708 Like Someone in Love

Discuss releases by Criterion and the films on them. Threads may contain spoilers!
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domino harvey
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Re: ??? Like Someone in Love

#76 Post by domino harvey » Fri Feb 14, 2014 10:45 pm

Coming May 13th, separate Blu-ray and DVD releases, more details to come

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manicsounds
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Re: 708 Like Someone in Love

#77 Post by manicsounds » Tue Feb 18, 2014 8:01 pm

Looks like it has pretty much the same specs and extras on disc as the UK release.

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What A Disgrace
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Re: 708 Like Someone in Love

#78 Post by What A Disgrace » Tue Feb 18, 2014 8:21 pm

Hopefully, Criterion will pull a Certified Copy and give us a supplementary film.

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Minkin
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Re: 708 Like Someone in Love

#79 Post by Minkin » Tue Feb 18, 2014 8:24 pm

manicsounds wrote:Looks like it has pretty much the same specs and extras on disc as the UK release.
Yikes. That makes the Nico Baumbach essay a $30 value (well, plus the DVD I guess). It is rather annoying when they think less than an hour of content = a premium price (especially when you can essentially get the same thing in the UK for around $10)

Hopefully Criterion will pull a Certified Copy (which had the same problem as here - initially) and add some early Kiarostami work in order to make this a must-have disc.

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swo17
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Re: 708 Like Someone in Love

#80 Post by swo17 » Tue Feb 18, 2014 8:25 pm

I wouldn't count on it given that there's no "More!" listed here, though all will of course be forgiven if they are saving up a bunch of early Kiarostami films for the Koker trilogy set.

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Ashirg
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Re: 708 Like Someone in Love

#81 Post by Ashirg » Tue Feb 18, 2014 8:27 pm

You also get a shiny new DVD with this release!!!

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ryannichols7
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Re: 708 Like Someone in Love

#82 Post by ryannichols7 » Wed Feb 19, 2014 12:13 am

swo17 wrote:I wouldn't count on it given that there's no "More!" listed here, though all will of course be forgiven if they are saving up a bunch of early Kiarostami films for the Koker trilogy set.
which while I think they may be doing that, I do distinctly remember there not being a "More!" for Certified Copy...the Report was added out of nowhere.

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manicsounds
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Re: 708 Like Someone in Love

#83 Post by manicsounds » Mon Apr 21, 2014 1:16 am


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Der Spieler
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Re: 708 Like Someone in Love

#84 Post by Der Spieler » Fri Apr 25, 2014 10:59 am

Beaver review had that to say about the film:

"The deliberate pace is embraceable."

That's gotta mean... something.

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med
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Re: 708 Like Someone in Love

#85 Post by med » Sat Apr 26, 2014 12:09 pm

Huggable in its leisureliness.

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Gregory
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Re: 708 Like Someone in Love

#86 Post by Gregory » Sat Apr 26, 2014 12:26 pm

Embraceable, adj: able or suitable to be taken up, accepted, welcomed, or greeted with affection

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manicsounds
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Re: 708 Like Someone in Love

#87 Post by manicsounds » Wed May 21, 2014 9:25 pm

It seems this and Hidden Fortress are 2 titles with a 3.0 soundtrack, but instead of using a dts-HD MA 3.0 track, but for some reason Criterion has these tracks as 5.1 tracks but with 2 silent speakers and a silent .1. What's the point? Just use a 3.0 track. "Yojimbo" and "Sanjuro" did.

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cdnchris
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Re: 708 Like Someone in Love

#88 Post by cdnchris » Wed May 21, 2014 9:36 pm

I'd have to go double check but I beleive the booklet mentions this was to resolve possible compatibility problems with certain receivers. Whether that's a valid reason or not I can't say.

I don't see any issue with 5.1, though, since the unused channels are just silent anyways.

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swo17
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Re: 708 Like Someone in Love

#89 Post by swo17 » Thu May 22, 2014 12:10 am

So what does the film's title mean?
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Obviously a call girl's job is to act like someone in love, though we don't really even see much of this side of her profession. The professor acts several parts with her, but never seems particularly infatuated. It's actually two lesser roles that strike me most as evoking the fervor hinted at by the film's title. At one end, we have the neighbor, confined to the small hole of her window (which the film only permits us to view once) seemingly doomed to subsist from her vantage point on brief glimpses of the life that she could have had with the professor. At the other, there is the boyfriend, whose every action in the film is misguidedly driven by his compulsion to save his relationship with the girl. These are two extremes, neither of which achieve their intended purpose. One is trapped behind a window with no glass, inviting but unwanted. The other breaks through glass where he is not welcome. Windows are interesting. They afford an unfettered view on either side but deny any contact. Two people can be standing a foot away from each other with a window between them and act as though it were a wall. Is Kiarostami saying that love and true connection are impossible in this modern world, because of the barriers that we put around ourselves and others? Or is he saying that it only seems this way because we are pursuing and defining "love" incorrectly, only acting parts instead of actively loving? Ambiguity!

