Arbelos / Cinelicious Pics

[Calvin]

Cinelicious Pics, which launched earlier this year, have announced that they're going to restore Eiichi Yamamoto's Belladonna of Sadness from the original camera negative with a view to releasing it theatrically and on home video in 2015. More info here

[EddieLarkin]

Wonderful news. Has there even been a subtitled DVD release before? There's so much classic anime that deserves new state of the art presentations and/or English localisations, and that really belong with the art house labels as opposed to the anime distributors (who are often inept in the extreme at bringing titles to home video) that I hope this is the beginning of many such releases, and for other labels to follow in Cinelicious's footsteps.

[jojo]

Wonderful news. Has there even been a subtitled DVD release before? There's so much classic anime that deserves new state of the art presentations and/or English localisations, and that really belong with the art house labels as opposed to the anime distributors (who are often inept in the extreme at bringing titles to home video) that I hope this is the beginning of many such releases, and for other labels to follow in Cinelicious's footsteps.

I agree, too many of the anime distributors in the U.S. are more about the latest trends than quality control. I think out of all of them, Discotek is currently the best at re-releasing classic anime films, but most of their stuff is still DVD-only. I'd love for somebody to restore and release Angel's Egg someday.

[Calvin]

Cinelicious will be releasing Agnès Varda's Kung-Fu Master and Jane B. by Agnès V. later this year.

[Zot!]

If my procrastination with buying the Varda box ultimately yields a BD of these, my entire deferred approach to life will be officially validated.

[criterionsnob]

Kung-Fu Master and Jane B. by Agnès V. two disc blu-ray, coming on January 12.

Finally some Varda on blu!

[pointless]

Cinelicious Pics, which launched earlier this year, have announced that they're going to restore Eiichi Yamamoto's Belladonna of Sadness from the original camera negative with a view to releasing it theatrically and on home video in 2015. More info here

New 4K Restoration of Belladonna of Sadness

Special Features:

• New Video Interviews with Director Eiichi Yamamoto, Art Director Kuni Fukai, and Composer Masahiko Satoh
  Red Band Trailer, Green Band Trailer, Original Trailer
  16 page booklet

Belladonna Restoration Comparison

Belladonna of Sadness Trailer

[beamish13]

i'm gonna get Belladonna with Hat & Beard Press' limited edition hardcover art book

[rapta]

Just heard that Anime Ltd here in the UK will be releasing Cinelicious' restoration of Belladonna of Sadness later this year. Exciting stuff, and glad us in Region B will get access to this one without having to import!

They also have Momotaro’s Divine Sea Warriors planned for late 2016/early 2017!

[L.A.]

Belladonna of Sadness @ DVDBeaver

[domino harvey]

Private Property, Warren Oates' debut film, coming in October

[htdm]

Quite excited by this release.

I never got to see this during its release (very few did I suspect).

[htdm]

Beaver

[L.A.]

Beaver

Region A? Is this possibly getting a UK-disc as well? This thing is limited to 3,000 copies, so...

[senseabove]

HHas anyone seen news indicating the release date for Funeral Parade has gotten any narrower than "early 2017"?


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[barryconvex]

Kung-Fu Master and Jane B. by Agnès V. two disc blu-ray, coming on January 12.

Finally some Varda on blu!

Not only two of Varda's best, these are two of the best films i've seen this year. After watching this and the Eclipse set my estimation of her has grown ten fold and it was already pretty high. Madame V. is incapable of making a bad movie. Thank you Cinelicious...

[Aunt Peg]

Beaver

Region A? Is this possibly getting a UK-disc as well? This thing is limited to 3,000 copies, so...

The disc plays fine on Region B locked players. Buy with confidence. DVD Beaver are sometimes wrong when they state that a disc is region locked and this is one of those times.

[rapta]

Beaver

Region A? Is this possibly getting a UK-disc as well? This thing is limited to 3,000 copies, so...

I could see Eureka releasing it if they intend to license Cinelicious' restoration of Funeral Parade of Roses (as I hope they do). Of course, that's just a hopeful possibility rather than a realistic probability.

[whaleallright]

Madame V. is incapable of making a bad movie.

Have you seen Lions Love?

[domino harvey]

Or half the films in the Criterion box?

[knives]

I dunno, I would say even the worst from that is just exceedingly mediocre.

[Michael Kerpan]

I dunno, I would say even the worst from that is just exceedingly mediocre.

"Exceedingly mediocre" comes close to "bad" -- in my book, at least...

