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Jack Rabbit Slim wrote:
I mean, Luc Besson - come on! Aside from Leon, La femme Nikita and the Big Blue - which, interesting films though they are; could hardly be considered masterpieces - what else has he done worth noting?
Messenger: Joan of Arc? Taxi (which he produced)? the Transporter (which he wrote)? Let's not forget his bastardisation of Ong-bak!

Well there is always Atlantis, but that is a Warner property anyway!

colinr0380 wrote:
Well there is always Atlantis, but that is a Warner property anyway!

I'm not familiar with this particular film and IMDb doesn't have much info other than the fact that it's a documentary of sea-life. I'm a huge fan of underwater photography so I may just check this out.

daniel p wrote:

stepps wrote:well i think there is a bit of snobbery about Besson, i am a real lover of avant-garde and classic cinema, but i would rather see MoC release the Big Blue (btw have any of the detractors seen it?) than a Murnau stinker for the completist nerds ie. Schloß Vogeloed (5.5/10 on imdb), not that im saying that MoC have done this yet, but 2 of their spines are earmarked for unannounced Murnau's, and arent all of his great films released? Besson is well known recently for producing potboilers, but the big blue is a great film, and Nikita shows off some real directorial flair.
i wouldnt be surprised if a boutique label picks up on the big blue in thirty years times, you'll probably all be buying it as well.
my brother is a freediver, and this is his favourite film, its the kind of athletic adrenalinising movie that wont appeal to a lot of the pinot grigio sipping 40-somethings that lurk on this forum.
As well as movies like Meshes in the Afternoon and Last Year in Marienbad my top 100 contains Kiss of the Dragon and The Chronicles of Riddick, oh there's another two movies the poster's havent watched, dont want to slum it down the local odeon eh?
im not so sure bresson is a better director btw, his Lancelot du Lac was a bit too reactionary for my tastes.
perhaps some more Bergman or Kurosawa, im sure these two must have made some films that the boutique labels have overlooked, 40 + Bergman uk releases? (only 10 deserving of release?).
Sorry for the rant guys.

Dude, you're seriously adding fuel to the fire you've sparked in this thread...
Contrary to one point you made, I (a poster on here) have seen Kiss of the Dragon, and I'm curious as to where it sits on your "top 100" list.

The fact that Besson is mentioned so freely in the same sentence as Bresson stilll amuses me...

here is 80 to 90 of my top 100 for your info:

El Topo (1970 - Alejandro Jodorowsky)
The Big Country (1958 - William Wyler)
Draughtman's contract (1982 - Peter Greenaway)
King of New York (1990 - Abel Ferrara)
Cries and Whispers (1972 - Ingmar Bergman)
Beau travail (1999 - Claire Denis)
Kiss of the Dragon (2001 - Chris Nahon)
Nosferatu (1922 - F.W. Murnau)
The Red Shoes (1948 - Michael Powell)
Watership Down (1978 - Martin Rosen)
Zabriskie Point (1970 - Michaelangelo Antonioni)

so you can see the context of kiss of the dragon, a film which contains literally jaw-dropping martial arts action (and im not a big fan of the genre)
it is obvious that Besson has been recently involved in producing some deplorable stinkers, this is also true of Jean-Luc Godard whose films become ever more nauseating year on year (though Vivre sa Vie is at no 59 on my top 100 list). who on earth judges artists by their worst work - surely this is sophomoric? (Chabrol is another example of a deteriorating French director whose genius works such as Les Bonnes Femmes, and les Cousins, no 61 and 65 on my top 100 were subsequently followed in later decades by stinkers such as l'ivresse du pouvoir and au coeur du mensonge)
it is also equally obvious that MoC's mission statement precludes releases of movies such as the big blue, but that does not lessen the snobbery that i was responding against with my initial post.
of course i was expecting a post by a smart-arse who had seen Kiss of the Dragon, but i think that the necessity of your post probably underlines the validity of my point. (though i acknowledge that my claim is unfalsifiable in the Popperian sense).
i was not being ironic in saying i prefer besson to bresson, the atmosphere in his work borders on the pretentiousness of films like Louis Malle's Les Amants, which are responsible for the pop-culture lampoons of
French cinema that lead to its massive public underestimation.
btw can this thread be moved as the task of suggesting good films for MoC is probably too important to be interuppted by this distraction. Wojciech Has - The Hour-Glass Sanatorium please? (but definitely no Bressonian agitprop)
sorry for the rant guys

kekid wrote:Not so obvious. I heard George Bush prefers Besson over Bresson.

