Roman Polanski

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swo17
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Re: Roman Polanski

#76 Post by swo17 » Thu Apr 25, 2019 12:31 pm

aox wrote:
Thu Apr 25, 2019 12:29 pm
Polanski has been expelled from the Academy

along with Bill Cosby
He was expelled last year, the more recent news is that he's suing for reinstatement as brought up here

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furbicide
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Re: Roman Polanski

#77 Post by furbicide » Fri Apr 26, 2019 4:06 am

I’m kind of surprised he cares so much about it, to be honest. What do you get from being a member of the Academy, apart from getting to vote for their silly awards? It’s not like Polanski needs the legitimacy, and I’m guessing he won’t be attending any US-based industry shindigs any time soon...

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dda1996a
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Re: Roman Polanski

#78 Post by dda1996a » Fri Apr 26, 2019 7:04 am

I think it's more on principle I guess

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domino harvey
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Re: Roman Polanski

#79 Post by domino harvey » Thu May 09, 2019 2:40 am

Poland has released a complete Polanski Blu-Ray set, with shorts and every feature (yes, all of them, allegedly even the segment Polanski made Olive cut) and English subs. Some caps here. Note that Carnage appears to be cropped for some reason (though that’s a bargain bin title) and the Ghost Writer is opened up (not cropped), and several titles are in 25/1080i

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FrauBlucher
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Re: Roman Polanski

#80 Post by FrauBlucher » Mon May 27, 2019 8:48 pm


kekid
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Re: Roman Polanski

#81 Post by kekid » Tue May 28, 2019 5:18 pm

domino harvey wrote:
Thu May 09, 2019 2:40 am
Poland has released a complete Polanski Blu-Ray set, with shorts and every feature (yes, all of them, allegedly even the segment Polanski made Olive cut) and English subs. Some caps here. Note that Carnage appears to be cropped for some reason (though that’s a bargain bin title) and the Ghost Writer is opened up (not cropped), and several titles are in 25/1080i
According to the listing for this item on Amazon.com, discs on this set do not have English subtitles.

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Roscoe
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Re: Roman Polanski

#82 Post by Roscoe » Wed May 29, 2019 11:24 am

Scorsese's evident delight in at least not having lost to Rob Fucking Marshall is my main memory of that event.

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vertovfan
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Re: Roman Polanski

#83 Post by vertovfan » Fri May 31, 2019 1:55 am

Empik and dvdmax.pl both list English subtitles (napisy: angielskie) on the big Polanski set from Poland, as does domino's link (for the non-English films, at least - the English-language features appear to have only Polish subs). It's also the same packaging as the Wajda set from a year or two ago, which I can confirm is completely English-friendly. The screencaps for the short films Rozbijemy Zabawę... and Lampa look much better than what I remember from the UK blu-ray release of Knife in the Water - I'm no expert, but the shorts on that disc looked like upconverts to me.

If only that Wajda set had been released on blu-ray as well!

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Re: Roman Polanski

#84 Post by mfunk9786 » Tue Sep 03, 2019 7:38 pm

Chinatown has gone up on iTunes, Vudu, and the Microsoft Store for purchase in UHD. It includes the commentary by David Fincher and Robert Towne and a bunch of bonus material. Not sure if that means a restored disc is on the way.

Also worth noting that it's not compatible with Movies Anywhere since it's Paramount, so. Choose carefully where you buy it, because that'll be the only place you can watch it.

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Re: Roman Polanski

#85 Post by black&huge » Tue Sep 03, 2019 7:57 pm

Fincher commentary? I hope this gets a criterion release

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mfunk9786
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Re: Roman Polanski

#86 Post by mfunk9786 » Wed Sep 04, 2019 10:57 am

Worth noting that the aforementioned digital version of Chinatown is currently only $4.99 on iTunes (4K UHD and bonus features are included by default), and that an Apple TV app will be out for Roku and other streaming devices by the fall, according to Apple. Perhaps as soon as next week when the new line of phones is announced and their streaming service is presumably detailed. So you could buy it now and even if you don't have an Apple device to watch it on, you could presumably do so very soon.
black&huge wrote:
Tue Sep 03, 2019 7:57 pm
Fincher commentary? I hope this gets a criterion release
The commentary made an appearance on the 2012 Blu-ray, so you can buy it very inexpensively now! It has just also been carried over to the UHD digital version, and the film being in that resolution is new (especially since it sounds like it's not the same restoration as said Blu-ray)

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domino harvey
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Re: Roman Polanski

