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What is the logic behind this not having spine numbers but something like the Tati set or the Cassevettes set does?

You're asking about the wrong thing being spineless

beamish14 wrote: Fri Dec 11, 2020 4:36 pm

senseabove wrote: Fri Dec 11, 2020 3:31 pm My favorite Reddit fanboy defense was, to paraphrase, “as long as he doesn’t change the story there’s nothing to complain about and you’re just being pretentious”

That is why I don't go to film subreddits. The people in music discussions can be just as ridiculous.

Funny because as insufferable as people on the Steve Hoffman forum can be, for the most part lurking that message board the consensus seems to be the same: get the sound as close to the original master tape as possible. Which is basically what I'm looking for in a well-restored film.

Drucker wrote: Fri Dec 11, 2020 6:42 pm

beamish14 wrote: Fri Dec 11, 2020 4:36 pm

senseabove wrote: Fri Dec 11, 2020 3:31 pm My favorite Reddit fanboy defense was, to paraphrase, “as long as he doesn’t change the story there’s nothing to complain about and you’re just being pretentious”

That is why I don't go to film subreddits. The people in music discussions can be just as ridiculous.

Funny because as insufferable as people on the Steve Hoffman forum can be, for the most part lurking that message board the consensus seems to be the same: get the sound as close to the original master tape as possible. Which is basically what I'm looking for in a well-restored film.

You're certainly right on both counts: they are insufferable as a whole, but I relate to their hatred of revisionism

Calvin wrote: Fri Dec 11, 2020 4:08 pm

barbarella satyricon wrote: Fri Dec 11, 2020 4:00 pm
I checked the Korean-language version of their site just now, just to be sure, and it looks like the listings for those titles, on the Korean site, list only Korean subtitles. The linked pages are in Korean, but the specs are in English.

Ashes of Time, The Eagle Shooting Heroes

It might be a matter of different language-versions of a website being updated (or not updated) at different times, and it would be nice to be wrong, but it does seem like some gauntlet has been thrown down in the realms of worldwide Wong Kar-Wai licensing and distribution. That’s how the situation looks from my end.

Nova have told me in the past that their .co.kr website isn't updated as regularly as their .com, but it's a worrying discrepency to be sure. I'll ask Nova and update with their answer if I get one.

I tried looking at the picture of the back of the releases, and it's pixilated but I think I can JUST barely make out what it says. I used another Nova release as a reference (April Story), and the line I'm looking at lists "SUBTITLES: *Languages* [### min] Dual Layer BD"

So on Ashes of Time Redux, I'm seeing "SUBTITLES: Korean [96 min] Single Layer BD25"
On Eagle Shooting Heroes I see "SUBTITLES: Korean [106 min] Single Layer BD25"

I know the run times don't match what's on imdb, but the point is that there doesn't seem to be more than one language listed after "SUBTITLES". I know this could just be a placeholder. I know it could change. It doesn't correspond to what's listed on their English website. and I know that 98% of releases from Nova Media come with English subtitles. But that's what I'm currently seeing on the images on their site of the back covers. Hopefully this isn't the case. Hopefully the English subs will be included.

TraverseTown wrote: Fri Dec 11, 2020 6:07 pm What is the logic behind this not having spine numbers but something like the Tati set or the Cassevettes set does?

None of the other big director collector sets (Bergman, Varda, Fellini, and even going back the AK25 set) have a spine. Godzilla, Zatoichi, Bruce Lee, and the Olympics do though. It may just be arbitrary, but I suspect that Criterion considers the spineless boxes to be "gift boxes" and thus may feel comfortable eventually letting them go out of print (like AK25). Whereas they feel obligated to keep anything with a spine in print for perpetuity, except for rights issues or temporary hiccups between print runs and repackaging.

Calvin wrote: Fri Dec 11, 2020 10:49 am Wong Kar-Wai is on the Filmmaker Council of Scorsese's World Cinema Foundation, so he does take the preservation/restoration of other filmmakers' works quite seriously.

All this means is that Scorsese found it useful to get a bunch of big names to lend some marquee value to his foundation and thereby open a bunch of doors. I mean, I'm glad Wong is on there, but it doesn't say anything about his commitment to particular principles of film preservation.

