Japanese Films on DVD/Blu-ray

Discuss internationally-released DVDs and Blu-rays or other international DVD and Blu-ray-related topics.
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Cash Flagg
Joined: Thu Jan 24, 2008 11:15 pm

Re: Japanese Films on DVD/Blu-ray

#226 Post by Cash Flagg » Mon Jun 29, 2020 10:53 am

I was just about to order the 5 Shochiku Ozu BDs (skipping Green Tea and Good Morning) from CDJapan, and was wondering if there were any other 30s-60's 'domestic melodrama'-type films with English subtitles on BD that were recommended?

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feihong
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Re: Japanese Films on DVD/Blu-ray

#227 Post by feihong » Mon Jun 29, 2020 9:36 pm

Calvin wrote:
Mon Jun 29, 2020 5:53 am
Obayashi was given only a few months to live prior to commencing production on Hanagatami. He not only lived to finish that, but also Labyrinth of Cinema

I've not seen any of his recent films so I can't vouch for Hanagatami but I'm looking forward to getting the Third Window release next week and will chip in with my thoughts then. The reviews around, even the ones that lean towards mixed/negative, have sold me on it.
That's interesting to learn about Hanagatami and Labyrinth. The trailers for the movies make them look quite...extreme...in their stylization. Which seems weird to say, since Obayashi has always been synonymous with those kind of crunchy, hand-made special effects. But doing them in digital looks really weird. The images look uncomfortably flat. This goes back to those films like Casting Blossoms Into the Sky and Seven Weeks. I think it's how the films are shot on digital and use weak digital effects. I didn't mind the cheap effects in Suzuki's Princess Raccoon, but that was shot on 35mm. And Obayashi goes for these awkwardly close shots in these later films. Eh, whatever. I'll check these films out and see what they're like.

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feihong
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Re: Japanese Films on DVD/Blu-ray

#228 Post by feihong » Tue Jun 30, 2020 3:31 am

Actually, I think maybe the change in Obayashi's movies takes place around the time of Sada, a movie I haven't watched all the way through, but upon skipping through it tonight, there are a lot of scenes shot on what look like very small soundstages. The lighting is garish in a way not present in his earlier movies, because they were shot primarily on location, in larger environments. Sada looks cramped and uncomfortable (I'm still going to watch it), and Obayashi's films of the 21st century in general have that same feeling to them. Obayashi's effects looked chintzy in the 80s, but because they were handmade––because a certain quality of light fell upon the figures in the effects, mediated by distance from the camera lens––they had a kind of hand-made charm to them. Then, as he shoots in smaller locations, eventually on digital, he does the same kind of effects, to a very different effect. So the more recent films have this flat, but uncomfortably crisp look to them, perhaps brought about by being filmed in tight spaces, under less advantageous lighting conditions. The musicians that travel through Seven Weeks are garishly mapped onto B-roll of various settings––they look uncertain of where they're supposed to be. Characters in Casting Blossoms Into the Sky and Hanagatami leer close to the camera, while a cut-and-paste moon is superimposed behind them. It doesn't look charming anymore––it looks claustrophobic. It's also clear just from the trailers that Obayashi's preoccupation with death––a lingering chill in the background of films like Emotion: Dracula's Legendary Afternoon, The Deserted City, His Motorbike Her Island, Bound for the Fields the Mountains and the Seacoast, and Lonelyhearts (Chizuko's Little Sister is an exception and a harbinger of things to come––a cute, fun movie about emerging adolescence made strained and misshapen by the extraordinary pain of the elder sister's death scene; The Discarnates, or, Summer Among Ghosts, has a kind of miserable grimness made alien by its presentation as a Poltergeist–style chiller)––has taken over in these later movies. One of these later films is about a widower dealing with grief meeting a man whose wife is in a coma, and stuff like that. Several of these seem to involve vivid parades of the dead, or ships taking the dead to some kind of afterlife. There's an early speech in Seven Weeks about people dying and being replaced by new people living. There's constant images of the atom bombs. Older actors play young students, grimacing next to teenage actors who are supposed to be their peers. Scenery to Remember is literally about a woman dying, returning to her hometown for closure but only finding the sting of imminent death. Each film in this later cycle seems aimed at morbidity for its overall tone. It all seems to suggest that the claustrophobia of the visuals in the later movies is meant to imply the closeness of death. These later movies look unrelentingly grim. No less inventive than the earlier films, but not as fun–looking. There is only the weakest sense of mitigating nostalgia in the more recent films, especially when you don't have the distance of the earlier films, which allow you to see the world of Onomachi in the 80s and early 90s. The new films look to embody what I would consider Obayashi's most overt overemphasis from those earlier movies. I am not really looking forward to seeing them.

