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colinr0380 wrote:Here's a typically low key scene from Les Amants du Pont Neuf to tide you over yojimbo!

Minimalist, indeed; makes Bela Tarr look almost Keystone Cops-esque, in comparison, col!

I remember charges of 'hubris' were levelled against him here on its cinema release which put me off investigating it.
But I think 'Mauvais Sang' seems to be a consensus good jumping-off point

As someone who has only seen the first three Carax and had kind of lost touch with him until seeing the Cannes reviews, I would definitely go for Boy Meets Girl for the first one, it has everything that made the others great and a truly lovely leading lady, along with a wonderful bit by Levant to Holiday In Cambodia.

Anything by Guru Dutt is worth having and you just have to live with the picture issues. You've never seen it any other way and maybe never will so just watch and enjoy. And the Yash Raj edition, as mentioned, is the one to get, with the songs subtitled and an excellent 3 part C4 Guru Dutt documentary as a bonus.

Bollywood remains the elephant in international cinema's room and the lack of heed it receives puts me in mind of the way a lot of so-called cinephiles disregard Silent cinema.

Digging through the internets, I found this summation of Carax's work, circa '94, from Jonathan Rosenmbaum. A decent primer for those wondering what makes him tick.

"The Problem with Poetry: Leos Carax" by Jonathan Rosenbaum

carax09 wrote:

Cold Bishop wrote:I think it's quite the opposite, actually. It's essentially half-romance, half-gangster film (a genre I'd really love to see Carax tackle head-on), all with sci-fi overtones. I don't understand why it didn't become as much a crossover hit as Diva or La Femme Nikita, other than the tendency of people to not like good things.

I completely agree! Mauvais Sang (and even The Moon In The Gutter) is so much greater, and yet those two have always gotten all the oxygen, when critics discuss Cinema du Look. Eh...whatever...I guess it should be of no surprise that critics aren't exempt from the same tendency.

I played all four titles regularly when I ran a repertory cinema, and Diva was miles ahead of the rest in terms of popularity. In fact, when box office takings plunged during the early 1990s recession it was one of our few guaranteed cash cows.

That said, the Moon in the Gutter/Roselyne and the Lions double bills did well enough to justify repeat bookings - I suspect the Diva/Betty Blue combo was so successful that it generated a fair bit of curiosity.

I don't remember how well Carax performed, but we certainly did Boy Meets Girl/Mauvais Sang double bills on quite a few occasions, especially when Les Amants du Pont-Neuf opened - and thereafter we'd double-bill that with one of the earlier titles.

Holy Motors coming to Blu-ray & DVD in January from Artificial Eye. I've had the AE Carax boxset since forever - really need to pull it out of the Kevyip in anticipation of this.

Man I wish Criterion or another Label would pick these up stateside.

stroszeck wrote:Man I wish Criterion or another Label would pick these up stateside.

They're all available in passable releases here.

prokosch wrote:

colinr0380 wrote:Just wait until you get to this!

I don't say this terribly liberally, but that scene tops the charts for me in terms of single scenes in cinema that irrevocably changed me forever. I don't exaggerate when I say I went fully slack-jawed the first, second and third times that I saw it.

Pretty close to that response first time I saw it as well. Haven't been able to see it big since then.

Zot! wrote:

stroszeck wrote:Man I wish Criterion or another Label would pick these up stateside.

They're all available in passable releases here.

They're all out of print as far as I can tell, and didn't exactly come packed with extras.

stroszeck wrote:

Zot! wrote:

stroszeck wrote:Man I wish Criterion or another Label would pick these up stateside.

They're all available in passable releases here.

They're all out of print as far as I can tell, and didn't exactly come packed with extras.

Oh sorry, I thought they were still available. I think all the transfers were PAL to NTSC anyways and pretty weak, though certainly not the brutal fate that the beautiful Beineix films have been dealt.

Does anyone know if the Pola X disc in this rather silly-looking "Catherine Deneuve Collection" has all the extras from the OOP Fox Lorber release, or is it just a barebones disc of the film?

I'll say this again: what we really need is the television version of Pola X, titled more comprehensibly Pierre ou les ambiguïtés. It's much longer than the theatrical version, and Carax has said that he prefers it. But it only showed a few times on Arte in 2001 and has since almost disappeared. I believe the Cinémathèque Française managed to screen it during a Carax retro about ten years ago.

There was a flurry of interest in Carax around the time of Pola X--Miramax finally dumped Les amants du pont-neuf into a few theaters after holding on to it for the better part of a decade, and prints of Boy Meets Girl and Mauvais sang circulated a bit. I still remember watching the latter, jaw agape, from the balcony in a near-empty Brattle Theater in Cambridge. (They do have a balcony, right? I want to make sure I'm not mixing up two memories.)

Speaking of which--is it too much to expect FIAF to at least tell us what format these films are being shown from?

A. Oh yeah, the Brattle still has the balcony.

B. Speaking of Boston, Carax's retrospective is coming here in late February - Harvard Film Archive - and so is Carax, with it.

...

jonah.77 wrote:is it too much to expect FIAF to at least tell us what format these films are being shown from?

A FIAF rep confirmed all 35mm prints.

Restorations of Boy Meets Girl and Mauvais Sang were shown at the Cannes Market this week. Hopefully it doesn't take too long for Blu-Ray releases to trickle out.

Man, that would be something - just saw both films on the big screen (from old battered prints), I'm sure those restorations will look amazing. My all-time dream release (well, top five anyway) however would be a Blu-ray of Pola X with both cuts, unfortunately it's probably also one of the most unlikely ones to happen...

Does anyone have that Deneuve box with Pola X? I'm still wondering if it has the Depardieu commentary, can't find that information anywhere

Would Artificial Eye Blu them?

Seems like just a matter of time before the boards will be exclusively devoted to The Smurfs.

Mathew2468 wrote:Would Artificial Eye Blu them?

They no longer have the rights. Of course, that doesn't mean they can't get them again.

With the success of Holy Motors I'm not surprised by this at all, definitely see a box set of his films coming.

repeat wrote:Does anyone have that Deneuve box with Pola X? I'm still wondering if it has the Depardieu commentary, can't find that information anywhere

The Depardieu commentary is really terrible. You aren't missing anything: long, long silences that are only slightly less informative than the talking bits.

zedz wrote:

repeat wrote:Does anyone have that Deneuve box with Pola X? I'm still wondering if it has the Depardieu commentary, can't find that information anywhere

The Depardieu commentary is really terrible. You aren't missing anything: long, long silences that are only slightly less informative than the talking bits.

Yeah, I'm not looking for it so much as an informative commentary on the movie as more out of a biographical interest in the man - otherwise that would be enough to turn me off as there's nothing more horrible than a commentary with indefinite long pauses. Thought the Deneuve box might've been worth it for the Desplechin film and this, but with no evidence to the contrary I'm guessing the box is stripped of the extras