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Ha, yes, I did. Had been reading about Dogura Magra in another tab while browsing the forum and got my names mixed up.

Speaking of Blind Beast though, can anyone recommend any other good Edogawa Rampo adaptations? I also love Wakamatsu's Caterpillar and Ishii's Horrors of Malformed Men, and would like to seek out more.

I haven't seen it but there is also that anthology film, Rampo Noir.

zedz wrote: Oh! One essential Re:Voir release that is available from amazon (presumably because it's a co-production with other labels that amazon routinely carries), and is reasonably priced, is the new Jonas Mekas box set.

Just got an influx of cash. Where's the cheapest place for this and how english friendly is it?

Here I think, which is still pricey, but much more reasonable than this. Also, if you only want select titles from the box, they are available individually.

Just in my pricerange too. Thanks, I've been meaning to watch Mekas for years now.

It's completely English-friendly. All the films are primarily in English in the first place, with no forced subs and any Lithuanian or other language subtitled in either French or English. Every disc comes with a comprehensive booklet which is bilingual.

(Note that the Walden booklet is not a reprint of the massive squarebound book that came with Re:Voir's original release of that film - it's more on the Second Run level, i.e. pretty damn good)

I'm curious if any of the Nipponophiles or Japanese-language speakers here can shed any light on the works of Eizo Sugawa and Hideo Suzuki? I've seen both named mentioned in passing as major filmmakers in various writings on Japanese film of this era, but I can't find anything substantial on either them or any of their films.

Trace (Wojciech Wiszniewski, 1969) – Wojciech Wiszniewski (PWA / NiNA) – This is just a student film, but what a student film! Ostensibly a documentary portrait of a retiring railwayman, this very short film is adorned with a mass of dazzling effects – an elliptical, disjunctive soundtrack, including a sparse, dissonant score; wild point-of-view and faux-point-of-view camera movements; leaps back and forth in time; and Wiszniewski’s amazing visual sense (e.g. locomotives wreathing themselves in steam). Basically, what you’re seeing is a master filmmaker assembling his tools in preparation for the sui generis masterpieces (also often documentary portraits, in another dimension) of the next decade.

Another film for the exceptions list: Jerzy Skolimowksi's original 1967 version of Hands Up, which would also leave the window open for voting for the second version during the 80s project, if you're so inclined.

Cold Bishop wrote:Another film for the exceptions list: Jerzy Skolimowksi's original 1967 version of Hands Up, which would also leave the window open for voting for the second version during the 80s project, if you're so inclined.

I think the imdb rule means this only counts as an 80s film. Which is probably correct, since it wasn't actually released at all in the 60s, even in its original form, was it?

But the IMDb entry certainly only accounts for the 1981 version, which features plenty of newly-filmed footage. The 1967 edit is distinctly different, features only footage from the era, and in my opinion (as should be considered for any other unreleased but otherwise untouched film that may pop up in later decade projects) should be shoehorned in. Certainly, the situation isn't much different than Larks on a String (or Ivan the Terrible II.

1. Is this something you're seriously considering voting for, or are you just trying to make my life difficult?

2. Is it possible to actually see the original 1967 version?

The '80s version sounds a lot like Makavejev's Innocence Unprotected to me, which would mean that these really should be considered as two separate films, the first of which just doesn't yet have an IMDb entry. Maybe someone (you?) could submit it?

The original is available on French DVD as of last year and will probably end up in Second Run's catalog in the near future. It is, also, head and shoulders above the 1981 version, and stands as good a chance on my list as any other Skolimowski.

OK, I've created an exception for Hands Up.

Sorry about bringing these spotlights out late, but the academic job hunt this year has been absolutely brutal. Any one have a job to offer? Anyone...? Oh well, I was shocked that no one mentioned the following titles, so I thought that I'd make the case for them:

First up is Sidney Lumet's masterful TV adaptation of Eugene O'Neill's The Iceman Cometh. While Frankenheimer's production thirteen years later is arguably the more famous of the two, the relative obscurity of this time is entirely undeserved. In his production Lumet perfectly captures the early afternoon exuberance that gives way to the late night despair after one too many drinks. Although the adaptation is known for introducing the world to a still green Robert Redford, the highlight is undoubtedly Jason Robards's unparalleled (with all due respect to the great Lee Marvin) performance as Hickey. The forty-five minute long soliloquy by Robards in the play's final act is the stuff of legends. Robards's performance, which begins with champagne and ends in handcuffs, never strikes a false note and is made even more impressive by the fact that it was all done live.

