_Zangiku_/Pia Cinema Club

[Joel Cohn]

Thanks to Randy Man for the detailed answer to my query about different
versions of _Zangiku_.  

Re his query:
>Who is the "Pia Cinema Club"? That's a new one to me.

_Pia Cinema Club_ (or Pia Shinema Kurabu) is an annual film guide published
by Pia, the outfit that does various entertainment guides, promotions etc. 
There's a volume for Japanese films and another for foreign productions (or
at least Western films - can't remember if it includes Chinese etc).  The
bulk of the book consists of brief descriptions of individual films,
including production info,  lead performers, thumbnail plot summary
sometimes with mention of other notable features  (the write-up on _Zangiku
monogatari_ cites it as the film on which Mizoguchi perfected his
"one-scene one-cut" technique), and tape/LD/DVD availability (with the
_Zangiku_ videotape listed as out of print, by the way).  There are over
6000 Japanese films written up in my 1998-99 edition.  It also contains a
set of handy indexes listing the films of various directors,
actors/actresses, scriptwriters, cinematographers, musicians, and original
story writers, many of them accompanied by very brief bios. 

There is now also a CD-ROM version of Pia Cinema Club, which was mentioned
in a couple of KineJapan postings last year.