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DVD Savant on Au bonheur des dames (Facets - Arte)

Adam Grikepelis wrote:I think I may have to give it a try regardless. It's been a while since I've enjoyed a Japanese film by a director I've not seen anything by.

????

So apparently Facets is releasing The Saragossa Manuscript in September...

For those who have seen it, what's the correct AR? The old image disc appears to have been 2.00:1 while the Facets disc, according to the link, is 1.78:1.

It's supposed to be 2.35, I believe

I think you can order it directly from PolArt right now, or so they said in an e-mail they sent me a few weeks ago. I'd put my money on the Bongo release, though. If nothing else, it's much cheaper.

Looks like Facets has Syberberg's Karl May and Stanojevic's Diary of a Suicide coming out next week.

Typically deep DVDTalk review of Diary of a Suicide makes it sound like a typical Facets job (maybe; I don't understand how a transfer can be "anamorphic," "full frame," and "slightly wider than old tube televisions" all at the same time), which is a shame, because the film had always sounded intriguing. Nice to see Facets is remaining loyal to the good old graph-paper menu design, at least. Makes me nostalgic for ninth-grade geometry.

But there's an NTSC German DVD of Karl May, so if Facets has ported that, perhaps it'll be watchable?

Perkins Cobb wrote:(maybe; I don't understand how a transfer can be "anamorphic," "full frame," and "slightly wider than old tube televisions" all at the same time)

I've come across anamorphic 4:3, though thankfully rarely - DVD producers use it to force widescreen TV owners to frame the picture correctly, but it comes at the expense of a loss of resolution (because the underlying full-frame picture consists of a squished 4:3 image with black bars at the sides).

That said, I've no idea whether this is the case here, and suspect it may not be.

Perkins Cobb wrote:Looks like Facets has Syberberg's Karl May and Stanojevic's Diary of a Suicide coming out next week.

Syberberg's Ludwig is also supposed to be out (according to a print ad). Any reports on disc quality of either will be greatly appreciated.

Has anyone ever seen Diary of a Suicide? Is the film itself any good?

The Syberberg transfers will probably come from Syberberg himself, who is selling his own discs in Germany. The DVD of Hitler: A Film From Germany was a bit disappointing, at least compared to the superior color on the old BFI VHS. But I get the impression he's working a one-man operation with the expected budget constraints.

jsteffe wrote:Has anyone ever seen Diary of a Suicide? Is the film itself any good?

The Syberberg transfers will probably come from Syberberg himself, who is selling his own discs in Germany. The DVD of Hitler: A Film From Germany was a bit disappointing, at least compared to the superior color on the old BFI VHS. But I get the impression he's working a one-man operation with the expected budget constraints.

It's at the top of my netflix queue, so hopefully I can comment soon. When I added it, however, I didn't realize it was a Facets release. D'oh!!!!

After watching it, I think that Diary of a Suicide is one of Facets' best releases in terms of presentation. (I've seen about ten Facets dvds and they were all shit transfers, save for Daisies, which is still far inferior to SecondRun's release.) For starters, Diary has fairly little dialogue, so the subtitlist can actually keep up. Aside from one sentence late in the film, I think the subs actually translate all the dialogue in this movie (I'd estimate that the Facets releases I've seen before only get 60-70%, tops). Better yet, the subs are small, white, in an attractive font, and removable.

The film is a mixture of b&w, (very little) color, and lots of color-tinting. The film depicts stories within stories, so each tint is supposed to reflect a different narrative level, although this becomes deliberately confusing at times. Anyway, the point is that the tinting is strong and the image is clear, none of the washed-out colors of other Facets VHS-to-dvd or PAL-to-NTSC transfers. The sparse amount of color photography is pretty vibrant. There's a bit of artifacting on the print (a one-frame doozy around the 11-minute mark), but for the most part it's nothing worse than Criterion's early releases, and except for the instance mentioned earlier, wasn't obtrusive.

As for the film itself, I'm not sure I followed everything, so I won't comment until I've had the chance to watch it again, but in terms of presentation, nobody should be put off b/c it's a Facets release.