But I plan to see them all this week! COVID goals. I've rounded up a bunch of Obayashi movies I haven't been able to see before, spanning his entire career. I plan to go through them all. By the time I'm done I hope to have seen:

Take Me Away!
Cute Little Devil
Kenya Boy
Four Sisters (Shimaizaka)
Haruka, Nostalgia
Beijing Watermelon
Sada
Switching: Goodby me
Casting Blossoms Into the Sky
Seven Weeks
Hanagatami

If anyone has a line on where I can find some of the even rarer films, I'd certainly appreciate it. I've seen The Island Closest to Heaven, Samurai Kids (the bizarre Indian-in-the-Cupboard–inspired picture with the tiny samurai), The Rockinghorsemen, and Tomorrow (Ashita) without subtitles, and I have unsubtitled versions of April Fish and One Summer's Day I haven't watched yet (I tried in the past and just couldn't get into either without the language). I've seen all the short films in the DVD collection, Emotion (great movie), Hausu, The Visitor in the Eye (the Blackjack movie with Joe Shishido), the Kosuke Kindaichi movie (the most fun of these early movies, prior to him really finding his way, and discounting Emotion, because it's great and an anomaly early on), School in the Crosshairs, Exchange Students (a personal favorite), The Girl Who Leapt Through Time, The Deserted City, His Motorbike Her Island, Lonelyhearts, Bound for the Fields the Mountains and the Seacoast, Drifting Classroom, The Discarnates, Chizuko's Younger Sister, and The Reason (a genuine misery; not comprehensible, and not interesting). So I suppose I'm looking for the TV movies (which I doubt I'll find, though someone has been subbing the Seijun Suzuki TV movies from the 60s and 70s, so maybe it could happen?), The Strange Couple, Turning Point, whatever Shinjuro is (I can't find a description of it or a cast list anywhere), The Stupid Teacher, Before That Day, Goodbye for Tomorrow, The Last Snow, I Want to hear the Wind's Song, Song of Goodbye (sounds real morbid), Scenery to Remember, So Long! and Labyrinth of Cinema. Wow. Exhausting! But I'm looking forward to seeing Four Sisters, Haruka Nostalgia, Cute Little Devil, and Beijing Watermelon (from what I will probably end up feeling is Obayashi's sweet spot, from the early 80s to the early 90s). I'm not writing off these later movies, but nothing I read or see about them makes them seem like my cup of tea.

WmS
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Re: Japanese Films on DVD/Blu-ray

#229 Post by WmS » Thu Jul 02, 2020 9:27 am

Feihong, your posts on Obayashi have really been great. Thank you!

No idea on the rarer films but the Japan Cuts fest at Japan Society is streaming this year, with Labyrinth of Cinema available to rent starting July 17.

Along with a new doc on his and his wife's career together.

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Re: Japanese Films on DVD/Blu-ray

#230 Post by Michael Kerpan » Thu Jul 02, 2020 10:20 am

Obayashi seems to fall in the same general category as Kinoshita -- a director who seems like he was a kind and decent person, and whose cinematic heart was in the right place, but whose films almost never seem to work for me (though I wish they did). All the same, happy to see (for the sake of others, at least) more of his films becoming available.

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feihong
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Re: Japanese Films on DVD/Blu-ray

#231 Post by feihong » Thu Jul 02, 2020 5:09 pm

WmS wrote:
Thu Jul 02, 2020 9:27 am
Feihong, your posts on Obayashi have really been great. Thank you!

No idea on the rarer films but the Japan Cuts fest at Japan Society is streaming this year, with Labyrinth of Cinema available to rent starting July 17.

Along with a new doc on his and his wife's career together.
Thanks for those links! I'm going to try an see Labyrinth of Cinema, and I'll take a look at that documentary if I can, as well.