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zedz
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Re: 708 Like Someone in Love

#90 Post by zedz » Thu May 22, 2014 12:26 am

Not really any spoilers in here, but it would be rude not to follow suit!
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I take it as an ironic comment on the film's play with appearance and reality, but on top of that the interpretation is also something of an open question, like "Do the Right Thing". How should "someone in love" behave? Is the boyfriend's obsession a sign of love, a sign of insecurity, or a sign of mental illness? Are the old man's attentions romantic or paternal? How we read that relationship influences what we speculate the actual plot might be. Maybe most importantly, the title itself, right down to its harking back to a romantic standard, is a generic romcom title, and a substantial part of Kiarostami's formal play in the film involves setting up the audience to expect a romantic comedy and then giving them something much more problematic, so there's a certain strategy in the use of that particular title (which would also have been a pretty apt title for his previous feature).

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The Narrator Returns
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Re: 708 Like Someone in Love

#91 Post by The Narrator Returns » Sun Jan 11, 2015 1:55 pm

Something very strange is afoot at Criterion HQ. I look at the Blu-Ray in their release of this, which I got over the holidays, and notice something peculiar when the disc is put under direct light. The light reveals that, underneath the label of the disc, there is a label for a Blu-Ray of Heaven is For Real, the title, disc artwork, and even rating clearly visible. Thankfully, when I put in the disc, it played Like Someone in Love just fine, but this is still a strange occurrence, especially considering Heaven is For Real was still in theaters when Criterion released this (their release predates the Blu-Ray release of Heaven is For Real by two months). Does this mean that if one were to buy Heaven is For Real on Blu-Ray, and scrap off the label, they would find that it's actually the disc for Where is the Friend's Home?

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Re: 708 Like Someone in Love

#92 Post by CSM126 » Mon Jan 12, 2015 7:49 am

I had a similar problem with Criterion's Obscure Object of Desire DVD. Under light it shows a label for that godawful Will Smith movie Seven Pounds hidden under the disc art. Thankfully it does not actually play Seven Pounds. I assume it's just a mixup at the manufacturing facility, and that reprinting the correct label over the wrong one is just cheaper than scrapping the disc entirely.

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domino harvey
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Re: 708 Like Someone in Love

#93 Post by domino harvey » Mon Jan 12, 2015 3:09 pm

Ha, I just checked my Blu-ray and sure enough, you can see Heaven Is Real!

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bottled spider
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Re: 708 Like Someone in Love

#94 Post by bottled spider » Thu Mar 19, 2015 3:00 am

I've searched this thread for 'Halloween', 'costume', 'witch', 'pumpkin', & 'jack-o'-lantern' and find no mention of the glimpse of a child wearing a jack-o'-lantern cape and another dressed as witch as the professor backs out of his drive way to fetch something from the pharmacy for Akiko. Might this hold the key to the inner meaning of the film? Or was I hallucinating?

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Re: 708 Like Someone in Love

#95 Post by LightBulbFilm » Fri Mar 31, 2017 4:51 pm

bottled spider wrote:I've searched this thread for 'Halloween', 'costume', 'witch', 'pumpkin', & 'jack-o'-lantern' and find no mention of the glimpse of a child wearing a jack-o'-lantern cape and another dressed as witch as the professor backs out of his drive way to fetch something from the pharmacy for Akiko. Might this hold the key to the inner meaning of the film? Or was I hallucinating?
That's enlightening--I didn't take in that detail, just simply the note that he's aging, and especially in a rush to go pick up Akiko, is drastically unaware of the world and happenings around him.

I'm still unpacking the film, especially that very "enigmatic ending". Poetically, I wonder if the former idea is somehow grafted onto what happens in the end:
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I find it most interesting that the brick does not actually hit Takashi, but surprises him, causing him to fall. Perhaps in that moment, he has a heart attack or his feebleness causes something more life-threatening upon hitting the ground (his loose-hold on existence is noted when he falls asleep in traffic.) This vague idea that the world happened to him--that the brick did not actually hit him, and it was not Noriaki's fault. As if his ignorance, be it by age or passion, was being paid back by the universe. I feel like this is a stretch, thus my flagrant use of the word "poetically".
It is a very challenging ending, and I feel it would be foolish to just cast the film aside as minor Kiarostami, or such--this will stick with me.

I really found this film profound on second viewing, and like many of my favorite films, perhaps it came at an opportune time in life.

A side note: The making of featurette included is fantastic, and if I taught a class, specifically in writing or directing, I would show it as an introduction.

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domino harvey
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Re: Like Someone in Love (Abbas Kiarostami, 2012)

#96 Post by domino harvey » Fri May 19, 2017 2:11 pm

zedz wrote:Spoilers follow, for those who haven't seen it.

