On 4K UHD and Blu-ray - David Hare risks a small fortune and welcomes and asks some questions about the Imprint edition of THE CINEMA OF POWELL & PRESSBURGER - Collection Two (1942 - 1956)

 This is both an exciting and a bewildering release.

On the fabulous side the box includes not only the existing 4K mastered disc of The Red Shoes and I Know Where I’m Going (both of which Criterion has already released in superb editions) but it’s adding more new and newish restorations in Blu only of Black Narcissus, Colonel Blimp and One of our Aircraft is Missing as well as Oh Rosalinda! and Battle of the River Plate. The latter two are very far from peak Powell for me but their inclusion is rewarding for completists. Most importantly the box releases the first 4K UHD Dolby Vision discs worldwide of both The Small Back Room (an underrated Powell to be sure) and the most important title for me a 4K DV of Tales of Hoffmann. Given the whole box is credited to Fidelity In Motion for encoding I have not an atom’s concern about quality. And given my worship of Hoffman as a total, unfettered masterpiece of celestial beauty This box would make me an even happier man than I already am.

BUT….

This press release only presents the Powell box for RRP in tandem with several other boxes including what I consider a redundant Kubrick box bringing the cost over 500 bucks Oz. Does this mean they will perhaps never release the Powell box as standalone? If they don’t they’ve lost a customer. And equally important for people like me who already have everything in this box already except for the world prem 4K discs of Hoffman and Small Back Room, are these titles likely to be picked up in a parallel boxset or singly as 4K discs from somebody like Criterion? We don’t know and these days throwing around this sort of money on something not ideally priced for some of us who are already rabid and going-broke collectors?

(Mike Baard followed this up by sending this info...

David, good news, you will be able to purchase P&P set as a standalone.

Just Click Here

BUT BACK TO DAVID

One thing I didn’t mention: the new 4K discs of IKWIG as well as Red Shoes will have DV/HDR. Criterion’s IKWIG is also mastered and encoded by FIM /MacKenzie but SDR/2160p. Only David MacKenzie could encode something so beautiful in both 8 bit and 10 bit 2160p and make them both sing. This is why I am risking a small fortune basically for the same deft hand with a new 4K of Hoffmann.

This is Imprint’s trailer for the Powell/Pressburger box in August. The music sample track is largely from Brian Easdale’s score for Red Shoes. What a masterpiece, what a score!

A FACEBOOK COMMENT

@jnoe635098 

5 days ago

All the clips (on the trailer) you are showing are in the wrong aspect ratio. Not a good presentation.

Streaming on Disney + - Rod Bishop notes THE BEAR - (Season 5, Christopher Storer, USA, 2026)

Sydney (Ayo Edebiri) and Carmy (Jeremy Allen White) fixing prawns

The Fairfax press (link possibly paywalled) recently called Season 5 of The Bear “the equivalent of re-heated leftovers”. Yes, we’ve been here before. 

Seven of the eight episodes follow a full day at the restaurant and everything that could go wrong, does goes wrong, of course. 

The entire day is treated with all the drama, anxieties, pressures, neurotic boil-overs, and personality clashes as though the staff were planning the logistics for D-Day. Unlike D-Day however, the weather forecast is incidental: just the cost of doing business. It buckets down all day long and intense traffic jams mean every booking will be late. 

The water pipes burst first thing in the morning, not only destroying all their Bear uniforms, but flooding the kitchen and restaurant, making it impossible to clean dishes. This is an unfortunate necessity. Clean dishes are needed; they have three “turns” (sittings) tonight.

As he often does, Richie (Ebon Moss-Bachrach) makes everything worse by not cancelling the 15 reservations he was asked to. The cancellations are necessary to fit in the three ‘turns’. He has too big a heart, and after a couple of calls, he can’t bear - pun intended - being a harbinger of disappointment. And, still doesn’t have the courage to confess this to the rest of the staff.

Carmy (Jeremy Allen White) meanwhile has been forced to reveal he is leaving the restaurant business for good and is handing over the reins to sous-chef Sydney (Ayo Edebiri). His staff greet this news as though their entire families have just been wiped out in a mudslide.

They don’t have enough food either, necessitating some on-the-spot menu changes. Outside, Uncle Jimmy and his crew are in the drenching thunderstorms trying to stop the restaurant from closure by finding whoever has the “air rights” above their building. 

And the Michelin “Star Man” has made a reservation.

Like “re-heated leftovers”, it’s all very predictable and unlike the rest of the series, there’s no standout episode. The drenching rain, the packed restaurant and the heated interchanges between staff, makes it feel even more claustrophobic, insular, and even parochial than it’s been in the past.

And the Michelin “Star Man”? No spoilers.

