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kristophers wrote:

Moridin wrote:Is there any way to know if this set is sold out? I'm a bit late to the party, but just ordered it from Amazon.co.uk and it said that estimated delivery was 1 to 3 months.

I think it was just a mix up with Amazon, I noticed the same. My order shipped out yesterday.

Definitely. It's now back in stock. Ordered mine today, estimated arrival in a week or two. Have only seen "Heroic Purgatory", at the time completely out of the blue so I had really no expectations going in, but as it's such a great film I'm now completely stoked for the other two films in the set.

Here's hoping this box sells so well that it encourages Arrow to release more of Yoshida's films. And if not, at least we'll have a stunning set like this.

I have seen only the David Desser introduction and the first few minutes of the director's cut so far. In his introduction David says that the shorter version does not have anything that the longer director's cut does not have. It is constructed by either trimming scenes or eliminating entire scenes. If that is true, then the brightness / contrast of corresponding images should be identical. They clearly are not. As mentioned before, and demonstrated in the screen captures, the director's cut has an over-exposed look compared to the shorter cut. Since it has been confirmed by Michael and David that the images represent director's preferences, we must conclude that Yoshida chose the over-exposed look for the director's cut, but decided that a more conventional look was appropriate for the shorter cut. He chose not to make the looks of the two cuts comparable for the restoration.
This raises questions of the rationale behind the aesthetic decisions. At least for me the washed-out look of the director's cut is a distraction. Why do we think Yoshida wanted it to look this way? And if he had a reason, why did that reason not apply to the shorter cut? Finally, if upon re-thinking he chose to change the look of the shorter cut, why would he not make that correction to the original, given an opportunity?
Did anyone have an opportunity to ask these "why" questions, rather than "what" questions"? I would appreciate people sharing thoughts about these questions. Thank you.

swo17 wrote:Arrow already specifically addressed this.

I am not sure that anyone has speculated on why the look of the director's cut is the way it is - not a technical reason but an aesthetic rationale. We do not see B&W films that look this way. If this is the authentic representation, why?

kekid wrote:In his introduction David says that the shorter version does not have anything that the longer director's cut does not have. It is constructed by either trimming scenes or eliminating entire scenes. If that is true, then the brightness / contrast of corresponding images should be identical.

You have a good question there, but from how you write it, David seems to be talking about the material that's included, not the brightness or contrast of that material. That is, the theatrical cut is a merely trimmed down version. I wouldn't read too much into it.

(I'm commenting without having seen neither the introduction nor the director's cut, so there you go.)

kekid wrote:

swo17 wrote:Arrow already specifically addressed this.

I am not sure that anyone has speculated on why the look of the director's cut is the way it is - not a technical reason but an aesthetic rationale. We do not see B&W films that look this way. If this is the authentic representation, why?

Yoshida himself pushed the visual aspect of the movie.
While the DC has been scanned from the better material, allowing to obtain the proper respectful look, the TC hasn't because it's sourced from lesser material.
That's it. There's nothing more about it to read into.

manicsounds wrote:Rewind review with screencaps

I can see what this reviewer is getting at, and I think he is right. If you look at the films in this set as a whole, Yoshida uses black-and-white film stock in an incredibly rich and thoughtful way, with varying densities from shot to shot. Many of the shots have a strongly graphic, almost two-dimensional effect. The director's cut of Eros + Massacre pushes the use of overexposure to the limit, but it works as a coherent aesthetic. The individual shots still have density and atmosphere - it's like sculpting in light. The theatrical cut looks more "normal" superficially because the midtones are pushed down into the range that we are used to expecting, but I miss the delicate precision of the director's cut. Yoshida is such a masterful visual artist!

The only other film I can think of that uses overexposure so extensively and systematically is A Well for the Thirsty by Yuri Illienko, but Eros + Massacre arguably demonstrates more technical facility in this area. I find the Blu-ray captivating.

Can someone perhaps post a link to two to a useful review of this set? I was hoping the new Sight & Sound would have one, but the issue I just received did not. (I'm in the U.S., so a little behind.) Something along the lines of what you'd find in Sight & Sound would be ideal, as opposed to, say, what you find on dvdbeaver.

http://www.dvdcompare.net/review.php?rid=3986" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

Has anybody noticed the "halo" effect going on through out Heroic Purgatory?
Especially around 3 mins, when the guy is walking around, and the woman is sat at the desk.

It doesn't really need to be stated but I just finished the Director's Cut after this being a blind-buy (albeit having just watched ~25 Japanese New Wave films in the past six weeks whilst reading Desser's book) and it exceeded all of my expectations and then some. More like this, please!

Ribs wrote:It doesn't really need to be stated but I just finished the Director's Cut after this being a blind-buy (albeit having just watched ~25 Japanese New Wave films in the past six weeks whilst reading Desser's book) and it exceeded all of my expectations and then some. More like this, please!

Have you watched the other 2 (and regular cut of Erros) and can comment on their worth? Sadly I am just getting into Japanese cinema, and while Ghibli and Kurosawa are all personal favourites I have yet to dip into the New Wave (except for Tokyo Drifter, which is great). I am asking because for 3 1/2 films this is really expensive to blind buy.

Does anyone know if Arrow is planning a later individual blu-ray release?

