Tartan goes into administration

By Matt Holmes / June 25, 2011

This is such a shame. It was about four years ago that I got my first introduction to the Tartan label when our web maestro Peter borrowed me a copy of an Oldboy DVD he had, which completely out of nowhere (I had never heard of the movie at that point) became one of my favourites of that year. Since then I've always thought of the Tartan label favourably. It stood for, certainly in the beginning (I'm surprised to here the label was actually two decades old) - a sign of quality. These foreign movies had been imported to this country for a reason and they deserved my time, effort and money, even if they were a little more expensive than most other labels.

So many movies... Sympathy for Mr. Vengeance, A Bittersweet Life, Memento Mori, Infernal Affairs trilogy and lots of great horrors such as Audition and The Eye have made their Western debut through the label. Now it's all come to end. The Hollywood Reporter say this week that the U.K. based company has gone into administration and the 22 members of staff have been laid off. It's hardly a big surprise though. Only a few weeks back, the company ditched it's U.S. portion of the label and although it was claimed to have been unrelated to it's U.K. stability, that has proven not to be the case. I would expect some companies to pick up the bigger titles and give them glossy new releases (wouldn't surprise me to see Criterion give some a go) but it's still sad to think I won't be able to go into my local HMV and see a brand new Tartan release ready to be purchased.