Third Window Films

[ex-cowboy]

Meant to post the other week - in case anyone missed it, the final title in the new Toyoda set is 'I'm Flash' with Fujiwara Tatsuya and Matsuda Ryuhei.

[Adam X]

…and posted a few days ago:

Meeting director Toshiaki Toyoda this week to make video interviews for the bluray releases of each of:
Hanging Garden / I'm Flash / Monsters Club / Day of Destruction / Wolf's Calling
So if you have any questions for him on any of the above, let us know and we'll put them in!

His new documentary Shiver is available to stream worldwide (except Japan) through 6th June, as part of Germany’s Nippon Connection festival.

[konoyaro]

It seems the Funky Forest release from 3WF has now been pushed out to "Autumn 2021".

[L.A.]

Upcoming titles:

Beyond the Infinite Two Minutes
Crazy Thunder Road
Funky Forest / Warped Forest
Funuke: Show Some Love, You Losers!
Hiruko the Goblin
Nobuhiko Obayashi: Anti-War Trilogy Box (Casting Blossoms to the Sky, Seven Weeks, Hanagatami)
Toshiaki Toyoda: 2005-2020 Box (Hanging Garden, I’m Flash, Monsters Club, Day of Destruction, Wolf’s Calling)
Zokki

[colinr0380]

Oh, excellent! Everything looks great but a couple of things stand out immediately: Crazy Thunder Road is another Sogo Ishii film, coming two years before even Burst City.

And Hiruko The Goblin was Shinya Tsukamoto's attempt at a 'commercial' horror film (falling between the two Tetsuo films) which has somewhat fallen by the wayside in the West with the attention paid to his more arthouse entries. It had a UK DVD release through Artsmagic in the mid-2000s but it is good to see it being upgraded. The other 'commercial' Tsukamoto films that are left to be rescued from OOP DVD status in the US (and which have never been released at all in the UK) are the first of the Nightmare Detective films from the mid-2000s (released in the US by the "Dimension Extreme" arm of Miramax. The second film has never received a disc release in the West) and Tetsuo: The Bullet Man (released in the US by IFC).

EDIT: Zokki looks interesting, at the very least for apparently being co-directed by Naoto Takenaka! (Takenaka also stars in Hiruko The Goblin too, though is probably best known in the West as one of the supporting cast of salarymen turned ballroom dancers in the original Japanese version of Shall We Dance?)

And here's the trailer for Beyond The Infinite Two Minutes which looks like the one-take idea of One Cut Of The Dead meeting Being John Malkovich's lo-fi sci-fi shenanigans.

[Michael Kerpan]

I loved Funuke. Not a fan (at all) of Funky Forest.

Zokki looks like 5 short films (interrelated short stories) split between 3 directors. The trailer doesn't tell me a whole lot....

[yoshimori]

I loved Funuke.

Saw it at Cannes, back when. And since Yoshida is probably one of my two or three favorite working directors - Kirishima Thing was my top pick in the 2010s poll; Beautiful Star and Pale Moon are great too - I'm looking forward to re-watching this one, his debut.

[Michael Kerpan]

yoshimori -- Alas, I never got to see these later Yoshida films. Last I saw was (unsubbed) Permanent Nobara, which I thought was quite good also.

[yoshimori]

Yes. We need subbed Permanent Nobara and Scythian Lamb discs.

Kirishima Thing and Pale Moon are available, subbed, in HK, but only on dvd. [Was relatively easy to marry English-subs to rips of the Japanese BDs, though.]

Beautiful Star, subbed, can be had on BD in HK.

The 2021 Kiba: Fangs of Fiction (which I haven't seen) comes out on BD in Japan in September. It plays at NYC's Japan Cuts in August - but not in the online fest, sadly. One hopes it will make the US fest rounds after that.

Kuhio Taisa is horrible, so ...

[ex-cowboy]

Excellent news about Crazy Thunder Road. Very much looking forward to seeing it again. If I remember correctly, it was on a Takeshi Kitano list of best (Japanese) films, written for Kinema Jumpo (though I can't remember if that was a year end or decade end list (or both)). Hopefully if this sells well, we can expect more Ishii - Labyrinth of Dreams is sublime and Crazy Family is also great. Would be nice to get some of his short films out as well (particularly Shuffle), and maybe some box sets, like TW have been doing with Toyoda.

Interested to see the Obayashi's - I've got Hanagatami, but will no doubt get this set. Have had the Italian Raro release of Hiruko for a few years, but still haven't gotten round to watching.

[yoshimori]

If I remember correctly, it was on a Takeshi Kitano list of best (Japanese) films, written for Kinema Jumpo (though I can't remember if that was a year end or decade end list (or both)).

This site says this is Kitano's list ... from, I think, a 2002 S&S poll:

Children of Paradise (1945, Marcel Carne)
2001: A Space Odyssey (1968, Stanley Kubrick)
A Clockwork Orange (1971, Stanley Kubrick)
Seven Samurai (1954, Akira Kurosawa)
To Live and Die in L.A. (1985, William Friedkin)
Wild at Heart (1990, David Lynch)
Bring Me the Head of Alfredo Garcia (1974, Sam Peckinpah)
Darkman (1990, Sam Raimi)
Crazy Thunder Road (1980, Sogo Ishii)
The Railroad Man (1956, Pietro Germi)

Rather eclectic.

