Lars von Trier

[Aunt Peg]

Thanks.

[Der Ungrund]

No one's mentioned it yet, but the new Breaking the Waves 4K uses the same restoration as the criterion, but it's a significant improvement. It's an incredibly grainy film and grain levels often vary from scene to scene (the title cards, for example, have always had a weird banding like Von Trier ran them through video or a very early digital source to process them), but the 4K handles this way better than the criterion. I compared both copies and while the Criterion looks great from a distance, its encode has a really hard time dealing with the grain, so it ends up looking downright blocky at time. The 4K looks very similar to Curzon's 3 Colors Trilogy, in that it's probably not reference quality, but to my eye it looks completely unfiltered and renders the grain very well.

For what it's worth, it also seems to use the "lighter" and "less green" grade of the film used in the earlier AE vs the Criterion http://www.dvdbeaver.com/film5/blu-ray_ ... lu-ray.htm

[nicolas]

Incredible news! The first Blu-ray set of Riget / The Kingdom has been announced by Plaion Germany for January 2024! We can select either a complete set with Exodus or just Exodus on its own.

Likely no English subs though.

[nicolas]

Received my copy of the French Lars von Trier - Intégrale set from Potemkine.
I had high hopes after they put out a few great BD releases in the past and the excellent Lost Highway UHD fully sold me.

I hate to be the bearer of bad news though: The encodes are terrible, almost Curzon-level bad. It’s ironic as I’ve attempted to escape the curse of Curzon and their terrible BD releases (Wim Wenders set) by going with the Potemkine, yet here I am. What makes this even more sad is that apparently Curzon stepped up their game and delivered a solid von Trier set themselves.

The shot-on-film films fare the worst with significant macroblocking in nearly all areas of the frames - from highlights to normally bright portions. The blocking is visible in motion and even stronger in caps. This is not a bitrate issue but something in the encoder settings. I have a strong feeling that these are the most basic autopilot encodes.

The digitally shot films are better but still imperfect. Dogville looks good, Melancholia absolutely terrible, The House that Jack Built solid, The Idiot solid and so on. It’s terribly inconsistent. It’s admittedly a little difficult to spot encoding issues among some of the anomalies inherent to the sources but if you know where to look at, you can see things.

It’s a damn shame as I’m not sure we’ll see too many other LvT complete sets coming soon. I will now (reluctantly) get the Curzon set as LvT is one of my favorite directors and compare the discs.

[tenia]

Do you have specific examples out of Melancholia ? I've received the discs and have screened through Element of Crime, Epidemic and Europa and all 3 seemed fine. Breaking The Waves seemed a bit more fragile in some areas, but nothing egregious (it's possible the Criterion disc is worse).

[nicolas]

Do you have specific examples out of Melancholia ? I've received the discs and have screened through Element of Crime, Epidemic and Europa and all 3 seemed fine. Breaking The Waves seemed a bit more fragile in some areas, but nothing egregious (it's possible the Criterion disc is worse).

Melancholia looks terrible during the scene after the prelude - with Dunst and Skarsgard in the limousine as they drive up the road. It’s extremely blocky, especially when you pause it. Detail is much better on my old Curzon disc (I’m sure it’s the same in the new set) without these issues. I haven’t checked further as that was enough for me to dismiss the disc.

Element of Crime and the shot-on-film films have issues with blocking and mushy grain exposure in highlights and even moderately exposed portions. The encodes immediately reminded me of how Walkabout looks in 4K. It’s the same here - dim areas look excellent but as soon as a little more brightness enters the frames, the image collapses. I’ll give you a few time stamps for Element of Crime: 0:07:10 - horrifying: the lamp, bottle, glasses, table and suit are all one blocky mess. 0:10:51 - most detail in the suit is totally invisible. 0:21:17 - the wall, TV and parts of the suit are affected.

Epidemic: 0:00:29 - the grain over the illuminated wall behind the character is all but invisible. (I can even see some minor grain management but that’s surely in the master). 0:01:35 - the lamp and computer are both blocky. 0:12:20 - nearly the entire frame is affected.

Breaking the Waves has the same issues but thankfully a very good UHD is available by Curzon.

[tenia]

Thanks for the details and timecodes. I only gave the discs a quick spin before launching BD Info and scanning them, so I probably haven't gone through the variety of shots and grain exposure and thus encoding possibilities.

