684-690, 873-879, 1044-1050, 1142-1148 Martin Scorsese's World Cinema Project

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therewillbeblus
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Re: 684-690, 873-879, 1044-1050 Martin Scorsese's World Cinema Project

#176 Post by therewillbeblus » Mon Jun 15, 2020 4:45 pm

After the Curfew and especially Dos monjes sound amazing. Has anyone seen any of the titles outside of Pixote?

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Re: 684-690, 873-879, 1044-1050 Martin Scorsese's World Cinema Project

#177 Post by swo17 » Mon Jun 15, 2020 4:48 pm

I remember Lucía being great but it's been a long time since I've seen it

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Re: 684-690, 873-879, 1044-1050 Martin Scorsese's World Cinema Project

#178 Post by knives » Mon Jun 15, 2020 4:51 pm

Likewise. Solàs is one of the great underseen filmmakers. If I recall correctly some of his films were released by First Run.

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Re: 684-690, 873-879, 1044-1050 Martin Scorsese's World Cinema Project

#179 Post by Saturnome » Mon Jun 15, 2020 4:54 pm

Dos monjes is creaky, weird and broken early talkie fun, with a great expressionist flavor and a Rashomon-like story before Rashomon. A big part of the plot is daytime soap stuff, though, making it hard to watch it more than once IMO. But O Soleil is a hundred percent greatness! And I've been wanted to see a Usmar Ismail film for a long time, so it's an instant buy.

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Re: 684-690, 873-879, 1044-1050 Martin Scorsese's World Cinema Project

#180 Post by goblinfootballs » Mon Jun 15, 2020 4:56 pm

Saw the Soleil Ô restoration in February and loved it; actually disappointed it's not getting its own spine.

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Re: 684-690, 873-879, 1044-1050 Martin Scorsese's World Cinema Project

#181 Post by domino harvey » Mon Jun 15, 2020 5:01 pm

My thoughts on Soleil O, which given the current climate really should have been released solo
domino harvey wrote:
Fri Jun 21, 2019 5:20 pm
I imagine once Criterion releases Soleil Ô, which has been restored by the WCP, everyone will be able to tick off the rather unexpected country box of Mauritania. There will be a lot of buzz for this one once people actually see it, as it's an incredibly caustic look at the treatment of a black African man in late 60s France. The move is a hot mess, with a lot of sloppiness and obvious faults, and I think a viewer needs to be honest with its raggedy construction and Nouvelle Vague/Czech New Wave-aping (I can already see the thinkpieces calling this the second-coming without really weighing its flaws). But it also has moments of unforgettable power, and the ending is a cathartic howl at an oppressive world that leaves no other outlet but frustration. Plus holy shit this movie had an amazing poster-- if Criterion uses anything but this, they're mad:

Image

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Re: 684-690, 873-879, 1044-1050 Martin Scorsese's World Cinema Project

#182 Post by Cremildo » Mon Jun 15, 2020 5:06 pm

I'm sure I won't be the only Brazilian to import this set, as Pixote is a national treasure that has been absurdly relegated to a 4x3 DVD here. Not that the other titles aren't interesting, of course.

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Re: 684-690, 873-879, 1044-1050 Martin Scorsese's World Cinema Project

#183 Post by zedz » Mon Jun 15, 2020 7:08 pm

swo17 wrote:
Mon Jun 15, 2020 4:48 pm
I remember Lucía being great but it's been a long time since I've seen it
Yeah, Lucia is great. Three stories set in different historical periods shot in very different cinematic styles.

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Re: 684-690, 873-879, 1044-1050 Martin Scorsese's World Cinema Project

#184 Post by El Manchego » Mon Jun 15, 2020 8:16 pm

domino harvey wrote:
Mon Jun 15, 2020 5:01 pm
My thoughts on Soleil O, which given the current climate really should have been released solo
domino harvey wrote:
Fri Jun 21, 2019 5:20 pm
I imagine once Criterion releases Soleil Ô, which has been restored by the WCP, everyone will be able to tick off the rather unexpected country box of Mauritania. There will be a lot of buzz for this one once people actually see it, as it's an incredibly caustic look at the treatment of a black African man in late 60s France. The move is a hot mess, with a lot of sloppiness and obvious faults, and I think a viewer needs to be honest with its raggedy construction and Nouvelle Vague/Czech New Wave-aping (I can already see the thinkpieces calling this the second-coming without really weighing its flaws). But it also has moments of unforgettable power, and the ending is a cathartic howl at an oppressive world that leaves no other outlet but frustration. Plus holy shit this movie had an amazing poster-- if Criterion uses anything but this, they're mad:

Image
Yes and yes. Either way, very pleased to finally have this in the collection (even if it was only a matter of time).