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feihong
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Re: Japanese Films on DVD/Blu-ray

#232 Post by feihong » Mon Aug 10, 2020 11:44 pm

Obayashi's The Rocking Horsemen came out on blu ray in Japan, preceding a release of Chizuko's Little Sister in September. The Rocking Horsemen has no English subtitles.

The first few minutes of the film are video footage of concerts featuring The Ventures and a bunch of Japanese rock acts at festivals and concerts. This is all grungy footage, with a lot of ghosting in the image. This is followed by a dream sequence which seemed to have the same visual qualities, the same ghosting and artifacts. Then the main character wakes up, and the film snaps into crisp 35mm. The blu ray sharpens up into a rich, sharp image, with a lot of grain. From then on, the movie looks magnificent. Most scenes are sharp as a tack. Some are fuzzier, but those are scenes shot with some smoke in the air. This bodes well for Chizuko's Little Sister, due out next month.

I'm about halfway done watching my list of Obayashi movies. There's a lot that's interesting in them, but I'm trying to save all the impressions I have and put them all together at the end. I'm tempted to say that The Rocking Horsemen and Chizuko's Younger Sister are at the edge of Obayashi's run of quality films, but there's still Goodbye for Tomorrow and Sada before he starts his string of movies about people dying of cancer, which leads into his series of movies where he shrilly attempts to make young people think about WWII. This last group makes up the last stretch of his career, and probably the worst series of films within it––though I haven't seen any of the cancer movies. There is a trailer for Song of Goodbye which makes it look moving and visually inventive, though the plot description I've read sounds like a genuine misery (it's straight up cancer movie stuff). Scenery to Remember, also from that period, is very acclaimed, but there seems to be no way to see that movie at all. Anyway, The Rocking Horsemen is a very nice picture, and pretty good value in a good blu ray presentation. In fact, a grip of Obayashi movies have good blu rays, including Hausu, of course (which has a good-looking but interlaced transfer of Emotion: Dracula's Legendary Afternoon on it––that extra is better than the feature), but in Japan there are high quality discs for School in the Crosshairs, The Girl Who Leapt Through Time, The Deserted City, His Motorbike Her Island, The Island Closest to Heaven, and now The Rocking Horsemen. There is an interlaced, not too great disc of Take Me Away!, and a blu ray of The Discarnates that I haven't purchased, because I don't like that movie much. There are high-definition versions of Cute Little Devil, Lonleyhearts, and Four Sisters, as well, and there's an HD transfer out there of the black-and-white version of Bound for the Fields, the Mountains and the Seacoast. Hopefully that ATG production will get a blu ray one of these days––it's probably Obayashi's best feature.

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Re: Japanese Films on DVD/Blu-ray

#233 Post by The Fanciful Norwegian » Tue Aug 11, 2020 12:35 am

feihong wrote:
Mon Aug 10, 2020 11:44 pm
Scenery to Remember, also from that period, is very acclaimed, but there seems to be no way to see that movie at all.
There's an R2J release, though unsurprisingly with no English subtitles. Doesn't look like any subs are circulating online either.

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Re: Japanese Films on DVD/Blu-ray

#234 Post by feihong » Tue Aug 11, 2020 3:33 am

I guess I have them mixed up. Maybe then it's Song of Goodbye that doesn't have a dvd release. I don't think any of these cancer movies are getting fansubs any time soon. I read that someone was doing subs for Goodbye for Tomorrow, though.

I missed the documentary on Obayashi and his wife, because life just got in the way pretty hard. I did see Labyrinth of Cinema, though. It was...it's definitely of a piece with all the later movies, from Casting Blossoms Into the Sky to Hanagatami. I found it entirely frustrating.

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Re: Japanese Films on DVD/Blu-ray

#235 Post by Michael Kerpan » Tue Aug 11, 2020 8:03 am

I haven't seen nearly so many Obayashi films as you, feihong -- but my sense is that he was probably a wonderful guy, whose political heart was in the right place, but whose movies really don't seem to work all that well for me. :-(

Calvin
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Re: Japanese Films on DVD/Blu-ray

#236 Post by Calvin » Tue Aug 11, 2020 8:22 am

I'm surprised Arrow hasn't put any of his films out, as he would seem to be in their wheelhouse and they're actively putting out titles from the same rightsholders. Hopefully it's just a matter of time before further officially subtitled releases of his work.

