Olive Films thread - Page 3

I'm just happy that we are seeing some nice older film releases. So far ,most of these Olive films look good if not great.I've see Space Children, Force of Evil, Invasion of the Body Snatchers,Project X among others, and they look good. The only gripe, and this is minor, and I'm even sure if it has validity, is they might be filtered a bit.

Art

Considering that Macbeth was one of Welles' "projects", it should not be a surprise that it looks like it does.

I watched the Bound BD I purchased the other day.

The print they used leaves a lot to be desired...shows damage during many scenes.
Detail approaches DVD levels way too much.
Grain often doesn't resolve well.

The 2 channel lossy sound is the worst I have ever heard on any BD of a modern movie.

Does Olive Films have a Satisfaction Guaranteed Or Your Money Back policy?

I have a review and thumbnails of "Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1956)" here.

-Bill

Interesting. Going on Olive's track record I predict a disc on par with the Lionsgate A/V but bare bones and more expensive. No thanks. I'd recommend anyone who's been holding out to snatch up one of the cheap and plentiful copies available through Amazon third party sellers.

...Aaaand I'm wrong. Sort of. There's a thread on blu-ray.com about this. It's billed as the 30th Anniv Ed and will include a new director commentary, so there's that. I imagine it will be pretty redundant. I mean, how much juicy info does Lewis Teague possibly have left to divulge on Cujo? And since Olive has given us straight BD25's thus far I doubt any visual improvement barring a new scan. Something tells me new scans aren't in the Olive budget.

Olive has in fact sprung for new 4K masters of The Quiet Man, Shanks, and The File on Thelma Jordan. But there's no reason to think Cujo will be getting the same treatment -- those three older films really need it (the Quiet Man DVDs were infamously bad) whereas Cujo has a serviceable HD master already. There may not be any improvement over the Lionsgate Blu, but I'm not going to complain if Olive allocates their limited resources elsewhere.

Good to know. I haven't kept up with Olive releases or news to the letter but from the many I'd seen it seemed their M.O. was just to slap the available master onto disc, like so many niche distributors. From the lack of extras I assumed they'd made their priority to focus their budget on just releasing highly obscure/fringe material that otherwise probably wouldn't see the light of day. Do we definitely know they're covering the costs of these new masters or just took the opportunity to snag them?

I am amazed at some of the movies that Olive is releasing on Blu-ray. They are definitely filling a hole in the market that the other companies have largely abandoned on the format.

If anybody has to do a mea culpa on the way Blu-ray has developed over the years, I'm a guilty party.

I was one of those "conventional wisdom" guys five or six years ago, who thought old catalogue films would barely see the light of day in high defintion. As a buyer of primarily catalogue films, I was perfectly willing to be an early adopter of high definition with the understanding that we might see half a dozen small, older titles released every year. I figured I could safely buy into Blu-ray, knowing that I'd have a relatively small expenditure on a tiny handful of films.

I couldn't have been more wrong...and I've got 520 Blu-rays (95% catalogue) to prove it. The output from Olive alone about twice what I guessed we'd see from all studios combined. I'm estimating I bought eighteen Olive Blu-rays so far this year and I have more on order. Latest to arrive for me are THE SLENDER THREAD and LETTER FROM AN UNKNOWN WOMAN.

People keep telling me, "Catalogue doesn't sell on Blu-ray" and "You should see the sales numbers, they're awful". Maybe that's true. I can't dispute it. I'm stuck on the Canadian prairie, a million miles away from the movie business. But the fact is that, not only is this stuff getting released, the pace of releases is picking up. And I just placed a pre-order for THE QUIET MAN.

Well, if anybody benefits from Target moving into Canada it will be me . This is the plan for the big Winnipeg store...and I can see the site from the end of my block (a 10 minute walk from my house):

"The city's Assiniboia Community Committee approved design plans on Tuesday night for the retail giant's store, which would be built on the site where Canad Inns Stadium currently stands.

Target proposes a 144,000-square-foot store built on "stilts" to provide parking on the ground level and a shopping level above it. The company's trademark bull's-eye would make the store visible from aircraft flying over the city."

I don't know what kind of Blu-ray selection they will carry but it sounds like I'm getting a good sized Target. If they don't carry BDs here, I'll be disappointed.

sadly we won't be getting a target, and our Future Shop has cut down the Blu-ray section.

That is correct, the studios are seeing great catalog sales when they hit under $10 or $15 at most retailers. The Hollywood studios simply have no interest in selling their catalog that low and want to license them out to others.

No. The studios are not seeing great catalog sales at any price. Under ten dollars is loss leader time for any studio. THAT is why they are licensing out titles because there's not only low sales at any price range (it doesn't matter what the price, people today will wait till it's less than that price - they will not pay fifteen or ten if they think they can outsmart or out wait until it's five), they run the risk of huge returns - licensing out is a win/win - they take NO risks, make MORE money, and never get anything back. So, thanks to the prevailing attitude of today's consumers (I'll wait till it's under ten under five under two) this is where the business has gone and it will not be changing - you will now be paying MORE to companies like Twilight Time and Olive for any catalog films you want because cheaping out and the game playing has shown the studios everything they need to know.

New announcements for January:

Joseph Losey's Don Giovanni
Les Misérables (1958, starring Jean Gabin)
Hal Hartley's Trust

The first two are "restored in HD," Trust is a new master from the negative "supervised by director Hal Hartley" (and has an extra ported from the UK DVD).

QFT