less of my money than I should because I'm just not very savvy on that topic yet. But a recent release that I loved is Tomorrow I'll Wake Up And Scald Myself With Tea, which is a nazi time travel comedy (!) from Czechoslovakia. Very much official state cinema, not a Czech New Wave kind of thing, but really clever with its time travel conceit; can't think of another movie that uses it so well this side of Back To The Future.

Finally, 88 Films, headed by Nicky Wire in a banana suit, have just had British censors refuse them permission to release a blu-ray for some Italian nazisploitation orgy thing, which is dumb but also very funny if you immediatley think of dude's ilx days.

i've been eyeing up the Second Run dvds for a while now, always meaning to buy more, but i only have the Jancso box.

(and Daisies. but then everyone has Daisies)

I'm sad about the possible demise of WB Archive but to be honest I could never be bothered with bare bones releases, even if the transfers are very good.

Huh. Are the latter regular Warner DVD releases that went OOP?

Some are. They just released Curse of Frankenstein which I think got a crummy snapcase DVD release 20 years ago in the US but was otherwise only ever available in multipacks. The new blu-ray is a two-disc set with the film in three different aspect ratios and a whole lot of new features.

Looking over my recent purchases (Curse, Shop Around the Corner, Meet Me in St. Louis, Best Years of our Lives), only Best Years is fairly stingy with the extras.

Second Run's Goodbye Dragon Inn might be my favorite release of the last year. Or at least my favorite movie that finally got a decent set.

Didn't realise Nicky Wire Bananaman actually ran 88 Films, but did watch one of his documentaries on a release - might have been Massacre In Dinosaur Valley? - so it makes sense.

I have never understood what "nicky wire in a banana suit" means and had no idea he was a poster...is there some reasonable reason his company has that name?

Big Hitler fan and cinephile

One of those more believable than the other.

ugh hitler stans are so annoying

Just did a nostalgic search through thread titles started by his most frequent identity and that was a wild ride. I didn't realise there were just so many of them.

In actually relevant news I went to order that Czech film from Second Run but I can't check out the shopping cart. Oh well.

yeah sorry for derail (also embarrassingly realized I've figured this out before)

still, I would probably avoid releasing nazisploitation movies with that company name

I wasn't having a go except at myself because I thought I was derailing.

there are lots of WB Archives Blu-Rays with extras. Off the top of my head, a couple Michael Curtiz movies (Dodge City + Adventures of Robin Hood) have newsreels, cartoons, short films (by Curtiz!), trailers, and multiple radio broadcasts of the film in question. Usually some contemporary interviews with scholars/critics, too.

Dunno about entire extra films though, I've only ever encountered that with Criterion. They should really emphasize that more imo, I mean the Stranger Than Paradise disc for example: it has Permanent Vacation! That's hardly an extra. Stranger Than Paradise is an extra on that disc!

Gaslight at least has both the 1940 and 1944 versions of the film. I could swear I have at least one other with a bonus film.

But yeah, Criterion (and others who do likewise) should make a bigger deal about that. I bought The Front Page from Kino not realizing that it was included on Criterion's release of His Girl Friday.

Most (if not all) of the Warner Archive Blu extras are ported over from the original DVDs.

The first Gaslight with Anton Walbrook is grebt.

Wow, I had no idea about Gaslight. Yeah, I had the same reaction with His Girl Friday, tbh I didn't even know it had the extra movie when I bought it. I went to watch HGF again like 2 years ago and was like "what's this extra disc...? ...oh..... wtf?!!"

It Happened One Night has a feature length Capra silent (haven't watched yet), and the Stagecoach release has one of the best Ford silents I've seen, Bucking Broadway.

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.

I absolutely loved Troll 2 after getting it as a surprise last year so I'm hoping there's enough in The Wrangler to make it worthwhile - but Human Lanterns is good enough

Pleased that Radiance got around to Jean-Pierre Mocky's Solo and La Tete Contre Les Murs (a Franju film starring Mocky), hadn't heard of the latter but I wonder why they didn't translate the title?