[Finch]

Beyond the Infinite Two Minutes dated for 15th November
region-free
extras: ‘Howling’ Short film, Making Of, Interview with director Junta Yamaguchi

I watched the trailer, and I'm in!

Embedded on the TWF site

[L.A.]

Funuke: Show Some Love, You Losers!

Release date August 30th.

[yoloswegmaster]

Preorder link to Nobuhiko Obayashi's Anti-War Trilogy (2000 copies only)

Disc 1: Casting Blossoms to the Sky この空の花-長岡花火物語 (2011)
Endo Reiko is a journalist visiting Nagaoka to comment on the aftermath of the earthquake in Tohoku. From local residents, Endo learns about the city’s fireworks traditions, and how the region was destroyed during the war.
Special Features: 45 minute Interview with Nobuhiko Obayashi

Disc 2: Seven Weeks 野のなななのか (2014)
Weaving the life of a 92-year-old doctor into the history of a small Hokkaido city, “Seven Weeks” addresses Japan’s wartime responsibility, its present nuclear crisis and the heartaches of youth and love.
Special Features: 75 minute Making Of

Disc 3: Hanagatami 花筐 (2017)
In the spring of 1941, sixteen-year-old Toshihiko leaves Amsterdam to attend school in Karatsu, a small town on the western coast of Japan. Immersed in the seaside’s nature and culture, Toshihiko soon befriends the town’s other extraordinary adolescents as they all contend with the war’s inescapable gravitational pull.
Special Features: 35 minute interview with Nobuhiko Obayashi

[L.A.]

The Yurei’s interview with Toshiaki Toyoda.

[ex-cowboy]

Just preordered the Obayashi - thanks for the link Yolosweg. Have I missed something - are Arrow no longer the distributor for Third Window going forward? Does this also effect Second Run?

[yoloswegmaster]

Just preordered the Obayashi - thanks for the link Yolosweg. Have I missed something - are Arrow no longer the distributor for Third Window going forward? Does this also effect Second Run?

Arrow still distributes Third Window and Second Run titles (though there is no link for the Obayashi trilogy on the Arrow site). I only linked the Terracotta page since the guy who runs Third Window says the company gets more money if you buy from them.

[Adam X]

It might just be COVID-related supply issues, but the new Toshiaki Toyoda box set (ltd-2000 copies) seems to be selling out at various places online, in case anyone thought they could wait a bit. Terracotta still has it up.

Don’t think it’s been mentioned here, but TWF ended up squeezing in the third new short Toyoda’s made over the last two years, Go Seppuku Yourselves.

[Finch]

Terracotta have Crazy Thunder Road up for pre-order (best place to buy TWF titles by the way; my orders arrived within 10 days)

The first video release (in any format) outside of Japan of Sogo Ishii's punk classic, featuring a new restoration supervised by the director alongside many new and exclusive extras!

Hailed as Japan's Mad Max, Sogo Ishii's high-octane, loud-and-proud breakthrough hit was one of that country's great success stories, a graduation project from a film school punk rocker bought by Toei Studios and released nationwide.

The plot involves Ken, a gang leader dreaming of a quiet life with his girlfriend Noriko, and Jin, Ken's maverick successor, who isn't about to let yakuza kingpins or right-wing nutjobs tell him what to do or whom to kill.

Jin's violent individualism in a world where even outlaws follow the bosses' orders references the doomed anti-establishment heroes of Kinji Fukasaku, but Crazy Thunder Road points toward a new style of genre filmmaking-fast-paced, quick-witted and brilliantly stylized.

BLU-RAY CONTENTS

New master approved by the director
New interview with Gakuryu (Sogo) Ishii
Audio commentary by Tom Mes
Video Essay: Jasper Sharp on Jishu Eiga

Region: B

[yoloswegmaster]

Preorder link to Funky Forest/Warped Forest Double Pack.

[Finch]

Adam Torel implied via the TWF twitter account that there is going to be more Obayashi on the way from the 1980s.

[agnamaracs]

Preorder link to Funky Forest/Warped Forest Double Pack.

US release from Error 4444 is now up for preorder. Promises an "extra mystery disc."

[Calvin]

Adam Torel implied via the TWF twitter account that there is going to be more Obayashi on the way from the 1980s.

Has confirmed on the podcast that there will be a boxset released in 2022 containing The Girl Who Leapt Through Time, School in the Crosshairs, His Motorbike, Her Island, and The Island Closest to Heaven

[TraverseTown]

His Motorbike, Her Island feels a little out of place there since the other 3 are stories of high school girls and in that film, the characters are a bit older. But, they are all vital films that I'm glad they are getting official English-language releases. I was hoping for Arrow to do them so they could get a Region A release too but that seems unlikely now. Wonder who the next best distributor could be?

I recommend School in the Crosshairs for fans of House, since the climax of the former is one of the only moments in Obayashi's 80s filmography that matches the frenetic energy/artifice of the latter film.

[Glowingwabbit]

His Motorbike, Her Island feels a little out of place there since the other 3 are stories of high school girls and in that film, the characters are a bit older.

I thought that too but I suppose boxing them up with what many say is his best film will certainly help sell a lot more copies. I'll be buying it primarily for that one as it's definitely the best film I've seen of his so far. I didn't care for School in the Crosshairs and haven't seen the other two yet. I'm so happy Third Windows is doing these.

In terms of Region A the only company I can think of that might release his work is Grasshopper tbh (Arrow would have been the other). He still seems to left of field for Criterion although they really should amend the disservice they did to his work by the way they promoted House upon it's release