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Electronico6 posted:It'd be like having a Michael Mann box set that cut everything after The Insider, it sort of just works. Sure, I like Collateral just fine but it has less in common with the other films. Fair enough, dude. I respect your opinion, I just don't agree with it. The Michael Mann clapback doesn't hold water. I don't really try to put myself in WKW's head and care about what he thinks in his advancing years, I just enjoy the films I enjoy, and to be honest he was already getting a bit stuffy in 2046. As far as The Grandmaster is concerned all three cuts of that film that I've seen are complete and total slogs, and I don't feel like it gels at all with the crunchy, trashy vibes of his 90s HK embedded work, and I definitely don't give a rat's rear end about My Blueberry Nights. It's unfortunate that Ashes of Time wasn't included, but I'm very happy with what's here and I just can't be arsed to care about an aspect change or the odd shot that's color-corrected differently from what I remember from 15 years ago. The films themselves almost defy being obsessed over like that, they actively scoff at a viewer's attempt to hold on to them too tightly. But you do you. There are always other versions out there for sale. 
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Apr 17, 2021 07:25
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BeanpolePeckerwood posted:There are always other versions out there for sale. But...for a lot of these films, there aren’t. Chungking Express, Fallen Angels, Happy Together are all long out of print, and these new versions are now the only way to see them without searching out discs that run $100 a pop on eBay.
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Apr 17, 2021 07:34
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oneforthevine posted:But...for a lot of these films, there aren’t. Chungking Express, Fallen Angels, Happy Together are all long out of print, and these new versions are now the only way to see them without searching out discs that run $100 a pop on eBay. Don't worry, these will prolly be out of print soon, too lol 
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Apr 17, 2021 07:37
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It’s also not just “the odd shot” colour-corrected in a lot of cases
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Apr 17, 2021 10:31
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I watched Fallen Angels tonight and it looked fuckin great. It was a treat.
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Apr 17, 2021 10:38
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The idea that the other versions will continue to remain available is pretty easily challenged by what Wong did with Ashes of Time. The real frustration isn't that we don't like some of the edits, it's that these will basically become the only available versions until someone decides to do this again which I imagine will be decades from now. Swing and a miss!
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Apr 17, 2021 13:54
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It's true; you are the gatekeeper of your own experience. For the 90% of people who now have access to this catalogue of films at what is less than $30 each, who would probably never bother to notice some minor changes had been made here and there, good tidings. For those individuals who seek the absolute purity of expression, happiness dependent on strict adherence to the original vision in their memory, who must now trudge through the grey market of $50-100 versions in order to feel at ease, good tidings as well.
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Apr 17, 2021 20:17
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BeanpolePeckerwood posted:It's true; you are the gatekeeper of your own experience. For the 90% of people who now have access to this catalogue of films at what is less than $30 each, who would probably never bother to notice some minor changes had been made here and there, good tidings. For those individuals who seek the absolute purity of expression, happiness dependent on strict adherence to the original vision in their memory, who must now trudge through the grey market of $50-100 versions in order to feel at ease, good tidings as well. Why are you being such a weirdo about this? We all get it, you prefer the Star Wars Special Editions and don't give a poo poo about film history or preservation. You can shut up now.
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Apr 17, 2021 20:39
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Vince MechMahon posted:Why are you being such a weirdo about this? We all get it, you prefer the Star Wars Special Editions and don't give a poo poo about film history or preservation. You can shut up now. It's funny that you can post such glaring hyperbole and call me weird. Actually, just because you disagree with me doesn't give you the right to run me out of the thread. Maybe calm down.
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Apr 17, 2021 20:54
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BeanpolePeckerwood posted:It's funny that you can post such glaring hyperbole and call me weird. Actually, just because you disagree with me doesn't give you the right to run me out of the thread. Maybe calm down. We understand you like the current versions. No one has ever said you can't. No one is even saying they're objectively bad. You on the other hand keep posting about it like the idea of multiple cuts of a film being included in a $200 box set, or at the very least making those other versions officially and easily available, is unreasonable and a crazy idea. No one is trying to drive you out of the thread. Just shut up about this one thing that no one is ever going to change your opinion on, and you've made your position on clear multiple times.
