The Arrow Thread

[nosferatu42]

Just to prolong the sense of disappointment over a longer period.

[Demoncrat]

Googled?

No

Just looked for it in his R section

Aye??

[Susan Foreman]

Arrow Academy

"***JEAN-LUC GODARD + JEAN-PIERRE GORIN: FIVE FILMS, 1968-1971 FINAL SPECS AND PACKAGING***

Time for us to reveal the final specs and packaging for our upcoming release of JEAN-LUC GODARD + JEAN-PIERRE GORIN: FIVE FILMS, 1968-1971! This set will be released in the UK on February 26 and the US February 27.

After finishing his film Weekend in 1967, Jean-Luc Godard shifted gears to embark on engaging more directly with the radical political movements of the era, and thus create a new kind of film, or, as he eventually put it: “new ideas distributed in a new way.” This new method in part involved collaborating with the precocious young critic and journalist, Jean-Pierre Gorin. Both as a two-person unit, and as part of the loose collective known as the Groupe Dziga Vertov (named after the early 20th-century Russian filmmaker and theoretician), Godard and Gorin would realize “some political possibilities for the practice of cinema” and craft new frameworks for investigating the relationships between image and sound, spectator and subject, cinema and society.

Included here are five films, all originally shot in 16mm celluloid, that serve as examples of Godard and Gorin’s revolutionary project:

Un film comme les autres [A Film Like Any Other]: An analysis of the social upheaval of May 1968 made in the immediate wake of the workers’ and students’ protests. The picture consists of two parts, each with with identical image tracks, and differing narration.

British Sounds, aka: See You at Mao: An examination of the daily routine at a British auto factory assembly line, set against class-conflict and The Communist Manifesto.

Vent d’est [Wind from the East]: A loosely conceived leftist-western that moves through a series of practical and analytical passages (“an organization of shots,” Godard called it) into a finale based around the process of manufacturing homemade weapons.

Lotte in Italia / Luttes en Italie [Struggles in Italy]: Not necessarily a film about the struggles in Italy — largely shot, in fact, in Godard and Anne Wiazemsky’s home at the time — this is a discursive reflection on a young Italian woman’s shift from political “theory” to political “practice” and, at the same time, a self-questioning of its own practice and theories.

Vladimir et Rosa [Vladimir and Rosa]: A searing and satirical comic-reportage on the trial of the Chicago Eight, featuring Juliet Berto and Godard and Gorin themselves.

These films, long out-of-circulation except in film dupes and bootleg video, here make their Blu-ray debut, providing a crucial glimpse of Godard’s radicalization, and of the aesthetic dialogue between him and Gorin that, in essence, served to invent a modern militant cinema. As Godard told an English journalist of the era, film is not a gun — but “a light which helps you check your gun.”

SPECIAL EDITION CONTENTS:
- High Definition Blu-ray (1080p) and Standard Definition presentation of all films
- Original uncompressed monaural audio
- Optional English subtitles
- A Conversation with JLG – Interview with Jean-Luc Godard from 2010 by Dominique Maillet and Pierre-Henri Gibert
- Michael Witt on Godard, Gorin and the Dziga Vertov Group – Professor Witt, author of Jean-Luc Godard, Cinema Historian, takes an in-depth look at the films and filmmakers of this collection
- “Schick After-Shave” – a 1971 commercial by Godard
- Newly commissioned artwork by Scott Saslow
- A 60-page full-color booklet featuring a revised version of a lengthy essay by Michael Witt never before published in English; vintage texts by Godard appearing in English for the first time; archival interviews with Godard and Gorin; and a copious selection of stills from the films."

[Susan Foreman]

Arrow Academy

"UK/US TITLE: Sleeping Dogs (Blu-ray)

Simultaneously a political thriller, a personal drama and a true landmark in New Zealand cinema.

Release dates: 16/17 April

Adapted from C.K. Stead’s novel Smith’s Dream, Sleeping Dogs almost single-handedly kickstarted the New Zealand New Wave, demonstrating that homegrown feature films could resonate with both local and international audiences, and launching the big-screen careers of director Roger Donaldson (No Way Out, Species) and Sam Neill (Jurassic Park, Possession).

Neill – in his first lead role in a feature – plays Smith, a man escaping the break-up of his marriage by finding isolation on an island off the Coromandel Peninsula. As he settles into his new life, the country is experiencing its own turmoil: an oil embargo has led to martial law and civil war, into which Smith reluctantly finds himself increasingly involved.

