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The Official Mill Creek Sony Firesale Appreciation Thread
It can't be as bad as those Buena Vista releases, right?
Originally Posted by Home Theater Magazine
Minneapolis’ Mill Creek Entertainment has licensed 250 titles from Sony Pictures Home Entertainment for DVD and Blu-ray Disc distribution in the United States and Canada.
The deal covers everything from the “Hostel” and “Hollow Man” franchises to classics such as Ship of Fools, Bonjour Tristesse, The Last Detail, Avalon, The Chase and Agnes of God. Many of the titles will see their first-ever Blu-ray release. “It’s a defining moment for Mill Creek Entertainment. The sun is shining over here on the home video business,” said Jeff Hayne, VP of content acquisition for Mill Creek. “We’re going to do a lot of things where we package titles together by star, like Jean-Claude Van Damme and Steven Seagal, and in other cases we’ll do that by genre. That’s been our bread and butter with DVD for a long time, and now we get to do that with Blu-ray.” Mill Creek plans a first wave of releases included in the deal this fall. Hollywood Homicide, All the Pretty Horses and Saving Silverman are among the other well-known titles Mill Creek will release. “This treasure trove of SPHE films represents a watershed enhancement of our growing filmed entertainment catalog,” said Ian Warfield, president and COO of Mill Creek. “We are excited to work with the Sony Pictures Home Entertainment team to deliver this amazing line-up of star-filled titles for the enjoyment of an even broader audience of consumers.” WAVE 1 (October 9th, 2012)
WAVE 2 (March 26th, 2013)
WAVE 3 (May 7th, 2013)
WAVE 3.1 (October 1st, 2013)
WAVE 4 (July 22nd, 2014)
WAVE 5 (August 19th, 2014)
WAVE 6 (September 30th, 2014)
POSSIBLE FUTURE RELEASES CONFIRMED BY MILL CREEK & SONY Spoiler:
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Re: The Official Mill Creek Sony Firesale Appreciation Thread
Hal Ashby deserves so much more than Mill Creek. I am expecting a bare bones, interlaced, upconversion for The Last Detail. Albeit at a bargain basement price...between this and the TT thread I am turning into Goldilocks. Surely, there will be a "just right" boutique label on the horizon.
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Re: The Official Mill Creek Sony Firesale Appreciation Thread
C'mon Body Double
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Re: The Official Mill Creek Sony Firesale Appreciation Thread
Originally Posted by BambooLounge
(Post 11202694)
Hal Ashby deserves so much more than Mill Creek. I am expecting a bare bones, interlaced, upconversion for The Last Detail. Albeit at a bargain basement price...between this and the TT thread I am turning into Goldilocks. Surely, there will be a "just right" boutique label on the horizon.
If Mill Creek is going to be their dumping ground for movies they have no intention of remastering, their reputation is going to take a hit. I'm not saying they're above that, but I for one will be disappointed if it turns out to be true. It would particularly pain me to see a movie like The Last Detail end up on a subpar BD. |
Re: The Official Mill Creek Sony Firesale Appreciation Thread
We’re going to do a lot of things where we package titles together by star, like Jean-Claude Van Damme and Steven Seagal, and in other cases we’ll do that by genre. |
Re: The Official Mill Creek Sony Firesale Appreciation Thread
Well, I guess I have mixed feelings about this announcement. On one hand, there are some really good movies that might not have ever been released in HD that will end up getting a Blu-ray release. On the other hand, it's Mill Creek ... I guess we'll just have to wait and see how these look.
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Re: The Official Mill Creek Sony Firesale Appreciation Thread
GREAT! Wish it was anyone else other than Mill Creek (with the possible exception of Anchor Bay, cf their BD edition of DEADLY SPAWN).
We can look forward to 250 shitty, low-bitrate encodes. I'd just love for Mill Creek to prove me wrong, turn over a new leaf, and raise the bar by making their BD encodes shine, however! |
Re: The Official Mill Creek Sony Firesale Appreciation Thread
Originally Posted by zyzzle
(Post 11203048)
GREAT! Wish it was anyone else other than Mill Creek (with the possible exception of Anchor Bay, cf their BD edition of DEADLY SPAWN).
We can look forward to 250 shitty, low-bitrate encodes. I'd just love for Mill Creek to prove me wrong, turn over a new leaf, and raise the bar by making their BD encodes shine, however! Mill Creek is great at putting out quality product at a cheap price as long as they're given the right material to work with. The Buena Vista titles, not as much, as they look like they're first-generation HDTV masters (especially as all of them have come packed with 2.0 audio tracks). However, based upon the specifications of the next Buena Vista wave, we could be seeing a sudden jump in quality. If anything, their track record is leaps and bounds better than Echo Bridge or Image Entertainment. If Sony is willing to work with them, we could get some stellar bargain-bin releases. |
Re: The Official Mill Creek Sony Firesale Appreciation Thread
Originally Posted by Texan26
(Post 11202917)
Sounds like more upcoming Wal-mart dump bin material.
