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Sad news! Tartan US closes its doors.
Posted by Swarez at 4:50am.
Posted in DVD News , Exploitation, Cult, Horror, USA & Canada, Obituaries.
I am virtually rubbing the sleep out of my eyes, so bare with me, when I see an article in Variety written by our friend Grady Hendrix of Kaiju Shakedown that apparently indy, Asian and horror label Tartan US has gone out of business. This is sad news for everyone. This basically means that they are selling off all their assets, including their library of 101 films. Now let’s hope that a good company picks up those titles, please not the Weinsteins, and continues where they left off.
This sucks ass, if I may be so blunt, and it’s always sad to see companies that you like and have done business with go the way of the Do Do. Tartan UK were my introduction to Asian and European films back in the day and I have been buying titles from them ever since. Let’s hope that Tartan UK is standing on stronger legs and it seems to be so as they’ve just announced their next wave of Blu Ray discs, that include Paranoid Park, I’m A Cyborg, The Proposition, Sky Blue, Funny Games U.S., A Tale of Two Sisters, P2 and Lady Vengeance.
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Reader Comments
mc85 05/31/2008 @ 8:51am
Tartan was the same for me. Back in the day when Asian Cinema in the UK was just taking off, Tartan provided many titles for those new to Asian horror. Though that being said, I’m not that surprised they are closing down. I mean, they don’t exactly have the best reputation for releasing the most high quality DVDs, and a lot of the time they are very mediocre titles. Not to mention disc faults and their infamous PAL to NTSC transfer history.
But they did introduce many, many people to Asian cinema so maybe their good points cancels out their bad points.
ChevalierAguila 05/31/2008 @ 3:27pm
Sucks, even that they released a lot of crappy sub-par horror films. Guess i should stop waiting for them to release A Bittersweet Life on R1 and go for the new R2 edition that is coming out.
Rhythm-X 05/31/2008 @ 8:21pm
Perhaps I’M A CYBORG, but according to Tartan’s UK website it is no longer OK. Because screwing around with film titles worked so well for LADY VENGEANCE and TRIAD ELECTION. Way to think on your feet, guys.
kenixfan 06/01/2008 @ 12:39am
Well, I wonder if releasing all those mediocre Korean and Japanese horror films did them in? They certainly got the product into the stores over here in the States.
I hear that the UK wing is much better—at least the title slate is.
ChevalierAguila, yes, A Bittersweet Life is a pretty great film—not very original but so well done visually that one forgets that you’ve seen the same kind of story many times already.
The trailer for the same director’s The Good, The Bad and The Weird looks cool too—it’s probably up here for viewing.
BrianBkyn 06/01/2008 @ 11:56pm
I think more than anything this shows that the economics of buying and releasing Asian films isn’t on very firm ground these day and this hasn’t been the first one to close recently. US distributors have been paying way too much for some Asian titles and they have to depend pretty much on dvd sales since getting a theatrical release is nearly out of the question. And getting retail space in stores can be very difficult as well for these specialty labels. I think Asian films in the US was a big bubble waiting to burst.