Recommendations for Second Run

Discuss releases by Second Run and the films on them.
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Finch
Joined: Mon Jul 07, 2008 5:09 pm
Location: Edinburgh, UK

Re: Recommendations for Second Run

#251 Post by Finch » Tue Aug 16, 2011 2:44 pm

From Second Run's Coming Soon page:

"The Girl from Hunan (Xiangnu xiaoxiao) A film by Xie Fei China 1986

The heartbreaking tale of a young girl sold into an arranged marriage with a 2 year old boy who she must raise as his nanny until he is old enough to marry her. She is expected to honour tradition and to toe the line so far as social proprieties are concerned, but the young girl rebels against the edicts of her elders until at 16, she falls in love with another man...

Though set in turn-of-the-century China, The Girl from Hunan deliberately parallel the state of affairs in the China of the late 1980s.

Release date: TBC"

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perkizitore
Joined: Thu Jul 10, 2008 3:29 pm
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Re: Recommendations for Second Run

#252 Post by perkizitore » Tue Aug 16, 2011 2:45 pm

That's been there for ages.

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Bikey
Joined: Wed Aug 17, 2005 4:09 am

Re: Recommendations for Second Run

#253 Post by Bikey » Tue Aug 16, 2011 3:18 pm

skuhn8 wrote:Though it's been raised before just want to repeat this request:
Csontvary by Huszarik (you've got the momentum from the Szindbad release)
We are on the case with this, skuhn8, but just don't know what the outcome might be. And I don't think we will have an answer imminently. But this is where we will first announce it when...

By the way, did you finally receive your Szindbad from Zavvi?

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L.A.
Joined: Thu May 28, 2009 7:33 am
Location: Helsinki, Finland

Re: Recommendations for Second Run

#254 Post by L.A. » Tue Aug 16, 2011 5:28 pm


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SpiderBaby
Joined: Wed Dec 15, 2010 6:34 pm

Re: Recommendations for Second Run

#255 Post by SpiderBaby » Tue Aug 16, 2011 5:41 pm

Hotel for Strangers (Antonín Mása 1966)?

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skuhn8
Joined: Tue Dec 14, 2004 4:46 pm
Location: Chico, CA

Re: Recommendations for Second Run

#256 Post by skuhn8 » Wed Aug 17, 2011 5:00 am

Bikey wrote:
skuhn8 wrote:Though it's been raised before just want to repeat this request:
Csontvary by Huszarik (you've got the momentum from the Szindbad release)
We are on the case with this, skuhn8, but just don't know what the outcome might be. And I don't think we will have an answer imminently. But this is where we will first announce it when...

By the way, did you finally receive your Szindbad from Zavvi?
I gave up on Zavvi after waiting over a week and pushed my business to Amazon.co.uk. Got it. Watched Strickland and scanned through a few of my favorite scenes. Glorious.

Just too bad that the press and momentum from this release can't segue straight into a follow up Csontvary release. Oh well.

Not to pry into your books, but is there any indication that Szindbad sales benefited from the glowing reviews? Higher sales 'than usual' (however, one would define that)? I suppose it's still not going to get picked up by the casual rave/rioter demographic.

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knives
Joined: Sat Sep 06, 2008 6:49 pm

Re: Recommendations for Second Run

#257 Post by knives » Wed Aug 31, 2011 4:06 am

I don't know if it's any good and it probably shouldn't be the first Fabri, but is there a chance of getting Két félidö a pokolban?

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skuhn8
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Re: Recommendations for Second Run

#258 Post by skuhn8 » Wed Aug 31, 2011 5:22 am

knives wrote:I don't know if it's any good and it probably shouldn't be the first Fabri, but is there a chance of getting Két félidö a pokolban?
Good movie (available on DVD in Hungary) except for the lame-o third act. Lubitsch was right about Hungarian plays (extend to films) frequently being excellent except for rubbish handling of the third act.

nolanoe
Joined: Fri Jan 08, 2010 10:25 am

Re: Recommendations for Second Run

#259 Post by nolanoe » Wed Sep 07, 2011 10:21 am

I just found out that Das Brot der frühen Jahre is actually held at various cinemas in Berlin and Vienna - so just in case you guys are looking for it. :)

Anyways, there is another German film I wanted to recommend, which may, at first not make a bell ring, but let me explain.

