Haneke on DVD

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#76 Post by **Matt** » Sun Dec 17, 2006 12:06 am

kekid wrote:Does anyone know how the quality of the Artificial Eye box of Haneke Trilogy compares with the releases on Kino?

You may have two different releases confused. Artificial Eye released "The Michael Haneke Collection", a box of four of Haneke's more recent films: Caché, Time of the Wolf, The Piano Teacher, and Code Unknown. Tartan has just released a box called "The Michael Haneke Trilogy" which contains The Seventh Continent, Benny's Video, and 71 Fragments of a Chronology of Chance. Either way, you're probably better off with the UK versions of each. The Tartan can be had for under $60, while the Kino discs of the same films will cost you about the same but will be PAL>NTSC transfers. The Kino discs of The Piano Teacher and Code Unknown are also PAL>NTSC transfers and not even half-decent ones at that. The Artificial Eye set can also be had for under $60.

kekid · #77 Post by **kekid** » Sun Dec 17, 2006 9:01 pm

Thanks, Matt. I meant the Tartan trilogy (Benny's Video, etc.). Given these are older films I was wondering if the difference in quality from Kino is significant. I have not seen any reviews of the Tartan set.

#78 Post by **Matt** » Sun Dec 17, 2006 9:23 pm

kekid wrote:Thanks, Matt. I meant the Tartan trilogy (Benny's Video, etc.). Given these are older films I was wondering if the difference in quality from Kino is significant. I have not seen any reviews of the Tartan set.

I guarantee the Kino and Tartan are from the same transfers.

franco · #79 Post by **franco** » Sun Dec 17, 2006 11:35 pm

DVD Times posted a review a while ago. The transfer is identical to that of the French set.

Lino · #80 Post by **Lino** » Sat Jan 20, 2007 10:43 am

Lino wrote:DVDTimes reviews the recently released Michael Haneke Collection.

The Michael Haneke Collection boxset collecting these four films is released in the UK by Artificial Eye. The films are each presented on a dual-layer disc in PAL format and encoded for Region 2. The content and the quality of the discs is identical to previously released DVD editions, but they are repackaged here with new covers in slimline cases and held within a slipcase.
Nice.

And here's another review of that set, courtesy of DVDManiacs.

nyasa · #81 Post by **nyasa** » Thu Feb 22, 2007 7:49 am

Has anyone seen The Castle? It's available on DVD-R here.

Haneke and Kafka: interesting combination.

spencerw · #82 Post by **spencerw** » Thu Feb 22, 2007 8:20 am

Haneke's own comments in this interview about The Castle are interesting:

iW: What's your take on the adaptation process, because "The Piano Teacher," like your earlier film of Kafka's "The Castle," is a distinctly personal interpretation that nevertheless remains quite faithful to the events of the source material.

Haneke: I would draw a definite line between "The Castle" and "The Piano Teacher," because "The Castle" was made for television, and I'm very clear about the distinction between a TV version and a movie. Films for TV have to be much closer to the book, mainly because the objective with a TV movie that translates literature is to get the audience, after seeing this version, to pick up the book and read it themselves. My attitude is that TV can never really be any form of art, because it serves audience expectations. I would not have dared to turn "The Castle" into a movie for the big screen; on TV, it's OK, because it has different objectives. But with "The Piano Teacher," if you compare the structure of the novel to the structure of the film, it's really quite different, and I feel I've been dealing very freely with the novel and the way it was written. I would say that my version of looking at the story is pretty distanced and cool, while the novel itself is almost angry and very emotional. The novel is much more subjective and the film is much more objective.

There are some comments on the film in the DVD Times review of the French DVD of the film.

#83 Post by **Jeff** » Tue Jul 10, 2007 8:25 pm

upcoming seven-disc R1 set

Rich Malloy · #84 Post by **Rich Malloy** » Wed Jul 11, 2007 10:09 am

Jeff wrote:upcoming seven-disc R1 set

7 discs = 7 films? Which films does Kino have the rights to?

