Imprint

[JSC]

Madadayo!

[Peacock]

Eureka!!!

Crazy that no one had put this out yet.

[Zot!]

Can someone briefly educate me on the ho-hum reaction here to the King Hu box? The "Imprint tax" I understand, but I don't own ANY of the existing discs, so is this meant for me, or should I wait for reviews to roll in?

[domino harvey]

I mean, if I didn’t own most of these I’d absolutely buy it (and I don’t care about UHDs, so I’d not even be paying more for discs I could conceivably utilize). I’m one of the biggest advocates for what Imprint does with regards to releasing films with copious extras, but they often use older masters, so the tech crowd is not always as enthusiastic.

[Maltic]

This is another thing I don't "get" about these boxsets. I would've thought people who aren't that familiar with King Hu would want to dip their toes in it at first with a few single releases instead of importing a 10 disc-set from Australia at the outset. OTOH, people who are fans will own a number of the films already and have use for only, like, half of those 10 discs...

[domino harvey]

I always think of that Patton Oswald joke about box sets. “I don’t own anything by the Allman Brothers. Now I own everything by the Allman Brothers.”

[Zot!]

Thanks, I get it now...In terms of older masters, since these are what I believe are some of the first 4k releases of these, I'll roll the dice...though I heard somebody complaining about the grading perhaps not being right, Ill look into it. I am a Hu dilletante, and he's kind of a gap in my otherwise pretty broad survey of world cinema. I feel like since I've watched everything by John Woo, Johnny To, Wong Kar Wai, Tarantino, Hou Hsiao-Hsien, Tsai ming-liang, Ang Lee, etc, I owe it to myself to work backwards. I'd been avoiding it up till now because during the time of my most condensed movie watching (pre-kids), a lot of this early stuff from China/Hong Kong/Taiwan was sort of lost to time and hard to see in reasonable quality and undubbed.

I'll admit it's a bit ridiculous to dive in to the deep end, and I will cheat and watch the two Criterions before I commit to a two-parter box set party. At the same time, my collecting has moved from "building a cohesive media library" to "eclectic picks that are otherwise not easy to come by", so this kind of fits that remit. Like I love Sunset Boulevard, but I've seen it so many times I don't feel like I don't need to own it anymore. Yet I have two Mizoguchi box sets. I think part of what's driving this is moving closer to a reparatory cinema, and therefor downsizing what I watch at home.

[Zot!]

Sorry, last question...when I look at pre-ordering a box-set directly from Imprint in Oz, it's like 20 USD more expensive (before shipping) than if I pre-order the same through Orbit in US. Is this an anomaly, or typical?

[Lowry_Sam]

They order a single title in bulk so they probably get a discount over the label's own list price.

[Aunt Peg]

I'm going to have an expensive day when these go up for pre-order:

King Hu Boxset (just to get the two titles I don't already have)
Eureka
Madadayo
Henry & June
The Cassandra Crossing (utter rubbish but has nostalgia value for me along with a cast featuring a bunch of all-time favourites: Ava Gardner, Sophia Loren, Burt Lancaster, Ingrid Thulin, Martin Sheen)

[Zot!]

They order a single title in bulk so they probably get a discount over the label's own list price.

Great thanks. I've never seen a discount for using an importer before, but that's great by me.

[Guido]

I'm just finishing a rewatch of King Hu's 60s-70s output and was literally just fantasizing about a potential Criterion UHD box set. I have no Imprint discs in my collection, but I'll be watching their upcoming box set closely.

[Aunt Peg]

Eureka is showing at the upcoming Sydney Film Festival in June but there is no indication in the program of it being a 'restoration'. It is part of a 'Cannes Selected Classics' section of the festival. I don't recall the film ever being shown on the big screen in Sydney before.

I first saw the film when I purchased the DVD Artificial Eye over 20 years ago.

[Captain Paranoia]

Eureka is showing at the upcoming Sydney Film Festival in June but there is no indication in the program of it being a 'restoration'. It is part of a 'Cannes Selected Classics' section of the festival. I don't recall the film ever being shown on the big screen in Sydney before.

I first saw the film when I purchased the Artificial Eye DVD over 20 years ago.

I recall there was a restoration that was on MUBI a few years back. (Preceded by a StudioCanal logo so I assume it's them who have the rights), from what I have seen it certainly looked a lot better than the more-than-20-year-old Japanese DVD, particularly in the ending scene.

On an additional note, this was screened at the 2022 Tokyo Film Festival in the 'Nippon Cinema Now' section alongside a few other Aoyama films (certainly as a memoriam to him following his death that same year), as well in Busan just last year (selected by Bong Joon Ho as part of the 'Carte Blanche' lineup)

Certainly, this and (to an extent) Madadayo have two films crossed off my wish list.

[Omensetter]

Eureka and the other titles are up for preorder on their site.

[Yakushima]

King Hu set is up on OrbitDVD.

[domino harvey]

Eureka!!!

Crazy that no one had put this out yet.

Completely missed this announcement until I saw it on Orbit. Been wanting to see this for a while. Surprised to hear it’s a worldwide Blu-ray debut

[Michael Kerpan]

Do people actually pre-order releases 5 or so so months before they come out?

I seem to recall that the Japanese DVD release of Eureka (which WAS subbed -- more common back in those days) looked pretty decent.

[Aunt Peg]

Do people actually pre-order releases 5 or so so months before they come out?

I seem to recall that the Japanese DVD release of Eureka (which WAS subbed -- more common back in those days) looked pretty decent.

Yes. I suppose to ensure I get a copy in case they sell out and there isn't another pressing.

I've done this with Imprint, Radiance, Eureka, Severin, Vinegar Syndrome, Fun City, Indicator, Arrow and a few others.

[The Fanciful Norwegian]

No idea who owns the rights to Four Moods, but Sons of Good Earth is with Shaw Brothers, which theoretically means that Arrow, VS, or Kani could release it here. They missed adding his first film (The Story of Sue San) to volume 1 though, which should have been available since it's also with Shaw Bros.

Four Moods is with the Taiwan Film & Audiovisual Institute, who released an English-subtitled Blu-ray in Taiwan. Eureka has probably licensed more titles from the TFAI than any other label in the Anglophone world, and given their track record with Hu I would expect them to be the likeliest source of another English-friendly edition. The Story of Sue San hasn't been released on Blu anywhere and it's possible that no HD master exists (the version streaming for free on the Shaw Brothers YouTube channel is 720p, but I strongly suspect an upscale).

[swo17]

20% off sitewide, excluding new releases and preorders, for the next week

[andyli]

Is that 20% off SRP? In that case it's not much of a sale at all since many were already marked more than 20% off (like The Last Seduction 4K).

[PfR73]

No, it's more like 20% off the existing price. For instance, Last Seduction is AUD$119.96 with a list price of AUD$159.95, which is 25% off. It was definitely priced higher than even 20% off before the sale started (I had actually been building a cart prior to the sale; I didn't know one was coming, I was just planning to order some stuff and was glad I hadn't pulled the trigger on placing the order before the surprise sale happened), so not sure when you saw it already more than 20% off.

[andyli]

I saw it after the sale began. So the price has already been marked down. Thanks for pointing that out.