A propos of nothing, I was going to suggest co-teaching a philosophy and film course with the woman who writes all of the liner notes/box description for Facets, when we both taught at a Chicago area community college. Since I got into a Ph.D. program, it never happened. She was a lovely lady, but under the false impression that Man of Aran is better than Louisiana Story.

Michael Kerpan wrote:????

it reads weird to me too, looking back at it. but it's true

what I meant was I just haven't discovered any interesting films by Japanese filmmakers I'm not already familiar with, probably since Miike's AUDITION.

but now that I write this, I'm reminded of 9 SOULS, which I first saw last year, so it's not true after all... That still makes for quite a long drought, considering there was a point maybe 10 years ago when it seemed to me impossible that there were any bad or boring Japanese films out there.
Things change I guess.

Adam Grikepelis wrote:

Michael Kerpan wrote:????

it reads weird to me too, looking back at it. but it's true

what I meant was I just haven't discovered any interesting films by Japanese filmmakers I'm not already familiar with, probably since Miike's AUDITION.

but now that I write this, I'm reminded of 9 SOULS, which I first saw last year, so it's not true after all... That still makes for quite a long drought, considering there was a point maybe 10 years ago when it seemed to me impossible that there were any bad or boring Japanese films out there.
Things change I guess.

Given the films you seem to like (Audition and 9 Souls), I suspect that what YOU consider an interesting Japanese film and what I consider an interesting Japanese film have almost no intersection. I'm afraid I can provide no guidance whatsoever on recent developments in extreme cinema in Japan. ;-}

FWIW, there have been plenty of very fine relatively low-key films made by younger directors during the past decade.

It's actually just a coincidence that both those films fall near each other, and they're about as "extreme" as my tastes run in regard to Japanese cinema (with a few exceptions).

I definitely prefer more subtle cinema, though I should say I've always found films by Akira Kurosawa, Ozu and their ilk a little underwhelming. I understand why people love them so, I just don't feel the same way.
I guess I like my cinema a little less old school, for lack of a better word. but I don't restrict myself to any one area, and will try anything at least once. Since studying film though, my tastes do seem to have veered toward more genre-oriented cinema, and Kiyoshi Kurosawa & Shinya Tsukamoto are probably my favourite Japanese directors right now. Though I don't actually think this gives a clear indication of where my interests lie in general, considering my two favourite directors are Tsai Ming-Liang & Claire Denis ...

wasn't actually farming for suggestions, but would be happy to hear any if you care to make them, though clearly this is heading away from strictly Facets releases. cheers

Savant on Private Century

I see that Facets has just released a collection of pinscreen animation by Alexeieff and Parker. This is welcome news indeed.

I have a strong suspicion that it's a PAL-to-NTSC conversion of this French edition.

MichaelB wrote:I have a strong suspicion that it's a PAL-to-NTSC conversion of this French edition.

You know, I'll bet you're right--apart from the main image, most of the cover design is the same.

Do they have any new or upcoming releases?

I've just made the very pleasant discovery that there's a good set of English subtitles available online for both Pearls of the Deep and Ivan Passer's A Boring Afternoon.

Which means that the horrendous Facets release of the former is completely redundant, as you can simply import the Czech Filmexport edition (which includes the latter as an extra), and you'll end up with a better picture and better subtitles for just the merest smidgen of extra effort.

Hopefully the person who uploaded those subtitles has plans to do the same for Juraj Herz' The Junk Shop, the seventh short made for the Pearls of the Deep project, and which is also included on the DVD.

Is there any reason why Tarr's The Werckmeister Harmonies is out of print, but not his other films? Is it being rereleased? Is this a fluke? Is someone else picking it up (CC release would be a dream come true for me)?

I am assuming that Facets just got backordered?

aox wrote:Is there any reason why Tarr's The Werckmeister Harmonies is out of print, but not his other films? Is it being rereleased? Is this a fluke? Is someone else picking it up (CC release would be a dream come true for me)?

What's wrong with the Artificial Eye version?

MichaelB wrote:

aox wrote:Is there any reason why Tarr's The Werckmeister Harmonies is out of print, but not his other films? Is it being rereleased? Is this a fluke? Is someone else picking it up (CC release would be a dream come true for me)?

What's wrong with the Artificial Eye version?

Nothing, and according to the screen shots, it is preferable. I am just inquiring.