165 The Pillow Book

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MichaelB
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165 The Pillow Book

#1 Post by MichaelB » Thu Dec 05, 2019 6:41 am

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THE PILLOW BOOK
(Peter Greenaway, 1996)
Release date: 17 February 2020
Limited Edition Blu-ray


Preorder here

Inspired by Sei Shōnagon’s first-century diary, Peter Greenaway’s The Pillow Book is an audio-visual tour de force, and a showcase for one of British cinema’s most singular talents.

Starring Vivian Wu (8½ Women), Ewan McGregor (Trainspotting) and Ken Ogata (Mishima: A Life in Four Chapters), the film is among Greenaway’s most daring and adventurous works.


INDICATOR LIMITED EDITION BLU-RAY SPECIAL FEATURES:

• High Definition remaster
• Original stereo audio
• Selected scenes commentary with Peter Greenaway (2015)
• The Book of the Editor (2020): new interview with editor Chris Wyatt
• Rosa (1992): performance film by Anne Teresa De Keersmaker’s Rosas dance company, directed by Peter Greenaway and shot by Sacha Vierny, presented in a new restoration from the original negative
• Image gallery: on-set and promotional photography
• Theatrical trailer
• Original theatrical calligraphic subtitle presentation
• New English subtitles for the deaf and hard-of-hearing
• Limited edition exclusive 40-page booklet with a new essay by Adam Scovell, Peter Greenaway on The Pillow Book, excerpts from Greenaway’s 26 Facts About Flesh and Ink and the original press book, an overview of contemporary critical responses, Anthony Nield on Rosa, and film credits
• Limited edition of 3,000 copies
• All extras subject to change

#PHILTD165
BBFC cert: 18
REGION FREE
EAN: 5060697920079

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Aunt Peg
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Re: 165 The Pillow Book

#2 Post by Aunt Peg » Thu Dec 05, 2019 9:09 am

I'll be interested to know if this presentation of the feature film differs in any way for the Blu Ray from a few years ago by Circus Park (or were they called Park Circus).

I really don't want to purchase this film for the fourth time (1st US DVD, 2nd UK Blu Ray, 3rd US Blu Ray - that was purchased in error) unless there is a very good reason so and in this case I the special features don't come into consideration. Just the presentation of the feature film comparisons.

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MichaelB
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Re: 165 The Pillow Book

#3 Post by MichaelB » Thu Dec 05, 2019 9:21 am

The Indicator disc reinstates the calligraphic subtitles that accompanied the original theatrical release and the initial video versions. They're a significant part of the film's aesthetic (I'm thinking particularly of the way that multiple subtitles dissolve over each other on different parts of the image), but they're not included in FilmFour's HD master - presumably because it was created to serve multiple territories.

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Roscoe
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Re: 165 The Pillow Book

#4 Post by Roscoe » Thu Dec 05, 2019 10:00 am

Glad to see Greenaway getting some attention -- fingers crossed that PROSPERO'S BOOKS follows....

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L.A.
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Re: 165 The Pillow Book

#5 Post by L.A. » Thu Dec 05, 2019 10:39 am

The Baby of Mâcon has a pretty good Nordic Blu albeit without extras. Wouldn’t say no to an upgrade.

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Big Ben
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Re: 165 The Pillow Book

#6 Post by Big Ben » Thu Dec 05, 2019 10:50 am

L.A. wrote:
Thu Dec 05, 2019 10:39 am
The Baby of Mâcon has a pretty good Nordic Blu albeit without extras. Wouldn’t say no to an upgrade.
I was under the impression that there are rights issues with it.

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Aunt Peg
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Re: 165 The Pillow Book

#7 Post by Aunt Peg » Thu Dec 05, 2019 6:05 pm

MichaelB wrote:
Thu Dec 05, 2019 9:21 am
The Indicator disc reinstates the calligraphic subtitles that accompanied the original theatrical release and the initial video versions. They're a significant part of the film's aesthetic (I'm thinking particularly of the way that multiple subtitles dissolve over each other on different parts of the image), but they're not included in FilmFour's HD master - presumably because it was created to serve multiple territories.
Thanks Michael. Looks like this will be my fourth buy of the film.