The film is called Ein Mann wie EVA (1984) and directed by Radu Gabrea.

Now, let me tell you what this is about: Gabrea has made a film about a filmmaker who is a direct reflection of Rainer Werner Fassbinder (RWF - here re-imagined as EVA). The faux Fassbinder is directing a film himself, an adaptation of "La dame des camélies". Sounds interesting, right? Now, get this: the faux Fassbinder is being played by Fassbinder-regular actress Eva Mattes (the daughter of Petra von Kant, among others), complete with fake beard, back then still in her 20s.
And now, look at these stills:

Still 1 - Still 2 - Still 3 - Still 4 - Still 5 - Still 6 - Still 7

I have no further info on the film itself, although there are dozens of reviews on it in german. It obviously handles Fassbinder's persona and reflects upon him after his untimely death. I think this is not just important for Fassbinder fans, but also for people interested in seeing a (very young, back then) actress portraying a male celebrity (something Cate Blanchet did later on with her portrayal of Dylan in I'm Not There), not to mention that the cinematography looks STELLAR. The film has, to my knowledge, not seen the light of day ever since 1984. So please, consider this one, as I think it fits perfectly into your catalogue.

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MichaelB
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Re: Recommendations for Second Run

#260 Post by MichaelB » Thu Sep 08, 2011 4:49 am

A Man Like Eva opened theatrically in Britain, so there'd be plenty of UK press coverage. Here's Time Out, for starters.

nolanoe
Joined: Fri Jan 08, 2010 10:25 am

Re: Recommendations for Second Run

#261 Post by nolanoe » Thu Sep 08, 2011 8:53 am

OH WOW! :shock:

Sorry, but this is a bit of a shock. I have only ever heard of friends who saw a TV-taping of it that most be very, very old and from britain. Seeing that this has a theatrical run in the UK, while it is neglected in its home country is... striking, and proofs that international companies should really get a hold of some older german films. :^o

EDIT: OH, now I realized, it opened back in the 80s. Sorry, my bad.

Still, proof that this film should get a chance to shine on DVD.

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MichaelB
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Re: Recommendations for Second Run

#262 Post by MichaelB » Thu Sep 08, 2011 10:31 am

German films were still reasonably popular (or at least screened) in Britain well into the 1980s - in addition to the Fassbinder, Wenders and Herzog titles, not to mention Heimat (shown theatrically before its TV outing) and István Szabó's German-language titles, there were plenty of other one-off oddities like A Man Like Eva.

It's only from about 1990 onwards that there was a really marked decline in distribution - I suspect the death and/or decline of the major auteurs was a contributing factor (Herzog was still producing great stuff like Lessons of Darkness, but Cobra Verde killed off theatrical interest in his work for an alarmingly long time).

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zedz
Joined: Sun Nov 07, 2004 7:24 pm

Re: Recommendations for Second Run

#263 Post by zedz » Thu Sep 08, 2011 4:40 pm

Don't forget the briefly zeitgeisty Percy Adlon (now I'm really showing my age)!

I don't remember all that much about A Man Like Eva except that it was disappointing, not able to live up to its high concept. Considering how many Fassbinder films I had yet to see, I kept wishing I was watching one of those instead.

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GaryC
Joined: Fri Mar 28, 2008 3:56 pm
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Re: Recommendations for Second Run

#264 Post by GaryC » Thu Sep 08, 2011 6:23 pm

No more than I'm showing my age - I watched some of those Percy Adlon films in the cinema, and more recently rewatched Rosalie Goes Shopping when it had a DVD release.

Another German oddity was the comedy, or broad farce to be precise, Schtonk!. I found my old timecoded VHS review copy the other day. (I'm having a clearout/rearrange of my books and DVDs - not to mention some VHS I'm still keeping hold of.) IIRC reviews couldn't get past the idea of whether Germans had a sense of humour or not, and the film bombed theatrically. (Artificial Eye distributed it.) But I found it amusing enough, though that was back in 1993.

