#boutique bluray

[disastardly]

today is the last day the Vinegar Syndrome summer sale can make a fool of me

and a fool I have been made (＋_＋)

[ringoandolive]

The slipcover for the bright lights big city bluray is soooo cute

[bowelfly]

oh hi i just dumped like 30-ish of my favorite chinese fantasy movies (plus a few japanese and indonesian fantasy films) onto a google drive here. i'm gonna try and leave it up for at least a year unless i really need the space, but in the meantime go nuts with it. i might also occasionally add new films to the folder. the contents of the drive are not even close to a comprehensive overview of the genre but i've only got so much upload capacity and it's a pretty good introduction imo.

if you're wondering where to start, i will recommend the following, roughly in order, as first stabs into the genre:

Buddha's Palm (1982)

Holy Flame of the Martial World (1983)

Zu: Warriors from the Magic Mountain (1983)

The Miracle Fighters (1982)

Portrait in Crystal (1983)

Descendant of the Sun (1983)

The Battle Wizard (1977)

The Beheaded 1000 (1993)

The Ghost Hill (1971)

The Hidden Power of the Dragon Sabre (1984)

that last one is technically the third part of a trilogy but it's a long-gap sequel with tenuous continuity and the first two aren't nearly as crazy, and honestly watching them first wouldn't really make the film anymore coherent. in fact as a general rule for enjoyment of any of these i strongly discourage the impulse to make total sense of the plot. just let the wizard laser nonsense wash over you.

offhand, i think the only film in this compilation that really needs a content warning is Wolf Devil Woman, which is a kickass taiwanese fantasy film and one of the few that has a female lead, the inimitable Pearl Chang who also wrote and directed the film, but it also has a couple moments of on-screen animal cruelty to be wary of.

UPDATE 2024.3.2: i replaced the copy of The Enchantress (1983) with a higher quality version i found. i highly recommend grabbing this one, it's a banger.

i absolutely love old 60s-80s wuxia movies and have watched probably close to a hundred of them just in the last year, especially if you include some of the more wuxia-adjacent kung fu films of the era, but without question my favorite wuxia subgenre is the string of films made mostly in the 80s plus a few from the late 70s and early 90s when hong kong and taiwan movie studios started to get really weird and high concept in an effort to stand out and were churning out all kinds of movies about wizards having laser battles and shit, but since computer graphics weren't really a big thing yet everything had to be done either with practical effects or just hand-drawing the effects on the film.

i say this without an ounce of irony or condescension. there is absolutely nothing "so bad it's good" about these movies. they genuinely fucking whip ass and the amount of effort and artistry put into such weird and wild concepts is mind-blowing, especially considering many of them were made to be practically disposable and some of them only survived to today by the grace of someone happening to save the original negative or just an intact 35mm print from being tossed in a dumpster.

to that end i've been compiling a list of films in this my most beloved of genres and if you love wizard shit then you really owe it to yourself to track some of these down and give them a watch:

EDIT: forgot to mention that many of these you can find on public torrent servers like rarbg and there's a surprising number just on archive.org and youtube. but also if you can spare the cash, many excellent old hong kong movies are starting to get really nice physical media releases from boutique DVD and blu-ray distribution companies

[bimbofawn]

Just spent almost $300 at Vinegar Syndrome's bi-annual 50% off sale. Finally got my own copies of Alien From L.A. and Reform School Girls, but seriously, someone take my Paypal away.

[astralbondpro]

Why can't one have cheap hobbies? Like CDs of American pop bands, and big studio blurays?

But nooo. Imported vinyls of small European bands, and remastered b movies from boutique bluray shops it is.

[watching-pictures-move]

Viddying the Nasties | Home Sweet Home (Pena, 1981)

Put this on as it’s American Thanksgiving and I figured I’d watch something appropriate for the day despite being Canadian and already having celebrated our Thanksgiving over a month ago. Big mistake. This is horrible.

I’m probably not being entirely fair to the movie as the copy I watched on YouTube looked to have been smeared with Vaseline, which made it harder to appreciate any strengths the movie might have had on a technical level. There are a handful of novel kills, including one via wrestling move and another via electric guitar electrocution. I’m sure if you watch a kill compilation, this might seem fun.

But at feature length, you’re stuck with a bunch of characters, almost all of whom are extremely shrill and refuse to shut up at any point during the movie. There are a few recognizable names, including Don Edmonds, director of the first two Ilsa movies, and Vinessa Shaw. She’s probably the most tolerable character by virtue of being find years old and having no lines. Least tolerable is her brother, who wails on his electric guitar, runs around in KISS makeup and manages to annoy the other characters in addition to the audience. He gets paired up with a Latina girl who wails on her acoustic guitar and who I would have assumed was an ill intentioned racial caricature had I not known that director Nettie Pena is Latina herself.

