Third Window Films

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dwk
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Re: Third Window Films

#251 Post by dwk » Tue Apr 09, 2019 1:17 am

The horror streaming site Shudder picked up the US, Australian and New Zealand rights to One Cut of the Dead. So TWF's Blu is going to be the only English friendly release and the film has very little chance of breaking out in the US.

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Michael Kerpan
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Re: Third Window Films

#252 Post by Michael Kerpan » Tue Apr 09, 2019 10:17 am

dwk wrote:
Tue Apr 09, 2019 1:17 am
The horror streaming site Shudder picked up the US, Australian and New Zealand rights to One Cut of the Dead. So TWF's Blu is going to be the only English friendly release and the film has very little chance of breaking out in the US.
What a revolting development.

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L.A.
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Re: Third Window Films

#253 Post by L.A. » Fri Nov 22, 2019 11:58 am

The Legend of the Stardust Brothers and Pink Films Vol 1 & 2 (including Inflatable Sex Doll of the Wastelands and Gushing Prayer) coming in 2020, the former in February and the latter in March.

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colinr0380
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Re: Third Window Films

#254 Post by colinr0380 » Sun Jan 19, 2020 5:15 am

According to the latest edition of Neo Magazine, Third Window is bringing Shinya Tsukamoto's Killing to Blu-ray in April, and that the shorts Haze (from 2005) and The Adventures of the Electric Rod Boy (1987) will also be on there.

They also note that Volume 3 & 4 of the Pink Films Collection will be out in May. Here's their write up of the films in Volumes 1 &2, out in mid-March:
Neo Magazine wrote:Atsushi Yamatoya's Inflatable Sex Doll of the Wastelands (1967) concerns a hitman Sho (Yuicihi Minato) hired to rescue a kidnapped woman Sae (Noriko Tatsumi), but the case leads him to the gangster (Shohei Yamamoto) who killed Sho's girlfriend five years earlier. Masao Adachi's Gushing Prayer, from 1971, uses the backdrop of the failed student protests of the '60s to tell the story of a disillusioned teenager, Yasuko (Aki Sasaki), searching for meaning in life through sex. Long before his ballroom dancing hit Shall We Dance? Masayuki Suo started his career with Abnormal Family (from 1984), which plays like a subversion of an Ozu drama. Karuo Kaze plays Yuriki, a newlywed who finds herself the object of her in-law's desires. Finally, Kan Mukai's Blue Film Woman (from 1969) sees a young woman using her body to exact vengeance on the man who destroyed her family.
By the way, the director Atsushi Yamatoya also directed Trapped In Lust, which was the 1973 Roman Porno remake of Branded To Kill that was included as an extra feature on the Arrow set.

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dda1996a
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Re: Third Window Films

#255 Post by dda1996a » Sun Jan 19, 2020 12:21 pm

Trapped in Lust unfortunately was awful so I'm not sure if that's an endorsement

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feihong
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Re: Third Window Films

#256 Post by feihong » Sun Jan 19, 2020 4:31 pm

I'm afraid Inflatable Sex Doll of the Wastelands is not really much better than Trapped in Lust.

Yamatoya supposedly wrote the 2nd act of Branded to Kill, I believe, and watching these subsequent Yamatoya–directed movies, they all seem to play like a less–visually–inspired remake of that 2nd act of Branded to Kill.

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Adam X
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Re: Third Window Films

#257 Post by Adam X » Sun Jan 26, 2020 3:31 am

colinr0380 wrote:
Sun Jan 19, 2020 5:15 am
Third Window is bringing Shinya Tsukamoto's Killing to Blu-ray in April, and that the shorts Haze (from 2005) and The Adventures of the Electric Rod Boy (1987) will also be on there.
Given that Electric Rod Boy was included on their Tetsuo release, it seems an odd addition. Hopefully that was meant to read The Phantom of Regular Size? TWF mentioned Haze as forthcoming on social media recently when revealing more Tsukamoto was forthcoming in 2020. Hopefully this isn't all being jammed into a single release...?

While I've not seen either of the pink films on the above double-bill, they've also mentioned films 3 through 5 are Masayuki Suo's Abnormal Family, Kan Mukai's Blue Film Woman & Mamoru Watanabe's Women Hell Song. I'm personally hoping to find some or all of these working on the same level as the films Mondo Macabro released years back, as the handfull of Nikkatsu films I ventured to check out from Synapse have generally been underwhelming, focussing more on nudity & sex than surrealism & perversity.

