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'»

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)

I wonder why the first (in line) guy on the left picture ain’t running considering his chain is gone.
Continue reading 'Cut-Throats Nine & Joshua from Code Red'»

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

Unfortunately I regret to inform you that we are having to pull ALL FORMATS of FACCIA A FACCIA (FACE TO FACE) from the release schedule.

In the last week, some further unforeseen production issues have arisen regarding this particular title, which has led to us making the decision that it would be in everyone’s best interests for the title to be cancelled completely for the foreseeable future, until all these production issues have been resolved.

We hope you appreciate our continued commitment to producing product of the highest possible quality, and will accept our sincere apologies for any inconvenience caused and amend your records accordingly – full details below

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

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.

Just got my hands on all the Titanus Wild West DVDs that were released a week ago. Thompson 1880 was supposed to be amongst them but for some reason has been cancelled (too good print?). First the good news: the covers look nice.

But the first moment of horror came when I realized the back covers for all the discs say the films are presented in 4:3… So opened and checked a couple of them and unfortunately it seems minimum effort has went into these discs. There is only a very basic menus with only the option to either play the film or choose a scene, nothing else. Which wouldn’t really be a problem though but the films are presented in non-anamorphic widescreen. Non-anamorphic in late 2010, just great. Still, I could even accept that if they were fine otherwise which they unfortunately are not or at least not the three I checked. The image on all three has been cropped from the sides to make them into 1.85:1. This has to be some kind of a sick joke!
Continue reading 'Titanus Wild West DVDs from Italy'»