Sadly, these will likely be "Kino quality", at least a tick or two below the PAL alternatives.

justeleblanc · #85 Post by **justeleblanc** » Wed Jul 11, 2007 10:17 am

Rich Malloy wrote:
Jeff wrote:upcoming seven-disc R1 set
7 discs = 7 films? Which films does Kino have the rights to?

Castle
Piano Teacher
71 Fragments
Benny's Video
Funny Games
7th Continent
Code Unknown

The first time I saw any of these Haneke films were through netflix on the Kino label, and I thought the quality was good. The R2 transfers are of better quality, but then on my tv and with my eyes I didn't notice a difference.

Rsdio · #86 Post by **Rsdio** » Wed Jul 11, 2007 10:19 am

Rich Malloy wrote:
Jeff wrote:upcoming seven-disc R1 set
7 discs = 7 films? Which films does Kino have the rights to?

They're shown on the product image - The Piano Teacher, Code Unknown, The Castle, Funny Games, 71 Fragments of a Chronology of Chance, Benny's Video and The Seventh Continent.

Edit: Too slow..

Rich Malloy · #87 Post by **Rich Malloy** » Wed Jul 11, 2007 10:58 am

Hmmmph. Would one have to purchase the entire box to get "The Castle", or will it be available separately?

ptmd · #88 Post by **ptmd** » Wed Jul 11, 2007 1:03 pm

It's available separately

Rich Malloy · #89 Post by **Rich Malloy** » Wed Jul 11, 2007 3:23 pm

ptmd wrote:It's available separately

=D>

Svevan · #90 Post by **Svevan** » Wed Jul 11, 2007 7:40 pm

Matt mentioned earlier in the thread that Kino's Code Unknown is a PAL transfer, but it's also non-anamorphic. If they just repackage that disc with the others (some of which are anamorphic if I remember right, like Benny's Video, but no word on transfer quality or source) then this is not worth the cash. It'll be more worthwhile to pick and choose among the regions. Hopefully Gary Tooze will post a comprehensive review of this set when it is released.

soma · #91 Post by **soma** » Tue Jul 17, 2007 8:23 pm

I've checked the recent R4 releases of Funny Games, The Seventh Continent and Benny's Video and the picture quality / transfers of all are superb. I own the Director's Suite editions of Cache, Funny Games, Time Of The Wolf, The Seventh Continent and The Piano Teacher. The best editions out there as far as US / UK / Australia is concerned.

tavernier · #92 Post by **tavernier** » Mon Aug 13, 2007 11:49 am

In October, the Museum of Modern Art in New York is showing all of Haneke's features, along with his films for television, which will be North American premieres.

Press release:

NEW YORK, August 13, 2007--The Museum of Modern Art presents a full retrospective of the feature films of Michael Haneke, one of contemporary cinema's most provocative and incisive filmmakers.

Michael Haneke, the most comprehensive exhibition of his work ever screened in North America, is presented October 3 through 15, 2007, in The Roy and Niuta Titus Theater 1. The series includes eight of Haneke's celebrated theatrical features, several of which have won top prizes at the Cannes Film Festival, including The Piano Teacher (2001) and Caché (2005), both triple award-winners at Cannes, and the North American premieres of eight of Haneke's Austrian-German television productions from the mid-1970s to mid-1990s.

The retrospective precedes Warner Independent Pictures' October 26 release of the director's 2007 remake of Funny Games, starring Naomi Watts and Michael Pitt. Haneke will be present to introduce the screenings of Code Unknown (2000) on Saturday, October 13, at 8:30 p.m., and the original Funny Games (1997) on Monday, October 15, at 7:00 p.m., both of which are followed by question-and-answer sessions with the director.

This series is based on the originating exhibition Michael Haneke: A Cinema of Provocation, curated by Roy Grundmann, Film Studies professor at Boston University, with additional assistance from Karin Oehlenschläger of the Goethe-Institut Boston, and Brigitte Bouvier from the Cultural Services of the French Embassy in Boston. That exhibition will be presented at Harvard Film Archive and the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, from October 11 through November 3, 2007.