Available on DVD from Image

Second, I'd like to spotlight Mikhail Romm's subversive 1965 documentary Ordinary Fascism (aka Triumph over Violence). The film, which by no mere coincidence came out during Khruschev's move away from Stalinism, takes a rather mordant look at the history of Nazi Germany and World War II. Using footage gathered from a variety of sources including Joseph Goebbels's private archives, Romm strikes a decidedly anti-authoritarian tone critical of any regime that would use violence to oppress its peoples. This is explicit in its condemnation of Nazi Germany and the US, but just below the surface lies an implicit condemnation of the past forty-five years of Soviet history. Its truly a wonder that this was made at all, pre or post thaw.

Available on youtube.

Thanks for the suggestions. And it's never too late to bring up a spotlight title.

Isn't the Kino DVD of the Frankenheimer version though?

swo17 wrote:Isn't the Kino DVD of the Frankenheimer version though?

Oops. You're right. The 1960 edition is from Image as part of their Broadway Theater Archive. It is also up for streaming on Amazon.

bamwc2 wrote:Second, I'd like to spotlight Mikhail Romm's subversive 1965 documentary Ordinary Fascism (aka Triumph over Violence). The film, which by no mere coincidence came out during Khruschev's move away from Stalinism, takes a rather mordant look at the history of Nazi Germany and World War II. Using footage gathered from a variety of sources including Joseph Goebbels's private archives, Romm strikes a decidedly anti-authoritarian tone critical of any regime that would use violence to oppress its peoples. This is explicit in its condemnation of Nazi Germany and the US, but just below the surface lies an implicit condemnation of the past forty-five years of Soviet history. Its truly a wonder that this was made at all, pre or post thaw.

Available on youtube.

Damn, I was looking for a good release of this at the beginning of the project- is youtube as good as it gets?

There are German and Russian DVDs available, though I don't know if they're English friendly. There are, however, fansubs kicking around the internet if necessary.

If anyone is at all interested, I'll post my "too see" lists from the 60s here. I'm sure that most of us have our own, but perhaps there may be some new material here. I hope that it helps.

1960
The Approach of Autumn (Mikio Naruse), Cruel Story of Youth (Nagisa Oshima), Devi (Satyajit Ray), The Emperor of the Mughals (K. Asif), The False Student (Yasuo Masumura), The Housemaid (Kim Ki-young), Macario (Roberto Gavaldón), Moderato catabile (Peter Brook), Mysterious Case of the Rygseck Murders (Matti Kassila), The Rise and Fall of Legs Diamond (Budd Boetticher), The Truth (Henri-Georges Clouzot)

1961
Bandits of Orgosolo (Vittorio De Sica), Chronicle of a Summer (Edgar Morin and Jean Rouch), A Difficult Life (Dino Risi), Guns of the Trees (Jonas Mekas), Hatari! (Howard Hawks), The Human Pyramid (Jean Rouch), The Long Absence (Henri Colpi), My Mother and Her Guest (Shin Sang-ok), Placido (Luis García Berlanga), Two Daughters (Satyajit Ray), Two Rode Together (John Ford), Vanina Vanini (Roberto Rossellini), A Wife Confesses (Yasuo Masumura)

1962
47 Samurai (Hiroshi Inagaki), Adieu Philippine (Jacques Rozier), The Easy Life (Dino Risi), Family Portrait (Valerio Zurlini), Gypsy (Mervyn LeRoy), The Mad Fox (Tomu Uchida), Midnight Meeting (Roger Leenhardt), A Monkey in Winter (Henri Verneuil)

1963
15 From Rome (Dino Rosi), About Something Different (Vera Chytilová), The Caretaker (Clive Donner), A Child Is Waiting (John Cassavetes), The Executioner (Luis García Berlanga), Flaming Creatures (Jack Smith), Gun Hawk (Edward Ludwig), How to Be Loved (Wojciech Has), Méditerranée (Jean-Daniel Pollet), Monsieur Gangster (Georges Lautner), Raven's End (Bo Widerberg), Tom Jones (Tony Richardson), The Virgin of Nuremberg (Antonio Margheritti), Who's Minding the Store? (Frank Tashlin)

1964
Assassination (Masahiro Shinoda), Before the Revolution (Bernardo Bertolucci), The Cool World (Shirley Clarke), Diamonds of the Night (Jan Nemec), The Enchanted Desna (Yuliya Solntseva), Father of a Soldier (Rezo Chkheidze), The Guns (Ruy Guerra), Lilith (Robert Rossen), That Man From Rio (Philippe de Broca), The Umbrellas of Cherbourg (Jacques Demy), Welcome, or No Trespassing (Elem Klimov)