[nicolas]

Thanks for the details and timecodes. I only gave the discs a quick spin before launching BD Info and scanning them, so I probably haven't gone through the variety of shots and grain exposure and thus encoding possibilities.

No worries, the good thing is you’ll see the issues in time for your reviews, assuming you dive into the set. Hopefully the people at Potemkine read your review as the sloppiness with which these discs were put together is really embarrassing.

[jegharfangetmigenmyg]

Received my copy of the French Lars von Trier - Intégrale set from Potemkine.
I had high hopes after they put out a few great BD releases in the past and the excellent Lost Highway UHD fully sold me.

I hate to be the bearer of bad news though: The encodes are terrible, almost Curzon-level bad. It’s ironic as I’ve attempted to escape the curse of Curzon and their terrible BD releases (Wim Wenders set) by going with the Potemkine, yet here I am. What makes this even more sad is that apparently Curzon stepped up their game and delivered a solid von Trier set themselves.

The shot-on-film films fare the worst with significant macroblocking in nearly all areas of the frames - from highlights to normally bright portions. The blocking is visible in motion and even stronger in caps. This is not a bitrate issue but something in the encoder settings. I have a strong feeling that these are the most basic autopilot encodes.

The digitally shot films are better but still imperfect. Dogville looks good, Melancholia absolutely terrible, The House that Jack Built solid, The Idiot solid and so on. It’s terribly inconsistent. It’s admittedly a little difficult to spot encoding issues among some of the anomalies inherent to the sources but if you know where to look at, you can see things.

It’s a damn shame as I’m not sure we’ll see too many other LvT complete sets coming soon. I will now (reluctantly) get the Curzon set as LvT is one of my favorite directors and compare the discs.

I agree fully with this. Have also been going through some of the discs, and I think you're right, it comes down mostly to the (automatic?) encoding - all the discs I checked had a fixed bitrate of 30.0 mb/s while the extras were at 15.0 mb/s, so I don't think much manual effort was put into this, unfortunately.

What disappointed me the most, probably, is that the exclusive transfers of The Orchid Gardener, Medea and D-Dag are mostly horrible. The former appears to be an upscale of an old transfer, and D-Day is marred by terrible macro-blocking almost all of the time, and Medea... Wow, it's interlaced and upscaled, bootleg quality - if I'm not mistaken it comes from a screen recording of a projection of the film. It's wild! There's also the short film Occupations, but that, too, appears to be upscaled and interlaced.

The good/great news is the Blu-ray bitrate release premieres of Manderlay and especially the restored version of The Boss of It All. They look quite amazing, especially the latter. And, as Nicolas wrote, The Idiots also looks very good. There's a huge amount of extras and hour-long docs, but only subtitled in French. Luckily for international speakers, a lot of it is in English, but the voice-overs and new academic analysis featurettes and interviews are exclusively in French.

[nicolas]

Received my copy of the French Lars von Trier - Intégrale set from Potemkine.
I had high hopes after they put out a few great BD releases in the past and the excellent Lost Highway UHD fully sold me.

I hate to be the bearer of bad news though: The encodes are terrible, almost Curzon-level bad. It’s ironic as I’ve attempted to escape the curse of Curzon and their terrible BD releases (Wim Wenders set) by going with the Potemkine, yet here I am. What makes this even more sad is that apparently Curzon stepped up their game and delivered a solid von Trier set themselves.

The shot-on-film films fare the worst with significant macroblocking in nearly all areas of the frames - from highlights to normally bright portions. The blocking is visible in motion and even stronger in caps. This is not a bitrate issue but something in the encoder settings. I have a strong feeling that these are the most basic autopilot encodes.

The digitally shot films are better but still imperfect. Dogville looks good, Melancholia absolutely terrible, The House that Jack Built solid, The Idiot solid and so on. It’s terribly inconsistent. It’s admittedly a little difficult to spot encoding issues among some of the anomalies inherent to the sources but if you know where to look at, you can see things.

It’s a damn shame as I’m not sure we’ll see too many other LvT complete sets coming soon. I will now (reluctantly) get the Curzon set as LvT is one of my favorite directors and compare the discs.

I agree fully with this. Have also been going through some of the discs, and I think you're right, it comes down mostly to the (automatic?) encoding - all the discs I checked had a fixed bitrate of 30.0 mb/s while the extras were at 15.0 mb/s, so I don't think much manual effort was put into this, unfortunately.

