Matthew Chmiel

My problem with CAT is that out of the entire Animal trilogy, it is the slowest paced of Argento's films by far. While it might actually be the darkest and most sadistic entry in the animal trilogy, I feel it lacks a lot of what makes Argento's films so great -- the cinematography and the score -- are VERY pedestrian. Doesn't help that it's one of the least interesting plots of an Argento film with a large amount of unlikeable characters.

Ironically, my biggest beef with Four Flies is that the humor feels very out of place. I know that Argento wanted to leave the giallo genre, but the humor feels awkward in what could've been a darker entry than Bird and Cat.

SilverDreams

Picked this up today at my local Best Buy, they had two copies in stock. The employees were scrambling around trying to find it and finally located it in the back of the store on a shelf, not anywhere near the rest of the merchandise that went out yesterday.
The DVD looks great. I wish there were subs for the Italian track, but what can you do? I'm just glad to have it, period. Beats my old bootleg all to hell. Now maybe I'll send the DVD insert to Argento and see if he'll sign it.

SethDLH

The things I would do for a chance to meet him...

SilverDreams

I've met him several times, and didn't have to do anything unseemly. Don't degrade yourself just yet.



But he is honestly one of the nicest people I've ever met. *Cue ripple dissolve*
Almost nine years ago now (I am getting OLD) I got a chance to meet him at the Cinequest film festival in San Jose, Ca where he was being given a lifetime achievement award. I'm still not quite sure how it happened but I ended up in the restaurant at the Fairmont Hotel with Argento and we talked for a good two hours. I'll never forget his amusement at Pepperidge Farms goldfish crackers, ah the memories.

SethDLH

That is awesome! He seems really laid back. Would love to get him to a convention or anything really on the east coast

Matthew Chmiel

You lucky son of a bitch.

Out of all my teenage cinema idols (Kevin Smith, Joss Whedon, Bruce Campbell, etc); Argento is the only one I have not met.

SilverDreams

You met Joss Whedon? I'm jealous of that! And why must you bring my mother into this? She's not always a peach, but I would never say she is a bitch.

I so want to geek out and spill the entire Argento story, but I need to keep the fanboy at bay. Needless to say, meeting him and what came of it was the most amazing thing that has ever happened to me? Is that sad? HAHA

Torchur317

Argento's English doesn't seem that good, how did you pull off having a 2 hour convo with him? lol

man*machine

There's a discussion over at the Mobius forum. Apparently this release is cut by about 40 seconds and runs at a very slight slower speed than it's supposed to. Oh well. It still looks great, so I'm not too bugged.

SilverDreams

His English isn't THAT bad (although I can't say the same for you. The last time I checked 'convo' is not a word )
he just talks a little slow, a lot of hand movements. Some things I had to repeat and kind of act out in a way.
One thing that I love in particular about him is just how animated and excited he gets when talking about certain things. He has such a warmth about him, you can't not smile when you're around him.
And he's very big on giving hugs, even strangers he would hug sometimes when they would come up to him and say HI.

Torchur317

My English is fine, "convo" is short for conversation & it's used all the time....
So take your rude comments somewhere else.....

SilverDreams

but I like my rude comments here where fine folks like yourself actually read them!

:P

But back to the original reason for this post. It's great to have this film on DVD, I still can't get over it. It's actually sitting on my book case. I can watch it whenever I want, and it's not that god awful cobbled together bootleg that I had to suffer through before.

TomOpus

Very cool that you met Dario. I'd love to meet him too. It's sorta funny that I ran into his daughter Asia at Comic-Con some years ago right before "xXx" came out.

Anywho, ordered the movie and should have it tomorrow or Saturday.

SilverDreams

I've met Asia several times, she's very sweet. She was at a Best Buy signing copies of SCARLET DIVA, and was riding high off of "XXX". I'll never forget when a kid came up with I think six photos of her from "XXX" and asked her to sign them, and she said "These are going up on Ebay right?" and the kid said "No, they're for friends". I think she was right, and I wanted to say "You should sign them "Dear Ebay winner-"

asianxcore

Nothing at my local BB.

I think I'm just going to go ahead and order this.

TomOpus

Got mine in the mail today!

asianxcore

Finally picked this up today. The Best Buy I originally went to the week it came out put them out this week.

I'll be happy as a clam once I pick up Bird With The Crystal Plumage on Blu-Ray to accompany this soon.

Zodiac_Speaking

Need to pick it up. I almost met Argento as he was schedule for last year's Texas Frightmare but canceled since Giallo got underway

asianxcore

I'm surprised the audio issues weren't talked about more in this thread, though I know a couple here mentioned it.

Wish I read this review before picking up the disc now.
http://dvdmaniacs.net/review.php?id=696

"It’s merely that the track is in rough shape - a fair amount of background noise and hiss are evident, parts of the track seem very wobbly indeed, and much of the track has been noticeably slowed down to keep the audio in synch with the image. It seems likely that Mya sourced the audio track from a PAL master, which would result in a higher pitch - and which would also throw it out of synch when paired with an NTSC image master. Mya have compensated by slowing the track down, making the voices seem far deeper than intended - and playing havoc with Morricone’s score in the process. "

Carcosa

Its funny how such conclusions are drawn on what appears to be guesswork to begin with.

logboy

yes, guess work is regrettable. so is the situation we seem to have with Mya, that nobody quite knows who / where they actually are... so nobody can contact them directly to clear-up what's clearly taken to be a fault with this / their work.

asianxcore

So the actors voices in the film aren't deeper than they are supposed to be? The score?

I'm curious to all of you here who have seen the movie before to confirm or deny that there is an audio issue with this release.

I have not seen this film before nor have I had any other releases of it, so I have nothing to compare it against.

man*machine

Yes, it's a fact. The audio is mucked up on the English track. Michael Brandon's voice sounds a lot deeper than he should and Morricone's score also lurches around a bit. If you don't know the film well enough and you don't know what Brandon and the other actors usually sound like, you may not care. But it's definitely noticeable and annoying if you are familiar with this film/actors. It does appear that Mya simply took the audio-track from the recent German bootleg which was a PAL audio-track, but by slowing it down, they screwed up the pitch and speed so it is not at correct NTSC. Just a really bad patch-job. (People have checked and it appears both the bootleg and this Mya release have the same anomalies and noise in certain scenes on the audio track - thus implying that Mya just stole the audio track off the bootleg - as they did most of the extras, too). The Italian track on the disc is in the right pitch so you can hear how it's supposed to sound, but unfortunately no English subtitles! The Mya release is also cut by 53 seconds including dialog and the final breaths of one dying character.

But most people just care about how pretty the picture looks and it does look very pretty. So enjoy!

NoirFan

DVD Beaver

man*machine

Are all DVD Beaver reviews so brief? "It looks good and sounds good and I heard there was a missing minute." OK - I know the review was a bit longer than that, but not by much. Anyway, cool screenshots.

Here's some much more interesting reading:

http://www.avmaniacs.com/forums/show...=39003&page=16