MoC Cover Art & Packaging Babble-on

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Michael Kerpan
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Re: MoC Cover Art & Packaging Babble-on

#1451 Post by Michael Kerpan » Tue Sep 22, 2015 3:19 pm

I hope she wasn't out in the snow when this picture was taken...

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Re: MoC Cover Art & Packaging Babble-on

#1452 Post by swo17 » Tue Sep 22, 2015 3:28 pm

Well if she was, it was the last time De Toth would ever film her in that snowed-in Wyoming town...


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Re: MoC Cover Art & Packaging Babble-on

#1454 Post by CSM126 » Tue Sep 29, 2015 5:27 am

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Re: MoC Cover Art & Packaging Babble-on

#1455 Post by swo17 » Mon Nov 09, 2015 12:07 pm

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Altair
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Re: MoC Cover Art & Packaging Babble-on

#1456 Post by Altair » Mon Nov 09, 2015 12:19 pm

A Touch of Zen cover makes it look like its a DVD even though (I assume) it is a blu-ray; also, the 'finish' to the image seems to resemble over-zealous DNR (although I'm sure the picture quality of the release will be fine). A rare miss in terms of cover art for MoC I feel; The Friends of Eddie Coyle's cover is much superior.

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Re: MoC Cover Art & Packaging Babble-on

#1457 Post by swo17 » Mon Nov 09, 2015 12:27 pm

It has to be a Blu-ray because there is already a spine 130 on DVD.

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Re: MoC Cover Art & Packaging Babble-on

#1458 Post by Zot! » Mon Nov 09, 2015 12:49 pm

Could be wrong, but it looks and feels like a temp placeholder to me. That said, the final Dragon Inn art from BFI was pretty ugly in a similar fashion.

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Re: MoC Cover Art & Packaging Babble-on

#1459 Post by Finch » Mon Nov 09, 2015 2:45 pm

The Dragon Inn cover also looked like they slapped a watercolour filter on a production or film still. I like the Touch of Zen image itself a lot but a pristine copy of it would be much better.

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exidor
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Re: MoC Cover Art & Packaging Babble-on

#1460 Post by exidor » Mon Nov 09, 2015 2:49 pm

I like how the Touch of Zen cover has a callback to the subs on the old VHS/DVD releases with the use of white text on a mottled white background, rendering it barely legible. Very meta.

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Re: MoC Cover Art & Packaging Babble-on

#1461 Post by rapta » Mon Nov 09, 2015 5:25 pm

Altair wrote:A Touch of Zen cover makes it look like its a DVD even though (I assume) it is a blu-ray; also, the 'finish' to the image seems to resemble over-zealous DNR (although I'm sure the picture quality of the release will be fine). A rare miss in terms of cover art for MoC I feel; The Friends of Eddie Coyle's cover is much superior.
I believe the pack-shot implies it will be in a slipbox like The Passion of Joan of Arc. After all, the RRP seems to be £27.99, and it could also mean the booklet will be a little thicker than usual (again, like Joan of Arc). Of course I could be wrong, and this could be the first MoC with a slipcover (if you ignore the original release of Metropolis, which came with a slipcover albeit housing a slim Blu-ray case).

Either way, this looks to be an essential release!
exidor wrote:I like how the Touch of Zen cover has a callback to the subs on the old VHS/DVD releases with the use of white text on a mottled white background, rendering it barely legible. Very meta.
That's exactly the vibe I was getting. Of course I prefer crisp images but maybe the quality of production stills weren't good enough, or maybe they intentionally made them look like this as a throwback (and also to make it look less like they're just screenshots). Whatever the intention, I still quite like them.

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Re: MoC Cover Art & Packaging Babble-on

#1462 Post by Altair » Mon Nov 09, 2015 5:35 pm

rapta wrote:
Altair wrote:A Touch of Zen cover makes it look like its a DVD even though (I assume) it is a blu-ray; also, the 'finish' to the image seems to resemble over-zealous DNR (although I'm sure the picture quality of the release will be fine). A rare miss in terms of cover art for MoC I feel; The Friends of Eddie Coyle's cover is much superior.
I believe the pack-shot implies it will be in a slipbox like The Passion of Joan of Arc. After all, the RRP seems to be £27.99, and it could also mean the booklet will be a little thicker than usual (again, like Joan of Arc). Of course I could be wrong, and this could be the first MoC with a slipcover (if you ignore the original release of Metropolis, which came with a slipcover albeit housing a slim Blu-ray case).

Either way, this looks to be an essential release!
I hope that's true! Of course, when I grouse about the artwork, it's not a comment on the quality of the presentation and/or extras (including the booklet). Some of the finest BD releases have sub-standard covers (i.e. the Italian release of The Leopard or just about every studio release of any film, ever).

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Re: MoC Cover Art & Packaging Babble-on

#1463 Post by feihong » Mon Nov 09, 2015 5:42 pm

Very little promotional photography has ever been available for this movie, and most of it isn't very dynamic. That still is the winner amongst a bad little bunch. I've never seen it as a very high resolution image, either.

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/ ... hOfZen.jpg" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

http://www.festival-cannes.com/thumb.ph ... &100017602" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

Posters for the film have always been kind of crazy and always a little inadequate. I think that still they used comes closest to implying something about the feel of the movie. But I don't think the image is any sharper than what we see on the art.

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Re: MoC Cover Art & Packaging Babble-on

#1464 Post by rapta » Mon Nov 09, 2015 7:11 pm

Altair wrote:
rapta wrote:
Altair wrote:A Touch of Zen cover makes it look like its a DVD even though (I assume) it is a blu-ray; also, the 'finish' to the image seems to resemble over-zealous DNR (although I'm sure the picture quality of the release will be fine). A rare miss in terms of cover art for MoC I feel; The Friends of Eddie Coyle's cover is much superior.
I believe the pack-shot implies it will be in a slipbox like The Passion of Joan of Arc. After all, the RRP seems to be £27.99, and it could also mean the booklet will be a little thicker than usual (again, like Joan of Arc). Of course I could be wrong, and this could be the first MoC with a slipcover (if you ignore the original release of Metropolis, which came with a slipcover albeit housing a slim Blu-ray case).

