Anchor Bay: Alejandro Jodorowsky

[Cobalt60]

This city has no culture that isn't manufactured. I'm disappointed that it isn't playing here, but not surprised by any means.

The Inwood sort of tries with their midnight series, but they keep their selections pretty safe. By not booking El Topo and Holy Mountain (the quintessential midnight movies) they have blown their "cult cred" all to hell. Still, I really like Austin and its only a 3-3 1/2 hour drive so I guess its not so bad.

[Toxicologist]

Interestingly enough i understand Wild Side in France are releasing their own Jodorowsky boxset in May as well from what i gather.....wonder what they have up their sleeves which is going to differ from the Anchor Bay editions?

At any rate...Jodorowsky set,Svankmajer set (BFI) and Chris Marker CC editions....2007 shaping up very nicely indeed!

[Lino]

Interestingly enough i understand Wild Side in France are releasing their own Jodorowsky boxset in May as well from what i gather.....wonder what they have up their sleeves which is going to differ from the Anchor Bay editions?

I have a feeling that the french editions will be pretty much the same as the US ones. On the Anchor Bay UK forums, Marc Morris has already confirmed that the Tartan UK set will be identical to the US one in terms of extras and seeing as the Anchor Bay US set will carry subtitles in various languages, I imagine that a sort of deal must have been made to distribute the films and the extras accordingly to these same various countries.

As a side note, the collector in me is happy to notice that my Anchor Bay UK Santa Sangre DVD is going to sit very nicely next to the upcoming Anchor Bay US set. Some consistency is always nice on a shelf.

[Toxicologist]

Interestingly enough i understand Wild Side in France are releasing their own Jodorowsky boxset in May as well from what i gather.....wonder what they have up their sleeves which is going to differ from the Anchor Bay editions?

I have a feeling that the french editions will be pretty much the same as the US ones.

You may very well be right..but i'm not so sure...i know Wild Side have produced their own featurettes for certain dvd titles that you would have thought were direct ports from other regions.
I believe the interview with Jodorowsky that was included in the Japanese Boxset was conducted entirely in French so maybe they have licensed excerpts from that etc????

[THX1378]

Saw El Topo at the Castro in SF friday night. I asked one of the workers there for some info on the print. They told me that it was projected digitally from a High Def remastered DVD. It looked very good, but you could tell that it wasn't "film". The reason they said was that ABCKO didn't want to spend money to make new remasted 35 mm prints of the film. I thought it was odd, since unless the masters are in such bad shape to do remastering. So I don't know how true this is. Maybe ABCKO felt that the remastered digital print was the best that the film was going to look. They also said that they had reviewed the Holy Mountain print. It was 35 mm and not remastered. The man I talked to said that the Holy Mountain print looked good, but that El Topo looked better. Over all it was great at last see Topo on the big screen after years of viewing it on a bootleg VHS. The theater was sold out for the screening. It sounded like many people had never seen the film before, coming to the screening to see what the hype was about. One person I talked to in line while waiting to get in said that he remembered seeing the film when it first hit SF back in late 1972. He talked about how most of the crowd was stoned or high on LSD, with one woman freaking out at one point and running out of the theater screaming her lungs outs.

[Felix]

For me personally Santa Sangre doesn't even come close to the three films featured in this set - for me they are the three great Jodorowsky films. I understand that quite a few people feel Santa Sangre is his best though. It certainly has a more coherent narrative but for the most part it leaves me cold. I find that it is too close to being a horror genre film and therefore lacks much of Jodorowsky's personal visionary artistic style.

It is my favourite but the only one I have had a chance to see in a good print so that might change. I did like Holy Mountain, more than the other two but I can't really argue with you about the first three being the most typical of his work.

Santa Sangre seems a very different film. I have read suggestions that producer Claudio Argento's papa may have had a finger or two in the pie. He did a couple of other films though, didn't he? Tusk and something else, neither of which he has much time for, I think.

[Barmy]

The digital El Topo does NOT look "better" than the 35mm Holy Mountain. I've seen both. There is no substitute for film. Yes, the digital El Topo looks immaculate, but that doesn't mean it looks better. Of course, most people don't care about such niceties.

