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By Sundance, October 26, 2011 9:20 pm

Enzo Barboni’s comedy spaghetti Man of the East was released in Sweden (and Denmark?) in October 19th as a Blu-Ray & DVD combo pack. Disc has English audio with optional Swedish, Danish, Norwegian and Finnish subtitles. I haven’t checked the DVD yet but I would think it is the same disc that has already been released in Scandinavia some years ago (and later with similar kind of cover that this combo pack has).

Pure speculation since I haven’t yet seen the Koch Media disc but it looks to me like the available DVDs (except the old Italian one) since 2004 or even earlier (in Spain) have all used the same (old) master from which this Blu-Ray has also been made from. So no wonder it isn’t as good as it could be. The Blu-Ray is obviously better than the DVDs but some might be disappointed. Region B only.

Not sure about stores shipping this outside EU but at least discshop.se will deliver inside EU.

Anyways here are some screenshots from the Blu-Ray, click to see them in full 1080p HD glory.
Continue reading 'Man of the East Blu-Ray (E poi lo chiamarono il magnifico (1972)) from Soul Media'»

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By Sundance, September 10, 2011 12:08 am

As promised here are some screenshots from Koch Media’s recent (region free!) Blu-Ray release of Yellow Sky, under the title Herrin der toten Stadt. As with the Ox-Bow Incident Blu-Ray the disc features English (and German) audio and optional English subtitles.

Extras on the disc include: Original theatrical trailer, radio excerpt with Gregory Peck, photo gallery and an 8 page booklet (part of the case).
Disc space used only 17GB so still around 7GB left… Use it damnit! ;p

Here is photo of the custom book style covers used for these western legenden series. The German age rating stickers are on the cover but can be removed (be careful). There are also Blu-Ray stickers on the covers (whyyyyyy) which are almost as big as the FSK ratings, these can be removed as well. Photo by Andreas Wagner.

Yellow Sky disc available at Amazon.de.

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By Sundance, September 7, 2011 8:24 pm

This one isn’t about a spaghetti so if that bothers you, stop reading… Anyways, as some of you may be interested in the US westerns as well, here are a few screenshots from the recent German Blu-Ray of the Ox-Bow Incident (from Koch Media). The disc has English & German audio and optional English subtitles (which don’t 100% match the spoken English dialogue) and is region free. It is actually vol. 9 in Koch Media’s Western Legenden Series but only one other so far (Yellow Sky as no. 7, I’ll add some screenshots later) is available as a Blu-Ray release.
Continue reading 'The Ox-Bow Incident Blu-Ray (Ritt zum Ox-bow)'»

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By Sundance, August 16, 2011 10:48 pm

Code Red’s double feature DVD of Cut-Throats Nine and Joshua is now out and so I have added a screenshot comparison between the very old Eurovista (bootleg) and Code Red’s DVDs. There really isn’t any question as to which one looks better.

Here is a zoomed-in comparison between the two discs which should show some of the differences… (click the link for a very large image)

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By Sundance, August 15, 2011 9:21 pm

Australian company Bounty Entertainment/Bounty Films has recently (April 2011) released several spaghetti western DVDs. Seems to me most of them offer nothing new compared to previous editions (and might even be much worse), but I bought the three that haven’t previously had any kind of official releases. I added the disc infos to the site with several images from all the discs.

The three are:
Kill Django… Kill First / Uccidi Django… uccidi per primo!!! + screenshots
Kitosch, the Man Who Came from the North / Kitosch, l’uomo che veniva dal nord + screenshots
Ringo, It’s Massacre Time / Giunse Ringo e… fu tempo di massacro + screenshots

As you can see they are all cropped from widescreen to fullscreen and the quality certainly isn’t very good. But from what I have understood none of them have previously existed in as good quality as they do on these discs? Unfortunately Kill Django… Kill First has been confirmed to be cut by over 10 minutes, and while I don’t know about Ringo, It’s Massacre Time the running time of only 73 minutes does sound somewhat short (but doesn’t necessarily mean it is cut).
Oh and at least on my setup Kitosch seems to suffer from somewhat low volume and the dialogue comes only from the right channel while effects are on the left one…

I can’t really recommend them, but I guess they are better than nothing.

Also as a bonus, I added some screenshots from the Spanish DVD release of Ten Killers Came from Afar (Dallas aka Il mio nome è Scopone e faccio sempre cappotto). The disc unfortunately has only Italian audio (even though the case mentions Spanish soundtrack and the menu lets you select it) and no subtitles. And it is out of print already.

