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I own a handful of these (4 or 5) and they are all good quality, I'd say. Subtitles are removable, some of the discs have great extras (interviews and/or short films), and the picture and sound are very good. I wouldn't have any reservations about picking any of these up if I were you. One thing that's kind of lame is that they only have one booklet, which is included in all of their Fassbinder DVD's.

Thanks for the input. I'll probably pick up Fox and His Friends and The Bitter Tears of Petra von Kant first. Bitter Tears features two short films, as I recall.

I've got both of them, and can definitely recommend them both, although I much prefer "Fox" as a film. Personal preference out of the equation, I think you'll be happy with them.

Yeah, that one booklet is annoying. Good piece, though, but still. The Wellspring DVD of Beware of a Holy Whore is good.

That's actually one of the other titles I was considering. As I recall, John Waters is rather fond of it.

Some interesting news on the Fassbinder front: in the UK, Arrow has announced plans to issue 19 Fassbinder features on DVD.

Some interesting news on the Fassbinder front: in the UK, Arrow has announced plans to issue 19 Fassbinder features on DVD.

I really hope this isn't just a bunch of R2 overlap and we get a substantial amount of new Fassbinder titles. There are several vital films we have not yet recieved in the US, such as The Third Generation (my personal favorite), Despair, Lili Marleen, World on a Wire, Why Does does Herr R Run Amok?, etc. Though Fassbinder is waaaaay too prolific to play completist with (though I'm sure they're out there), I'd really like to see his entire filmography released. Especially the first and last of my list.

The Third Generation came out in France last year via Carlotta, I would assume that Arrow will release the same films as Carlotta.

postmodern-chuck wrote:I really hope this isn't just a bunch of R2 overlap and we get a substantial amount of new Fassbinder titles. There are several vital films we have not yet recieved in the US, such as The Third Generation (my personal favorite), Despair, Lili Marleen, World on a Wire, Why Does does Herr R Run Amok?, etc. Though Fassbinder is waaaaay too prolific to play completist with (though I'm sure they're out there), I'd really like to see his entire filmography released. Especially the first and last of my list.

The list of available DVDs on the Fassbinder Foundation's website suggests that there are a number of films that have been released on DVD in Europe but not in the USA; so there is some slack there for Arrow to take up.

The Foundation also has a rather ambiguous news item that might just be suggesting that more is on the way both in the US and elsewhere.

Just thought I'd mention that the Institute of Contemporary Arts in London is screening a number of Fassbinder films in April and May. The institute describes it as "a three-week celebration of Fassbinder's spirit and genius, to tie-in with the forthcoming release of 17 key titles on DVD from Arrow Films". Details of April's screenings.

James Wolcott has an entertaining, somewhat wandering post about Fassbinder on his blog. It's also incidentally about how "fringe" cultural artifacts become mainstreamed. It makes me wonder to what degree DVDs have made the general population aware of obscure film titles. If so, what are the effects of this this increasing exposure?

It's no big deal, but I just wrote an article on Fassbinder for a Vancouver student paper, here.
I prefer his mid-1970s work to his later films, of those I've seen.

i just finished a merchant of four seasons

my favorites are:

ali fear eats the soul
maria braun
in a year
fox and his friends
lola
chinese roulette

good but didn't love:
satans brew
veronika voss
merchant

not crazy about:
bitter tears
beware of a holy whore
katzelmacher

i guess lists are frowned upon so lets pretend i said stuff about each film

Why didn't you like Beware Of A Holy Whore?

it was kinda boring i dunno. didn't engage me at all. i'm probably not going to watch any more of the first 11. i'm iffy about whity. it seems i like the middle and latter periods best and that holy whore/four merchants transition time seems more transitional than really effective. after seeing douglas sirk's immitation of life i see fassbinder's work differently though.

IMITATION OF SIRK AMIRITE GUYS LOL

Infinity Arthouse, through Tango Entertainment, the same company that released Herzog's WHERE THE GREEN ANTS DREAM on R1 recently, will release RWF's THE THIRD GENERATION on DVD on July 25, 2006. It's available for pre-order at amazon already; I haven't checked the other sites. The Herzog disc includes the DRITTE GENERATION trailer. Good news for Fassbinder fans.

born in a truck on the 4th of july

crisp wrote:born in a truck on the 4th of july

and i still ain't asked for a favor or the money yet

high five

Amazon has Third Generation on pre-order sale for 50% off. So is Valley of the Tartars for some reason.

i just finished a 3 week long marathon run of every Fassbinder released in R1 land...I had previously seen only Ali:Fear Eats the Soul, Merchant of Four Seasons, Bitter Tears of Petra Von Kant, the BDR trilogy, and Beware the Holy Whore. Along with watching these films, I read along with Christian Braad Thomsen's wonderful book entitled "Fassbinder" and I watched the films in the order he lists them.