Nothing more entertaining than visiting the multiscreen art cinema and trying to pronounce the film title at the ticket desk

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bQoxSvuIECo

Be A Wicked Woman AKA An Experience to Die For (1990)

Two scorned women agree to kill each other’s husbands, who are guilty of neglect and infidelity. Once things are in motion, events start to spiral out of control.

Made in 1989 and to be released in 1990, An Experience To Die For was directed by iconic director Kim Ki-young. Instead, it was shelved until 1995 when it was put in front of the censorship board again and retitled Be A Wicked Woman. The film itself didn’t premiere until 1998, following Ki-young’s death from a house fire the same year. For the most part, Be A Wicked Woman didn’t gain much traction, slowly disappeared over the years, and never made it out of its home country.

From the director of The Housemaid, Woman Chasing The Butterfly Of Death, and Woman Of Fire comes Ki-young’s last film, with a brand new 2K restoration from the original camera negative is Be A Wicked Woman. Graveface is very proud to release such a wonderful film that has been unavailable for the last couple of decades, with a brand new restoration and bonus features going over the wonderful work of Mr. Kim Ki-young.

Sounds good, The Housemaid is an amazing film but I haven't seen any others he directed

Here's how I rate the region two players right now:

Radiance - The best in the game. Satisfying mix of arthouse, genre cinema and stuff that falls in between. Unbeatable roster of regular extras collaborators.

Eureka - Still doing great stuff within the realms of silent cinema and classic French cinema. The Masters Of Cinema/Eureka Classics distinction is auteurist claptrap anyway, but I do wish they wouldn't put almost every Japanese release no matter how trashy under MoC and almost every Hong Kong release under Classics. In what world are Ringo Lam and Sammo Hung not masters of their craft??

Second Run - Niche, but impeccable taste within that. Wish they did more commentaries.

Arrow - Erratic but they do come out with some bangers. Kinda neat that someone is still putting mainstream modern films into nice editions.

BFI - Solid. Rarely release something that really really excites me but they do good work and predictably are very strong on British cinema.

Criterion - Almost entirely coasting on their rep at this point, really lacking in extras. Every now and then they'll have a classic Hollywood comedy with a David Cairns video essay, otherwise I'm barely paying attention.

Powerhouse/Indicator - Very low quality control when picking titles, infuriating tendency to call any Columbia b movie "noir" by default. The fact they've started releasing classic French commercial cinema is a welcome development tho.

88 Films - Just feels like they mostly release leftovers, stuff that the other boutique labels found too mid.

I think commentaries should be saved for very select occasions, most of the time an interview or essay works better

I love commentaries, great to have going on in the background when you're doing something else.

Just curious, how would you rate Shout/Studio Canal/Kino, if you have an opinion?

A lot of these various editions, they always have some frustrating overlap or lack thereof. Like, one edition will have the (allegedly) better transfer but inferior or less comprehensive special features. Some will have only a few special features but they're really well done, another might have more but they're kind of half-assed. It makes collecting kind of a constant fomo challenge. For example, right now I can get the A Better Tomorrow trilogy box on Shout for around $40 all-in, but they just announced an Arrow version with even more stuff in it for about $10 more ...

A director's commentary track is fun to listen to once. Same for one by the star of the movie, maybe. Commentary tracks by critics should be booklet essays.

Ha, I've got some sets with like 4 commentary tracks. I save them for rainy days.

