BFI: 32 Ozu Films

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reaky
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Re: BFI: 32 Ozu Films

#676 Post by reaky » Sun Nov 25, 2012 6:15 am

I can't imagine that Artificial Eye would have held on to one of their Ozus and not the other, so yes.

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Re: BFI: 32 Ozu Films

#677 Post by peerpee » Wed Nov 28, 2012 4:25 pm

FLOATING WEEDS was from Kadokawa (like GATE OF HELL). THE END OF SUMMER is with Toho and decent HD materials did not exist a year ago.

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reaky
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Re: BFI: 32 Ozu Films

#678 Post by reaky » Wed Nov 28, 2012 7:34 pm

Is "a year ago" in contrast with "now", Nick? Is there something in the offing with End of Summer that you can share?

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zedz
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Re: BFI: 32 Ozu Films

#679 Post by zedz » Wed Nov 28, 2012 10:27 pm

"A year ago" was when Nick worked for MoC. "Now," you'd have to ask MoC, presumably.

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MichaelB
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Re: BFI: 32 Ozu Films

#680 Post by MichaelB » Wed Feb 06, 2013 9:18 am

Full specs announced:
The Ozu Collection
The Gangster Films
Three silent films by Yasujiro Ozu

The latest volume in the BFI's celebrated collection of the works of Japanese master Yasujiro Ozu (Tokyo Story), released on 18 March 2013, focuses on his gangster-genre films. This 2-disc set contains Walk Cheerfully (1930), That Night's Wife (1930) and Dragnet Girl (1933), all coming to DVD for the first time. Each film is presented with a newly commissioned score from Ed Hughes. Also included is the only surviving fragment of Ozu's A Straightforward Boy (1929).

Ozu honed his craft in the early 1930s, a time when young Japanese directors were experimenting with cinematic conventions. In these rare, silent works, Ozu mixes a Hollywood-infused dynamism with elements of his later unique and poetic style.

Disc One

Walk Cheerfully (Hogaraka ni ayume)
When Kenji 'the Knife' Koyama, leader of a gang of hooligans, falls for the beautiful and virtuous Yasue he faces a tough decision: go straight to win her heart or carry on with his life of petty crime and easy luxury. With its expressionist lighting - reminiscent of Sternberg's Underworld - and distinctive characterisation, Walk Cheerfully sees Ozu combine international cinematic influences with comic touches all of his own.

Japan / 1930 / b&w / silent with music, English subtitles and intertitles / DVD9 / 92 mins / original aspect ratio 1.33:1

Disc Two

That Night's Wife (Sono yo no tsuma)
In desperation over the illness of his daughter, young father Shuji turns to crime to pay the medical bills. Enter Detective Kagawa (played by Togo Yamamoto) for a tense nighttime stand-off with Shuji's wife, Mayumi. That Night's Wife demonstrates Ozu's masterly handling of drama as the film reaches its emotional climax.

Dragnet Girl (Hijosen no onna)
By day sweet-faced Tokiko (played by Equinox Flower's Tanaka Kinuyo) is an ordinary typist but come nightfall she's a glamorous fun-loving gangster's moll. When her boyfriend Joji starts to stray, Tokiko is forced to confront the effects of her dissolute lifestyle. Hugely popular when it was released, Ozu's Dragnet Girl remains one of Ozu's most endearing silent films.

Japan / 1930 + 1933 / b&w / silent with music, English subtitles and intertitles / DVD9 / 63 mins + 96 mins / Original aspect ratio 1.33:1

Special Features
A Straightforward Boy (1929, 13 mins): a kidnapped boy gets the better of the baddies in this surviving fragment of the film, directed by Ozu, which shot its child star Tomio Aoki to fame;
Ozu: Emotion and Poetry (2012, 10 mins): an extract from Asian cinema expert Tony Rayns' 2010 lecture on Ozu's early work;
• Illustrated booklet with newly commissioned essays from Tony Rayns and Michael Kerpan.

Product Details
RRP: £29.99 / cat. no. BFIVD951 / Cert PG

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AidanKing
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Re: BFI: 32 Ozu Films

#681 Post by AidanKing » Sun Feb 10, 2013 7:17 am

Nice to see an essay by Michael Kerpan after the excellent essay by Nick Wrigley in the melodramas set. Another reason for looking forward to this.