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Re: 684-690, 873-879, 1044-1050 Martin Scorsese's World Cinema Project

#185 Post by yoloswegmaster » Mon Jun 15, 2020 8:37 pm

Having seen the Pixote restoration, I can already see people complaining about the heavy yellow tint.

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Re: 684-690, 873-879, 1044-1050 Martin Scorsese's World Cinema Project

#186 Post by tenia » Tue Jun 16, 2020 3:26 am

IIRC, most of the WCP restorations are not recent enough to avoid Ritrovata's color signature.

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Re: 684-690, 873-879, 1044-1050 Martin Scorsese's World Cinema Project

#187 Post by Grand Wazoo » Tue Jun 16, 2020 7:57 am

The Lino Brocka films are the worst color grade offenders of the released titles thus far.

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Re: 684-690, 873-879, 1044-1050 Martin Scorsese's World Cinema Project

#188 Post by Drucker » Tue Jun 16, 2020 11:54 am

::Cough:: The Colour of Pomegranates::Cough::

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Re: 684-690, 873-879, 1044-1050 Martin Scorsese's World Cinema Project

#189 Post by Perkins Cobb » Tue Jun 16, 2020 1:28 pm

therewillbeblus wrote:
Mon Jun 15, 2020 4:45 pm
Has anyone seen any of the titles outside of Pixote?
Downpour was great, and looked gorgeous, although I don't remember a whole lot about it .... because I saw it (at the Walter Reade) in 2012, which is a reminder of how impatiently I've been waiting for more of these. Haven't seen any of the other five; glad I never got around to Pixote on DVD.

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Re: 684-690, 873-879, 1044-1050 Martin Scorsese's World Cinema Project

#190 Post by MichaelB » Tue Jun 16, 2020 2:50 pm

swo17 wrote:
Mon Jun 15, 2020 4:48 pm
I remember Lucía being great but it's been a long time since I've seen it
My review of the Mr Bongo DVD. I assume the transfer of the Criterion will be an unrecognisable improvement.
Humberto Solas; Cuba 1969; Mr Bongo Films/Region 0; Certificate 18; 159 minutes; Aspect Ratio 1.66:1 anamorphic; Features: none

Film: Made at just 26, Humberto Solas' second feature remains one of the most ambitious of all Cuban films. Its three separate stories about individual women (all named Lucía, otherwise unrelated) highlight pivotal points in Cuban history: the 1890s war against Spain, President Machado's overthrow in 1933 and Castro's 1960s. Each episode has its own distinct tone: the initial impassioned melodrama with flashes of savage, almost Buñuelian cruelty gives way to something closer to Visconti's The Leopard before concluding with a claustrophobic kitchen-sinker that raises thorny questions about the role of women in a notionally equal but traditionally macho society. All three Lucías are passionately involved with unsuitable men (Spaniard Rafael, revolutionary Aldo, pathologically jealous Tomás), their female comrades providing much-needed perspective alongside the gossip. If it seems didactically contrived in bald outline (the Lucías also represent the aristocracy, the bourgeoisie and the newly-liberated peasantry), some thrilling individual set-pieces more than compensate.

Disc: It says much for the film that it survives a dismal VHS-quality transfer whose picture has been further softened by being converted from a clearly NTSC original. The lack of context-setting extras piles further insult on top of existing injury.

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Re: 684-690, 873-879, 1044-1050 Martin Scorsese's World Cinema Project

#191 Post by L.A. » Mon Jul 13, 2020 9:32 am

Since Come and See is A/B, I sincerely hope the third set is going to be as well. Really can’t imagine say BFI or Eureka releasing any of these.

