Bilitis English language Blu

It was pretty disappointing when that German Bilitis blu-ray turned out to have no English language options. Well now there's another blu, this time from Spain, and it does have the English audio, as well as the French, German and Spanish tracks. Unfortunately, it has several subtitle options, but not including English, so you can't select the French audio with English subs. But still, this blu-ray has the English audio, which puts it leaps and bounds ahead of the German disc.

It's from a company called Llamentol - here's their official webpage. They've also released a DVD edition for fans who haven't gone blu. Unfortunately, Llamentol is known to release their discs on BD-Rs, which isn't ideal. But clearly the fates will not allow us an uncompromised Bilitis release; so if you're bound to the English language, this seems to be the new best bet.

Scratch One Off the M.I.A. List!

Woo-hoo!  I just got to remove a title off our DVDs Still M.I.A. column on the right, there!  La Pelle, Or simply The Skin as it's been directly translated to in the US, is coming to blu-ray this month. Giving us one more Catherine Breillat film finally available in English... and on a fancy shcmancy special edition blu-ray to boot!

I wrote about this film before, as part of a series of posts covering scripts Breillat had written or co-written. In this case, she co-wrote it with two other screenwriters, based on the memoirs of Curzio Malaparte. The film stars Marcello Mastroianni and Burt Lancaster, and has a had a couple untranslated DVDs in other countries. Then, in 2011, it was released on blu-ray in France... frustratingly, with no English language options!

Well, that's finally been corrected in the US by Cohen Media Group. Not only have they ported over the HD transfer onto blu-ray, but they've added a whole heap of English-friendly special features, including an audio commentary and four new featurettes. This will be out In just a week's time, January 13, and has received a very encouraging review from DVDBeaver - those screenshots look great. Wow. I didn't see this one coming.