Also, not that I care about not having another version of the Redux, but what explains the absence of Ashes of Time from this set? It's a pretty glaring omission.

The fundamental difference is that here, it's HIS OWN movies so I guess he kind of can do whatever he wants with them. This doesn't mean he's not, on the other hand, totally conservative when it comes to other people's movies.

Restorations aside, that’s a handsome set. Modern, minimalist. I usually loathe criterion’s graphics department but they did a nice job there.

knives wrote: Fri Dec 11, 2020 2:28 am To play devil’s advocate as unpleasant as this is for those that love the earliest versions what Wong is doing is not unusual historically even if it is unusual in film. Literature, music, plays, and even the fine arts have always had artists continuously tinkering with their works removing old versions in favor of some new thing. There’s nothing aberrant or shocking, quality aside, about Wong’s actions.

Fair, but isn't this kind of ongoing tinkering with literature less likely to result in the original version becoming completely unavailable? If nothing else, books, unlike electronic discs, don't decay and become unreadable in a matter of 10-15 years. If a book maintains a certain stature over a long enough period, someone is likely to make its major variations available - so, for example, one can easily compare the various editions of Frankenstein or Leaves of Grass. It helps that reprinting a book is an easier task than releasing a film, even without a full-scale restoration. In cases where the originals do become almost impossible to find (it seems Marianne Moore is an example), and the originals are of sufficient interest and merit, as others have said, it's equally unfortunate as it is in cinema, but as far as I know this situation is both less common for books and more likely to be resolved eventually.

whaleallright wrote: Fri Dec 11, 2020 9:15 pm
Also, not that I care about not having another version of the Redux, but what explains the absence of Ashes of Time from this set? It's a pretty glaring omission.

I was wondering that myself too. But after knowing Nova Media will release Ashes of Time and Eagle Shooting Heroes in Korea, I think Criterion might release them as a double feature/spine separate from the boxset.

ftsoh wrote: Fri Dec 11, 2020 11:22 pm

whaleallright wrote: Fri Dec 11, 2020 9:15 pm
Also, not that I care about not having another version of the Redux, but what explains the absence of Ashes of Time from this set? It's a pretty glaring omission.

I was wondering that myself too. But after knowing Nova Media will release Ashes of Time and Eagle Shooting Heroes in Korea, I think Criterion might release them as a double feature/spine separate from the boxset.

Just a guess, of course, but my impression is that the current version of Wong Kar-Wai, who is summing up his career until now with this box set, does not like Ashes of Time. The Redux was not universally embraced. I think he felt pushed around on the original cuts, where the producers allegedly demanded more action or whatever. That was, to my mind, a good idea, and the variation on the opening in the Redux is significantly duller by comparison. But it's what Wong wanted, later on. And maybe at the time, as well; but you know, these genius auteurs just aren't so infallible, is all it is, and sometimes someone else working on the movie has a surer sense of what makes the film more vivid in a particular part, or more communicative. Maybe in a swordplay film people expect some swordplay. But I suspect Wong has just never been quite happy with that film. Chungking Express upstaged it at the time of release, and Wong's later attempt to reformat it in the style of In the Mood for Love and 2046 failed to produce a very vivid or memorable result (it's not that kind of movie; the original cuts which work much better, have more in common with Chungking Express and Fallen Angels than they do with Wong's later-career movies). In my reading of this, My Blueberry Nights doesn't get into this set either, because that movie sucks and Wong knows it. But the impression I get of Ashes of Time, with Wong's rejiggering and retooling of it, and his deliberately not including it in this set, is that he isn't happy with it or proud of it, and he's rather people remember him for his clear successes: Days of Being Wild, Chungking Express, Happy Together, In the Mood for Love, and 2046. As Tears Go By fits in there, and The Hand, too. Fallen Angels almost makes it, but Wong isn't totally happy with that one, either––comparison to Chungking Express leaves Fallen Angels feeling a little less original, a little less substantial. And so the Ashes of Time impulse emerges again. Maybe he can re-envision the movie through digital revision and make it extreeeeeme!

