721 Love Streams

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yoshimori
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721 Love Streams

#1 Post by yoshimori » Tue Feb 15, 2005 4:08 pm

Love Streams

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The electric filmmaking genius John Cassavetes and his brilliant wife and collaborator Gena Rowlands give luminous, fragile performances as two closely bound, emotionally wounded characters who reunite after years apart. Exhilarating and risky, mixing sober realism with surreal flourishes, Love Streams is a remarkable film that comes at the viewer in a torrent of beautiful, erratic feeling. This inquiry into the nature of love in all its forms was Cassavetes's last truly personal work.

SPECIAL FEATURES

• New 2K digital restoration, with uncompressed monaural soundtrack on the Blu-ray
• New audio commentary featuring writer Michael Ventura
• New video essay on actor Gena Rowlands by film critic Sheila O'Malley
• New interviews with executive producer and director of photography Al Ruban and actor Diahnne Abbott
• Interview from 2008 with actor Seymour Cassel
"I'm Almost Not Crazy..."—John Cassavetes: The Man and His Work (1984), a sixty-minute documentary by Ventura on the making of Love Streams
• Trailer
• PLUS: A booklet featuring an essay by critic Dennis Lim and a 1984 piece by Cassavetes on the film from the New York Times
Last edited by yoshimori on Thu Feb 24, 2005 2:24 am, edited 2 times in total.

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Hrossa
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#2 Post by Hrossa » Wed Apr 13, 2005 1:26 pm

yoshimori wrote:I got it. Looks great to my eyes. Non-removable french subs, but they're, 90% of the time, out of the picture area. And the movie, Love Streams, of course, is incredible. [Haven't checked A Child is Waiting yet.]

There's some of the Michael Ventura doc in English, and a nice little making of a single scene doc VO'd in French -- though, of course, in English when Cassavetes et al are speaking.
I know it's been a while and the right people might have strayed from this thread, but I was curious which running time is presented on the French DVD. Is it the theatrical 140 min. time or the 120. min. VHS release time?

If anyone could answer I'd be very grateful.

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Miguel
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#3 Post by Miguel » Wed Apr 13, 2005 2:07 pm

It says 160 min on the back cover.

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#4 Post by Hrossa » Wed Apr 13, 2005 3:40 pm

Miguel wrote:It says 160 min on the back cover.
Hmmm... well, to my knowledge, (from Cassavetes On Cassavete) the theatrical runtime was 141 minutes, which was then cut to 121 for video release by MGM. I have no idea where the extra 20 minutes could be coming from. Maybe that's the total runtime including supplements.

IMDB also lists the runtime as 141 minutes, as does Dave Kehr's capsule review at the Chicago Reader.

If anyone else wants to weigh in with their expert opinion, that would be great.

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#5 Post by therainsong » Wed Apr 13, 2005 5:00 pm

The disc's running time is a little over 2 hours and 14 minutes, and considering the difference with PAL, it is the full-length version.

Great disc; it is a shame the subs are not removable, but the film is so amazing that it really doesn't matter. The picture is nearly perfect.

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#6 Post by Hrossa » Wed Apr 13, 2005 5:25 pm

Ok, well now that that question seems to have been answered...

I'm curious if anyone could tell me what those twenty minutes contain. I know it might be harder to get someone to bite on this. I'm just curious. I don't really mean in detail, but roughly what the scenes are and between whom. Obviously, I might just run into the problem that no one has seen both the DVD and VHS versions and thus wouldn't know.

How much did you guys pay for those French DVDs? I saw that they were selling on Amazon.fr for like 30 Euros! Can that be right or did I just see wrong?

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Arn777
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#7 Post by Arn777 » Wed Apr 13, 2005 7:09 pm

I paid 24 euros for Love Streams alone, the 30 euro one listed on Amazon.fr includes 'A child is waiting'.

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Miguel
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#8 Post by Miguel » Thu Apr 14, 2005 4:31 am

I got lucky and found the double dvd for about 26 euros at the Fnac store in Brussels. The lowest online price seems to be 30 euros.

I recommend getting the 2 disc as the price difference is minimal and A Child Is Waiting is a very worthwile movie.

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Donald Trampoline
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#9 Post by Donald Trampoline » Fri Jun 17, 2005 9:12 pm

This is also rentable from Niche Flix, www.nicheflix.com.


Love Streams here
and A Child is Waiting here.

It lists the subtitles as "non-removable" and the runtime of Love Streams as 135 mins, which matches the above comments meaning it sounds like it's the full-length theatrical version with normal PAL speed-up.

