On the hunt for Delicatessen (1991) on DVD
December 23rd, 2003 at 2:55 pm (Other)
On December 9th I wrote an entry titled The missing DVDs in which I listed a number of movies not yet released on DVD and solicited feedback on how to ask a studio to feed the fans and release movies that are only available on VHS. I decided that it was time to take action and chose Delicatessen (1991) as a good first target for a new experiment. According to the IMDB the two companies responsible for US distribution are Miramax Home Entertainment for the Video release and Paramount Home Video for the laserdisc (which is reported to be a bad film transfer). Finding contact information for Paramount was easy enough, but Miramax was another story. Their web site Miramax resizes my browser and tries to place it in between my two monitors every time I hit the site annoying me to no end. I prevailed though and searched the site high and low to find… nothing. A Google search did not yield any better results (I tried a half dozen keyword searches) but did give me a clue. Through Google I found a website for fans of the movie The Crow: Salvation (2000) (the third and not well received adaptation of the James O’Barr comic) that encouraged people to contact Miramax and demand a theatrical release. The Crow page gave away Miramax’s home city as New York. One more search, this time on Verizon Yellow Pages for Miramax Films in New York gave me two addresses that matched the ones from the Crow page.
Not sure whom to address my query to or what other contact points may exist I went ahead and wrote this letter:
I am writing to inquire on plans for distribution of one of my favorite films, Delicatessen (1991), on DVD. I have been eagerly awaiting this French masterpiece’s DVD release for some years now and was encouraged by the 2002 German DVD release but have not seen any announcements nor found information for a Region 1 release. I am hoping you may have information you may be able to share on release plans, or if there are no plans yet, that this letter may encourage to consider it. The movie has a strong following, specially since the increased attention received for directors Marc Caro with City of Lost Children (1995) and Jean-Pierre Jeunet with Alien 4 (1997) and Amelie (2001). Based on discussions with the many fans of these two artists and their films I know I am not the only one wanting to own a copy of Delicatessen and that the movie will sell well once it is available in the US in DVD format.
I look forward to a reply from you. Thank you for your time.
and mailed it to:
Paramount Studios
5555 Melrose Avenue
Hollywood, CA 90038
323.956.5000Miramax Films
11 Beach St
NY, NY 10013
(212) 941-4049and
Miramax Films
375 Greenwich St.
New York, NY 10013
(212) 941-3800
Now lets see if any of them answer…
gl. said,
December 27, 2003 at 11:48 pm
eee! you go, boy! i’d love to see this succeed, both because delicatessen is worth a dvd release, and because i would love to see other people able to reference this to provoke other cult releases.
Anthony Luke said,
January 18, 2004 at 2:51 pm
Gigli and Glitter, are avaiable on dvd but Delicatessen is not. This is a crime. I love this film and anyone who has seen it once would surley buy it if it were made available. Corporate pin heads are deciding what to release based on what? their zit faced 14 year old daughter tastes. Get real. This movie has a large cult following.
keep up the good work geekroar.
Leopoldo said,
February 3, 2004 at 8:48 am
Well, I sent the letters back in December of 03 and Feb of 04 has rolled by with still no answer.
jette said,
March 30, 2004 at 3:04 pm
And yet you can get a Region 2-encoded DVD of “Delicatessen” from any number of online UK/European retailers. Just not Region 1. Bleah.
photochick said,
June 6, 2004 at 8:25 am
can region 2 encoded DVD’s play on computer (e.g. macintosh) players in North America?
leopoldo said,
June 6, 2004 at 10:48 am
That is a very good question. I did not know the answer so I went hunting on the Apple web site and found out that the DVD Player built into MacOS X does in fact lock itself to a single region (the region for the first disc you insert). You can switch the region up to 5 times before the player locks down:
http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=60183
Incidentally the distributors never answered my letters and the title is still not released in region 1.
Craig said,
August 24, 2004 at 9:09 am
The Jeunet & Caro official site message board had very little information regarding the lack of a region 1 DVD of Delicatessen. There was never any explanation as to why it wasn’t available.
Here is the only message left on the old forum (translated by Google):
“The forum closed its doors in spring 2004. A new forum will be born on the official site of Jean-Pierre Jeunet (opening be 2004).”