btw i think that George Bush would tell you that they were both "frog faggits" and he certainly has never seen movies by either of the directors, what with being so busy bringing about world misery

wrt the quote : "I think Kid Rock might just be a better song writer than John Lennon" i must admit that im not at all knowledgeable about low culture but a googlesearch has informed me that John Lennon is far more popular than Kid Rock (though it seems that both of their works are richly saturated with naivety). this is not the case with Bresson, who is far less esteemed than Besson by non-members of this forum. all in all, an utterly inappropriate parallel. it is amusing to note that being a fan of John Lennon probably means you are one of the forty-something pinot-grigio-sipping sell-outs that i was referring to in the original post, either that or a feckless Liverpudlian.

1.) New website still coming. Looking like early August now.

2.) F FOR FAKE has been put back to December to try and work out some stupendous extras for disc two. Can't promise a disc two yet.

3.) KEATON and MIKIO NARUSE sets will be out before Xmas.

4.) A new MoC Series catalogue (our second) will appear in Eureka's 2-disc "deluxe edition" release of JUNEBUG in August.

5.) The two Murnau titles (#23 and #25) are looking promising. #23 will probably be out first, an HD transfer, hopefully around February 2007. Too early to say for sure right now. Titles will be announced when everything is in place.

6.) We have made a large number of new acquisitions. See below:


TEASER TIME

Not including films already with their own page at the MoC Series website, we plan to release 53 films in the next year (four multidisc boxsets are included in that (including the Keaton set, which has 32 films)).

36 out of 53 will be silent films (thanks to the Keaton set).
2 will be documentaries.
The following numbers indicate multi-film releases by the same director: 32, 3, 9 (4 + 5).

btw. our 2006 release schedule looks like this (at the time of writing!):

AUGUST 2006

FANTASTIC PLANET (René Laloux, 1973)
FUNERAL PARADE OF ROSES (Toshio Matsumoto, 1969)


SEPTEMBER 2006

SHOESHINE (Vittorio De Sica, 1946)


OCTOBER 2006

KEATON set


NOVEMBER 2006

NARUSE set


DECEMBER 2006

F FOR FAKE

WOW!!

Random speculation: (Unless Flaherty has been completely dropped from your schedule) Two Naruse sets!? =P~

looks good.
i wish some dude from criterion appeared on here and did posts like this.

Anyword on how much the Naruse boxset should run?

Scharphedin2 wrote:WOW!!

Random speculation: (Unless Flaherty has been completely dropped from your schedule) Two Naruse sets!? =P~

I'd be a little skeptical with the BFI set coming, but more Naruse is always welcomed.

Still, the boxsets should be enough for now, and i would love to see some Ichikawa or Mizoguchi instead.

I was skeptical of the random speculation of a second Naruse boxset from MoC... And while I'd love to see more Naruse, I think the 6 that are being released is enough, that I'd prefer some of the key Mizoguchi or Ichikawa titles yet available before any additional releases..

No more Naruse planned at the moment, other than the 3 film boxset that we've barely announced (just here at CCF I think).

Very intrigued by the "9" box tease. Could this be the aforementioned Flaherty sets?

Also, as I'm not likely to be HD equipped in the near future and have no idea on what it all entails, can anyone tell me HD discs are playable in SD discs in the same manner as SACD hybrid discs are playable in normal CD players?

These "mystery Murnaus" are killing me.

could the 4 + 5 be 4 Powell and Pressburger Films, and one by Powell alone?

Listening to Turandot at present and wondering if we die if we guess the teaser riddle wrong?????

TheWatcher wrote:Very intrigued by the "9" box tease. Could this be the aforementioned Flaherty sets?

I don't think so, because they are only releasing 2 documentaries out of the fifty odd titles. Flaherty must have been pushed further into the future, or, maybe they are releasing him as single releases. The 4+5 must be a director not even mentioned by MoC yet.