Born in 1942 in Germany, and raised in his current home of Austria, Haneke studied philosophy, psychology, and drama at the University of Vienna before becoming a screenwriter and director of opera, theater, and film. Much of his early work in television was based on his own writing, or adapted from modernist and postmodern literature by Franz Kafka (The Castle, 1997), Joseph Roth (The Rebellion, 1993), Ingeborg Bachmann (Three Paths to the Lake, 1976), Peter Rosei (Who Was Edgar Allan?, 1984), and others. These revelatory works anticipate Haneke's later work for the cinema, centering on the historical amnesia of Old Europe and its wartime past, and on the loss of identity and individuality, whether during the fall of the Austro-Hungarian Empire (The Rebellion, 1993), in the decade following World War II (Lemmings - Part 1- Arcadia, 1979, and Fraulein, 1986), or in the present day (Three Paths to the Lake, 1976; Lemmings - Part Two - Injuries, 1979; Variation, 1983; and Who Was Edgar Allan?, 1984).

blindside8zao · #93 Post by **blindside8zao** » Tue Aug 14, 2007 6:05 pm

I hope I make it into a graduate school in New York.

tavernier · #94 Post by **tavernier** » Tue Aug 14, 2007 8:55 pm

Just so you can watch Haneke's TV films?

blindside8zao · #95 Post by **blindside8zao** » Tue Aug 14, 2007 9:45 pm

no, I keep hearing about all kinds of great stuff happening in New York. The Berlin in Lights festival, the Pasolini retrospective, this, and really just the MET in general. I live in North Carolina so there aren't too many opportunities to see Haneke or Pasolini anywhere but on my small TV set. I guess that will change with the Naomi Watts version of Funny Games.

tavernier · #96 Post by **tavernier** » Tue Aug 14, 2007 11:31 pm

blindside8zao wrote:no, I keep hearing about all kinds of great stuff happening in New York. The Berlin in Lights festival, the Pasolini retrospective, this, and really just the MET in general. I live in North Carolina so there aren't too many opportunities to see Haneke or Pasolini anywhere but on my small TV set. I guess that will change with the Naomi Watts version of Funny Games.

Good answer....at least it's not all film, all the time.

s.j. bagley · #97 Post by **s.j. bagley** » Sun Oct 14, 2007 4:50 pm

soma wrote:I've checked the recent R4 releases of Funny Games, The Seventh Continent and Benny's Video and the picture quality / transfers of all are superb. I own the Director's Suite editions of Cache, Funny Games, Time Of The Wolf, The Seventh Continent and The Piano Teacher. The best editions out there as far as US / UK / Australia is concerned.

so would it be silly to ask for a definitive list of the best editions of haneke dvds?

sevenarts · #98 Post by **sevenarts** » Sun Oct 14, 2007 6:17 pm

s.j. bagley wrote:so would it be silly to ask for a definitive list of the best editions of haneke dvds?

I've gone with all the R2 UKs, myself.

Tartan has a box set with Benny's Video, The Seventh Continent, and 71 Fragments of a Chronology of Chance. No complaints on any of those, in fact I can't imagine how they could be bettered -- they all look beautiful.

Tartan also has a standalone disc of Funny Games which is fine as well.

Artificial Eye has done the four most recent films, all available individually and also in a box set -- Cache, The Piano Teacher, Time of the Wolf, and Code Unknown. All those are great too, maybe a shade less impressive looking than the Tartans, but very strong nonetheless.

Oh, and I suppose since The Castle is only to be found English-subbed from Kino, that's your only real choice for that one, though I haven't seen it.

My Man Godfrey · #99 Post by **My Man Godfrey** » Mon Oct 15, 2007 3:29 am

Hello all.

Just posting to let you know that there's a huge piece on Michael Haneke's films in the new issue of Harper's Magazine. (On the web at harpers.org.)

malcolm1980 · #100 Post by **malcolm1980** » Mon Oct 15, 2007 10:37 am

It would be nice for Criterion to get a hold of at least a few of Haneke's works.