What disappointed me the most, probably, is that the exclusive transfers of The Orchid Gardener, Medea and D-Dag are mostly horrible. The former appears to be an upscale of an old transfer, and D-Day is marred by terrible macro-blocking almost all of the time, and Medea... Wow, it's interlaced and upscaled, bootleg quality - if I'm not mistaken it comes from a screen recording of a projection of the film. It's wild! There's also the short film Occupations, but that, too, appears to be upscaled and interlaced.

The good/great news is the Blu-ray bitrate release premieres of Manderlay and especially the restored version of The Boss of It All. They look quite amazing, especially the latter. And, as Nicolas wrote, The Idiots also looks very good. There's a huge amount of extras and hour-long docs, but only subtitled in French. Luckily for international speakers, a lot of it is in English, but the voice-overs and new academic analysis featurettes and interviews are exclusively in French.

Thanks for the confirmation about the standard bitrates. I didn’t have time to put in the discs in my computer, but that’s indeed very disappointing and exactly what Curzon did with their Wenders set. I still can’t believe that they (apparently) did a better set than Potemkine. I’m glad that at least some of the discs look good in the FR set - I was so disappointed that I only made random checks of the LvT films I love the most after seeing the same issues in the first few discs. I should have the Curzon next week and am looking forward to what they’ve done.

[jegharfangetmigenmyg]

Received my copy of the French Lars von Trier - Intégrale set from Potemkine.
I had high hopes after they put out a few great BD releases in the past and the excellent Lost Highway UHD fully sold me.

I hate to be the bearer of bad news though: The encodes are terrible, almost Curzon-level bad. It’s ironic as I’ve attempted to escape the curse of Curzon and their terrible BD releases (Wim Wenders set) by going with the Potemkine, yet here I am. What makes this even more sad is that apparently Curzon stepped up their game and delivered a solid von Trier set themselves.

The shot-on-film films fare the worst with significant macroblocking in nearly all areas of the frames - from highlights to normally bright portions. The blocking is visible in motion and even stronger in caps. This is not a bitrate issue but something in the encoder settings. I have a strong feeling that these are the most basic autopilot encodes.

The digitally shot films are better but still imperfect. Dogville looks good, Melancholia absolutely terrible, The House that Jack Built solid, The Idiot solid and so on. It’s terribly inconsistent. It’s admittedly a little difficult to spot encoding issues among some of the anomalies inherent to the sources but if you know where to look at, you can see things.

It’s a damn shame as I’m not sure we’ll see too many other LvT complete sets coming soon. I will now (reluctantly) get the Curzon set as LvT is one of my favorite directors and compare the discs.

I agree fully with this. Have also been going through some of the discs, and I think you're right, it comes down mostly to the (automatic?) encoding - all the discs I checked had a fixed bitrate of 30.0 mb/s while the extras were at 15.0 mb/s, so I don't think much manual effort was put into this, unfortunately.

What disappointed me the most, probably, is that the exclusive transfers of The Orchid Gardener, Medea and D-Dag are mostly horrible. The former appears to be an upscale of an old transfer, and D-Day is marred by terrible macro-blocking almost all of the time, and Medea... Wow, it's interlaced and upscaled, bootleg quality - if I'm not mistaken it comes from a screen recording of a projection of the film. It's wild! There's also the short film Occupations, but that, too, appears to be upscaled and interlaced.

The good/great news is the Blu-ray bitrate release premieres of Manderlay and especially the restored version of The Boss of It All. They look quite amazing, especially the latter. And, as Nicolas wrote, The Idiots also looks very good. There's a huge amount of extras and hour-long docs, but only subtitled in French. Luckily for international speakers, a lot of it is in English, but the voice-overs and new academic analysis featurettes and interviews are exclusively in French.

Thanks for the confirmation about the standard bitrates. I didn’t have time to put in the discs in my computer, but that’s indeed very disappointing and exactly what Curzon did with their Wenders set. I still can’t believe that they (apparently) did a better set than Potemkine. I’m glad that at least some of the discs look good in the FR set - I was so disappointed that I only made random checks of the LvT films I love the most after seeing the same issues in the first few discs. I should have the Curzon next week and am looking forward to what they’ve done.