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Apr 17, 2021 21:07
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The upcoming Criterion release of Flowers of Shanghai is similarly messed with, with richer colors (i.e. more yellow). I guess I'm not a hardliner on this, though. Obviously, if there was a disc with a new restored version and an "original" version (like the first home release or something) on it, I'd prefer that, but when I compare the new version of Flowers and my library's crappy DVD copy of The Puppetmaster, I'd prefer a restoration that actually works on modern devices, even if it isn't accurate to previous versions. The only way I see to pressure Criterion and other companies to more stringently preserve film would be to boycott these kinds of releases, but on balance I wouldn't want to discourage making these movies available to a wider audience.
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Apr 17, 2021 21:09
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BeanpolePeckerwood posted:It's true; you are the gatekeeper of your own experience. For the 90% of people who now have access to this catalogue of films at what is less than $30 each, who would probably never bother to notice some minor changes had been made here and there, good tidings. For those individuals who seek the absolute purity of expression, happiness dependent on strict adherence to the original vision in their memory, who must now trudge through the grey market of $50-100 versions in order to feel at ease, good tidings as well. Is it really that out of place in a thread for Criterion - which is some nerdy poo poo - to promote film preservation? I've said nothing to imply that your enjoyment of the set isn't valid, so why don't you let people talk about the importance of preservation and archival work without chiming in constantly with "Well personally, I don't care  ."On another Wong note, I just watched the original Ashes of Time and was kind of shocked at how clear it is that this is a WKW film, since I always got the idea that this was a movie where his whole style got subsumed by studio direction and the huge budget. It's actually really good, and I'm surprised it's dismissed so often since it really is quite similar to Days of Being Wild and Chungking Express in terms of tone. I haven't seen Redux yet which I'm interested to see mostly because it's available in much better quality than the original cut is, but I heard they cut the electronic score in Redux which sounds like a huge bummer.
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Apr 17, 2021 22:03
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I don’t really care about versions of a movie per se because you can go down that rabbit hole forever and not determine what the original is (see in this case the stuff about when the Faye Wong song plays) let alone what’s the best version of a film but the green filter on in the mood for love just looks like poo poo. If that’s what the movie looked like originally or what Wong wants it to look like, it looked bad and he wants it to look bad Chungking and fallen angels look good in the new versions so it’s w/e
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Apr 17, 2021 22:23
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pospysyl posted:The upcoming Criterion release of Flowers of Shanghai is similarly messed with, with richer colors (i.e. more yellow). I guess I'm not a hardliner on this, though. That’s just a Ritrovata thing. I’m still excited for it and glad Criterion picked it up for release; it’s probably the worst looking dvd in my collection. I will knock them a bit for that cover though, I’m not into it at all.
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Apr 17, 2021 22:35
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Vince MechMahon posted:We understand you like the current versions. No one has ever said you can't. No one is even saying they're objectively bad. You on the other hand keep posting about it like the idea of multiple cuts of a film being included in a $200 box set, or at the very least making those other versions officially and easily available, is unreasonable and a crazy idea. No one is trying to drive you out of the thread. Just shut up about this one thing that no one is ever going to change your opinion on, and you've made your position on clear multiple times. I'd actually love multiple versions of each film, but I don't see it as a dealbreaker. Once it became apparent what WKW's intentions were here I kinda decided to lay those cares to rest. He's an idiosyncratic dude who made a bunch of films that are equally idiosyncratic and I guess I'm just enjoying revisiting them from a fresh perspective. Maybe I'll pony up for the previous criterion of Chungking Express in order to round out the collection.
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Apr 17, 2021 23:06
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DeimosRising posted:I don’t really care about versions of a movie per se because you can go down that rabbit hole forever and not determine what the original is (see in this case the stuff about when the Faye Wong song plays) Yeah, I'm willing to admit there are shades of grey here when it comes to movies that have been released with lots of alternative versions and weirdness like that. Hell, I'm willing to retract that criticism since it's apparently not some new change, even though on the personal side I really dislike it. But that might just be my bias. I still don't understand why everything got pushed green. I wonder if it's WKW trying to present these movies like they've always been part of some holistic and aesthetically consistent set?
