anthony

On Jul 18, 8:44 pm, "robotman" <androiddre...@noemail.co.uk> wrote:
> Does anyone here buy the Directors Suite titles put out by Madman? They
> usually are Art-House type films, and feature directors like Michael Haneke,
> Lars Von Triers and Wim Wenders(amongst others). Price wise, they are
> usually in the $28- $35 mark(can be expensive), and sometime lacking extras
> which are available on overseas releases.
> Anyone bought a title from this range and found it to be average, and
> decided to stick to the Overseas equlivent(R1, R2 etc)?

I've found often that overseas-equivalent titles are better
(especially Criterion). For instance, the Criterion edition of The
Leopard included as bonus a different cut with English dialogue --
interesting in this case since the lead actor, Burt Lancaster, voiced
his own role in the English version.
The Directors Suite set of the classic movies of Jacques Tati fall
down in some instances too -- the French DVD of the first Ms Hulot
movie, 'Tour de Fete', features as bonus a different cut of the movie
in its original colour, instead of the black and white version -- it's
an interesting story in that the film was shot simultaneously in
colour and black and white, with the B & W used as a safety measure in
case the colour (a new French colour film stock) didn't work out too
well. It didn't work out at all ... no image could be struck from the
flawed negatives, hence the cinema release in black and white. Only
recently was digital technology able to be applied to the original
negatives to pull out the colour, to let the film be seen as Tati
intended.
The Madman edition of the classic 'Monsieur Hulot's Holiday' reverses
things in that the Australian edition carries, as bonus, the original
English-language soundtrack as well as the original French. Usually I
prefer the soundtrack of the country of origin, but 'Hulot' is
slightly different, in that there's almost no dialogue at all, and the
'English' soundtrack is vastly superior in its pure audio qualities --
crisper and better defined.
I have seen that some Madman titles are criticised for transfers from
NTSC to PAL rather than having a totally new transfer struck -- my
Madman 'Walkabout' does show some artefacts from that process,
although it is at least an anamorphic dub while my old Criterion
version was not.
Anthony