I like the film, and it's clearly a companion piece to Certified Copy, playing with several of the same narrative tropes, but here he's experimenting with tone rather than meaning. All of the plot components - the mistaken identities, the jealous boyfriend, the did-they-have-sex ambiguity / misunderstanding, the 'running gags' (e.g. the waiting grandmother) - are the fodder of romantic comedy, and Kiarostami delivers it all with a lightness of tone (and certain deliberate elisions) in order to encourage the audience to read the film as a romantic comedy. But the gist of the film is that this isn't a romantic comedy at all: it's much, much darker. All those tropes we're conditioned to consider cute are actually pretty horrible, if you just step back out of the genre cocoon and think about them in realistic terms. The jealous boyfriend, we're told in the very first scene, is more than just mildly besotted, he's dangerously obsessive - so the final event of the film should really come as no surprise to us (and yet we still have so many critics dismissing it as a gimmicky twist or meaninglessly arbitrary). The chaste evening spent with the professor only comes off as chaste because we're not shown explicitly that it isn't (but logically, why would it be?) The ruse played on the boyfriend is depicted as if it's a good-natured masquerade with farcical complications, but there's nothing particularly good-natured about it (and that dramatic irony you note doesn't really do anything but curdle). The non-meeting with the grandmother is paced and staged like a running gag, but it's actually a pretty horrible way to treat a vulnerable old woman. This last one is, until the climax, probably the most explicit showing of Kiarostami's hand. I see the film as being one about the seductiveness of fiction and genre (as was Certified Copy), though the inflection here is more about how it blinds us to human understanding. Exactly the same story could have been told as a harrowing drama, in which we're fearing for the heroine every second, but with a simple flick of the wrist, it plays as a different genre entirely. Judging by many of the reactions to the film, Kiarostami's sleight-of-hand works exactly as intended. I was discussing the film with another forum member recently and pointed out how beautifully the AV Club review had missed the point, even to the extent of posing the rhetorical question, "Is Kase a good enough boyfriend to justify his jealous rages?" Take a step back and look at what you've written there, buddy, and you might figure out what's going on! And once you've woken up to that possibility, you can start to see the veiled horror stories in so many other romantic comedies.
Finally saw this and thought the above was a terrific and concise reading of the film's strengths. This thread's discussion is fascinating-- and frustrating, due to warren oates' dog with a bone resistance to letting go of his script gripes in the wake of others finding worth within.

I think it's fitting that this film made in Japan by an Iranian director is still a French production, as I saw two obvious points of inspiration within: Chabrol's Les bonnes femmes and the works of Jacques Rozier. The former for its extended misdirection, in which the viewer is conditioned to expect an entirely different film than the darker product they receive in the final moments, casting a pall on all that came before, and more broadly in how the latter filmmaker extends copious amounts of film capturing moments other directors would elide. I don't think this rises to the heights of either of those touchstones, but I do think this is quite successful at teasing out its deceptively simple narrative by imbuing commonplace interactions with a lack of surety that doubles as dread in retrospect.

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Re: 708 Like Someone in Love

#97 Post by black&huge » Wed Feb 09, 2022 2:24 pm

Why is this still available as DVD only on criterion's site? I assumed they were going to do a standalone blu reissue but did they actually lose the rights for the blu edition or something? I'm hoping this will be available in time for this month's flash sale but not holding out much hope.

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MV88
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Re: 708 Like Someone in Love

#98 Post by MV88 » Thu Feb 10, 2022 11:09 am

black&huge wrote:
Wed Feb 09, 2022 2:24 pm
Why is this still available as DVD only on criterion's site? I assumed they were going to do a standalone blu reissue but did they actually lose the rights for the blu edition or something? I'm hoping this will be available in time for this month's flash sale but not holding out much hope.
I was wondering the same thing. At the time I’m posting this, there’s not even a copy of the dual format edition for sale on Amazon or eBay. The only major retailer that has it in stock right now is Barnes & Noble, but of course if you’re looking to get it at a sale price, you’d have to wait until the next 50% off sale in July, and there’s no telling if it’ll still be in stock by then.

Does anyone know if this is a temporary thing, or has the dual format edition of this film actually gone out of print?

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Re: 708 Like Someone in Love

#99 Post by trobrianders » Tue Mar 01, 2022 5:28 pm

black&huge wrote:
Wed Feb 09, 2022 2:24 pm
Why is this still available as DVD only on criterion's site? I assumed they were going to do a standalone blu reissue but did they actually lose the rights for the blu edition or something? I'm hoping this will be available in time for this month's flash sale but not holding out much hope.
I have the UK released Region B on New Wave Films and I'm pretty sure it's a match for picture/audio and you can pick up a pre-owned copy for £5-10 pretty easily. New Wave Films like Artificial Eye easily match the best US equivalents.

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