Friday, August 21, 2009

Criterion's Eclipse line does Nikkatsu Noir

In college I'd have been all over the relative obscurities Eclipse has been spotlighting over the years - I even took a class devoted exclusively to Ozu. Haven't been buying any of them, since I'm sadly past the omnivorous stage of my film career.
But even in college I was heavily focused on Asian action of all kinds, and would have been annoyed that Eclipse never found a way to treat that stuff right. You know, the way Dragon Dynasty was until they decided to pee in our faces and stop including the original language tracks.
So it's pretty damn cool that they're doing a set of old Japanese noir flicks. Including a Seijun Suzuki. No idea whether these are worth catching or not, but hopefully we'll have someone on staff willing to take a chance and tell us how they are.

2 comments:

  1. Man, Seijun Suzuki. Yet another director I'd like to like, instead of just appreciate. Then again, I am apparently a simple beast at heart, as my next post will illustrate.

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  2. Speaking of Suzuki, does Criterion have any intention of reissuing Branded to Kill and Tokyo Drifter? Dunno how high priority the films are as they'd probably like any re-releases to be accompanied by Blu Ray.

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