432-433 Mishima: A Life in Four Chapters & Patriotism

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Tommaso
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#51 Post by Tommaso » Tue Mar 18, 2008 7:32 am

kaujot wrote:That said, its features, whilst a bit more substantive than those found on the Night and Fog disc, are NOT that much better. A making-of doc and audio excerpts. Hopefully substantive, but still, I think they should knock $5 off for a not-even-30-minutes long film.
I think it all depends on how much you are interested in Mishima, the person. For me, he lived one of the most interesting lives ever lived by a writer, and I'm very keen to learn more about that very contradictory character and would love to see and hear him speak in order to make up my mind a little more about him. I guess I would even buy a set which only had the extras of the two releases without any of the actual films, and I'm happy to see that CC managed to unearth all this stuff. But I see where you're coming from: if you're only interested in the film itself, the price point seems rather too high.

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#52 Post by kaujot » Tue Mar 18, 2008 11:40 am

Tommaso wrote:I think it all depends on how much you are interested in Mishima, the person ... I guess I would even buy a set which only had the extras of the two releases without any of the actual films, and I'm happy to see that CC managed to unearth all this stuff. But I see where you're coming from: if you're only interested in the film itself, the price point seems rather too high.
Well, I'm going to buy it. Patriotism is among the best short stories ever written, and I can't wait to see how Mishima translated it to film.

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kinjitsu
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#53 Post by kinjitsu » Tue Mar 18, 2008 10:44 pm

kaujot wrote:I'm a bit surprised that Patriotism isn't a bit cheaper than a normal 1-disc-no-commentary release, but I suppose with the inclusion of the short story, it's necessary.

That said, its features, whilst a bit more substantive than those found on the Night and Fog disc, are NOT that much better. A making-of doc and audio excerpts. Hopefully substantive, but still, I think they should knock $5 off for a not-even-30-minutes long film.
I'd say that the films (English and Japanese versions), two 45-minute documentaries, the Mishima interviews, plus the book, are more than substantial for the asking price.

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Buttery Jeb
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#54 Post by Buttery Jeb » Fri Mar 21, 2008 10:21 pm

According to the Criterion website, the "Mishima" DVD will now include the English narration by Roy Scheider, as well as a Japanese narration by Ken Ogata, as audio options.

-BJ

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#55 Post by Fan-of-Kurosawa » Sat Mar 22, 2008 5:34 am

Both these releases seem great. But it's a pity that Criterion does not include either as an extra or as a separate release Kon Ichikawa's Enjo (Conflagration). The film is based on a Mishima story and as far as I know it is the best adaptation of any of Mishima's novels.

Besides, we have too few Ichikawa films on DVD. So this would have been a perfect opportunity. First, a film about Mishima himself, second, a film that was directed by Mishima, and third the best adaptation of a Mishima novel by one of Japan's greatest directors. Of course I don't know if Janus owns the rights to Enjo. Does anybody know anything about that?

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#56 Post by Person » Sat Mar 22, 2008 7:39 am

Buttery Jeb wrote:According to the Criterion website, the "Mishima" DVD will now include the English narration by Roy Scheider, as well as a Japanese narration by Ken Ogata, as audio options.
I was going to inquire about that. Perhaps the recent passing of Scheider prompted this move. Kudos.

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#57 Post by sidehacker » Sat Mar 22, 2008 12:39 pm

Did Roy Scheider have some affiliation with Yukio Mishima or is this just a random choice?

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Jeff
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#58 Post by Jeff » Sat Mar 22, 2008 12:56 pm

sidehacker wrote:Did Roy Scheider have some affiliation with Yukio Mishima or is this just a random choice?
Scheider narrated the original American release of the film. I think Schrader just chose him because of his distinctive gravelly voice.

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#59 Post by arsonfilms » Sat Mar 22, 2008 1:04 pm

As I haven't seen the film, I'm a little unclear as to the nature of the narration, as the Criterion page seems to leave the impression that its a separate, perhaps optional element. Is it comparable to the narration in Edvard Munch, where the English narration is intentionally separated from the native-language dialogue (with the option of replacing it with the Japanese narration on the new disc), or is this something different altogether?

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#60 Post by kinjitsu » Sat Mar 22, 2008 2:06 pm

It's a first person VO, and just as it was on Warner's release, you have the choice to switch between Scheider or Ogata, the latter being the one that Schrader preferred. The Scheider narration most likely was left out of the extras earlier on because of an oversight, and typically, updated later.

Schrader mentions in his commentary that Scheider's narration was added because there was so much of it, and they decided that the subtitled version should have English narration so there wouldn't be so much to read. He goes on to say that he "was in the odd position of having directed a Japanese language film for which there was no Japanese language version," and to correct this, he added Ogata's narration to the Warner's DVD. He also mentions that all of the narration comes directly from Mishima's writing, in particular, Sun and Steel.