Either way, this looks to be an essential release!
I hope that's true! Of course, when I grouse about the artwork, it's not a comment on the quality of the presentation and/or extras (including the booklet). Some of the finest BD releases have sub-standard covers (i.e. the Italian release of The Leopard or just about every studio release of any film, ever).
Yeah, more than half of the BFI titles I own have fairly bland covers, yet the content is almost always outstanding. Even Arrow - who are known for their specially commissioned covers for all of their releases - sometimes settle on something that looks a bit 'first draft' (e.g. The Train, The Visitor), yet the discs and booklets are to their usual high standards.

I can forgive Eureka for not commissioning new art for either of these Hu titles (they were probably supplied with next to no press materials, if at all). First of all, they're regularly releasing outstanding titles (especially impressive considering the size of their team). Secondly, I'd much rather their budget was spent on the discs in all honesty. I'm also very pleased they chose to go all-out on this particular title, as they could've easily just released this in much the same way as Dragon Inn (or release the King Hu doc separately, probably on DVD). And as we've both said, there are much worse examples of dodgy graphic design/illustration from other labels...a 'bad' MoC cover would be a 'good' cover from a lesser label!

Looking forward to seeing the packaging for this. I'd imagine it'll drop to about £15-20 by the time it gets released (I hope...though I will gladly pay anything if it means more Hu-related material). The two main things we don't know about yet are the comprehensiveness of the booklet (i.e. regular or slightly thicker than usual), and whether the third disc is a Blu-ray or DVD disc. Very excited about this though (even more so than some other January releases like BFI's Farewell My Concubine and Third Window's Hana-bi).

PS: if you want to see some low-quality Asian posters released on a recent Blu-ray release, have a look at the reverse artwork for Arrow's Branded to Kill and Massacre Gun (I've not got Retaliation yet). Even if Eureka were supplied with posters for the Hu titles, I doubt they'd be of much better quality than those...and you can see why Arrow requested something much more eye-catching.

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Re: MoC Cover Art & Packaging Babble-on

#1465 Post by The Fanciful Norwegian » Tue Nov 17, 2015 9:03 am

The thing that jumps out to me about the Touch of Zen cover is "the masterpiece of King Hu," which (and I hope I don't offend anyone with this) has an odd ESL ring to it—I would normally expect that to be phrased "King Hu's masterpiece." And this is even more nitpicky, but the Mandarin title has...well, it's not quite a spelling error, but right now it's Xiá Nü, with a tone mark on xiá but none on . For consistency it should be either Xia Nü (no tone marks at all) or Xiá Nǚ (tone marks on both).

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Re: MoC Cover Art & Packaging Babble-on

#1466 Post by swo17 » Wed Dec 09, 2015 8:56 pm

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Re: MoC Cover Art & Packaging Babble-on

#1467 Post by rapta » Thu Dec 10, 2015 10:56 am

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Re: MoC Cover Art & Packaging Babble-on

#1468 Post by What A Disgrace » Thu Dec 24, 2015 7:56 pm

Could it be that A Touch of Zen's unusual appearance indicates a cardboard box instead of a keepcase? Most Masters of Cinema titles show up as being in keepcases, except for the Imamura and Shoah sets.

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Re: MoC Cover Art & Packaging Babble-on

#1469 Post by tenia » Fri Dec 25, 2015 11:40 am

Rumor has it that Touch of Zen packaging will replicate the Joan of Arc one : Steelbook + outercase.

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Re: MoC Cover Art & Packaging Babble-on

#1470 Post by rapta » Mon Dec 28, 2015 10:09 pm

tenia wrote:Rumor has it that Touch of Zen packaging will replicate the Joan of Arc one : Steelbook + outercase.
Don't think it will be a steelbook as they would have advertised it as such, but yeah it looks like it will have a slipbox like Joan of Arc (and maybe even a thicker booklet than usual). I'd love a steelbook but wouldn't be distraught if they didn't go that way - I can imagine a lot of collectors being annoyed if it did turn out to be a steelbook (i.e. being forced to get a steelbook edition to receive the limited bonus disc).

Can't wait for this one though...only a few weeks to go now!

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Re: MoC Cover Art & Packaging Babble-on

#1471 Post by rockysds » Wed Jan 13, 2016 6:40 am

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Randall Maysin
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Re: MoC Cover Art & Packaging Babble-on

#1472 Post by Randall Maysin » Wed Jan 13, 2016 7:04 am

Wow, that Eureka cover is actually not that good or particularily Roeg-y. Unusual for MoC, :(

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Re: MoC Cover Art & Packaging Babble-on

#1473 Post by Roger Ryan » Wed Jan 13, 2016 9:58 am

Randall Maysin wrote:Wow, that Eureka cover is actually not that good or particularily Roeg-y. Unusual for MoC, :(
True, but I think it might be the first time a film title and the name of the label series releasing the film are the same, right? That has to count for something.
EDIT: Ah, forget it, I see the joke was already made two hours and fifty-eight minutes ago.

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Re: MoC Cover Art & Packaging Babble-on

#1474 Post by TMDaines » Wed Feb 03, 2016 9:07 am

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4 discs! Looks like a Joan of Arc shaped slipbox too.

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Re: MoC Cover Art & Packaging Babble-on

#1475 Post by TMDaines » Wed Feb 03, 2016 9:09 am

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