You Don't Have To Go To Poland For A Rainy Day In New York

So there's not a lot of information out there about it, but Woody Allen's latest film, A Rainy Day In New York - yes, the one Amazon broke their contract by refusing to release - is currently available on blu-ray.  From Poland.  It's totally importable to the US; I did it.  Though it might help if your search for "W deszczowy dzien w Nowym Jorku," rather than "A Rainy Day In New York."  But is it English friendly?  Progressive scanned?  Nobody's talkin'.  Writing about DVDs and BDs that aren't getting duly covered anywhere else, though?  I guess that's my purview.  So hey, let's do it!

Update 1/22/20 - 9/15/21: It's been a wacky journey sorting out ways to import this film in the US. But in the end, it turns out we didn't need to. A US label called MPI picked it up for distribution, and ironically enough even got it picked up by Amazon Prime for streaming!  ...Also, in further Update Week business, I've also added Criterion's 2018 DVD to my Women In Love comparison.

Update 8/14/24: Hey, look.  Last time I updated this post was Update Week, and it's Update Week again.  This time I'm just adding the DVD, which isn't such a big deal; but I'm happy to paint a more complete picture.

My first thought was wow, this is our second movie in a row with a sizeable, central sequence taking place in a major New York museum.  Has the city started some kind of new tax shelter for filmmakers or something?  Anyway, what we've got here is a smart, charming, but maybe a little bit lazy romantic comedy by Allen.  It's got a great supporting cast, including Liev Schrieber, Jude Law who absolutely disappears into his role (I was wondering when he was going to appear only to realize I'd been watching him for the past couple of scenes) and Rebecca Hall who I only wished had gotten more screen time.  The movie glides from beautiful location to beautiful location, masterfully shot by Vittorio Storaro (The Bird With the Crystal Plumage, Apocalypse Now, Reds) with heavily romanticized horse-drawn carriage rides through rainy city streets.  This is the kind of film where a depressed college student laments that he needs a cigarette and "a Berlin ballad," which is going to push literalist commercial audiences away.  But for those prepared to be whisked away into another world, rather than demanding a mirror reflection of their own, this echoes some of Allen's previous conjurings of heightened Hollywood fantasy, like Midnight In Paris or Magic In the Moonlight.

Before I could get my hands on this film, I'd seen several critics poke fun at this aspect of the film, like it's an unintended side effect of Allen having grown out of touch.  For example, the lead character's name is Gatsby Welles, which they'd poke fun at for being so heavy handed.  But they can't have been paying much attention if they didn't realize this is all a deliberate discussion the Allen is trying to have with us.  There's actually a critical reveal (which I won't spoil) of why our protagonist is known as Gatsby Welles in the third act, and throughout all of the various plot threads, the characters are addressing, directly or indirectly, our relationship with artistic ambitions, hierarchy and pretentiousness.  Looking back at reviews that seem to have completely somehow missed that is downright frustrating.

On the other hand, though, I doubt this is going to top anyone's list of favorite Allen films, certainly not mine.  I mentioned laziness earlier, and while some of this film's humor consists of cleverly elicited genuine laughs and reminds one of the famous genius penning the script, some other intended comedy felt well-trodden if not downright hack.  The "funny" reason one supporting character wants out of his wedding with his fiancee is lifted right out of episodes of Seinfeld and Cheers.  And there are too many easy jokes at a young girl's naivete, and double entendres about a prostitute that seem shockingly unaware of how little good will Allen already has left with audiences regarding his relationships with women.  Like, I was just re-watching Whatever Works, and when the young ingenue (Evan Rachel Wood) starts to develop romantic feelings for the much older man (Larry David), I thought, in a vacuum, this would be a fine avenue to explore and the film handles it well.  But within his body of work, where ignorant younger women are constantly being paired up with impatient older men like they're ideal relationships, and given what we know of his real life controversies, it winds up just stopping the film dead and making it feel sleazy (until Laura Linney and Ed Begley Jr. finally show up and take the film in new directions).  Here, our romantic leads are all young, but the sequences where older men do hit on and try to take advantage of a younger woman get distracting in ways that don't help the film.

