5 Kinoshitas to be released in Germany

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lubitsch
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5 Kinoshitas to be released in Germany

#1 Post by lubitsch » Wed Sep 02, 2009 10:45 am

Out of the Blue a German label polyfilm announced the release of 4 Oshimas, 11 Ozus and 5 Kinoshitas. No Ozu has found a DVD release here until now, but the Kinoshitas are even more amazing: Carmen comes home, Carmen's Pure Love, A Japanese Tragedy, The River Fuefuki and Immortal Love. The first and the third are available with english subs in Asia, the fourth and fifth in France with French subs only. Apparently the question of optional English subtitles isn't decided yet and naturally depends on legal rights.

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Tommaso
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Re: 5 Kinoshitas to be released in Germany

#2 Post by Tommaso » Wed Sep 02, 2009 11:46 am

Brilliant, brilliant, brilliant news! Though again it's not Germany who can take the credit: Polyfilm is an Austrian label.

Anyway, do you have a link for more info? I couldn't find anything on the polyfilm sity, and the only useful bit of information I could find was this brief discussion on an Austrian film forum, where they reveal the Oshima titles:

Taiyô no hakaba (The Sun's Burial)
Nihon no yoru to kiri (Night and Fog in Japan)
Muri shinju: Nihon no natsu (Night of the Killer)
Nihon shunka-kô (Sing a Song of Sex)

The last two are unreleased outside Japan, aren't they? And even if the first two are already available in the UK, these new discs hopefully are much better than their abominable UK counterparts.

But of course I'm even more excited about Kinoshita! Who'd have thought to see these?

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tenia
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Re: 5 Kinoshitas to be released in Germany

#3 Post by tenia » Wed Sep 02, 2009 12:00 pm

In France, we have already :

- "La Ballade de Narayama" (Ballad of Narayama)
- "Carmen revient au pays" (Carmen comes home)
- "Les Vingt-quatre prunelles" (Twenty-Four Eyes)
- "La Rivière Fuefuki" (The River Fuefuki)
- "Un Amour éternel" (Immortal Love)
- "Les Enfants de Nagasaki" (Children of Nagasaki)

They're released by MK2, in Japanese with French subs.

For the Oshimas, we have by Carlotta (Japanese with French subs) :

- Sing a song of sex
- Japanese Summer: Double Suicide
- The Pleasures of the Flesh
- Night and Fog in Japan
- Cruel Story of Youth
- A Town of Love and Hope
- Violence at High Noon
- Three Resurrected Drunkards

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Re: 5 Kinoshitas to be released in Germany

#4 Post by CJG » Wed Sep 02, 2009 12:08 pm

Tommaso wrote:Anyway, do you have a link for more info? I couldn't find anything on the polyfilm sity, and the only useful bit of information I could find was this brief discussion on an Austrian film forum, where they reveal the Oshima titles:

Taiyô no hakaba (The Sun's Burial)
Nihon no yoru to kiri (Night and Fog in Japan)
Muri shinju: Nihon no natsu (Night of the Killer)
Nihon shunka-kô (Sing a Song of Sex)

The last two are unreleased outside Japan, aren't they? And even if the first two are already available in the UK, these new discs hopefully are much better than their abominable UK counterparts.
There's a Hong Kong DVD of Sing a Song of Sex available which has English subtitles. It's not very good quality though.

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Tommaso
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Re: 5 Kinoshitas to be released in Germany

#5 Post by Tommaso » Wed Sep 02, 2009 2:25 pm

Thanks, I didn't know about these French editions. I assume these will probably be the same transfers with added German subs, then, for those films available in France already. Probably directly ported from some Japanese master, given that MK2 and Carlotta are normally high-quality labels.

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Re: 5 Kinoshitas to be released in Germany

#6 Post by BB » Wed Sep 02, 2009 4:54 pm

Thanks,
Can't wait to get more info (English subs? Release date?) since I was about to buy the Panorama disc of Carmen Comes Home. Does anybody own the Panorama disc? I assume the english subs are just barely adequate, but I'm wondering about the picture quality...