[THX1378]

The digital El Topo does NOT look "better" than the 35mm Holy Mountain. I've seen both. There is no substitute for film. Yes, the digital El Topo looks immaculate, but that doesn't mean it looks better. Of course, most people don't care about such niceties.

I wish I could have seen Holy Mountain to have compared the two. I only got to go for the friday night screening of Topo and Mountain played Sunday and today. I was just talking to my friend about Topo being shown digitally and that you could tell that it was a digital print, and that Mountain was 35 mm film. He said that even if the print was in so so shape, that it should look better than Topo. Topo looked at sometimes "fake" to me, like it wasn't filmed on film. My friend said that it's more and more a problem with digital shown films is that depending on the source, it comes up with this "fake" look.

[zombeaner]

In case anyone feels like spending $20 more than MSRP, it looks like a few advance copies have floated onto Amazon Marketplace here:

The Films Of Alejandro Jodorowsky @ Amazon Marketplace

I can wait for the price to drop, but if anyone decides to bite, let us know how it looks!

[Ashirg]

It's most likely Italian set or a bootleg made from Japanese discs. The Anchor Bay set wasn't released yet.

The covers were uploaded from The Digital Bits; the release date is January 4, 2005 and studio name was added just recently. If you search by correct UPC for Anchor Bay set, this page doesn't come up, so it's not official release.

[Tommaso]

For me personally Santa Sangre doesn't even come close to the three films featured in this set - for me they are the three great Jodorowsky films. I understand that quite a few people feel Santa Sangre is his best though. It certainly has a more coherent narrative but for the most part it leaves me cold. I find that it is too close to being a horror genre film and therefore lacks much of Jodorowsky's personal visionary artistic style.

I have only yesterday managed to watch "Santa Sangre", and it was much better than I expected from that horrible, horrible dvd cover, but I agree: it's not quite as good as "Holy Mountain" in my view. Main difference is of course that he refrains from all too overt symbolism here (and that excellent documentary on the second disc tells you why, as he's being annoyed to be seen constantly as some sort of occult master).
It is indeed close to being a horror genre film, but it may be a very conscious and ironic take on it: it seems to me that he consciously cites prime examples from the whole history of the genre: "The Invisible Man" is obvious, of course, but there are also parodies of "Psycho", "Freaks", "Night of the living dead", David Lynch, the Hammer films and the giallo films. It's hard to decide what he intended by this: I assume it was an ironic gesture to the Argento brothers, but all in all, "Santa Sangre" is pretty harmless in its depiction of gory violence in comparison. Great visuals, as always, but the story itself is a little too cliched and rather conventionally told in my view, and the dialogues are truly weak, but that is not unusual for Jodorowsky in general. It looks a little like one of his comic strips transposed to film, perhaps. Still, a very interesting film, but not his best.

[toiletduck!]

So you're telling me there's no way that the El Topo I saw tonight was anything other than digitally projected? Because you could have fooled me. Maybe I'm just not as sensitive to that sort of thing (it's very possible), but the way you guys are talking, this one's not easy to miss. I'll be seeing Holy Mountain in two weeks, maybe it'll be more obvious to me after I compare. But on to the film...

Holy hell, I've just seen a cinematic masterwork.

The word that kept coming back to me was 'pure'. Every image, movement, sound, etc. seems so precise, so exact, that I have to believe we have a direct port of Jodorowsky's mental images -- even more amazing considering he's in front of the camera for almost the entire film.

Those seeking perfect intellectually considered symbolism will likely be disappointed, but those who want to see breathtaking imagery and the unbridled and pure creativity of one mans wild imagination and psyche will be amazed. Actually I think Jodorowsky is in many ways very close to the spirit of true surrealism.

It was really interesting to go back and read your comments again, vogler. I went in expecting this sort of surrealism, and I have to say that I disagree. I found El Topo to be extremely allegorical and containing very little surrealism (purely speaking, of course). I haven't sat down to sort out exactly what I feel fits where in the 'meaning' of everything, but I'm certainly looking forward to doing so.

