As I said I would, I made time today to catch another title in the Tanaka retrospective -- Watcher in the Attic (Edogawa Rampo ryôkikan: Yaneura no samposha, 『江戸川乱歩猟奇館 屋根裏の散歩者』).I didn't read Jasper Sharp's fine review over at Midnight Eye before seeing the film, so I was surprised to see elements from Rampo's other stories incorporated, most notably "The Human Chair" (the fate of the man inside is much different though). It was a very good print that showed off Tanaka and Nikkatsu's gorgeous production design and colour work. Beautiful, apocalyptic final shot after the Great Kantô Earthquake hits (effectively protrayed through b&w news reels and well crafted aftermath sets). Being strangled between Miyashita Junko's thighs wouldn't be a bad way to go...
In the spirit of the film I entered voyeur mode, complete with heavy breathing (due to a bike ride just prior) and shot a short video walking tour from Asagaya station to the cinema. Click the image to watch Asagaya no samposha (QuickTime, 2m55s, 9.9Mb).*
12 comments:
Hey Jason, "long time no see" back to you by the way.
Always love your videos. Keep 'em coming. You should pimp your bike with a cam.
Watcher in the Attic has been rotting on my DVD-shelf for way too long now. Will give it a try this week.
Thx for sharing your impressions.
i've seen it mentioned alongside 'abe sada' and 'in the realm of the senses' as one of the few pink / erotic films to make an impact on foreign audiences.
the show was one of those 'top 100' affairs (though no jimmy carr this time) about erotic films, and this was fairly high up. it's part of the reason i think there's still a breakthrough possible with this kind of material and the differing perceptions over the meaning(s) behind sexual elements in films here in the west...
there's a lot of serious, worthwhile stuff in a genre that's all-too-automatically given as being mysoginistic sexist crap without there being consideration for sex as being part of human nature and a two-way street instead of a one-way pleasure dome full of simple exploitation.
i hope this is a film that gets a decent full DVD release stateside one day - there's a UK DVD of it, or there was at some point, but it didn't make a dent enough for me to really feel happy with the quality of the edition, so i am still waiting...
logboy
stauffen,
Thanks. It's funny you mention a bike-cam as I did shoot some footage like that the same night. I want to put together a little jib arm of some kind to hold the camera (my cell phone or otherwise) so I can ride and blab hands-free.
logboy,
The fact remains that margins for Japanese video releases remain very slim (I know I'm repeating myself), no matter how popular the title may seem in the blogosphere.
One of the companies I do work for in Europe was basically losing money on J-releases (beautiful ones, at that). When they started releasing Bollywood titles, the profits shot up and they opened a brand new office, which has helped pay for the "labour of love" Japanese stuff.
i would love to know more about the costing aspects of it all - i am sure there's issues to be dealt with, in terms of japanese companies and government policy (?) that affect (for the worse) how effective things are. fact remains (also repeating myself) that the number of DVD companies managing to do the bare basics in terms of business practice and promotion of their product can be counted on one fully-fingered hand, unfortunately.
logboy
Jason is right on the money when it comes to the commercial viability of foreign cinema abroad in terms of perception vs. reality. The cinephiles and movie geeks who frequent blogs and specialty sites (like Twitch) represent a miniscule portion of the movie buying population. Add to that the sheer derth of titles now available along with rampant piracy that most of these same people partake in -- it becomes very clear that something like specializing in delivering J-cinema is a risky endeavor.
