Janus Films

[Hogfather]

Janus has new pages for Paris qui dort, Entr'acte, and Les Grandes Manœuvres. The first two were already included on the Criterion editions of Under the Roofs of Paris and À nous la liberté, respectively, but the runtimes on the Janus pages are longer than those on the Criterion Channel. The Janus page lists a version of Paris qui dort almost twice as long as the one on CC.

[domino harvey]

I bought the DVDs a few months ago, so you're all welcome for the upgrades

[Tuppence]

Also, À nous la liberté and Under the Roofs of Paris are presented from 4K restorations on the Criterion Channel.

[Hogfather]

Janus added a new page for In a Year of 13 Moons.

[eerik]

Trailer for Él

[dwk]

More René Clair
14 Juillet
The Italian Straw Hat
Les deux timides

[davidhuxley]

Janus has new pages for Paris qui dort, Entr'acte, and Les Grandes Manœuvres. The first two were already included on the Criterion editions of Under the Roofs of Paris and À nous la liberté, respectively, but the runtimes on the Janus pages are longer than those on the Criterion Channel. The Janus page lists a version of Paris qui dort almost twice as long as the one on CC.

The version of Paris qui dort on Criterion disc and streaming on the Criterion Channel is the director-approved edit that was released in the 1950s. Hopefully it will eventually be replaced by the original full-length version.

[jwd5275]

More Kira Muratova
The Tuner
The Asthenic Syndrome
Among Grey Stones

[jwd5275]

Happy Hour

[beamish14]

The Asthenic Syndrome

Phenomenal. Hope I can get rid of my shit Russian DVD soon

[ryannichols7]

Happy Hour

this was a big title for KimStim, wonder what the story is there. obviously Hamaguchi has quite a relationship with Janus at this point, makes sense. I'm happy with my Blu-ray but if somehow a 4K came of this...

[jwd5275]

The Shrouds

[ryannichols7]

More Kira Muratova
The Tuner
The Asthenic Syndrome
Among Grey Stones

also please "Three More by Kira Muratova" too, while we're at it

[Red Screamer]

The Shrouds

I was really into The Shrouds and frankly have no idea why some people reacted so poorly to it. If you loved Crimes of the Future as much as I did, no caveats needed; it’s plainly in the same vein of a martial drama taking place on the quotidian edges of the Cronenberg universe, with the sci-fi and horror elements mostly used for conceptual framing and the bigger emotional punches.

It’s Cronenberg at his most nakedly sentimental and I personally found it very moving, particularly when it comes to the grief of a widower dumbfounded by the changes and loss of the body — aging, sickness, frailty, death — that over the years has essentially, as the protagonist says, merged with your own. Which isn’t to say that the Shrouds has Cronenberg letting go of his peculiar sense of humor, as is obvious from the opening scene in which Vincent Cassel, basically explicitly playing Cronenberg himself, has a first date at a restaurant, that’s revealed to be 1) an upscale restaurant at a graveyard used to attract tourists, 2) owned by him, along with the graveyard, 3) right next to the plot where his late wife is buried, and 4) a prelude to him walking his date over to her grave, where he’s live-streaming her corpse’s decomposition.

That said, Cronenberg is not as in control of his provocative conceits and sparse style as he was in Crimes and the movie ends with more than a few things left unaddressed, kind of fitting its diaristic, sketch-like quality.

I know not everyone values as much as I do the shock of seeing uncomfortable, bizarre shards of “how we live now” in the digital age captured in films, but for those fellow Twin Peaks: The Return / Coma / We’re All Going to the World’s Fair fans, this is really one to add to your programming. I haven’t even gotten into the ways he incorporates cellphones, driverless cars, artificial intelligence, bitmoji-esque avatars…

[davidhuxley]

FYI: https://letterboxd.com/michaelhutchins/ ... e-catalog/

[hearthesilence]

FWIW, I posted about The Shrouds but it was probably my favorite new film shown in NYC last year. (It was at the NYFF)

[Red Screamer]

Thanks for mentioning it, I missed the thread earlier. And now that I'm reading it, I'm seeing that I rehashed some of your and twwblu's points! I'm glad it connected with you two as well.

[Yakushima]

More Kira Muratova
The Tuner
The Asthenic Syndrome
Among Grey Stones

Be still, my heart! The Tuner is one of Muratova's absolute best and a personal favorite of mine. Does this hint at physical releases of the three titles in the near future?

[Hogfather]

Platform
Unknown Pleasures
The World
Caught by the Tides

[domino harvey]

I can't wait for one of each of these groupings to get a physical release while the rest languish on the channel

[The Elegant Dandy Fop]

Disappointing that the listed runtime for Platform (154 minutes) is exactly the same as the standard version that's been around for 25 years, and not the 193 minutes of the Venice cut or something in between (which is what I had expected when Tony Rayns wrote ages ago that Jia was working on a "definitive cut").

Years ago when UCLA Film and Television Archive did their Jia Zhangke retrospective with him in person, I sent them an email expressing disappointment that they were playing the shorter version of Platform and not the longer cut that had played at Metrograph a few months prior and said they had "rights issues" but they had pursued it. Wonder what is going on with that version?

[The Fanciful Norwegian]

I've read that the Venice cut has uncleared music, so that might be what they meant.

EDIT: From what I can tell, the Metrograph screening of the Venice cut took place in 2016 and the UCLA retrospective in late 2018. That was just a couple of months before we found out that Janus had acquired the U.S. rights for Jia's first four features. My guess is that UCLA worked with Janus for their screening and the latter was contractually unable to authorize a screening of the 193-minute cut (possibly due to the aforementioned music rights issue), whereas the Metrograph screening was done before the Janus acquisition and fell into more of a legal gray area by working directly with the producer rather than a commercial distributor.

[Finch]

Adam Nayman reviews The Shrouds for the New Republic.

[jwd5275]

The Fall of Otrar
The Lovers on the Bridge

[dwk]

I figured they'd get/had The Lovers on the Bridge when they picked up Boy Meets Girl and Mauvais Sang.