Film Movement

[tenia]

The new restoration is far from being perfect, but it looks like the DCP had issues on top of it, as the French BD and UHD don't have picture "desitegrating" here and there.

[Maltic]

Paul Fonoroff gave a nice introduction to the film, noting that HK films dominated the HK market in the 80s & 90s (100-200 HK produced films per year which has since dropped to only about 40) & that only 3 Western films cracked the top 25 in the HK market the year it was released (& in which it was 3rd biggest box office hit).

People have noted it was with Jurassic Park that Hollywood began to challenge the local industry. The CGI combined with Spielberg's marketing strategy.

[Stefan Andersson]

Bye Bye Brazil, 4K, digital release from Film Movement:
https://thefilmstage.com/a-landmark-of- ... ye-brazil/

[dwk]

Looks like Film Movement has Shunji Iwai's Love Letter

[Michael Kerpan]

dwk -- I wonder if the trailer comes from an old HK DVD?

[nicolas]

Film Movement licensed new 4K restorations of A City of Sadness, To Live , Raise the Red Lantern, Samba Traore, The Taste of Tea, My Sassy Girl (director’s cut), Nirvana, Violette Noziere, La Femme Publique, The River (Tsai Ming-liang) and Visconti’s L’innocente. They’ll release them theatrically and on streaming.

Fingers more than crossed for 4K releases via Criterion.

[afilmcionado]

Film Movement licensed new 4K restorations of A City of Sadness, To Live , Raise the Red Lantern,

Finally! Huge. So happy!

[beamish14]

The River is massive news

I really hope they can rescue Zulawski’s more elusive French films, Fidelity and My Days Are More Beautiful Than Your Nights

[dwk]

Film Movement licensed new 4K restorations of A City of Sadness, To Live , Raise the Red Lantern, Samba Traore, The Taste of Tea, My Sassy Girl (director’s cut), Nirvana, Violette Noziere, La Femme Publique, The River (Tsai Ming-liang) and Visconti’s L’innocente. They’ll release them theatrically and on streaming.

Fingers more than crossed for 4K releases via Criterion.

Wasn't Criterion credited for the restoration of Raise the Red Lantern when it had some festival screenings a few years ago?

[TVC15]

Great news about the Zhang Yimou titles — I just wish Red Sorghum had been included.

[ianthemovie]

Could they do Tsai's What Time Is It There? while they're at it? It's essentially a sequel to The River.

Tsai's films really need some love. So disappointing that The Hole couldn't even get a Blu-ray release when it was restored a couple of years ago.

[nicolas]

Film Movement licensed new 4K restorations of A City of Sadness, To Live , Raise the Red Lantern, Samba Traore, The Taste of Tea, My Sassy Girl (director’s cut), Nirvana, Violette Noziere, La Femme Publique, The River (Tsai Ming-liang) and Visconti’s L’innocente. They’ll release them theatrically and on streaming.

Fingers more than crossed for 4K releases via Criterion.

Wasn't Criterion credited for the restoration of Raise the Red Lantern when it had some festival screenings a few years ago?

Honestly I’ve no idea. I only remember reading that the producer of the film wanted to keep the restorations exclusive to a particular market (Asia maybe?) for a few years and then sell the rights to Lantern, A City of Sadness and To Live in a package deal.

Maybe Film Movement secured the rights to Sadness, To Live and Raise the Red Lantern early with Criterion’s backing in exchange for the physical rights. The Indiewire article I’ve read didn’t mention physical at all, so it’s lots of speculation at the moment.

It’d be more than puzzling if they invested in the restoration and a direct boutique competitor got the theatrical and digital rights.

[senseabove]

Could they do Tsai's What Time Is It There? while they're at it? It's essentially a sequel to The River.

Tsai's films really need some love. So disappointing that The Hole couldn't even get a Blu-ray release when it was restored a couple of years ago.

Which, if they could, should also include the short The Skywalk is Gone, an actual sequel to WTiiT?

[mteller]

And The Wayward Cloud too please!

[goblinfootballs]

Any and all films by Hou or Tsai would be welcome on blu or 4K.

[andyli]

Film Movement licensed new 4K restorations of A City of Sadness, To Live , Raise the Red Lantern, Samba Traore, The Taste of Tea, My Sassy Girl (director’s cut), Nirvana, Violette Noziere, La Femme Publique, The River (Tsai Ming-liang) and Visconti’s L’innocente. They’ll release them theatrically and on streaming.

Fingers more than crossed for 4K releases via Criterion.

I think you misread this part in bold (emphasis added by me) from the news article.

In addition to these acquisitions, Film Movement Classics has also recently acquired the new 4K restoration of Idrissa Ouedraogo’s “Samba Traore,” slated for re-release later this year; Katsuhito Ishii’s cult favorite “The Taste of Tea,” opening May 8th at New York’s Metrograph; “My Sassy Girl,” the landmark Korean rom-com, in a 25th anniversary 4K restoration director’s cut coming to theaters later this year; a new 4K restoration of Gabriele Salvatores’ “Nirvana”; as well as Claude Chabrol’s “Violette Noziere”; Andrzej Zulawski’s “La Femme Publique”; Tsai Ming-Liang’s “The River”; and a 4K restoration of Cate Shortland’s “Somersault,” starring Sam Worthington and Abbie Cornish, in theaters now.

There's no indication these films are coming from 4K restoration going by the text. La Femme Publique could still be 4K restored as there are indications elsewhere. But I've not heard anything like that for Tsai's The River. It might very well be the same 2K transfer out in Taiwan more than 10 years ago.

Regarding the Red Lantern situation, I'm beginning to doubt if people really saw Criterion's credit in those screenings. If Criterion indeed had taken part in the restoration, why in the world would they let another party handle the theatrical release?

