Luc Moullet Box Set

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mikebowes
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#1 Post by mikebowes » Tue Sep 19, 2006 9:42 am

Now Available from Blaq Out in France.

Ou la la - it looks like it's got subtitles:

Spécificités techniques :
4 DVD 9 - Multizones - NTSC - Couleur et Noir et blanc - Formats image d'origine respectés - Ecran 16/9 compatible 4/3 et écran 4/3 pour format image d'origine 1.37 - Version française et version anglaise (Une aventure de Billy le Kid uniquement) en Mono - Sous-titres anglais en option.

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backstreetsbackalright
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#2 Post by backstreetsbackalright » Tue Sep 19, 2006 1:52 pm

It'll be good to have these in wider circulation. I saw four of these films in Seattle earlier this year. While I was very happy for the opportunity, the films were maddening at times. The overall loose mood is cool, and there are some genuinely brilliant passages, but the playfulness at times came across as meandering. It seems like that was deliberate, but it didn't always translate into satisfying viewing. But again, portions of each film were really thrilling. And once it got going, Anatomie d'un rapport turned out to be truly fascinating.

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Barmy
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#3 Post by Barmy » Tue Sep 19, 2006 2:11 pm

Yeah, these showed at Anthology in NYC. I caught a few and didn't like any of them. Life is too short to spend much time watching this sort of amateurish stuff. Even Leaud couldn't save the Billy the Kid flick.

But kudos to them for including English subtitles.

mikebowes
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#4 Post by mikebowes » Tue Dec 19, 2006 9:35 am

And now we have Facets releasing two from this box set with a street date of 12/27/06

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Scharphedin2
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#5 Post by Scharphedin2 » Tue Dec 19, 2006 6:43 pm

I have never seen any of Moullet's films, but I remembered this quote, which appeared quite some time ago in a column by Jonathan Rosenbaum (in "Cinemascope" I believe):

Ever since I published “A la Recherche de Luc Moulletâ€

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Barmy
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#6 Post by Barmy » Tue Dec 19, 2006 9:10 pm

Rosenbaum is a blowhard. His (appropriate) reverence for Rivette notwithstanding. There are at least 50 French directors whose worst film is of more interest than Moullet.

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godardslave
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#7 Post by godardslave » Tue Dec 19, 2006 9:36 pm

Barmy wrote:There are at least 50 French directors whose worst film is of more interest than Moullet.
Thanks for saving me some money.

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#8 Post by evillights » Wed Dec 20, 2006 4:01 am

Moullet is a giant.

His least successful film is of more interest to me than the best films of at least "50 French directors."

A thought which puts me in mind of the program notes for Rivette's incredible 'Merry-Go-Round,' which screened a few days ago at the Museum of the Moving Image (excerpted from Michael Ferguson's book on Joe Dallesandro, 'Little Joe, Superstar') -- "One critic noted, however, that 'a failed Rivette will always be more engaging than a successful Sautet or Woody Allen, because it speaks of the cinema, and the cinema's morality'."

I find this applies just as well to Moullet.

craig.

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Scharphedin2
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#9 Post by Scharphedin2 » Wed Dec 20, 2006 1:34 pm

I had not looked at the Cinemascope website in a while, and found that I had missed a couple of instalments. The latest of course features a piece by Rosenbaum on the Moullet set. I do not really have a dog in the fight on Rosenbaum's qualities as a critic (I simply do not know enough about the man), however, I have discovered a number of excellent DVDs through his column in the past. It is also my opinion that anyone with the insight and love of film/DVD that Rosenbaum shares in his column deserves the respect of not being verbally abused in a forum such as this.

For anyone interested in the Moullet set and/or Rosenbaum's ongoing global DVD recommendations. Here is the link to the latest issue:

Cinemascope issue 29: Global DVD Discoveries

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Michael Kerpan
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#10 Post by Michael Kerpan » Wed Dec 20, 2006 1:59 pm

Scharphedin2 wrote:t is also my opinion that anyone with the insight and love of film/DVD that Rosenbaum shares in his column deserves the respect of not being verbally abused in a forum such as this.[/url]
Consider the source.

;~}

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Barmy
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#11 Post by Barmy » Wed Dec 20, 2006 2:28 pm

He's also fat.

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domino harvey
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#12 Post by domino harvey » Wed Dec 20, 2006 5:53 pm

I'd go for it but $100+.... does anyone have this already and can confirm all six titles have English subs?

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Scharphedin2
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#13 Post by Scharphedin2 » Wed Dec 20, 2006 6:08 pm

I am very tempted myself. From what I have read, all the films have English subs, and there are actually 6 feature films + an additional short feature by Moullet and another short feature that documents Moullet at work.

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#14 Post by evillights » Thu Dec 21, 2006 2:22 am

domino harvey wrote:I'd go for it but $100+.... does anyone have this already and can confirm all six titles have English subs?
All have English subs, are Region 0, and are NTSC.

Even the packaging is bilingual (in French and English). This was clearly conceived as not just a French release, but an international release. --

Giving Moullet to the world!

craig.

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domino harvey
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#15 Post by domino harvey » Thu Dec 21, 2006 3:31 am

I didn't even notice there's an "English" option at the top of the page-- how nice for them to go thru the effort! =D>
will have to pick this one up with Christmas moneys

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domino harvey
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#16 Post by domino harvey » Fri Dec 22, 2006 2:32 pm

looks like Facets is releasing Brigitte et Brigitte/Up and Away on January 30th, list price of $39.95... I think they're just releasing identical discs to those in the set. I went ahead and bit the bullet last night, $117 or so all said and done, which is much cheaper than getting the four discs individually assuming they're all released like this over here by Facets. Well, that's how I rationalized spending so much money anyways. I will be happy to answer any questions about the set once it arrives.