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Re: 684-690, 873-879, 1044-1050 Martin Scorsese's World Cinema Project

#192 Post by L.A. » Tue Aug 25, 2020 5:42 pm


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Re: 684-690, 873-879, 1044-1050 Martin Scorsese's World Cinema Project

#193 Post by FrauBlucher » Sun Oct 04, 2020 1:04 pm



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Re: 684-690, 873-879, 1044-1050 Martin Scorsese's World Cinema Project

#195 Post by Pavel » Tue Dec 15, 2020 6:28 pm

Surprised they didn't pair Touki bouki with Atlantics.

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Re: 684-690, 873-879, 1044-1050 Martin Scorsese's World Cinema Project

#196 Post by senseabove » Tue Dec 15, 2020 6:43 pm

The standalone release does have a new extra not on the WCP version that includes Mati Diop, fwiw.

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Re: 684-690, 873-879, 1044-1050 Martin Scorsese's World Cinema Project

#197 Post by therewillbeblus » Thu Dec 17, 2020 2:53 pm

I'll probably wait until I receive the physical set in January to watch the other films in the third volume, but Bahram Beyzaie's Downpour is so excellent that, if the other films are even a fraction of its caliber, I'll be heavily reconsidering my votes for Release of the Year. This is a hard film to pin down, but in a sense it's a romantic comedy set in the backdrop of a socio-political drama, a comedy-of-manners flipped around where the austere intellectual hero is a fish out of water in the more modest community; and yet we find that the relationship between this man and this milieu encourages reciprocal readings of character, for his humility at times shines against the inflexible traits of the town, after the dynamic appears concretely reversed earlier on. The concept of 'usefulness' is touched upon at one point where Hekmati is looking for how others, including his students, can be of use to him, without separation of focus on his own usefulness to the community, which seemingly rejects his imposition based on obliviousness and unwillingness to compromise against cultural differences. However, the opposite becomes closer to the truth: where the ability to see a usefulness is actually the bridge that allows Hekmati to feel affinity with his students and be accepted by them, his own usefulness received and respected in this new environment- not in the way he may have first envisioned but in a manner that's far more rewarding as he manages to flex his own terms of endearment.

I loved the ambiguity in the depiction of the working-class woman shaking up the intellectual as he breaks from his own sense of novelty via ego-inflation and struggles to contend with this novel grace in corporeal form, away from his comfortable vantage point. The ambiguity is both a dramatic deflation of perspective and a comic inflation of newfound energy, at times reaching surreal heights. There is a theme of cultural competence woven into this narrative, in how human connection suffers from deficits between social contexts but the language of attraction binds us with a sixth sense. There are declarations made here that feel right out of classic rom-coms, with your typical emergence from rigidity toward sublime liberation of character working within a socio-political border-line satire with experimental formal techniques, making a strange cocktail for the medium. The film comes alive constantly against expectations, and I loved soaking up all its expressive flooding that seemed to fall in rhythm with the protagonist’s own surrendering of conservative attitudes. The subtext of the political climate that also surrounded this time period historically layers this experimental framework, as the impassioned revolutionary poetry both inside and outside of the film becomes reflected in its methodology.

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Re: 684-690, 873-879, 1044-1050 Martin Scorsese's World Cinema Project

#198 Post by goblinfootballs » Thu Dec 17, 2020 3:19 pm

Pavel wrote:
Tue Dec 15, 2020 6:28 pm
Surprised they didn't pair Touki bouki with Atlantics.
Or at least Diop's A Thousand Suns, but maybe that will appear on the Atlantics release.

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Re: 684-690, 873-879, 1044-1050 Martin Scorsese's World Cinema Project