It just sounds like a bunch of garbage is coming. Is Sony going to farm out anything that's actually good? |
Re: The Official Mill Creek Sony Firesale Appreciation Thread
The big studios are no longer interested in releasing catalog. Hardly comes as a shock. At this point we should be glad just to get these on Blu-ray.
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Re: The Official Mill Creek Sony Firesale Appreciation Thread
I don't mind if they don't get any extras, but hopefully these will at least get decent HD transfers. The Last Detail and Bonjour Tristesse, at least, are great movies, and I'd jump at the chance to get them on Blu-ray.
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Re: The Official Mill Creek Sony Firesale Appreciation Thread
The transfers/masters are one thing, but the actual disc encodes are something else. They could (and should) be getting stellar material to work with from Sony, but it won't amount to much if they give them indifferent, low-bit rate encodes. Not saying this is what will happen. I don't own any of the previously released BV releases, and even if I did they might step up their game with the Sony stuff.
We'll all just have to wait and see. I am positively optimistic considering the titles they are choosing to mention in the initial press release. Bonjour Tristesse is a day one purchase for me, as will likely be The Chase. I'm very surprised to see BT going to Mill Creek rather than Twilight Time. I thought for sure something like that would be a shoo-in over there. Hopefully in 2013 I can start scratching a lot of these off my want list Gilda Gidget (finally in it's proper OAR) From Here To Eternity The Buddy Holly Story The China Syndrome Golden Voyage Of Sinbad The Swimmer with all the licensing deals in place now, 2013 should be a decent year for deeper catalog it looks like. |
Re: The Official Mill Creek Sony Firesale Appreciation Thread
its a distribution deal right, so maybe it will be like the Image deal where Sony seemed to have done encodes and the masters?
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Re: The Official Mill Creek Sony Firesale Appreciation Thread
Originally Posted by nitin77
(Post 11203467)
its a distribution deal right, so maybe it will be like the Image deal where Sony seemed to have done encodes and the masters?
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Re: The Official Mill Creek Sony Firesale Appreciation Thread
Seeing as how Sony has completely bypassed releasing some newer films on BD at all (Hostel III, Good Old Fashioned Orgy) it's no surprise they'd do this. Seems like an easy way to focus solely on big titles while allowing a second-rate company to pump out the rest.
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Re: The Official Mill Creek Sony Firesale Appreciation Thread
Mill Creek has been doing decent stuff.
People complaining sound like they're talking about Echo Bridge. |
Re: The Official Mill Creek Sony Firesale Appreciation Thread
Strong A/V with any existing extras for cheap? Sounds good.
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Re: The Official Mill Creek Sony Firesale Appreciation Thread
Originally Posted by GizmoDVD
(Post 11203621)
Possibly. But some of Sony's BDs haven't looked all that great. I have a feeling were going to get a bunch of ancient HDTV masters slapped on a disc. Why spend the money when the disc will MSRP at $9.99?
For example, Cowboy Bebop: The Movie was a packed special edition DVD with a 5.1 English track (the original Japanese audio track was stereo). The Blu-ray drops all of the bonus material and even drops the 5.1 English track to PCM 2.0. If Sony keeps providing the masters, Mill Creek's releases will look great as they don't mind using dual-layered discs for bargain titles (unlike say Echo Bridge). Hopefully they'll bring over the bonus material a lot of these DVDs and Blu-ray releases included as well. |
Re: The Official Mill Creek Sony Firesale Appreciation Thread
Well if Mill Creek is now using BD50s for its releases, that is wonderful news. The idea should be to encode the best possible PQ out of the provided masters. I'm willing to be optimistic and give Mill Creek the benefit of the doubt.
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Re: The Official Mill Creek Sony Firesale Appreciation Thread
Originally Posted by GizmoDVD
(Post 11203621)
Possibly. But some of Sony's BDs haven't looked all that great. I have a feeling were going to get a bunch of ancient HDTV masters slapped on a disc. Why spend the money when the disc will MSRP at $9.99?
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Re: The Official Mill Creek Sony Firesale Appreciation Thread
Originally Posted by nitin77
(Post 11204871)
most have looked pretty solid to me. Image titles like Absence of Malice and And Justice For All look and sound pretty fine.
