Of Flesh and Blood: The Cinema of Hirokazu Kore-eda

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MichaelB
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Re: Of Flesh and Blood: The Cinema of Hirokazu Kore-eda

#51 Post by MichaelB » Sat Aug 17, 2019 12:30 pm

j99 wrote:
Sat Aug 17, 2019 11:44 am
What did you do to get permanently banned?
Officially, "the purpose of your visits is to discredit the site and its contributors".

Actually, the purpose of one visit was to set the record straight about a release that I'd worked on extensively, when one of its reviewers was posting serious and commercially damaging misinformation out of technical ignorance. When I tell you that this person refused to retract his allegations even as easily checkable evidence mounted that wasn't exactly in his favour (understatement), you can probably guess who it was - and when I finally proved beyond any possible doubt that he'd made an error so basic as to call into question whether or not he was competent to review Blu-rays at all, he fell silent, something that's as eloquent as the wordiest speech in a context like that.

I wasn't banned over that, as that would have been a little too blatant even for them, but it was clear that they were looking for an excuse, so it didn't come as a huge surprise when it happened a few weeks later.

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domino harvey
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Re: Of Flesh and Blood: The Cinema of Hirokazu Kore-eda

#52 Post by domino harvey » Sat Aug 17, 2019 12:46 pm

I effectively self-banned myself from there a few weeks ago after being caught in the crossfire of endless bootlickers falling over themselves to get some label rep to ask them to prom and I realized life was way too short to exert any more energy on this. I logged out and do not plan to ever log back in. I will surely miss the fifty "Thanks given" appearing beneath each new announcement of some grade-Z 80s movie with prominent oiled chests on the cover, but such is life

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Re: Of Flesh and Blood: The Cinema of Hirokazu Kore-eda

#53 Post by j99 » Sat Aug 17, 2019 12:51 pm

I’ve only checked out the site a couple of times, but preferred this one. Seems like I made the right decision.

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Re: Of Flesh and Blood: The Cinema of Hirokazu Kore-eda

#54 Post by MichaelB » Sat Aug 17, 2019 1:24 pm

I’d taken very long breaks before - a two-year one in one case - so it wasn’t exactly a wrench.

The biggest problem is the near-total lack of any substantive discussion about the actual content of the discs - it’s all surface trivia like packaging, picture quality, endless navel-gazing delivery sagas of zero interest to anyone else. Very occasionally you’ll get someone posting something halfway intelligent, but it usually sticks out like the sorest of thumbs compared with the utter banality of what surrounds it.

longstone
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Re: Of Flesh and Blood: The Cinema of Hirokazu Kore-eda

#55 Post by longstone » Fri Aug 23, 2019 3:54 pm

My set just arrived, it looks like a nice product and I'm looking forward to checking out the upgraded films and the stack of extras. I've only had time to start reading the booklet so far and it's nice to have some articles in English collected together after not being able to find much in the past. I will confess to already having all these films already in one form or another so I've double or even triple dipped with this set to get either the upgrades or extras. I was a little disappointed when it was announced that the BFI didn't ( or couldn't ? ) include Distance and Hana or even add some of the early documentaries as extras but it's still a fantastic set and great that Maborosi finally gets a long overdue U.K. release. Plus After Life was well overdue an upgrade from the old U.K. Soda pictures DVD release. I hope people who discovered Kore-eda via Shoplifters will be tempted by this set and maybe there will be a second volume to fill the gaps.

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Re: Of Flesh and Blood: The Cinema of Hirokazu Kore-eda

#56 Post by zedz » Fri Nov 15, 2019 5:00 pm

This is a very nice set. The BFI Koreeda interviews are especially good, as he's a thoughtful and funny speaker (and the translators seem to be superb in both cases).