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senseabove
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Re: 165 The Pillow Book

#8 Post by senseabove » Thu Dec 05, 2019 8:46 pm

Sometimes letting something sit in your keyvip for ages and ages is a good thing, I guess...

Isn't this also the Greenaway for which previous releases have possibly incorrectly implemented the shifting aspect ratios? Or am I mixing it up with another one?

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John Cope
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Re: 165 The Pillow Book

#9 Post by John Cope » Fri Dec 06, 2019 12:48 am

More great news, though an Indicator release of Prospero's Books, if and when that happens, will be even better.

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Boosmahn
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Re: 165 The Pillow Book

#10 Post by Boosmahn » Fri Dec 06, 2019 1:02 am

Is this a good starting point for someone new to Greenaway's filmography? I know Criterion (probably) has The Cook..., but who knows how long that'll take to get released.

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Re: 165 The Pillow Book

#11 Post by swo17 » Fri Dec 06, 2019 1:07 am

I'm gonna say Vertical Features Remake and Draughtsman's Contract would be better places to start

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DeprongMori
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Re: 165 The Pillow Book

#12 Post by DeprongMori » Fri Dec 06, 2019 1:49 am

Boosmahn wrote:
Fri Dec 06, 2019 1:02 am
Is this a good starting point for someone new to Greenaway's filmography? I know Criterion (probably) has The Cook..., but who knows how long that'll take to get released.
Although decent, The Pillow Book is not one of my favorites of his films. I first got hooked on Greenaway's work with The Draughtsman's Contract during its original release, so I might recommend starting there or with Drowning By Numbers or Zed and Two Noughts, both of which have excellent Blu-ray releases in the UK. Or The Cook... of course.

I'll still be picking up The Pillow Book in a shot, as this is the first time that care has been taken to get the details of its aesthetic correct. I hope Prospero's Books follows shortly.

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John Cope
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Re: 165 The Pillow Book

#13 Post by John Cope » Fri Dec 06, 2019 1:56 am

Draughtsman's Contract is definitely the way to go. Not The Falls (as much as I like The Falls).

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Re: 165 The Pillow Book

#14 Post by colinr0380 » Fri Dec 06, 2019 4:37 am

I really like The Pillow Book, and although it feels a lot like the climax of Peter Greenaway's preoccupations (though 8½ Women followed) before he moved into a different 'installation' and more direct art criticism phase of work, it might not be too bad a point to start with. It still has that major Greenaway theme of the sort of timelessness of intellectualism carrying its own erotic power contrasted against the more direct, earthy and of the moment pleasures of the flesh which flare up but also quickly decay away (I usually think that he has come closest to making films that embody that Oscar Wilde "we are all in the gutter, but some of us are looking at the stars" quote).

Its main character is another in the line of Greenaway protagonists who are both aiming to become 'something more' in intellectual (and slightly pretentious!) terms but also remain fascinated by their biological urges and the ephemerality of their existence, in this case in embodying (even becoming subservient to) language and poetry in the calligraphy being inked onto bodies but eventually washing away, leaving the body a fresh canvas again for future annotation. Its kind of a fetish in some ways, learnt in childhood and then turned into a personal quirk that then becomes an artistic statement that builds a career and reputation (which gets into the other big Greenaway theme of artists being exploited by, and in turn exploiting, their patrons in a kind of symbiotic relationship, as the creator starts to chafe against the rather crass artistic tastes of their employer or institution who are just looking to 'appropriate' and possess the results for having some prestige rub off on them by association), before eventually becoming a kind of mini-cult of personality passed on to the next generation in the relatively happy, though beautifully melancholy, ending.

