Kino

[What A Disgrace]

Kino's posted the full specs of their new Morris Engel set (looks like an essential purchase if ever there was one), as well as two DVDs dedicated to the work of Kihachiro Kawamoto. Unfortunately, Winter Days is left out of this collection.

[Steven H]

Kino's posted the full specs of their new Morris Engel set (looks like an essential purchase if ever there was one), as well as two DVDs dedicated to the work of Kihachiro Kawamoto. Unfortunately, Winter Days is left out of this collection.

Shame about Winter Days PERIOD not just for the Kawamoto short (Norstein has a gorgeous bit in that as well.) Outstanding news concerning his Book of the Dead, however. I have the Kawamoto short film collection from Japan (wiht english subs) and there's hardly anything not impressive about it.

[jsteffe]

Beaver announces Kino will release four Alain Resnais titles on DVD in March 2008:

Melo (one of my 3 or 4 favorite Resnais films)
Life is a Bed of Roses
Love Unto Death
I Want to go Home

They are being presented under the Kimstim Collection banner, and are more than likely a direct port of the R2 Mk2 French releases from a few years back. A couple of the titles were already subtitled in English for those Mk2 releases, but not all of them.

This is great news, though I'm really waiting for Providence!

I like Resnais a lot but knowing Kino I wanted to see the transfers on these first before I bought them unseen. Well I just saw La Vie Est Un Roman via Netflix and I would recommend anyone contemplating a blind buy watch the film first. Not because of the quality of the Kino disc but because of the quality of the film itself. It is so bad that I'm sure there's a faction of people convinced that it's a masterpiece just because nothing could be this bad accidentally. But let me preemptively say no amount of revisionism could save this astonishingly awful film.

Thanks for your honesty! I too have never been able to warm up to La Vie est un roman. The best way to describe it is arch and pretentious. You all should also check out carefully I Want to Go Home before making a blind purchase. On the other hand, I found Love Unto Death/L'Amour a mort to be a marvelous surprise--precisely realized, yet full of mystery. I love the Henze soundtrack and how Resnais uses it in the film!

So yes, even brilliant directors like Resnais can make very bad films, and I agree wholeheartedly that Life is a Bed of Roses is like nothing so much as a box of stale Russell Stover Easter chocolates avec un faux accent literaire.

[pro-bassoonist]

Thanks for your honesty! I too have never been able to warm up to La Vie est un roman. The best way to describe it is arch and pretentious.

I agree wholeheartedly. In fact, I would also add snobbish. But...this was Resnais' intent as far as I know. About 8 years ago we did "In Retrospect" on his work while I was still at Indiana University and the overwhelming reaction to this film was indeed...numbing silence - dialog, acting, storytelling, everything was greeted with a collective sigh of disapproval. Yet, the more I keep coming back at this film the more I keep thinking about it as a grand farce of intellectual snobbism. Not as polarized as Ferreri's La Grande Bouffe but quite similar in its message (only here you get Resnais' typical fractured script).

Ciao,
Pro-B

[Cold Bishop]

Didn't Ehrenstein write about this film recently? Where is he when you need him?

[tavernier]

Didn't Ehrenstein write about this film recently? Where is he when you need him?

Ehrenstein on the film (from DVDBeaver):

To explain the process in order we should begin with Life is a Bed of Roses (1983), whose French title La Vie est un roman, which literally translates as Life is a Novel just doesn't carry it's implication in such form. Life is Just a Bowl of Cherries might be closer to the mark. But there are no cherries on view in this time-shifting fantasy about the wealthy and eccentric Count Forbeck (Ruggero Raimondi) who on the eve of World War I strives to create a “Castle of Happiness” in the Ardennes. When part of his master plan is completed a group select guest (Fanny Ardant and Andre Dussolier playing two of them) arrive to drunk a mysterious potion that will revive within them a child-like state of bliss. It doesn't work. But neither do the plans of group of academics who descend upon the site in the present day (Sabene Azema, Geraldine Chaplin and Pierre Arditi in their number) who under the command of a new guru named Guarini (Vittorio Gassman) try to take up intellectually where the first group left off sensually. They're marginally more successful in that two of their number hook up. But that would make the film a simple past/present story. The action is often give over to fairy tale creatures (Kings, Knights, Maidens, Witches, talking salamanders) and that's not to mention the pack of small children racing through for reasons that are never simply explained. In other words it's just as mysterious as Marienbad -- but with a twist. And that twist comes from the fact that rather than a novelist as was his practice in the past, Resnais worked with veteran scriptwriter Jean Grualt, whose credits include Jules and Jim, Les Carabiniers, The Story of Adele H, The Rise of Louis XIV and Paris Belongs to Us.