Oh, and speaking of Woo and Arrow, an amusing tale. I ordered the Killer set some months ago. Turns out the third disc, the extended cut, will do nothing but play. No no pause, no chapters, no fast forward or rewind, nothing, so all you can do is watch it from start to finish in one sitting. I'd always heard that Arrow customer service was notoriously bad, so figured I was screwed, or it wasn't worth the effort, but I saw someone post they got a replacement disc and figured, eh, what the hell. Here's my path to remedy:

Used the Arrow web portal to contact customer service. I get an auto email confirmation that I contacted them. Hear back directly, they ask for details, I explain, they say they'll get right back to me. A couple of days go by so I follow up. Get another auto response, then connect with a different person, they ask for details, I provide them. A couple more days, nothing, so reach out to them a third time, get a third person who asks for even more comprehensive details, including pictures, which I provide. Then nothing. Contact them the next day to follow up, am asked to provide all the same stuff again, which I do, then no further progress. Next day or so, I contact them via Facebook, get a pretty quick response that asks for all the usual (proof of purchase, pictures, etc.). This time they say they'll get a replacement right out to me, and indeed, the next day I get confirmation via email that they are doing so! And then, hilariously, between June 9th and today, I get no less than *13* emails, sometimes multiple a day, tracking the replacement disc's progress, culminating in delivery today. Very entertaining.

Haha, Arrow's costumer support is by all accounts terrible but I've never had to contact them.

Just curious, how would you rate Shout/Studio Canal/Kino, if you have an opinion?

I only own one Kino release - The Gracie Allen Mystery - but love their chaotic neutral attitude to curation, if I lived in the states I'd buy from them more often. StudioCanal tends to do a minimum of extras but usually with good people (Matthew Sweet - no, not that one), also I think it's part of the empire of that big Le Pen supporter who's blackballing anti-fascist actors, capitalism in being evil SHOCKAH I know.

I had a very short period of importing Shout releases, when they were focusing on old timey showbiz - got that Mel Brooks box, the Steve Martin one and a sort of mixtape of old western episodes, all great stuff. They've gone severely downhill though, I mean their handling of the Shaw catalogue vs Arrow's is night and day, the Shawscope sets have careful curation and great features, Shout just slaps a bunch of random films together with no rhyme or reason.

Which leads me to this: would STRONGLY advise going with Arrow over Shout for any Hong Kong stuff, I don't remember all the details but one thing that happened is Shout had a dude with shaky grasp of Cantonese doing the subs, for free, using AI. When confronted on a blu ray forum he basically went "no one cares about the dialogue in action flicks anyway", so that's the level of care invested in the work. Arrow meanwhile work with Dylan Cheung, who is a real one.

A director's commentary track is fun to listen to once. Same for one by the star of the movie, maybe. Commentary tracks by critics should be booklet essays.

Strong disagree. Film is a visual medium and commentary tracks allow the viewer to SEE what the critic is talking about, so they offer possibilities for formal analysis that doesn't work anywhere near as well in booklet form (many booklet essays should have been commentaries!). It is sadly true though that most critics fail to take advantage of that and just go through the film's production history.

Commentaries featuring those involved, meanwhile...there's some good ones but most are just PR fluff, particularly if the film is recent.

A director's commentary track is fun to listen to once. Same for one by the star of the movie, maybe. Commentary tracks by critics should be booklet essays.

Video essays and interviews with smartly chosen clips are much better because they can do it at leisure and get everything in without worrying about all the scenes that might overtake their ability to keep up. I can watch Tony Rayns talk for 40 minutes easily.

A pet hate in bonus features is when they cut away from the interviews to show you something you probably just seen before the bonus features.

Don't immediately have examples but I've been noticing Tony Rayns often provides inaccurate or outdated info, you get a little lazy when you've been top of the heap in your area of expertise for that long I guess.

It's always amusing when somewhere in the extras someone says "a common misconception about this movie is that...", comprehensively debunks it, and then a different bonus feature just obliviously reproduces the debunked thung.

Video essays and interviews with smartly chosen clips are much better because they can do it at leisure and get everything in without worrying about all the scenes that might overtake their ability to keep up. I can watch Tony Rayns talk for 40 minutes easily.

Select scene commentary is I guess the compromise there, been seeing that around more. Def feel there's a value to more sustained analysis that video essays and interview clips can't provide.