#87 Post by domino harvey » Sun Jun 28, 2020 4:15 pm

Caught up with Pirates and man, who the hell was crazy enough to throw this much money at such a weird movie? Walter Matthau has gone on record as hating the project, only signing on because his son goaded him into it, but I thought he committed to his unlikable perf with a consistency that showed he was a professional of the studio system well used to getting through productions he disliked. The film is aggressively unpleasant and keeps an arch tone despite being fairly grotesque. A description of the first scene will let you know if this is a film you'd ever want to sit through: Matthau's disgusting pirate and his French mate are marooned on a rickety skiff. Matthau contemplates eating the Frenchie, going so far as to take a bite out of his midsection. When the Frenchie finally catches a tiny fish, Matthau inhales the creature raw with such fervor that he inhales the hook as well. After several attempts to reel the hook out of his throat, Matthau doubles down and swallows it instead. Gross, and not even the grossest thing we see in this film (I won't spoil it, but a meal here gives Temple of Doom a run for its money). There's also a real and offputting flippancy to the deaths in the film. Sympathetic and innocent characters are dispatched with ultra-arch efficiency and played for laffs that don't come. It's... unpleasant. And yet. This film looks beautiful. I can't even imagine how many nights the crew had to set up in order to capture the just before nightfall/dawn lighting so often on display here, but WOW. In addition to the natural and low-light scenes, Polanski of course presents continuous reminders of his visual fluidity and superior instincts. Still, no one could read the script for this film and think it was going to be a mainstream adventure hit (the unsatisfying circular loop of the narrative alone is evidence that mass audiences were not courted by design), so I'm going to put the impetus for this bomb squarely on the financiers who enabled it.

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Re: Roman Polanski

#88 Post by ianthemovie » Sun Jun 28, 2020 5:23 pm

domino harvey wrote:
Sun Jun 28, 2020 4:15 pm
Caught up with Pirates and man, who the hell was crazy enough to throw this much money at such a weird movie? Walter Matthau has gone on record as hating the project, only signing on because his son goaded him into it, but I thought he committed to his unlikable perf with a consistency that showed he was a professional of the studio system well used to getting through productions he disliked. The film is aggressively unpleasant and keeps an arch tone despite being fairly grotesque. A description of the first scene will let you know if this is a film you'd ever want to sit through: Matthau's disgusting pirate and his French mate are marooned on a rickety skiff. Matthau contemplates eating the Frenchie, going so far as to take a bite out of his midsection. When the Frenchie finally catches a tiny fish, Matthau inhales the creature raw with such fervor that he inhales the hook as well. After several attempts to reel the hook out of his throat, Matthau doubles down and swallows it instead. Gross, and not even the grossest thing we see in this film (I won't spoil it, but a meal here gives Temple of Doom a run for its money). There's also a real and offputting flippancy to the deaths in the film. Sympathetic and innocent characters are dispatched with ultra-arch efficiency and played for laffs that don't come. It's... unpleasant. And yet. This film looks beautiful. I can't even imagine how many nights the crew had to set up in order to capture the just before nightfall/dawn lighting so often on display here, but WOW. In addition to the natural and low-light scenes, Polanski of course presents continuous reminders of his visual fluidity and superior instincts. Still, no one could read the script for this film and think it was going to be a mainstream adventure hit (the unsatisfying circular loop of the narrative alone is evidence that mass audiences were not courted by design), so I'm going to put the impetus for this bomb squarely on the financiers who enabled it.
And you haven't even mentioned the comic rape scenes (of which there are at least two, if memory serves)!

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Re: Roman Polanski

#89 Post by black&huge » Sun Jun 28, 2020 5:31 pm

You mean he didn't stop at What? with the comical rape scenes? That's one where you could say "it's the whole movie".

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domino harvey
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Re: Roman Polanski

#90 Post by domino harvey » Sun Jun 28, 2020 5:35 pm

Technically there are two scenes where the “joke” is that the rape doesn’t occur because the French guy is too honorable. This leads to a really bad gag in the second iteration wherein Matthau just pinch hits their genial compatriot, a pretty broad stereotype of black characters in 30s Hollywood movies, into doing the raping— only it takes him too long to get disrobed to do the raping. Hilarious!!! I guess it wasn’t as offensive to me as it might be in another movie because the whole film had already sworn allegiance against good taste at that point, so what’s one more example?

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Rayon Vert
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Re: Roman Polanski

#91 Post by Rayon Vert » Sun Jun 28, 2020 5:36 pm

I see someone put it up on YT. Thanks (or not) for reminding us of its existence - I probably will force myself to watch it one of these days since it's the only of his pre-2010s I haven't seen yet.