I do really like the way that the main character sorts of drifts out of the film in the later sections as she becomes more experienced and assured as well as somewhat less naïve and in need of the camera to have to be there watching her all of the time, and we instead start to focus more on the schemes of the person desperately wanting to get their hands on the artworks (and being teased for their desires by the artist) and especially the 'final masterpiece' that has been created but made somewhat private and inaccessible through the artist's own wishes (it reminds me a little of how people might have been so desperate to have read that final Harry Potter book because they had become so invested in the narrative that had been weaved that they conceivably might even have stolen the manuscript if they had needed to!) And that in doing a kind of heist to get their hands that final work, and preserve it for the ages as their personal and private property, they kind of violate the entire purpose of the creation, and in some ways reveal their essential misunderstanding of the purpose for the creation of the piece by profaning it so thoroughly. (After all we know from the more thorough exploration of that particular idea in A Zed and Two Noughts that decay into nothingness is an essential part of the lifecycle, and why should it be any different for art itself? Because perhaps only the process of death and decay emphasises that something was truly alive in the first place)
SpoilerShow
It is a really similar kind of premise to the bookending stories that give Clive Barker's Books of Blood series its title!
Its a fascinating film with perhaps as much to say (and criticise) about the vagaries of publishing as it does about the artist as creator! With perhaps a cheeky little joke about that old phrase that we should not judge every book by its cover! And the usual slightly cynical Greenaway sense that the purity of a grand love affair is a kind of seductive but eventually insipid (and often deadly) delusion.

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Re: 165 The Pillow Book

#15 Post by colinr0380 » Fri Dec 06, 2019 12:10 pm

And now that I am back from work, I can post the NSFW music video within the film, which shows off a bit of the calligraphy aspect, as well as the shifting aspect ratios which senseabove notes above. Though I think in a previous discussion on the forum that it was noted that on the aspect ratio issue, short of reconstructing the film from scratch, everything needs to be in 4x3 pillarboxed with letterboxed widescreen within it because of the way the imagery is all optically fading into each other.
Last edited by colinr0380 on Fri Dec 06, 2019 12:33 pm, edited 2 times in total.

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MichaelB
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Re: 165 The Pillow Book

#16 Post by MichaelB » Fri Dec 06, 2019 12:16 pm

Yes, there's no way you can frame Film4's HD master any other way without cropping it (and Greenaway is not a filmmaker who takes kindly to cropping). It's unambiguously 4x3 at base, although obviously within that there are all kinds of aspect ratios, sometimes two or more at the same time.

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Re: 165 The Pillow Book

#17 Post by MichaelB » Sat Dec 07, 2019 9:38 am

senseabove wrote:
Thu Dec 05, 2019 8:46 pm
Isn't this also the Greenaway for which previous releases have possibly incorrectly implemented the shifting aspect ratios? Or am I mixing it up with another one?
The video versions are all correct, but the film has often been compromised theatrically.

Editor Chris Wyatt confirms in a lengthy interview on the Indicator disc that the original plan during post-production was to have 1.33:1 as the optimum ratio ("very square, very much like a book") but to allow for cropping to 1.66:1 for 35mm projection. Unfortunately, by the mid-1990s surprisingly few cinemas could handle anything narrower than 1.85:1, news that arrived too far into post-production for them to be able to change course, so many 35mm projections were unavoidably compromised.

Unfortunately, because of this, people who recall watching big-screen presentations at a wider ratio than 1.33:1 (hard to miss, as 1.33:1 is so rarely shown on the big screen these days that anyone attuned to such things really notices), are convinced that it's actually the home video versions that are wrong, while the cinema version must be correct. 99% of the time, this reasoning would be perfectly sound, but The Pillow Book is a rare exception.

It's also a rare instance of a film where the editor is a greater authority on the intended aspect ratio than the cinematographer! The film was shot on Super 35 to allow for framing flexibility - Greenaway originally conceived it in 2.35:1, but decided that going anamorphic would give him much less room to manoeuvre in post-production - so Sacha Vierny shot it in 1.66:1 with the intention that the images would be reframed in post-production in anything from 1.33:1 to 2.35:1 and a load of ratios in between. But Wyatt's job as editor had as much to do with the visual layout of each frame as it did with more conventional editing tasks, which is why he and Greenaway are the ultimate authorities on how the film should be framed.

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Re: 165 The Pillow Book

#18 Post by jsteffe » Sat Dec 07, 2019 8:22 pm

This is good to know, thanks! I saw the film projected in 1.85:1 and found it a frustrating experience. This partly explains why.

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Adam X
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Re: 165 The Pillow Book

#19 Post by Adam X » Sun Dec 08, 2019 3:30 am

Wonderful news about the actual calligraphic subtitles being reinstated for this release - I’ve not touched any of the HD releases because of this.

