113 A Man Vanishes

[bigP]

Ditto, I ordered almost exclusively from HMV for years and felt it was very rare that they missed the release date. I would normally have been surprised to find my DVD hadn't turned up on the Friday or Saturday before hand.

[Der Spieler]

Hopefully it means that they're awaiting more stock meaning that it's selling better than expected.

MoC said on Twitter that there was a delay, but that it's in stock with them now and should get to the retailers near the end of the week.

[frankiecrisp]

Ditto, I ordered almost exclusively from HMV for years and felt it was very rare that they missed the release date. I would normally have been surprised to find my DVD hadn't turned up on the Friday or Saturday before hand.

I agree HMV are brilliant at getting pre-orders to you by Sat before release day. its not HMV its the company sending them stock so they can get them out for release day.

[frankiecrisp]

Two to four weeks

Five to eight days

One to three weeks

[knives]

I'm about 40 minutes in and it's about meeting my expectations. The is it real aspect hasn't gone into play yet, but the story is compelling enough to not matter and I love that even in seeming reality Imamura is able to so thoroughly question the Japanese cultural heritage simply through examination. Possibly release of the year for me.

[Perkins Cobb]

I'm about 40 minutes in and it's about meeting my expectations.

May I respectfully suggest, since you seem like a young cinephile eagerly gobbling up the canon as I once was, that most movies, and certainly one as complex as A Man Vanishes, would benefit greatly from being watched without interruption? I am seriously trying to be helpful, not snide, and am saying this as a fellow e-mail checking addict.

Glad you're loving the film as much as I do, even if it's piecemeal!

[knives]

Could you please not condescend to me again especially when you don't know the circumstances of my posting. Because it seems you are curious of such boring details it should comfort you to know that I had the movie paused and was only on the Internet because I was taking care of business that would not allow me to focus in on the film. No matter what I wouldn't have been able to watch the film.

[Perkins Cobb]

Could you please not condescend to me again especially when you don't know the circumstances of my posting. Because it seems you are curious of such boring details it should comfort you to know that I had the movie paused and was only on the Internet because I was taking care of business that would not allow me to focus in on the film. No matter what I wouldn't have been able to watch the film.

Condescension was not my intent, and I'm sorry if I offended you. We all have our own viewing habits and I guess I should know better than to critique anyone else's.

[Gregory]

Personally, I wouldn't post my thoughts on a film partway through a viewing even if an interruption was necessary, lest my comments seem slapdash or uninformed, but maybe that's just me.

[knives]

One sentence is hardly thoughts.

[Gregory]

OK, then whatever word would describe this.

I'm about 40 minutes in and it's about meeting my expectations. The is it real aspect hasn't gone into play yet, but the story is compelling enough to not matter and I love that even in seeming reality Imamura is able to so thoroughly question the Japanese cultural heritage simply through examination. Possibly release of the year for me.

Again, just speaking in terms of general practices and meant nothing personal by it.

[Peacock]

One sentence is hardly thoughts.

If one sentence doesn't count as thoughts why did you post anything at all?

[knives]

I was just posting that as a means of encouragement to those who hadn't picked up the disc yet. It's not much, but at the time I thought it was innocuous. I never would have thought that something so dull and often done would yield so much discussion. Especially since it is such a blandly generic statement.

[Peacock]

What did you think of the whole thing then? Lived up to the first half?

[Michael Kerpan]

Personally, I wouldn't post my thoughts on a film partway through a viewing even if an interruption was necessary, lest my comments seem slapdash or uninformed, but maybe that's just me.

Well, I think I posted comments as I worked my way through Out 1, Part by Part (as I had no intention of sitting through the whole thing at one time) -- and Rivette chose to break this up into discrete sections. ;~}

[knives]

What did you think of the whole thing then? Lived up to the first half?

It's probably best for me to talk about it in reference to Oshima's essay which I'm grateful to MOC for including (in fact this is one of the best DVDs in that regard I've encountered in a long time I've never been so grateful to hear Rayn's voice). In a sense I agree with what he poses though I disagree with his conclusions. The film is distinctly Imamura and does eventually settle on a theme and pursues it intelligently. I want to see the film again before I definitively comment on this element, but I don't think the form is what makes the film great for the reasons that Oshima states. Form without thought or emotion is rather dead (especially when it's over two hours of just form) and this might just be because of forty years of history, but it's not that interesting on that level. What really excited me was how he used that form to create a narrative that conforms to his outlook. He cuts off his own nose a bit by making the question of what is real unimportant and honestly I think it works better without a nose.

This, again as Oshima outlines better than myself, gets even better in the second half when the film finds itself and settles into a stronger narrative (plus we get Imarmura himself as a wonderful chorus). Where I begin to disagree with Oshima is with his feeling that Imamura's thematic pursuits yield no fruit or bad fruit. I think the sister narrative actually is mostly successful and demonstrates his concerns for how the Japanese view women in a rather shocking way by showing it through the eyes of women (actually this part of the narrative and in fact theme reminds me a great deal of Violence at Noon). It shows a cultural misogyny that even the women are conditioned into believing. The women are being defined by men even when those men no longer are a true part of the women.

[antnield]

The Digital Fix.

[Jean-Luc Garbo]

A fabulous and consistently intriguing movie. I couldn't help not thinking of Rashomon throughout it, but it was amazing to see Imamura go even further. Rayns' comments were quite helpful and the primary source documents in the booklet were great to read. I'm glad that someone in England can get an Imamura release right.

[manicsounds]

The Eureka disc now has some competition from Icarus in the US
"A Man Vanishes" 4-disc US version comes with 5 bonus Imamura documentaries.

[zedz]

"Some competition" is putting it mildly.

[YnEoS]

I dunno, this seems to me to be a clear case where double dipping is called for. Definitely excited for all the docs on the Icarus release, but also glad to have the MoC DVD which is much more loaded with special features of a different kind.

[skuhn8]

After watching this film I couldn't help but wonder: What ever became of the film's elusive MacGuffin, Tadashi Oshima? Did he ever turn up in the years since the film's release in 1967? I looked online but couldn't find anything. Anyone know?

[manicsounds]

Seems like the film said - he vanished. If there had been news of his emergence, it would have been noted in the booklet or in the news somewhere. Since it's been 50 years, he's legally declared dead. He may have killed himself by jumping in a river with the boy unrecovered or he may have changed his identity completely and lived on an island where he welcomed Tupac.