Sad news this afternoon and it looks like Tartan's US branch is in a heap of trouble. After months of speculation about its finances, Stateside releasing operation Tartan Films USA has admitted its financial problems. In what may amount to the beginnings of a rescue operation, Vin Roberti's Palisades Media Asset Fund announced a "public foreclosure sale" of all the assets belonging to Tartan Films USA and Tartan Video USA. Legal notice said company's assets include a film library of 101 titles. Established in 2004 by Hamish McAlpine, the head of the U.K.'s Tartan Films, company established a reputation for acquiring and handling arthouse and genre titles. Its biggest hits were Park Chan-wook's "Oldboy," "Mysterious Skin" and "Sympathy for Lady Vengeance."
Ive suspected this since February when a few Tartan releases never came out. This truly is bad news for those of us who enjoy our foreign horror. You can still find some of these titles on ebay-HAte20 and the Matrimony , as far as the other titles Ive been searching for some time and cant find them anywhere. Strange thing is that Tartan UK doesn't even carry these titles, will they be picking up any of these titles?
That's terrible. I have a bunch of their releases, and the packaging is always so nice, and it seems like they put a lot of effort into their dvds....so sad.
this does indeed suck. Tartan was usually a beacon of quality when sifting through all the foreign horror. Perhaps they should do a re-release of Norbit or something to get the well adjusted, american cinema fan's dollar to help things out.
such a shame. I have several of their releases and they were the only company that I would buy just because it was a Tartan release. And yeah, the packaging was really nice. Hopefully they can get out of this, cuz I'll be first in line to pick up Matrimony, P, 1942 and the others they were set to release
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