CASTLE is a boring formulaic film, I thought. I'd far rather see even the moderately less mediocre DER BRENNENDER ACKER or FINANZEN von GROSSHERZOG, not to mention the greater wishlist of PHANTOM & DER GANG IN DER NACHT... PHANTOM in particular since it appears Flicker Alley has hit a financial bump in the road-- their R1 edition was slated for "spring 06" (Jeff told me mid-June at last communique).

Have you seen THE HAUNTED CASTLE Dave? I have it on vhs-- it's a CAT & CANARY style whodunnit w a surprise ending without any of the visual invention & fun of Leni, save for one set of dream sequences which feel almost like they were taken from another film.

The 9 tease very probably refers to short films, like the 32 Keatons. So no Powell & Pressburger (which are out in good editions anyway, though I'd love to have "The Elusive Pimpernel" and "Oh, Rosalinda"...).

Hmmm.... I'd give a lot for a collection of 9 unreleased Greenaway shorts...

davidhare wrote:[
Of course there are so many missing Murnaus. Not the least would be City Girl. Christ! what a virtually lost movie!!

A fucking sin that the only company to have put this fine film out in any form is freaking Grapevine. Next it'll be Facets, probably.

peerpee wrote:36 out of 53 will be silent films (thanks to the Keaton set).

Very nice!

peerpee wrote:TEASER TIME

Not including films already with their own page at the MoC Series website, we plan to release 53 films in the next year (four multidisc boxsets are included in that (including the Keaton set, which has 32 films)).

36 out of 53 will be silent films (thanks to the Keaton set).
2 will be documentaries.
The following numbers indicate multi-film releases by the same director: 32, 3, 9 (4 + 5).

Hmm, I was never very good at quizzes but I'll try to make some sense of those numbers at the end.

So, 32 is the Keaton box, right? Right. That one out of the way.

4 + 5 must refer to the other two boxsets that we still know nothing about as yet (we already know about the Naruse and the Keaton are coming, which make 2 + 2). So, we are to expect 9 films from the same director getting a MoC spine in the future. Which one, you might ask?

Then there's 3 more from another director that we also know nothing about. Murnau, perhaps? Tabu, Nosferatu and Phantom? Fingers crossed for those 3!

The possibilities with those numbers are of course enormous. Maybe some more hints, Sir Mulvaney Esquire? For instance, could you tell us if the numbers 4+5 and 3 refer to directors that are new to MoC?

Hmm, on second thought, 4+5=9 could very well be refering to Mizoguchi. These are the exact number of films on the 2 boxsets available in France containing works by the japanese director:

Ugetsu monogatari + Oyû-sama + Gion bayashi + Akasen chitai + Saikaku ichidai onna

Chikamatsu monogatari + Sanshô dayû + Yôkihi + Shin heike monogatari

And since The Life of Oharu is already available through Artificial Eye, MoC could very well substitute it with another one that would suit the bill. And to make things even nicer, the sets could be 2x5+5 if they included the Mizoguchi documentary contained on the second disc of extras of the Criterion Ugetsu.

I've done my best. Now's your turn.

I'm not going to reveal anything yet, other than "3" refers to the Naruse (thought that would be obvious!). There's still a disparity in the numbers that no-one's picked up on.

That's an extra Keaton, no?

peerpee wrote:I'm not going to reveal anything yet, other than "3" refers to the Naruse (thought that would be obvious!). There's still a disparity in the numbers that no-one's picked up on.

Not including films already with their own page at the MoC Series website, we plan to release 53 films in the next year (four multidisc boxsets are included in that (including the Keaton set, which has 32 films)).

36 out of 53 will be silent films (thanks to the Keaton set).
2 will be documentaries.
The following numbers indicate multi-film releases by the same director: 32, 3, 9 (4 + 5).

So, of the boxsets, we know that 32=Keaton and 3=Naruse. 9 (4+5) clearly means that nine films of another director (certainly a MAJOR director) are being released in two boxsets of 4 and 5 titles, respectively. Also, the 4-title boxset could be silents (36 total silents - 32[Keaton] = 4 remaining).

So, I'll offer up some possible names on that assumption: Ford, Hitchcock, Lang, Lubitsch, Mizoguchi, Ozu, Renoir, Sternberg, Vidor.

How'd I do, Nick?