Which is another oddity: I fell in love with the film for the same reason that you feel many are disappointed. While I wouldn't say perfect (there are extra flourishes here and there), intellectually considered symbolism is very much what I saw tonight, but filtered through the breathtaking imagery and pure -- that word again -- creativity. Despite being so consistently unique, there was nothing in El Topo that didn't seem to make perfect sense where it was. There are bits and pieces that still seem like they shouldn't make sense, but my subconscious is going along with it, so I'm playing game and waiting for the reasoning to bubble up to the surface. This must be what people are feeling when they tell me they understand Mulholland Drive...

My lord, I've been on a streak! The last three days have introduced me to El Topo, 2 Or 3 Things I Know About Her, Mr. Arkadin, and McLaren's Ballet Adagio. My jaw was on the floor each and every time. I don't know if I can handle any more quality this month -- it's a good thing that Dreamgirls is on tomorrow's menu.

*bites tongue and starts mantra*

I will go in with an open mind. I will go in with an open mind. I will go in with an open mind...

-Toilet Dcuk

[vogler]

I'm really glad you liked the film toiletduck. Jodorowsky gets a huge amount of negative criticism and it's nice to see someone have such a positive reaction. Just to clarify, my comments were very much meant in a positive way. To me the negative would have been if the film had been over intellectualised. I think Jodorowsky works in a largely intuitive manner, as I believe does David Lynch, plucking images and ideas straight from the mind without being too formalistic about the construction of the film and relying on a more pure form of intuition. Pure and intuition are the key words for me here. I see this as a very good thing and to me this takes the work far closer to the essence of what I see as true artistic inspiration. That zone in the mind where other forces seem to take over and you are driven by an uncontrollable urge to create, ideas seemingly spring from nowhere as if coming from some other place - true inspiration. William Blake, John Coltrane, Stan Brakhage and Luis Bunuel are all good examples of this I think.

I can relate to this in creating film and music but probably most noticeably in music. In the area of free improvisation (free jazz) there comes a certain point when you seem to lose conscious control of what you are playing and become so absorbed in the performance that something seems to take over. In this state all kinds of things become possible that would normally be totally out of grasp. The whole performance comes together as a whole in a far more emotionally and structurally satisfying manner. I think this is the kind of mental area that Jodorowsky and the others I mentioned were working in. This doesn't necessarily mean that the end result doesn't make any sense, often very much the opposite, it just means that the artist relies on intuition, a feeling, an emotion, a mental image and inspiration. The artist follows the path of their own imagination wherever it may take them and this, to me, represents true artistic creativity. Pure, intuitive, limitless etc. In my opinion an over reliance on the conscious rational mind as opposed to the inner thoughts, feelings and intuitition of the creative mind has been one of the most damaging things for art during the second half of the 20th century; thinking more like a scientist than an artist, creating more from a sense of conscious logic than from an unexplainable, passionate urge to create.

Despite being so consistently unique, there was nothing in El Topo that didn't seem to make perfect sense where it was. There are bits and pieces that still seem like they shouldn't make sense, but my subconscious is going along with it, so I'm playing game and waiting for the reasoning to bubble up to the surface. This must be what people are feeling when they tell me they understand Mulholland Drive...-Toilet Dcuk

I would argue that perhaps Jodorowsky was doing the same thing. I'm not sure that you're entirely disagreeing with me - at least not the essence of what I was trying to say. I think that in viewing this film, those receptive can reach the point of intuition that I was referring to with regards to creating art. It is these intuitive and inspirational experiences that I value the most when witnessing artistic creations rather than those intellectual exercises that sometimes prevail with some art of a more formalistic nature (note the use of the word some there - art can be both formalistic and a true passionate artistic expression). I think over-intellectualisation can actually bring the whole experience down a notch or two, from the realm of transcendent artistic inspiration to the level of rational scholastic thought.

I hope you enjoy The Holy Mountain as much as El Topo. Fando & Lis is also great and perhaps my favourite Jodorowsky film.

By the way, my comment about 'imagery that defies logic' was directed toward The Holy Mountain far more than El Topo. Please let me know what you think when you have seen it.

[toiletduck!]

Always a delight reading your words, vogler.

A point of clarification on my part: I didn't intend to diminish your approach, I merely find it inspiring that we can speak of the film from such different angles (although, you're right, they're probably closer than we realize) and still each have such a positive reaction.