A BOLOGNA DIARY - links and a picture

Day 1 - Marco Bellocchio, Mitchell Leisen, John Abraham, Daisuke Ito

Day 2 - Kon Ichikawa  

Day 3 - Dariush Mehrjui, Mitchell Leisen, Daisuke Ito, Roy Del Ruth

Day 4 -  Daisuke Ito, Henry King, Paule Delsol

Day 5 - Nostalgia - Vittorio Cottafavi - Asta Nielsen

Day 6 - Mitchell Leisen, Julien Duvivier, Josephine Baker

Day 7 - Mitchell Leisen, Ritwik Ghatak, Jospeh Losey

Day 8 - Chaplin, Mitchell Leisen, Josephine Baker

A BOLOGNA DIARY - IL CINEMA RITROVATO DAY 8 - Charlie Chaplin, Mitchell Leisen, Josephine Baker, a group photo and final critics' chart

Highlight of the official final night of Il Cinema Ritrovato 2026 was the screening in the Piazza Maggiore  of one of the ten greatest films ever made Charles Chaplin's A Dog's Life (USA, 1918) in a double bill with Charlie's Shoulder Arms (1918), accompanied by a full orchestra conducted by Neil Brand. Dave Kehr of MoMA in New York, which did the restoration, succinctly explained how they had gone back and found the original material and thus were able to supersede the version long circulating that Chaplin himself had put together from out-takes and other sources. Dave's intro was then followed by some interminably long and  totally already known thoughts offered by Arnold Lozano of the Association Chaplin/Roy Export, the price you probably have to pay to keep in good with the zealous protectors of the great man's legacy. 

Ginger Rogers PR shot for Ladyin the Dark

Before that happened there had been a screening of one of Mitchell Leisen's failures, Lady in the Dark (1944). The main problem was that some idiot at Paramount, not named by Wikipedia in its succinct description, decided to remove most of the Kurt Weill & Ira Gershwin songs that thrilled Broadway audiences in 1941. Wikipedia says: "The film version cut most of the Weill/Gershwin songs from the score. .. Part of "My Ship" was hummed by Ginger Rogers, but the song itself was never sung." If you want to know about the song here's Julie Andrew singing it in Star. The Technicolor archive 35mm print on display was sensational. In its day the film was a 'success".

Josephine Baker, The Siren of the Tropics

The afternoon was taken up with the final apparitions of Josephine Baker. Her Fausse Alerte/False Alarm  from  1942 has her as part of a big ensemble cast as the population of Paris is being called on to respond to German bombing and her silent La Sirene des Tropiques/ The Siren of the Tropics has her as a local who saves the hero, a young man sent out to some colony as  a way of breaking up his relationship. His boss is under instructions to ensure he never comes back. Neither of them are up to the magnificent Zouzou. 

...and here's a bunch of people eating at La Pirata del Porto on the final night...five of them are from the Cinema Reborn Organising Committee... silent film accompanist Maud Nelissen was at the table but has managed to keep herself hidden!

Final night before most head off (Photo Ross Barnard)

Film	Geoff Gardner	Spiro Economopoulos	Ross Barnard
L’Innocente (Luchino Visconti)		****
Kuroi Junin No Onna/Ten Black Women (Kon Ichikawa)	*	***
Ten Seconds to Hell (Robert Aldrich)		***	***
Osho /The Chess Master(Daisuke Ito)	*
Amma Ariyan (John Abraham)	*
Geru No Kobi/The Servant’s Neck (Daisuke Ito	***
Oborokago/The Inner Palace Conspiracy (Daisuke Ito)	***
Ladies of Leisure (Frank Capra)			***
Sunrise (F W Murnau)			****
Night Nurse (William A Wellman)			***
The Overcoat (Grigory Kozintsev & Leonid Trauberg)			*
La Bugiarda (Luigi Comencini)			***
Putney Swope (Robert Downey)			***
Eight Girls in a Boat (Richard Wallace)	*		***
The Devils (Ken Russell)		***	****
Mirages de Paris (Feodor Ocep)	**
The Cycle (Darish Mehrjui)	****
Curse of Frankenstein (Terence Fisher)		***	***
La Derive (Paule Delsol)	***		**
Perfume of the Lady in Black (Francisco Barilli)		***
Accident (Joseph Losey )		**	***
The Damned (Luchino Visconti)		***
Die Fremde Vogel (Urban Gad)	***
Senso (Luchino Visconti)		****
Lenny (Bob Fosse)		***
Zouzou (Marc Allegret)	**
Meren Kasvojen Edessa/By the Edge of the Sea (Teuvo Puro)			**
What Price Glory (Raoul Walsh)			***
L’Image Originelle – Wim Wenders (Pierre Henri Gibert)			***
Drakula in Istanbul (Mehmet Mutar)			**
Sa Dam Ying/Big Boss Sis (Chung Sun)		**	**
Clash By Night (Fritz Lang)			***
Tales of Manhattan (Julien Duvivier)	**		**
Young Man with Ideas (Mitchell Leisen)	***
Darling, How Could You! (Mitchell Leisen)	***
Nagarik (Ritwik Ghatak)	**
A Man on the Beach (Joseph Losey)	***
House of Usher (Roger Corman)		***
Death in Venice (Luchino Visconti)		***
The Pornographers (Shoehei Imamura)		**
Peking Opera Blues (Tsui Hark)		***
A Dog’s Life (Charles Chaplin	****
Lady in the Dark (Mitchell Leisen)	*
False Alarm/Fausse Alerte (Jean de Baroncelli)	**
Ossessione  (Luchino Visconti)			**
Princesse Tam Tam (Edmond T Greville)			***
The Bartered Bride (Max Ophuls)			**