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Re: BFI: 32 Ozu Films

#682 Post by MichaelB » Sun Feb 10, 2013 7:38 am

AidanKing wrote:Nice to see an essay by Michael Kerpan after the excellent essay by Nick Wrigley in the melodramas set. Another reason for looking forward to this.
It's probably not giving away too much to say that the production team behind the Ozu releases is well aware of this forum in general, this thread in particular, and especially the esteemed Mr Kerpan's encyclopaedically knowledgeable contributions - so I'm not the least bit surprised that they signed him up!

I also wouldn't be at all surprised if discussions here about the colour problems with the Criterion Good Morning and the Audrey Hepburn subtitle flub on Late Spring helped ensure that the BFI releases would rectify those issues.

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Re: BFI: 32 Ozu Films

#683 Post by Michael Kerpan » Mon Feb 11, 2013 12:18 pm

Good to know that being a "complainer" is sometimes actually useful. ;~}

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MichaelB
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Re: BFI: 32 Ozu Films

#684 Post by MichaelB » Tue Feb 12, 2013 3:36 am

I got my longest-standing regular writing gig (a decade and counting) after complaining about something!

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neilist
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Re: BFI: 32 Ozu Films

#685 Post by neilist » Mon Feb 18, 2013 11:13 am

How would I tell just by looking at the disc itself whether a blu-ray of 'An Autumn Afternoon' was the original issue or the higher bit-rate replacement? Is the disc marked 'repress' or 'reissue' at all? Presumably the codes around the centre of the disc on the data side are different?

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MichaelB
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Re: BFI: 32 Ozu Films

#686 Post by MichaelB » Mon Feb 18, 2013 11:19 am

neilist wrote:How would I tell just by looking at the disc itself whether a blu-ray of 'An Autumn Afternoon' was the original issue or the higher bit-rate replacement? Is the disc marked 'repress' or 'reissue' at all? Presumably the codes around the centre of the disc on the data side are different?
I can't speak for An Autumn Afternoon, but the repressed Battleship Potemkin has a small 'V2' at the very end of the text curving around the bottom of the disc artwork.

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Re: BFI: 32 Ozu Films

#687 Post by sidehacker » Mon Feb 18, 2013 12:15 pm

AidanKing wrote:Nice to see an essay by Michael Kerpan
drink every time he begins a sentence with "Alas,"

I kid. I'm looking forward to that piece and the rest of the set.

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EddieLarkin
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Re: BFI: 32 Ozu Films

#688 Post by EddieLarkin » Mon Feb 18, 2013 1:43 pm

I have the Autumn Afternoon replacement disc and it does not have a "V2" identifier like Potemkin does. You can tell if it's the new disc by checking it's average bit rate. The first disc had an average bit rate of 13-14Mbps whilst the new one was 23-24Mbps. A PS3 or most Sony Blu-ray players display bitrate if you select Display whilst playing. If you don't have a Sony player then a program like BDinfo can read the disc and tell you (assuming you have a BD drive)

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RobertB
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Re: BFI: 32 Ozu Films

#689 Post by RobertB » Mon Feb 18, 2013 1:52 pm

I have different numbers on the inner ring of the side of the disc without any print on my two discs. The replacement is A0101809748-A511. The original one starts A010 and ends -A511, but the other numbers are different. The printed sides are identical.

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neilist
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Re: BFI: 32 Ozu Films

#690 Post by neilist » Mon Feb 18, 2013 2:06 pm

Fantastic, thanks very much for the help!

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Re: BFI: 32 Ozu Films

#691 Post by Michael Kerpan » Mon Feb 18, 2013 6:00 pm

sidehacker wrote:
AidanKing wrote:Nice to see an essay by Michael Kerpan
drink every time he begins a sentence with "Alas,"
Probably no drinks will be forthcoming, alas. ;~}

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EddieLarkin
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Re: BFI: 32 Ozu Films

#692 Post by EddieLarkin » Sat Feb 23, 2013 6:09 pm

I've been trying to get my head around which Ozu films make up the 32 total, and thus which remain to be released, and have come up with what I hope is a definitive list. Bolded are films yet to be released/announced by the BFI

Days of Youth
A Straightforward Boy (short film)
Walk Cheerfully
I Flunked But
That Night's Wife

The Lady and the Beard
Tokyo Chorus
I Was Born But
Where Now Are the Dreams of Youth
Woman of Tokyo

Dragnet Girl
Passing Fancy
A Mother Should be Loved
A Story of Floating Weeds
Kagami jishi
(documentary)

An Inn in Tokyo
The Only Son
What Did the Lady Forget
Brothers and Sisters of the Toda Family
There Was a Father

