Solid Metal Nightmares: The Films of Shinya Tsukamoto

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colinr0380
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Solid Metal Nightmares: The Films of Shinya Tsukamoto

#1 Post by colinr0380 » Sun Feb 02, 2020 9:44 am

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US/CANADA ONLY:
One of the most distinctive and celebrated names in modern Japanese cinema, there’s no other filmmaker quite like Shinya Tsukamoto. Since his early days as a teenager making Super 8 shorts, he has remained steadfastly independent, garnering widespread acclaim while honing his own unique and instantly recognizable aesthetic on the margins of the industry. Frequently exploring themes of urban alienation, physical transformation and psychosexual obsession, his films cross genre boundaries, defying straightforward classification. This exclusive collection gathers together eight feature-length films and two shorts from Tsukamoto’s diverse filmography, including his most recent offering – his samurai drama Killing, making its home video premiere.

Includes:

Tetsuo: The Iron Man, Tetsuo II: Body Hammer, Tokyo Fist, Bullet Ballet, A Snake of June, Vital, Kotoko, Killing, The Adventure of Denchu-Kozo, Haze

LIMITED EDITION CONTENTS

• High Definition Blu-ray™ (1080p) presentations of all ten films

• Original lossless PCM 1.0 mono audio on Tetsuo: The Iron Man, Tetsuo II: Body Hammer and Tokyo Fist

• Original lossless PCM 2.0 stereo audio on Bullet Ballet and Haze

• Original lossless DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1 on A Snake of June, Vital, Kotoko and Killing

• Optional lossless DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1 on Bullet Ballet

• Optional English subtitles for all films

• Audio commentaries by Japanese cinema expert Tom Mes on all ten films, including brand new commentaries on Tetsuo, Tetsuo II, Tokyo Fist, A Snake of June, Kotoko, Killing, The Adventure of Denchu-kozo and Haze

• Brand new career-spanning interview with Shinya Tsukamoto

• An Assault on the Senses, a brand new visual essay on the films and style of Shinya Tsukamoto by Japanese cinema expert Jasper Sharp

• Multiple archival interviews with Shinya Tsukamoto, covering every film in the collection

• Shooting A Snake of June, an archival behind-the-scenes featurette on the film’s production

• Archival The Making of Vital featurette

• Archival behind-the-scenes featurette on Vital’s world premiere at the Venice Film Festival

• Archival featurette on Vital’s special effects

• The Making of Haze, an archival behind-the-scenes featurette on the film’s production

• Kaori Fuji at the Locarno Film Festival, an archival featurette focusing on Haze’s lead actress

• Archival Background to The Adventure of Denchu-Kozo featurette

• Tokyo Fist, Bullet Ballet and Vital music clips

• Multiple trailers and image galleries

• Limited edition packaging featuring original and newly commissioned artwork by Gilles Vranckx, Gary Pullin, Ian MacEwan, Chris Malbon, Jacob Phillips, Tommy Pocket, Peter Strain and Tony Stella

• Double-sided fold-out poster

• Illustrated collector’s booklet featuring new writing on the films by Kat Ellinger, Jasper Sharp and Mark Schilling
See the Third Window thread for discussion of UK releases. Basically the UK is getting a boxset of Killing, Haze and The Adventure of Denchu-Kozo. There have already been separate UK Blu-ray releases of the other films in this box set over the last few years except for Vital (perhaps suggesting that this is upcoming by Third Window at some stage?). And this US release features all the films released by Third Window in the UK except for Tsukamoto's 2014 remake of Fires On The Plain.

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rapta
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Re: Solid Metal Nightmares: The Films of Shinya Tsukamoto

#2 Post by rapta » Sun Feb 02, 2020 12:10 pm

According to another post elsewhere, UK rights for Vital are still with Palisades Tartan until 2024 (they acquired a 20 year license). So perhaps Arrow will port their own disc over, or Third Window will get to it eventually, but not until Tartan's rights have expired.

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zedz
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Re: Solid Metal Nightmares: The Films of Shinya Tsukamoto

#3 Post by zedz » Sun Feb 02, 2020 2:56 pm

Very impressive!

