Peter Greenaway

[Quote Perf Unquote]

But yes, he has decided to put off any suicide attempts for now due to a change of mind.

What a pussy! Not very rock and roll, Petey.

[SSF]

David Gregory from Severin Films posted on FB that they are working on a 4K release of one of his films. Not Cook/Thief.

[beamish14]

David Gregory from Severin Films posted on FB that they are working on a 4K release of one of his films. Not Cook/Thief.

Let the speculation begin. Tulse Luper would be a dream. I’m guessing probably Drowning by Numbers, though.

[yoloswegmaster]

I wonder if they will be releasing The Draughtsman's Contract on 4K after the BFI released it only on Blu, something that happened with the 'Out of the Blue release.

[John Cope]

Please God let it be Prospero.

[MichaelB]

Please God let it be Prospero.

In 4K? Why, when the original is only 1035i?

I saw it twice in 35mm, and it looked decidedly fuzzy - but that’s baked into the video technology used to realise the project.

[John Cope]

Please God let it be Prospero.

In 4K? Why, when the original is only 1035i?

Okay, good point. Well, let's at least get a good Blu then (I was under the impression that Indicator might take care of that).

[RobertB]

A friend of mine has this card/envelope from Prospero's Books. But he can't remember where he got it. Is it part of a press kit?

https://ibb.co/vB7SFH7

[colinr0380]

He has no intention of dying by suicide, although he is presently concerned about issues pertaining to euthanasia and transhumanism, and he will be exploring these in his new feature

This gets confirmed by his recent BBC Radio 4 interview "Peter Greenaway - Painting With Film", where he says that he has "seven or eight scripts ready to go" and that, as beamish14 has said, the first is looking likely to be "Luca Mortis, which is an attempt to answer the question "is death necessary?", starring Morgan Freeman as an elderly gentleman who comes to Europe to deal with 'a family question', and which involves topics of euthanasia and suicide and what makes a good death, if it is necessary at all". Which Greenaway states that of course it is, just in case we had not seen A Zed And Two Noughts (or really any of his films!) to be aware of his thoughts on the subject!

On the interview itself I liked the brief moments of Greenaway reading from his new collection of stories but the half hour programme only really focuses on a few films: The Draughtsman's Contract, Drowning By Numbers (there is an audio clip of the Film 88 location report from the shooting), a little mention in passing of The Falls and the shorts The Sea In The Blood, Act of God and H Is For House (which turns up on the upcoming BFI Blu-ray of Draughtsman's Contract, so it was probably inevitable that would get the most focus). It gets left to Greenaway himself to bring up his start at the COI and he does mention how strange it is to talk about cinema on the radio and that he would prefer to have been making images rather than weaving narratives!

As an interview with Greenaway the programme is fine, although its focus is far too narrow to really be a good career retrospective. Aside from a couple of the early shorts no others are mentioned at all and I do not really know how you could properly talk about Greenaway and the encyclopaedic interweaving with artistic tendencies without talking about Dear Phone, A Walk Through H and especially Vertical Features Remake, yet somehow they manage it. Let alone the most beautifully evocative yet minimalistic filmic adaptation of a Lord of the Rings or Dune-style elaborate fantasy world containing arcane reams of historical lore and unique terminology in Water Wrackets!

Perhaps more tellingly the other interviewee from the BFI kind of dismisses everything outside of that ("he did a lot of TV work"), notes that post-Baby of Macon's gruelling rape scene was the point where "the critics started turning on him" (which was probably as much to do with the break with Michael Nyman), then brings up that apparently 8 1/2 Women caused "a big controversy at Cannes", ignores The Pillow Book, namechecks the Tulse Luper trilogy (which I don't think has ever been released in the UK) and "a film about Rembrandt" (without noting that Nightwatching is probably one of Greenaway's most accessible films, and the closest companion piece to Draughtsman's Contract!) and then says that is "about it until these new films". Which completely glosses over Goltzius and the Pelican Company (as scathing a portrait of the perils of patronage as Cook/Thief/Wife/Lover) and the Eisenstein film!

[senseabove]

Still half convinced I'm dreaming right now:

Drowning By Numbers [2-Disc 4K UHD + Blu-ray w/Exclusive Slipcover]
In between his celebrated THE BELLY OF AN ARCHITECT and THE COOK, THE THIEF, HIS WIFE & HER LOVER, writer/director Peter Greenaway – “one of the most distinctive, provocative talents of his generation” (The Guardian) – shocked/delighted international audiences with this slyly deranged black comedy classic: Oscar® nominee Dame Joan Plowright (ENCHANTED APRIL), four-time BAFTA Award nominee Juliet Stevenson (TRULY MADLY DEEPLY) and two-time Golden Globe nominee Joely Richardson (THE GIRL WITH THE DRAGON TATTOO) star as three generations of women who murder their husbands in an unsettling salvo of sumptuous visuals, macabre capers and numerical mischief. Bernard Hill (THE LORD OF THE RINGS, TITANIC) co-stars in this “fascinating brain buster of very bad manners” (Entertainment Weekly), now featuring a new 4K scan from the original negative personally supervised by Greenaway.