I really loved Hanagatami. It's aesthetic is very artificial, but also surprisingly beautiful. Even if you hadn't seen any of his other films since House, you couldn't mistake it as having been made by any other director.

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Cash Flagg
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Re: Japanese Films on DVD/Blu-ray

#237 Post by Cash Flagg » Tue Aug 11, 2020 11:56 am

Cash Flagg wrote:
Mon Jun 29, 2020 10:53 am
I was just about to order the (6) Shochiku Ozu BDs (skipping Green Tea and Good Morning) from CDJapan
If anyone is still considering purchasing these, they were unable to order Late Autumn for me, and it only seems to be available on Amazon JP and Yes Asia at high prices from third-party sellers.

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The Fanciful Norwegian
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Re: Japanese Films on DVD/Blu-ray

#238 Post by The Fanciful Norwegian » Tue Aug 11, 2020 1:12 pm

feihong wrote:
Tue Aug 11, 2020 3:33 am
I guess I have them mixed up. Maybe then it's Song of Goodbye that doesn't have a dvd release.
Obayashi is incredibly well-represented on DVD considering his output—these are his only features (besides Labyrinth of Cinema, which just got its theatrical release a couple of weeks ago) with no DVD releases in Japan:

Four Sisters (1985)
April Fish (1986)
The Drifting Classroom (1987)
Why She Doesn't Get Married (1992, TV movie)
My Heart Belongs to Daddy (1992, TV movie)
The Legend of Reiko (1998, TV movie)

Some of these can be found in other formats, though. All were released on VHS and I know Four Sisters and The Drifting Classroom have HD versions available online.

ryanalva
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Re: Japanese Films on DVD/Blu-ray

#239 Post by ryanalva » Fri Aug 14, 2020 7:45 pm

feihong wrote:
Tue Jun 30, 2020 3:31 am
Actually, I think maybe the change in Obayashi's movies takes place around the time of Sada, a movie I haven't watched all the way through, but upon skipping through it tonight, there are a lot of scenes shot on what look like very small soundstages. The lighting is garish in a way not present in his earlier movies, because they were shot primarily on location, in larger environments. Sada looks cramped and uncomfortable (I'm still going to watch it), and Obayashi's films of the 21st century in general have that same feeling to them. Obayashi's effects looked chintzy in the 80s, but because they were handmade––because a certain quality of light fell upon the figures in the effects, mediated by distance from the camera lens––they had a kind of hand-made charm to them. Then, as he shoots in smaller locations, eventually on digital, he does the same kind of effects, to a very different effect. So the more recent films have this flat, but uncomfortably crisp look to them, perhaps brought about by being filmed in tight spaces, under less advantageous lighting conditions. The musicians that travel through Seven Weeks are garishly mapped onto B-roll of various settings––they look uncertain of where they're supposed to be. Characters in Casting Blossoms Into the Sky and Hanagatami leer close to the camera, while a cut-and-paste moon is superimposed behind them. It doesn't look charming anymore––it looks claustrophobic. It's also clear just from the trailers that Obayashi's preoccupation with death––a lingering chill in the background of films like Emotion: Dracula's Legendary Afternoon, The Deserted City, His Motorbike Her Island, Bound for the Fields the Mountains and the Seacoast, and Lonelyhearts (Chizuko's Little Sister is an exception and a harbinger of things to come––a cute, fun movie about emerging adolescence made strained and misshapen by the extraordinary pain of the elder sister's death scene; The Discarnates, or, Summer Among Ghosts, has a kind of miserable grimness made alien by its presentation as a Poltergeist–style chiller)––has taken over in these later movies. One of these later films is about a widower dealing with grief meeting a man whose wife is in a coma, and stuff like that. Several of these seem to involve vivid parades of the dead, or ships taking the dead to some kind of afterlife. There's an early speech in Seven Weeks about people dying and being replaced by new people living. There's constant images of the atom bombs. Older actors play young students, grimacing next to teenage actors who are supposed to be their peers. Scenery to Remember is literally about a woman dying, returning to her hometown for closure but only finding the sting of imminent death. Each film in this later cycle seems aimed at morbidity for its overall tone. It all seems to suggest that the claustrophobia of the visuals in the later movies is meant to imply the closeness of death. These later movies look unrelentingly grim. No less inventive than the earlier films, but not as fun–looking. There is only the weakest sense of mitigating nostalgia in the more recent films, especially when you don't have the distance of the earlier films, which allow you to see the world of Onomachi in the 80s and early 90s. The new films look to embody what I would consider Obayashi's most overt overemphasis from those earlier movies. I am not really looking forward to seeing them.