I obviously know little to nothing of Jodorowsky and his work habits, so I could very easily be projecting or taking ownership of what he's provided, but while viewing El Topo, I got the sense that he knew the exact purpose of every last detail included, but had no interest in revealing the master plan. This is the same reaction I have to most Lynch, the only difference being that a Lynch film seems aware of the audience in an almost taunting manner. El Topo forged onward regardless, showing an extreme faith in or an utter disregard for the audience on Jodorowsky's part. Either of those are an excellent quality for any work of art, in my opinion.

But that is in essence the same thing that you were speaking towards. If Jodorowsky is not concerned with making sure the viewer is along for the ride, everything is bound to be straight intuition, as over-intellectualisation is almost always an act of (attempted) audience assistance. Which is absolutely a large boon to pure creativity.

Although, unlike free improv (a great example), there did seem to be a master plan in El Topo. Meaning, of course, that there appeared to be a master plan to me. Meaning, of course, not a whole lot to anyone else. But I do get the sense that while not diluting his creations, Jodorowsky always knew exactly where they were going and what they meant, which is why I took aim at the surrealism tag. But again, this is all my own approach.

I would also be fascinated to speak further with you about formalism vs. artistic expression and the ways they work against and for each other. As opposed to your(?) free jazz, I come to a good portion my written work from a very formalistic standpoint -- an unleashing of ideas within a preset mold to see how the final result changes both the mold and the ideas -- very Oulipo inspired. I would argue that the damage that art as a process has taken in the late 20th century (a concept I totally agree with), comes not from intellectualisation or rationalization, either too much or too little, but from a slavish relationship to the idea of 'presentability', which happens to take the form of over-intellectualisation more often than its counterpart. But this is neither the time nor the place. I've already gone on longer than I had intended and there's a Dreamgirls matinee awaiting!

I will certainly be back with Holy Mountain thoughts, and I hope we can continue the above discussion (wherever it belongs) at a future date as well!

-Toilet Dcuk

[criterionsnob]

Amazon.ca Preorder

[toiletduck!]

Quick Holy Mountain response: Just as visionary as El Topo, but this seemed to come from a place more sinister/cynical in Jodorowsky. Turns out I'm not as up on my mysticism as I thought I was and struggled (in a good way) to cling on during the Planets section. The New Age-y second half grew more than a little tiresome (except the Pantheon Bar), but then the brilliant payoff turned everything on its head. While I think I prefer El Topo for its stronger narrative (!!!), a second viewing is essential before any opinions about HM can be said with any degree of certainty.

Either way, the box set is a must have, and I'm looking forward immensely to Fando, to see just how many synapses can be fried by Jodorowsky and Arrabal combined.

-Toilet Dcuk

[Gigi M.]

[Lino]

=P~

[sevenarts]

=P~

I second that. Amazon preorder is up now.

[Rich Malloy]

I'd rather not nitpick an exciting release like this, but my movie collection has to share very limited space in a, erm, "cozy" Boston apartment with my wife and I, two cats, and some furniture. Are the dimensions of the box as they appear in that photo, that is, 6 full-sized individual keepcases wide?

I know I know... why find a reason to complain about a great release like this? My space is at such a minimum that I practically drool over the prospect of fitting, say, 8 Almodovar films plus an extra features disc in a tiny little package like the "Viva Pedro" box, and I've even sold off individual releases at a loss so that I can repurchase slimline boxes to squeeze out a bit more shelf-space (most recently the R2 Haneke Collection).

[Jean-Luc Garbo]

What a beautiful box! I love the Criterionesque sticker, too.

[In Heaven]

So I thoughgt I knew my AJ...but what is "La Cravate?"

[sevenarts]

So I thoughgt I knew my AJ...but what is "La Cravate?"

More commonly known as Severed Heads, his first film.

[zombeaner]

I thought the price would be better at Amazon. Currently it is on preorder at DVDPacific for around $31, and $38 at buy.com where you can use google checkout perhaps?

[Ashirg]

Maybe cd-wow will carry it. They got Herzog boxsets from Anchor Bay for $49.92 without any coupons and shipping is free.