And thanks for all the comments. I hadn't heard of this disc, so as soon as I saw it appear on Niche Flix I came here looking to find out if this disc was worth renting, and it sounds like it is! :)

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#10 Post by Faux Hulot » Fri Jun 17, 2005 11:07 pm

Hrossa wrote:
Miguel wrote:It says 160 min on the back cover.
Hmmm... well, to my knowledge, (from Cassavetes On Cassavete) the theatrical runtime was 141 minutes, which was then cut to 121 for video release by MGM. I have no idea where the extra 20 minutes could be coming from. Maybe that's the total runtime including supplements.

IMDB also lists the runtime as 141 minutes, as does Dave Kehr's capsule review at the Chicago Reader.

If anyone else wants to weigh in with their expert opinion, that would be great.
As accurate as Carney generally is with his info, I'm not sure why this keeps getting repeated except that it suits his thesis about the neglect of Cassavetes' work. After reading about the alleged truncation, I double-checked my copy of the MGM/UA VHS release (by which I mean I watched it start to finish) and it is in fact 141 minutes long, though the box lists the running time as "2 hours 2 minutes". Nothing different from the theatrical realease that I could recall, either. I can't imagine the tape ever sold well enough to warrant a second pressing (that moreover somehow magically restored 20 minutes of footage supposedly excised) so it appears this is a story that Carney never bothered to corroborate.

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Hrossa
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#11 Post by Hrossa » Sat Jun 18, 2005 3:29 pm

Faux Hulot wrote: I double-checked my copy of the MGM/UA VHS release (by which I mean I watched it start to finish) and it is in fact 141 minutes long, though the box lists the running time as "2 hours 2 minutes". Nothing different from the theatrical realease that I could recall, either.
Thanks for that info Hulot. Maybe I should contact Carney and ask him about it. Surely his response would be worth the effort. Incidentally, I know that everyone is probably emailing Mulvaney about future Cassavetes releases, but I got a reply saying they have no plans for future Cassavetes releases.

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#12 Post by Faux Hulot » Sat Jun 18, 2005 4:57 pm

Hrossa wrote:Maybe I should contact Carney and ask him about it. Surely his response would be worth the effort.
Or a good laugh. I mean don't get me wrong, I dearly love his "C on C" book and I'm eternally grateful for his Cassavetes scholarship, but he takes himself so seriously.
Hrossa wrote:Incidentally, I know that everyone is probably emailing Mulvaney about future Cassavetes releases, but I got a reply saying they have no plans for future Cassavetes releases.
I'm not surprised, especially after they got caught in the middle of the Carney/Rowlands crossfire. On the other hand, I'd emailed Criterion a few times over the years asking after plans for the films that ended up in their box, and each time was told the same thing. So, you never know.

Incidentally, I once saw Love Streams listed in an MGM "coming soon" press release reprinted at DVDFile.com, but this was easily close to two years ago, and not a peep since. Anyone hear word of a US release?

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#13 Post by paa400 » Wed Jul 13, 2005 11:26 pm

Do these discs have good transfers? I love both films-I have bad VHS copies of both of them and just recently picked up a non-region DVD player-so forgive me-Im new at whats out there and good concerning non-region discs.

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Faux Hulot
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#14 Post by Faux Hulot » Wed Sep 07, 2005 12:31 am

paa400 wrote:Do these discs have good transfers? I love both films-I have bad VHS copies of both of them and just recently picked up a non-region DVD player-so forgive me-Im new at whats out there and good concerning non-region discs.
The transfers are excellent, very clean prints; pic quality of the supplements however is just so-so (the Child trailer is fairly beat, and the excerpt from the Ventura doc looks like a cheap telecine from the 80s). But the films are pristine, virtually flawless -- I've seen numerous scratchy 35mm prints of Love Streams as well as the original VHS, and it's never looked better. And as surmised above, I can confirm that Streams is indeed the full-length (originally 141 min.) version, but plays at 135 min. thanks to the PAL speed-up.

Sept 25 update -- DVDBeaver reviews now online (thanks Gary!):
A Child Is Waiting
Love Streams

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#15 Post by pemmican » Thu Feb 23, 2006 8:28 pm

I contacted Carney awhile back about what I assumed was an error -- it looked like he'd read the video label (2 hrs 2 minutes) and assumed that 21 minutes were trimmed, when, in fact, they aren't. He didn't dispute this (or acknowledge it), but told me that material was missing from the dream sequences, later in the film. Having actually seen the film on screen -- it screened at a Pacific Cinematheque retrospective shortly after Cassavetes' death -- it seemed to me that there WERE differences at this point in the film.

Anyhow, Sony have struck a new print of the film, which people might already be aware of -- it was done for the Brooklyn Academy of Music's Gena Rowlands retrospective in November, and will be playing at the Vancouver International Film Centre in early March, with Tom Charity (now a Vancouver resident) introducing it. Carney has asked me to time the print. I'll have portions of an interview with Charity on my blog in the next couple of days, and have written about the screening at greater length for the Vancouver free magazine, DISCORDER (can't say if it'll appear online). I'm really excited that I'll be able to see it again onscreen.

