Of Flesh and Blood: The Cinema of Hirokazu Kore-eda

[MichaelB]

From a BFI press release:

HIROKAZU KORE-EDA – May 2019

During May, BFI Southbank will host a focus on the work of HIROKAZU KORE-EDA, coinciding with the BFI UK-wide release of MABOROSI (1995) and a BFI box set release of MABOROSI (1995), AFTER LIFE (1998), NOBODY KNOWS (2004) and STILL WALKING (2008).

[domino harvey]

Excellent news!

[kcota17]

Who owns the rights to both sets in the US? It’s too sad that Still Walking is the only available blu-ray out of all them here in the States.

[Timec]

Milestone recently released Maborosi on Blu-ray—though I hear the transfer was sub-optimal (someone correct me if I'm wrong.) They also own After Life.

Nobody Knows is IFC.

[criterionsnob]

I have the Japanese imports, and Maborosi does not have the same interlacing issues as the Milestone version.

[Finch]

Thank heavens for the BFI!

[Michael Kerpan]

Is the Milestone's interlacing visible when simply watching on a (non-immense) HD TV? I certainly didn't notice it...

[dda1996a]

I'm sold for After-Life. What a perfect movie

[DeprongMori]

Will certainly pick this up in a shot for After Life, a potentially better Blu of Maborosi, and an upgrade of Nobody Knows (the DVD of which I haven’t watched yet.)

I do rather wish they had concentrated on his early films rather than skipping forward to Still Walking as I don’t believe there has been any release of 2001’s Distance outside of Japan. Hoping we might get some of his early short films as supplements. In any case, I’ll be picking this one up right away.

[Michael Kerpan]

I considered the Japanese set a must-buy because it contained several films that will likely never get a Western Blu-Ray release. (Distance has, of course, never gotten any Western release of any sort -- and probably never will).

[DeprongMori]

I totally missed the release of the limited edition Japanese Blu-ray box set, which seems to have included a handwritten message from Hirokazu Kore-eda in each set. Checking at YesAsia, it looks like standalone Blu-rays of the titles from the set are available with English subtitles, including Distance.

[artfilmfan]

Is the Milestone's interlacing visible when simply watching on a (non-immense) HD TV? I certainly didn't notice it...

Don't know. I'm glad I did not have to find out.

I got the Japanese Blu-ray of Maborosi when it was released. Placed an order for the Japanese Blu-ray of Still Walking just yesterday. Wish the announcement of this set had come out yesterday.

[rapta]

Slightly unexpected from the BFI but nevertheless great news. I have Still Walking on DVD from New Wave Films, and wanted to get both After Life and Nobody Knows at some point but never got around to it. This is an easy day-one for me!

[What A Disgrace]

Slightly unexpected from the BFI but nevertheless great news. I have Still Walking on DVD from New Wave Films, and wanted to get both After Life and Nobody Knows at some point but never got around to it. This is an easy day-one for me!

I wonder if any other New Wave titles are up for grabs, after this and Arrow releasing 24 City. Some juicy prospects for future boxes.

[rapta]

Slightly unexpected from the BFI but nevertheless great news. I have Still Walking on DVD from New Wave Films, and wanted to get both After Life and Nobody Knows at some point but never got around to it. This is an easy day-one for me!

I wonder if any other New Wave titles are up for grabs, after this and Arrow releasing 24 City. Some juicy prospects for future boxes.

Would have liked to have seen Blu-rays for some of their titles - e.g. The Pearl Button, Arabian Nights, Güeros, Theeb, Stray Dogs/Journey to the West - but assume those are all too recent. Perhaps we could see those Svankmajer features upgraded into a box set? Or things like The Silence of Lorna, Crimson Gold, Kontroll, Three Monkeys, Mysteries of Lisbon, and sleep furiously?

Biggest news for me would be both Joanna Hogg's Unrelated and Hou Hsiao-hsien's Café Lumière. Either would be no-brainers, in my opinion, if they were up for acquisition.

[Kauno]

Is there a release date for the box set?

[MichaelB]

May 2019, as said in the very first post.

[Kauno]

Sorry. English is not among my top 3 languages; I meant release date as a day of the month. I asked because I'll be in London at the beginning of May.

[MichaelB]

All that’s been revealed so far is that it’s probably May. Exact release dates generally aren’t announced this far in advance, as there may be unexpected production challenges ahead.

[Godot]

This is very exciting news, I am glad I saw this announcement just now. I've been considering buying "After Life" on either Japanese or R2 DVD (with the crappy New Yorker DVD so expensive), but now I'll gladly pre-order the blu-ray set from BFI when it's available. I found "After Life" quite moving, but only after I'd thought about it for a few months. On first viewing I thought it was interesting (mostly for its reflexivity, commenting on movie-making), but it stayed in my memory and kept intruding on my thoughts. I found the second viewing to be deeper and more affecting (maybe because I wasn't distracted trying to figure out the narrative), and devoted more attention to the differences between favorite memories chosen (and how they are enacted for the memory-films). I had the same reaction to Assayas' "Summer Hours" - somewhat intrigued the first time through, but not really emotionally invested; but when I watched it again 6 months later, I was really impacted by the last 30 min (especially the husband-wife lunch at the museum and the final 5 minutes as the granddaughter reminisces in the back yard). Both movies mean more to me as I age and experience more family and friends dying each year, naturally.

[Michael Kerpan]

A fun exercise for "After Life" -- guessing which "clients" are professional actors and which are telling (in essence) their own life stories.

I found the Japanese BluRay boxset indispensable -- as it has all the early (feature) films. When I bought this it was (relatively) affordable.

[longstone]

The Japanese Blu-rays are still available individually so it's possible to get the BFI set when it arrives and buy the missing films from Japan. Assuming that is that the BFI or another label don't announce a Vol 2 Kore-eda set. It seems a real shame that Distance and Hana have never been available in any form in the U.K.

[artfilmfan]

A question: One of the workers at the processing center in "After Life" looks a lot like the actor who plays the second husband in "Maborosi". Is he the same actor?

[Michael Kerpan]

A question: One of the workers at the processing center in "After Life" looks a lot like the actor who plays the second husband in "Maborosi". Is he the same actor?

Yes, Takashi Saito was in both films. He was also the voice of the father in Spirited Away. Another repetition -- the child version of the heroine in Maborosi shows up in After Life as well.

[artfilmfan]

Thanks for that confirmation, Michael. Had Tadanobu Asano played that minor role in After Life, it would have been really cool. This is not to say that the two films are related in anyway. It's just that I've seen Maborosi many times over the years and it was a little weird to see him (and not Tadanobu Asano) being one of the caseworkers in After Life. I need to watch After Life again to see what role the young actress from Maborosi plays in this film. I only watched After Life from the beginning to the end once before and that was on the New Yorker DVD years ago. Although I subsequently bought the Japanese DVD, and even after two attempts, I still haven't finished watching it.