Here is the Jeunet & Caro website:
http://jeunetcaro.online.fr/english/index.html
Tim said,
October 25, 2004 at 9:00 am
Personally I have given up on waiting for studios to release the DVD’s I want in the region that I need. There are now quite a few very affordable DVD players that have built in PAL/NTSC converters, and can be changed to all region. I have a Philips DVP 642, which I purchased at a Target store for $70. It has a simple code you input to change it to a region 0 player, and it converts PAL to NTSC and vice versa. It also plays almost every media and video format (including DiVX/Mpeg4). I have begun getting all the British DVDs I could ever want (mostly comedy television shows unavailable in the US). I plan on buying the British release of Delicatessen in my next order from Amazon.co.uk, which is a terrific place to buy from. I’ve had no problems with customs or anything at all (probably because Amazon is such a big company, they wouldn’t worry too much about things shipped by them. And as long as it isn’t over $200 they don’t really care anyway). Extremely fast shipping (usually even quicker than the 5-9 days they estimate on the site, almost always less than a week), and I actually haven’t seen many anything that I have gotten from them for less anywhere else, even eBay. In fact it is often more expensive to look elsewhere. So I say that if Miramax, or Paramount, or anybody, won’t put out the Delicatessen DVD, or any number of other movies, in region 1 then they should lose out on the money they could be making rather than us losing out on the movies we love. Everyone who really loves movies and DVDs should get a region free player and start buying any movie they want from where ever they can get it. I’m not talking about pirated versions of DVDs. I’m just talking about throwing out their ridiculous, and in no way legally binding “region” system, and giving your money to someone who is willing to legally give you the product you want.
Rico said,
December 5, 2004 at 1:44 pm
Tim, Bravo on your distain for the corporate pinheads! I too am searching for Delicatessen on DVD Region 1, but like you have been unable to procure one. If by chance you are as techno savvy as you seem, and have heard of “DVD Shrink” Software I would certainly be glad to purchase a region-free ripped copy from you.
Here’s the address: http://www.dvdshrink.org/what.html
Thanks in advance!
Rico
Cracker said,
January 27, 2005 at 1:44 pm
I found this page while searching for a copy of Delicatessen. Tim, I also found the movie on Amazon, in PAL format. They have used ones very cheap. Like you, I also can watch them because I also have a Philips DVP 642 which I also purchased at Target, for about 70 bucks.
The reason for this post is to verify what Tim said about the versatility of this particular unit. It does indeed play any region DVD as well as VCD, DivX, Xvid, .avi, .mpg, .jpg, etc. In other words, you can watch on your television virtually any type video disc in the world, including data discs burnt from nearly any video file you have on your hard drive. So if you’re into downloading movies from the internet, you can copy one straight to CD and be watching it in your living room five minutes later without doing any sort of editing, repairing, re-encoding or formatting, all of which can take many hours for one flick. This means you can put up to six 700-meg movies on one DVD-R disk. And to top it all off, the machine doesn’t freeze up on you when it encounters glitches. It just skips right over them! In my opinion it’s priceless.
The Good Doctor said,
February 2, 2005 at 10:10 am
Be very careful of this. I had ordered one copy
through Amazon.com and was taken by a crook who
never sent the dvd. I have a vhs version for now,
which looks great. I’m still looking for a dvd
copy. I’m a cinematographer by trade and
“Delicatessen” is a true classic.
Good Luck,
The Good Doctor
www.worthkillingfor.com
Cracker said,
March 10, 2005 at 10:56 am
I ordered and received a region 2 PAL copy of Delicatessen from the UK. I spent many hours re-encoding it to region-free NTSC format that can be played on any USA DVD player capable of playing burned disks. I re-authored it with the original chapters, titled in English. The movie is encoded with permanent English subtitles. The video quality is excellent.
Email me if interested.
Loco said,
November 10, 2005 at 3:18 pm
I am interested–how do I email you?
ratazaina@hotmail.com
scott said,
January 17, 2006 at 12:38 pm
I would be interested in a copy as well. Loco did you get a copy? If so how did it work out?
jennifer said,
July 12, 2006 at 8:08 pm
Hey y’all, it’s been released by Miramax on DVD (May 2nd, 2006). Hooray!