John Edmond wrote:And I can only second that bar noting the film's lovely sensualist use of telephoto, and hoping Zedz expands on the film's pottery (don't laugh). No chance you (MB) are preparing a nice essay for the booklet regarding what the hell happened to Grečner?
I don't know who's doing the booklet, but Grečner seems to have spent the 70s and 80s supervising Slovak-language versions of other people's films - the only film-industry job he could get after the post-1968 crackdown. He made two features in the 1990s -
Earthly Disturbance (1993) and
Jasek's Dream (1996) - but I know nothing about them.
There's an episode of
Golden Sixties devoted to him, and he comes across as pretty modest - he's constantly deferring to people like his mentor Štefan Uher, and
Dragon's Return seems to be the only one of his films that he was really satisfied with. But that's the only one that I've seen with subtitles.
Oh, and not only is he still alive, but he also has
a blog - though unsurprisingly it's in Slovak.
I just hope Second Run can wrangle a anamorphic transfer. If I recall correctly it was the Slovakian DVD label that chose to waste 2K transfers on non-anamorphic releases but the logic seems dubious enough that I'm probably wrong. Either way I look forward to gifting my old DVD to somebody of decency.
If a 2K master exists, an anamorphic transfer should be a mere formality - but I don't know what materials Second Run have been supplied with (if any thus far). But hopefully they should be able to improve on the Slovak disc - which is staggeringly cheap*, but you get what you pay for! (It's a very safe bet that the Second Run edition will have superior subtitles and context-setting extras).
*Mind you, once you've factored in delivery charges from Slovakia, you probably won't save much (if anything at all), unless you bulk-buy a whole load of Slovak DVDs...