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colinr0380
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Re: Solid Metal Nightmares: The Films of Shinya Tsukamoto

#4 Post by colinr0380 » Sun Feb 02, 2020 6:44 pm

Bullet Ballet is probably my favourite Tsukamoto film (just edging out Tetsuo II: Body Hammer) for putting some of the material much more grounded in a youth gang setting whilst simultaneously keeping all of the themes that underpinned say the gun fetishism of the Tetsuo films or the boxing milleu of Tokyo Fist intact (in a way the subplot with the aspiring boxer in Bullet Ballet feels like an ironic callback to Tokyo Fist being entirely set within that world). I also seem to remember that zedz did a positive write up of Haze in the Horror thread a few years ago.

Martin Scorsese also namechecked A Snake of June in particular as having had an impact on him in the interviews around Silence, especially apparent as he not only cast Shinya Tsukamoto in an acting role but also cast the lead actress of A Snake of June, Asuka Kurosawa, in a small but very important role in the final scenes of his film.

Portishead also paid tribute to Tetsuo: The Iron Man by using its riff in their Machine Gun track. Oh, and that "New World" post-accident sequence we keep returning to over and over again in Tetsuo: The Iron Man where the camera crawls around and explores details of the grill of a car and its blinking headlight in great detail whilst a jazzy musical riff plays is probably the best bit of disturbingly sexy car fetishism in cinema! Better than Crash even!
Last edited by colinr0380 on Fri Jun 12, 2020 10:43 am, edited 1 time in total.

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Re: Solid Metal Nightmares: The Films of Shinya Tsukamoto

#5 Post by swo17 » Wed Mar 11, 2020 12:32 pm

Release delayed to May 26 due to minor authoring issues

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Re: Solid Metal Nightmares: The Films of Shinya Tsukamoto

#6 Post by therewillbeblus » Wed Mar 11, 2020 12:57 pm

I've been oblivious to this set's existence, but it sounds fascinating- thanks colin for the writeups, are there other fans on the board who recommend the set?

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Re: Solid Metal Nightmares: The Films of Shinya Tsukamoto

#7 Post by knives » Wed Mar 11, 2020 5:42 pm

I've only seen the original Iron Man which I thought was quite bad. Even at only an hour it feels incredibly overlong for an idea that never finds itself. Cronenberg's experiments covering similar territory decades before is far better. I'd be much more enthused over a Sogo Ishi set if we're talking punk rock, low budget, Japanese filmmakers.

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Re: Solid Metal Nightmares: The Films of Shinya Tsukamoto

#8 Post by colinr0380 » Wed Mar 11, 2020 6:54 pm

I'd love a Sogo Ishii set too but Tetsuo: The Iron Man is a seminal 'cyberpunk' work. I found it extremely shocking stumbling across it on late night television at 14, which is the best age to see it really. Though I might be biased as I think it might have been the first Japanese film I had seen. At the very least it taught me my first Japanese phrase, though perhaps it wrongly suggested that you have to say "Moshi Moshi" back and forth to each other over the telephone a dozen times in a row, so I missed the humour in that interaction a bit on the first viewing! (By the way Dragonfly Lingo's All Right track and its many excellent remixes are all based around an audio sample of the "Moshi Moshi" scene of the film!)

Now that I am more used to the 'in your face' intense soundtrack and visuals the first Tetsuo film actually feels like it plays much more like a black comedy than anything else!
Last edited by colinr0380 on Fri Mar 20, 2020 5:04 am, edited 5 times in total.

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knives
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Re: Solid Metal Nightmares: The Films of Shinya Tsukamoto

#9 Post by knives » Wed Mar 11, 2020 7:45 pm

It's definitely seminal work and has a lot of historical significance, but that in itself doesn't make it good regardless of personal significance (I think you're right that 14 is the perfect age to discover it).

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Re: Solid Metal Nightmares: The Films of Shinya Tsukamoto

#10 Post by nitin » Thu Mar 12, 2020 4:47 am

I can vouch for A Snake Of June. Not sure it sticks the landing but fascinatingly perverse, without losing sight of being empathetic towards its female lead, for most of its runtime.