I mean, so Fallen Angels was a little less original than Chungking Express. So what? It's pretty great at being what it is. Likewise, Ashes of Time, in its original presentation, was a gripping, interesting movie. As a younger person I was really struck with it, and thought it pretty great. But part of the way it worked was its postmodern relationship to other wuxia movies of the time––and that's the part Wong sought to remove from it when he reworked it. So no wonder it wasn't considered very impressive in the Redux form. But I think Wong is in this very George-Lucas-like, trap, where he's been told he's a genius so often he believes himself to be infallible. Then when people hate the changes he makes to his movies, his passive-aggressive side goes into overdrive, and he doubles-down on his insistence in his own infallible genius, forcing everyone to watch his preferred version of the film instead of the one the audiences generally prefer, because only that will reaffirm for him his self-identity as infallible genius. Tony Rayns has remarked on how after Chungking Express Wong has taken greater care and labored longer over ever previous film––one can see how after In the Mood for Love this feeling doubled again. This has led to a tiny output of films, which are few and far between because, in Wong's mind, all of them have to be great. When that doesn't work out, I think Wong tries to fix the films if he can (Ashes of Time, Fallen Angels, and ignore them when he must (My Blueberry Nights).

Anyway, that's my headcanon as to why this nightmare is happening to us all over again.

whaleallright wrote: Fri Dec 11, 2020 9:15 pm Also, not that I care about not having another version of the Redux, but what explains the absence of Ashes of Time from this set? It's a pretty glaring omission.

Is the UK Blu from AE still in print? Criterion is also releasing this set in the UK, they may have opted to not license it from Sony and just omit it from the set if they can't include it in both regions.

feihong wrote: Sat Dec 12, 2020 12:16 amThis has led to a tiny output of films, which are few and far between because, in Wong's mind, all of them have to be great. When that doesn't work out, I think Wong tries to fix the films if he can (Ashes of Time, Fallen Angels, and ignore them when he must (My Blueberry Nights).

I’d counter that most of these issues are due to the more or less collapse of the Hong Kong film industry. WKW was working at a time when the industry was flush with cash and talent. Wong is only an auteur in so far as the wealth of actors, production designers, and cinematographers that were available to him because of that boom.

The big issue now is that there is no money to fund his type of film and there is also no money to preserve it. With Hong Kong now coming back into the fold of the mainland there will also be no will to preserve the permissiveness of this generation of cinema.

Hong Kong cinema of the 90s and 00s has largely been missing on the HD format. The situation with this set is just a portent of things to come where we are likely going to lose decades of sophisticated cinema from an industry at its height.

Lots of Ann Hui's work never even got passable DVD representation.

R0lf wrote: Sat Dec 12, 2020 1:48 am

feihong wrote: Sat Dec 12, 2020 12:16 amThis has led to a tiny output of films, which are few and far between because, in Wong's mind, all of them have to be great. When that doesn't work out, I think Wong tries to fix the films if he can (Ashes of Time, Fallen Angels, and ignore them when he must (My Blueberry Nights).

I’d counter that most of these issues are due to the more or less collapse of the Hong Kong film industry. WKW was working at a time when the industry was flush with cash and talent. Wong is only an auteur in so far as the wealth of actors, production designers, and cinematographers that were available to him because of that boom.

The big issue now is that there is no money to fund his type of film and there is also no money to preserve it. With Hong Kong now coming back into the fold of the mainland there will also be no will to preserve the permissiveness of this generation of cinema.

Hong Kong cinema of the 90s and 00s has largely been missing on the HD format. The situation with this set is just a portent of things to come where we are likely going to lose decades of sophisticated cinema from an industry at its height.

While I agree with that assessment of what's happened to the Hong Kong film industry, there are other factors with Wong that have slowed his film output. One is that he now takes around 4 years to complete a movie, whereas in the 90s he turned around the films much faster––which I think speaks to the increasing perfectionism Tony Rayns talks about.

Also, in this era Wong worked––like Bong Joon Ho––with U.S funding. He was, before Bong, considered a world-class auteur. When he worked on My Blueberry Nights he didn't suffer for lack of talent on the picture––he got a host of A-list Hollywood stars and supporting players to play small, weird roles, very badly, and he had Darius Khondji lensing the film. There was Nicole Kidman's seemingly pressing need to work with him on a big project. So in the aughts and after he has not suffered so much for lack of opportunity and resource as you make out. Wong needn't have confined himself to Hong Kong at that point. In the Mood for Love's reputation took him most places he might have wanted to go.