Looking forward to your run-through of the Curzon. Do you know why Dancer in the Dark isn't included in that set? I forgot to mention it for the Potemkine because there's not much new to report. It appears to come from the same restoration as the German BD that came out some years ago. But that one has a fixed bitrate of 35 mb/s where the Potemkike, again, is 30. Anyways, since it was shot on handheld DV there probably isn't much to gain by further restoration.

Also forgot to mention: The big elephant in the room is of course the total omission of Riget/The Kingdom. Hopefully, deluxe sets of these series will come out next year for the series anniversary, starting with the reported one from Plaion

[nicolas]

I agree fully with this. Have also been going through some of the discs, and I think you're right, it comes down mostly to the (automatic?) encoding - all the discs I checked had a fixed bitrate of 30.0 mb/s while the extras were at 15.0 mb/s, so I don't think much manual effort was put into this, unfortunately.

What disappointed me the most, probably, is that the exclusive transfers of The Orchid Gardener, Medea and D-Dag are mostly horrible. The former appears to be an upscale of an old transfer, and D-Day is marred by terrible macro-blocking almost all of the time, and Medea... Wow, it's interlaced and upscaled, bootleg quality - if I'm not mistaken it comes from a screen recording of a projection of the film. It's wild! There's also the short film Occupations, but that, too, appears to be upscaled and interlaced.

The good/great news is the Blu-ray bitrate release premieres of Manderlay and especially the restored version of The Boss of It All. They look quite amazing, especially the latter. And, as Nicolas wrote, The Idiots also looks very good. There's a huge amount of extras and hour-long docs, but only subtitled in French. Luckily for international speakers, a lot of it is in English, but the voice-overs and new academic analysis featurettes and interviews are exclusively in French.

Thanks for the confirmation about the standard bitrates. I didn’t have time to put in the discs in my computer, but that’s indeed very disappointing and exactly what Curzon did with their Wenders set. I still can’t believe that they (apparently) did a better set than Potemkine. I’m glad that at least some of the discs look good in the FR set - I was so disappointed that I only made random checks of the LvT films I love the most after seeing the same issues in the first few discs. I should have the Curzon next week and am looking forward to what they’ve done.

Looking forward to your run-through of the Curzon. Do you know why Dancer in the Dark isn't included in that set? I forgot to mention it for the Potemkine because there's not much new to report. It appears to come from the same restoration as the German BD that came out some years ago. But that one has a fixed bitrate of 35 mb/s where the Potemkike, again, is 30. Anyways, since it was shot on handheld DV there probably isn't much to gain by further restoration.

Also forgot to mention: The big elephant in the room is of course the total omission of Riget/The Kingdom. Hopefully, deluxe sets of these series will come out next year for the series anniversary, starting with the reported one from Plaion

I’ve no idea other than the usual rights situation. Who knows which UK label or tights holder has their hands on it. I’m sure Curzon asked and were denied. The German Koch BD is also OOP by now.

[dwk]

MUBi is releasing The Kingdom trilogy on Blu-ray on February 6th.

[nicolas]

MUBi is releasing The Kingdom trilogy on Blu-ray on February 6th.

Amazing news! MUBI have improved their encoding significantly, so I’ll definitely take that set despite Plaion surely delivering a good one themselves.

On another note, I received my Curzon set. After all they’ve done, I’m literally speechless as to how great this set is. “Great” encompasses each disc they made specifically for the set - those they simply copied from previous releases (Breaking the Waves and from Antichrist onwards) sadly aren’t 100% perfect from an encoding perspective. Other than that, truly a magnificent set and definitely worth buying! I didn’t expect saying this but Curzon delivered the worldwide best BDs of many of the titles included here. Epidemic, The Element of Crime and Europe look far better than the Criterion versions AND have 5.1 audio included here. Dogville and Manderley are beautiful, The Idiots looks very good as well. (Medea also looks badly here - they likely only received this awful TV master, it’s appropriately treated as nothing more than a bonus feature).

[therewillbeblus]

Excellent news on all accounts! Do we know if The House That Jack Built is the unrated DC? Would you say that any discs are a downgrade from the already-available blu-rays (i.e. Antichrist)?

[swo17]

It's just the unrated version of Jack presented here

[nicolas]

Excellent news on all accounts! Do we know if The House That Jack Built is the unrated DC? Would you say that any discs are a downgrade from the already-available blu-rays (i.e. Antichrist)?

I’ve given the respective discs another look and have some good / bad news.