[senseabove]

The DBN UHD arrived today so I popped it in for a quick sample on my lunch break, and I regret to report that it looks like we might have an exemplary disc for showing that high bitrate ≠ good encode. Hadn't realized DVDBeaver had posted their caps (Beaving by Numbers?), but just take a look at any shot with the sky...

[therewillbeblus]

That's a shame. It doesn't seem like there's an optimal alternative blu-ray out there, so is this still the 'best' we have, if still disappointing? I don't really want to cancel my preorder unless it's that abysmal

[senseabove]

I wouldn't go so far as to say it's abysmal—everything else looks great (though I am less sensitive to color and grain futzing than some)—but it does have the dubious distinction of looking worse in motion because the large flat fields of blue mean the macroblocking is jumping around a lot. Nevertheless, it's firmly in the "goddamit this is likely the last home video release of this movie ever so it should be perfect" category.

[Peacock]

I’ll stick with the UK Blu then, thanks.

[senseabove]

If you love the movie and/or Greenaway, I think it's still worth picking up, and I don't regret pre-ordering it. It's just, sadly, not the absolute best it could be. I was able to sit down and actually watch the first 45 minutes or so last night before bed, and the additional detail is fantastic and the HDR is jawdropping, really highlighting Greenaway's exaggerated, painterly use of light: the shot of the youngest Cissie leaning against a tree in a vehemently unnatural raking spot from left of frame while her fiancé stands off in the dim, "natural" light, the three Cissies sitting in a dark car with vibrant green light coming from one side and violent red coming from the other. Yes, every now and then, the sky looks briefly looks like a disco ball, but I wouldn't say the drawbacks are severe enough to avoid it entirely, and the good of it is really, really good.

[colinr0380]

(Beaving by Numbers?)

"Drowning by Beavers" would be more thematically appropriate for the film, surely?

[EddieLarkin]

The DBN UHD arrived today so I popped it in for a quick sample on my lunch break, and I regret to report that it looks like we might have an exemplary disc for showing that high bitrate ≠ good encode. Hadn't realized DVDBeaver had posted their caps (Beaving by Numbers?), but just take a look at any shot with the sky...

Are you watching in HDR10 or Dolby Vision?

[senseabove]

Dolby Vision

[therewillbeblus]

I've been enjoying some of the 80s works on revisits, with A Zed & Two Noughts faring best until I finally watched Drowning By Numbers all the way through, and if this isn't Greenaway at the height of his artistry, my head might explode at what is. It's challenging to write about how creative this film is, so jam-packed with visual gags, deadpan riffs, tragic existential rot, and buoyant interplay - plus, it's so clearly Wes Anderson's core inspiration for a sizable chunk of his approach, particularly Moonrise Kingdom (one could write an essay on all the references, from characters to scenes to the setting and the respective just-off color gradings therein, etc.) but dating back to Life Aquatic - and I'm talking about a film-specific combination of style, strategy, and attitude, divorced from Greenaway's usual shtick (I'd also say there's a Lanthimos synergy on a different level, but I could probably keep the list going - there's basically a disquieting psychosexual rationalization recalling a Dogville-inspo during a car exchange towards the end!) Although predominately a light farce, when the drama comes and the emotional undercurrents shine through the playful artifice, they feel genuine and earned. It's a riotous comedy about the trivialities of life and death, with an urgent recognition of all the possibilities - via an infinite array of idiosyncratic details of life crowding the schematic vision - that make it worth living, exploring, filming..

I'll need to revisit The Cook, the Thief.. but I don't remember liking it very much, and it's at least more of a concentrated tone, which is a step back from the eclectic potential here. And then there's Prospero's Books and onward, which just don't seem to be for me. So it's a bit disheartening that Greenaway built his skills to this explosive zenith of what film can be, and then decided to do 'less' (or 'more' without meditating on any idea for long enough to deserve recognition for so-called imaginative diversity), except, in his defense, where do you go from here? Also, I think the 4K disc looks fantastic. I'm not an expert on poor UHDs, but I watched a bunch of this in what I think is its best known HD transfer just prior to Severin's release, and this is miles better than that already strong presentation. Here the colors pop and really emphasize the fun vibe of the silly elements, a lot more than the paler version I saw did, at least in spirit. I will also advise that this film really benefits from watching with subs - there are too many witty jokes condensed into the script, most of them totally absurd and unpredictable and worth reading out as one is digesting the eccentric information - but the only sub option is SDH. It's not a big deal, but worth mentioning as a small caveat.