This really hit home when, if I'm not mistaken, I read recently that Panik House was shutting down. They delivered some excellent J-cinema releases like The Pinky Violence Collection. I thought the release was extremely popular but apparently not so much. It's a sad reality but one that cannot be avoided. I just try to be thankful that some of the bigger studios are securing distro rights to many of the more significant asian films and putting them out on DVD. To them the risk is far less. That coupled with the excellent work being done by Criterion and Kino are very much a Godsend.
the "panik house is shutting down" story was KFC's april fools joke - looks like many fell for it, including yourself, imran. they're alive, though matt kennedy (ex-president) left, and like many companies that have issued some good stuff they're facing toughish times (as well as going unfortunately quiet on their site content, where they were once busy) but they also miss some major key elements to the way they perform their tasks in hand - no trailers, no specs, little consistency on mastering quality, little imagination for selecting films that could tap into previously explored genres and markets or applying some lateral thinking to picking on cheaper, older, perhaps more desirable material from many countries.
as for the perception versus reality argument on commercial viability, ive written about it and mentioned it many times within comments and posts at twitch. i too think that companies in america fantasise about how big the market is, japanese companies do too with the prices they often ask for licenses because america = large country with large population = must be money to be had, even though not everyone in even the home territory would go for domestic product, so why would english speakers?....
twitch gets something like 10-15k individual visitors a day, and there's no way of telling what elements of the site they're taking with them and for what purpose, or if they're involved in piracy (which we discuss but won't promote - i don't engage in it beyond what i feel companies are slow to pick up on, and even then it's just the odd CK disc). in the end, twitch is a blog in order to bring things into a more obvious realm, to make obscurities more obvious and to help inform - it's not fair to instantly label a blog of little value by comparison to those sites that see themselves of value because they latch into the way of thinking that obscurities should be discussed in an obscure fashion; that's elitist, and it's not a true representation of the entirity of the film-fandom world which has elements of audience willing to skip to and from country and time in order to access the most important aspects of films : the ideas contained within them, their stories and the approaches to telling those stories.
thing is, that although it's easy to say there's only a small market, i am not sure it's any more accurate a description of the market potential or size than the dedication some major labels give it which suggests they feel there's a major market there. they either subconsiously (or otherwise) know its small - hence the massive manipulation and dredging for films that are inexpensive and fit minute niches (j-horror) in order to ply them into the hands of as many as possible - or they're talking themselves out of the larger potential market (never a better time for open minds in foreign or old films than DVD) by that same manipulation away from broadening and growing opportunities, or capitalising on those people that already have broad opportunities that wander off to explore their options from DVDs issued in other regions.
kino have picked up one or two, but they're still plagued by soft transfers and lax translation (see the ryuichi hiroki discs - limitations in the production, but many errors in the subs) and many avoid them. criterion have preconcieved ideas about what constitutes a "criterion film" and like many film fans miss the true connections to other more interesting and potentially worthy / popular work - the ideas, not the countries or the filmmakers - which reinforces the ideas about film fans lacking a little measure and objectivity in their selections. i think both are good in many ways, but as with many labels they're also contributing and not curtailing certain practices which have plagued the DVD age of opportunity which i think we're a decade through and too far down the line to correct easily...
logboy
Thanks for setting me straight logboy, I know I didn't read it at KFC as I rarely go there so I must take solice in knowing that I wasn't the only one who was duped. I also didn't mean to imply that a site like Twitch is lesser than any other, I go there daily and think it's great. I've even won one of Todd's contests! But it is fair to say that Twitch caters to cinephiles primarily and there's nothing wrong with that. What I was attempting to say is that those of us who frequent such sites have a skewed perception of what is popular.
I work in the film industry (currently developing my first film as it were) and I know all too well how perception and reality rarely intersect. Look at Grindhouse...much hyped, much anticipated, and all but ignored this past opening weekend much to the shock of the industry. In the end Grindhouse was a 3+ hour R-rated film opeing on Easter Weekend which is far from mass market. There have also been those that have posited that American audiences are warming to subtitled films it can only be considered moderately increased at best. Hero was a bonified hit but House of Flying Daggers and Curse of the Golden Flower were anything but.
