Absolutely no politics in these movies! (long)

[M Arnold]

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?

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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