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domino harvey
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Re: Roman Polanski

#92 Post by domino harvey » Sun Jun 28, 2020 5:38 pm

I mean, it is extremely well-made and entertaining— in spite of its myriad flaws, I wouldn’t recommend not seeing it. It’s just also really crass and gross and broad and seems to be working against itself at all times

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Re: Roman Polanski

#93 Post by MichaelB » Sun Jun 28, 2020 5:45 pm

domino harvey wrote:
Sun Jun 28, 2020 4:15 pm
And yet. This film looks beautiful. I can't even imagine how many nights the crew had to set up in order to capture the just before nightfall/dawn lighting so often on display here, but WOW. In addition to the natural and low-light scenes, Polanski of course presents continuous reminders of his visual fluidity and superior instincts.
Jazz musician turned cinematographer Witold Sobociński deserves at least as much credit for that, not least because I suspect he was hired specifically for his visual fluidity - probably seen to best effect in Andrzej Wajda's The Wedding (1972) and Wojciech Has's The Hourglass Sanatorium (1973).

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Re: Roman Polanski

#94 Post by ianthemovie » Sun Jun 28, 2020 6:25 pm

Rayon Vert wrote:
Sun Jun 28, 2020 5:36 pm
I see someone put it up on YT. Thanks (or not) for reminding us of its existence - I probably will force myself to watch it one of these days since it's the only of his pre-2010s I haven't seen yet.
I noticed that it was up on YouTube earlier this year too, which is what prompted me to watch it. It's otherwise hard to see here in the US. North American Polanski completists, stream it while you can (if you can stomach it).

Like dom says the production quality of the film is quite high, which surprised me. I had assumed that, given its reputation as a notorious flop, it would be an incoherent mess on a crafts level, when in fact it's handsomely made. It even got an Oscar nomination for Best Costumes!

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knives
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Re: Roman Polanski

#95 Post by knives » Mon Jun 29, 2020 4:20 pm

Is Matthau dubbed in this? Doesn't sound much like him.

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domino harvey
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Re: Roman Polanski

#96 Post by domino harvey » Mon Jun 29, 2020 4:27 pm

It’s him, you can hear his cockney accent slip a few times. I think he’s just so rarely called upon to be anyone but a variation of himself that it can be a bit surprising to hear him put some effort in

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Re: Roman Polanski

#97 Post by MichaelB » Mon Jun 29, 2020 4:27 pm

It's definitely his voice, but it's supposed to be Cockney and he misses it by some distance.

The problem being, as he confessed later, that the crew member he was modelling it on wasn't actually from east London, he was from Watford (i.e. north-west London), and the accent is quite different. In fact, if you watch Pirates knowing upfront that it's a Watford accent, he makes a surprisingly decent fist of it, but it wasn't supposed to be Watford.

(Mind you, I don't know why a pirate from Watford is any less credible than one from the East End.)

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knives
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Re: Roman Polanski

#98 Post by knives » Mon Jun 29, 2020 4:34 pm

Interesting. Accurate description of the film too which I think I like, but it's too bizarre to really decide.

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Re: Roman Polanski

#99 Post by therewillbeblus » Thu Nov 12, 2020 11:55 pm

Based on a True Story isn't very good, mostly because the audience is kept at arm's length by design and the material isn't compelling enough to hold us there with sustained interest. Still, Polanski retains his autopilot-level mastery over slow-building suspense, and what appears to be a recycled idea at least ventures into using novel strategies to achieve those tired aims. The notably interesting piece is Assayas' hand in the script, helping to soil any clarity in role assignment with identity crises and reality-testing, becoming so chaotic that the motive-confusion erupts into disjointed verbal and visual information. Polanski has fun shooting the environment to match the psychology of a given scene, especially when the physical disorganization or movement of inanimate objects reflect a mental state, whether it's an item breaking aggressively and unpredictably, or even a character closing a door quietly on another from a distance.

Assayas' interest toward one's place in the cultural stratosphere is present as well, though much more uniformly terrifying than usual, as an overwhelming entity that is unsafe to navigate. Ultimately this feels like a solid allegory for the ego's complex processing of desires, proposing that everyone's dream of being validated, seen, appreciated, and granted ubiquitous attention is actually a nightmare to the voice that feels like we don't deserve it and can't contend with irrepressible forces, whose perceptively insatiable qualities cause emotional claustrophobia. This is one of those psychological thrillers that steps into the shoes of horror due to the erratic, violent maneuvers of uprooting confidence in the laws of narrative via cinematic weapons. I'm being pretty charitable to its strengths, but even with all the clear positives it doesn't really work as a cohesive whole. The ride picks up for a bit at the start of the last act, but the build up and the end result are much what you expect from this kind of programmer, and much less than what you expect from a Polanski/Assayas collab.

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Re: Roman Polanski

#100 Post by hearthesilence » Sat Dec 05, 2020 6:37 pm

I had no idea The Ghost Writer was censored in the U.S. in order to get a PG-13 rating. Ridiculous, but not surprising.

Apparently the Australian BD uses the U.S. master so it should be censored there as well, but according to this site, most other BD's should be uncensored.

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