BFI: 32 Ozu Films

[zedz]

Fantastic news. This will plug a lot of holes in the filmography. And it also suggests how the BFI might be handling the remaining silents (a gangster set would be great!)

[Michael Kerpan]

a new featurette in which Tony Rayns discusses Ozu’s early career.

Presumably this fills the 30 minute gap. ;~}

[MichaelB]

Given the average length of Tony's pieces for MoC, this seems highly likely.

[Michael Kerpan]

People will be shocked by the Ozu they will find in the first three of these films. Nothing in his later career has the degree of wackiness found here. The echoes of Harold Lloyd are pretty loud in Days of Youth. And some of the jokes in I Flunked But are pretty outrageous. While Lady and the Beard is (to me) delightfully silly (but has a sweeter tone than its predecessors). Alas, a number of great-sounding nonsense comedies from the era are lost.

[Cash Flagg]

So this next set will apparently be DVD only?

[MichaelB]

So this next set will apparently be DVD only?

It wouldn't surprise me - BFI policy with this series has been that if the materials aren't good enough to bump up to 1080p, they'll only get a DVD release, and the DVD-only titles thus far have been heavily slanted towards the early part of Ozu's career.

[knives]

That's certainly understandable though as I'm sure they're mostly working with existing masters especially with these five.

[MichaelB]

Aside from Good Morning, which the BFI redid because of the poor reception of existing versions, I believe everything in this series was sourced from Shochiku or Criterion masters.

[lubitsch]

Are the issues with the low GB of Autumn Afternoon and the region problems with Late Spring the reason why both releases aren't available on Amazon and most other sites? And if so when will they be ready again?

[zedz]

I don't believe there's a specific region problem with Late Spring. There's some authoring quirk that seems to affect a number of the Ozu discs when you try to play them on an Oppo (and maybe some other players) but which you can circumvent with digital voodoo and a copy of The Bed Sitting Room. It's another one of those tiresome quirks you get with BluRay authoring (like the atrocious glitches on The Leopard that render it unwatchable), but I don't think it actually amounts to an error.

[Opdef]

Looking forward to getting these, especially as I've never seen any of Ozu's early films. If it is DVD-only it's going to cause some problems on my shelves though - DVD and Blu-ray cases must never mix!

[triodelover]

Looking forward to getting these, especially as I've never seen any of Ozu's early films. If it is DVD-only it's going to cause some problems on my shelves though - DVD and Blu-ray cases must never mix!

Mercy! Remind me never to let you see a picture of my shelves. =;

[antnield]

[MichaelB]

The RRP is £29.99, so Amazon appears to be offering a pretty hefty discount on The Student Comedies...

[perkizitore]

I would imagine the RRP would be £19.99 as usual, are you sure about this?

[MichaelB]

Definitely £29.99 - it includes four features, so has more in common with the Kurosawa boxes than the other Ozu releases.

[perkizitore]

It's only 2 discs though and The Hut claims the RRP is £19.99.

[MichaelB]

The RRP is definitely £29.99, whatever The Hut is claiming - I've just checked with the man who actually set it!

[matrixschmatrix]

Well, hell, I pre-ordered it. Hopefully Amazon won't back out if this is based on a misunderstanding of the MSRP.

[ellipsis7]

Yes, it was originally £29.99 list price reduced to £22.99 on Amazon, but then it dropped to £11.99, so obviously went for the new price...

[zedz]

Snaffled. Thanks Michael!

[jguitar]

I may have missed an announcement about this (since I haven't been visiting this forum regularly in the recent past) but does anyone know why the BFI Tokyo Story dual edition is looking like it's out of print at Amazon UK? It looks available at the BFI store.

[MichaelB]

Still very much in print as far as I'm aware, though there may still be stock issues as a by-product of the Sony DADC fire last summer.

[Vito]

Amazon's price is great, but I wish I knew why shipping to Slovenia is more expensive than let's say Germany, Royal Mail has the same rates for both countries, not to mention various other UK retailers.

[MichaelB]

Amazon rather famously doesn't use the Royal Mail, so presumably the people they do use charge different rates to Slovenia.

So it might be worth trying other UK etailers and seeing what they charge.