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zedz wrote:Given how a couple of you love / hate the two halves of Tropical Malady, it will be interesting to hear your reactions to Uncle Boonmee, where those two sides of his filmmaking are sort of fused. (And that would have been my recommendation for a starting point if it were available.) Also, if it needs to be said, these films should be seen on the big screen if at all possible, and Uncle Boonmee will probably provide your best opportunity to do so over the next several months.

And winning the Palme might actually mean I can drag someone to the theater with me!

A few recent articles have shed light on the development of Apichatpong's "dream" project. Mark Slutsky, in his TIFF report for this week's edition of the Montreal Mirror, gives us a brief synopsis:

At a "Mavericks" Q&A session with Weerasethakul [...] later in the week, the director revealed that his dream project, which he's trying to get together, is a science-fiction film (to be shot in Canada) with Jane Fonda and several other aging ladies of sci-fi in pursuit of a "mystical beast" in a snowy landscape where the Starship Enterprise lies in ruins.

Apichatpong speaks briefly about the project (and its funding) in an article at The Star:

We plan to make a movie, but we cannot raise enough funds and there has to be the Starship Enterprise in the middle of a snowstorm erupting. It's like a survey of these women going to this landscape and there are periodic snowstorms and monsters that are the creation of these people. It's very sad, but it's very funny at the same time. It would be a really big budget for me.

Joe has a new short, Cactus River (Khong Lang Nam), available on the Walker Art Center's website. They commissioned the work.

Shorts films Vampire and M Hotel are available to view online until April 9th.

Apichatpong will be present for a discussion at the Feb. 1 screening of Cemetery of Splendour at the Gene Siskel Film Center in Chicago.

Edit: Information on Apichatpong's appearance from the Siskel Film Center's website

FWIW, that film makes its official theatrical premiere in March of next year - not sure what the distribution will be like in Chicago though, but definitely go to that preview screening if you can. Especially nice since Weerasethakul got his MFA at the Art Institute of Chicago - when his last film premiered at the NYFF, he actually brought one of his professors as a guest.

It's getting a week long run at the Siskel Center along with Mekong Hotel at the end of January.

Awesome! Glad they managed to book a full week, Strand hasn't even listed that yet.

Ooh, I'll take a day trip up to catch it if I can. Thanks for the head's up.

I have already seen Cemetery of Splendor thanks to a local film festival, and quite enjoyed it, as I do all of Apichatpong's films. It's more along the lines of Syndromes and a Century and Blissfully Yours than it is Tropical Malady or Uncle Boonmee. Really, I prefer the latter pair of films to the former, but like I said, I'm a big fan of all of his movies, so that's hardly an insult.

Mysterious Object at Noon has been released on the Edition Filmmuseum label/imprint as a result of the an Austrian Film Museum and The Film Foundation joint restoration effort ("Restored in 2013 by the World Cinema Foundation and the Austrian Film Museum. Restoration works carried out at the Austrian Film Museum, LISTO laboratory in Vienna, Technicolor Ltd in Bangkok, and Cineteca di Bologna/L’Immagine Ritrovata laboratory, in close collaboration with Aphicatpong Weerasethakul")

To correspond with their 3/4 premiere date of Cemetery of Splendor, the IFC Center in Manhattan is doing an Apichatpong retrospective beginning on 2/29. Said retro includes 35mm prints of Tropical Malady, Syndromes and a Century, and Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives. (!)

All night and following morning program of Apichatpong Weerasethakul's films at the Tate Modern April 9th-10th.

Does anyone know if Mekong Hotel is included on the UK Blu-ray?

Is Tropical Malady ever coming out on Blu Ray?

Quarantine ruminations about his plum tree. https://www.indiewire.com/2020/04/apich ... 202222960/

New Yorker feature profile: “The Metaphysical World of Apichatpong Weerasethakul’s Movies”

I've never seen a Noh theatre play live (traditional Japanese theatre, I assume Thailand might have something similar) but it's what Uncle Boonmee reminds me of. I didn't find the connection between the two (or between theatre and Weerasethakul in general) online, but found this instead:

http://www.16-9.dk/2019/05/theatrical-transcendence/

this article will explore the relationship between traditional Japanese theatre and the cinema. Focusing on two films by director Kenji Mizoguchi, Ugetsu Monogatari (1953), and Uwasa no Onna (1954), the article will highlight the methods that the director uses to inform his audience, both emotionally and spiritually.

DarkImbecile wrote: Thu Jan 13, 2022 7:12 am New Yorker feature profile: “The Metaphysical World of Apichatpong Weerasethakul’s Movies”

Slightly amusing to read that Memoria "opened in New York on December 26th," since Neon's brilliant release strategy means it already closed before this article came out. And anyone reading in another city will have no luck figuring out when it'll come there, since Neon's own website still has it down as "Coming Soon" with zero info on future playdates. Meanwhile it opens in a dozen-odd UK cities this weekend.

Also, this...

When “Mysterious Object at Noon” hit the festival circuit, many seasoned programmers didn’t know that there was even such a thing as a Thai art movie, let alone one as idiosyncratic and artful as Weerasethakul’s. This may be due partly to the fact that most Thai films before then had been shot on 16-mm. color-reversal stock, with no original negative to print from. (If you can’t make a print, you can’t get your movie to the West, which remains the superpower when it comes to distribution.)

...is a pretty inadequate explanation, since Mysterious Object at Noon was itself shot on 16mm reversal stock, and in any case the Thai film industry switched to 35mm in the '70s. Plus it's perfectly possible to make prints from reversal stock, though given the way the industry operated during that period it wouldn't surprise me if it was common to just project an edited camera master.

Cinemateket in Copenhagen had announced screenings of Blissfully Yours and Tropical Malady on 35mm as part of their AW retrospective this month, but they have now been cancelled as apparently AW has requested a moratorium on those two films until 4k restorations are released next year.

Bad luck timing for you - those films played in 35mm prints in the LA AW retrospective just last month.

But GREAT news re the 4K restorations!

yoshimori wrote: Tue Jun 07, 2022 10:14 pm Bad luck timing for you - those films played in 35mm prints in the LA AW retrospective just last month.

But GREAT news re the 4K restorations!

Only Tropical Malady was in 35. Blissfully Yours was a DCP

Oops. My bad. Thanks. Saw the TM print. Shouldn't've assumed re the BY.

beamish14 wrote: Tue Jun 07, 2022 10:15 pm

yoshimori wrote: Tue Jun 07, 2022 10:14 pm Bad luck timing for you - those films played in 35mm prints in the LA AW retrospective just last month.

But GREAT news re the 4K restorations!

Only Tropical Malady was in 35. Blissfully Yours was a DCP

How did the DCP look? The IFC Center had an Apichatpong retro back in December that was kind of a mess. Everything was advertised as DCP, but, from the two I saw, Blissfully Yours was poor quality and confirmed to be just a digital file; Syndromes and a Century, meanwhile, was claimed to be an actual DCP but was standard-def and horribly interlaced.

FWIW, Lincoln Center is holding a complete retrospective that began yesterday (Thu., May 4), and a lot of his films are in 35mm, including Syndromes and a Century and Blissfully Yours (which they had to import from Australia - it looks GREAT). Tropical Malady is also in 35mm, but I caught it in 35mm at Metrograph earlier this winter, so perhaps that moratorium is no longer in effect? They did confirm that all of his films are currently being restored, and Apichatpong Weerasethakul is here this week to give Q&A's and intros. (He's even attending quite a few of the carte blanche screenings where he actually picked out films he's yet to see.)