[Lowry_Sam]

If Criterion indeed had taken part in the restoration, why in the world would they let another party handle the theatrical release?

Maybe Film Movement is shifting to distribution and dropping its disc production & letting Criterion do that, in which case it would be like Janus & Rialto, which would be fine with me, particularly if Criterion continues with 9 releases per month. Criterion has featured Fim Movement titles on the Channel, so presumably that would continue.

[andyli]

Farewell, My Concubine is a famous collaboration between the two companies, but that was before Film Movement began releasing 4K titles on their own. Plus their output makes up almost half of VS' partner label slate each month. I doubt they'd give anything to CC now.

[Lowry_Sam]

But they've released only one UHD. Maybe Film Movement releases those titles set for DVD and Criterion for those on UHD.

[andyli]

The Dam Busters is their first. After that there are The Great Silence and Shanghai Blues.

[brundlefly]

Looks like Film Movement has Shunji Iwai's Love Letter

Restoration trailer.

[hearthesilence]

Asia Society screened Center Stage tonight. Stanley Kwan was originally going to appear for a Q&A but they ended up cancelling all of his appearances when he had to cancel his trip altogether. As a result, it was maybe 1/3 full at best. It was still worth catching because, as indicated in the schedule and repeated in the programmer's brief introduction, this was a vintage 35mm print from the Hong Kong Film Archive. However, their website also said this was 154 minutes - turns out, this was a print of the shorter 126-minute version.

Frustrating, but still worth seeing for anyone who's already seen the longer versions (there's also a 146-minute version which I haven't seen) because this print was absolutely beautiful. No shortage of dust specks, but the color, detail and shadows appeared intact and they looked gorgeous. If you really wanted to see the difference between digital and film (circa 1990) at its best, this was a great one to see, and it was apparent in Maggie Cheung's first close-ups. Honestly, she never looked more radiant, and the glowing, diffuse look of those shots really bloomed on this print.

One thing you'll notice about film grain from a projected 35mm print vs. a digital scan is that when you're watching a projected film print, if the shot is exposed properly and they don't need to push it in the film lab, then the grain can look pretty soft while the detail of the image capture remains intact. That's not the case with a good digital scan where everything is clear, crisp and well-defined, including the film grain, which is why the 4K scan of Center Stage as it appears on Film Movement's Blu-ray doesn't knock me out the way the film print would. That misty softness that comes with diffusion is pretty much undermined when the film element's grain is rendered with crisp, sharp clarity.

This is also why the misguided desire to "de-grain" a digital scan becomes understandable, but the problem is that the process ends up degrading the detail in an unnatural way, making everything look waxy or plastic, i.e. instead of improving things, it makes a film look much, much worse. (Exhibit A: Flowers of Shanghai as it appears on the current Blu-ray.)

So long story short, if you get a chance to see this projected in 35mm, do it. Unfortunately, that was the only screening they had at Asia Society.

There are at least two major cuts in Film Movement's new blu-ray of Center Stage, compared with the old Hong Kong blu-ray. The first cut is in the opening scene in the bathhouse, where the establishing shot is cut short to omit full frontal and back nudity of men walking past the camera. The second is more severe. About 1 hour and a half into the film, when Ruan is rehearsing her famous smoking scene alone in her room, there is an abrupt cut that eliminates a line from Tang ("What are you doing?"), Ruan blowing smoke to Tang's face, staring at Tang, and moving away from Tang, resulting in a jarring discontinuity.

A friend attending the Shanghai IFF showing told me at least the second cut is not present in the DCP. So it looks like a mistake solely on the part of Film Movement. Very disappointing.

Even though this print was the shorter version, neither of these things were cut.

I'm not 100% sure if the nudity was all there because I didn't see any blatant frontal nudity, but there were plenty of men's asses and the shot that contains them is a pretty long one that dollies slowly through the room. On the Blu-ray, you'll notice an abrupt jump in the film score when they cut to the next shot, another tell tale sign that they brutally cut this shot short, but no such abrupt jump is apparent during the film print, it sounded like a continuous performance/recording.

The part where Ruan blows smoke into Tang's face is wonderful - I can't believe that's lost on the Blu-ray, and now that I've seen that scene completely intact via the film print, the way that scene is cut on the Blu-ray looks ridiculously sloppy and half-assed. Film Movement really, really needs to re-do the Blu-ray.

Regardless, this may be the greatest film I've ever seen depicting filmmaking (or at least commercial narrative filmmaking - there are some films dealing with non-fiction filmmaking that are possibly greater). Virtuosic in the way it layers together dramatization, re-enactments, self-reflexive scenes and archival footage (both vintage narrative work and real-life interviews) and yet the film feels wholly organic - it never feels jarring or patchwork, everything locks together in a smooth, logical flow. And I was struck by how egalitarian filmmaking appears in this film, at least compared to Hollywood - a company of artists working together on a modest scale, with no one seeming above everyone else. Everyone is also taking their work seriously but clearly enjoying it as well. It really struck me how so many movies about movies, particularly studio movies, tend to be gooey schmaltz or cheap and cynical in a smug, self-congratulatory way, but Center Stage never lapses into either of those things.

EDIT: Forgot one detail. The print had burned-in subtitles for both Chinese AND English displayed at the same time, with English on the bottom. I'm guessing the Chinese subtitles were to cover audiences fluent in different dialects? Anyway, that's the only advantage of seeing this on Blu-ray - the ability to remove the subtitles or to display just one language at a time. The subtitles were never overwhelming, but given how beautiful this film looked, I can see the appeal of seeing less words burnt into the image.