The House That Jack Built has the DC included - this is the same disc as the previous Artificial Eye release. (FWIW, the booklet included with the new Curzon set lists the runtime of the 146 minute version although that cut is not on the disc).

Regarding whether any of the BDs are downgrades, I unfortunately have to say yes - all the previously released films under the former Artificial Eye banner are inferior. This affects Breaking the Waves Antichrist, Melancholia, Nymphomaniac and The House… All other BDs, the newly encoded ones are exceptional and the reason you’d buy this set for.

For Breaking the Waves, the best alternative is the new Curzon 4K (I wish they included it in this set) hands down.

Melancholia has a plethora of versions available worldwide - I have the US Magnolia BD, gave it a try and it‘s a vastly superior encode. You don’t immediately see any difference during the prologue as that‘s a heavily processed image but later, once the "normal" digital footage starts, there is a big difference. The Curzon BD renders the digital noise as macroblocking, which is sadly noticeable as the noise is more present throughout the film. The Magnolia doesn’t appear to have any of that. That’s a gorgeous BD. If you have it, definitely keep it.

Antichrist has a Criterion BD - notable for including the original theatrical audio without alterations! That BD (BD-50) also looks vastly superior to the Curzon disc, which is a victim of early BD-era, low-bitrate encoding. The Curzon (BD-25) also runs at 25fps, which surely is the frame rate the film was shot in, but everything looks better on the 24fps Criterion.

Nymphomaniac (both parts) is closer, although the Magnolia BDs are both better. I can see and appreciate the difference but believe that they could have squeezed a little more depth and detail out of the source. These are not reference discs but also superior to the Curzon‘s, which are heavily blocky.

The House That Jack Built looks solid on the Curzon and is surely sufficient, although I‘m wondering whether another label delivered a better encode. I don’t have any other BD besides the one in the Potemkine set (irrelevant anyway) but I may give the Shout BD a try. I haven’t seen this film yet and only noticed that the digitally shot sequences appear to have very thick and visible noise in addition to a general lack of "crispness" the modern digital cameras have. This is LvT though, so other standards apply. The inserted shot-on-film clips look fine from what I saw.

I‘m deliberately not including the German Concorde BDs as potential alternatives as that label frequently produced terrible BDs in the past, of which I had way too many.

[therewillbeblus]

Thanks nicolas, very helpful. I'll probably hold onto my discs for now and sell them after comparing. I wonder how Dogville compares to the German BD, which already looked excellent, but we'll see. It's strange that Curzon simultaneously released Breaking the Waves on 4K and makes me wonder if they're going to continue this trend, rendering more discs in this behemoth superfluous...

BTW Orbit responded to my query that this set is apparently OOP and they won't be restocking it - so I imagine the same goes for Diabolik et al. I didn't know this was an LE, but I guess Amazon UK is the best bet right now since it's still in stock there. Grab it while you can

[M-A]

Excellent news on all accounts! Do we know if The House That Jack Built is the unrated DC? Would you say that any discs are a downgrade from the already-available blu-rays (i.e. Antichrist)?

I’ve given the respective discs another look and have some good / bad news.

The House That Jack Built has the DC included - this is the same disc as the previous Artificial Eye release. (FWIW, the booklet included with the new Curzon set lists the runtime of the 146 minute version although that cut is not on the disc).

Regarding whether any of the BDs are downgrades, I unfortunately have to say yes - all the previously released films under the former Artificial Eye banner are inferior. This affects Breaking the Waves Antichrist, Melancholia, Nymphomaniac and The House… All other BDs, the newly encoded ones are exceptional and the reason you’d buy this set for.

For Breaking the Waves, the best alternative is the new Curzon 4K (I wish they included it in this set) hands down.

Melancholia has a plethora of versions available worldwide - I have the US Magnolia BD, gave it a try and it‘s a vastly superior encode. You don’t immediately see any difference during the prologue as that‘s a heavily processed image but later, once the "normal" digital footage starts, there is a big difference. The Curzon BD renders the digital noise as macroblocking, which is sadly noticeable as the noise is more present throughout the film. The Magnolia doesn’t appear to have any of that. That’s a gorgeous BD. If you have it, definitely keep it.