But I plan to see them all this week! COVID goals. I've rounded up a bunch of Obayashi movies I haven't been able to see before, spanning his entire career. I plan to go through them all. By the time I'm done I hope to have seen:

Take Me Away!
Cute Little Devil
Kenya Boy
Four Sisters (Shimaizaka)
Haruka, Nostalgia
Beijing Watermelon
Sada
Switching: Goodby me
Casting Blossoms Into the Sky
Seven Weeks
Hanagatami

If anyone has a line on where I can find some of the even rarer films, I'd certainly appreciate it. I've seen The Island Closest to Heaven, Samurai Kids (the bizarre Indian-in-the-Cupboard–inspired picture with the tiny samurai), The Rockinghorsemen, and Tomorrow (Ashita) without subtitles, and I have unsubtitled versions of April Fish and One Summer's Day I haven't watched yet (I tried in the past and just couldn't get into either without the language). I've seen all the short films in the DVD collection, Emotion (great movie), Hausu, The Visitor in the Eye (the Blackjack movie with Joe Shishido), the Kosuke Kindaichi movie (the most fun of these early movies, prior to him really finding his way, and discounting Emotion, because it's great and an anomaly early on), School in the Crosshairs, Exchange Students (a personal favorite), The Girl Who Leapt Through Time, The Deserted City, His Motorbike Her Island, Lonelyhearts, Bound for the Fields the Mountains and the Seacoast, Drifting Classroom, The Discarnates, Chizuko's Younger Sister, and The Reason (a genuine misery; not comprehensible, and not interesting). So I suppose I'm looking for the TV movies (which I doubt I'll find, though someone has been subbing the Seijun Suzuki TV movies from the 60s and 70s, so maybe it could happen?), The Strange Couple, Turning Point, whatever Shinjuro is (I can't find a description of it or a cast list anywhere), The Stupid Teacher, Before That Day, Goodbye for Tomorrow, The Last Snow, I Want to hear the Wind's Song, Song of Goodbye (sounds real morbid), Scenery to Remember, So Long! and Labyrinth of Cinema. Wow. Exhausting! But I'm looking forward to seeing Four Sisters, Haruka Nostalgia, Cute Little Devil, and Beijing Watermelon (from what I will probably end up feeling is Obayashi's sweet spot, from the early 80s to the early 90s). I'm not writing off these later movies, but nothing I read or see about them makes them seem like my cup of tea.
Any info on where I might be able to find these films? Have seen House His Motorbike Her Island and Hanagatami, and am hoping to do a deeper dive, but am having a bit of a challenge in finding his other work. Am exclusively an Anglophone so that may be a limiting factor, but any help is immensely appreciated.

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feihong
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Re: Japanese Films on DVD/Blu-ray

#240 Post by feihong » Wed Sep 09, 2020 4:53 am

Sorry, didn't see your question for a while. PM'ed you about that.


Chizuko's Younger Sister arrived on blu ray today. It is one of the best-looking blu rays I've seen, with crisp grain structure and a very sharp, stable image. it helps that there's no smoke used in the shooting of this movie, but it looks a lot better than The Rocking Horsemen, which already looked pretty great. I think there are damaged bits in The Rocking Horsemen that limit the quality of some scenes, and there's a lot of smoke machine effects in the movie. Chizuko's Younger Sister has no such effects and looks uncannily pristine––it does not look like a 30-year-old movie––except of course for the fashions, and the general sense of quality. There's no subtitles, of course, but those subtitles are out there on the internet.