And how about our young leads?  Elle Fanning, from Sophia Coppolla's Somewhere, is quite good, but she isn't helped by the writing, which limits her character a little too much.  And Timothee Chalamet falls into the trap of patterning his performance a little too much of Woody Allen's persona, sort of like Kenneth Branagh in Celebrity.  I somehow doubt Woody really tells his male leads to do an impression of him; it's just actors too readily decide they've cracked the code by imitating their auteur.  And Selena Gomez probably would've garnered the most raves, had this film received the mainstream attention Amazon's release would've afforded it, by showing how surprisingly well she can adapt to this kind of material.  She's the real surprise in all of this.

2019 Kino Swiat BD top; 2020 MPI DVD mid; 2020 MPI BD bottom.

So how's Kino Swiat's blu-ray already?  Well, right off the bat, the picture's A-OK.  It's not interlaced, the wrong frame rate, or troubled with any of the other concerns you worry about when importing a foreign release that nobody reviews online.  It's from Kino Swiat, who I don't believe are connected to our Kino, but seem to be a legit Polish label that's been in the distribution game for a while now.  The film is presented in its OAR of 2.00:1, which in this modern age where aspect ratios are arbitrary and no longer dictated by technical limitations, is starting to become a popular AR.  Rainy Day was shot digitally, so we're not concerned with film scanning, and on 4k; but it's 2024 now and I don't think a UHD's coming.  It is a single layer disc, but at 92 minutes (21.8 GB) and no special features, I don't think over-compression is really a concern.  So PQ wise, this is about as good as you could ask for.

And so, as you'd expect, MPI's blu is essentially using the same master for the same result.  Essentially.  The framing and everything is identical, and the compression is slightly different, but neither is really better than the other (this is also a single layer disc).  As you'd expect, both are clearer and cleaner than the DVD.  But there is one distinction.  The US BD is clearly a shade darker.  It's not something you'd notice outside of a direct comparison, but it's not hard to see here.  I'd say it gives the US disc a slightly warmer, more seductive tone, giving it the edge.  But it's hardly "run out and replace it" worthy.

The subtitles might be, though.  See, the Kino Swiat offers us the choice of the original English 5.1 mix (in DTS-HD) with Polish subtitles, or a Polish overdub (as in a narrator speaks all of the lines in Polish and you hear all the original English audio underneath) with no subs.  So yeah, those subs are forced.  Now they're not burnt in, so if you have a player that lets you get around them, or push the forced subs off-screen, you're golden.  Or if you plan to watch it on your computer, rip the disc, etc.  But on my Samsung, for example, I could not turn those subs off while playing the English track.  I didn't find the subs terribly distracting, but it's certainly the disc's biggest flaw.

So thank goodness for MPI!  Besides getting rid of those Polish subs, they've included a DTS-HD 2.0 mix, n addition to the 5.1 (both are lossy, of course, on the DVD) and optional English subtitles.  The only slightly frustrating step backwards is that the Kino Swiat at least featured the film's trailer, in English with burnt in Polish subs.  MPI is completely barebones; they dropped the trailer for whatever inexplicable reason.

Ultimately, I think I’m happy I got the Polish disc at the time.  It would have been an infuriating wait, as MPI didn't come around with their release until the end of November, 2020.  And it wasn't too painful a double-dip to replace it, since MPI's disc was nice and cheap.  Those subs didn't bother me that much, but I'm also glad to see 'em gone, and the other improvements are a nice bonus that help take the edge off further.  And while the film is definitely towards the bottom of his catalog, it was still more than worth the time and trouble it took to add it to my collection.

