Showing Soon; ‘Scope for Improvement from Eureka! Classics… September 18, 2008
Posted by John Hodson in : DVD News & Info, Showing Soon , trackbackApologies for the lack of activity recently, and this is merely a flying visit by way of a warning; U.K. outfit Eureka!, famed for their superb Masters of Cinema series, is also set to release a number of titles in their ‘Eureka! Classics’ line-up come November, among them Universal-International’s first Cinemascope picture, Rudolph Mate’s hugely enjoyable medieval romp The Black Shield of Falworth (which has entered movie lore for the line delivered, in a Bronx accent, by Tony Curtis: “Yondda lies da castle of my fadder.” Curtis swears it was in fact: “Yonder lies the valley of the sun, and beyond, the castle of my father…”).
Yesterday, I was astounded to read this review which reveals the transfer to be 1.78:1, cropped from the original 2.55:1. A peek at the Eureka! website listing showed the film as coming in 2.35:1, so a quick email was fired off to see what the position is. Sadly Eureka! has confirmed that the film is indeed coming butchered to 1.78:1, as you’ll see from that link, they have now amended their listing to show the film as a somewhat nebulous ‘16:9′…and references to it being Universal’s first ’scope feature have been removed.
Oh dear.
Other titles upcoming in the same range are (October) Night of The Living Dead, Jess Franco’s Eugine De Sade, Claude Pierson’s Justine de Sade, The Naked: A Psychological Film, Manina – The Lighthouse Keeper’s Daughter, Krzysztof Zanussi’s Leben für Leben, Jess Franco’s X312 – Flight to Hell, 56 Rue Pigalle, The Benny Goodman Story, Henry Hathaway’s Souls at Sea (with Gary Cooper), Ronald Neame’s The Horse’s Mouth, Ralph Thomas’s The Clouded Yellow. In November, the offerings include Jeroen Krabbe’s The Discovery of Heaven, and The Stranglers – On Stage/On Screen. Some have extras, some don’t, check out the website for details, but following the ‘Black Shield’ debacle, I’m afraid it has to be caveat emptor.
By the way, also coming November* from Eureka! is Douglas Sirk’s A Time To Love & A Time To Die in their Masters of Cinema line, thus a little more optimism for that one.
*EDIT; now postponed ‘for a few months’ while Eureka! upgrade the title from a single to a two-disc set.
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Very disappointing news about “Black Shield”. When I see this, and think of Optimum’s handiwork on “Seven Days to Noon”, I can’t help wondering if this kind of tinkering isn’t a misguided attempt to placate those who whine about finding black bars appearing on their 16:9 televisions. I get a nasty feeling in my gut that we might be in for more and more of this.
It may be down to cost or sheer laziness and slapping on DVD a ‘made for TV transfer’ that has been previously buggered about with; I have asked Eureka! for a explanation.
Optimum have a history of transferring to DVD some quite ancient transfers that were made in the days of VHS, and thus we have a whole slew of films in 4:3, at best open-matte, that should be wide. The wide transfer of Seven Days to Noon has been broadcast on TV for some years now - disappointing isn’t it? In some ways Optimum were a much better outfit before the Studio-Canal takeover.
Eureka’s early silent DVDs were a right con. Their Metropolis DVD of 1999 claimed to be the “director’s cut” at 139min, but in actuality was a heavily cut 16mm transfer played in super slow motion, with the most sluggish music.
That said, the Masters of Cinema range seriously rocks!
Thanks for the that John. “Black Shield” wasn’t on my to buy list anyway as when I saw it announced I assumed a (cheaper) R1 disc will hopefully come out sooner or later. I’m interested in their disc of “The Clouded Yellow” though.
Eureka’s early DVDs bring to mind “Scarlet Street” for me. But there were also some very good discs. I’m not sure when I last bought a non-MoC Euerka disc though so can’t comment on their latest efforts.
It’s good to see MoC are porting a lot of excellent French discs like “A Time to Love and a Time to Die”, “L’Argent” and “L’Enfance Nue” and adding their own excellent booklet/books. I’ve already got the French Sirk boxset so won’t be getting “A Time to Love..” but I’m glad I held off on the L’Herbier films.
Incidentally John, I see you’ve ordered Fremantle’s “The Seven Per Cent Solution”. I was just about to do the same and also order their release of “Charlie Bubbles”.