1965
The Golden Thread (Ritwik Ghatak), I Am Twenty (Marlen Khutsiyev), I Knew Her Well (Antonio Pietrangeli), Mickey One (Arthur Penn), Not-Reconciled (Danièle Huillet and Jean-Marie Straub), Pered sudom istorii (Fridrikh Ermler), Quixote (Bruce Baillie), Rabočij poselok (Vladimir Vengerov), Redline 7000 (Howard Hawks), Ride in the Whirlwind (Monte Hellman), The Round-Up (Miklós Jancsó), Sandra of a Thousand Delights (Luchino Visconti), Tattooed Life (Seijun Suzuki), Three Rooms in Manhattan (Marcel Carné), Young Cassidy (Jack Cardiff), Yoyo (Pierre Étaix)

1966
7 Women (John Ford), La Caza (Carlos Saura), Faraon (Jerzy Kawalerowicz), Land of Fathers (Shaken Aimanov), The Laughing Man (Walter Heynowski and Gerhard Scheumann), Mademoiselle (Tony Richardson), Morgan (Karel Reisz), The Nun (Jacques Rivette), The Plague of the Zombies (John Gilling), Trans Europ Express (Alain Robbe-Grillet), The Trap (Sidney Hayers), Watch Out for the Automobile (Eldar Ryazanov), The Wrong Box (Bryan Forbes), Yesterday Girl (Alexander Kluge)

1967
China is Near (Marco Bellocchio), Countess from Hong Kong (Charles Chaplin), Departure (Jerzy Skolimowski), Django Kill (Giulio Questi), The Dragon Gate Inn (King Hu), Elvira Madigan (Bo Widerberg), I Even Met Happy Gypsies (Aleksandr Petrovic), Jaguar (Jean Rouch), Night of the Bride (Karel Kachyna), The Oldest Profession (Jean-Luc Godard, et al.), Portrait of Jason (Shirley Clarke), The St. Vallentine’s Day Massacre (Roger Corman), Teesri Kasam (Basu Bhattacharya), The Thief of Paris (Louis Malle)

1968
17th Parallel (Joris and Marceline Loridan Ivens), Artists Under the Big Top: Perplexed (Alexander Kluge), Big Time Gambling Boss (Kosaku Yamashita), The Body’s Way (Keung-ha Jo), Capriccio all'italiana (Mauro Bolognini, et al.), Death by Hanging (Nagisa Oshima), Heiligabend auf St. Pauli (Klaus Wildenhahn), High School (Frederick Wiseman), Hour of the Furnaces (O Getino and F Solanos), I Was Nineteen (Konrad Wolf), In the Year of the Pig (Emile de Antonio), J'taime, j'taime (Alain Resnais), The Legend of Lylah Clare (Robert Aldrich), The Man Who Lies (Alain Robbe-Grillet), Nanami: The Inferno of Lost Love (Sasumu Hani), Rachel Rachel (Paul Newman), Reconstruction (Lucian Pintilie), The Red Light Bandit (Rogério Sganzerla), Le Révélateur (Philippe Garrel), Separation (Jack Bond), Signs of Life (Werner Herzog), Succubus (Jess Franco), Summer In Narita (Ogawa Shinsuke), Tres tristes tigres (Raúl Ruiz), War and Peace (Sergei Bondarchuk), Yellow Submarine (George Dunning)

1969
Acts of the Apostles (Roberto Rossellini), Ådalen '31 (Bo Widerberg), L’amour fou (Jacques Rivette), Back and Forth (Michael Snow), The Boys of Paul Street (Zoltán Fábri), Cactus Flower (Gene Saks), The Cow (Dariush Mehrjui), Diaries, Notebooks and Sketches (Jonas Mekas), Don’t Worry (George Danelia), Eros Plus Massacre (Yoshishige Yoshida), The Fall (Peter Whitehead), Fuck (Andy Warhol), Funeral Fest, Burial Lunch (Matjaz Klopcic), A Gentle Woman (Robert Bresson), Go, Go Second Time Virgin (Koji Wakamatsu), Ice (Robert Kramer), Katzelmacher (Rainer Werner Fassbinder), Macunaíma (Joaquim Pedro de Andrade), Muhammad Ali: The Greatest (William Klein), The Night of Counting the Years (Shadi Abdel Salam), The Rain People (Francis Ford Coppola), The Reivers (Mark Rydell), The Secret of Santa Vittoria (Stanley Kramer), Shine, Shine, My Star (Aleksandr Mitta), A Time for Dying (Budd Boetticher), Tom Tom the Piper’s Son (Ken Jacobs), A Touch of Zen (King Hu), The Witness (Péter Bacsó), Yawar Mallku (Jorge Sanjinés)

Tonight I'll tackle Rachel, Rachel via Netflix (a favorite of Domino's if I remember correctly), and Assassin tomorrow on Hulu. I also pan to shuffle around my Netflix queue to put these on top.

matrixschmatrix wrote:Damn, I was looking for a good release of this at the beginning of the project- is youtube as good as it gets?