It might further interest people that Sony now own the rights to LOVE STREAMS, but that, when emailed about it, say that there are no plans for a DVD release in the immediate future.

Cheers -

Allan
Last edited by pemmican on Fri Mar 10, 2006 6:35 pm, edited 2 times in total.

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Barmy
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#16 Post by Barmy » Fri Feb 24, 2006 2:13 am

zzz

That new print (recently shown at AFA in Manhattan) is no longer than any other print.

Talk about a tempest in a teapot.

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#17 Post by paa400 » Fri Feb 24, 2006 4:46 am

The print shown at AFA looked pretty good, but Barmy is right, its the same version that was released on video in US and on DVD region 2 France.

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#18 Post by pemmican » Wed Mar 08, 2006 8:48 pm

Well, for what it's worth, I timed the new print -- it's 2:22:45, from what I could see, and identical to the VHS edition. I think that it's pretty conclusive at this point, that Professor Carney is in error...

A.

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#19 Post by pemmican » Fri Mar 10, 2006 6:28 pm

Actually, change all that. (Does anyone care?) Ray Carney is RIGHT about the VHS edition. He just provided some detailed, recent writing on it:
The complete, final film as released in theaters runs 2 hours, 20 minutes and 38 seconds from the start of the sound of the initial pre–title singing through the end of the final credits; subtracting the approximately 2 minutes and 11 seconds of final credits (which wouldn't have been included at this
point) that leaves 2 hours 18 minutes and 27 seconds in the second and final edit.

Another oddity of the video release is that some footage has been removed. While, as I noted above, the released film has a running time of 2 hours, 20 minutes and 38 seconds, the video has a running time of 2 hours, 20 minutes, and 22 seconds. The difference is accounted for by cuts in the joke–telling scene – eleven seconds from the start and five seconds from the middle. ....... The first cut removes a run of black leader involving Sarah and a following jump cut when Jack and Debbie come down the steps; the second removes a second run of black leader when Sarah is doing the popcorn joke with Jack at approximately two minutes and twenty five seconds into the scene.
DVD owners are invited to check for black leader in the dream sequence... my guess is that Golan and Globus just thought this was sloppy and trimmed it. By the way, watch the background when the animals get out of the cab, and you'll see the film crew! ...and Carney tells me that in one dream sequence, there's a tent visible that was used to house the crew and equipment... I don't know which tent he means yet...

It starts to seem like a festival of anal-retentives, but one difference I did notice that I want to double-check against the VHS: I'm pretty sure that in the shower sequence in the VHS edition, you see a bit of one girl's breast -- it was a nice breast, so I'd noticed it! The new print doesn't seem to have the breast-bit in it. I will be watching it again on Sunday, looking for the breast, and the tent... and I think I'll bring the stopwatch again.

By the way, I've written about LOVE STREAMS online here.

Indeed, the new print has the nude scene shortened and "zoomed in" on, so you only see the head and upper shoulder of one of the two girls in the tub. Why I dunno. More on this, including screen captures from the VHS edition, here.

Looks like Sony has produced another mutilated version of a Cassavetes film, to sit alongside HUSBANDS and MINNIE AND MOSKOWITZ -- tho' there are other possible theories about who is to blame, of course -- the nudity could have been something Golan and Globus insisted on, and the Sony version could be "restoring" Cassavetes' original intention.

If anyone knows people responsible for the new print, please ask them about this.

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#20 Post by Barmy » Mon Mar 13, 2006 1:39 pm

The "debate", I thought, was about a 20-minute time differential, which is a myth.

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#21 Post by paa400 » Mon Mar 13, 2006 3:35 pm

When I saw Love Streams on the big screen I immediately noticed the black liter-now Ill have to go back and watch the region 2 DVD and my old VHS copy! keep it coming-this topic is fascinating!

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#22 Post by pemmican » Mon Mar 13, 2006 8:24 pm

Yeah, the 20 missing minutes is a myth -- we've all got that -- BUT the black leader IS cut from the dream sequence in the VHS, as well as a brief shot, before a jump cut, of Seymour Cassel approaching alone, and the new print is shortened at the shower scene. Tom Charity is taking his time getting back to me, so if anyone can peek at the DVD, it would be useful to know:

a) are two girls clearly visible in the shower? The one on the left stands up, her head and hand briefly obscuring the one on the right; you can see two shampoo bottles in the background, on the rim of the tub. This is the VHS edition.
b) do you see their breasts, or are they "cropped," off the bottom of the screen?