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tenia
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Re: 5 Kinoshitas to be released in Germany

#7 Post by tenia » Wed Sep 02, 2009 6:03 pm

Tommaso wrote:Thanks, I didn't know about these French editions. I assume these will probably be the same transfers with added German subs, then, for those films available in France already. Probably directly ported from some Japanese master, given that MK2 and Carlotta are normally high-quality labels.
I'm not sure about the MK2, they're from September 2008, but for the Oshimas, yes, they're from the newly restored Japanese masters. BUT (cause there is a but), both always do a second restoration because (I quote) "Quality standards from Japan are not the same than the French ones". So, if you don't care about not having English subs, I can tell you, at least for the Oshimas : they're probably the best editions for these movies in the world.

If the German editions are about to use these masters, it will be great for the German, because everything is already very clear and sharp.

But, anyway, you're right about MK2, and especially for Carlotta, they're real high-quality labels.
For some years now, Carlotta is becoming our French Criterion, releasing in very heavy editions some nice treasures. They're about to release Bergman's The Serpent's Egg, Yesterday, Tomorrow and The Day After (+ the sequel) with Mastroianni and Loren, Fellini At Work, an Allan Dwan boxset and a third (yes a third !) Sirk boxset.

They're real great, and I think they can easily compete with MoC and CC. They're people I will always cheer and congratulate about their work.

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Wu.Qinghua
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Re: 5 Kinoshitas to be released in Germany

#8 Post by Wu.Qinghua » Sun Sep 06, 2009 7:27 am

The list of the 22 films to be released by polyfilm is to be found here - German titles only:
http://www.polyvideo.at/catalog/product ... 17407a5b26

According to the german text there probably will be german subtitles only.

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Tommaso
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Re: 5 Kinoshitas to be released in Germany

#9 Post by Tommaso » Sun Sep 06, 2009 9:50 am

Thank you, an impressive list indeed (and also quite ...ahm...impressive prices for the discs). There are some non-CC Ozus among them, too. So if they care for producing top-notch transfers, there might be some alternatives to the Tartan and Panorama discs, as long as you can read German.

They also release two films by Yoshitaro Nomura, a director totally unknown to me. And I haven't been able to identify the two titles they will release on imdb, due to polyfilm only giving the German titles ("Dämon" and "Das Dorf der acht Grabsteine", which translates as "Demon" and "The Village of the eight Tombstones"). Does anyone know something about these films?

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htdm
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Re: 5 Kinoshitas to be released in Germany

#10 Post by htdm » Sun Sep 06, 2009 2:23 pm

The Demon and Village of Eight Headstones are both available in fair to poor quality releases.
The Demon is based on the novel by Matsumoto Seicho best known in Japan for his detective fiction (and in my opinion this is the better of the two films) while Village is scripted by Hashimoto Shinobu - longtime Kurosawa script collaborator.

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Re: 5 Kinoshitas to be released in Germany

#11 Post by Michael Kerpan » Sun Sep 06, 2009 4:47 pm

The Demon got a fairly nice release from HVE (indistinguishable from the Japanese release -- except for being subtitled). My favorite Niomura films are Zero focus (another fine HVE release) and Stake Out (a good unsubbed Japanese DVD).

I've seen all the forthcoming Kinoshita releases (except for Immortal Love, maybe). Not a big fan of any of them -- and found the River Fuefuki especially unimpressive. Japanese Tragedy is very interesting -- but struck me as rather confused in its outlook. The two Carmen films are amusing but slight (not much rewatchability) -- and Pure Love has way too many canted shots for my taste.

All in all, I prefer Nomura -- though his Castle (really should be Bowls) of Sand was pretty much a disappointment.

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Re: 5 Kinoshitas to be released in Germany

#12 Post by colinr0380 » Sun Sep 06, 2009 5:01 pm

I wasn't able to get my hands on a copy of Demon (here are DVD Beaver and DVD Talk reviews of the Home Vision release) but I do have Zero Focus and can add to the interest in Nomura's films from that. Perhaps it was a result of watching it so close to the Kurosawa film but I was reminded a lot of the adaptation of The Idiot with the snow covered landscapes, dark secrets revealed and melodramatic (in a good way) moments.

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Re: 5 Kinoshitas to be released in Germany

#13 Post by Michael Kerpan » Sun Sep 06, 2009 8:37 pm

colinr0380 wrote:Perhaps it was a result of watching it so close to the Kurosawa film but I was reminded a lot of the adaptation of The Idiot with the snow covered landscapes, dark secrets revealed and melodramatic (in a good way) moments.
And Nomura's "The Stake Out" (Harikomi) is an extended riff on the sweltering summer heat we see (feel) at the beginning of Stray Dog.