Swo's right. I saw it on youtube here a few months back. My knowledge of Russian is very rusty--going back to my last class in 1999--but it struck me as a fairly faithful dub.

I've found youtube to be a great resource for tracking down some obscure films. Here's a rather notoriously hard to find one that some of you might want to check out for the next 70s list.

Cold Bishop wrote:The original is available on French DVD as of last year and will probably end up in Second Run's catalog in the near future. It is, also, head and shoulders above the 1981 version, and stands as good a chance on my list as any other Skolimowski.

Just to make life even more complicated: that probably makes it a 2012 film, by imdb criteria!

My Skolimowski pick will almost certainly be Barrier. Go see it, folks, if you haven't already.

Particles in Space (Len Lye, 1966) – Rhythms (Re:Voir) – In many respects this is a condensation of the techniques Lye explored so magnificently in Free Radicals. The result is a film that’s extraordinarily simple yet extraordinarily complex, as fields of dirt / debris – the kind of thing you might expect to see on an extremely battered print of an ordinary film – pulse and sway in time to the music, by turns resembling swarms of atoms or moonlight rippling on water, ineffably alive.

Cold Bishop wrote:I'm curious if any of the Nipponophiles or Japanese-language speakers here can shed any light on the works of Eizo Sugawa and Hideo Suzuki? I've seen both named mentioned in passing as major filmmakers in various writings on Japanese film of this era, but I can't find anything substantial on either them or any of their films.

I doubt anyone cares, but as there's no info on this guy immediately available in the English speaking world, I may as well compile what I've found (mostly from loosely translated Brazilian sources, where his films were consistently imported in the 60s and where he still has something of a reputation).

He (like Suzuki) started as an assistant to Naruse, before graduation to his own directorial career in the late 50s. From what I can gather, he was considered something of a major director in the early 60s, but his reputation seemed to decline as he worked on more mainstream product. One word that constantly pops ups in regards to him is the word "nihilist", and it sounds like he was mostly distinguished by dark, brooding films. His career seems to revolve around what Brazillians called his "Beast" trilogy (who knows if its considered as such in Japan) - a trio of films, made in the 50s, 60s and 70s, revolving around murderous, antisocial Dostoyevskian-underground types. His first was 1959's Yajû shisubeshi/The Beast Must Die, with Tastuya Nakadai as the lone, youthful anti-hero who sets off a wave of terror and violence in urban Japan. Some accounts list it alongside Kisses, Cruel Story of Youth and Crazed Fruit as one of the crucial films that helped kick off what would become the New Wave. This was later remade as a film of some note and acclaim in 1980, perhaps most famous as the film that secured the late Yusaku Matsuda's cult reputation in Japan (and unlike its predecessor, this film is available on video). He revisited the same material in 1964's Kemonomichi/Beast Alley, a film that seems to relocate his eye further up the social ladder, elaborating on Black Test Car's conceit of the business elite as a criminal "overclass". Both ends of the social spectrum would meet in one of his last films Yajû shisubeshi: fukushû no mekanikku/The Beast Shall Die, a grim story of a terrorist organization that kidnaps the exec of a soda company.

His other films were equally focused on taboo subjects and casting a critical eye on Japanese society: 'Minagoroshi no uta' yori kenjû-yo saraba!/Get 'em All and Ai to honoho to/Challenge to Live (the only films of his that seemed to get any sort of American release) focused on subjects like suicide, euthanasia and the lingering trauma of WWII. His Aru Osaka no Onna/That Woman from Osaka/Ayako was about a female factory worker who revolts against the working and sexual conditions of her job. Bokutachi no Shippai/Our Failures, based off a novel by Tatsuzo Ishikawa (a fearless writer who reported on Japanese abuses in China during the war), is supposed to be a bitter dissection of married life circa 1962.

Yet for all this brooding and social criticism, the other half of his filmography seems to reveal a completely different side. In the early 60s he was sent by Toho to America for over a year to study Musicals, and the culmination of his study was Kimi mo shusse ga dekiru/You Can Succeed Too. Throughout the late 60s, he seemed to earn a living making romantic and workplace comedies, considerably lighter than his earlier films, but with much of the sly social commentary still apparent.

All this seemed to culminate in what was originally to be his last film, Nihonjin no heso/The Japanese Belly Button in 1977, a musical extravaganza produced by the Art Theatre Guild! It's also about the only film of his readily available. He briefly came back to filmmaking in the early 90s, and seem to finally get some of the recognition that eluded him in the last two decades, with River of Fireflies, a coming-of-age that seems to have been something of a critical and commercial success, and his time-travel romance film A Paucity of Flying Dreams is the only film of his with IMDb comments, both of which are effusive.

And that's it. That's the extent of what I can dig up on him. I sure as hell can't find any of these films (paging Eclipse or Second Run...)

Are any of his films available anywhere?