The Lives of Others won Best Foreign Film at the Oscars over Pan's Labyrinth.

It was also exclusively in limited release -- 259 theaters with an extremely healthy per-screen average of $23,732. It shouldn't be painted as any sort of failure, financially or critically.

Also worth noting that The Lives of Others nearly tripled Layer Cake's domestic box office take, and it's on par with Running with Scissors's gross. I'd imagine I could find more examples if I kept digging. Putting out a title like this on Blu-ray is hardly unprecedented for Sony.

No, but it does not sound like a movie that is going to sell a whole lot of discs or players. The limited release and the fact that it is a foriegn film does not bode well for success on Blu Ray. Layer Cake probably would not have been released if it did not star Daniel Craig. It was clearly released just to cash in with the release of Casino Royale.

Kiefer Sutherland, Julia Roberts, Mel Gibson, and hot soft core porn staring Denise Richards are far more of a sure thing.

I'm not arguing that it will, but it's still a disappointment, especially since so many of the titles from Blu-ray-exclusive studios seem so heavily skewed to the "PS3 demographic".

Maybe not, but it's still sad. It may be the minority, but there's more to some movie fans than Julia Roberts, Mel Gibson, and some cheezy T&A.


This is an Oscar-winning best picture that is currently #87 on the IMDb top 250. It has a whopping 95% Fresh rating over at Rotten Tomatoes. Obviously there are people out there that would enjoy it.

I think it *would* sell discs. At least to those who are looking for something other than the usual fare with big stars or shit that blows up.

One of the "insiders" at AVS is saying that the Ghostbuster movies are being prepped for release. I still remember the excitement over the long delayed release of Ghostbusters on DVD here back in 99, I think. Then the outrage that followed when Reel.com took weeks to fulfill all of the orders with the people who preordered the earliest getting them last. Ah, the good old days...:) This should be a pretty big hit for BD.

It's Beatboy77...take it with a salt mine. The true insider at AVS, Paidgeek, said that they're looking at them...which they're doing for their entire library. I'd love to see both Ghostbusters movies on BD this year, but I doubt it.

Yeah, I know about Beatboy, but then I read this post by Paidgeek in the insiders forum:

Quote:
Originally Posted by roma_victor
To paidgeek:

First, thanks for your continuing contribution to this forum.
There has been some speculation here about several possible upcoming BD releases, and I would like to ask if you can verify whether the following are in the works/scheduled for release in the near future:

Lawrence of Arabia

Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon (one of my all-time favorite movies)

Bram Stoker's Dracula (ditto)

Ghostbusters 1 & 2

Thanks in advance for any information you can share!


Quote:
Originally Posted by paidgeek
All of these titles are in the works, but I can't comment any further on them until they are closer to their street dates.

But again, they're obviously working on their bigger titles for eventual release, but are they all coming by the end of 2007? Probably not.

"In the works" is industry-speak for "Yeah, we've thought about it. Maybe some day. Eventually".

Sorry. Don't buy that. I believe all of these titles will be released within the year and probably by the end of 2007.

I'm not saying this so-called "insider" is correct, but if the Ghostbuster movies' HD quality is anything like it was when I saw them via Comcast On Demand a few months ago, then they'll end up being TERRIBLY disappointing.

Do you also think Universal will go neutral in July?

:) No.

The Man Room also threw out some of the above metioned titles as possibly getting announcements soon.

I think we'll see Bram Stoker's Dracula this Fall.

Were these versions SD or HD?

fitprod

I thought my post was quite clear - they were the HD versions.

I wonder who processed them, and what the compression rate was. I've seen the HD masters and while Ghostbusters needs some clean up work, Ghostbusters 2 looked pretty good. (You have to factor in the age of these flicks... They are both nearly 20 years old now...)

I worked with an attrocious 4x3 SD master for Comcast's VOD a few months back, and due to their compression limitations it created a whole special level of problems...

fitprod

I started watching "Ghostbusters II" in the HD OnDemand section and it was really not that much better, if any better, than my standard DVD upconverted through my HDA1. I agree with you that it would be disappointing.

Can you really compare Comcast HD with Blu Ray or HD DVD? I have Directv and I know the HD channels from them are not even close to the quality we get on our HD discs.

Comcast is supposed to be one of the better providers out there in terms of HD quality, although their VOD is supposed to be fairly lousy.

It could be a case of Sony providing Comcast with an older HD master, but the eventual Blu-ray release could be culled from something more recent or from a transfer that hasn't even been done yet. A random example would be Silence of the Lambs; when it first aired on HDNet Movies, it was using a much older HD master than the one used for the as-of-then most recent MGM DVD release, and it reportedly looked pretty awful.

let's hope it doesn't look like what was broadcast over on HDNet Movies - the Superbit standard DVD looked better than what I experienced in watching this in HiDef.

this release screams out for a deluxe edition. Given how much supplements were not given by Columbia/TriStar to Criterion's laserdisc of 'Close Encounters' I know there is a treasure trove of extras that could be beneficial to a new SE of 'Dracula'

what's up the deletion of Cars ?

As someone newer to this subforum, can I get a key for that chart?

red = HD DVD exclusive
orange = HD DVD title also on BD
blue = BD exclusive
green = BD title also on HD DVD


Basically, if you're looking for HD DVD stuff, focus on the red and orange.