As for the film itself; I'm still going through the big list of Obayashi movies––most of the films I had already seen from Obayashi were fun, so I thought it wouldn't be too hard to blaze through them. But it turns out most of the films I hadn't seen so far are much, much darker, real grim affairs, and I find myself watching other stuff even when I feel like I want to get abreast of all of these films. I still have to finish Hanagatami (I'm about 90 minutes in), and I have yet to see Kenya Boy, Haruka, Nostalgia, Sada, Switching: Goodbye Me, and Seven Weeks. I did see Labyrinth of Cinema on the Japan Cuts festival, but missed the documentary on Obayashi and his wife, because life has been really getting in the way of my film habit recently. Suffice to say, I plan to write a lot more about these movies when I'm finished with them, and I plan to write a lot on Chizuko's Younger Sister in particular, because I think it's kind of a lynchpin film, where Obayashi seems to spend the remainder of his goofy humor and warmth, and the morbidity––which has always been a feature of Obayashi's movies––takes the fore. At any rate, Chizuko's Younger Sister is the last of the really fun Obayashi movies, the wonderful run from School in the Crosshairs in the 80s until this early-90s capstone. But it also gives you a sense of the humorless darkness which Obayashi fans have coming to them.

It follows a girl in her early teens, who is profoundly out of it at all times. When she is nearly raped on the way home from school one night, the ghost of her elder sister intercedes and helps her fend off her attacker. The film follows the relationship between the sisters, one alive and spacy, the other dead and very together, and also very focused on corporeal life. To what degree does the dead Chizuko expect her younger sister to live out the things she couldn't? What happens as the younger sister starts to mature, and needs her sister's ghost's advice less and less? This is the central drama of the movie. There are extraordinarily ambitious and awful blue screen effects in the movie. There's lots of humor and fun––the school scenes are lively and entertaining, and there are romantic sections as well. But there is a scene in the middle of the film that radically changes the tone of the movie. Right in the middle of the film, we suddenly see Chizuko's death scene. It is strikingly different from everything else in the movie––the scene is shockingly close-up on the suffering of Chizuko's death (she is crushed under a load of timber that falls off a truck). Chizuko clutches her uncomprehending sister's hand and cries in pain and despair. It's a scene shot through with a pain that goes way beyond the whimsical, romantic tone of the movie, and, weirdly, the whimsical, romantic tone returns after the scene plays out.

But I think the movie never quite recovers from that scene. It is so much more abrasive a shift than the viewer is expecting, and the film doesn't really grow it into anything much. We have believed that Chizuko's younger sister acts like a dizzy child throughout because she is traumatized by her sister's death, but in this scene we see that the girl is actually like this even before that happened. The movie treats the girl's strange affect as a sign of immaturity––kind of like an innocent narcissism, which she begins to grow out of as the picture reaches its end. But it's very hard to make any meaning out of the difference between the rest of the film and this one, searingly painful scene. And yet, I like the movie, a lot. In spite of the loss of control of the film's tone, it is still full of whimsy and fun, and the nebulous way Obayashi seems vaguely fond of his characters in this era. In later movies, Obayashi will kind of retreat from his characters, and it becomes increasingly hard to identify with the characters on screen. That is not a problem in Chizuko's Younger Sister. It's delightful for most of its running time, and as always, Obayashi is inventive. The movie is mostly a joy to watch, and now that I'm prepared for the scene, I find it easier to take in its stride. It makes me wonder if the filmmakers had just become inured against the effect of the scene by staring at it so many times in the editing bay?

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Re: Japanese Films on DVD/Blu-ray

#241 Post by L.A. » Tue Oct 13, 2020 5:24 am

Limited Edition Box Set including Wicked City and Demon City Shinjuku coming on November 23rd in the UK, an HMV Exclusive.

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Re: Japanese Films on DVD/Blu-ray

#242 Post by L.A. » Wed Nov 11, 2020 1:24 pm

TWO OF THE MOST REQUESTED NIKKATSU FILMS COME TO THE U.S. WHEN "FLOWER AND SNAKE" AND "ZOOM UP: MURDER SITE" HIT BLU-RAY AND DVD IN NEW HD TRANSFERS IN 2021 FROM IMPULSE PICTURES!

ZOOM UP

SPECIAL FEATURES:
All-new high-definition restoration from the original camera negative provided by Nikkatsu Studios

Newly-translated removable English subtitles

Reversible cover art with original uncensored artwork and original title.