I had a bit of an issue with the commentary for Still Walking. It was overall very good, but it's pushing the Ozu comparisons so hard that it distorts what's actually on screen. Some examples of this tendentiousness: just about any shot without people in it gets described as a "pillow shot" and automatic Ozu reference, when a lot of them simply aren't, such a point-of-view shot of an empty chair that's followed immediately, and conventionally, by a shot of the character looking at it, or very ordinary establishing shots of a location before we cut to what the characters are doing in it. That's standard film grammar that you can find in any Hollywood film, and has nothing to do with Ozu's unusual bridging shots. Likewise, a scene of a parent bathing with his child is (correctly) described as a perfectly normal everyday detail of Japanese life, but is then immediately afterwards called as yet another Ozu reference because there's one Ozu film in which this is also depicted. You can't really have it both ways! (And, if those are the rules, what can't it be a My Neighbour Totoro reference, for example?) Similarly, just about any domestic interior counts as a point in the Ozu column, even when the composition and framing of it has little in common with Ozu's characteristic look. No wonder Koreeda gets exasperated with this one-note auto-comparison.
Last edited by zedz on Sun Nov 17, 2019 2:43 pm, edited 1 time in total.

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Re: Of Flesh and Blood: The Cinema of Hirokazu Kore-eda

#57 Post by Michael Kerpan » Fri Nov 15, 2019 5:13 pm

Kore'eda seems to draw upon Naruse and Shimizu (and Hou, for that matter) as much as Ozu. But, at this point in his career, trying to tag every shot with a supposed "source" seems silly. ;-)

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Re: Of Flesh and Blood: The Cinema of Hirokazu Kore-eda

#58 Post by filmyfan » Sun Nov 17, 2019 7:43 am

zedz wrote:
Fri Nov 15, 2019 5:00 pm
This is a very nice set. The BFI Koreeda interviews are especially good, as he's a thoughtful and funny speaker (and the translators seem to be superb in both cases).

I had a bit of an issue with the commentary for Still Walking. It was overall very good, but it's pushing the Ozu comparisons so hard that it distorts what's actually on screen.
I have only seen Maborosi so far in this set...and the commentary on that was rather dull...one of the worst i have heard I am afraid...and I like commentaries...nothing really about the film itself...but lots of talks of Ozu and his place in history of Japan cinema etc!

There is I see a commentary on the US version...wonder what that is like!

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Re: Of Flesh and Blood: The Cinema of Hirokazu Kore-eda

#59 Post by DeprongMori » Sun Nov 17, 2019 10:58 am

filmyfan wrote:
Sun Nov 17, 2019 7:43 am
I have only seen Maborosi so far in this set...and the commentary on that was rather dull...one of the worst i have heard I am afraid...and I like commentaries...nothing really about the film itself...but lots of talks of Ozu and his place in history of Japan cinema etc!

There is I see a commentary on the US version...wonder what that is like!
Linda Ehrlich’s commentary on the Milestone release was quite perceptive on the cultural issues and much else, and a real pleasure to listen to. If you love the film as much as I do, and already have the BFI, the Milestone is well worth adding to your collection for the commentary alone.

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Re: Of Flesh and Blood: The Cinema of Hirokazu Kore-eda

#60 Post by Michael Kerpan » Sun Nov 17, 2019 12:58 pm

Yes. Linda Ehrlich did a fine job on Maborosi -- glad I double dipped (despite already having this in the comprehensive Japanese Blu-Ray set). (Also I promised Dennis Doros long ago that I would buy this on DVD when he got around to releasing it -- getting it on BR was a bonus). ;-)

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zedz
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Re: Of Flesh and Blood: The Cinema of Hirokazu Kore-eda

#61 Post by zedz » Sun Nov 17, 2019 2:46 pm

Michael Kerpan wrote:
Fri Nov 15, 2019 5:13 pm
Kore'eda seems to draw upon Naruse and Shimizu (and Hou, for that matter) as much as Ozu. But, at this point in his career, trying to tag every shot with a supposed "source" seems silly. ;-)
I think it was in one of the interviews on this disc that Koreeda said that one of the reasons he values Tony Rayns' criticisms of his films is that, while everybody else was wittering on about Ozu with regard to Still Walking, he was the only critic who related it to Mike Leigh.


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Re: Of Flesh and Blood: The Cinema of Hirokazu Kore-eda

#63 Post by ryannichols7 » Sun Oct 10, 2021 1:13 pm

DeprongMori wrote:
Sun Nov 17, 2019 10:58 am
filmyfan wrote:
Sun Nov 17, 2019 7:43 am
I have only seen Maborosi so far in this set...and the commentary on that was rather dull...one of the worst i have heard I am afraid...and I like commentaries...nothing really about the film itself...but lots of talks of Ozu and his place in history of Japan cinema etc!

