RING and "pink" film

[TKBowman at aol.com]

> But THE RING isn't -- it's been licensed by Fine Line, I think, and
> they don't seem to know what they want to do with it -- remake it
> or issue it on home video.

I hope Fine Line treats RING better than they treated Shunji Iwai's LOVE 
LETTER. They sat on it for a year or two, inexplicably changed the name to 
WHEN I CLOSE MY EYES, dumped it into a few theaters without any fanfare, and 
are currently letting it languish unreleased on video or DVD.

Re: Tom Weisser and Pink Films
> He is also quite biased towards the pinku eiga genre; probably because
> he feels it's underrepresented and deserves a wider audience.

Not so fast....Weisser has recently announced that he is the "official" 
distributor of Nikkatsu pink films in the United States. His company, Asian 
Cult Cinema, is releasing a slate of 50 titles on home video, all reportedly 
widescreen and subtitled. I'm not surprised he's not releasing these through 
his Video Search of Miami since he's been offering "grey-market" dupes of 
many of these films for years. Does anyone in the know anything about the 
validity of his new claims of official distributor status?

The lineup includes films by Tatsumi Kumashiro, Chusei Sone, Yasuhara Hasee, 
Masaru Konuma, Takashi Ishii, Koyu Ohara, and Naosuke Kurosawa among others. 
I might be interested in a couple of these titles but not if they're just the 
same old poor quality dubs that VSoM has offered before.

Todd
tkbowman at aol.com