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Adam X
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Re: Third Window Films

#258 Post by Adam X » Sat Feb 01, 2020 1:16 am

So it seems The Adventure of Denchu-Kozo (Electric Rod Boy) is indeed included, it's just a "newly remastered" version.
Announced as coming 27th April, shortly before Arrow decided to remind TWF they have bigger boots with their US boxset announcement.

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swo17
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Re: Third Window Films

#259 Post by swo17 » Sat Feb 01, 2020 1:22 am

I'm sure the Arrow US release is a friendly collaboration using materials from Third Window, since they have a relationship in the UK and Arrow have a distribution arm here. I wonder if a similar Takeshi Kitano or Sion Sono set might eventually follow

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Adam X
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Re: Third Window Films

#260 Post by Adam X » Sat Feb 01, 2020 7:25 am

Oh, I'm fully aware of that, it just feels a bit like they're stepping on their little cousin's toes, given the majority of those titles are only included, no doubt, due to Adam Torel's years of hard work, and they're releasing it at the same time as TWF's latest Tsukamoto release - along with Arrow's tendency to not publicise their collaboration with other (often smaller) labels on their releases, it doesn't feel quite as friendly as I'd like to believe, though I guess that's more down to their recent tendency of holding their cards close to their chest, Criterion-style.

Of course, from what I've seen of the number of people complaining online about Arrow only releasing it in the US, plenty of people aren't even aware of them, sadly.

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tenia
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Re: Third Window Films

#261 Post by tenia » Sat Feb 01, 2020 9:52 am

Adam Grikepelis wrote:
Sat Feb 01, 2020 7:25 am
along with Arrow's tendency to not publicise their collaboration with other (often smaller) labels on their releases,
Could you elaborate on this ? Pretty much no label publicise their collaboration with other labels, except in their on-disc or booklet credits, so I'm unsure what you're refering to.

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MichaelB
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Re: Third Window Films

#262 Post by MichaelB » Sat Feb 01, 2020 10:07 am

Yes, I’d be curious to know what Adam’s referring to as well.

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Adam X
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Re: Third Window Films

#263 Post by Adam X » Sun Feb 02, 2020 12:54 am

I guess when I say "publicise" I don't mean in a press release or sales sheet, but rather in online interaction with people on social media, forums etc (ie 'to make public'). One example that I had in mind was the release of The Bloodstained Butterfly, where Camera Obscura were quite open about their collaboration with Arrow, yet Arrow when asked didn't respond. Another example might be said to be Arrow's edition of Nightbreed, where no answer was received about the source of the masters (even though the materials Scream Factory worked with were the likely source). I probably shouldn't have used the word "tendency" as it suggests this approach to be more commonplace than it is. I'm not necessarily singling Arrow out for their actions (they were just the subject of these two particular releases), but it's rather just a common trend with home video labels, it woud seem, that the more popular/successful they become, the less open about their dealings they tend to be. Whether the reason for this is due to increase of staff, or reluctance to engage with reactionary 'fans', or any number of other reasons, this obviously varies from company to company.

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tenia
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Re: Third Window Films

#264 Post by tenia » Sun Feb 02, 2020 6:27 am

Camera Obscura are rather the exception than the rule in the market though. Only a handful of labels are explictly saying this kind of things. Especially, many labels are buying extra features originally made for other labels, and again, you won't find any details about these except in the credits. It's just part of the business, I guess, and while some are happy spending time explaining how their work is structured, a lot just don't.

As for Nightbreed, considering Arrow released a technically inferior version after Shout ones, I suppose they simply didnt want to spend time on this.

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MichaelB
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Re: Third Window Films

#265 Post by MichaelB » Sun Feb 02, 2020 6:45 am

The problem with a phrase like "Arrow when asked didn't respond" is that it raises more questions than it answers. Where, how, and to whom was the question posed? If it was somewhere like the Arrow FB groups, there's every chance that it simply wasn't spotted.

I'm personally very happy to discuss the various sources feeding my own projects and draw attention to collaborations - for instance, I stressed on more than one occasion that Arbelos did more of the heavy lifting on The Last Movie than Powerhouse, and I also defended the prominent credit for Nicolas Winding Refn on Night Tide (a film made a decade before he was even born, as people objecting to it pointed out), as without his input the restoration simply wouldn't have been possible.