#199 Post by zedz » Thu Dec 17, 2020 10:45 pm

therewillbeblus wrote:
Thu Dec 17, 2020 2:53 pm
I'll probably wait until I receive the physical set in January to watch the other films in the third volume, but Bahram Beyzaie's Downpour is so excellent that, if the other films are even a fraction of its caliber, I'll be heavily reconsidering my votes for Release of the Year. This is a hard film to pin down, but in a sense it's a romantic comedy set in the backdrop of a socio-political drama, a comedy-of-manners flipped around where the austere intellectual hero is a fish out of water in the more modest community; and yet we find that the relationship between this man and this milieu encourages reciprocal readings of character, for his humility at times shines against the inflexible traits of the town, after the dynamic appears concretely reversed earlier on. The concept of 'usefulness' is touched upon at one point where Hekmati is looking for how others, including his students, can be of use to him, without separation of focus on his own usefulness to the community, which seemingly rejects his imposition based on obliviousness and unwillingness to compromise against cultural differences. However, the opposite becomes closer to the truth: where the ability to see a usefulness is actually the bridge that allows Hekmati to feel affinity with his students and be accepted by them, his own usefulness received and respected in this new environment- not in the way he may have first envisioned but in a manner that's far more rewarding as he manages to flex his own terms of endearment.

I loved the ambiguity in the depiction of the working-class woman shaking up the intellectual as he breaks from his own sense of novelty via ego-inflation and struggles to contend with this novel grace in corporeal form, away from his comfortable vantage point. The ambiguity is both a dramatic deflation of perspective and a comic inflation of newfound energy, at times reaching surreal heights. There is a theme of cultural competence woven into this narrative, in how human connection suffers from deficits between social contexts but the language of attraction binds us with a sixth sense. There are declarations made here that feel right out of classic rom-coms, with your typical emergence from rigidity toward sublime liberation of character working within a socio-political border-line satire with experimental formal techniques, making a strange cocktail for the medium. The film comes alive constantly against expectations, and I loved soaking up all its expressive flooding that seemed to fall in rhythm with the protagonist’s own surrendering of conservative attitudes. The subtext of the political climate that also surrounded this time period historically layers this experimental framework, as the impassioned revolutionary poetry both inside and outside of the film becomes reflected in its methodology.
This was the standout of the previously unseen films in the latest set for me. Breezy and serious at the same time, I felt a strong influence of the Czech New Wave (though I don't recall Beyzaie acknowledging that in the extras).

Did you get the sense at the end that
SpoilerShow
the protagonist didn't just leave the suburb at the end, but died?

The tone of the film changes quite dramatically, and his 'recall' is very abrupt. As he's wheeling his possessions out of town the locals don't just farewell him, but silently fall in behind the wagon as if it's a hearse and this is a funeral cortege. The guy dragging the wagon isn't the old man who brought him to the place, but an odd figure who had previously appeared (and been singled out by the camera) in the 'prizegiving' scene. And he doesn't physically leave the village but rather vanishes from the frame in a dissolve.

He may have been killed in the drunken nocturnal confrontation with his rival, and his death explains why his beloved cannot follow him.
I saw Beyzaie's Bashu, the Little Stranger years ago, but it wasn't as impressive and singular as this film. I was quite surprised to find he'd directed it.

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Re: 684-690, 873-879, 1044-1050 Martin Scorsese's World Cinema Project

#200 Post by therewillbeblus » Thu Dec 17, 2020 11:16 pm

Yeah the Czech New Wave influence was pretty clear on my end too, and I love how it becomes most obvious and experimental in the middle as the protagonist flexes his mindset most, departing from rigidity and diving head-first towards love in his own way. It's a perfect example of style-imitating-psychology, though the film doesn't have the obvious subjective feel of many Czech New Wave films as far as a clinical alignment with Hekmati, so it's even more impressive to see Beyzaie find novel ways to use his camera to orient all empathy to him, even with more objective distance. As for the ending,
SpoilerShow
I read it the same way, both literally (he's bleeding from the chest through his shirt post-fight, and when he reaches out his hands to his students, they recoil in horror- I took this to be a more superficial reaction from his injuries rather than in despair at him leaving, but both can be true) as well as metaphorically, which seems more significant. I haven't read up on the Iranian political movement of this time, which I know is crucial to read the film against, but I assumed that Hekmati represented hope in the possibility of finding harmony between sides. He infiltrated this area and struggled to access, and to be accessed, but a beautiful fusion was formed that led to romantic-comedy bliss, only for the film to suddenly turn into a tragedy robbed of any explanatory catharsis. This symbol of hope literally dissolves without a chance at closure, which is incredibly pessimistic- almost a Christ-like loss to mark the futility of reconciliation.

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