The Elephant Man, Thoroughly Resolved

The Elephant Man is a rather unusual film for Lynch, in that it's not rather unusual.  Elephant Man's the film he made after spending years trying to find funding for his own, post-Eraserhead script and couldn't get it. So he decided to film somebody else's, more conventional script.  And fortunately for him, it turned out to be a huge success, nominated for like eight Academy Awards, and let him go back to making his own, distinct films.  Oh, and Dune.

Update 4/16/17 - 9/14/21: I originally ended this post by writing, "it wouldn't surprise me to see it get announced any day now with a fresh 4k scan," and three years later, it happened. And not just a 4k scan on a 1080p blu (though we've gotten that, too), but a proper 4k Ultra HD release.

The Elephant Man starts out with one surreal, abstract sequence, with literal elephants and super-imposed imagery.  After that, it becomes a fairly traditional, but excellent, bio-pic.  He went to London and worked with Anthony Hopkins, John Hurt, Mrs. Brooks a.k.a. Anne Bancroft, And the Ship Sails On's Freddie Jones and of course John Gielgud.  It's beautifully shot by Tales From the Crypt's Freddie Francis and produced by Mel Brooks.  It's very stoic in one sense, but it has a real old Hollywood feel, too.  And not just because it's in black and white.  It's the austere performances, the dark locations, it's inevitable story.  It just feels timeless, important and flawless: in some ways, almost the exact opposite of Lynch's scrappy, wild excursions of self expression.  It's definitely not for anyone looking for quick, brain candy entertainment; but it's so bleak and honest that it still packs the same punch it did back in 1980.

Paramount gave this film a pretty respectable DVD debut back in 2001, anamorphic widescreen with some nice special features.  Really nothing to complain about.  But when Optimum put it out in the UK in 2008 with all new extras, well, you couldn't call yourself a Lynch fan if you weren't at least tempted to double-dip.  Well, I did.  But surprisingly, we still haven't seen it hit HD here in the states.  But Studio Canal has taken up the reigns and released it on blu in pretty much every other corner of the world.  I wound up going with their Hong Kong disc, which was a mistake, as you'll see later.  But in 2020, SC made up for that mistake by restoring the film in 4k and issuing it in a lavish 3-disc BD/ UHD set.

1) 2001 Paramount DVD; 2) 2008 Optimum DVD; 3) 2011 Studio Canal BD;
4) 2020 Studio Canal BD; 5) 2020 Studio Canal UHD.

Like I said, even the initial DVD was pretty great.  So until you get up close, these screenshots look pretty similar, at least the first few.  They're all pretty much identically framed at 2.35:1 and finely detailed.  None of them are interlaced, the colors are truly black & white (none of that weird green and purple haze that infects a lot of cheaper B&W DVDs).  They all seem to be using the same source master, but when you look at the close-up comparison below, you can see how the UK DVD does smarten up the image a bit more than the older Paramount disc, which is more compressed with splotchier dark edges.  And then the blu clarifies the finer points even more.  Panning from left to right, it's like the faces are coming into focus.

1) 2001 Paramount DVD; 2) 2008 Optimum DVD; 3) 2011 Studio Canal BD;
4) 2020 Studio Canal BD; 5) 2020 Studio Canal UHD.

And they only become more life-like when they hit the final two, where it becomes less about focus and more about depth.  The lights now longer look washed out, and even these small, background characters appear more photo realistic.  One could easily wonder if HDR means all that much when the film is entirely in grayscale, and hey, maybe a fresh scan could've yielded similar results with or without it.  But there's no denying that these results handily trump the old blu.  The range of shades puts even the new 1080p blu way ahead of everything that came before it, and then the resolution of the UHD really manages the grain to look just like the original film, and even manages to pull out a few subtle details that were lightly crushed out of the lower discs' shadows.  Oh, and it should also be noted that while the framing is still 2.35:1, it pulls out to reveal more along the edges, and is also panned slightly to the left.