I remember reading (and discussing on ILX) the subtitle/translation controversy re: Shout vs Arrow. But I've seen the Shout Hard Boiled and it seemed fine to me.

somewhat moot since the new art for these things is _very_ rarely better than the original stuff but the arrow artwork has also been nicer imo

But I've seen the Shout Hard Boiled and it seemed fine to me.

Assuming you don't speak Cantonese...how would you be able to tell?

I really like critical commentary tracks! I very nearly wept when it dawned on me that certain AU domestic DVDs were now out of print (and perhaps starting to fall out of public collections, even) before I'd heard all the corresponding commentary tracks from Adrian Martin et al.

early laserdisc/dvd commentaries could be wild, you'd get people turning up drunk & having arguments, telling all sorts of stories as if no one but those in the room would hear them. bring those ones back!

(XP) Amusingly, Martin's own musings on commentary tracks apparently "aroused the most violently aggressive responses of probably anything I've ever written" lol.

the new arrow Stranger Things is a bit of a puzzle to me. Troy also.

Assuming you don't speak Cantonese...how would you be able to tell?

Well, no translation is a perfect 1:1, there are always choices that have to be made. Setting that aside, though, the grammar was by and large solid and made sense, no strange gibberish or glaring errors; I'm so used to weird/bad subtitle stuff, especially in Asian cinema. As to the accuracy, there is no way I would ever be able to tell, no two translations will ever be the same. I mean, there are different editions of Shakespeare, and that's in (more or less) English!

I do prefer the Tony Stella (RIP) are of the Arrow editions, though.

The Stranger Things box is I think there to appeal to collectors who love dumb gimmicks. Sadly there's an audience for that type of thing. Agreed it'd be a deranged thing to actually buy to watch tho, it was made to be halfwatched and at any rate will be on netflix forever.

Troy makes more sense, there's a following for it (not me!) and no one else is gonna do it.

i don't and never will netflix. kinda tempted by the dvds tbh, but would like it in more affordable chunks

it's more the modernity of it that i thought was odd. and the tv series aspect.

but if it funds other, weirder things then I've no complaints

we were talking about criterion recently (virtual cupboard?) and i realised i have very few. but the few i have are some of my favourite physical things - zatoichi set and the lone wolf and cub set.

generally expensive though.

Well, no translation is a perfect 1:1, there are always choices that have to be made. Setting that aside, though, the grammar was by and large solid and made sense, no strange gibberish or glaring errors; I'm so used to weird/bad subtitle stuff, especially in Asian cinema. As to the accuracy, there is no way I would ever be able to tell, no two translations will ever be the same. I mean, there are different editions of Shakespeare, and that's in (more or less) English!

Well, part of the problem is that if you're using AI you are not making choices! The actual work of translation, making those choices, is no longer in your hands.

I had assumed the grammar would be ok, I mean, that's really setting expectations low, but Hong Kong cinema is full of cultural specificities that demand a native speaker for a competent translation. And sure, historically we've had terrible subtitles. We've also had terrible transfers! But now we have labels making these ultra expensive collector's editions, and I think it's batshit not to demand more from those than we would from a grey market DVD.

Having done a master's in translation I am acutely aware that no two translations are ever alike - different individuals use different strategies to arrive at what they perceive to be the ideal translation, which means negotiating a plethora of factors (space, grammar, cultural equivalence, poetics). An unpaid non speaker using AI isn't doing any of that, and frankly I think that's insulting not just to translation as a profession but also to the movies themselves and the culture they come from.

i don't and never will netflix. kinda tempted by the dvds tbh, but would like it in more affordable chunks

Everything I've heard is that it's a terrible show with every piece of info repeated five times because they know streaming audiences aren't watching with any level of attention - or at least that this is what it turned into a few seasons in. But at any rate I fear the audience for wanting to check out a tv show that you've never actually seen before and that is widely available on streaming is miniscule, the box is for fans (who prob also won't watch it, it's more of a funko pop).

135 quid is one HUGE funko pop

Yup, but that appears to be the way the market's going!