Upon my initial viewings of the films, I somewhat enjoyed Merchant, I rather enjoyed Ali:Fear Eats the Soul, and I was rather indifferent to the BDR trilogy, and I hated Bitter Tears and Holy Whore...

However after reading this book (Thomsen was a very close friend with Fassbinder) and watching the films in the order that Thomsen lays out as Fassbinders work "periods" (his crime films, bourgiouse films, woman films, TV films, etc.) I came to have a newfound, and complete respect for the man and his work. Quick thoughts on some of the films...

The American Soldier - this was a fun, neat film, it was here that you really get a good look at some of the themse that will run throughout Fassbinders long illustrous career, the use of mirrors to "double" the characters, the idea of love being colder than death (while the first feature was titled that, this film is where he REALLY starts to hammer those ideas in). The ideas between violence and sex, and how they are connected, and also intertwined with submissiveness and aggressiveness, and finally his interest in freudian theories, here it is the edipal complex.

Whitty - the humor in this is great, there's some really really grand scenes, including the son of the plantation owner in drag praying to a crucifex...a little bunuelian.

Rio Das Mortes - once again, laced with humourous bits, the 2 guys trying to convince people that they have a serious business plan to grow cotton reminded me of schemes my friends and i would dream up in high school

Martha - Cruel and powerful

Stationmasters Wife - once again, cruel and powerful...with these 2 films and Effi Briest, we get a really interesting look at the dominace/subservient relationships involved.

In a Year with 13 Moons - I was blown away by this...I gotta be honest, I wasn't expecting much, I thought that the transgender aspect of the plot might turn me off from the story, as in previous works, Fassbinder has seemed to almost go out his way to throw the idea that what he's expressing is NOT the norm in terms of sexuality, and here we've got a tormented character with Elvira/Edwin. (s)he's a transexual who at first isn't even gay when he becomes Elvira, there are times that she's ashamed of herself and dresses in mens clothes, and as the film goes on, she tries to connect with her masculinity again but realizes that its too late. The thing that REALLY blew me away though was the dialogue and the delivery of the dialogue. I've always found German to be language that seems to be barked rather than spoken, but the actor (whom his name escapes me right now and im not in the mood to IMDB it) delivered his lines with breaktaking poetry. There was a sensous wisp to them, which really added to the character. Again this movie is not short on humour as well.

I just got Why Does Herr R. Run Amok today, and I'm going to order Third Generation right away... I really want to get my hands on any and all Fassbinders that aren't available in R1 now!

BrightEyes23 wrote:I'm going to order Third Generation right away...

Amazon mentions that as being released by Tango Entertainment next month: http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B000FWGYU8

sorry, i meant pre-order.

Wasn't Third Generation supposed to be released by Fantoma?

I just watched "Why Does Herr R. Run Amok?" today and was yet again blown away by Fassbinder. It took a few films for me to become acclimated, but I am now hooked. I hadn't seen anything of his films prior to '72, for fear of boredeom, but now I need to go back and check out some of his earlier stuff.

The acting is much more naturalistic than in much of his other work, and the long takes of his banal daily existence completely worked for me, and weren't slow or boring in the least. You know he's going to "run amok" and are left constantly trying to figure out how these all add up to such a random act of violence. And when it finally happens, the scene has much more power than I was anticipating.

I was also left wondering if this film had any influence on Gus Van Sant, because I kept thinking of similarities to "Elephant". Anyway, another great one from Fassbinder.

fassbinder is definetly one of those filmmakers who you really have to watch a handful of his films before you can really begin to appreciate him.

after watching Merchant of Four Seasons, Bitter Tears of Petra Von Kant, Beware the Holy Whore, and...oh i can't remember the name of it...the one that deals with a lot of marxist ideas, its very Godard-esq, it feels like a journey film...itll come to me later...after watching those 4 i kind of thought that Fassbinder was just sort of a cheap artist, he'd make his films on the fly just to put out stuff (this was due to the low production values, the cheap-bare sets, and being shot made for TV look like in 4x3).

After watching more and more of his films, I began to realize he truly is one of the best modern filmmakers...a true artist.

I think perhaps some of my reservations about him being a true artist also inadvertently came from how he looks...he looks NOTHING like what one would expect of a serious filmmaker. you look at Godard, Truffaut, all of the Nouvelle Vague guys, and they look really studious, they look smart...then you look at Fassbinder, he's very unkempt, overweight, dressed very boring, he doesn't have the look of an "artist" but he is, and he's a damn fine artist to boot!