Like all the Studio Canal blus, the HK disc only gives us the English in 5.1, which is less than ideal for purists (after all, there's no way the original audio was in 5.1 back in 1980); but it's a pretty straight-forward mix, so it's fine.  And it's a Dolby TrueHD track, so it's uncompressed, and the English and Chinese subtitles are optional/ removable.  But both the old DVDs featured the original stereo mix, so it's nice to see it back on the new 2020 release, in lossless DTS-HD, along with French and German dubs, plus English, French and German subtitles.

So why was the Hong Kong blu a mistake?  I'm not that mad at the 5.1.  And it's Region A, so it's nothing to do with that.  The problem is in the special features.  It's barebones, while the SC discs in literally every other country - France, Japan, Italy, Spain, Scandinavia, Australia, Germany, The UK - have a nice special features package.  But not, for some reason, the HK disc.

Even the old DVDs managed to provide a nice selection of extras.  The Paramount DVD has a really good, half-hour 'making of' featurette that interviews Brooks, Hurt, and several other key players.  It's pretty straight-forward, but quite good.  Then there's a brief but fascinating look at the effects of the elephant man make-up, which was taken from an actual cast of the original, real elephant man from a British museum.  That's followed by a "narrated photo gallery," where effects artist Christoper Tucker gives us a deeper look at the film's effects work.  Also included is the trailer an a nice insert with some cool artwork.

The UK DVD doesn't have any of that stuff, but what it comes up with is just as good, if not better.  First, there's a very professional, informative featurette about the real historical figure this film biographies.  But even more importantly is a very comprehensive, sit-down interview with David Lynch, the key player missing from the Paramount doc.  It's a really great, informative interview that goes through the whole process.  Finally, they have another, quite good interview with John Hurt; but it is fairly redundant if you've seen the Paramount stuff.  Oh, and the trailer's on here, too.

Now, the Hong Kong blu doesn't have jack, not even the trailer.  And while I don't own any of the other Studio Canal blus, I can tell you what's on them because I research this stuff.  A little too late in my case, but I researched it.  😆  Anyway, they have all of the Optimum extras, plus two additional interviews with Lynch (one of which is just focused on his paintings at an exhibit they happened to meet him at).  And the new SC has all of that, plus even more.  They reach back and secure all of the old Paramount stuff except for the narrated photo gallery, and secure us two new features.  One is a surprisingly compelling interview with the set photographer.  He might be a little low on the totem pole, but he's an interesting guy and has some good stories.  The other is a festival Q&A with the producer, which is good on its own terms, but he doesn't say anything that we haven't already heard on the other extras.  They also add a brief, un-narrated stills gallery.  The first pressing included a 36-page booklet and 5 art cards, and there's an alternate steelbook edition that drops the BD (but keeps the bonus disc).

So if you're looking for a fun time, The Elephant Man may not be your bag.  But if you just like moving, high quality films, this is definitely one.  And having just gone through the 4k experience, I have to Lynch's distinctive use of sound and imagery casts itself you in a richer, deeper way, making it feel more as one with the rest of his body of work.  SC's new release is unquestionably the way to go, with greatly restored picture, the original mix back and lossless, and the largest collection of extras yet.  If you've been meaning to revisit The Elephant Man, now's the time.  And you might want to hang onto your old Paramount DVDs as an extra little bonus for that brief talk with Tucker, but if it's not already on your shelf, it's nothing to worry about missing out on.  This set is all you could ask for.

How To Be Happy With My Life Without Me

Here's a far less frustrating US/ UK comparison to ease the tensions of yesterday's post. Today's film is 2003's international collaboration My Life Without Me, written and directed by Spanish filmmaker Isabel Coixet, based on a short story by American novelist Nanci Kincaid. But despite those two nationalities, it's primarily a Canadian production, starring Sarah Polley. This was a new release right in the heyday of DVD, so it was given decent editions all over the globe. But they're not identical, so today I'm looking at the US and UK discs, from Columbia Tri-Star and Alliance Atlantis/ Metrodome respectively.

Update 11/11/15 - 9/13/21: I suppose the biggest unspoken question in a post where I debate the merits of the US vs the UK DVDs of this movie is, "what about the blu-ray? Don't you know it's out on blu in Japan? Surely that's better!"  Well, maybe, maybe not...

