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Another Argghhh: "The Business of Strangers" Canadian Edition (Alliance Atlantis) (1 Viewer)

Jason Whyte

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Although I appear to be the only one on this forum who has seen the movie, let alone bought the recent Alliance Atlantis disc (and I got it because I quite liked the movie, not JUST because you-know-who-I-got-to-meet is in it, :)), I just thought I would throw out this post to those of you who were thinking of getting it.
Sadly, with all of the hit-and-miss of Alliance DVD, with their own exclusive transfers that can come out rather nicely (Maelstrom, Memento), to irritating bi-lingual packaging (anything from early this year to present), they hit a new low with this DVD release.
First off, the 16x9 transfer is an eyesore. It is very dark with a lot of shimmering, edge enhancement and a lot of uninentional haze. The WORST part, however, is that this transfer appears to have been sourced from a PAL source, and therefore sped up, to the point the movie comes out at a lean 79 minutes (WITH credits), whereas the theatrical cut came out at 84 minutes. (And no, to my knowledge, no footage is missing from this transfer)
MGM/IFC Films will be releasing this disc August 6th in the States. Hopefully the transfer work they do will be much better (and at the correct speed!).
If anyone has the contact address (before I go looking for it myself) for the digital mastering department at Alliance, please let me know so I can give them a *friendly* shout about this sub-par release of a fine film.
Thanks for listening,
Jason
 

Mark Palermo

Second Unit
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Jun 28, 2000
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I don't care to purchase this title, but for Alliance to sell such a careless product should be illegal. Aside from their horrible bilingual covers, it seemed like the company was finally getting its act together with DVD releases.

Grrr.

Well, if you ever find their contact info feel free to pass it on.

Mark
 

Gui A

Supporting Actor
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Dec 25, 2000
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I have officially stopped buying discs from Alliance. (and Universal, since they seem to be affiliated somehow). Paramount is on my watch list. Anything I want from New Line, Miramax, Paramount or Universal, I get from amazon.

There's 2 addresses I know for Alliance, the one at 121 Bloor street, and one in all the stickers they used to put on DVDs, before they chose to make ugly covers. I think that one is in Quebec. Alas, removing that sticker was the first thing I did with those disks.

I would also like to ask the mastering department how they're able to fit a 5.1 french track where there once was a 2.0 english track. It takes at least double the bitrate, and I assume that impacts the video quality... Example: Memento. Eng2.0 at 192kbps became Fre5.1 at 384k (i think).
...and on the Jay & Silent Bob disk, the video was re-encoded to include french opening titles, and make it look like Alliance made the movie.

So a happy camper I am not.

Let us know if you find out anything, Jason.
 

Robert Crawford

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Jason,
I preordered the August 6th DVD release and I hope it doesn't have the same defects.



Crawdaddy
 

Michael Reuben

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Mark Pfeiffer

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Jun 27, 1999
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Oh, I've seen it, although I don't know that it would be a buy for me. I'm surprised it's coming out at all here since films IFC has released theatrically have been practically nonexistent on DVD. Maybe this is a sign that they're finally going to spit out some product to the home market.

It is odd if there's PAL speed-up since, to my knowledge, this was made in North America. Weird.
 

Mark McLeod

Second Unit
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Jan 12, 2000
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Oh, I've seen it, although I don't know that it would be a buy for me. I'm surprised it's coming out at all here since films IFC has released theatrically have been practically nonexistent on DVD. Maybe this is a sign that they're finally going to spit out some product to the home market.

It is odd if there's PAL speed-up since, to my knowledge, this was made in North America. Weird.
Mark, IFC Films signed a video distribution deal with MGM which will see their films being released to DVD starting with Buisness of Strangers in August.

As for this PAL speed-up issue. I was debating this with Jason last night privately but I didn't notice any problems with the transfer or speed-up. I however didn't have a chance to watch the entire DVD.

I saw the film theatrically with Jason and thought the print was pretty dark and the DVD looked to be the same way. I have no idea why this would be from a PAL source.
 

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