Director: Koyu Ohara
Starring: Erina Miyai, Yuki Yoshizawa, Yoko Azusa, Tatsuya Hamaguchi
Runtime: 67 minutes
Release Date: February 9, 2021

FLOWER AND SNAKE (Releasing on both Blu-ray and DVD)

SPECIAL FEATURES:
All-new high-definition restoration from the original camera negative provided by Nikkatsu Studios

Newly-translated removable English subtitles

Director: Masaru Konuma
Starring: Naomi Tani, Nagatoshi Sakamoto, Yashuhiko Ishizu, Hioko Fuji
Runtime: 74 minutes
Release Date: March 16, 2021

Specifications:

Formats: Blu-ray and DVD
Language: Japanese
Video: High-Definition 1080p (2.35:1) Widescreen (Blu-ray) / Anamorphic Widescreen (2.35:1) (DVD)
Audio: DTS-HD MA Japanese 1.0 Original Mono (Blu-ray) / Dolby Digital Japanese 1.0 Original Mono (DVD)
Region: Region A (Blu-ray) / Region 1 (DVD)

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feihong
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Re: Japanese Films on DVD/Blu-ray

#243 Post by feihong » Tue Jan 19, 2021 7:55 pm

Two more Nobuhiko Obayashi movies are getting released on blu ray in Japan. Both come out tomorrow, I was excited to learn.

Four Sisters is a strange movie for Obayashi. Nominally, it slots into the pop-star movies he had been making in that era, like The Girl Who Leapt Through Time and The Island Closest to Heaven. In terms of subject matter, the film looks forward to Obayashi's very glum later movies, in which he really reveals his obsession with death. Early in the film, one of the titular sisters starts very obviously dying of cancer––they hold out the reveal for a while, but...come on, nobody's fooled. Though the other sisters have their own issues they are dealing with, the cancer subplot eventually takes over the film, roping in the main male love interest in a bizarre way (Obayashi seems to get him made up to look ashen-faced and grim. However, though the ending to the movie is quite spectacularly morbid, the film somehow doesn't quite succumb to the misery of the later pictures. Instead, it gives off the impression of a sort of sub-Chekovian, bittersweet slice of life, emphasizing family as a kind of support and succor against the crushing defeat of death. It's not the greatest Obayashi movie, but it was made during his best period, so it boasts the glowing visuals, warm acting, and the kind of sentimental nostalgia Obayashi trucked in during that most artistically balanced and successful era. So there are many elements that make the film worthwhile.

The other blu ray being released is Lonelyheart, which is from the same era and features a cast with some key similarities to Four Sisters. This is a much different film, and one of Obayashi's best movies. Toshinori Omi is the male lead in Exchange Students, Four Sisters, Chizuko's Younger Sister, and The Deserted City. He was Obayashi's default male child lead in the early 80s. As he gets older he continues playing many smaller parts in movies like The Rocking Horsemen, while Obayashi replaces him as the child star with Yasufumi Hayashi (star of Bound for the Fields, the Mountains and the Seacoast and Drifting Classroom). In Lonelyheart Omi delivers the same consistent level of quality performance he always does for Obayashi. It's a movie about him meeting the girl of his dreams, who seems to be a fantasy creation in his head. Lonelyheart, the fantasty girl, dresses and acts like a silent movie imp, and she seems able to appear or disappear at a moment's notice. It's also a film about Omi's character's very contentious bond with his mother. These two story strands end up connecting in an unexpectedly tidy way. The movie is funny, nostalgic, and an exceptionally good-looking production. It's probably one of Obayashi's best movies, for its blend of humor and energy and the kind of intimate but ultimately nicely meaningful story.

Doubtful that either of these will have English subtitles, but fans have created subs for both of these films, which are pretty easy to find. At this point the outstanding films absent on blu ray from Obayashi's best period are going to be Exchange Students (his best comedy), Bound for the Fields, The Mountains and the Seacoast (probably his best movie, period; produced for ATG, like Exchange Students and The Deserted City––which is on blu ray, so where are these other two?), and Drifting Classroom (as bizarre as Hausu, another lunatic film co-sponsored by McDonalds).

Labyrinth of Cinema is also out on blu ray in Japan, but frankly, that movie is a train wreck. I've read positive reviews of it, but I think the people who think of it that way are really fooling themselves. My feeling so far from the films I've seen is that 80s Obayashi is usually high-quality-to-great, 90s Obayashi is pretty iffy, and 2000s Obayashi is unwatchable.

