Film Restoration and Preservation

[wilder]

Deaf Crocodile: First Look at New Restoration of The Tale of Tsar Saltan
blu-ray.com

Deaf Crocodile has released a promotional video for the brand new restoration of Aleksandr Ptushko's classic film The Tale of Tsar Saltan (1967). The label will bring the film to Blu-ray later this year.

Description: Based on a famous fairy tale in verse by Alexander Pushkin, THE TALE OF TSAR SALTAN is one of director Aleksandr Ptushko's most sublime creations: a ravishingly beautiful fantasy about love, magic, betrayal and abandoned family. Driven from the Russian court by her sisters' scheming, the young Tsarina (Larisa Golubkina) is thrown into the sea in a cask with her infant son. Surviving the storm-tossed voyage, the mother and her now magically-adult son (Oleg Vidov) land on a remote island where he falls in love with a Swan Princess in human form (Kseniya Ryabinkina), and longs for reunion with his estranged father, Tsar Saltan (Vladimir Andreyev).

Like his earlier masterpieces SAMPO and ILYA MUROMETS (also released by Deaf Crocodile), TSAR SALTAN is filled with breathtaking imagery: carved wooden lions who shed tears; peasants in pagan ritual masks, dancing in the snow; the treacherous faces of conspirators bathed in red candle glow like the witches in Macbeth.

Ptushko's second-to-last feature, TSAR SALTAN has been gorgeously restored by Mosfilm and Deaf Crocodile for its first-ever Blu-ray release in the U.S., co-presented with Seagull Films. In Russian with English subtitles.

[wilberfan]

I guess I'll put this here.

Warner Bros has a site for their "Warner Bros 100 Years - Celebrating Every Story" event this year.  The 70mm BOOGIE NIGHTS recently struck is part of this, is my understanding.

Very pleased to see MAGNOLIA on here as well!  Plus, 4 Kubricks.  I hope they all get the restoration/re-release treatment.

https://www.wb100.com/intl/

[wilder]

Gregg Araki's 1997 Cult Film 'Nowhere' Gets 4K Restoration
Variety

Strand Releasing is restoring Gregg Araki's 1997 cult film "Nowhere," bringing stars James Duval, Christina Applegate, Debi Mazar and Mena Suvari into 4K. This is the final addition to the restoration of Araki's 1990's Teen Apocalypse trilogy. In addition to Strand, the Bureau Sales and French producers Why Not are assisting on the project.

"I'm so gratified that these films are finding a new generation of viewers and seeing them projected at theatres and venues across the globe," said Araki. Select scenes omitted in the original theatrical "Nowhere" release for MPAA rating purposes will be restored in this new director's cut.

"Nowhere" is a black comedy take on teen drama. Araki mashes together decades of teenage television and movie tropes and wraps them up in this intense 24-hour snippet into the lives of Los Angeles college students. "Sexy, psychedelic, dementedly funny, with a sensational soundtrack...it's like 'Clueless' with nipple rings," Paper Magazine wrote at the time.

The trilogy includes the 1995 and 1993 films "The Doom Generation" and "Totally F***ed Up," which were restored with oversight from Strand. The "Doom" restoration recently premiered at Sundance Film Festival. Strand will debut the new "Nowhere" alongside Araki's other two films this fall at Los Angeles's Academy Museum.

"We're thrilled to be restoring Gregg's films back to their originally conceived versions in stunning transfers," said Marcus Hu, co-president of Strand Releasing.

Roundabout's Vincent Pirozzi of Roundabout and Tripp Brock of Monkeyland Audio have been working on the projects with technical supervision from Beau Genot.

[WorldForgot]

Really hoping this means all the 90s Araki work will get remastered and proper releases.

[wilder]

A 4K restoration of Gérard Krawczyk's L'été en pente douce (1987) is premiering at Cannes



When he inherits the family house and property after his mother's death, aspiring novelist Fane returns home with his bimbo girlfriend Lilas. He must care for his idiot brother Mo and contend with a greedy garage owner who covets Fane's property to expand his business. When efforts to buy the property are fruitless, the mechanic incites the townsfolk against the strange trio.

It's like a western and a polar and a neo noir and a Sartre play, it's French but it feels like Tenesse Williams, the characters are so strong yet they're all broken, and they're all fascinating and lovable even the bastards - it's a wonderful, unique movie.