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colinr0380
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Re: Third Window Films

#266 Post by colinr0380 » Sun Feb 02, 2020 7:24 am

This is pure conjecture on my part but if we want to quibble it appears that the upcoming Pink Film releases are a project that have already been worked on by Rapid Eye Movies, a German boutique label. And they have five volumes planned. So that could perhaps be argued to be a 'port project' itself (or was being worked on simultaneously?). I hate to use the 'denizens of this forum' argument, but there probably is still an argument to be made about bringing out releases in specific territories (especially if there is a language difference between them so you can localise things) just so that they appear in shops and play on specific region locked players, despite online sales being international and most of us here at least being aware of multi-region players, if not owning a couple. It is important to give credit where credit is due (though as mentioned that may be done in the fine print anyway), but I also presume that the specific label putting out a disc in a territory will be the ones taking the financial risk in releasing it in that territory, so are most probably understandably within their right to want their own branding and label to appear most prominently on the product.

I also presume that 'collaborations' spread that kind of risk out a bit too between labels - I mean that I could easily imagine a situation where some of these Pink Films might not make it through the BBFC unscathed or even be outright rejected (especially in a climate where the portrayal of sexual material is under particular scrutiny), so not having to produce a project entirely from scratch and then lose all that hard work completely compared to working with another label who have already produced a release in their own territory and already have materials available might make sense, or be the difference between a release of the films in the UK being viable at all. Or maybe not, since I am completely speculating here without any evidence as to how this project came about. And if this discussion teaches us anything, it is that people love to speculate!
Adam Grikepelis wrote:
Sun Jan 26, 2020 3:31 am
While I've not seen either of the pink films on the above double-bill, they've also mentioned films 3 through 5 are Masayuki Suo's Abnormal Family, Kan Mukai's Blue Film Woman & Mamoru Watanabe's Women Hell Song. I'm personally hoping to find some or all of these working on the same level as the films Mondo Macabro released years back, as the handfull of Nikkatsu films I ventured to check out from Synapse have generally been underwhelming, focusing more on nudity & sex than surrealism & perversity.
I think out of these first two volumes that I am most excited to get a chance to see Abnormal Family, as that was a film briefly mentioned by Nagisha Oshima in his "100 Years of Japanese Cinema" documentary made in 1995 for the BFI (He was really championing Masayuki Suo just the year before Shall We Dance? hit it big)

By the way, if you can I would highly recommend tracking down Nurse Diary: Beast Afternoon from the US Synapse releases of Nikkatsu Roman Porno films. That film is the high point for me out of the releases so far that keeps inspiring me to check out the other films, and I kind of want some enterprising label to find a way of upgrading that DVD edition up to Blu-ray! (That film and the stunning and disturbing in equal measure Angel Guts films that Artsmagic put out, but those are long out of print unfortunately, and would probably never be releasable in the UK due to their content. Which is a shame as Angel Guts: Nami in particular takes an amazing twist into being a delirious Argento-style horror film in its final stages!)
Last edited by colinr0380 on Sun Feb 02, 2020 8:37 am, edited 1 time in total.

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MichaelB
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Re: Third Window Films

#267 Post by MichaelB » Sun Feb 02, 2020 8:15 am

colinr0380 wrote:
Sun Feb 02, 2020 7:24 am
It is important to give credit where credit is due (though as mentioned that may be done in the fine print anyway)
This will most likely be a contractual requirement. I know that both Arrow and Powerhouse have licensed extras that I produced for them to other labels, and that's absolutely fine with me: the sources will be credited somewhere in the package and of course my own personal credits (plus the copyright notice to Arrow/Powerhouse/whoever) will remain on the pieces themselves.
but I also presume that the specific label putting out a disc in a territory will be the ones taking the financial risk in releasing it in that territory, so are most probably understandably within their right to want their own branding and label to appear most prominently on the product.
Oh, of course - and one of the best examples of such cross-label collaboration comes with the Arrow/Flicker Alley film noir releases, whose discs are literally identical on the machine-readable side, but they've been authored to serve up the Arrow or Flicker Alley ident/menus depending on whether the player is locked to Region A or B. I rather like that approach, not least because it allows the labels to split the authoring costs. (See also the fact that the transfers of Jacques Rivette's Out One are literally the same encodes - as in the .m2ts files being ported directly across from one label to the other - when dealing with material of such gargantuan length, why reinvent the wheel?). Although in all cases the branding on the sleeves and disc artwork will favour the home label, which is exactly what you'd expect.)