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#61 Post by arsonfilms » Sat Mar 22, 2008 3:47 pm

I'm still a little bit confused by your explanation, so please bear with me. When the film was released theatrically, was there any narration at all, or was it created for the home video release? If it was always there, was Scheider's the version that was used with Ogata's recorded later for the Japanese release? Or was Ogata's the original with Scheider's recorded later with the American release in mind? I understand that Ogata's is Schrader's preferred version, but I'm trying to work out how exactly it fits into the sceme of things.

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#62 Post by kinjitsu » Sat Mar 22, 2008 4:32 pm

It was released theatrically with Scheider's narration which was recorded before it premiered at Cannes. Schrader later added Ogata's original narration to the Warner DVD in 2000.

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#63 Post by Cronenfly » Sat Mar 22, 2008 6:05 pm

As an addendum, the situation is made all that much more confusing by the fact that the English v/o was not Scheider on the original Warner disc (I don't know who did it in his place, but it is not Scheider on the Warner disc). Why this was I still don't know, but I'm looking forward to seeing the movie with Scheider's v/o (which is scripted differently as well). I believe that the VHS also has the Scheider v/o, so who knows what kept it off the original DVD. Not to speak (potentially) ill of the dead, but the Scheider interviews on the original disc of All That Jazz were missing on the Music edition of that movie, so maybe Mr. Scheider asked for a bit too much in royalties in both cases(?)
kinjitsu wrote:If Warners only released one edition, then I would have to disagree since the narration most certainly is by Roy Scheider on that disc.
I'm still not sure, but in looking back, it was this IMDB posting (if memory serves) which made me think that the Warner DVD had someone other than Scheider doing the narration.

EDIT- It's Scheider on the DVD. My mistake.
Last edited by Cronenfly on Mon Mar 24, 2008 7:07 pm, edited 1 time in total.

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#64 Post by Jeff » Sat Mar 22, 2008 8:03 pm

Cronenfly wrote:I'm still not sure, but in looking back, it was this IMDB posting ... which made me think that the Warner DVD had someone other than Scheider doing the narration.
Paul Schrader cleared up the narration confusion in (of all places) the comments section of the Warner Mishima listing on Amazon:
Someone pointed out to me confusion about the change in the narration. Here's the story. I originally intended to have Mishima's narration in English outside Japan to cut down on the surfeit of subtitles. (The US version of Diary of a Country Priest has French dialogue and English narration.) I asked Roy Scheider to read a translation of the Ogata/Mishima narration and we mixed this into the film at Lucasfilm. The Japanese distributor was to be responsible for mixing Ken Ogata's narration into the Japanese version. However, there never was a Japanese version since the film was de facto banned in Japan. Consequently, it was never possible for non-English speaking Japanese viewers to see the film entirely in Japanese. When the DVD was issued we went back to Lucasfilm to fix this, allowing either a Japanese-speaking viewer to hear the Ogata narration or a non-Japanese-speaking viewer to hear the Scheider narration. In recording both Ogata and Scheider an equal effort was made to keep the narrative flat and matter-of-fact. Paul S.

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#65 Post by Cronenfly » Sat Mar 22, 2008 8:30 pm

I knew there was something else that made me think Scheider's narration wasn't the one on the Warner DVD.DVD Times' Noel Megahey:
I am somewhat confused by the English narration track. It sounds like Roy Scheider’s original narration has been replaced but his name still remains on the credits at the end of the film and I can’t find any reason why it would have been changed, but after a comparison with my VHS copy of the film, it undoubtedly has. As an example, the opening line of narration in the original 1985 film is as follows:

Recently I have sensed an accumulation of many things which cannot be expressed by an objective form like the novel. Words are insufficient.

On the DVD a different narrator reads the following:

All my life I have been acutely aware of a contradiction in the very nature of my existence. For 45 years I struggled to resolve this dilemma by writing plays and novels. The more I wrote, the more I realised that words were not enough.


This is a substantial change, and it leads me to suspect that possibly there were contractual problems with the rights to the translations. Paul Schrader’s commentary refers to Scheider’s narration, but doesn’t make any reference to the change in the narration track. What has been presented for the first time however is Ken Ogata’s original Japanese narration. This has never been heard before, as the film was never released in Japan due to “political pressure”. This means that you can listen to the film with the actor playing Mishima doing the voice-over in Mishima’s own words, making the narration seem a little more integral to the film. However, the lack of the original English narration is a major disappointment.
and in the comment section:
If you listen closely you will notice that it is Paul Schrader himself doing the narration on the dvd. At least 90% of the time it is money that casues changes on the dvd from film or vhs and I've always assumed that here.
I may still be wrong about the narration being altered, but at least now you know the context which led me to think it so. That and the Warner disc's English narration did not sound like Scheider to me (though I don't have the disc as of now for reference). I just point this out as one of the main reasons (if not the main one, extras, non burnt-in subtitles, etc aside) why the new Criterion disc is an essential upgrade over the old Warner disc.