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Apr 17, 2021 23:08
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DetoxP posted:Yeah, I'm willing to admit there are shades of grey here when it comes to movies that have been released with lots of alternative versions and weirdness like that. Hell, I'm willing to retract that criticism since it's apparently not some new change, even though on the personal side I really dislike it. But that might just be my bias. I think he's definitely doing that, which I don't fully agree with since it's several  timelines and numerous thematic intersections all bunched up. However, the work on whole contains so many in-jokes that it's not unreasonable to see why he's run with that idea in the past and is doubling down now, you know, the trilogy of Days/Mood/2046 which was commonly held as a blanket association, but it always felt a bit loose to me. So if Mood was originally supposed to relate to Days more directly, not only from a thematic standpoint but a visual one as well, then going a bit greener would probably make sense. The scenery in all of these movies is so much of a collage that it never feels like one palette dominates for too long from scene to scene, but I suppose I'll have to see how that affects Mood on this set. Tonight is Happy Together though.
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Apr 17, 2021 23:25
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DetoxP posted:
His only real mandate by the financiers was that the film needed Big Stars, and it does have them all, and also to feature a lot of martial arts scenes, and they are there, and choreographed by the Greatest to ever do them. The real story is that Wong spent two years slowly losing his mind in the deserts of China, because he didn't really know what he was doing, and almost bankrupted his brand new production company that he set up with Jeffrey Lau. This when Lau jumped in and shot Eagles Shooting Heroes in two months to get it ready for Chinese New Year, make money back to keep production running, and avoid a repeat of Days of Being Wild. He always felt that the film was unfinished which resulted in Redux 14 years later. Despite what some say, the film actually made money. It's based on some of the more popular Wuxia characters ever, that has countless media adaptations, so no matter how odd it was always going to make some money. The difference between the two versions are also an interesting examination of two different modes of film production. The original is a WKW film and is still very part of the 90's Wuxia HK deconstructions that Tsui Hark started doing with Once Upon a Time in China, while the Redux with it's new phantasmagorical color grading becomes a product of 2046 Wong. There's also this very funny line in the movie's wiki "Critics found it so elliptical that it was almost impossible to make out any semblance of a plot, something very rare in a wuxia film.[citation needed]" lol DetoxP posted:I still don't understand why everything got pushed green. I wonder if it's WKW trying to present these movies like they've always been part of some holistic and aesthetically consistent set? This is from 2010 restoration of Fallen Angels quote:Colors are a bit different, most notable in the final scene, which is more greenish now. The image also seems less grainy and softer now, which makes me wonder if there was some DNR applied. I don't know for sure though. https://wong-kar-wais-love-odysseys.blogspot.com/2010/04/fallen-angels-1996.html Funny enough the scenes that he is saying that have become greener in 2010, in the Wong Box are now not green at all. It's too bad that the image links are dead. But you are correct about the aesthetics. Wong wants to push his films to become inline with 2046. Look how he talks about his new project, Blossoms, when he calls it the final part of a trilogy with In The Mood For Love and 2046. It used to be that there was already a trilogy, but with Days of Being Wild. FancyMike posted:That’s just a Ritrovata thing. I’m still excited for it and glad Criterion picked it up for release; it’s probably the worst looking dvd in my collection. I will knock them a bit for that cover though, I’m not into it at all. Is there any word on the subtitles? When the restoration premiered in Bologna people noted that the subtitles were still credited to Tony Rayns, but it was actually a whole different, and worse, translation.
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Apr 17, 2021 23:29
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Electronico6 posted:Is there any word on the subtitles? When the restoration premiered in Bologna people noted that the subtitles were still credited to Tony Rayns, but it was actually a whole different, and worse, translation. I have no idea, and last I looked I didn’t find a clear answer for which subs ended up on the Taiwan blu-ray, which is why I didn’t import it right away. Pretty sure I remember Rayns being aware of and very upset about the issue, and this is one area I’d definitely expect Criterion to get right, so here’s hoping they do. It would be so disappointing for them to finally put out a Hou film and gently caress it up like that. FancyMike fucked around with this message at 00:09 on Apr 18, 2021 |
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Apr 18, 2021 00:06
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What was the last movie you watched on The CC and thought ‘drat that was really fuckin good’.
Kart Barfunkel fucked around with this message at 06:20 on Apr 18, 2021 |
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Apr 18, 2021 06:15
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Kart Barfunkel posted:What was the last movie you watched on The CC and thought ‘drat that was really fuckin good’. I watched both Lady Snowblood movies earlier this week.