Over and above all Life is a Bed of Roses is haunted by the cinematic past -- particularly the films that director Marcel L'Herbier made in the era the story reflects particularly L'Inhumaine (1924) and Le Vertige (1927) with their massive cubism-meets-art-nouveau sets. Resnais, in a sense, is returning to his childhood. The "Making of" documentary on the disc makes this apparent without "spelling it out" in a literal fashion. And as the other films in this group show the trip is far from over.

[Cold Bishop]

Doesn't tell me anything about the film being good or not...

[Tribe]

I did a cursory search in this thread, but didn't find anything, so I hope this isn't old news. Over at Amazon there's some cover art up regarding a Kino First Ladies: Early Women Film Makers series: Hypocrites/Eleanor's Catch, The Red Kimona, and The Ocean Waif/49-17.

These are all unfamiliar to me. Schrek (or anyone else), any thoughts, short critiques, etc. on these?

Tribe

EDIT: They were previously announced in this thread. Well, the links will carry you to some covers.

[Jeff LeVine]

Did anybody pick up those Resnais DVDs? Or heard any word on the transfer quality? Is there another thread somehwere (that I'm not finding?)

[domino harvey]

Did anybody pick up those Resnais DVDs? Or heard any word on the transfer quality? Is there another thread somehwere (that I'm not finding?)

The one title I've seen was progressive and while not real sharp, looked fine on my upscaling Oppo/HDTV

[pro-bassoonist]

The one title I've seen was progressive and while not real sharp, looked fine on my upscaling Oppo/HDTV

Domino, could I ask what title you are referring to? I reviewed two of those, and they both revealed "combing". Given it is rather mild and not easily detectable the "combing" is most certainly there pointing to the fact that the transfers are not progressive.

With this in mind the actual prints are almost exact copies of the transfers from the MK2 set, perhaps slightly softer.

Ciao,
Pro-B

[domino harvey]

It was La Vie Est Un Roman-- my Oppo/16X9 TV picks up combing to an almost obnoxious level, making many non-progressive transfers near unwatchable, so if there was combing on this title, it had to be incredibly minor.

[pro-bassoonist]

Interesting. I reviewed this film, watching it on a 981 (SONY XBR4) and most definitely there is combing. You are correct it is not heavy but I was able to pick it up instantaneously.

Ciao,
Pro-B

[Oggilby]

Kino has a Harry Langdon double feature of Three's a Crowd and The Chaser on June 3rd.

Both remastered in HD and from 35mm negatives (except for some 16mm replacements on The Chaser).

[zone_resident]

Digitallyobsessed Review of Houdini: the Movie Star

[domino harvey]

On the other hand, I found Love Unto Death/L'Amour a mort to be a marvelous surprise--precisely realized, yet full of mystery. I love the Henze soundtrack and how Resnais uses it in the film!.

Just watched this and I don't know, I think while it's certainly a better film than La vie est une roman, that's true about almost anything. L'Amour a mort is flawed in that it really should be the story of the priest and his wife's inability to stop a tragedy rather than the story of that tragedy-- flip the supporting characters and the main characters and it might have been a better film. As for those musical interruptions you mentioned fondly, they were beyond obnoxious!

[railroaded]

I did a check on one of the movies: L'âge d'or. BFI - Kino. BFI won handsdown, quality-wise, but please take in account that I paid Euro 9,80 at DVD Pacific recently.

If I would buy the BFI version at Play.com I would have to pay 26,80 Euro! And Play is the cheapest......

[HerrSchreck]

You could have saved the comping trouble by checking dvdbeaver's comparison between the two.

[railroaded]

You could have saved the comping trouble by checking dvdbeaver's comparison between the two.

Which I did via The Annotated Kino Catalogue.

[HerrSchreck]

I see what you're doing-- reporting on price difs. I thought you were reporting on qualitative differences.

Btw I love those early Manns.. "Railroaded!" and "Strange Impersonation".

[railroaded]

I see what you're doing-- reporting on price difs. I thought you were reporting on qualitative differences.

Btw I love those early Manns.. "Railroaded!" and "Strange Impersonation".

Yes, Mann is a favorite. Re price difference: I'm not rich and maybe there should be a poor man's L'âge d'or too ....

[zedz]

Btw I love those early Manns.. "Railroaded!" and "Strange Impersonation".

Strange Impersonation is such a ridiculous film in conception that Mann's ennobling contribution is all the more obvious. No wonder he could do such wonders when he finally got good material like Reign of Terror and T-Men.

[HerrSchreck]

..and that concludes tonights episode of "Damning With Faint Praise" (brought to you by the Campaign To Elect Ron Paul.)

[domino harvey]

[HerrSchreck]

(struggling back up off floor to reacquire chair...)

Now that we're doomed from the Billarious Pa. win to a relentless stretch of DemoPrimary Hell, the avatar geeks at livejournal will be squealing with nonstop photoshop-obsessed delight.