I’m on the record for thinking the creakiness and dead air of early slashers is part of what makes them effective. Dead air implies silence. There is little silence here. Anyway, if you look up Pena online, she makes no mention in her website bio of either this movie or her editing work on Dracula Sucks. Maybe when this gets its inevitable boutique Bluray release replete with generous, borderline mendacious copy on the back cover, she’ll open up about them in the special features.

[mariocki]

hi! apologies for the long ask but i read your tags on that post about physical media and i thought you might like to know my experience with 4ks versus my experience with other physical media

i''ve seen that post about all 4k discs requiring access to the internet to work before and i've never encountered that, i have a decent collection of 4k discs both from boutique distributors and mass releases from regular stores at the mall. i play them on a 4k player that has never been connected to the internet in any way, only plugged into a power outlet and my dumb tv which is not connected to the internet in any way either, and they all work perfectly.

the only time i've ever been denied access to a disc was when i put a regular blu ray in a ps4 that had never been connected to the internet and it said i had to connect to enable bluray playing (it plays games offline fine so i thought this was weird). i said fuck that and put the same disc in my blu ray player and it worked fine.

i've never connected any of my disc-playing machines to the internet in any way and the only one that has ever shown limitations like that is my ps4 (it can't play some newer games or download things or upload stats etc but who cares lol i just use it to play older games as they are). my regular blu rays and my 4ks play perfectly in their respective completely offline players. maybe it's an issue with PS5s? i've never had one but i know they can play 4ks (unlike the ps4), and maybe they exhibit similar limitations when it comes to playing movie discs vs games?

i love my regular blus, and have a lot more of them than 4ks, so i'm not one of those people that think upgrading is necessary, but i've had a lot of fun getting into 4k so far and they can look incredible if they're done with care (there's heaps of enthusiasts on youtube that scope out releases and let you know which ones make the most of the format and are worth spending money on)

so if you're curious about 4ks, don't be discouraged by the idea you can never "own" one in the way you can with standard bluray, because like i said, i buy them regularly from multiple sources and watch them all 100% offline and have never once encountered this problem so it's definitely not a format-wide issue at all.

Ooh OK, thank you! Truly appreciate the input.

Tbh I don't see myself getting into 4k personally, but that's mostly bc I already have a too big blu ray collection and my bf would kill me

Plus the backbone of my collection is shitty Italian horror films from the 70s, and I'm not convinced they really require the upgrade. I have one 4K disc, from a dual format set, of Ark of the Sun God, a film that probably looks at its best on battered VHS. That being said, I've no prudish notions or anything about the format and fully appreciate what it can potentially do for, yknow, genuinely beautiful films. Eh, maybe one day. I swore off blu ray at first... come to that, I swore off DVD initially too!

[orlaite]

favourite boutique bluray you own? favourite 4K you own? what movie deserves a 4K the most? most overrated 4K? physical media pet-peeve?

My favourite, favourite boutique is the Criterion The New World bluray. I mean just look at it. The Tree of Life Criterion is in very similiar packaging but it's slightly thinner and is decorated by stills from the movie and not original artwork. The Tree of Life Criterion is also amongst my faves but this one is just the Top Dog.

My favourite 4K is the Lawrence of Arabia limited edition steelbook. It was my White Wale for so long as I got into the movie right after the steelbook went out of sale and I even remember seeing it being launched and thinking "oh wow that steelbook looks great and this is supposed to be one of those classic GOATs. Should I blind-buy it?" but then I was too money-sensible... But it is mine now! And even with the amount of hype and expectations I built up from a year of pining for it it didn't disappoint. It's the most beautiful 4K scan of one of the most beautiful movies ever made and I'm so glad I own it and get to watch it in quality that good!❤️

And the movie that most desperately needs a 4K release is a contemporary of LoA: Ben-Hur (1959). I don't understand why WB won't release a 4K when the film was scanned in 8K for the bluray release! They're sitting on a HQ scan of one of the most beautiful, epic, critically and commercially acclaimed movies of all time and they're satisfied with it not having a 4K?? Seeing how marvelous the LoA 4K looks made me thirst all the harder for a Ben-Hur 4K and more classic 70MM films on 4K in general. @ Warner Brothers get your house in order and give the people what they want!

I don't have any one specific 4K I'd call overrated but most modern movies I've watched on 4K have been very underwhelming... I think classic movies, shot on film and with different conventions and attitudes wrt: lighting, production design, effects, colour, etc etc show up much better on 4K than modern digital photography and all that entails do. They look better than their bluray counterparts, no doubt, but the only modern movie I've seen in 4K that really wow'ed me was Interstellar with it's full-screen IMAX scenes - whereas almost all classic movies I've seen of 4K has really blown my socks off.