EDIT-Here's an Amazon page full of people decrying the altered English narration on the Warner disc.

EDIT #2- It would seem that the english narration for the Warner DVD was changed from the theatrical/VHS, but kinjitsu assures me that it's still Roy Scheider doing the narration.
Last edited by Cronenfly on Mon Mar 24, 2008 7:05 pm, edited 3 times in total.

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#66 Post by Tribe » Sat Mar 22, 2008 9:05 pm

I just popped the Warners DVD in...Roy Scheider does appear in the final credits, but that is not his voice in the narration. Scheiders' voice is fairly distinctive.

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#67 Post by Cronenfly » Sun Mar 23, 2008 11:13 am

It'll be interesting to see which version of the English narration (original or revised) shows up on Criterion's disc, even outside of whether it is Scheider doing both versions (I remember the Warner DVDs narration seeming to be too "flat" in intonation to be Scheider's voice, but I feel that my mind could've played tricks on me with regards to this, and Scheider would've been significantly older [and sound accordingly different from the Scheider I'm used to] for the re-recording).

Good point, kinjitsu, about the translation rights for the passages of narration that have been changed being potentially part of the reason (if not the reason, although I wouldn't count out revisionism on Schrader's part) the narration was rewritten and re-recorded for the Warner DVD.

It would be great if Criterion could provide both of the English narration tracks (though this seems very unlikely); I fell in love with the Warner DVD version (the only version of the movie I've seen), so I wonder, if the narration included on the Criterion disc was the original theatrical/VHS version, whether I'd still have the same affection for the English-language version of the movie. In the Amazon page I linked to, many had the opposite response, in that they could not appreciate the new English track on the Warner DVD.

EDIT- Here are two Youtube clips: the opening andfinal scene from the VHS, both featuring Scheider's original narration. If someone could rip the audio/post the clips of these scenes from the Warner DVD to clear the matter up for good (whether it proves me right or wrong, as, if Scheider is indeed the one on the DVD, his delivery for the re-recording [presumably done years after the film was made] could just be really, really flat, as Schrader indicates in his Amazon posting), I'd be very grateful.

EDIT #2- kinjitsu's checked the Warner DVD vs. the VHS, and the Warner DVDs narration is indeed Scheider (just from another recording session); my mistake.
Last edited by Cronenfly on Mon Mar 24, 2008 7:02 pm, edited 1 time in total.

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#68 Post by zedz » Sun Mar 23, 2008 9:56 pm

Jeff wrote:Paul Schrader cleared up the narration confusion in (of all places) the comments section of the Warner Mishima listing on Amazon:
Someone pointed out to me confusion about the change in the narration. Here's the story. I originally intended to have Mishima's narration in English outside Japan to cut down on the surfeit of subtitles. (The US version of Diary of a Country Priest has French dialogue and English narration.) I asked Roy Scheider to read a transdlation of the Ogata/Mishima narration and we mixed this into the film at Lucasfilm. The Japanese distributor was to be responsible for mixing Ken Ogata's narration into the Japanese version. However, there never was a Japanese version since the film was de facto banned in Japan. Consequently, it was never possible for non-English speaking Japanese viewers to see the film entirely in Japanese. When the DVD was issued we went back to Lucasfilm to fix this, allowing either a Japanese-speaking viewer to hear the Ogata narration or a non-Japanese-speaking viewer to hear the Scneider narration. In recording both Ogata and Scneider an equal effort was made to keep the narrative flat and matter-of-fact. Paul S.
The Japanese version wasn't completely unreleased before the DVD release, as I saw that version on UK TV sometime in the early 90s (having only been aware of the Scheider narration beforehand). Ogata's narration is better by far, for obvious reasons. It's bizarre to have the main character speaking in somebody else's voice, in somebody else's language, when the rest of the film is in Japanese.

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#69 Post by Cronenfly » Mon Mar 24, 2008 6:57 pm

If you listen to the narration in the two Youtube videos I linked above (from the VHS and, presumably, the same as the theatrical release), the narrator (definitely Scheider) sounds very much so like Scheider at the time the movie was first released. This is why I find it hard to believe that it's Scheider on the re-recorded English Warner DVD v/o; I know it isn't Schrader (another man with a very distinctive voice), but I can't reconcile in my mind that the re-recording is Scheider as well. The VHS/theatrical v/o is not nearly as flat in delivery as the Warner DVD v/o, and the latter sounds little like Scheider to my ears. Would it really be so far outside of the realm of possibility that Scheider got replaced by some generic v/o artist for the Warner DVD?

EDIT: It is indeed outside of the realm of possibility; kinjitsu assures me that it's Scheider's voice all the way on the Warner DVDs English narration track.