80% sold out.

dda1996a wrote:

Ribs wrote:It doesn't really need to be stated but I just finished the Director's Cut after this being a blind-buy (albeit having just watched ~25 Japanese New Wave films in the past six weeks whilst reading Desser's book) and it exceeded all of my expectations and then some. More like this, please!

Have you watched the other 2 (and regular cut of Erros) and can comment on their worth? Sadly I am just getting into Japanese cinema, and while Ghibli and Kurosawa are all personal favourites I have yet to dip into the New Wave (except for Tokyo Drifter, which is great). I am asking because for 3 1/2 films this is really expensive to blind buy.

Does anyone know if Arrow is planning a later individual blu-ray release?

Sorry, only just saw this post.

Though the other two films are good this set is very much Eros and everything else. Heroic Purgatory is practically impenetrable even considering the avant garde nature of the rest of this set; after literally reading a book preparing me for the complexities of Eros + Massacre, I felt incredibly lost when I had absolutely no idea what to expect. It's very beautiful and still recommended but bear in mind it's not an easy film to process.

Coup d'Etat is the most straightforward of the set and it's very good. I'm not really sure what else to say about it; I'd put it in the top quarter of all the New Wave stuff I've watched (with the caveat that it falls techically outside the period).

I have really no interest in the theatrical version of Eros but I thought I'd mention here in case anyone hasn't dived in that the Desser extras on the theatrical version are meant to be watched before those on the extended version, as in the latter he keeps citing back to his earlier observations.

I'd recommend watching some other New Wave stuff to get some idea of what was happening at the time rather than diving in blind, but basically nothing can adequately synthesize what the movie is like, it's absolutely one of, if not the, culmination(s) of the period.

The news that this has almost sold out is mildly shocking to me but I think practically ensures a follow-up set (if not several), if not Yoshida then maybe Terayama. I am over the moon.

antnield wrote:80% sold out.

That's good to hear. Bodes well for future Japanese sets of this ilk (Terayama! Wakamatsu! Jissoji!) as well as Yoshima Vol. 2, I would hope.

Ribs wrote:Heroic Purgatory is practically impenetrable even considering the avant garde nature of the rest of this set; after literally reading a book preparing me for the complexities of Eros + Massacre, I felt incredibly lost when I had absolutely no idea what to expect. It's very beautiful and still recommended but bear in mind it's not an easy film to process.

It was totally impenetrable when I watched it with French subs on its earlier DVD release. This time through I found it much easier to follow. I haven't entirely got my head around the intricacies of the plot, but I get the general picture now. There's a certain allegorical sense of several generations of activists dealing with the same problems in slightly different guises (which is cued by the cyclical nature of the AMPO protests): such as interchangeable ambassadors they want to abduct, or the constant threat of treachery. Over this is layered a tacitly feminist critique of imposed gender roles, with the female characters posited as blank slates on which the male power structure projects a limited number of roles: mother, daughter, wife, victim. In one particularly memorable scene, the 'projection' metaphor is literal: in a film made of a sexual assault, the woman is either a victim or invisible. These female roles can be fluid and interchangeable, but their absence cannot be tolerated.

As in Eros Plus Massacre, there's a sense of the past (and the future) being a subjective construction, so the shifts in time don't obey the codes of cinematic 'naturalism'. Thus characters appearing as their past and future selves generally look like they do in the present, apart from occasional feints at fancy dress. Which is a nifty psychological trick, but does make the shifts in time harder to follow. You really need to latch onto the various temporal clues (mention of dates, identifying ambassadorial letters, costume) to be able to reconstruct the order of events.

It's still much twistier than most of Yoshida's films, but not insurmountably obscure. The late sixties films made before these more overtly political films had difficulties of their own, but they weren't so structurally radical. They tended to be melodramatic subjects (really, really skewed 'women's films') decked out in outrageous stylistic invention and garnished with bizarre swerves of Lynchian dream logic. They're really fantastic, and I hope Arrow is bold enough to mine another box out of them.

The 80% sold out is fantastic news!!!

Calvin wrote:

antnield wrote:80% sold out.

Terayama! Wakamatsu! Jissoji!

I agree! The three which came to my mind. Would Jissoji/Wakamatsu would get through BBFC uncut?

tomN245 wrote: I agree! The three which came to my mind. Would Jissoji/Wakamatsu would get through BBFC uncut?

I'd imagine that the film that might give the BBFC the most trouble would be Terayama's Emperor Tomato Ketchup. I know it screened at the Tate a few years ago, but I don't think they had to put that one past the BBFC.

I would assume a Terayama set would feature the ATG films that was released on blu-ray in Japan a couple years ago.

Throw Away Your Books, Rally in the Streets
Pastoral: To Die in the Country
Farewell to the Ark

It would be great if it could include Grass Labyrinth as well, but that probably isn't likely.

What is the encoding for this release? I know it's All Region but will it play on NTSC players?

23.98fps in both cases, so yes it will. There's no 50hz content anywhere on the discs.

Okay, thank you! I don't have a Region Free player so this is great news for me. Would you happen to know if the UK release of Obsession and Blood and Black Lace are like this set as well?

Blood and Black Lace is 100% US-friendly - indeed, the same discs would have come out in the US if a rights issue hadn't intervened.

Not sure about Obsession, but I think it's region-free.