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Tommaso
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Re: 5 Kinoshitas to be released in Germany

#14 Post by Tommaso » Tue Aug 03, 2010 8:11 am

The 5 Kinoshitas are now all available : jpc

Only German subs, but they look yummy...

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lubitsch
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Re: 5 Kinoshitas to be released in Germany

#15 Post by lubitsch » Tue Aug 03, 2010 9:48 am

Tommaso wrote:The 5 Kinoshitas are now all available : jpc

Only German subs, but they look yummy...
They are, but unfortunately the Ozu's won't appear as polyvideo now says on the film list link.

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Re: 5 Kinoshitas to be released in Germany

#16 Post by Michael Kerpan » Tue Aug 03, 2010 10:16 am

I'll be interested in seeing if people have more positive reations to these Kinoshita films than I did. The Carmen films strike as entertaining (most of the time), but have sections that also just didn't work for me. Japanese Tragedy was rather well-made, but not really a "likeable" film. Disliked River Fuefuki -- and have only faint memories of Immortal Love.

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Tommaso
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Re: 5 Kinoshitas to be released in Germany

#17 Post by Tommaso » Tue Aug 03, 2010 11:57 am

lubitsch wrote: They are, but unfortunately the Ozu's won't appear as polyvideo now says on the film list link.
Would be interesting to know the reason for this, but I could imagine that they believe that the market is too small for them, as most of the potential customers will by now have gotten the CCs or BFIs if they can read English subs at all. But the fact that there doesn't seem to be a single Ozu disc on the German market is deplorable.

On the other hand, with the Ozus off their back, they might continue now with some...ahm... Naruse?

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Re: 5 Kinoshitas to be released in Germany

#18 Post by Frankinho007 » Tue Aug 03, 2010 2:31 pm

The series is dead. Sales are poor. Not even breakeven for most of the titles. Source (for German-speaking members): http://forum.dvd-forum.at/1613750-post1.html" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

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Tommaso
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Re: 5 Kinoshitas to be released in Germany

#19 Post by Tommaso » Tue Aug 03, 2010 2:43 pm

Dammit! That says a lot about the German/Austrian dvd market in general. I heard similar things about the Transit-set of the Lubitsch films, for instance. All the more cause to admire the work of a label like Filmmuseum, who continue to put out things that in my view must be even much harder to sell than those Japanese films. Perhaps all these labels should really take the extra effort to provide English subs. If you can't sell in Germany, perhaps you can sell to the rest of the world.

In any case, another reason to get at least some of those Kinoshitas. Once the initial pressing is gone, they will be gone forever.

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Re: 5 Kinoshitas to be released in Germany

#20 Post by Tommaso » Tue Sep 28, 2010 7:14 am

Michael Kerpan wrote:I'll be interested in seeing if people have more positive reations to these Kinoshita films than I did. The Carmen films strike as entertaining (most of the time), but have sections that also just didn't work for me.
Well, I've watched "Carmen comes home" yesterday, and I was pretty baffled for several reasons. You know, we in Germany had especially in the 50s a curious genre called the 'Heimatfilm', extolling the beauties of the rural land in colourful ways, but with a few exceptions always combined with extreme sentimentalism and shallow stories. And much of what I saw in "Carmen comes home" reminded me of a Japanese version of this genre, but of course it had a twist here: the singing, the general lightness of tone and the irony that Kinoshita brings to this, which almost seems to come from the American musicals of the time. And this unlikely combination made for some very amusing 80 minutes for me, and seeing Chishu Ryu in a rather unusually funny role added to the pleasure. Hideko Takamine is cast against expectations, but I found her quite good here, too. While the film is slight, unlike you I think that the replay factor might be pretty high.

The film is eye candy, not least because of the costumes, and thankfully the transfer does full justice to the film. It shows its age in theform of a lot of scratches and so on, but the sharpness is good and the colours are eye-popping without appearing boosted, and everything retains that special Fujicolor look. Excellent German subs (only), and completely unintrusive.

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Re: 5 Kinoshitas to be released in Germany

#21 Post by Michael Kerpan » Tue Sep 28, 2010 8:04 am

I would say Carmen Comes Home is entertaining enough to warrant re-watching -- though there are a number of sequences that struck me as pretty flat (the whole blind composer sub-plot, for instance). The sequel isn't nearly as fun (IMO).

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