Von Trier's THE KINGDOM (released, at long last, on 11/8/05) (1 Viewer)

[Mark McLeod]

Anymore news on this?

My contact is looking into it. He's been busy working on other things and as Seville is a small company I'm sure there aren't that many extra man hours to go around.

I emailed him again about 20 minutes ago to see if he's found anything out yet.

M

 

[Enrique B Chamorro]

Does this need a bump??

 

[Bill McA]

Does this need a bump??

Yes it does!

Mark - where is your review of the disc?

 

[Seth Paxton]

I've never seen it but now you've got me curious. So I hope we can get some info on what is going on with this release so that I can make a good judgement on what to buy or not buy.

Or at least understand what I would be getting if I bought it, no matter if it's "right" or "wrong".

 

[Barrie Maxwell]

The Kingdom has indeed been released by Seville Pictures on DVD. It is presented in the five episodes with all opening and closing credits and Von Trier's summaries intact. We have reviewed the title over at dvdverdict.com.

Barrie

 

[Randall Dorr]

Wheeeeee! Check this out!

 

[Jean-Michel]

I'm confused. The discs themselves appear to be intended for the Scandinavian market (hence the Danish, Swedish and Norwegian subtitles), but the specs are in English. What's up? Will there be English subtitles on any of these? The Scandinavian release of Dancer in the Dark was in English with English subtitles for all the Danish-language material (including the commentary), but that was because it was also released in Australia. Anybody know if that's the situation here? There's not much reason to get the Scandinavian editions of these films if the extras aren't subtitled.......

 

[Randall Dorr]

These discs certainly seem to be for the Scandinavian market only.

My excitment was due to the fact that there will soon be von Trier approved DVDs of Breaking the Waves and Kingdom I and II somewhere in the world. It stands to reason that a company (hopefully Criterion) will release them in R1. All they have to do is add subtitles where appropiate.

 

[Jean-Michel]

Breaking the Waves has been available in R1 for quite some time. Not a great edition (it's nonanamorphic and a few seconds were cut) but it's out there. I very much doubt Criterion will ever get the rights back but if La Dolce Vita (another Artisan title) gets the Criterion treatment (as current rumor suggests) then I suppose there is some hope. The Kingdom is also an Artisan release (The Kingdom II is as well, I believe, although they've never released it on video).

And I'm still confused as to why all the specs were in English.

 

[Randall Dorr]

I have the R1 Breaking the Waves, but as you said, it's non-anamorphic and edited. (in addition to being barebones)

This new R2 will have a commentary from the man himself. (When done right, a commentary is far and away the best extra.)

 

[Jean-Michel]

Yeah, but if the commentary's in Danish (which it probably will be) and there are no English subtitles (which it looks like there won't be), it's not much good to us non-Danish-speakers.

 

[MickeS]

But look at the running time on those DVD's: The Kingdom I runs 283 minutes, and The Kingdom II runs 295 minutes. I wonder if that's correct?
I don't understand where Seville got their 5 episodes, 253 minute version of The Kingdom I from. When I saw it on Swedish TV, and on the Swedish VHS tapes I had, it was 4 episodes, but I don't know the running time (should have been around 260 minutes though).
In http://dvdverdict.com/reviews/thekingdom.shtml ( very favorable review, seems like a good release, except for the burned in subtitles) it says the following though:
So maybe it was just edited differently for release in countries where it might be shown on TV with commercial breaks (it was shown commercial free in both Sweden and Denmark I believe).
Jean-Michel, the specs were probably in English because they didn't want to have to do the pressrelease in 3 different languages.
/Mike

 

[KimK]

Well the plot thickens guys!
Here's a link to an english review of the R2 UK version of The Kingdom part I
http://www.dvdtimes.co.uk/index.cgi?...835&story=3207
It has a runtime of 300 minutes! That would translate to 5 episodes with a running time of 1 hour per episode.

 

[Jon Robertson]

Actually (being the author of said review - ahem), the 300 minutes I quoted off the box, but it is actually around 250 minutes - the extra 50 being the documentary (the same as on Criterion's The Element of Crime).

Apologies for any confusion, and I shall update the review accordingly.

 

[KimK]

Ok now I'm confused
Guess I'll just have to wait til september and buy the Scandinavian release.

 

[Michael Reuben]

Almost three and a half years since the last post in this thread, and The Kingdom is finally available on R1 DVD.

I haven't done more than look at the menus, but it's two discs, with each of the four parts presented separately. I skipped to the end of part 1, and it had the Von Trier appearance next to the closing credits (one I hadn't seen before, since the LD version only had the ones from parts 2 and 4).

(I thought I remembered a more recent thread on this release, but couldn't find it. If someone knows of any others, send me a PM with a link, and I'll consolidate everything in one thread.)

M.