Record of a Tenement Gentleman
A Hen in the Wind
Late Spring
Early Summer
The Flavor of Green Tea over Rice

Tokyo Story
Early Spring
Tokyo Twilight
Equinox Flower
Good Morning

Late Autumn
An Autumn Afternoon

A total of 32, with 25 released and 7 to come. Other extant Ozu films include:

Fighting Friends Japanese Style (partial only)
I Graduated, But... (partial only, included in the Student Comedies set)
The Munekata Sisters (Shintoho)
Floating Weeds (Daiei, released by MoC)
The End of Summer (Toho)

Have I made any mistakes? Presumably Fighting Friends will appear as an extra on a future BFI release, The End of Summer will hopefully come from MoC or another distributor, and who knows what if any attention Munekata Sisters will receive.
Last edited by EddieLarkin on Thu Feb 13, 2014 9:22 am, edited 1 time in total.

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Re: BFI: 32 Ozu Films

#693 Post by triodelover » Sat Feb 23, 2013 6:56 pm

Tokyo Chorus and Passing Fancy are part of the Eclipse set of Ozu silents that also includes I Was Born but.... A Story of Floating Weeds is also a Criterion release paired with Floating Weeds. An Inn in Tokyo is a Panorama release still available through YesAsia. Record of a Tenement Gentleman and The Flavor of Green Tea over Rice was part of Tartan's Ozu series and are still available in a two-film set through third-party sellers at Amazon UK among other sources.

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EddieLarkin
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Re: BFI: 32 Ozu Films

#694 Post by EddieLarkin » Sat Feb 23, 2013 7:18 pm

Though all are planned for re-release by the BFI in the near future, right?

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Re: BFI: 32 Ozu Films

#695 Post by triodelover » Sat Feb 23, 2013 7:41 pm

EddieLarkin wrote:Though all are planned for re-release by the BFI in the near future, right?
That's the assumption (along with The Munekata Sisters) but I don't think it's confirmed by BFI. All I'm saying is that those six films are available in SD editions, although several (the Panorama and the Tartan set in particular) could be improved upon even in new SD editions.

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Re: BFI: 32 Ozu Films

#696 Post by EddieLarkin » Sat Feb 23, 2013 7:46 pm

I left the Munekata Sisters out as I was under the impression it was a non-Shochiku production, and thus not part of the proposed 32 film collection

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zedz
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Re: BFI: 32 Ozu Films

#697 Post by zedz » Sun Feb 24, 2013 3:43 pm

I've been speculating that the two remaining sound films were being held back until good HD elements (e.g. Criterion restorations) became available, and they'd then be paired up with appropriate, or inappropriate, silents, but I don't know if the maths works with that configuration.

You could do another thematic set about economically struggling families ('Tenement Stories'? Now there's a catchy title. Maybe this is the right time to use 'A Who's Who of the Tenement'?): Record of a Tenement Gentleman, Tokyo Chorus, Passing Fancy and An Inn in Tokyo. If you had to drop one, it would probably be Tokyo Chorus.

Then you could pair up The Flavour of Green Tea Over Rice (probably the most marketable and 'Ozu-like' film they have left) with A Story of Floating Weeds (easily the remaining silent with the highest recognition factor) and throw in Kagami jishi as a bonus.

That's about the only way I see the remaining stocks breaking down into actual releases in the established formats. The most likely alternative would be three double features (Tea, Tenement, Weeds - assuming good HD transfers are available of all three) with the short and fragments scattered as bonuses, but this would mean headlining a silent, which they have yet to do.

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Gregory
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Re: BFI: 32 Ozu Films

#698 Post by Gregory » Sun Feb 24, 2013 5:09 pm

Flavor of Green Tea over Rice looked great in the retrospective 9 years ago, and I can't understand what's taken Criterion so long to get it out. (It probably would have been in an Eclipse set by now but for the fact that it's neither "Silent Ozu" or "Late Ozu.") I believe they added it to Hulu fairly recently, so wouldn't that mean they've done their HD transfer?

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Re: BFI: 32 Ozu Films

#699 Post by Michael Kerpan » Sun Feb 24, 2013 7:46 pm

My impression is that Green Tea doesn't have any terribly good source materials -- but I am hoping for a pleasant surprise.

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Re: BFI: 32 Ozu Films

#700 Post by Michael Kerpan » Tue Mar 12, 2013 8:48 pm

My copy of The Gangster Films arrived today. Now I need to start watching them. ;~}

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