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By Sundance, February 2, 2011 2:49 pm

First it was coming last October then delayed because they didn’t have a full version of the film available. Some time later the Blu-Ray was cancelled only to be announced again (as a Blu-Ray & DVD Combo) some weeks ago. And now…

IMPORTANT ACTION REQUIRED – All versions of FACCIA A FACCIA to be cancelled UNTIL FURTHER NOTICE

EKA70020 – Dual Format edition (containing both a Blu-ray and a DVD) – CANCELLED
EKA70020 – Blu-ray – CANCELLED
EKA40324 – DVD only – CANCELLED

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By Sundance, December 29, 2010 8:58 pm

As I have nothing better to do I took a few screenshots from Trinity Is Still My Name discs (DVDs & Blu-Ray). Well, I actually took them some months ago but been lazy as usual, and it turns out I only took one screenshot per disc. Which wasn’t a very smart thing to do. Anyways, this particular scene happens to be a very problematic one as evidenced by all the bad DVD images below and the Blu-Ray from German company 3L (and e-m-s?) doesn’t handle it any better.

Here’s a question for all of you following (1)… which one of the 8 images below is from the Blu-Ray? Notice that the one big image (a work of art!) below contains all the 8 screenshots so you don’t have to load them all separately. Just click on the image to load it in full size. It is 2megs in size though and the resolution is 1904×2782 so not for modems or gprs! The images from DVDs were resized to Blu-Ray resolution in photoshop before cropping.

Oh and since the image is so large I’d appreciate it if you’d link to this post instead of the image directly. That is if you for some reason need to show it to someone.

EDIT: Oh yeah, before anyone sends some hate mail, I have to add that a lot of the other scenes (but not all) on the Blu-Ray do look better than this one.

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By Sundance, October 15, 2010 5:36 pm

EDIT: The Blu-Ray has been cancelled.

Yeah, I know, I know, a third Face to Face (Faccia a Faccia) Blu-Ray post in a row… So anyways some of you might want to know that it is now available for pre-order from Amazon.co.uk and the release date as mentioned before is 15th of November.

Apparently (nothing to do with Amazon) Eureka Entertainment has been made aware (if they weren’t already) of the fact that their version is much shorter than the version on all the DVDs (discussed on the previous post) and they are looking into it. Whatever that means for this release I have no idea. I can’t imagine them being able to change it (in time) into the longer one for the Blu-Ray if they just heard about it.

Oh and Amazon.co.uk lists the length as 100minutes but that makes no sense at all.

Face to Face at Amazon.co.uk.

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By Sundance, October 12, 2010 2:02 pm

Looking at the Face to Face submission to BBFC by Eureka Entertainment Ltd, it seems we will be getting a much shorter version of the movie than what has been available on DVDs. The version submitted on 4th of October 2010 is only 93-94 minutes in length while the previous DVD editions are 107 minutes (and that is in PAL so the difference would be even bigger than the 14 minutes!). I didn’t even know there is a shortened version in existence, but according to BBFC site it looks like the same 93 minute cut has been previously (1993) released on VHS in the UK (the PAL to FILM/NTSC difference reduces it to around 90minutes).

This is a very disappointing piece of news if it will be the only version available. Play lists the release at around 92 minutes (can’t remember if it was always the case or not). But I guess we will have to wait and see (but they can’t release a longer one unless that is also submitted to BBFC which isn’t the case at least yet?).

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By Sundance, September 27, 2010 12:50 am

Play.com is listing Sergio Sollima’s Face to Face (Faccia a faccia, 1967) to be released on Blu-Ray disc 15th of November 2010. There aren’t any kind of specs on the disc yet, not even the company behind the release is listed. Hopefully this is the real deal!

http://www.play.com/DVD/Blu-ray/4-/16586563/Face-To-Face/Product.html

Thanks to djvaso for this piece of news.

EDIT: It seems the company behind the release is Eureka. Here is the cover and some specs for the release (thanks to Paul at lovelockandload):

I expect the best from Eureka so this might turn out to be the best spaghetti western news/release of the whole year!

Screenshots from the Face to Face DVDs to beat are available here: http://www.spaghettiwesterndvds.com/movies/face-to-face-faccia-a-faccia/screenshots/