I took a look at Lions Love -- and decided I'd be better off not actually watching it all the way through. I enjoyed (at least modestly) most of the other stuff in that set.

[barryconvex]

I was a little caught up in the rapture of Varda (and Jane Birkin for that matter) when i wrote that but still she's never made anything i thought was just flat out bad. One Sings, the Other Doesn't and Mur murs would probably be my least favorite but still, i don't think they're anything less that so-so. I do remember liking Lions Love but not much else about it...Jane. B., Vagabond, Cleo, Le petit amour , Le Bonheur, Gleaners, The Beaches Of Agnes...There isn't a director alive who wouldn't kill for a filmography even half that good.

[senseabove]

Lions Love... at least has some fascinating compositions and, if you're into avant-garde/experimental, the chance to see Shirley Clarke "play" Agnes. I'll admit it isn't very good narratively or structurally, but it's at least got some moments that are visually interesting (the clock!), and it's moderately historically interesting. Can't say I'll feel the need to watch it again any time soon and didn't feel impatient at times, but I didn't think it was a waste of time at the end.

And I liked both Mur Murs (though I've lived in SoCal) and One Sings... I can certainly get why the latter hasn't aged well, but I also thought it movingly grounded it's blatant "message" in messy, complicated, lived life, without getting itself preachy even when its characters were. But I live in the Bay Area, so my support and tolerance for that type of thing is probably higher than average

I do still need to pick up the Cinelicious disc. I caught Kung Fu Master on MUBI a few months ago (along with Les Creatures and One Sings...) and decided to hold off on streaming Jane B. so I could watch it in true HD when I get the BD. And I'm really looking forward to the AE box set when it comes out! I still haven't seen most of Varda's Certified Classics (e.g. Cleo and Gleaners).

[Calvin]

Re-launching as Arbelos in 2018 with a 4K restoration and release of Dennis Hopper's The Last Movie!

--


Out November 14th - Pre-Order

Long unavailable in the U.S., director Toshio Matsumoto's shattering, kaleidoscopic masterpiece is one of the most subversive and intoxicating films of the late 1960s: a headlong dive into a dazzling, unseen Tokyo night-world of drag queen bars and fabulous divas, fueled by booze, drugs, fuzz guitars, performance art and black mascara. No less than Stanley Kubrick cited the film as a direct influence on his own dystopian classic A CLOCKWORK ORANGE. An unknown club dancer at the time, transgender actor Peter (from Kurosawa's RAN) gives an astonishing Edie Sedgwick/Warhol superstar-like performance as hot young thing Eddie, hostess at Bar Genet where she's ignited a violent love-triangle with reigning drag queen Leda (Osamu Ogasawara) for the attentions of club owner Gonda (played by Kurosawa regular Yoshio Tsuchiya, from SEVEN SAMURAI and YOJIMBO). One of Japan's leading experimental filmmakers, Matsumoto bends and distorts time here like Resnais in LAST YEAR AT MARIENBAD, freely mixing documentary interviews, Brechtian film-within-a-film asides, Oedipal premonitions of disaster, his own avant-garde shorts, and even on-screen cartoon balloons, into a dizzying whirl of image + sound. Featuring breathtaking black-and-white cinematography by Tatsuo Suzuki that rivals the photographs of Robert Mapplethorpe, FUNERAL PARADE offers a frank, openly erotic and unapologetic portrait of an underground community of drag queens. Whether laughing with drunken businessmen, eating ice cream with her girlfriends, or fighting in the streets with a local girl gang, Peter's ravishing Eddie is something to behold. "She has bad manners, all she knows is coquetry," complains her rival Leda but in fact, Eddie's bad manners are simply being too gorgeous for this world. Her stunning presence, in bell-bottom pants, black leather jacket and Brian Jones hair-do, is a direct threat to the social order, both in the Bar Genet and in the streets of Tokyo. A key work of the Japanese New Wave and of queer cinema, FUNERAL PARADE has been restored in 4k from the original 35mm camera negative and sound elements for this 2017 re-release.

Special Features:

New 4K restoration from the original 35mm camera negative

8 newly remastered avant-garde short films by Toshio Matsumoto
- Nishijin (1961)
- The Song of Stone (1963)
- Extasis (1969)
- Metastasis (1971)
- Expansion (1972)
- Mona Lisa (1973)
- Everything Visible Is Empty (1975)
- Atman (1975)

Audio commentary by Chris D.
U.S. Theatrical Trailer
Original 1969 Japanese Theatrical Trailer
New essay by Hirofumi Sakamoto, Director of the Postwar Japan Moving Image Archive