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justeleblanc
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#17 Post by justeleblanc » Mon Feb 05, 2007 8:01 pm

domino, how's the quality of the set? any screen caps?

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domino harvey
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#18 Post by domino harvey » Mon Feb 05, 2007 8:28 pm

I'd love to tell you if it would ever fucking arrive. I've been waiting since I posted. As soon as it rears its head I will report back.

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#19 Post by yoshimori » Mon Feb 05, 2007 8:32 pm

domino harvey wrote:looks like Facets is releasing Brigitte et Brigitte/Up and Away on January 30th, list price of $39.95.
Saw these via netflix yesterday. Prints/transfer looked fine by me. The films are ... uhhh ... "rigorous".

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justeleblanc
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#20 Post by justeleblanc » Mon Feb 05, 2007 9:14 pm

yoshimori wrote:
domino harvey wrote:looks like Facets is releasing Brigitte et Brigitte/Up and Away on January 30th, list price of $39.95.
Saw these via netflix yesterday. Prints/transfer looked fine by me. The films are ... uhhh ... "rigorous".
I have them in my queue as well........ rigorous? perfect!

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#21 Post by evillights » Tue Feb 13, 2007 1:06 am

justeleblanc wrote:
yoshimori wrote:
domino harvey wrote:looks like Facets is releasing Brigitte et Brigitte/Up and Away on January 30th, list price of $39.95.
Saw these via netflix yesterday. Prints/transfer looked fine by me. The films are ... uhhh ... "rigorous".
I have them in my queue as well........ rigorous? perfect!
The films are "...uhhh...'rigorous'" insofar as Moullet has an innate understanding of what it takes to supplement idiosyncratic ideas, pants-wetting comedy, an inimitable worldview, and the outright reformation of reality: the creation of an "...uhhh...'rigorous'" — dense, intellectual — mise-en-scène. Which is to say, you put the fucking camera on a tripod, you place two perfect-cast actors in front of a wall, or on a mountain-path, and you -shoot-. He doesn't need to be Ophuls, because he's Moullet. Which is to say, he's Ozu. With the proviso: he's Moullet.

Having said that, don't let me give the impression there's any slackness of formal rigor on Moullet's part. Man v./w. nature is presented and contemplated as profoundly as in Ford and Mann, and that's no hyperbole. 'A Girl Is a Gun' is the greatest acid-trip parallel — in the most non-pejorative, non-mendicant-of-sundry-memes sense of the term ('acid-trip') — in all of cinema. I mean, on an experiential, evokes-a-trip level. The greatest COMEDIC treatment of an acid trip comes in Moullet's own 'Les Contrabandières,' from the moment the raga starts to wail.

Let me give the straight-story on the transfers, since the only place I've ever seen them accurately described was in the New York Times, by Dave Kehr, with regard to the Facets distribution of a few (soon all) of the discs, which were, as far as I'm aware, 1:1 ports of the BlaqOut releases. — The films are in NTSC, =BUT= they're in NTSC in that NTSC-sense in which the NTSC is only a PAL-master-directly-slapped-into-NTSC-shape. Which is to say: They're beautiful transfers, playing in NTSC, with ghosty motion, and 4% speed-up.

C'est ça.

Anyway, if you asked me who my five favorite filmmakers were, regardless of flux-on-a-whim, I could easily cite Moullet in the TOP FIVE EVER on the basis of the seven films in this box set alone.

My two viewing tips are: (1) Don't neglect 'Les Sièges de l'Alcazar' as "supplement"; it's a Moullet feature. (2) Chronological viewing will press home the fact that 'Parpaillon' (fuck the whole "Up and Down" title, which who knows who came up with) is a shattering tour-de-force, on a Keaton-level of ingenuity.

But personally for me, the crux-film (as I'll call it) of those in the set is 'Anatomy of a Relationship.' I can only bow my head in respect at the thought of this film. To paraphrase Nabokov on Dickens, we should begin every morning with at least two minutes devoted to the silent contemplation of 'Anatomy of a Relationship.' — A film in the discussion of which nobody ever mentions Jeanne Moreau as co-star.

Keep your eyes peeled for a multi-person Moullet roundtable that's going to be reprinted somewhere on the webosphere in the next two months or so, in which a bunch of us Moullet-fanatic participants are participating. Spurred on by occasion of the release of the box-set.

(The reason why the "hallowing" of post-New-Wave French filmmakers stopped in that canonizing sense is because there ceased to be people like Truffaut who were able to see enough into people like Guitry.)

craig.

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domino harvey
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#22 Post by domino harvey » Wed Feb 14, 2007 8:01 pm

Finally got my set from DHL this afternoon! AHHHHHH I thought it was never coming. The subtitles are impossibly small, but the menus are cute, will make screencaps once I've watched all the films. Blaq Out threw in a DVD of what seems to be film extracts from Cannes, will have to investigate further.

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domino harvey
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#23 Post by domino harvey » Wed Feb 14, 2007 10:40 pm

screenshots from the wonderful Brigitte et Brigitte (1966):

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domino harvey
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#24 Post by domino harvey » Thu Feb 15, 2007 9:40 pm

Les Contrebandieres (1967)

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justeleblanc
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#25 Post by justeleblanc » Thu Feb 15, 2007 10:08 pm

Thanks, Domino!

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