Flicker Alley
- Finch
- Joined: Mon Jul 07, 2008 5:09 pm
- Location: Edinburgh, UK
Re: Flicker Alley
Not to my knowledge.
- Finch
- Joined: Mon Jul 07, 2008 5:09 pm
- Location: Edinburgh, UK
Re: Flicker Alley
Received The Beast Must Die and The Bitter Stems yesterday from importcds. I fell asleep halfway through The Beast Must Die but that was entirely down to my tiredness and not a fault of the film. What I did see so far was very good though and the film looks great. Both films were encoded by David MacKenzie/Fidelity in Motion, and both films have the theatrical poster on the reverse sleeve.
- Finch
- Joined: Mon Jul 07, 2008 5:09 pm
- Location: Edinburgh, UK
Re: Flicker Alley
I haven't finished The Beast Must Die yet, but The Bitter Stems is, along with Arrow's Gamera The Heisei Era set from last year, my favorite discovery of this year. An Argentine journalist who is searching for meaning in his life seems to have found it when a foreigner talks him into a swindling scheme of putting together a newspaper from existing articles and attributing the writing to themselves and getting people to donate and subscribe. Gaspar is moved by his friend's request to collaborate so he can pay for his family's immigration to Argentina but Gaspar begins to mistrust Paar Liudas, and his mind begins to unravel. Visually this ticks all the noir boxes and the film wrings a lot of suspense out of the premise, and it has a pretty impressively put together dream sequence to boot. This was an excellent choice for the Noir Foundation and Flicker Alley to release. Unlike The Beast Must Die, Bitter Stems's print must have been pretty beat up because even after the restoration, there are still speckles and lines visible, and the contrast is not as impressive as on Beast but it was still a fine viewing experience.
The 43% discount on importcds is still live, and they also have the Duvivier set at a 30% discount.
The 43% discount on importcds is still live, and they also have the Duvivier set at a 30% discount.
- lzx
- Joined: Sat Jul 19, 2014 7:27 pm
Re: Flicker Alley
The Duvivier set is now 42% off on importcds. Nine films for $34.80 seems like a no-brainer. Could anyone here who already has the set confirm it's region free?
- tenia
- Ask Me About My Bassoon
- Joined: Wed Apr 29, 2009 11:13 am
Re: Flicker Alley
Did anybody here get the Duvivier set from Flicker Alley ?
I was wondering if the Flicker Alley discs are a 1:1 port of the French Lobster discs (or at least their main features' encodes), since they seem to mirror quite heavily Lobster's content.
The French set is a DVD-sized Dual Format kinda cheaply packaged set (despite being priced at 85€) and since Lobster have a history of abysmal BD encodes, the FA set could be a technical alternative for me, except that the few caps I saw from the FA discs look like they could very well be using Lobster's encodes, looking at how laughably bad the encodes seem to be.
I was wondering if the Flicker Alley discs are a 1:1 port of the French Lobster discs (or at least their main features' encodes), since they seem to mirror quite heavily Lobster's content.
The French set is a DVD-sized Dual Format kinda cheaply packaged set (despite being priced at 85€) and since Lobster have a history of abysmal BD encodes, the FA set could be a technical alternative for me, except that the few caps I saw from the FA discs look like they could very well be using Lobster's encodes, looking at how laughably bad the encodes seem to be.
- Matt
- Joined: Tue Nov 02, 2004 12:58 pm
Re: Flicker Alley
I did. I think they’re the exact same discs as they all start with the option to view the menus in French or English. I guess I just didn’t notice any deficiencies in the encoding.
- tenia
- Ask Me About My Bassoon
- Joined: Wed Apr 29, 2009 11:13 am
Re: Flicker Alley
Thanks for the info Matt. Could you also let me know what the packaging is ?
- Finch
- Joined: Mon Jul 07, 2008 5:09 pm
- Location: Edinburgh, UK
Re: Flicker Alley
I just checked the package for you. It's a cardboard box that is not as sturdy as Arrow's and Indicator's and it houses two transparent keepcases, first with three Blu-Rays, second with two. The 45 page booklet credits the authoring to David McKenzie/Fidelity in Motion.
- tenia
- Ask Me About My Bassoon
- Joined: Wed Apr 29, 2009 11:13 am
Re: Flicker Alley
Thanks for your answer, I see what you mean and would be a better option than the Lobster set, which has 5 DVD-cases (4 hold 1BD+2DVDs, 1 holds 1BD+1DVD) in a thin cardboard case, with a 40something-pages booklet seemingly in the case outside of any DVD case.
Based on the caps I saw and if David really encoded those, I wonder what happened here.
Based on the caps I saw and if David really encoded those, I wonder what happened here.
- EddieLarkin
- Joined: Sat Sep 08, 2012 10:25 am
Re: Flicker Alley
Where were the caps posted? A few sites offer full rez caps but compress them massively, making them almost entirely useless (Mondo-Digital, I'm looking at you).
- tenia
- Ask Me About My Bassoon
- Joined: Wed Apr 29, 2009 11:13 am
Re: Flicker Alley
On a private torrent tracker whose caps have been quite trustworthy to me so far.
-
- Joined: Sat May 10, 2008 1:10 pm
- domino harvey
- Dot Com Dom
- Joined: Wed Jan 11, 2006 2:42 pm
Re: Flicker Alley
Those booklets are about to become actual collectors items now
- Finch
- Joined: Mon Jul 07, 2008 5:09 pm
- Location: Edinburgh, UK
Re: Flicker Alley
never mind
Last edited by Finch on Mon Jan 17, 2022 4:27 pm, edited 1 time in total.
- Finch
- Joined: Mon Jul 07, 2008 5:09 pm
- Location: Edinburgh, UK
Re: Flicker Alley
2021 must be a record for QC fuck ups.
- tenia
- Ask Me About My Bassoon
- Joined: Wed Apr 29, 2009 11:13 am
Re: Flicker Alley
In the meantime, I had a quick look at Le mystère de la tour Eiffel and yup, it indeed looks like nothing Fidelity in Motion (god forgives they ever output anything close to that !) ever did, but pretty much every Lobster encode I know of. Pretty much any area relatively dark goes into Youtube-480p type blockiness, just like their Max Linder, Charley Bowers, J'accuse or Buster Keaton encodes (it's quite likely L'inhumaine, L'argent and King of Kings have the same issue).
- EddieLarkin
- Joined: Sat Sep 08, 2012 10:25 am
Re: Flicker Alley
Do we know if any of these were handled by David M for Flicker Alley later on, or does it seem like Lobster/FA always share encodes?
- tenia
- Ask Me About My Bassoon
- Joined: Wed Apr 29, 2009 11:13 am
Re: Flicker Alley
Some at least are different encodes but I'll have to check which ones exactly.
- swo17
- Bloodthirsty Butcher
- Joined: Tue Apr 15, 2008 10:25 am
- Location: SLC, UT
Re: Flicker Alley
I'm sure this was an honest mistake--they'd heard great things about this David Mackenzie character so they reached out to the director of Hell or High Water and Starred Up and gave him free rein with the encodes
- Finch
- Joined: Mon Jul 07, 2008 5:09 pm
- Location: Edinburgh, UK
Re: Flicker Alley
Yeah, the Lobster collaborations seem to be iffy. The Argentine noirs you can all safely buy though! Still, who knows whether anyone will port this over to the UK, and when, and on top of that go to the effort of doing a new encode (Arrow and the BFI might, to be fair..).
- yoloswegmaster
- Joined: Tue Nov 01, 2016 3:57 pm
- tenia
- Ask Me About My Bassoon
- Joined: Wed Apr 29, 2009 11:13 am