One thing that's caught my eye about the translation controversy is that the Shout and Arrow Hard Boiled and Killer sets are both available, and I am positive many people have both, but I have yet to see someone compare the translations, or at least demonstrate how one is better than or preferable to the other. And one may be! And I definitely think the translations should be done with care and accuracy. But in this case, I'd love to see a clear example.

(I'm honestly not even clear, based on that one forum discussion, what the problem is with the Shout subtitles, exactly. Iirc the translations weren't strictly AI, they were made with the help of AI (if that is a distinction) and then run past a native speaker for clarification. Or not! I remain confused, lol.)

It's kind of like transfers, too, at this point. Which is the "correct" one? Criterion has a new 4K of "Point Blank," and there were people that complained it looked wrong or, worse, was not how they remembered it (how many decades ago?). But the restoration team had been provided with a reference print from the WB archives, so ...

Or think about all the director/DP approved editions of transfers that are radically different from release to release. People have all sorts of issues with the Wong Kar Wai set - the color, the translations, even the credits, iirc - and he oversaw it. Or the "Godfather" 4Ks, which Coppola handled, and which differ from the Gordon Willis approved ones.

Well, the twitter thread where Dylan Cheung points out the inaccuracies in the Hard Boiled disc is sadly deleted, but here's an example of what the same person did on fellow Hong Kong classic City Of Fire:

I clarified in a reply to someone somewhere that my main issues were with style/tone and how the people doing the subs aren't fluent. The lack of fluency actually impacts the former because there's things they guess or make assumptions about. There aren't any overt mistranslations in City on Fire except for the interrogation scene when Roy Cheung is handed the bag full of money. The guy says that everything in the bag he's handing to Cheung was found on Chow Yun-fat's person. The subtitler, not being fluent, believes the guy is saying I'm giving you everything that was found in the bag in the locker. It's not grammatically possible to make this mistake unless you don't completely understand what's being said and had to guess from the parts you can. It's also poor comprehension of what's happening in the movie because the bag in the locker doesn't have money in it. I'd also argue the nickname of the Elvis Tsui character is a mistranslation because 'low-life' is a slur while his original nickname is not.

So these aren't big problems, one might say. But I think they highlight the kinds of errors that can come up when you don't have a fluent human taking care of things.

(I'm honestly not even clear, based on that one forum discussion, what the problem is with the Shout subtitles, exactly. Iirc the translations weren't strictly AI, they were made with the help of AI (if that is a distinction) and then run past a native speaker for clarification. Or not! I remain confused, lol.)

I don't think any of these details matter, really. Was the native speaker a professional translator? Did they have access to the original? If the answers to both of those are "yes", why not get then to do it? Like I know enough Italian to kinda sorta understand what people are saying - if I used AI to fill in the blanks of the stuff I don't get and then had an Italian speaker review my work...well, that would be an insane working method and I can guarantee the results would not be equal to those of a translator actually fluent in Italian.

It's kind of like transfers, too, at this point. Which is the "correct" one? Criterion has a new 4K of "Point Blank," and there were people that complained it looked wrong or, worse, was not how they remembered it (how many decades ago?). But the restoration team had been provided with a reference print from the WB archives, so

There absolutely is not a platonically "correct" transfer, you're usually trying to get as close to the original as possible but even that is complicated by the fact that obviously a cinema screen in the 60's will look different than now, imo there are just transfers that look good and transfers that don't. That being said if the pitch was "I had AI restore this print and then had a cinematographer take a look" that's one edition I wouldn't buy. :)

I recommend Franju/Mocky's La Tete Contre Les Murs. I didn't realize that Eureka had previously released this on dvd.
I hope the Mocky releases keep coming.
I know Eyes Without A Face but does anyone here rate any Franju like Judex, Spotlight On A Murderer or anything else?

Saw Judex at the BFI once, tons of fun.