There is I see a commentary on the US version...wonder what that is like!
Linda Ehrlich’s commentary on the Milestone release was quite perceptive on the cultural issues and much else, and a real pleasure to listen to. If you love the film as much as I do, and already have the BFI, the Milestone is well worth adding to your collection for the commentary alone.
going to have to pick up this disc. Jasper Sharp (who I had never heard a commentary from) is usually held in pretty good regard that I've seen, but he's pretty....not good in the Maborosi commentary. I had to turn it off because he really seems to be going through Wikipedia and IMDb entries of the cast and his explanation of the title. he even takes quite a few pauses and you can tell he's sort of struggling to fill the air rather than having plenty to talk about in what I think is a pretty easy movie to discuss. the movie was an instant classic for me (I have loved Kore-eda's work for a long time but held off on seeing Maborosi until I got a good release of it), and the commentary did so little to enhance my appreciation of it. the documentary of Makiko Esumi going back to the film's setting does so much more, truly a fantastic piece and honestly as essential as the movie itself is.

I'll be going through the rest of this set and will share my thoughts on the other commentaries since only
the Maborosi and Still Walking ones are mentioned. the Maborosi transfer is awesome but I kinda wish we got an edition with good artwork... both the milestone and BFI editions are kinda standard. but hey, that's a minor complaint, thrilled to have good discs of all four of these

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Re: Of Flesh and Blood: The Cinema of Hirokazu Kore-eda

#64 Post by ryannichols7 » Mon May 30, 2022 6:44 am

bumping this thread for the first time in awhile to answer myself..yes I finally did get to this set again...

After Life's transfer is pretty weak compared to the Criterion. I don't think the BFI had access to the original elements and so it does suffer a bit, being a 16mm film and such. Tara Judah's insights are decent but there's so much dead space on the commentary. Linda Ehrlich's commentary on the Criterion disc is absolutely incredible though, so please don't miss that. sorry to entirely downvote this disc for After Life but I'm glad it keeps it accessible for UK folk as its a tremendous film.

there is no way on earth Nobody Knows should be this teal. Gary has not reviewed the Japanese disc (I can't find anyone who has) but he has posted the old DVDs and the color scheme is drastically different. I have the Korean disc on order (I liked the artwork, and I'm a Kore-eda completionist) and will likely get the Japanese one and compare. this equally incredible film still has no region A release, and I'm just waiting on Criterion to get to it, as it's still held by IFC over here. hopefully like After Life they remedy the issues. but I do have finally something positive to say about this set - Kenta McGrath's commentary on this movie is excellent. I was fully braced to come on here and say I would like Criterion to enlist Ehrlich again (and maybe they still should, she's great), but McGrath delivers a really insightful scholarly commentary and for the most part keeps things running well over the 140 minute runtime. good job sir, I learned to look at a film I've loved for years a bit differently in many ways. I've never heard McGrath contribute to anything else but I'd love to see him enlisted in the future, assuming his expertise is Japanese cinema but he does reference Dogtooth early on, so anything is welcome.

I will still get to the Still Walking commentary (I don't do well with the reductivist comparisons Kore-eda gets to Ozu - yes it's there, but that's so lazy to me) and will be revisiting Maborosi (since it's been so long and my girlfriend wants to watch it) to comment on the transfer. I've basically accepted I'll be importing the Japanese editions of all four films, plus Distance and Hana which got left by the wayside of course. I'm definitely glad the BFI released this set, and if you aren't a superfan of Kore-eda like I am it certainly does the job, but there's for sure better out there. Maborosi is frustrating as the disc with good commentary has a bad transfer, the disc with a decent transfer has a bad commentary, both have bland/pedestrian art, and the Japanese edition with the original poster cover obviously is a fortune to import. After Life and Still Walking I'm perfectly happy with my Criterion editions. and then Nobody Knows...yeah, I can't believe I didn't see anyone else mention how it looks. again, I do hope Criterion release this and bring in Kore-eda (as they did with After Life, and he naiiled it) to get this right. but again, just glad these films got out there in solid editions.

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