But I think there was a reluctance on Wong's part, that let some of these opportunities go––and it's true that in the international market there have been some cooling elements––he takes forever to make a film, making Hollywood companies leery of long investment arcs. And My Blueberry Nights was just about as bad as could be. There was pressure to make Wong cater his production methods to existing patterns, and I think Wong was unwilling to compromise in that space. He had arrived at the success of Chungking Express and In the Mood for Love by improvising, and by pivoting, and turning the film into something else after his initial ideas didn't pan out. So I think he was reluctant to get as boxed-in to a production process as he was on My Blueberry Nights.

But look at it this way. In the same era, in the collapse of the HK film industry, Johnnie To directed 33 features to Wong's 3. To worked with a range of different budgets and other restrictions. Not all the films are great––I think a whole bunch of them are, though––but To kept working through the bad films, moving on and often making much better ones right away. A film like PTU took a long time to come out––but that was because To was shooting it on the weekends while he made other films during the week. So I think you have to say that for one of the most world-renowned filmmakers, there were opportunities there, which Wong either passed on, bungled, or was simply reticent to take. Contrasting with To––who's had a longer and much more varied career––Wong seems unwilling to work in ways he's not accustomed, and it feels to me like something in Wong is strongly allergic to even a hint of failure, in a way that isn't true for Johnnie To, or for Tsui Hark, for that matter, who has had tremendous trouble mounting projects, but who, like To, seems willing to work on films that a) aren't going to be made just exactly as he wants them to, and b) might not end up being that good. In this period from 2000 to 2020, Hark has made 14 films to Wong's 3. Many weren't so great––though I think films like 7 Swords were oddly underrated in their time––but nothing seems to stop Hark from mounting another film. So again, I think that the impediments you imply to be there aren't necessarily so readily applicable to Wong as to a filmmaker like, say Clarence Fok, who had a few cult HK films to his name and no international cache, and whose feature career largely dried up around the 1997 handover. So I think that it's more plausible that other things have held Wong back.

Shrew wrote: Fri Dec 11, 2020 9:05 pm None of the other big director collector sets (Bergman, Varda, Fellini, and even going back the AK25 set) have a spine. Godzilla, Zatoichi, Bruce Lee, and the Olympics do though. It may just be arbitrary, but I suspect that Criterion considers the spineless boxes to be "gift boxes" and thus may feel comfortable eventually letting them go out of print (like AK25). Whereas they feel obligated to keep anything with a spine in print for perpetuity, except for rights issues or temporary hiccups between print runs and repackaging.

Shoot, now you've got me wondering if I should pick up an extra Bergman box or two in case they do go out of print.

(feihong) I don’t find anything to disagree with in your comments but I think they exactly reflect what happened to Wong’s career. With the state of the industry he has two choices to stay viable and those are to seek foreign money (which leads us to MY BLUEBERRY NIGHTS) or to make more mainstream movies locally (which brings us to THE GRANDMASTER).

The not so thinly veiled criticism in my first post was also that I don’t think WKW is the main auteur of his work and that’s really why his career has stalled: because he isn’t be propped up anymore. But I guess we’re in agreement there too!

I think I getcha. I hadn't read your critique quite that way, but when you spell it out, I see what you mean.

I wonder if 2046 might be the key film in there, where the attempt to do genuine science fiction kind of runs aground, and at some point Wong starts making it into another In the Mood for Love. While he's not unsuccessful taking that tack...there is a kind of defeat implied there that I think Wong maybe even reckons with at least a little bit, and then ends up making some bad decisions as a result. That's where the looking backwards perhaps starts, leading to Ashes of Time Redux. And now...here we are, where tweaking and revisionism stands in the place of new movies.

As I understand it production on 2046 was shut down due to bird flu and the international actors he had been filming for the sci fi movie fell through due to scheduling conflicts?

There was a website for the production photographer which showed the original sets and actors in costume for this leg of production. There was a link to it in the old 2046 thread on here which doesn’t seem to exist anymore. Maybe another member could help out?