Also, since it's Update Week, I've added the DVD edition to my Color Out Of Space post. You might wanna pop over and have a look just to see the difference resolution makes in actual 4k digital movies.

Man. I'd forgotten how good this film was until I pulled it off the shelf again for this write-up. The plot might sound pretty melodramatic or "chick flick"y - a young mother finds out she's in the final stages of incurable cancer and creates a list of what to accomplish in her final months. But it doesn't wallow in sentimentality. Instead of telling her family, she breaks off on her own and almost mercenarily works her way down the list; and while the list is mostly well-intentioned, it's also sometimes selfish and unsympathetic. The controversial item on her list is to "make someone fall in love with me," which is naturally unethical given she's already happily married and the guy she selects is left in the dark. They don't go the easy route and make her a saint who always does what the audience wants, but all of her choices are recognizably human and relatable.

It's a really powerful, yet funny film. I've seen Coixet's follow-up film, The Secret Life of Words, which also starred Polley, and it was alright but definitely not on this level. Believe me, if you've seen that and were underwhelmed, don't let that put you off of this one. It's just one of those films where all of the elements fell together just right. Coixet found the perfect story for her sensibilities and ideal actress for the role. There's a brilliant supporting cast including Amanda Plummer, Alfred Molina, Scott Speedman, the admittedly debatable Deborah Harry, and a pre-Marvel Mark Ruffalo. The film has an impressively lush look considering how it's almost entirely handheld and a catchy but emotive soundtrack. It seemed to get a strong response when it opened, but it's due for a revival.

1) 2006 Alliance UK DVD; 2) 2004 Columbia Tri-Star US DVD;
3) 2011 Shochiku JP BD.

When I said these DVDs weren't identical, I clearly wasn't talking about the transfers. These are practically impossible to tell apart. Both are anamorphic and letterboxed to 1.82:1 (and believe it or not, neither disc is interlaced!). As for the blu? Well, it mattes the film to a more proper 1.85:1. The film's soft and grainy, since it was apparently shot on 16mm then blown up to 35, but it does look a little clearer on the blu. Grain looks fairly natural on the DVDs, but in direct comparison, it's definitely finer/ less splotchy on the blu.  But you won't see it unless you zoom in close. Colors are strong and consistently the same across all three discs.

2004 Columbia Tri-Star US DVD left; 2011 Shochiku JP BD right.

There is one peculiar detail, however. For one single scene, the second set of shots above, the Shochiku blu swaps ARs to 1.78:1.  It's just for some (not all) of the shots where what she's writing on the notebook is printed on the screen.  And if you look at the writing on-screen, for some reason it's placed a little more to the right than on the DVDs.  It's not really a problem - it took me ages to realize it was happening - but it sure is inexplicable.

The discs start to drift apart in the audio department. Both DVDs have a 5.1 mix and optional English subtitles, but only the UK disc also sports a 2.0 track.  The Japanese BD gives us the 5.1 in lossless DTS-HD (yay!), but drops the 2.0 track in favor of a lossy Japanese dub.  It also drops the English subs, naturally substituting them with Japanese ones.

What's that she's reading?

More noteworthy are the extras. Both discs feature a fun if grungy looking 'making of' doc that runs for 30 minutes. It's widescreen but non-anamorphic on both discs, but hey, it's just an extra, right? It's still definitely worth the watch. It's all behind-the-scenes footage and interviews conducted while filming, with some pretty revealing, candid moments. But that's all the US disc has, apart from the trailer and a couple more bonus ones.

The UK one is more of a special edition, which should attract the film's fans. It has the same doc, in the same condition, as the US disc. But then it also has a set of six interviews (Coixet and five of the stars), which are expansions of the ones we saw clips of in the doc. After that is a 2003 Q&A with Cioxete at a London screening. The footage is clearly handheld, low-fi video but it's matted down to 2.35:1 for some strange reason... maybe to crop off somebody's watermark? Anyway, it's still an interesting talk, and the sound quality is good for this type of thing. And it's all wrapped up with two trailers (English and Spanish) and a music video (not anamorphic either - grr) for one of the film's theme songs, pairing the singer with clips from the film. Oh, and there's more bonus trailers.