Ray Carney just sent me the note below, and said I could quote it, so what the heck. Based on what he says below about the censorship of HUSBANDS, I'd say we have a good possible culprit to question in where the missing breasts went; but I'll be trying to contact Sony about this, if the Vancity people give me a contact...

Allan

(Professor Carney's note follows:)

Thanks VERY MUCH for the able reporting on the Love Streams print. You are doing to it what I did to Shadows. (Well, not quite, since my Shadows project took four or five years and about a hundred viewings, but you have the same
spirit.)

Thanks also for clarifying the "Ray Carney is right/wrong" statement. People take what I say out of context and then accuse me of the mistake. Just to clarify another thing about Husbands that has been misunderstood by misreading my writing:

UCLA created TWO master prints. Two. Not one. One print is almost complete. It lacks one or two minutes of footage. But that's pretty close to complete. The other lacks approximately 11 minutes of footage, including most of the Leola Harlow and some of the vomiting scene. Rowlands asked for the creation of the second print because she found the Harlow and vomiting stuff "in bad taste." That's what I wrote. I think it's disgraceful of course to tell someone to cut her husband's work because SHE finds it tacky. But that's a fact. The cut print was in fact the one shown at the UCLA premiere screening of the film where Rowlands was present. And it was the one used for later video releases. And used for later print creation. But there is a long print that exists and that was part of the UCLA project. I hope that clarifies my point. What I wrote was not wrong and should not be in dispute. I was writing about the way an instiution like UCLA honors Rowlands's wishes, and how wrong I think that is, and how much it tells us about the priorities of film preservation. I never said that the long print was not obtainable at all. It is. But it is darn rare and almost never seen. The short print, the Rowlands approved print, is the one generally screened, at UCLA and elsewhere.

You may add this to your blog or post it as you see appropriate.

All best wishes and thanks for your sleuthing.

Ray Carney
www.Cassavetes.com

Ray Carney, Prof. of Film and American Studies

Author: Cassavetes on Cassavetes (Farrar, Straus and
Giroux/Faber and Faber); Shadows (British Film
Institute/University of California Press); John
Cassavetes: The Adventure of Insecurity; The Films of
Mike Leigh (Cambridge University Press); The Films of
Frank Capra (Wesleyan University Press); Speaking the
Language of Desire: The Films of Carl Dreyer
(Cambridge University Press); The Films of John
Cassavetes: Pragmatism, Modernism, and the Movies
(Cambridge University Press), and other works.

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Faux Hulot
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#23 Post by Faux Hulot » Tue Mar 14, 2006 3:15 am

pemmican wrote:a) are two girls clearly visible in the shower?
b) do you see their breasts, or are they "cropped," off the bottom of the screen?
On the French DVD, the shower girls appear exactly as they do in the VHS edition. The DVD also retains the jump cut and brief bursts of black leader in the dream sequence.

A note for all the trainspotting detectives out there: there are slight differences between the opening titles of the DVD and the VHS editions. The information/ timing/ design of the two are essentially the same (though the lettering in the VHS version has a slight glow behind it that the DVD lacks), but the orientation in the frame is slightly different, ostensibly to accomodate the difference between full- and widescreen transfers. (In other words, in both versions the titles fill roughly the same portion of the TV screen, but because of the difference between the image ratios, the titles take up different portions of the filmed image in the two versions.) This is probably completely irrelevant, except insofar as it may be useful to someone to determine which print was used for which transfer.

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#24 Post by pemmican » Tue Mar 14, 2006 10:08 pm

On the French DVD, the shower girls appear exactly as they do in the VHS edition. The DVD also retains the jump cut and brief bursts of black leader in the dream sequence.
Thanks for the information! I knew the DVD was otherwise complete, but at least two other people have now told me that you barely see the girls on the French DVD, so I'd been assuming it was censored... Perhaps not, though. I've just fired off an email from Cinemalta asking them about this, complete with a Babelfish'd French introduction, which should produce some unintentional hilarity at my expense... I will continue to dig.

Hey, if anyone has a contact person at Sony I could pester about this, my hotmail account is under ammacinn (followed by the usual @, etc).

Allan

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#25 Post by pemmican » Sat May 27, 2006 4:57 pm

The new print of LOVE STREAMS just played in Seattle -- sounds like a bizarre night:

http://daily.greencine.com/archives/001984.html

By the way, I have completely failed to get anyone at Sony to explain why the nudity was cut from the new print. After some serious phone resistence, I tracked down their archives section, made a phone call, and sent an email, and there has been zero result. BAM didn't know anything. The Vancity Theatre people didn't get back to me about a contact person that I might inquire into the matter about. Filmbrain said he had a contact person at Sony, but he hasn't gotten back to me or found any info that I know about. Dead end. At least I impressed Ray Carney...

A.

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