But image may have licensed titles that Sony had planned on putting out on BD but didn't. These titles Mill creek just got may not have any work done on them. I doubt Sony was ready to release Saving Silverman. |
Re: The Official Mill Creek Sony Firesale Appreciation Thread
Didn't realize it at first, but Mill Creek has also released the 90's Gamera trilogy on Bluray, and Sony holds the US rights to distribute a lot of Godzilla films. There's still a handful of Godzilla titles that never got legit US DVD releases, and this might be a good way of getting them out the door.
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Re: The Official Mill Creek Sony Firesale Appreciation Thread
I figure this is the same deal Image has with Sony... Image uses Sony for CEA and replication, in turn Sony gave them a batch of titles to release.
fitprod |
Re: The Official Mill Creek Sony Firesale Appreciation Thread
But you have to believe that many of these masters have been untouched since the DVD release, as GizmoDVD alluded to in his post. The Image BDs were clearly releases that Sony had once prepared for themselves to release but didn't, and hence looked good. These are all mostly C-list movies where the master has been rotting since the DVD release of years ago.
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Re: The Official Mill Creek Sony Firesale Appreciation Thread
Originally Posted by PhantomStranger
(Post 11205396)
The Image BDs were clearly releases that Sony had once prepared for themselves to release but didn't, and hence looked good. These are all mostly C-list movies where the master has been rotting since the DVD release of years ago.
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Re: The Official Mill Creek Sony Firesale Appreciation Thread
I'm prepared for the worst but would likely buy quite a few classic catalog titles if the encodes are decent.
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Re: The Official Mill Creek Sony Firesale Appreciation Thread
October 9th will see Mill Creek's first Sony release, all being double features priced at $9.98:
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Re: The Official Mill Creek Sony Firesale Appreciation Thread
Mild interest on the Hostel double feature, depending on reviews.
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Re: The Official Mill Creek Sony Firesale Appreciation Thread
Originally Posted by KillerCannibal
(Post 11346334)
Mild interest on the Hostel double feature, depending on reviews.
On the same day, Mill Creek releases these titles onto DVD, so assume Blu-ray rereleases (and re-releases) soon: Moved to the OP. |
Re: The Official Mill Creek Sony Firesale Appreciation Thread
Looks like they've actually snuck in a handful of legitimately good films among the usual middling, forgotten junk: Anderson Tapes, Last Detail, and Baby, the Rain Must Fall would all make potentially worthwhile releases, depending on the quality of the transfers.
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Re: The Official Mill Creek Sony Firesale Appreciation Thread
Originally Posted by NoirFan
(Post 11346386)
Looks like they've actually snuck in a handful of legitimately good films among the usual middling, forgotten junk: Anderson Tapes, Last Detail, and Baby, the Rain Must Fall would all make potentially worthwhile releases, depending on the quality of the transfers.
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Re: The Official Mill Creek Sony Firesale Appreciation Thread
I'll get the Hostel release just to cut down on space.
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Re: The Official Mill Creek Sony Firesale Appreciation Thread
Originally Posted by SethDLH
(Post 11346671)
I'll get the Hostel release just to cut down on space.
So on Hostel, you'll lose:
Hostel: Part II, you'll lose:
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Re: The Official Mill Creek Sony Firesale Appreciation Thread
Originally Posted by Matthew Chmiel
(Post 11346887)
You do realize this double feature will most likely be movie-only?
So on Hostel, you'll lose:
Hostel: Part II, you'll lose:
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Re: The Official Mill Creek Sony Firesale Appreciation Thread
Originally Posted by Matthew Chmiel
(Post 11346887)
You do realize this double feature will most likely be movie-only?
So on Hostel, you'll lose:
Hostel: Part II, you'll lose:
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Re: The Official Mill Creek Sony Firesale Appreciation Thread
Originally Posted by Matthew Chmiel
(Post 11346321)
October 9th will see Mill Creek's first Sony release, all being double features priced at $9.98:
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Re: The Official Mill Creek Sony Firesale Appreciation Thread
Originally Posted by SethDLH
(Post 11346671)
I'll get the Hostel release just to cut down on space.
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Re: The Official Mill Creek Sony Firesale Appreciation Thread
Originally Posted by PhantomStranger
(Post 11419941)
Stay away from the Hostel double feature and pick up the original Sony Blu-rays of them. Hostel Part II received an abysmal transfer that went horribly wrong somewhere down the line, with crushed black levels and other problems.
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Re: The Official Mill Creek Sony Firesale Appreciation Thread
Bumped with information for releases in May. I still need to add the information for the WM exclusives/everywhere else in a few weeks.
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Re: The Official Mill Creek Sony Firesale Appreciation Thread
Updated with more future releases. A lot of the titles only saw pan and scan DVD releases. Mill Creek's upcoming DVD releases of these titles will be the first time they're presented in their OAR.
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