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Adam X
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Re: Solid Metal Nightmares: The Films of Shinya Tsukamoto

#11 Post by Adam X » Thu Mar 19, 2020 2:49 pm

Mondo Macabro have just announced they'll be releasing Gemini.

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colinr0380
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Re: Solid Metal Nightmares: The Films of Shinya Tsukamoto

#12 Post by colinr0380 » Thu Mar 19, 2020 6:24 pm

Great news! Hopefully they will also be able to include the Making of Gemini documentary, directed by Takashi Miike.

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Re: Solid Metal Nightmares: The Films of Shinya Tsukamoto

#13 Post by What A Disgrace » Fri Mar 20, 2020 10:34 am

Amazon is listing this as being delayed until May 26.

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Re: Solid Metal Nightmares: The Films of Shinya Tsukamoto

#14 Post by bluesforyou » Thu May 28, 2020 4:18 pm

Received this today.

While some are better than others, all of the transfers are quite good with pleasing grain and good detail in highlights and shadows. Tetsuo 1 and Vital are the best of the bunch while the two short films, The Adventure of Denchu-Kozo and Haze have the worst transfers.

I haven't seen any of the films before but they seem very interesting from what I gleamed from my short reviews of the discs.

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Re: Solid Metal Nightmares: The Films of Shinya Tsukamoto

#15 Post by rapta » Thu May 28, 2020 4:28 pm

Adam Grikepelis wrote:
Thu Mar 19, 2020 2:49 pm
Mondo Macabro have just announced they'll be releasing Gemini.
And Third Window will be releasing it in the UK hopefully.

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Re: Solid Metal Nightmares: The Films of Shinya Tsukamoto

#16 Post by Adam X » Tue Jun 02, 2020 3:39 pm

Have they said this, or is this wishful thinking on your part?
Last I heard, in the UK at least, Gemini was really difficult to license, as were all Tsukamoto's other films TWF haven't released (though there was a comment recently that they're trying to license Nightmare Detective - didn't sound too fruitful). The ones they have are all owned outright by Tsukamoto himself.

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Re: Solid Metal Nightmares: The Films of Shinya Tsukamoto

#17 Post by tenia » Wed Jun 03, 2020 3:47 am

TWF said for Gemini : "not 100% fully signed off, but in advanced contract negotiations at the moment..."

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Re: Solid Metal Nightmares: The Films of Shinya Tsukamoto

#18 Post by Adam X » Wed Jun 03, 2020 4:07 pm

Well that's good news for them. I suspect their catalogue would look a lot different if it weren't for apparent rights difficulties with a lot of classic '80's-'90's east-asian cinema.

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Re: Solid Metal Nightmares: The Films of Shinya Tsukamoto

#19 Post by colinr0380 » Sat Jun 13, 2020 4:50 pm

I previously had the Third Window UK editions of many of these films but they had been trapped in my 'to watch' pile so got superceded by this new boxset. Therefore a lot of the extras are coming to me new. Going through the first disc (of Tetsuo, Tetsuo II and Adventure of Denchu-Kozo) yesterday it was exciting to finally realise that the footage playing on the TV in the early scenes in Tetsuo: The Iron Man is of the short Denchu-Kozo film! So it was nice to finally be able to place that reference for the first time after decades of it seeming like something that had been shot for another purpose and then used in the background but without being able to be entirely certain that it was the case!

On a sadder note it was a shame to hear from Tom Mes' commentary track that the composer for all of Tsukamoto's films (aside from the studio crewed Hiruko The Goblin; and 2011's Kotoko which had music by the lead actress Cocco, who also produced and wrote the original story for that film) up to 2014's Fires on the Plain, Chu Ishikawa, had died back in 2017 at the age of only 51. His strong industrial abrasive soundtracks (but also often lyrically beautiful too) really are the throbbing motor that powers the films he was involved with. Tetsuo: The Iron Man in particular would be impossible to imagine without that pounding score, but the scores to Tokyo Fist and Bullet Ballet particularly stand out too.

