Pulp Fiction/Jackie Brown-Sept 3? (1 Viewer)

[Yee-Ming]

"Blade" is written twice on the spine. One from left to right and the other upside down and from right to left. I guess the french speaking people had to read "Blade" upside down before they could understand it.

I think this may be because of different conventions in labelling spines of books, and therefore DVD covers.
AFAIK, English-language books have spines labelled with the text running from top to bottom; in other words, when it's laid down flat with top up, the text is still legible. many European languages, on the other hand, label them the other way, bottom to top, so when it's laid flat with top up, it appeaars upside-down.
so in bookshops and libraries, and now DVD stores, English-speakers would tilt their heads to the right to read spines, whereas Europeans tilt their heads to the left.
hmmmm, does this actually make any sense to you guys?

 

[Mikko Rasinkangas]

Yee-Ming, your statement makes sense, but I don't believe it applies here.

With "Blade", I think it has been done only because of the bilinguality of the recent Alliance covers. Alliance discs with "real" french name transalations have the english title written from the top to bottom and the french title from the bottom to the top. Then on the reverse side the french title is written from the top to bottom and the english from the bottom to the top.

But with Blade there is no need for it to be written twice since the title is the same in either language. But NOOOO, they just HAD to mess with the cover.

Does anyone actually like these covers that are bilingual on both sides? I've only seen complaints (from both english and french speaking people). If there are only complaints then why is Alliance doing it, why not go back to making reversible covers with one language per side?

 

[Yee-Ming]

Mikko, I guess Alliance is being "consistent". I recently borrowed a copy of LOTR, and it had both English and French titles running "up and down".
in the case of Blade II, it just so happens that the "English title" and "French title" are the same. but to be consistent with the way they handle bilingual covers, they repeat the (identical) French title running upwards. it also means French speakers only need to tilt their head one way to read the spines of all their discs, and not go back and forth when they run into discs that have the same title in French as in English.
does that make sense, in a twisted sort of way?
BTW, count me in among those supporting two-sided covers with just one language on each side.

 

[Johnny G]

There may be 6 million French speaking Canadians but how many of those don't understand English enough to want to watch the dubbed version?
Compare that to the number of Spanish speaking Americans that don't understand English & I bet they're close. However, you don't see Covers with Spanish graphics messing up the artwork.

 

[Jeff]

WARNING! Do not order PF, JB or RD from AMAZON.CA!!!
I preordered these two weeks ago and I got an email today saying that The Pulp Fiction 2 Disc SE (Import) was cancelled and "it won't be released after all"!!!!!!!!
I'm so infuriated with these guys. Also, Jackie Brown SE Import never shipped and says it's shipping in 1 to 2 weeks.
The funny thing is, the Pulp Fiction 2 Disc SE (Import) is still listed on their site as available but in 1 to 2 weeks. Unbelievable!!!!!!!!!
I'm wondering if Alliance has anything to do with this since they are being sold within Canada.
Anyway, Amazon has lost my business for good.
Jeff

 

[Chris Bardon]

Jeff, which item number did you order? Just trying to make sure, because I think that I ordered the right one yesterday, but haven't seen any emails from them. The whole order is on hold until everything is ready (including Sopranos) so I guess if it hasn't shipped to me by Tuesday, I'll cancel it and pick up the discs the week after. Thanks for the warning though.

 

[Jeff]

It's this one:
http://www.amazon.ca/exec/obidos/tg/...594510-3981913
The two others are the older Canadian version the and one that is coming out in September. There is also the more expensive box set that is listed too.
Jeff

 

[MichaelAW]

I just found out that my order of PF/JB from CD-Wow is the Canadian version.

How different, exactly, are these from the US Miramax releases?

 

[Jeremy Allin]

Joseph,
Those are horrid!
Luckily, I've made alternate arrangements!

 

[Mike Graham]

A nice Alliance Atlantis logo would've been fine. But the printed French text looks out of place - a sticker proclaiming the disc to be bilingual, along with the French title, would have been good enough. Normally I wouldn't complain about a cover, but since it was designed so nicely and the disc was held back two weeks because of it, I just can't help but shake my head in dismay. :frowning:

 

[Jeff]

Man, that is pathetic. It almost makes PF look like a foreign title.

 

[Jason Whyte]

Joseph,
That links to a login so only members can view those. Lemme see if I can link them on here:

Terrible, terrible news.
Jason

 

[Bob Turnbull]

Not exactly a whole lot of consistency in their translation practices...
Pulp Fiction simply has the title translated ("Pulpeuse"?) while Jackie Brown (since the title doesn't need to be translated - just a person's name) has the "Collector's Edition" and "A Film By..." parts translated (while that hasn't been done on the other one).
Odd. Just really odd. I can understand to a certain extent wanting to get French audio tracks on the discs and the fact that there are 2 languages to market to in this country, but the translated covers seem hardly worth it.

 

[Marc Colella]

I got a reply from someone at Alliance who stated that the bilingual packaging wasn't the reason for the 2 week delay, since they would've had that ready in time.

Funny thing is, I only asked for details on the difference between the US and Canadian version, and made no mention of the 2 week delay.

Anyway, here's the reply:

We apologize for any inconvenience the delay of Jackie Brown and Pulp Fiction has caused you.
I guarantee these things do not happen on purpose or in an off the cuff manner. We now replicate product in Canada and do Canadian packaging because we were often delayed by importing product in large quantities from the US (the US took their allocation first which sometimes left us with not enough product to cover our accounts needs therefore requiring a delay), so we develop almost everything in this
country now, most of it without incident.
Unfortunately our printer had numerous problems with the special packaging; packaging line, adhesive, artwork from US etc. and it wasn't until last minute when we realized that no matter how we tried we could not fix these problems in a hurry and we would not make street date.

So to your point, we cannot give advance notice about delays because they only happen when we have a last minute problem that we cannot fix. We always go to great expense to make street date even when we have these problems if we are able to rectify them by doing so. This is not taken lightly because it causes us great internal stress, reliability problems with our customers, costly fines and lastly but most importantly it is a letdown to the buying public.

Again, I am sorry that these titles had to be delayed. It is far from an ideal situation.

 

[Marc Deslauriers]

Damn...I just got my hands on the alliance versions of PF and JB and this has got to be the worst packaging I've ever seen.

The cardboard they used is borderline paper. It' so thin, it creases in my hand. The transparent plastic interior is very flimsy and the hub part that you press the disks into is just a protuding semi-round piece of plastic. Both disks were loose in both packages because of the cheap packaging. The proof of purchase tab, which sticks up like a sore thumb, was badly mashed in both of them.

I am wondering if the packaging is different to the american version as the alliance version's interior transparent plastic parts have the alliance "our own version of the dvd logo" logo on it.

Anyone compared the two?

 

[Joseph_mx]

Well, I can tell you that the material used in the USA PF and JB are just like the used for the x-files box sets.

 

[Marc Deslauriers]

Damn....that means us canadians get screwed again!
Now, how does one go about getting a green card?

 

[Marc Colella]

The packaging is cheaper for the Canadian/Alliance release?!

Can someone confirm this?

 

[Marc Deslauriers]

Yes, it has the same sync problem.

Marc.

 

[IanS]

screw this, I am going to the U.S. to pick this one up, you know what Alliance can do with the bilingual packaging up here in Canada, shove it right up their ............