The Japanese blu, now?  Just the trailer and a paper insert with chapter titles.  It's barebones, baby.

So, overall this is a fairly happy review. You've got cheap DVDs (we're talking penny discs on Amazon) of a great little film available on both sides of the ocean, both of which are quite good. And for the serious fan who wants more, there is a very mild BD upgrade available to import, which at least gives you lossless audio along with its slight visual bump.  Still hang onto your DVD(s) for the extras, and honestly, unless you're a die-hard fan, the BD double-dip is very easy to pass on.  But it's an option, which is nice.

Valentina Vs. Baba Yaga: Director's Cuts, Italian Comics, Lost Films and More!

When I first encountered Valentina, I had no idea about the source material, previous film adaptations or anything.  I caught it on late night cable, and for all I knew, it was just another softcore "erotica" flick, like an 80s Emmanuelle knock-off.  Admittedly, I noticed something was a bit unusual as soon as Valentina was shot to death in the opening credits and the directors' names flew out of her bullet wound.  But, hey, some of those Emmanuelle movies went to some pretty weird places, too.

Update 5/18/17 - 9/12/21: We're kicking off another Update Week here at DVDExotica, where we update older posts in dire need of an upgrade due to important subsequent releases.  Well, I originally ended this post by asking Shameless to please release their director's cut of Baba Yaga to blu; and since then they have.  How could we not go back and cover that?

It's full of creative uses of scrims, too

And in a way, 1989's Valentina is softcore erotica coming in the wake of Emmanuelle.  Valentina, played by American gymnast turned model turned actress Demetra Hampton, spends a lot of time undressing and making love.  She's even got a catchy theme song named after her, like Emmanuelle.  But as many times as this film starts a sex or general nude scene, it cuts quickly away, over and over, each and every time.  I used to think this was just a soft, censored cut of the film, but no, that's just how it is.  Because this film has a lot more interesting ground to cover.  Like, just try and follow this brief synopsis:

Valentina is a fashion photographer/ detective/ international woman of mystery who's working on a photo exhibit on cellos when she discovers she has a famous cellist for a stalker.  She's walking home with her boyfriend Rembrandt when a sexy witch almost runs her over with her car.  Taken with Valentina's beauty, the witch gives her a doll that secretly comes to life and puts a spell on Valentina.  It causes her to sleepwalk to the witch's mansion, which has a giant pit in the floor leading to a secret torture dungeon, where she gets locked in a cage.  Rembrandt figures it out and rescues her, at which point Valentina decides she can no longer resist the temptation of that cellist stalker and starts an affair with him.  But he turns out to be a dangerous knife-wielding psychopath, so she leaves town and goes on holiday to some old European city, stumbling upon a secret cult of people that cannot age and who steal her camera for an immortality ritual.  Meanwhile, dejected Rembrandt buys some antique art pieces from a street vendor, causing a coven of witches to haunt him in order to get them back.  Valentina escapes the cult, Rembrandt defeats the witches, and they reunite in a beach bungalow, where a Lady Terminator-type walks out of the ocean and starts blowing the entire town up with her laser eye-beams!  The whole movie is interspersed with pop reggae songs, dream sequences and artsy photo shoots, making very little sense, but boy is it entertaining!

featuring authentic Robocop vision!