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Apr 18, 2021 06:30
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Kart Barfunkel posted:What was the last movie you watched on The CC and thought ‘drat that was really fuckin good’. I watched Animal Crackers last night. The plot bits drag but there are some amazing scenes. Groucho does weird asides to the camera in a nod to Strange Interlude, there's a bit where Louis Sorin appears to forget his character's name and it's not really clear whether this was on purpose or they just kept the camera rolling, there are bits where you can catch Margaret Dumont trying her hardest not to break, it's a great example of the Marxs pushing the limits of a comedy feature as far as they were allowed.
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Apr 18, 2021 07:47
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Kart Barfunkel posted:What was the last movie you watched on The CC and thought ‘drat that was really fuckin good’. Taste of Cherry
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Apr 18, 2021 14:55
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Kart Barfunkel posted:What was the last movie you watched on The CC and thought ‘drat that was really fuckin good’. Watched Smooth Talk a week or two ago, and drat, that was really fuckin good.
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Apr 18, 2021 14:58
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If anyone hasn't seen California Split, get on that.
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Apr 18, 2021 15:08
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Kart Barfunkel posted:What was the last movie you watched on The CC and thought ‘drat that was really fuckin good’. Onibaba.
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Apr 18, 2021 16:12
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....is it okay if I thought dreams was kinda nice at the end and didn’t take much away from the ending
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Apr 18, 2021 16:24
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Cloks posted:If anyone hasn't seen California Split, get on that. Watched it last night, which was long overdue. Really enjoyed it, although I can see why it's a bit of a forgotten Altman film. It's much more focused on a few specific characters and so it doesn't feel quite as expansive as stuff like Nashville or Short Cuts. But the performances are excellent, it's funny how like 90% of Elliott Gould's status as a movie star was created by being in Robert Altman films. I don't think it's really possible to "get" why Gould is so good without seeing The Long Goodbye and California Split.
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Apr 18, 2021 17:05
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Maxwell Lord posted:I watched Animal Crackers last night. The plot bits drag but there are some amazing scenes. Groucho does weird asides to the camera in a nod to Strange Interlude, there's a bit where Louis Sorin appears to forget his character's name and it's not really clear whether this was on purpose or they just kept the camera rolling, there are bits where you can catch Margaret Dumont trying her hardest not to break, it's a great example of the Marxs pushing the limits of a comedy feature as far as they were allowed. Animal Crackers is great, that Strange Interlude homage where he tries to convince 2 women of the virtues of bigamy is an all-time classic
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Apr 18, 2021 18:52
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Just re-watched A Touch of Zen and caught an uncredited appearance by Sammo Hung near the end, never spotted that before
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Apr 20, 2021 01:49
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Are the versions of the Wong films that they put up on the channel this month the box set versions? I loaded up in the mood for love and skipped around for a few seconds and it didn’t look like the screenshots at all
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Apr 20, 2021 02:14
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DeimosRising posted:Are the versions of the Wong films that they put up on the channel this month the box set versions? I loaded up in the mood for love and skipped around for a few seconds and it didn’t look like the screenshots at all Chungking Express is definitely the older version (i.e., not the box set), and I'm reasonably sure the other ones are too. edit: Fallen Angels is also the older version. Calamity Brain fucked around with this message at 02:33 on Apr 20, 2021 |
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Apr 20, 2021 02:29
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Happy Together holds up. Such a great film, and the new credit roll is swell.
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Apr 23, 2021 08:18
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Does anyone else have immensely bad times with the channel app? Its like a crapshoot if can stream things on it to the tv.
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Apr 23, 2021 14:16
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Suplex Liberace posted:Does anyone else have immensely bad times with the channel app? Its like a crapshoot if can stream things on it to the tv. It works fine for me through my Roku.
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Apr 23, 2021 15:04
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Another Criterion disaster "restoration" https://twitter.com/jlalibs/status/1385593691071553538?s=20
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Apr 23, 2021 15:56
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rules
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Apr 23, 2021 16:30
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Electronico6 posted:Another Criterion disaster "restoration" What the gently caress are they doing over there?
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Apr 23, 2021 16:56
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The color timing is weird, of course, but you can maybe make an argument for its intended effect.... but WHY the cropping? That's so weird.
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Apr 23, 2021 17:15
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Sounds like the director is making the decision? https://twitter.com/matta_nathaniel/status/1385609661445857281
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Apr 23, 2021 17:17
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