They look to have quite a few interesting DVDs coming up (not to mention their Blu-rays of “Cabaret” and “Straw Dogs”). “Junior Bonner”, “Charley Varrick”, “They Shoot Horses Don’t They”, “Hell in the Pacific”, “Prizzi’s Honor”. I think they’ve all only been non-anamorphic transfers in their previous US and UK incarnations so here’s hoping for some nice new anamorphic efforts.
Sheer lethargy prevented me from getting a very cheap pre-order on ‘Charlie Bubbles’, so you can report back on the transfer!
Yes, I did note those other Fremantle pre-releases and they’re all nice and cheap at HMV. Even so, I need to know more, so I’m currently trying desperately to find out whether they are anamorphic OAR or not. I have the Danish (?) ‘They Shoot Horses…’, so that’ll do, and (despite vowing not to) I eventually sprung for the R1 ‘Charley Varrick’, which actually zooms decently, so that’ll do (probably), but decent anamorphic transfers of ‘Junior Bonner’ and ‘Hell in the Pacific’ would be must buys.
I pre-ordered ‘The Seven Per Cent Solution’ because, well, hell, I’ve just got to have it…
The price is what gives me concerns about their quality but fingers crossed “Charlie Bubbles” turns out to be a winner.
Hmmm, but Fremantle has always struck me as a pretty honest outfit, you’re not paying much, so you don’t expect much, and that’s not to say that they haven’t come up with some impressive work in the past. But that’s why I’m wary of both ‘Hell in The Pacific’ and ‘Junior Bonner’ at just £3.99 each. I’ll be amazed if they turn out to be OAR.
On the other hand, the ‘Eureka! Classics’ range has an rrp of £15.99 and the lowest on-line price I could find is £9.99 (which makes your average MoC title an absolute bargain), in fact Zavvi are asking £16 for ‘The Black Shield of Falworth’.
I appreciate we aren’t talking like for like here - Fremantle are a big company, and Eureka! are, in the great scheme of things, quite small, but nevertheless…
Yep you’re right. I’ve spent too much time feeling overcharged for bad discs that I’m now suspicious of a disc I haven’t even seen just because it’s well priced.
Hopefully there will be reviews of these discs in the not too distant future but if not it’s worth a gamble of £4 to get a better presentation of “Junior Bonner”.
Hi John.
‘Charlie Bubbles’ is a nice clean anamorphic 1.85:1 transfer.
Thanks Bob; that’s appreciated. Fremantle’s press office apparently can’t give any AR news on their upcoming titles until they get their hands on the check discs (!)
OCT. 8 UPDATE:
I am indebted to Eureka’s Kevin Lambert for going the extra mile to find out from Universal themselves just why we have what we have with TBSoF, and the news, received today, is not good:
“I’m not sure if you are aware but Universal had a fire earlier this year and lost a huge amount of masters, it turns out that there was never a down conversion done from the HD 16X9 print before the fire, so nothing would exist to create one from at the original aspect ratio at the present time.
“I’ve asked them to have a look at it and see if there is another copy anywhere else in the world but it looks doubtful.”
As noted elsewhere, Kevin appears to be referring to the video master when he writes of a ‘HD 16×9 print’; that may be lost, but the original neg is surely safe - it just needs Universal to strike another, time and budget permitting. ‘Falworth’ was also, it seems, filmed simultaneously in ’scope and 1.85:1, whilst being protected for 1.37:1 (allowing it to be screened in any of three formats). So have Eureka! been provided with 1.85:1 materialsl? Possible, but still hugely unsatisfactory for such a significant ’scope film. More, if and when I have it.
An Update on the cheaper Frematle DVDs John.
I took a punt on ‘The Shoot Horse Don’t They?’ and it’s an awful transfer.
Not only is it P&S, it’s got NTSC-PAL ghosting as well. I compared it with my Anchor Bay R1 (from 1999) and interstingly (or rather, scarily) the Fremantle is significantly worse than the P&S on the flip-side of that disc. I’ve no idea how previous UK editions fare but this was horrible.
As you know ‘The Seven Per Cent Solution’ is a perfectly acceptable anamorphic transfer so it seems only the lower priced discs are suspect.
Incidentally, I don’t know if you’ve bought any recent discs by Odeon Entertainment but I received ‘The Battle of the Sexes’ today and I was pleasnatly surprised by it’s quality. Progressive, anamorphc, generally a very solid presentation and a significant step up from ‘A Prize of Arms’ or ‘Tomorrow at Ten’ from last year.
Thanks for that Bob; the very decent quality of ‘The Seven-Per-Cent Solution’ lulled me into a false sense of security, so that’s a timely if disappointing warning.
That’s good news on the Odeon front. It goes on the wish list.