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MichaelB
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Re: Recommendations for Second Run

#265 Post by MichaelB » Thu Sep 08, 2011 7:01 pm

The problem with Schtonk! (a mammoth blockbuster in Germany, to be fair) is that it opened in Britain after the TV series Selling Hitler, a far subtler and funnier treatment of the same basic material (the Hitler Diaries scandal).

Let's face it, even if Schtonk! had had the exact equivalent of casting Barry Humphries as Rupert Murdoch or Alan Bennett as Hugh Trevor-Roper, it wouldn't have meant anything to a British audience.

Calvin
Joined: Sun Apr 10, 2011 11:12 am

Re: Recommendations for Second Run

#266 Post by Calvin » Tue Mar 13, 2012 4:36 pm

In Our Time (1982) - The seminal film of the Taiwan New Wave, In Our Time launched the career of Edward Yang. Any Yang or Hsiao-Hesien would be terrific but there's also some other films from Taiwan that I'd love to see. Chen Kunhou's Growing Up which is similar to The 400 Blows, was the first film of the New Wave movement to attract broad attention and launched it's young star as a pop icon. Also, Wu Nien-Jen's A Borrowed Life (Duo-Sang) which was one of Martin Scorsese's favourite films of the 90s.

nolanoe
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Re: Recommendations for Second Run

#267 Post by nolanoe » Wed Mar 14, 2012 2:37 pm

Any news on my recommendations? ;)

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warren oates
Joined: Fri Mar 02, 2012 12:16 pm

Re: Recommendations for Second Run

#268 Post by warren oates » Wed Mar 14, 2012 3:34 pm

Second Run should take a serious look at releasing Aleksandr Rogozhkin's The Chekist http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0103949/which is to Russia's communist purges what Alan Clarke's Elephant is the troubles in Ireland. At a small satellite office of the secret police, an unrelenting series of wild accusations of disloyalty, cursory investigations and summary show trials ends in execution for just about everyone who walks through the door. Imagine that one
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Irinia
moment in Tinker Tailor stretched into an entire feature. The film is primarily concerned with the effects of this unending evil on the psyches of the people who practice it. One of the few major masterpieces of cinema I've ever seen that plunge this deeply into the darkest heart of man.

This film would complement other important Second Run titles from Russia and Eastern Europe like Interrogation, but frankly I think it's an even better film that truly deserves a wider audience. I still have my old VHS tape that was from a small American outfit called Cinema Parallel that also did the initial U.S. home video release of Michael Haneke's The Seventh Continent and Bela Tarr's Satantango. The Chekist is definitely worthy of such company, like any number of other titles I've discovered through Second Run: it's one of the best films you've never heard of.

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zedz
Joined: Sun Nov 07, 2004 7:24 pm

Re: Recommendations for Second Run

#269 Post by zedz » Wed Mar 14, 2012 4:39 pm

I've never seen The Chekist, but Rogozhkin's earlier film The Guard is near the top of my 'best films you've never heard of' list, and seems to be similarly elusive.

For most of the film, it documents the bleak, dreary routine of a soldier on a train, with the ingenious twist that there are no straight cuts, only dissolves, which gives the numbing routine a suspended, dreamlike quality (sort of like a squalid and brutal Picnic at Hangng Rock) - at least until events finally reach a crisis point and
SpoilerShow
the man is killed, at which point the film enters an actual dream / point-of-death hallucination, which employs conventional cutting despite its fantastic content. And in fact, you realise that the disjunctions of traditional montage actually do a better job of reproducing the illogical juxtapositions of a dream than the typical filmic markers of dream sequences. It's one of the most thought-provoking subversions of conventional film syntax I've encountered.
I know I've banged on about this before, but it seems to me that post-Soviet cinema is the last bastion of hardcore European art-film values, and it's frustrating that so many of the great films of the last quarter century have never emerged on DVD - not even in their countries of origin.

