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I preordered my copy, keep up the good work. This is one of my favorite Godard films.

I suspect this will be far from a minority opinion, but the booklet is one of MoC's very best - maybe even the best. The amount of effort really shows: not only does it have a ton of fascinating information (essays, lectures, interviews, bilingual extracts from Racine's Bérénice, a roundtable discussion along the lines of the Buster Keaton set), but it's also been assembled according to convincingly Godardian principles, complete with asides querying the typography, the nature of production stills and even the distinction between a DVD "work" and "extra".

It's fabulous stuff, and almost worth the price on its own - though the DVD presentation is also top-notch. Nick's already mentioned the transfer (which is indeed pretty much flawless), but I also singled out the unusually conscientious subtitles for praise in my forthcoming Sight & Sound review. They make a real effort to translate everything relevant, even if it means some subtitles are only onscreen for half a second as they sneak in a translation of onscreen text mid-conversation.

This is hands down the best Godard release on the UK market, and right up there with Criterion's finest efforts.

My fancy is certainly tickled. MOC is the only company that manages to make a stellar DVD an 'extra' next to the book.

peerpee wrote:The MoC edition, out in April 2009, is an immaculate new HD transfer.

and @ MichaelB: that sounds excellent!. I cancelled my order at HMV and re-ordered it at blahdvd.com so I would have it faster (blahdvd is a lot faster than HMV)

I`m really looking forward to this one. Hope there`ll more Godard releases following.

Have this in my hand and on the deck... MoC are hitting new heights.... The booklet is superb (clearly a labour of love by Craig Keller), and it's a lovely transfer - I can only say "what's not to like?" about this release (and out with the truly awful NYFA disc)....

The booklet is indeed a beautiful object, with obvious great care taken as much to to content as to layout. I can't wait to find the time to deleve into it and judge if the contents does live up to these expectations. If so, then there is absolutely no reason to bemoan the absence of digital extras.

Congratulations are in order for everyone who worked on this edition.

As for the movie, I have only sampled a few chapters, but it appears to be a beautiful transfer. A can't-miss item for Godard fans (and another argument in favor of region-free players).

Received my copy over the weekend. Indeed a beautiful package. The book is beautiful, a realy hefty one. Can`t wait to find the time to get into it.

Only really small minor is the rating logo on the cover. Too bad it needs to be on the cover. Other than that, no complaints what so ever.

Seems strange that no reviews of this have surfaced yet. It has been out for a few days now.

I filed one with Sight & Sound - a total rave - but it won't appear in print till next week or thereabouts.

The first and only previous viewing I had of this film was of a shitty 16mm print smack dab in the middle of a 35mm 60s Godard retrospective about 16 years ago, so this is my first real viewing of the film. And I was bored senseless. Karina should have been cast in this, because Godard completely overwhelms his three stars. There's nobody standing up to him. It's interesting because you see him making the transition to his late 60s period, but the whole enterprise is a Coming Attractions trailer.

Beaver = *****

Well, to start off a discussion after watching it, this seems to be the first film in a series that ends with 2 or 3 Things I Know About Her about how modern life is a blight on Paris with ugly buildings, advertisements, neon and commercialism. Men try to rebel against this, knowing how politically wrong it all is, although they usually prove impotent and self-destructive. Women, however, utterly obsessed with style and possessions, fall for every bit of it since they are so vain and shallow.

Have I got the point about right?

BrianInAtlanta wrote:Well, to start off a discussion after watching it, this seems to be the first film in a series that ends with 2 or 3 Things I Know About Her about how modern life is a blight on Paris with ugly buildings, advertisements, neon and commercialism. Men try to rebel against this, knowing how politically wrong it all is, although they usually prove impotent and self-destructive. Women, however, utterly obsessed with style and possessions, fall for every bit of it since they are so vain and shallow.

Have I got the point about right?

Why not.

You're dangerously close to putting Godard in a (very appropriate) nutshell.

david hare wrote:One which I would take him out of, toute suite.

Obviously - me too. However funny that people try to put him into something anyway…

BrianInAtlanta wrote:Well, to start off a discussion after watching it, this seems to be the first film in a series that ends with 2 or 3 Things I Know About Her about how modern life is a blight on Paris with ugly buildings, advertisements, neon and commercialism. Men try to rebel against this, knowing how politically wrong it all is, although they usually prove impotent and self-destructive. Women, however, utterly obsessed with style and possessions, fall for every bit of it since they are so vain and shallow.