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colinr0380
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Re: Third Window Films

#268 Post by colinr0380 » Sun Feb 02, 2020 9:33 am

Also from the look of the "Solid Metal Nightmares" Arrow boxset coming out in the US on Twitter it is going to encompass almost all of the Tsukamoto films that Third Window has put out over the years in the UK (Tokyo Fist, the two Tetsuo films, Bullet Ballet, Kotoko and A Snake of June) into one boxset, not just be a simpler re-branding of this Killing/Haze/Adventures of Denchu-Kozo set with Arrow artwork. So it seems like something a bit different for that territory.

Although that Arrow set does also feature Vital which has not been released on Blu-ray in the UK as yet (another old "Tartan Asia Extreme" label rescue and Blu-ray upgrade) and whilst Third Window put out Fires On The Plain in the UK it is not in this set, so there is some variation there. The addition of Vital might actually tip me into getting the Arrow set, but I might have to see how the extra features stack up too!

(This all leaves Tsukamoto's more commercial/less celebrated and 'auteur' seeming works Gemini (released in the US on DVD by Image Entertainment), Tetsuo: The Bullet Man (out in the US on DVD from IFC), Nightmare Detective and its sequel (out in the US on DVD from Dimension Films) and Hiruko The Goblin (previously released in the US by Artsmagic) to remain rather obscure in the West though)

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colinr0380
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Re: Third Window Films

#269 Post by colinr0380 » Mon Feb 03, 2020 4:29 am

swo17 wrote:
Sat Feb 01, 2020 1:22 am
I'm sure the Arrow US release is a friendly collaboration using materials from Third Window, since they have a relationship in the UK and Arrow have a distribution arm here. I wonder if a similar Takeshi Kitano or Sion Sono set might eventually follow
The "800 Films of Takashi Miike Volume 1: 1996-1997" boxset retailing for $7,999! :D

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Re: Third Window Films

#270 Post by M Sanderson » Tue Feb 04, 2020 8:17 pm

tenia wrote:
Sun Feb 02, 2020 6:27 am
Camera Obscura are rather the exception than the rule in the market though. Only a handful of labels are explictly saying this kind of things. Especially, many labels are buying extra features originally made for other labels, and again, you won't find any details about these except in the credits. It's just part of the business, I guess, and while some are happy spending time explaining how their work is structured, a lot just don't.

As for Nightbreed, considering Arrow released a technically inferior version after Shout ones, I suppose they simply didnt want to spend time on this.
Did Shout offer a better transfer of the theatrical cut? Or something.

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tenia
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Re: Third Window Films

#271 Post by tenia » Wed Feb 05, 2020 3:04 am

That's exactly it.

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Re: Third Window Films

#272 Post by M Sanderson » Sun Feb 09, 2020 7:32 am

Ha, to me that’s the only cut worth watching.

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colinr0380
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Re: Third Window Films

#273 Post by colinr0380 » Wed May 20, 2020 5:56 pm

Third Window tweeted this out - the cast and crew of One Cut of the Dead have made a socially distanced short film sequel in lockdown with One Cut of the Dead Mission: Remote.

Calvin
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Re: Third Window Films

#274 Post by Calvin » Sun Jun 28, 2020 2:36 pm

Image

Out next week is what appears to be the first release of the late Nobuhiko Obayashi's Hanagatami outside of Japan. Amazon Pre-Order here. If it sells well, TW have said that they'll look into releasing Obayashi's older films which would be great.

Other upcoming releases are Melancholic (Seiji Tanaka, 2018) and an upgrade of Fish Story (Yoshihiro Nakamura, 2009). Earlier today, they teased that they'll be releasing Katsuhito Ishii's terrific The Taste of Tea as well.

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Adam X
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Re: Third Window Films

#275 Post by Adam X » Sun Jun 28, 2020 11:31 pm

I remember being very much repelled by Ishii’s Party 7, so I can’t say I’m that enthused to check out anything else of his, unless it was universally viewed as his worst film or close to (I’m happy for you to convince me otherwise, Calvin).
Fish Story on the other hand, is wonderful, and also mark’s TWF’s first BD upgrade. It’s been too long since I watched it to give a coherent right up, so instead here’s the trailer. Doesn’t quite capture it, but it’s the rare trailer that does.

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