102 / BD 10 Profound Desires of the Gods

Discuss releases by Eureka and Masters of Cinema and the films on them.
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Fiery Angel
Joined: Sun Jan 11, 2009 1:59 pm

Re: BD 10 Profound Desires of the Gods

#76 Post by Fiery Angel » Mon Jun 21, 2010 8:51 pm

med wrote:Could someone direct me to any in-depth English-language writing - either in print or online - on this phenomenal film? The Tony Rayns essay and introduction from this release whetted my appetite for more.
A good intro to/overview of his films

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jamie_atp
Joined: Wed Aug 19, 2009 7:21 pm

Re: BD 10 Profound Desires of the Gods

#77 Post by jamie_atp » Tue Jun 22, 2010 3:37 am

Currently have Soul Power, Profound Desires and Le Grand Jeu postcards but no Planete Sauvage :-( This is worse than spine numbers.

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daniel p
Joined: Tue Nov 02, 2004 9:01 pm
Location: Melbourne, Australia

Re: BD 10 Profound Desires of the Gods

#78 Post by daniel p » Tue Jun 29, 2010 10:33 pm

I watched this, and for 80% of the runtime I thought it dragged a far bit, and apart from the visuals and sunning Blu-Ray transfer I wasn't getting much out of it - I could understand why it flopped theatrically. In the end though it became rewarding, only when it flashed forward did I realise just how rewarding it had been to sit through the lead up to the climax. It was good, but nothing incredible. My second Imamura only, after Vengeance is Mine. I have had Black Rain and his other films on Criterion on my "to see" list for ages now, I should get to them. I think I will get more out of his other films.

But fantastic work to Nick and MoC with this, such an obscure title and it looks gorgeous in HD!

Oh, and where's my %@#$% postcards!! :-(

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RossyG
Joined: Sat May 30, 2009 5:50 pm

Re: BD 10 Profound Desires of the Gods

#79 Post by RossyG » Wed Jun 30, 2010 5:10 am

daniel p wrote:Oh, and where's my %@#$% postcards!! :-(
The first rule of Postcard Club is that you do not talk about Postcard Club.

The second rule of Postcard Club is that you DO NOT talk about Postcard Club. :P

Bleddyn Williams
Joined: Fri Mar 17, 2006 2:33 pm
Location: Billerica MA USA

Re: BD 10 Profound Desires of the Gods

#80 Post by Bleddyn Williams » Wed Jun 30, 2010 11:55 am

RossyG wrote:
daniel p wrote:Oh, and where's my %@#$% postcards!! :-(
The first rule of Postcard Club is that you do not talk about Postcard Club.

The second rule of Postcard Club is that you DO NOT talk about Postcard Club. :P
Postcard Club... :lol: :lol:

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FerdinandGriffon
Joined: Wed Nov 26, 2008 11:16 am

Re: BD 10 Profound Desires of the Gods

#81 Post by FerdinandGriffon » Thu Jul 01, 2010 11:15 am

Just got my copy of Gods yesterday, popped it into my player this morning. And gawsh, does it look lovely.
Sound is a whole other kettle of fish though. To all appearances, Imamura had his entire cast overdubbed by a a swarm of thespian bumblebees. All audio is incredibly high and brittle, reduced to an indecipherable if comic buzz, as if it had been sped up Alvin and the chipmunks style, though it hasn't, because everything's still in sync.
The question is, is this a fault in the disc or with my equipment? I use my Sony laptop running WinDVD BD as a player, with a maybe-maybe not legal copy of Any DVD HD running in the background to get past region encoding. I suspect the AnyDVD software may be the culprit, but then again I know very little about this sort of thing. Can anybody help clear this up for me?
Last edited by FerdinandGriffon on Thu Jul 01, 2010 12:02 pm, edited 1 time in total.

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Peacock
Joined: Mon Dec 22, 2008 7:47 pm
Location: Scotland

Re: BD 10 Profound Desires of the Gods

#82 Post by Peacock » Thu Jul 01, 2010 11:48 am

Try downloading VLC instead and playing it with that to see if the problem is your AnyDVD HD.

