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Oh well

Grasshopper tweeted out a tease of their 2022 Blu ray slate, which includes Hong Sang-soo's Virgin Stripped Bare by her Bachelors and Sion Sono's Whispering Star.

New Khalik Allah is also worth noting

justeleblanc wrote: Sat Jan 01, 2022 2:43 pm Grasshopper tweeted out a tease of their 2022 Blu ray slate, which includes Hong Sang-soo's Virgin Stripped Bare by her Bachelors and Sion Sono's Whispering Star.

As has become tradition I poked at them again about La Flor. But in all seriousness, it's great to hear about the Sion Sono title (not sure if it had been announced previously like the Hong Sang-soo title)

swo17 wrote: Sat Jan 01, 2022 2:49 pm New Khalik Allah is also worth noting

It is, though I thought it was already announced, whereas this is the first I've heard about the other two. I might have been mistaken.

No idea but either way, thanks for posting the news!

I should mention, Grasshopper picked up the U.S. distribution rights for Radu Muntean's Întregalde. No release date has been set yet, though it's already played overseas and festivals like the NYFF and AFI.

Received my slipcover of Days all bent up since it was shipped with zero padding in a normal envelop and shoved into my mail slot. I'm sure they'll replace it but just a really poor choice for shipping something like this.

Looks like Grasshopper will be theatrically distributing the wonderful 2021 Australian film Friends and Strangers in the US starting this week – no word yet on whether there's a DVD in the works, but I hope it won't be too far off.

https://grasshopperfilm.com/film/friends-and-strangers/

April 12: Virgin Stripped Bare by Her Bachelors

April 26: Ascension

criterionsnob wrote: Wed Mar 02, 2022 1:55 am April 12: Virgin Stripped Bare by Her Bachelors

surprised no cover art or pre-order at all for this yet, less than a month away.

ryannichols7 wrote: Thu Mar 17, 2022 6:29 pm

criterionsnob wrote: Wed Mar 02, 2022 1:55 am April 12: Virgin Stripped Bare by Her Bachelors

surprised no cover art or pre-order at all for this yet, less than a month away.

Hi all,

Pre-order is here, with cover art: https://grasshopperfilm.myshopify.com
Amazon is here: https://www.amazon.com/Virgin-Stripped- ... 8&qid=&sr=

No bonus features on this one unfortunately, but it does have a new translation and subtitle. And the quality looks great.

GrasshopperFilm wrote: Thu Mar 17, 2022 7:52 pm

ryannichols7 wrote: Thu Mar 17, 2022 6:29 pm

criterionsnob wrote: Wed Mar 02, 2022 1:55 am April 12: Virgin Stripped Bare by Her Bachelors

surprised no cover art or pre-order at all for this yet, less than a month away.

Hi all,

Pre-order is here, with cover art: https://grasshopperfilm.myshopify.com
Amazon is here: https://www.amazon.com/Virgin-Stripped- ... 8&qid=&sr=

No bonus features on this one unfortunately, but it does have a new translation and subtitle. And the quality looks great.

fantastic, thank you!! totally understandable about supplements, I know it's been mentioned HSS doesn't really have much to go around with those. will just be glad to have the film finally

ryannichols7 wrote: Thu Mar 17, 2022 7:54 pm

GrasshopperFilm wrote: Thu Mar 17, 2022 7:52 pm

ryannichols7 wrote: Thu Mar 17, 2022 6:29 pm

surprised no cover art or pre-order at all for this yet, less than a month away.

Hi all,

Pre-order is here, with cover art: https://grasshopperfilm.myshopify.com
Amazon is here: https://www.amazon.com/Virgin-Stripped- ... 8&qid=&sr=

No bonus features on this one unfortunately, but it does have a new translation and subtitle. And the quality looks great.

fantastic, thank you!! totally understandable about supplements, I know it's been mentioned HSS doesn't really have much to go around with those. will just be glad to have the film finally

Cool. Thanks. We always try, but that's indeed true with HSS. It's why we decided to do the HILL OF FREEDOM / WOMAN ON THE BEACH release.

I just noticed on Grasshopper's website that there's less than 300 copies left of their limited two-disc edition of Days. FWIW, Amazon itself is selling some less-than-mint stock in their Marketplace listings (presumably returns) for almost half of the retail price.

Grasshopper bought Cannes Directors’ Fortnight documentary De Humani Corporis Fabrica.

Finch wrote: Tue Jun 07, 2022 12:02 pm Grasshopper bought Cannes Directors’ Fortnight documentary De Humani Corporis Fabrica.

Directed by Lucien Castaing-Taylor and Verena Paravel, who are most famous for their 2012 fishing boat documentary Leviathan. All of their documentaries seem to be about bodies and their eventual death and dismemberment in some fashion, usually for food, though rather than the more benign seeming fishing one where it is mostly fish guts that are washing about on screen this seems somewhat closer to their 2017 documentary Caniba about the notorious Japanese cannibal Issei Sagawa (also released by Grasshopper). Serendipitiously I went down an extremely strange rabbit hole during the weekend as the fascinating but only for the strongest stomached Cinema's Underbelly channel recently did a big retrospective video about Sagawa and his film appearances as a celebrity capitalising on his infamy (very NSFW!), which not only brought the 2017 documentary to my attention but also revealed that there was a fictionalised true crime film version of his story directed in 1989 by Italian director Aldo Lado (of Short Night of the Glass Dolls and Who Saw Her Die? fame) called Love Ritual, which I really want to track down, since so far I have really enjoyed all of Lado's previous films that I have had the opportunity to see, which all seem darkly cynical on the subject of human interaction, and especially to the often hypocritical and deadly nature of supposedly 'romantic' couplings that spreads out to encompass (and condemn) the society as a whole.

It also appears that Sagawa did a brief cameo appearance in that goofy live action but anime influenced 1996 film A Weatherwoman which involves two rival weather presenters getting involved in escalating fights for dominance which seems to involve flashing their panties at each other, and which I seem to recall ends with them doing kind of the equivalent weather-harnessing final airbourne fight sequence from Matrix Revolutions avant la lettre above their television studio! (I remember it making Gus Van Sant's To Die For seem rather staid in comparison!)

Are the transfers on Hong's Virgin and Kangwon the same as on the (not that long ago) Korean Blu-ray releases?

From what I can gather, I believe at least Virgin is a brand new 2k restoration. Maybe Grasshopper can confirm?

therewillbeblus wrote: Fri Jul 01, 2022 1:47 am From what I can gather, I believe at least Virgin is a brand new 2k restoration. Maybe Grasshopper can confirm?

We're not certain, but they probably are the same restorations as were released in Korea.

The black levels in the Korean Bluray of Virgin struck me as "disappointing" -- shades of gray rather than the crisp black and white of the prior DVD. So I hope this is NOT exactly the same....

Michael Kerpan wrote: Fri Jul 01, 2022 1:29 pm The black levels in the Korean Bluray of Virgin struck me as "disappointing" -- shades of gray rather than the crisp black and white of the prior DVD. So I hope this is NOT exactly the same....

We'll double check on the restoration, but just to note, the transfer itself is definitely different. It was done by our lab (who's handled all of our blu-ray releases). And they didn't see any issues.

Great news! It was very likely a transfer issue.... Will order this for sure. Did you do your own transfer of Kangwon too?