Years later, when I'd put all the pieces of this bizarro-puzzle together, it's just as fascinating, if not moreso.  It's co-directed by Gianfranco Giagni, who also made the terrific, still unreleased Italian horror flick Spider Labyrinth; and it's based on the celebrated adult/ art comic books by Guido Crepax.  Originally, the Rembrandt character was the protagonist, known by his super-hero name Neutron; but his fiance Valentina became more popular and took over as the star of her own book for decades.  And the reason the movie has such a convoluted, episodic feel is because it's actually a mash-up of an Italian Valentina TV series, so we're seeing about six or seven half-hour episodes edited into a single movie.  And the most famous issue of the Valentina comics had actually been made into a movie over a decade earlier, Corrado Farina's Baba Yaga.

1973's Baba Yaga stars Carroll Baker as that sexy witch who almost runs over Valentina (this time played by Isabelle De Funès), and just focuses on this one particular story.  George Eastman co-stars as Arno, who's basically a stand-in for the Rembrandt character, and it has the same stand-out imagery: the pit in the witch's house, the cursed doll, and even some of the same dream sequences, like Valentina fighting her boyfriend in a boxing ring, which both films are taking right out of the comics.  Farina's film has a frankly annoying free-form jazz soundtrack, but is otherwise pretty cool, turning shots of the film into black & white stills to resemble illustrated panels, and making other stylistic choices to merge film and comics, well before Creepshow and Ang Lee's Hulk tried it.  And because it's a feature film devoted to a single story, as opposed to Valentina, which smushes in everything and the kitchen sink, it has time to develop the characters and restore plot points, like the witch cursing Valentina's camera.  I still prefer Valentina, and Hampton captures the character in spades over De Funès, who looks like someone pressed a wig down on her head and never told her what was going on, but both adaptations definitely have their strengths, so fortunately we don't have to choose.

Or perhaps more accurately, we can't choose.  Because the movie Valentina has never been released on DVD or blu in any region around the world.  Or VHS even!  There's just a very rare Japanese laserdisc, and that's pretty much it.  Fortunately, I was able to find a grey market copy from the now defunct Video Search of Miami.  Oh, and yes, the entire Valentina television series was released on DVD in Italy from MHE Ideal Entertainment (you can bet I've got that, too), but while the show is made up entirely of footage from the series - and Valentina fans should definitely seek it out as it features plenty more adventures, including a vampire, gangsters and one episode that's a homage to Argento and giallos in general - the series loses the madcap energy of the spliced together film, which is frankly kind of amazing.  Plus, as a die-hard fan, I tried re-editing the film out of the DVD series to have it in good quality, and there are lines of dialogue and music clips that are unique to the film, so it can't be directly reconstructed (though I pulled it off by cleaning up the audio on the VSoM DVDR and adding mp3s of a couple of the soundtrack songs).  Like, I'd recommend the series to fans of cult Italian stuff and of course the Crepax comics, but the Valentina movie is a unique experience even non-fans would get a pretty good kick out of.

VSoM DVDR on top; 2008 MHE DVD below.

So yeah, the VSoM disc is a grimy, old VHS-recording-sourced transfer.  It's washed out, soft, full of video noise, etc.  I mean, just look at it.  The MHE DVD, on the other hand, is just alright for an old television show on DVD.  But by comparison, it's a friggen' revelation.  You can actually tell what colors things are supposed to be!  Unfortunately, it's got a little bit of an interlacing issue, but otherwise it's no better or worse than you'd expect.  It's fullscreen, which is surely correct for a television project.  They include all thirteen episodes over three discs, and include the complete English and Italian audio in nice, clean stereo tracks.  Zero extras, but it's nicely packaged in a fold-out digibook and external slip-box.  And it's probably the best we'll ever get of the series or the film, as I believe its the copious amount of famous pop songs used throughout (Boy George, Buster Poindexter's "Hot Hot Hot," etc) that are preventing out favorite cult labels from tackling it.

A deleted/ restored scene from Shameless's director's cut of Baba Yaga.