I agree that good grammar is a low bar, but I (like most of you) have seen dozens and dozens of subtitled films, hundreds, whatever the number is, and aside from good grammar and the lack of typos or whatever, I can't think of any examples of poor translations that impacted my enjoyment. But then again, when it comes to really specific nuance, I'm not sure how I would ever know! Iirc some people brought up nicknames in The Killer. Shrimp head, or something, vs. Mickey Mouse? Something like that. At some point the nuance might/will be lost on me, because even if it was a more accurate translation, I lack a comprehensive enough understanding of the culture for it to make any real difference. Especially in a John Woo film, lol.

AI is bullshit, of course, and automating these processes are no or at least a poor, lazy substitute for human input. But we've had decades of movies with hit or miss translations already, and none of those used AI at all. The more eyeballs on things the better, but machines and people are both if not equally than potentially prone to imperfection. I think about how spellcheckers can't catch homonymns, it takes a human to catch that.

Now, AI-automated DNR, that sort of stuff people catch in transfers all the time. Weird distorted faces, gibberish words on signs, that sort of thing. Translations ... I think it's a trickier slipper slope, especially when it comes to words or phrases or languages that just don't lend themselves well to precise translation.

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?

Read Hofstadter's Le Ton Beau de Marot

It's a question of trust, you're accepting that this translation is probably accurate and of course if you don't speak the language you'll be none the wiser but believe me if you DO seeing bad translations is maddening. So I welcome the chance to vote with my money.

This Shout kerfuffle is literally the only time I've ever heard anyone even mention subtitles when it comes to boutique releases and the fact that it was intense enough to get Arrow to procure alternative ones is I think a net good: in the future labels will tread more carefully and consider paying their damn translators.

At some point the nuance might/will be lost on me, because even if it was a more accurate translation, I lack a comprehensive enough understanding of the culture for it to make any real difference. Especially in a John Woo film, lol.

Sure, but this is part of the joy of exploring a foreign nation's cinema, the fact that the more you watch the more attuned you will be to the cultural subtelties. If the translator's doing good work you will eventually get used to, and understand, linguistic and slang nuances...not all of them, of course.

That's for sure where commentaries often come in, providing context that I/we might miss. They can kind of work like footnotes and annotations.

I think "trust" is the right word here, not just in the accuracy but in conveying the nuance (setting aside how much nuance is or is not lost in an action movie; I wonder what a bad translation job on "Die Hard" - say, from English to Cantonese - would look like?). There are lots of Russian-to-English translations of Dostoevsky, with various pros and cons, some of which I might appreciate, some of which I might, some of which may come from more trustworthy sources, and none of which, no matter how well done, a substitute for being a fluent Russian reader/speaker. But comparing all the translations from the position of a non-fluent person literally becomes an academic endeavor.

Anyway, I support Arrow's work, but I guess from my vantage the image/transfer quality is paramount. It is odd that this is one of the few times I've ever seen subtitles come up, too, even though it is always an issue or consideration. Makes me wonder if there's something personal going on. Translator beef!

I don't think Cheung and the Shout guy know each other (dunno if I would refer to the latter as a translator at all - everything else aside he also did his work for free, another big wtf there). There was some uproar when Cheung first noted some errors in the subtitles (from cinema screenings iirc, the discs weren't out yet), but frankly I don't think it would've gotten anywhere as large a controversy if dude hadn't then decided to self destruct by announcing loudly that he did it using AI, that he doesn't speak the language, that he wasn't paid and that no one cares about subtitles anyway.

It is odd that this is one of the few times I've ever seen subtitles come up, too, even though it is always an issue or consideration. Makes me wonder if there's something personal going on. Translator beef!

― Josh in Chicago, Saturday, June 27, 2026 9:46 PM (one hour ago) bookmarkflaglink

I recently went looking for Varda's La Bonheur and there was several reviews about fucked up subtitles from a usually good label (Artificial Eye).

Interesting. Artificial Eye is Curzon, right? They do have a good reputation. Do you remember what people said went wrong? In this case there is a Criterion edition available, did people compare the subtitles? Or are they messed up on the Criterion, too?

