Jan Švankmajer

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DeprongMori
Joined: Fri Apr 04, 2014 1:59 am
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Re: Jan Švankmajer

#51 Post by DeprongMori » Mon Apr 27, 2020 6:24 pm

Having just watched the extraordinary Alice, I’m curious whether there is much chance of BFI’s Jan Svankmajer: The Complete Short Films ever making its way to a Blu-ray release. The DVD release seems to be “Currently Out of Stock”, and I notice the URL itself intriguingly referencing a non-existent Blu-ray release.

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MichaelB
Joined: Fri Aug 11, 2006 6:20 pm
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Re: Jan Švankmajer

#52 Post by MichaelB » Tue Apr 28, 2020 5:00 am

Some of the shorts have definitely been restored to HD, but I don't know what the situation is with all of them, and presumably the BFI would prefer to upgrade the entire original box.

On the other hand, the original plan for the box was just to release the same twelve shorts that had come out on VHS, so that might be a viable single-disc project.

But I can't stress enough that I'm not aware of any plans.

(There's no reason why I would be, although as the producer of the original box I suspect I'd at least be tipped off in advance, just as I was over plans to upgrade the Quay set to Blu-ray a few years ago.)

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MichaelB
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Re: Jan Švankmajer

#53 Post by MichaelB » Mon Jun 29, 2020 7:51 am

I don't think anyone's flagged this up yet, but I'm delighted to confirm that the Athanor Blu-ray of Faust includes both the Czech and English soundtracks.

Both are equally obviously dubbed (half the characters are puppets anyway, so it's no big deal), so there's no particular reason for favouring the Czech track unless it's your native language - the English dub (a virtuoso effort by the late Andrew Sachs) has always come across substantially more effectively to my ears.

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MichaelB
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Re: Jan Švankmajer

#54 Post by MichaelB » Mon Jun 29, 2020 8:17 am

And another unexpected bonus - Athanor's Alice includes Jabberwocky, which I believe is the first 1080p release of a Švankmajer short.

Although the titles are exclusively in English, it offers a choice of Czech or English soundtracks, but no subtitles (although the chances are you'll know the Lewis Carroll poem more or less by heart anyway, so you won't need them).

However, the main feature is exclusively in Czech, unlike the bilingual BFI release. (The English dub is dreadful, but I'm glad it's available on BD because there's no way my kids - aged single figures when the BFI disc came out - would have tolerated the Czech version.)

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furbicide
Joined: Thu Dec 29, 2011 4:52 am

Re: Jan Švankmajer

#55 Post by furbicide » Mon Jun 29, 2020 11:35 am

MichaelB wrote:
Mon Jun 29, 2020 7:51 am
I don't think anyone's flagged this up yet, but I'm delighted to confirm that the Athanor Blu-ray of Faust includes both the Czech and English soundtracks.

Both are equally obviously dubbed (half the characters are puppets anyway, so it's no big deal), so there's no particular reason for favouring the Czech track unless it's your native language - the English dub (a virtuoso effort by the late Andrew Sachs) has always come across substantially more effectively to my ears.
This hasn't surfaced as a standalone release by any chance, has it? I'd love to get it, but that box set is ... not so cheap, sadly. :(

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