Absolutely no politics in these movies! (long)

[a0322267]

>There are a few DVD releases I wanted to mention here.  At the end of the 
>message I have a quick question about Wim Wenders and Aoyama Shinji.
>
>Today (9/21) Suzuki Seijun's Zigeunerweisen, Kageroza and Yumeji came out on 
>DVD here in Japan.  They're being sold separately or together as a boxed 
>set.  I believe Zigeunerweisen at least has been out of print on video for a 
>long time and it's fairly hard to find for rental, so this may be a good 
>opportunity for those of you who are curious about Suzuki's more recent 
>(80s-90s) work.  The boxed set has a bonus disc with trailers, some "making 
>of" special (?), images of publicity materials, an interview and other 
>things.  The videos are all supposed to be mastered from "new prints" (maybe 
>the ones they used at the Shibuya retrospective?) so I hope they don't look 
>too bad.  I'll probably buy them before too long, so I'll let you all know 
>what I think.
>
>Speaking of which, have any of you heard any new info on Suzuki's new film?  
>...Never mind, I just found a web site.
>http://www.shochiku.co.jp/pistolopera/
>
>Something else I had been crossing my fingers for:  Next month on the 25th, 
>three Terayama Shuji movies are coming out on DVD.  Sho o Suteyo Machi e 
>Deyou, Denen ni Shisu and Saraba Hakobune.  These are supposed to be 
>"remasters" too.  I think they include trailers but no other special 
>bonuses.  These and the Suzuki DVDs are all being released by Pioneer LDC, 
>so check www.pldc.co.jp for more info.
>
>I bought the DVD of Kurosawa Kiyoshi's Kairo a few weeks ago.  I haven't had 
>a chance to watch the whole thing yet, but I scanned through a few scenes 
>and the picture didn't look that great.  In some of the darker parts the 
>picture became a brownish-greyish blob, and it was really hard to see some 
>of the ghosts' weird wiggling as they moved across the screen.  However, the 
>disc does have a lot of bonus materials, including subtitles in English and 
>Japanese.  Anyway, I was hoping this would be a reasonable transfer like the 
>Cure DVD was,
>so I'm a little disappointed.  It still seems that Hollywood movies are the 
>only films that get released on DVD with a good picture *and* interesting 
>extra materials for a reasonable price in Japan.
>
>Last week I rented Wim Wenders' Im Lauf der Zeit on DVD (Sasurai in 
>Japanese; I don't know the English title).  I was curious about it because 
>Aoyama Shinji wrote that it's one of his favorite movies, and so when I 
>started watching it I was a little surprised.  The film is a 3-hour long 
>black and white "road movie" about a couple of men driving around in a big 
>bus.  Sound familiar, anyone?  In several scenes some of the pans and cuts 
>even reminded me of Eureka.  There's also a scene when the characters start 
>fooling around in weird sunglasses...
>
>I haven't read anything by Aoyama yet that discusses any particular 
>relationship between his film and Wenders'.  Considering his style and 
>background I'm wondering if Eureka was intended as (partly) a conscious 
>"homage" of sorts, or perhaps commentary on the 1976 film and/or what it was 
>dealing with.  Can anyone offer some ideas on this?

The international distribution title of the Wenders film was 'Kings of 
the Road'. It is set in a region along the border to the former GDR. It 
deals with the situation in an 'artificial' remote area, the 'different 
time' between two areas and the film and imagination. A reference is the 
Nick Ray film The Lusty Men.

Bodo Schoenfelder

>
>I saw the boid.net CD-ROM on Eureka at Aoyama Book Center in Shinjuku.  
>Maybe if I buy that I'll find some answers...
>
>There sure have been lots of noisy jets flying in the sky over west greater 
>Tokyo this weekend and last.  Oops, politics.  Never mind.
>
>Michael Arnold
>
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