I am curious Michael, given the above, if you’ve seen or read anything from Sacha Vierny’s point of view, in regard to shooting with the knowledge (or lack thereof) that the framing would likely be altered in post, and I guess how much prep was done prior to or during the shoot to allow for any collaboration on the framing and such?

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Re: 165 The Pillow Book

#20 Post by MichaelB » Sun Dec 08, 2019 7:12 am

Adam Grikepelis wrote:
Sun Dec 08, 2019 3:30 am
I am curious Michael, given the above, if you’ve seen or read anything from Sacha Vierny’s point of view, in regard to shooting with the knowledge (or lack thereof) that the framing would likely be altered in post, and I guess how much prep was done prior to or during the shoot to allow for any collaboration on the framing and such?
From what Chris Wyatt says, the final decision on the aspect ratio was only definitively taken in post-production, after the film was already in the can. Presumably Vierny knew that his natively 1.66:1 images would be reframed in a variety of ways (he'd already worked on Prospero's Books and Greenaway's multi-image TV productions), and I imagine there were plenty of shots that were consciously framed to allow for cropping to a specific ratio. This is why they used Super 35 in the first place, of course, as it was the standard film format that gave them the most flexibility in this respect.

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Re: 165 The Pillow Book

#21 Post by MichaelB » Fri Jan 03, 2020 12:06 pm

Full specs announced:

Image

Incidentally, the new restoration of Rosa looks absolutely eye-popping. If you've never seen it in 35mm - and I imagine very very few people have; it mostly played on TV or video, and the one commercial release we could track down was in non-anamorphic SD fuzzyvision - it will be a literal revelation.

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Re: 165 The Pillow Book

#22 Post by MichaelB » Thu Jan 23, 2020 3:08 pm


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Aunt Peg
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Re: 165 The Pillow Book

#23 Post by Aunt Peg » Fri Jan 24, 2020 8:56 am

This will be the 4th (and final time) I purchase this film. First I purchased the American DVD, then I upgraded to the American Blu released by Film Movement, then I purchased the Park Circus Blu Ray forgetting that I already had the American Blu Ray. So this will be the 4th purchase and by the description on DVD Beaver I think we will be hard pressed to get a better version than this one.

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tenia
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Re: 165 The Pillow Book

#24 Post by tenia » Sat Jan 25, 2020 9:42 am

This is going to be a tough one to score for PQ. While the full frame shots are obviously way better to judge the overall HD master quality, a quick glance tells me they still look dated in some way, though it's not that bad as a whole and I've seen much worse. The issue rather lies in how the 1.33 ratio is mechanically blocking the smaller vignettes in a very small part of the screen, as if we're watching the movie zoomed out by 200%. It basically looks 2.35 in a 1.33 frame, and it seems like this happens for a non-negligible part of the movie.

I've always felt squarer ratio changes can work well in theaters because they're now mostly Scope so you can go from 2.35 to 1.33 and not giving this sense of double-framing, but on BD, I don't think I've ever seen a movie with squarer ratio changes that doesn't show this issue. While I can understand how working with pre-existing masters can prevent thinking around it, I'm still under the impression that at least for contemporary movies, there is a way to avoid this kind of situation.

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Re: 165 The Pillow Book

#25 Post by MichaelB » Sat Jan 25, 2020 10:29 am

I don't see why a "score for PQ" should be concerned with the aspect ratio, except insofar that it accurately reflects the filmmakers' intentions - and we can be certain of this because the film's editor/compositor spells out in the interview that 1.33:1 is the optimum presentation. The intention from the start was to create the effect of a book combining both text and illustrations, the latter sometimes filling the "page", but sometimes not. And one of the reasons I felt it was so important to reinstate the calligraphic subtitles (which are larger than the more conventional variety) was that they help balance the overall image.

As for it looking "dated in some way", it's actually a very specific way - namely, that it was assembled in the mid-1990s using analogue high-definition video technology that, while cutting-edge at the time, has been comprehensively superseded since. Unfortunately, the only way you're going to get around that - assuming the necessary material even survives at all - is to dig out all the original 35mm footage, scan it to 4K/6K and essentially reconstruct the film from scratch, an inconceivably expensive prospect given the likely commercial return.

(The same applies to Prospero's Books, which I recall looking decidedly fuzzy even in 35mm.)

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