Antichrist has a Criterion BD - notable for including the original theatrical audio without alterations! That BD (BD-50) also looks vastly superior to the Curzon disc, which is a victim of early BD-era, low-bitrate encoding. The Curzon (BD-25) also runs at 25fps, which surely is the frame rate the film was shot in, but everything looks better on the 24fps Criterion.

Nymphomaniac (both parts) is closer, although the Magnolia BDs are both better. I can see and appreciate the difference but believe that they could have squeezed a little more depth and detail out of the source. These are not reference discs but also superior to the Curzon‘s, which are heavily blocky.

The House That Jack Built looks solid on the Curzon and is surely sufficient, although I‘m wondering whether another label delivered a better encode. I don’t have any other BD besides the one in the Potemkine set (irrelevant anyway) but I may give the Shout BD a try. I haven’t seen this film yet and only noticed that the digitally shot sequences appear to have very thick and visible noise in addition to a general lack of "crispness" the modern digital cameras have. This is LvT though, so other standards apply. The inserted shot-on-film clips look fine from what I saw.

I‘m deliberately not including the German Concorde BDs as potential alternatives as that label frequently produced terrible BDs in the past, of which I had way too many.

The German release of Antichrist looks pretty similar to the Criterion to me from looking on caps-a-holic - marginally better in all but the first cap. Of course it being in 25fps is the biggest advantage there. Melancholia is also supposed to be 25fps and I believe only the Swiss BD has that correct https://www.blu-ray.com/movies/Melancho ... ray/80577/

Of course, if you are ripping the discs anyway, you can change the framerate manually to 25fps without reencoding

[nicolas]

Excellent news on all accounts! Do we know if The House That Jack Built is the unrated DC? Would you say that any discs are a downgrade from the already-available blu-rays (i.e. Antichrist)?

I’ve given the respective discs another look and have some good / bad news.

The House That Jack Built has the DC included - this is the same disc as the previous Artificial Eye release. (FWIW, the booklet included with the new Curzon set lists the runtime of the 146 minute version although that cut is not on the disc).

Regarding whether any of the BDs are downgrades, I unfortunately have to say yes - all the previously released films under the former Artificial Eye banner are inferior. This affects Breaking the Waves Antichrist, Melancholia, Nymphomaniac and The House… All other BDs, the newly encoded ones are exceptional and the reason you’d buy this set for.

For Breaking the Waves, the best alternative is the new Curzon 4K (I wish they included it in this set) hands down.

Melancholia has a plethora of versions available worldwide - I have the US Magnolia BD, gave it a try and it‘s a vastly superior encode. You don’t immediately see any difference during the prologue as that‘s a heavily processed image but later, once the "normal" digital footage starts, there is a big difference. The Curzon BD renders the digital noise as macroblocking, which is sadly noticeable as the noise is more present throughout the film. The Magnolia doesn’t appear to have any of that. That’s a gorgeous BD. If you have it, definitely keep it.

Antichrist has a Criterion BD - notable for including the original theatrical audio without alterations! That BD (BD-50) also looks vastly superior to the Curzon disc, which is a victim of early BD-era, low-bitrate encoding. The Curzon (BD-25) also runs at 25fps, which surely is the frame rate the film was shot in, but everything looks better on the 24fps Criterion.

Nymphomaniac (both parts) is closer, although the Magnolia BDs are both better. I can see and appreciate the difference but believe that they could have squeezed a little more depth and detail out of the source. These are not reference discs but also superior to the Curzon‘s, which are heavily blocky.

The House That Jack Built looks solid on the Curzon and is surely sufficient, although I‘m wondering whether another label delivered a better encode. I don’t have any other BD besides the one in the Potemkine set (irrelevant anyway) but I may give the Shout BD a try. I haven’t seen this film yet and only noticed that the digitally shot sequences appear to have very thick and visible noise in addition to a general lack of "crispness" the modern digital cameras have. This is LvT though, so other standards apply. The inserted shot-on-film clips look fine from what I saw.

I‘m deliberately not including the German Concorde BDs as potential alternatives as that label frequently produced terrible BDs in the past, of which I had way too many.

The German release of Antichrist looks pretty similar to the Criterion to me from looking on caps-a-holic - marginally better in all but the first cap. Of course it being in 25fps is the biggest advantage there. Melancholia is also supposed to be 25fps and I believe only the Swiss BD has that correct https://www.blu-ray.com/movies/Melancho ... ray/80577/

Of course, if you are ripping the discs anyway, you can change the framerate manually to 25fps without reencoding

I stand corrected - Antichrist was released by a different distributor in Germany and Switzerland. The Swiss disc looks indeed very good but I think I‘m fine with my CC version. BTW, Kyle15 mentioned on the other forum that the old Curzon BD (also the one in the set) is actually the 1080p version but encoded in 1080i.