Aside from the strong collaboration with Tsukamoto, Ishikawa composed for a couple of Takashi Miike's films (Fudoh: The New Generation and Dead or Alive 2) and apart from those directors also scored one film from 2013 called Pet Peeve (or Seeds of Anxiety, based on a manga) which I really want to try and find out more about now based on that trailer and a blog review of the film.
Last edited by colinr0380 on Mon Jun 15, 2020 3:44 pm, edited 1 time in total.

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Re: Solid Metal Nightmares: The Films of Shinya Tsukamoto

#20 Post by colinr0380 » Mon Jun 15, 2020 1:18 pm

Tetsuo: The Iron Man is still an astonishing piece of work that is so in your face with its metal transformations, pounding score and beautiful black and white photography (where sweat, tears and drops of mercury and rust all end up looking similar) that it is easy to overlook the fascinatingly sadomasochistic plots of a couple who hit and run over a man and get turned on by it so much they make out in front of him before they make a getaway (very Crash-like!), and the man they run over himself having been abused as a child and beaten with a metal pipe by a tramp that appears to have fuelled his desires on growing up to want to meld with metal and become powerful in a more bluntly visceral way.

Both 'hero' and 'villain' here feel as if they trade roles, where the salaryman everyman protagonist commits some of the worst acts (both of them on women, including his girlfriend. Although both get to revenge themselves on our protagonist in either possessed or dream demon form!) and comes to almost relish his new state; whilst the metal fetishist turns from self-harm and taking his anger out on proxies for his anger into finding an accomplice (a long lost twin brother if you will) to his plans and instead externalises the general rage outwards onto the wider world itself.

Which (a bit like the end of Cronenberg's Shivers) is kind of a happy ending for our main couple, but not exactly a comforting one for the 'real world' full of mild mannered salarymen simmering and sweating with repressed desires under the Summer heat that are about to get assimilated into the "New World" order, whether they wish to be or not!

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Re: Solid Metal Nightmares: The Films of Shinya Tsukamoto

#21 Post by swo17 » Mon Jun 15, 2020 1:34 pm

Has anyone in the U.S. gotten this yet? I preordered from DeepDiscount on 5/25 and haven't received a shipment notification or anything (and everything else I ordered at the same time has already arrived to me)

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Re: Solid Metal Nightmares: The Films of Shinya Tsukamoto

#22 Post by The Elegant Dandy Fop » Mon Jun 15, 2020 1:45 pm

swo17 wrote:
Mon Jun 15, 2020 1:34 pm
Has anyone in the U.S. gotten this yet? I preordered from DeepDiscount on 5/25 and haven't received a shipment notification or anything (and everything else I ordered at the same time has already arrived to me)
Ordered mine from DiabolikDVD back in April and this arrived on the day of release for me.

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Re: Solid Metal Nightmares: The Films of Shinya Tsukamoto

#23 Post by dwk » Mon Jun 15, 2020 1:47 pm

I ordered it from Target during the previous buy 2 get 1 free sale and it arrived on May 27th. (They no longer have it in stock.)

If you want to try to order from another site, Family Video says they have it in stock.

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Re: Solid Metal Nightmares: The Films of Shinya Tsukamoto

#24 Post by chatterjees » Mon Jun 15, 2020 3:15 pm

dwk wrote:
Mon Jun 15, 2020 1:47 pm
If you want to try to order from another site, Family Video says they have it in stock.
I tried Family Video couple of weeks ago, they cancelled my order last week. BestBuy cancelled my preorder last week too. I am dealing with VCI entertainment now. Apparently they have it in stock, but nobody to ship it. I contacted Arrow. According to them DiabolikDVD should be getting more in stock soon.

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Re: Solid Metal Nightmares: The Films of Shinya Tsukamoto

#25 Post by brundlefly » Thu Jun 18, 2020 3:17 pm

swo17 wrote:
Mon Jun 15, 2020 1:34 pm
Has anyone in the U.S. gotten this yet? I preordered from DeepDiscount on 5/25 and haven't received a shipment notification or anything (and everything else I ordered at the same time has already arrived to me)
Got a shipping notification from DeepDiscount for this today. And also for the Twilight Time order I placed in the before times, so #blessed and all that.

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