You can easily add to the AWOL Rogozhkins a half-dozen Muratova masterpieces, Kanevsky's Freeze, Die, Come to Life and An Independent Life, Bobrova's In That Country, German's The Last Train and Paper Soldier, and Balabanov's Morphia. Aside from the surprising number of Sokhurovs available, I can only think of two films of that calibre that are available subbed (Cargo 200 and - soon - My Joy). (For the record, good as he is, I think Zvyagintsev is still a tier or two below that level, but he may well get there one day.)

The big problem for a Second Run release of these films is that, until they get a decent release somewhere else, you have to assume that there isn't a good transfer ready and waiting, and they're very unlikely to be able to fund one from scratch. And until post-Soviet cinema becomes a lot more fashionable and visible in the marketplace, most of the better-resourced companies (Criterion, MoC) won't be interested.

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warren oates
Joined: Fri Mar 02, 2012 12:16 pm

Re: Recommendations for Second Run

#270 Post by warren oates » Wed Mar 14, 2012 6:07 pm

Thanks for the reply, zedz. The Guard absolutely sounds up my alley. And My Joy is at the top of my Netflix queue.

There might be a decent video master of The Chekist in Russia somewhere. I seem to remember an unsubbed DVD release that's now unavailable floating around during the time I was snapping up Sokurov discs from places in Brighton Beach and West Hollywood. Even though I can't understand Russian, I'm kicking myself for not having gotten it then.

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MichaelB
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Re: Recommendations for Second Run

#271 Post by MichaelB » Wed Mar 14, 2012 6:09 pm

zedz wrote:The big problem for a Second Run release of these films is that, until they get a decent release somewhere else, you have to assume that there isn't a good transfer ready and waiting, and they're very unlikely to be able to fund one from scratch.
That's simply not an option unless they can share the cost with other organisations - but, as you say, the likes of Criterion probably wouldn't be interested, and they can hardly team up with a fellow UK label.

At the moment, they're keeping a very keen eye on assorted government-backed restoration projects - there have already been a batch of Hungarian releases (with two more out this year: Szabó's Confidence has just been announced, and there's another Jancsó in preparation), and they've just started delving into the twenty restorations produced by Poland's revitalised Studio Kadr. There's also an even more ambitious Czech restoration project underway, whose first three releases are Marketa Lazarová, Lemonade Joe and The Firemen's Ball, but which includes quite a few previously unreleased Czech New Wave titles.

But I don't know if there's an equivalent situation in Russia: certainly Ruscico has been putting out quite a few pre-1990s classics (in fact, in many ways they were ahead of the curve on this), but have barely touched more recent titles.

Stefan Andersson
Joined: Thu Nov 15, 2007 1:02 am

Re: Recommendations for Second Run

#272 Post by Stefan Andersson » Fri Mar 16, 2012 7:02 am

Good news about Confidence.

Maybe 25 Firemen´s Street is also an option for Second Run.

I also remember rumours about Szabo having to cut 25 mins. out of Colonel Redl before release. Maybe there´s a director´s cut possibility down the road.

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MichaelB
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Re: Recommendations for Second Run

#273 Post by MichaelB » Fri Mar 16, 2012 7:20 am

Stefan Andersson wrote:I also remember rumours about Szabo having to cut 25 mins. out of Colonel Redl before release. Maybe there´s a director´s cut possibility down the road.
Fremantle have the UK rights, and their DVD is still in print as far as I can see.

admira
Joined: Fri Nov 13, 2009 4:33 pm

Re: Recommendations for Second Run

#274 Post by admira » Fri Mar 30, 2012 3:49 pm

admira wrote:Image
ČT2, (Czech Television 2) schedule Adelheid for Friday 01. 13. 2012 at 8:55pm in HD!
There is an HD transfer of Adelheid available, administrated by Ateliéry Bonton Zlín. First Blu-ray from Second Run...?

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MichaelB
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Re: Recommendations for Second Run

#275 Post by MichaelB » Fri Mar 30, 2012 4:30 pm

Second Run has no plans to go Blu-ray - the economics just don't work out for them at present.

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