I didn’t know that Melancholia was also 25fps and had a Swiss BD in the correct speed. As this is one of my all-time favorites, I bought a cheap copy on eBay to check it out. Thanks for the recommendation.

[nicolas]

Thanks nicolas, very helpful. I'll probably hold onto my discs for now and sell them after comparing. I wonder how Dogville compares to the German BD, which already looked excellent, but we'll see. It's strange that Curzon simultaneously released Breaking the Waves on 4K and makes me wonder if they're going to continue this trend, rendering more discs in this behemoth superfluous...

BTW Orbit responded to my query that this set is apparently OOP and they won't be restocking it - so I imagine the same goes for Diabolik et al. I didn't know this was an LE, but I guess Amazon UK is the best bet right now since it's still in stock there. Grab it while you can

Dogville already has the new 4K master on the German BD. The encoding is technically good but the digital noise buzzes around in the background. Curzon fixed this on their BD. You can already see the pattern in the first overhead shot of the town. Other than that, the biggest flaw on the Concorde disc is the translation of all on-screen text into German. This is a main reason why I dislike the label.
But I’d suggest you to hold on to this disc as there’s a commentary by LvT and Anthony Dod Mantle that’s not on the Curzon disc.

That the set is already (close to) OOP is remarkable - a little surprising as the Wenders set is still around but maybe that’s due to its abysmal quality. I got mine from Amazon UK but it arrived heavily damaged. Hopefully I’ll get a good copy before it’s gone for good.

[The Fanciful Norwegian]

What disappointed me the most, probably, is that the exclusive transfers of The Orchid Gardener, Medea and D-Dag are mostly horrible. The former appears to be an upscale of an old transfer, and D-Day is marred by terrible macro-blocking almost all of the time, and Medea... Wow, it's interlaced and upscaled, bootleg quality - if I'm not mistaken it comes from a screen recording of a projection of the film.

I think this is actually how it was made: shot on video, then transferred to 35mm and finally back to video using an old-fashioned film chain. That wouldn't necessarily account for all of the problems described here, though.

No one's mentioned it yet, but the new Breaking the Waves 4K uses the same restoration as the criterion, but it's a significant improvement. It's an incredibly grainy film and grain levels often vary from scene to scene (the title cards, for example, have always had a weird banding like Von Trier ran them through video or a very early digital source to process them), but the 4K handles this way better than the criterion.

The title cards were paintings by Per Kirkeby that were transferred to digital and then manipulated to add movement, so this is probably down to the source as you surmise. Kirkeby also did the overture images for Dancer in the Dark and the title cards in Antichrist.

[therewillbeblus]

Dogville already has the new 4K master on the German BD. The encoding is technically good but the digital noise buzzes around in the background. Curzon fixed this on their BD. You can already see the pattern in the first overhead shot of the town. Other than that, the biggest flaw on the Concorde disc is the translation of all on-screen text into German. This is a main reason why I dislike the label.
But I’d suggest you to hold on to this disc as there’s a commentary by LvT and Anthony Dod Mantle that’s not on the Curzon disc.

I previewed the commentary and was happy to hear English! Can anybody speak to its quality? I can't imagine it being uninteresting, considering... well, LvT is on it, and also the few details from various stories behind its conception and creation are already gold

[therewillbeblus]

Has anybody done a full compare of extras between the new box set and various other releases, that could potentially be linked? So far I haven't shed any previous discs due to nicolas' report of inferior encodes, but I may be willing to (read: would love to free up shelf space by-) dump a few if the supplements overlap..

[nicolas]

Has anybody done a full compare of extras between the new box set and various other releases, that could potentially be linked? So far I haven't shed any previous discs due to nicolas' report of inferior encodes, but I may be willing to (read: would love to free up shelf space by-) dump a few if the supplements overlap..

I was just about to open my set and the booklet to go through everything when I remembered this wonderful breakdown of the extras in the Curzon set: https://forum.blu-ray.com/showpost.php? ... stcount=42

Which (older) BDs do you have and wish to dump?