So no Valentina for us, but there's no problem with Baba Yaga.  Diamond originally released it under the title Kiss Me, Kill Me in 2001; and then Blue Underground released it in 2003 with a bunch of cool deleted scenes (and plenty of other extras we'll get to).  In 2009 in the UK, Shameless teamed up with Farina to re-edit those back into the film, because the producers removed them against his will in the first place.  "Finally, after 35 years, you can see my film as it was before the producers hacked it to pieces - Corrado Farina" is printed on the actual DVD label itself!  So that's definitely the DVD version I recommend.  Blue Underground released it again in HD as a 2013 blu-ray, but disappointingly, they didn't release the director's cut.  I imagine the reason is that the deleted scenes were in lesser quality, and they couldn't (or didn't want to pay to) restore that footage to HD, too, to reintegrate back into the film.  But come on, if Baba Yaga were an Argento film, you know they'd at least have given us a composite cut in HD.  So I never got their blu-ray. But then in 2020, Shameless finally did it - released their new director's cut on HD!  And yes, it is a composite cut.

2003 BU DVD top; 2009 Shameless DVD mid; 2020 Shameless BD bottom.

Both DVDs are slightly windowboxed to 1.83 and 1.76, respectively.  The transfers are virtually identical apart from this framing issue, with BU showing a bit more on each side.  Shameless's new blu is properly matted to 1.85:1 and reveals the most along the sides, though it's worth noting it frames the film differently, vertically.  I don't know if one is more correct than the other, but the blu tends to reveal more on the top and less on the bottom.  It's especially noticeable on the second shot of the doll.  It's crisper, of course, being in HD as opposed to the blus, getting rid of that compressed softness.  But what stands out even more is the color correction, replacing sickly greenish yellows with true whites and an image that really pops.  Rewatching this film for the first time in HD, I really felt the impact of Farina's graphic look, and I have to admit, this film rose in my estimation over previous viewings.

2020 Shameless BD.

And let's take a look at Shameless's inserted deleted scenes.  On the DVD, they're interlaced, faded and distinctly lower quality.  On the blu, they're still clearly taken from a rough, standard def source, but they've been matted to 1.85 and fairly de-interlaced.  They've also been color corrected along with the rest of the picture.  So the drop in quality is still there compared to the rest of the film, and you will notice the changes mid-film, but even this footage looks better than the DVD.  Overall, I'd say I wasn't bowled over, but pleasantly surprised.

Shameless also includes both the English and Italian tracks with English subtitles, whereas BU only includes the English and no subs (though that is something they did fix with their blu, which has both audio tracks and subs).  For the blu, Shameless has bumped both tracks up to lossless LPCMs.

Shameless and BU both feature substantial interviews with Farina (they're different, but as you can imagine, he says a lot of the same things in both of them) and a cool, vintage featurette on Crepax's comics called Freud in Color, plus the trailer and a gallery.  Blue Underground also has a neat easter egg, with a (very brief) Tinto Brass interview, where he talks about Crepax's influence on his own work.  And they include an insert with some additional comic and poster art.  Shameless, on the other hand, has a new introduction by Farina, a text commentary/ trivia track and most impressively, a rare (albeit, pretty silly) short film Farina directed in 1973 called Fumettophobia, about Italian comic books like and including Crepax's.  Shameless also throws in a bunch of bonus trailers and some cool, reversible artwork.

And that's just for the DVD.  Shameless keeps everything from their first release for the blu, but they also add a new audio commentary by critic Kat Ellinger, who gives a nicely informed and respectful new track.  This is the kind of film that calls out for some kind of critical support, possibly even explanation, so it's a very welcome addition.

So I still hold out hope that one day Shameless will release their cut of Baba Yaga to blu-ray, to at least give us a definitive version of that film.  They've done it!  And it's hands-down the definitive edition.  Still sadly, what I've always longed for the most, the biggest hole in all our collections, will probably never be filled: the Valentina movie.  But, as with all my M.I.A. posts, I write it with hope alive.  And Shameless's new edition of Baba Yaga does a more satisfying job of holding its place in the meantime.  In fact, pulling back for a more objective look, it is probably the objectively superior film.  And if you didn't know about the Italian set of the Valentina TV series, that's another nice stop-gap.  It's just... not the movie.