One of many reasons this seems too simplistic is that Godard also aestheticizes the "ugly" accessories of modern life, particularly with the many gorgeous shots of industrial buildings in 2 or 3 Things -- he's simultaneously fascinated and repelled by junk culture, by surface style. I don't think he ever sees things in such a straightforward either/or fashion; he's fascinated by dichotomies but wants to have both sides of a contradiction or paradox present at once.

sevenarts wrote:he's simultaneously fascinated and repelled by junk culture, by surface style. I don't think he ever sees things in such a straightforward either/or fashion; he's fascinated by dichotomies but wants to have both sides of a contradiction or paradox present at once.

So junk culture to Godard is beautiful and seductive but empty and distracting from man's true goals. Is there anything else he presents in a similar way?

BrianInAtlanta wrote:So junk culture to Godard is beautiful and seductive but empty and distracting from man's true goals. Is there anything else he presents in a similar way?

Anna Karina?

MichaelB wrote:

BrianInAtlanta wrote:So junk culture to Godard is beautiful and seductive but empty and distracting from man's true goals. Is there anything else he presents in a similar way?

Anna Karina?

Also, political ideas. Religion/spirituality. The cinema. Seriously, Godard's whole oeuvre is packed with examples of these kinds of contrasts and dichotomies. It's why no true understanding of his cinema can ever focus on just one aspect or side of his ideas; ideas and images in Godard's films are usually closely accompanied by their opposites.

sevenarts wrote:Also, political ideas. Religion/spirituality. The cinema. Seriously, Godard's whole oeuvre is packed with examples of these kinds of contrasts and dichotomies. It's why no true understanding of his cinema can ever focus on just one aspect or side of his ideas; ideas and images in Godard's films are usually closely accompanied by their opposites.

I understand what you're saying -- I just wish that Anna Karina, and women in general, weren't treated as seductive "junk" or "ugly accessories" in the process. And the men as poor, victimized intellectual youths led astray. It comes of as an intensely alienating probing of otherness and, to me, ordinary misogyny.

tartarlamb wrote:I understand what you're saying -- I just wish that Anna Karina, and women in general, weren't treated as seductive "junk" or "ugly accessories" in the process. And the men as poor, victimized intellectual youths led astray. It comes of as an intensely alienating probing of otherness and, to me, ordinary misogyny.

Well, later Godard in part serves as a 'corrective' to this; it's more the men who start to look a bit ridiculous (Numéro Deux, Sauve Qui Peut (la vie), Prénom Carmen, Je vous salue, Marie, etc). It doesn't exactly excuse the reductiveness (or perceived reductiveness) of earlier work, but JLG did move on to a less binary view of the sexes. By Nouvelle vague, men and women are very much on equal footing.

sevenarts wrote:

MichaelB wrote:

BrianInAtlanta wrote:So junk culture to Godard is beautiful and seductive but empty and distracting from man's true goals. Is there anything else he presents in a similar way?

Anna Karina?

Also, political ideas. Religion/spirituality. The cinema. Seriously, Godard's whole oeuvre is packed with examples of these kinds of contrasts and dichotomies. It's why no true understanding of his cinema can ever focus on just one aspect or side of his ideas; ideas and images in Godard's films are usually closely accompanied by their opposites.

See, e.g., the Pierrot trailer.

Oedipax wrote:

tartarlamb wrote:I understand what you're saying -- I just wish that Anna Karina, and women in general, weren't treated as seductive "junk" or "ugly accessories" in the process. And the men as poor, victimized intellectual youths led astray. It comes of as an intensely alienating probing of otherness and, to me, ordinary misogyny.

Well, later Godard in part serves as a 'corrective' to this; it's more the men who start to look a bit ridiculous (Numéro Deux, Sauve Qui Peut (la vie), Prénom Carmen, Je vous salue, Marie, etc). It doesn't exactly excuse the reductiveness (or perceived reductiveness) of earlier work, but JLG did move on to a less binary view of the sexes. By Nouvelle vague, men and women are very much on equal footing.

What about Contempt, where the men are the more deluded characters clinging to make believe while the women drive the film through their action (or inaction)? Add to that the way that 'poor, victimised, intellectual youths' seem childish and impulsive in film like Band of Outsiders. Or cynical and petty poseurs, ready with withering criticism of others in Masculin Feminin but little insight into themselves.

And while both the main characters in Weekend are scumbags (along with everyone else), plotting to go off and kill the guy's mother for the money she will leave in the will to them so they can fund their consumer lifestyle further and then double cross each other, at least the female member gets co-opted into a radicalist/cannibal movement (and gets another short lived boyfriend) while her partner ends up in the cooking pot!

Though Godard claims to have never seen Persona before accidentally requesting it for his lecture, it should be noted that he's fibbing-- coincidentally enough, I had selected the same still at random from the DVD months before the near-identical one was used in the MOC booklet.

Well there's a point of view.