Criterion's obsession with Suzuki

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marty

#126 Post by marty » Mon May 01, 2006 2:01 am

Criterion are releasing so many Suzuki films because it can, basically. Along with many other smaller, so-called "obscure" films which are no less important than some other more well known films, Criterion acquire the rights because it can and faces very little competition, especially from the majors. Since the invention of DVD, the mjaor studios have began pulling titles from Criterion as happened with Unbearable Lightness of Being etc because there was money to be made on these titles. However, no major studio would touch Suzuki, Malle, Ozu, Tarkovsky etc because the money made is not worth the effort. Fortunately, Criterion think differently and, after all, they a certain amount of titles to release each month to pay the bills!

Giulio
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Re: Criterion's obsession with Suzuki

#127 Post by Giulio » Tue Aug 27, 2013 6:29 am

The crit obsession with suzuki is justified but besides gonzo action he directed the wonderful taisho trilogy

The trilogy (released by kino!) is out of print and a blu ray box set from criterion would be a gem

we have to convince them :)

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zedz
Joined: Sun Nov 07, 2004 7:24 pm

Re: Criterion's obsession with Suzuki

#128 Post by zedz » Tue Aug 27, 2013 5:10 pm

Good lord, there really was six pages of this (and that wasn't the half of it: this was the Twilight Time Business Model argument of the mid-noughties, so this thread was probably just the sump for the worst offenders of the off-topic rants).

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domino harvey
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Joined: Wed Jan 11, 2006 2:42 pm

Re: Criterion's obsession with Suzuki

#129 Post by domino harvey » Tue Aug 27, 2013 5:19 pm

You gotta admit: This was one helluva thread bump

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zedz
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Re: Criterion's obsession with Suzuki

#130 Post by zedz » Tue Aug 27, 2013 5:20 pm

I climbed under my desk.

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Michael Kerpan
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Re: Criterion's obsession with Suzuki

#131 Post by Michael Kerpan » Tue Aug 27, 2013 9:01 pm

I'd forgotten all about this thread. Blessed amnesia, perhaps.

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feihong
Joined: Thu Nov 04, 2004 12:20 pm

Re: Criterion's obsession with Suzuki

#132 Post by feihong » Tue Aug 27, 2013 9:23 pm

I can't really remember being so angry about this. It was like 7 years ago, and I feel like a very different person. In the blu-ray era Mizoguchi has picked up the slack, with more and more of his filmography available in some format or other, and a great deal of Naruse is now at least watchable. The number of Suzuki films available in English-language editions has grown only a little. Fighting Delinquents, Flower and the Angry Waves, and Take Aim at the Police Van appeared, along with the Hulu availability of Everything Goes Wrong. I guess we got the best of everything, in a way. But there's still a lot of Suzuki I'd like to see. Carmen from Kawachi looks very interesting to me, and it seems weird that Criterion released two of the films in Suzuki's "Flesh Trilogy" without any desire to follow up with the third picture. But then, it took Criterion forever to get around to La Notte, which seems a bigger omission.

Giulio, there's a blu-ray set of the Taisho Trilogy out in Japan. While there are no English subtitles, the set is quite handsome. There is sometimes too much DNR in some scenes. Once I wrote an impassioned letter to Mulvaney asking Criterion to consider Zigeunerweisen. At first Mulvaney was completely against it, but I wrote back and argued my point as well as I was able. I got an oddly personal reply, the gist of which being they would look into it. If they ever did that, I'd have to assume that no one at Criterion wanted to make an effort for the film. This was probably around the time this thread was still active.

I thought that one of these days I would try and make a .srt file for the Japanese Zigeunerweisen BD. I've never gone to that effort before, but that movie--a personal favorite--would probably be worth it.

I would definitely love to see Criterion revisit some more of the Suzuki titles on blu-ray, including the HomeVision ones. Kanto Wanderer--another favorite Suzuki--would probably look gorgeous. And if Flower and the Angry Waves was ever available to them, wouldn't that look rapturous, too.

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