It would be exciting to get that footage on this release!

R0lf wrote: Sat Dec 12, 2020 5:36 am The not so thinly veiled criticism in my first post was also that I don’t think WKW is the main auteur of his work

I might not go that far ... but if you mean Doyle and Chang were crucial (sine qua non) elements in Wong's more successful works, I'd be happy to sign on to that opinion. I remember very clearly thinking, the second time* I saw In the Mood for Love, that I was watching two movies cut together. When I learned that Mark Lee had taken over for Doyle mid-shoot, it all made more sense.

*The first time doesn't count, because I rarely like any movie with Tony Leung the first time around -- Cyclo is the only exception I can think of. Leung spoils everything for me.

feihong wrote: Sat Dec 12, 2020 5:56 am I wonder if 2046 might be the key film in there, where the attempt to do genuine science fiction kind of runs aground, and at some point Wong starts making it into another In the Mood for Love. While he's not unsuccessful taking that tack...there is a kind of defeat implied there that I think Wong maybe even reckons with at least a little bit, and then ends up making some bad decisions as a result. That's where the looking backwards perhaps starts, leading to Ashes of Time Redux. And now...here we are, where tweaking and revisionism stands in the place of new movies.

I wonder if they redid those CG train sequences. If there was any part of the movie that needed revisionism it was probably that. It looked good for the time, but I watched a (admittedly crappy) stream of 2046 recently and those scenes looked low resolution and stood out noticeably. Being 2004 I doubt they kept the source files, and even AI upscaling might be stretch.

RIP Film wrote: Sat Dec 12, 2020 4:51 pm

feihong wrote: Sat Dec 12, 2020 5:56 am I wonder if 2046 might be the key film in there, where the attempt to do genuine science fiction kind of runs aground, and at some point Wong starts making it into another In the Mood for Love. While he's not unsuccessful taking that tack...there is a kind of defeat implied there that I think Wong maybe even reckons with at least a little bit, and then ends up making some bad decisions as a result. That's where the looking backwards perhaps starts, leading to Ashes of Time Redux. And now...here we are, where tweaking and revisionism stands in the place of new movies.

I wonder if they redid those CG train sequences. If there was any part of the movie that needed revisionism it was probably that. It looked good for the time, but I watched a (admittedly crappy) stream of 2046 recently and those scenes looked low resolution and stood out noticeably. Being 2004 I doubt they kept the source files, and even AI upscaling might be stretch.

2046 was a pre digital release. The CGI wasn’t pixelated on release prints. Like any other *good* restoration for animation they don’t need to go back to the source files just the original film transfers.

feihong wrote: Sat Dec 12, 2020 3:03 amAlso, in this era Wong worked––like Bong Joon Ho––with U.S funding.

This is a nitpicky point but I think The Grandmaster is the only time Wong worked with a significant amount of U.S. funding, via Megan Ellison and Annapurna (which was essentially a pickup based on a ten-minute sizzle reel). His international funding otherwise mostly comes from France and Japan, and of course mainland China if that counts. Even My Blueberry Nights was a French coproduction, not an American one.

feihong wrote: Sat Dec 12, 2020 5:56 amI wonder if 2046 might be the key film in there, where the attempt to do genuine science fiction kind of runs aground, and at some point Wong starts making it into another In the Mood for Love.

I believe the sci-fi story was originally meant to be more prominent in 2046, but Wong insisted up and down that he had never actually set out to do a sci-fi movie and that was just the media extrapolating wildly from a few early photos of Kimura. The project all but originated as "another In the Mood for Love"—Wong was planning to do The Grandmaster next before the French coproducer on ITMFL proposed a sequel—and about half of it was shot during the later stages of production on ITMFL. Kimura's character was conceived as a kind of idealized self-image/future projection of Chow Mo-wan, though it's been a long time since I last saw the movie and I don't recall how much this came across in the final product.

R0lf wrote: Sat Dec 12, 2020 8:27 pm
2046 was a pre digital release. The CGI wasn’t pixelated on release prints. Like any other *good* restoration for animation they don’t need to go back to the source files just the original film transfers.

I know it was pre digital, those scenes’ output resolution just looked quite low to me. It’s possible it looks fine when cleaned up though.