This Shout kerfuffle is literally the only time I've ever heard anyone even mention subtitles when it comes to boutique releases

i don’t follow this world super closely and don’t have an example off the top of my head but it does come up with anime releases sometimes. seems like some companies are ok with AI slop translations and some are not and some shoddy translations find their way to crunchyroll etc, maybe even physical releases.

Yeah now that you mention it, have heard similar things but not knowledgeable about anime on disc either.

I recently went looking for Varda's La Bonheur and there was several reviews about fucked up subtitles from a usually good label (Artificial Eye).

Looked at the amazon uk reviews and the subtitle issue in this one seems to be that there are two sets of subtitles, of different size, appearing consecutively and only one is correct! So more of a disc production problem than any fault of the translator but yeah, wild that this hit the market.

subs for the original release of Come Drink With Me by 88 Films were terrible - people being misgendered, wrong character names etc. iirc the subs were provided by the licensors. there were enough complaints that when rereleased on 4K they commissioned a new set of subs.

I do sometimes think that a peculiar choice of phrase in a subtitle gives me a little peek into the idioms of the language being translated, and I'm usually fine with it/expecting it in wuxia and martial arts releases. Daniel absolutely right tho I was prefer my shonky translations created by a paid human being

Gotta check which "Come Drink With Me" I've got later, never noticed it being egregious

Are translators/subtitle editors usually credited in these released? Maybe somewhere in the, well, credits I assume. It looks like the guy that handles a lot of the 88 Films is named Gary Lau, or at least the buck stops with him.

Anyway, here's the epic debate/Cheung post that started this ball rolling:

https://forum.blu-ray.com/showthread.php?p=23294136

Lots of claims, complications and details, many tbh that are quite interesting to me. The two (feuding?) guys used to work together, the guy that doesn't speak Chinese nonetheless always works with a native speaker, John Woo himself approved the editions translated by the non-native speaker, etc. And this whole debate came to a head before either the Shout or the Arrow discs were even released! I find a lot of the comments fascinating, like this one:

Jean-Luc Godard's Breathless is now 65 years old and one of the most famous arthouse films ever made. It has had multiple translations over the years by some very proficient people, yet no one knows how to exactly translate the last line of dialogue in the film. The original French is vague by design, and how you interpret it depends on many factors. Since there is no exact English analog for the phrase, each translator has to choose one of the many possible meanings for the audience. I have seen at least three different translations of that last line and each version changes the tone of that final moment. Sometimes drastically.

The thread goes on forever, but there are some interesting twists and turns and interjections from people with production knowledge. Morality, ethics, professionalism, snobbery, fandom, personal beefs - all comes into play! And again, this is before any of the contested titles/translations were released! I had to skip way ahead in the forum until I found someone directly comparing some subs in the Shout and Arrow versions of "City on Fire:"

First line
Shout: He's involved in illegal gambling, drug trafficking, loan sharking.
Arrow: This guy... running gambling stalls, peddling dope, loan-sharking!

Second line
Shout: If we lose out to the cops like that, how are we supposed to carry on?
Arrow: How can we walk the streets if we lose to a bunch of cops?

From what I've seen while spot checking a few scenes, I prefer the Arrow subtitles. The main character jokingly says "no problem" a few times in what I believe to be Hakka instead of Cantonese. I imagine that it's an ad-lib of Chow Yun Fat, who is of Hakka descent. In the Shout subs it's translated to "no problem", but in the Arrow subs it's "no problemo". Substituting it with a mock Spanish expression is a good call imo.

I'd call the differences subtle, but can see why someone might still prefer one over the other.

I don't think translators are credited on most releases, no, which is a shame. There's a lot of questionable practices in the industry, I've heard rumors that translators aren't the only ones sometimes working for free w/ these releases (not specific to Shout).

Yeah that Godard line is a tough one. Tbf tho English speaking audiences are more likely to either know French or have access to someone who does than w/ Cantonese or Japanese, so at least that aspect gets discussed a lot.