As for physical media pet-peeves: double-stacking the 4K discs so they get scratched super easily, the slipcover lottery, 4K's that don't come with a standard bluray (like my Arrow Robocop 4K), how difficult and expensive it can be to find the movies I want when my taste is older and more niche cinema... And I was really pissed by the way the Avatar 4K's were sold. When Avatar: TWOW came out on physical they released the original Avatar on 4K as well, and I bought the TWOW 4K steelbook. Then a year later both Avatar and Avatar: TWOW get new collectors editition 4K steels with Dolby Vision and lots of extra special features?? That was low.

[thegeekempress]

Remember, DVDs/BluRays aren't entirely dead. Support the boutique manufacturers who still put fun stuff on their titles. Shelves full of the movies/shows/animation you genuinely like is sexy and sophisticated like a cyberpunk library.

the death of dvds is so fucked. what about bonus features

[freewayshark]

Well yeah it’s $40, it’s a collector’s edition

It’s also the only version they’ve actually made so kind of seems like one of those things where they slapped “Collector’s Edition” on there as an excuse to make it $$$

Also, Scream Factory is a boutique label, essentially all their releases are “collector’s edition” and while they’ve always been pricey, this seems excessively high. The Slumber Party Massacre 1 + 2 4K/bluray combo pack has a list price of 35.99, where their single movie blurays are typically listed for 27.99. Although they often drop in price if you wait, I’m just nervous the demand for Hush is going to lead to a bit of a deal like Scream Factory’s original Slumber Party Massacre 2 bluray which, until the 4K combo release, was selling for like $400 on eBay because it sold out and they didn’t make more.

[reyys]

tagged by my one of the best gifts this hellsite gave me @tchallaas 💕💕

nickname: Mag

sign: leo

height: 5′5

last thing i googled: theme recovery. every time i consider updating this blog I change my mind and immediately go back.

song stuck in my head: by your side - sade

number of followers: over a thousand 

amount of sleep: well it’s 6 am and i still haven’t went to sleep. i’ll get back to you on that one

lucky number: 23

dream job: not working/travel photography

wearing: amazon basic t with fear of god sweats and californias

movies/books that summarize me:

books: leaves of grass

movies: beasts of the southern wild, paris is burning, the place beyond the pines. I’m pretty sure i’d have to explain that combo but I assure you that it makes sense in my head.

favorite song: killing me softly - Fugees (I don’t think anyone can have a favorite song but I revisit this one often)

favorite instrument: piano

aesthetic: I’m going through a more than basic minimal phase juxtapose by my collectables (vinyls, boutique blurays, 4Ks, posters and figures). My clothes are mostly monochrome earth tones but I toss in like Levi 501s with my beanies, coverse and/or boots. 

favorite author: I no longer have one

favorite animal noise: purring is always good. It means the animal is at peace.

random: thanks to work there’s like 5 computers in my apartment. Not including ipad/iphone. I hate everything. 

i tag no one atm

[lizardsfromspace]

Yeah, this

Also seeing boutique Bluray publishers (not just Criterion but Arrow too) get sections at stores leads to some wild things. Like wandering into a Barnes & Noble media section where the first film in the marquee display is Incubus, the Esperanto-language horror movie starring William Shatner

Sometimes people fearing the end of physical media for movies rope in books too & physical books are fine. They're not going anywhere bc they're still how publishers make the majority of their money

If you look into the data, after an initial boom, the percentage of people reading print versus ebooks has remained pretty consistent, without major swings. It's still primarily paper books, as this graph from 2024 shows. Majorities still prefer physical books across all age brackets as well,

If you look at sales charts, at the start of the 2010s physical book sales took a big hit, but then ebook sales declined and now physical book sales are at or exceed where they were before they came along.

Now, the elephant in the room is that this data concerns ebook versions of books with physical copies, i.e. traditionally published ones. Because no one predicted that the primary market for ebooks would not be digital editions of every book, but an entirely separate ecosystem of independent and self-published books that would not exist were it not for ebooks.

But why ebook sales of traditionally published books declined so much after their initial boom is a question in need of an explanation. Let's check out the Amazon page for their current top selling book, the Handmaid's Tale

Oh, that's right! Ebooks COST MORE THAN PHYSICAL BOOKS now. But if you pay a $11.99 monthly subscription, you could read it for free! Anyway yeah this isn't a DVD/Blu-Ray situation physical books are not going anywhere anytime soon

[commiegoth]

This guy compared RLM throwing a bunch of Nukie VHS tapes into a woodchipper for a video raising money ($80k+!!!) for charity to book burnings and doubled down when people pointed out VHS is a non-archival format that degrades over time and the film is readily available to watch online for free on archive.org.

Also he's one of the Living Tombstone guys and does the music on those Vivziepop shows.

[blindenmuth]