I still admire those distro houses (especially boutique operations) who still march along hoping that wider audiences will embrace these foreign gems, but I think the fact that more international releases are releasing DVD's with english subtitles (especially the Korean and HK markets) have and will significantly hamper domestic releases that are, as you noted, often slapped together. I personally love Korea's enthusiasm for presenting their films, they've got the best cases by far! Cinephiles (like us Twitchers) tend to import DVD's more so than mass audiences who most likely never will. I even have friends who are very much movie fans who are resistant to watching foreign films...si it's like we're a subset of a subset!
lots of these boutique labels hope in vain, i think.
primarily i think this is because of what i've already mentioned - the failure to curtail and banish bad practice - so, as i've mentioned elsewhere in relation to that recent new yoirk times article on the struggle with small labels, there's a huge contradiction in not even providing the bare essentials to support your releases (trailers, good DVD presentations, good choices of films that don't tread on toes of others but follow similar ideas to build on past successes) and the pumping huge quantites of DVDs (and hope) towards shops like K-mart and then moaning they're mostly returned and it financially scuppers you, as though a large store is a preordained route to major success that requires little consideration and skill to tap into, yet you don't even manage to server the clearly defined / known core audience effectively.
yes, this was mentioned in that article, and i think it shows how there's a dodgy foundation that's lead to a huge inappropriate and disproportionate ambitious hope that's being placed in the hands of those that stack em high and sell em cheap for anyone and everyone, it seems.
there's no chance 2 million casual purchasers are going to bypass 'spiderman 2.5' and even in a small percentage decide they now have an interest in obscure japanese chambara like 'goyokin' or italian crime movies like 'milano rovente' or whatever it may be. there is, however, a certain amount of people interested and buying regularly who have, through many aspects of basic errors, turned to a more global perspective befitting of a global taste in films - and they also subsequently suffer from negative actions as a result of diversifying tastes, supression of subs on foreign releases to avoid competition being one that really urks me as it represents effort in the wrong direction that negates accidentally positive aspects of global imports - such as an audiences tastes developing, as these clearly lead to new market opportunities for licensees, other fans, and even companies scraping millions together from the opening weekends of the latest remake.
logboy
it's like we're a subset of a subset!
That made me laugh -- probably because it's true.
supression of subs on foreign releases to avoid competition being one that really urks me as it represents effort in the wrong direction that negates accidentally positive aspects of global imports - such as an audiences tastes developing
With piracy as rampant as it is (and with Japan gradually catching up to the rest of Asia) I can somewhat understand why legit DVD companies try to protect their investment. And as businesses they won't hang around until tastes develop, whether it's to their detriment or not.
People have been creating their only subs for years now. I was surprised to see even a placeholder for the Andô Noboru film I wrote about on this massive subtitle database.
yep, fansubs are something i've also touched on elsewhere. they're also places where tastes develop from, clearly.
i remember in the early 90s that anime discussions often hinted that some companies in japan didn't mind fansubs because it helped create a market. with the same regard, it's possible that a more rampant fansubbing of live action would (or does) perform a similar task to some extent (As do foreign releases with subs on them, but i think the market for those kind of films is fundamentally not as obsessive-compulsive or habit forming as anime, and it's not as big a market either now or in potential (that's a guess at best) - because anime taps into a youthful market with higher disposable income, live action seems for an older or broader range of age groups.
logboy
Oddly enough there is a huge fansub community for live-action Japanese/Korean/HK TV Dramas. I'm not sure how the original broadcasters feel about having their product subtitled and made available online for free but the fact that there are such prominent sites offering them I would have to say they don't much mind. I know that Korean Dramas in particular have found some broadcast success both locally in the LA area and nationally on the AZN Network. So there is a bit of a market there but again it's far too niche to be considered mainstream by any stretch.
personally don't really like fansubbing, don't really get involved in it, but you can see (as i mention) that the fansub world in anime is very tightly tied to official releases - the licenses, the announcements to "stop subbing! we've licensed it" that companies make show they're as much involved in it as a way of keeping in touch and previewing material, how people gradually shift tastes, follow newer material and so on. i still don't condone it, but it's done something, undeniably. just clutching to increase my sense of why things do and don't work well, how they're structured and how they could shift, really... don't really agree with avoiding the financial support element of buying stuff, but certain negative aspects linked to that idea are managed in part by less tasteful aspects like fansubs...
llgboy
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