[wilder]

Deaf Crocodile Acquires Three Eastern European Classic Films
blu-ray.com

Deaf Crocodile has announced that it has acquired three rarely-seen Eastern European genre classics for release in 2024 in newly-restored versions, co-presented with Seagull Films: Ruslan and Ludmila (1972), The Savage Hunt of King Stakh (1980), and Kin-Dza-Dza (1986). Deaf Crocodile plans to release the three films in Spring – Summer 2024




RUSLAN AND LUDMILA – 1972, Mosfilm, 150 min. The final film from Russian fantasy master Aleksandr Ptushko (ILYA MUROMETS, SAMPO), RUSLAN AND LUDMILA was a glorious and magical summation of his career: a 2-1/2 hour greatest hits package filled with the sweeping lyricism, bejeweled visual F/X and mythic storytelling that put him on par with Walt Disney, Ray Harryhausen and Mario Bava. Based on an epic fairy tale written in 1820 by Alexander Pushkin (Ptushko had previously adapted Pushkin's THE TALE OF TSAR SALTAN, and half-jokingly said they were related), the film opens with the seemingly-joyous marriage of bogatyr (warrior) Ruslan (Valeri Kozinets) to Ludmila (Natalya Petrova), the daughter of Prince Vladimir. (Like his earlier ILYA MUROMETS, the action of the film is set during the legendary era of the Kyivan Rus' culture that pre-dated both modern Ukraine and Russia.) On their wedding night, Ludmila is spirited away by the long-bearded wizard Chernomor (Vladimir Fyodorov), and taken to his sinister palace where she's held prisoner. On their epic quest to rescue her, Ruslan and his three rivals encounter some of Ptushko's most unforgettable imagery: a giant's monstrous, decapitated head slumbering on an open plain, magic rings and stone warriors, sorcery and sacrifice, all in the hope of reuniting lost lovers. Newly restored by Mosfilm for release by Deaf Crocodile and Seagull Films. In Russian with English subtitles.

"One of Ptushko's richest works, a compendium of all the techniques and special effects he had developed in previous films. His miniature work reached its peak here, especially in the model of Chernomor's icy kingdom with its gloomy castle perched atop a craggy cliff. Just as memorable are the sequences of Ruslan riding through the haunted woodlands at sunset ..." – Alan Upchurch, Video Watchdog.

THE SAVAGE HUNT OF KING STAKH (DIKAYA OKHOTA KOROLYA STAKHA), 1980, Belarusfilm, 126 min. Dir. Valeri Rubinchik. "We have more ghosts than live people," murmurs the pale, haunted mistress of the mansion of Marsh Firs (Elena Dimitrova) to a scholar of ancient folklore (Boris Plotnikov) who has arrived at her castle to research the bloody legend of King Stakh, a murdered 15th century nobleman whose spirit supposedly thunders through the local woodlands. (The Wild Hunt is a fixture of northern European folklore in which a sinister figure leads a chase followed by ghostly companions.) Part folk horror, part supernatural mystery, KING STAKH is a melancholy, chilling mixture of Terry Gilliam, Italian Gothic Horror, 1960s Hammer Films and THE WICKER MAN – and a major rediscovery for genre fans. The longer the young scholar stays in this mysterious house of "shadow, gloom, madness and death," the more strange and surreal the imagery becomes: a mad widow in a white wig; a man bleeding spontaneously from his skull; a dwarf hiding in a decayed doll's house; screeching ravens and maniacal puppet shows. Based on the novel by Belarusian writer Uladzimir Karatkievich, the long-unavailable KING STAKH has recently been restored from the original film elements in its extended 126 min. Director's Cut by Deaf Crocodile and Seagull Films for its first-ever U.S. release. (In Russian with English subtitles.)








KIN-DZA-DZA! – 1986, Mosfilm, 135 min. Dir. Georgiy Daneliya. Imagine Andrei Tarkovsky circa SOLARIS directing Douglas Adams' The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy and you'll come close to the existential weirdness of the wonderfully loopy Soviet-era sci-fi comedy KIN-DZA-DZA! Two average Muscovites – a plainspoken construction foreman (Stanislav Lyubshin) and a Georgian violin student (Levan Gabriadze) – encounter an odd homeless man on the street who asks, "Tell me the number of your planet in the Tentura?" In a flash, they're teleported across the universe to the planet Pluke in the Kin-Dza-Dza galaxy – a Tatooine-like desert world whose inhabitants are hilariously noncommunicative (their main words are "ku" for good and "kyu" for very bad) and where common wooden matches are tremendously valuable. A deadpan, absurdist mixture of Kurt Vonnegut, Monty Python, Samuel Beckett and Jodorowsky's never-made Dune where alien cultures are even more haphazard and WTF? than our own, the film is also a savage satire of bureaucratic idiocy and dysfunction no matter what political system you're living under – or what planet you're living on. Recently restored by Mosfilm for its first-ever U.S. release by Deaf Crocodile and Seagull Films. In Russian with English subtitles.

"Possibly the most underrated science fiction film of the past 50 years ... A collapsed Ferris wheel provides a home for destitute desert dwellers. Graves are marked by balloons containing the deceased's final breath. The colour of your trousers signifies social status, so they are powerful barter items... There is no convoluted plot, but instead a convoluted universe, and its incredulous victims ready to point out the farcicality therein." – Joel Blackledge, Little White Lies

[WorldForgot]

Wow!! Hadn't heard of any of those, THE SAVAGE HUNT OF KING STAKH especially sounds like one I'll try to watch.