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FerdinandGriffon
Joined: Wed Nov 26, 2008 11:16 am

Re: BD 10 Profound Desires of the Gods

#83 Post by FerdinandGriffon » Thu Jul 01, 2010 11:57 am

Correct me if I'm wrong, but VLC doesn't have Blu-ray support yet.

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Peacock
Joined: Mon Dec 22, 2008 7:47 pm
Location: Scotland

Re: BD 10 Profound Desires of the Gods

#84 Post by Peacock » Thu Jul 01, 2010 11:58 am

:oops: Carry on...

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TMDaines
Joined: Wed Nov 11, 2009 1:01 pm
Location: Stretford, Manchester

Re: BD 10 Profound Desires of the Gods

#85 Post by TMDaines » Thu Jul 01, 2010 12:57 pm

FerdinandGriffon wrote:Just got my copy of Gods yesterday, popped it into my player this morning. And gawsh, does it look lovely.
Sound is a whole other kettle of fish though. To all appearances, Imamura had his entire cast overdubbed by a a swarm of thespian bumblebees. All audio is incredibly high and brittle, reduced to an indecipherable if comic buzz, as if it had been sped up Alvin and the chipmunks style, though it hasn't, because everything's still in sync.
The question is, is this a fault in the disc or with my equipment? I use my Sony laptop running WinDVD BD as a player, with a maybe-maybe not legal copy of Any DVD HD running in the background to get past region encoding. I suspect the AnyDVD software may be the culprit, but then again I know very little about this sort of thing. Can anybody help clear this up for me?
Well the obvious start for me would be to try and update (or: find later releases of) AnyDVD and WinDVD BD. If that doesn't work then I'm not sure.

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perkizitore
Joined: Thu Jul 10, 2008 3:29 pm
Location: OOP is the only answer

Re: BD 10 Profound Desires of the Gods

#86 Post by perkizitore » Thu Jul 01, 2010 1:22 pm

PowerDVD 10 is much more recent than the latest edition of WinDVD.

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TMDaines
Joined: Wed Nov 11, 2009 1:01 pm
Location: Stretford, Manchester

Re: BD 10 Profound Desires of the Gods

#87 Post by TMDaines » Thu Jul 01, 2010 1:30 pm

And you can always find "a maybe-maybe not legal copy" of that too.

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wiljan
Joined: Mon Jun 19, 2006 6:13 am
Location: Rotterdam

Re: BD 10 Profound Desires of the Gods

#88 Post by wiljan » Fri Jul 02, 2010 4:20 am

Maybe you could try this free little program instead of AnyDVDHD. It's been working great for me the last year or so.

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Michael Kerpan
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Re: BD 10 Profound Desires of the Gods

#89 Post by Michael Kerpan » Wed Aug 04, 2010 10:09 am

Watched this night. Watched this last night -- what a gorgeous BRD!

Noticed what seemed to be echoes of both Woman of the Dunes and Tabu this time around -- neither of which I recall noticing before.

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colinr0380
Joined: Mon Nov 08, 2004 4:30 pm
Location: Chapel-en-le-Frith, Derbyshire, UK

Re: BD 10 Profound Desires of the Gods

#90 Post by colinr0380 » Sat Sep 04, 2010 1:12 pm

Here's a review by Jasper Sharp from Midnight Eye.

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knives
Joined: Sat Sep 06, 2008 6:49 pm

Re: BD 10 Profound Desires of the Gods

#91 Post by knives » Mon Sep 27, 2010 10:44 pm

Michael Kerpan wrote: Noticed what seemed to be echoes of Tabu this time around
Glad I'm not alone. This felt like the definitive Imamura to me. Making the final word on what he had done before and in a weird doing the same for what would come later (of course the documentaries are a complete blank thing for me right now). Had they been switched around I would swear that Profound was an intentional expansion of Ballad in much the same way Intentions seems to be for Insect Woman. The scene toward the end when the father was getting junk thrown at him in the pit reminds me greatly of the daughter in law scene from Ballad. There's that same disturbing feeling that people are capable of this.
The one thing I found oddly missing from this film was that distant sense of Japaneseness preventing me as an American from fully understanding the essence. It wasn't until I watched the introduction that I realized Imamura was too busy making a puzzlebox for the lost Japanese to be bothered with alienating the west.