I cleared the matter of the Warner DVDs English voiceover with kinjitsu; he assures me that it's Scheider on the Warner DVD, and I trust his judgment on the matter. He compared the above VHS Youtube clips with the Warner DVD, and found them to both be Scheider, just from different recording sessions.

So, it would appear that there are two different Scheider voiceovers for the movie, one done for theatrical/VHS release, and one for the Warner DVD. It will be interesting to see which ends up on the Criterion DVD (I'd bet on the latter, now that I know for sure it's Scheider, but you never know).

My apologies for the confusion; I'd just believed that the Warner DVDs English narration was not Scheider for so long that I could not fathom that it was indeed him, just not sounding as I'm used to hearing him. My apologies to kinjitsu in particular, and anyone else for whom the matter has created any confusion.

Mandeville

Digital Alteration of Mishima

#70 Post by Mandeville » Sat Apr 26, 2008 5:17 am

I saw Mishima at Ebertfest this evening. After the film was over Mr. Schrader and Ms. Eiko Ishioka spoke with the audience. Mr. Schrader said that he had never been happy with the final part of the Runaway Horses sequence when the kendo student commits suicide on a real cliff because it does not match the artificial style of the other sets used in the novel sequences. Therefore he has digitally altered the sequence for the Criterion DVD to make it look more like a stage set. I find it somewhat disturbing that Criterion is releasing digitally altered version of a film without letting customers know or without giving viewers the option to seeing the film with the original sequence intact.

Does anyone have any further information about this?

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#71 Post by kinjitsu » Tue Apr 29, 2008 5:41 pm

Mandeville wrote:I find it somewhat disturbing that Criterion is releasing digitally altered version of a film without letting customers know or without giving viewers the option to seeing the film with the original sequence intact.
It's Schrader's film, so I imagine he can do as he pleases...

David Bordwell discusses Mishima.
David Bordwell wrote:Schrader’s film enacts the blending of art and life in its very imagery. At the climax, in the biographical strand Mishima climbs into a jet and the black-and-white imagery gains radiant color as he stares into the sun. The shift brings the biography up to 1970, and so provides a transition to the color footage of the writer’s last day, but it also recalls the opening credits, with the sun rising, and the closing shot of the cadet Isao about to slash himself.

Schrader regrets the transition showing Isao running to the beach, because the imagery shifts from Ishioka’s stylized world to something more realistic (albeit with glowing amber rocks). So for the upcoming Criterion DVD release he has fiddled with the final shots so that the sun and sky look far more abstract. Evidently he wants the world of art and the world of life to remain stubbornly apart—denying to his film what his protagonist yearned for.
Last edited by kinjitsu on Wed Apr 30, 2008 12:43 pm, edited 1 time in total.

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#72 Post by Cronenfly » Tue Apr 29, 2008 7:14 pm

As well, unlike, say, Storaro's Univision insanity, at least Schrader has provided a reasonable (to my mind) justification for the alteration, and it will cover a relatively small portion of the film. The digital alteration could still stick out like a sore thumb, of course, so I guess we'll just have to wait and see, but I have faith in Schrader's judgement.

As a sidebar (albeit one which is still relevant to the matter at hand), does anyone know of a digital alteration like the one Schrader proposes working out well on a pre-digital film? All that's coming to my mind right now is the terrible speedup/distortion added for some scenes of the Crusing DVD and the controversial Star Wars "touch-ups".

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#73 Post by miless » Tue Apr 29, 2008 7:23 pm

Cronenfly wrote:As a sidebar (albeit one which is still relevant to the matter at hand), does anyone know of a digital alteration like the one Schrader proposes working out well on a pre-digital film? All that's coming to my mind right now is the terrible speedup/distortion added for some scenes of the Crusing DVD and the controversial Star Wars "touch-ups".
there's always the walkie talkie's in ET...
and didn't Spielberg also redo the effects in Close Encounters recently, too?

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#74 Post by arsonfilms » Tue Apr 29, 2008 11:33 pm

I heard Schrader speak recently after a screening of The Comfort of Strangers, and he mentioned that he had spent a year working on the Mishima disc with Criterion. Most of the discussion that evening was limited to The Comfort of Strangers, but my impression from that evening was that this was no casual, fly by night relationship. Schrader also seemed reasonable and down to earth enough that I have every confidence that he is simply correcting a mistake that slipped by and not falling back on revisionism like Storaro, Lucas and Spielberg.

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#75 Post by Cronenfly » Wed Apr 30, 2008 6:44 pm

I didn't mean to toss Schrader in with that lot, and his intention does seem noble or at least reasonable, but I'm still not 100% sure that the digital alterations will work and be seamless. However, there's no way of knowing that until the disk comes out/the reviews start pouring in, so I guess we'll all just have to wait and see.

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