Still watching through all the Obayashi movies I've been able to track down, though. I've been able to see subtitled versions of The Island Closest to Heaven and Goodbye for Tomorrow, and I found a poor-quality, machine-subtitled version of Song of Goodbye that I want to take a look at. I still have to watch Haruka Nostalgia, Kenya Boy, Seven Weeks, and I have to finish Hanagatami, which is proving very hard to watch. I think that the discipline of working in actual film was good for Obayashi, because the later digital films I've seen from him are pretty dire. But there is a kind of rot in his career that sets in during, I think, the mid-90s. Goodbye for Tomorrow is so far the last good Obayashi film I've seen. It is unhealthily obsessed with death, like the later films, and its style points towards later miseries like Casting Blossoms Into the Sky, but there is still in that film a sense of meaningful presence––a sense that the characters, their wants and desires matter in the film, as well as a solid emotional core to the movie. The later films I've seen so far are usually mired in unwieldy and intrusive stylistics, drained of charm, and they have the quality of an essay or a harangue. I think what happens is that somehow Obayashi's connection to what engages audiences sort of dissolves. It's very weird to see this change happen. Anyway, here's hoping the people putting out ATG blu rays get the idea to release the two outstanding Obayashi ATG films––Exchange Students and Bound for the Fields, the Mountains & the Seacoast––which are maybe Obayashi's 2 best films, to my mind.

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The Fanciful Norwegian
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Re: Japanese Films on DVD/Blu-ray

#244 Post by The Fanciful Norwegian » Mon May 31, 2021 10:49 pm

The Obayashi Blus just keep on coming in Japan: Haruka, Nostalgia is due out on August 6th. The odds of English subs on the disc are somewhere between zero and 0.001% but a set of fansubs were completed last year.

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feihong
Joined: Thu Nov 04, 2004 12:20 pm

Re: Japanese Films on DVD/Blu-ray

#245 Post by feihong » Mon May 31, 2021 11:20 pm

Hawt! Looking forward to that. Thanks for the update.

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L.A.
Joined: Thu May 28, 2009 7:33 am
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Re: Japanese Films on DVD/Blu-ray

#246 Post by L.A. » Mon Aug 02, 2021 6:00 am

What are your thoughts on Sion Sono’s Hazard?

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feihong
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Re: Japanese Films on DVD/Blu-ray

#247 Post by feihong » Tue Aug 24, 2021 3:31 am

The blu ray of Nobuhiko Obayashi's Haruka, Nostalgia follows in the way of many of the recent Obayashi blu-rays. The picture quality looks top-notch, with very pleasing handling of grain. The image looks thick and colorful and steady––but for the high-waisted 90s jeans on display in almost every scene, you wouldn't think the film was so old. The picture has a lot of depth and just looks exceptionally high-quality. Even smoke and mist gets rendered with clarity.

Another couple of weeks and I should have the blu rays of Shinji Somai's Tokyo Heaven and Lost Chapter: Passion in Snow; I'm very nervous for those blu rays. Will they look as good as these Obayashi discs? The Cherry Orchard, another film from the same time period, had a lot of DNR.

I haven't watched this film with English subtitles yet, so I don't really know what is going on. I have subtitles, and plan to watch with them pretty soon. I've heard the film called misogynist, but I'm looking forward to seeing for myself what I think it's got going on. I haven't forgotten about my Obayashi project, but I'm taking it pretty slowly. Eventually I'll get through Haruka, Nostalgia, Sada, Kenya Boy, Seven Weeks, Song of Goodbye, and Switching: Goodbye Me, and finally finish Hanagatami, which I struggled through about 90 minutes of before turning it off in frustration. I'll get back to it and see the other 90 minutes, though.

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L.A.
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Location: Helsinki, Finland

Re: Japanese Films on DVD/Blu-ray

#248 Post by L.A. » Wed Sep 08, 2021 10:55 am

***NEW TITLE ANNOUNCEMENT***
Coming soon to Blu-ray from Media Blasters!

Doomed Megalopolis (1991)

“As we are about to announce our next set of titles, we start with the heavy hitter, Doomed Megalopolis BD. #mediablasters #doomedmegalopolis”

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L.A.
Joined: Thu May 28, 2009 7:33 am
Location: Helsinki, Finland

Re: Japanese Films on DVD/Blu-ray

#249 Post by L.A. » Thu Sep 16, 2021 12:14 pm

Star of David: Beautiful Girl Hunter coming to Blu-ray on October 5th from Impulse Pictures. Mondo Digital has a review for it.


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