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Telstar
Joined: Mon Apr 10, 2006 12:35 pm

Re: BD 10 Profound Desires of the Gods

#92 Post by Telstar » Sat Jun 25, 2011 6:31 pm

At the risk of sacrilege, has anyone compared the DVD version to the BD? I can't see financing the leap to region-free BD for at least a year or two, so I'm considering taking advantage of current sale prices and just buying the DVD... although I'm sure I'll eventually wind up double dipping.

peerpee
not perpee
Joined: Tue Nov 02, 2004 3:41 pm

Re: BD 10 Profound Desires of the Gods

#93 Post by peerpee » Sat Jun 25, 2011 6:36 pm

Oh, the DVDs terrible. The BD's amazing.

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Telstar
Joined: Mon Apr 10, 2006 12:35 pm

Re: BD 10 Profound Desires of the Gods

#94 Post by Telstar » Sat Jun 25, 2011 11:16 pm

peerpee wrote:Oh, the DVDs terrible. The BD's amazing.
Exactly what I thought.

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Der Spieler
Joined: Fri Oct 16, 2009 11:05 am

Re: BD 10 Profound Desires of the Gods

#95 Post by Der Spieler » Sun Jun 26, 2011 1:29 pm

peerpee wrote:Oh, the DVDs terrible. The BD's amazing.
Great publicity! :P

One can't accuse you of dishonesty, that's for sure.

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htdm
Joined: Wed Nov 03, 2004 3:46 am

Re: BD 10 Profound Desires of the Gods

#96 Post by htdm » Fri Aug 05, 2011 12:53 pm

Is the DVD NTSC or PAL?
Amazon.UK says it is PAL, the MoC site didn't state but I know they often work from NTSC with Japanese titles.

peerpee
not perpee
Joined: Tue Nov 02, 2004 3:41 pm

Re: BD 10 Profound Desires of the Gods

#97 Post by peerpee » Fri Aug 05, 2011 4:57 pm

The DVD is NTSC to retain the same running time as the BD.

Amazon is usually wrong with format and region coding info, simply because it's default info that appears on all their titles.

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Ashirg
Joined: Wed Nov 03, 2004 9:10 am
Location: Atlanta

Re: BD 10 Profound Desires of the Gods

#98 Post by Ashirg » Sun Oct 09, 2011 4:25 pm

October 24 for Dual Format upgrade, according to Amazon

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Tommaso
Joined: Fri May 19, 2006 10:09 am

Re: BD 10 Profound Desires of the Gods

#99 Post by Tommaso » Tue Oct 18, 2011 6:47 pm

peerpee wrote:Oh, the DVDs terrible. The BD's amazing.
LOL. Not wanting to question Nick's words (because I don't have the comparison in the first place), but as I have just finished watching the DVD, let me state that it simply looks gorgeous, probably among the very best transfers of a Japanese film of that vintage on DVD I've ever seen, and it's especially amazing if you consider the length of the film. Wonderfully vivid, detailed, unmanipulated image. Truly great work.

And I found the film fantastic, too, even though I needed to get over the first thirty minutes or so to begin to appreciate it. The Futori family is bewildering at first, if not downright appalling, but the longer the film went on, the more I got interested in what was going on, especially because of the completely non-judgemental view of the filmmaker which allows the viewer to become acquainted with those people and their deep relation to the land and the nature they live in, and in the end I really sympathized with the stubbornness with which Uma and Nekichi resist the change brought by the mainland influences. And the final sequence (before the "Five years later" epilogue, I mean) was pretty much of a knock-out in its ritualised strangeness and strong play on the emotions. It's a film of incredible visual beauty, and in its nature shots often enchanting and frightening at the same time.

This was my first Imamura, I have to confess, but it surely made me interested in seeing more from the director. Which film should I try next, then, if I liked this one?

Flanell
Joined: Tue Jan 05, 2010 4:16 am
Location: Gothenburg

Re: BD 10 Profound Desires of the Gods

#100 Post by Flanell » Tue Oct 18, 2011 7:16 pm

I'd say The Ballad of Narayama. You really can't go wrong with that one. And how fortunate that it soon will be available on Blu Ray!

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