Co-starring Warren Oates (Bring Me the Head of Alfredo Garcia) as the commander of a US army unit drawn into the conflict, Sleeping Dogs is simultaneously a political thriller, a personal drama and a true landmark in New Zealand cinema.

SPECIAL EDITION CONTENTS
• High Definition (Blu-ray) presentation
• Original mono audio (uncompressed LPCM)
• Optional English subtitles for the deaf and hard-of-hearing
• Commentary by writer-director Roger Donaldson, actor Sam Neill and actor-writer Ian Mune
• The Making of Sleeping Dogs, a 65-minute documentary on the film’s production featuring interviews with Donaldson, Neill, Mune, Geoff Murphy and others
• Theatrical trailer
• Reversible sleeve featuring original and newly commissioned artwork by Sean Phillips

FIRST PRESSING ONLY: Illustrated collector’s booklet featuring new writing on the film by Neil Mitchell, a contemporary review by Pauline Kael and the original press book"

[Susan Foreman]

Arrow Academy

"UK/US TITLE: L’Atlantide (Blu-ray)

Pabst’s vision of Benoît’s novel remains one of cinema’s best.

Release dates: 23/24 April

L’Atlantide marked a change of direction for German filmmaker G.W. Pabst. Following a string of features on which he’d made his reputation – the masterpiece Pandora’s Box, the classic World War I picture Westfront 1918, the Brecht adaptation The Threepenny Opera and the mining disaster movie Kameradschaft – Pabst ventured into fresh territory with an adaptation of Pierre Benoît’s fantasy-adventure novel.

Set in 1896, L’Atlantide concerns the exploits of two French officers searching for missing comrades in the desert. During their rescue mission, the pair are kidnapped and taken to the subterranean lair of the goddess Antinéa (played by Metropolis’s Brigitte Helm) in the ruins of the city of Atlantis – the infamous realm had not sunk beneath the sea but instead been buried under the sands of the Sahara.

Shot on location in the Sahara and at Berlin’s Efa Studios, L’Atlantide presents a wonderful fantasy world. Originally filmed by Jacques Feyder in 1920, and later the inspiration for a camp Maria Montez classic, an Italian Hercules picture and a Totò parody among many others, Pabst’s vision of Benoît’s novel remains one of cinema’s best.

SPECIAL EDITION CONTENTS
• High Definition (1080p) Blu-ray presentation
• Original French mono audio (uncompressed LPCM)
• Optional English subtitles
• Newly filmed appreciation by Kim Newman on the work of novelist Pierre Benoît and the numerous big-screen adaptations of his novel
• Reversible sleeve featuring original and newly commissioned artwork by Timothy Pattides

FIRST PRESSING ONLY: Illustrated collector's booklet featuring new writing on the film by Pamela Hutchinson, author of the BFI Film Classic on G.W. Pabst’s Pandora’s Box and an article by art director Ernö Metzner"

[Susan Foreman]

Arrow Academy

"NEW UK TITLE: La Chinoise (Blu-ray)

A mordant satire, pedagogical treatise, political tract, and pop-artwork-“plus blood”

Release date: 23 April

Jean-Luc Godard’s ferocious run of ground breaking 1960s commercial features neared a terminus point as the filmmaker turned his gaze onto the nascent left-wing student organisations coalescing on university campuses across France and environs. The resulting film was his searing masterpiece La Chinoise — a mordant satire, pedagogical treatise, political tract, and pop-artwork-“plus blood” rolled into one.

It’s early ’67 and Radio Peking’s in the air for the Aden Arabie Cell, a Maoist collective holed up in a sprawling flat on Paris’s rue de Miromesnil — the newly purchased actual residence of Godard and then-wife and star Anne Wiazemsky. Véronique (Wiazemsky) and her comrades, including Jean-Pierre Léaud (The 400 Blows, Out 1) and Juliet Berto (Out 1, Céline and Julie Go Boating) lead a series of discussions and performative skits addressing matters of French colonialism, American imperialism, and the broader conflict raging in Vietnam. A meditation on the efficacy of violent protest and militant counteraction played out between Wiazemsky (conducted by Godard via radio-earpiece), and her then-tutor philosopher Francis Jeanson gives way to a plot to assassinate the Soviet minister of culture — a red-handed point of no going-back on the path to complete radicalisation.

A tour-de-force of the primary-palette images — the ‘household images,’ perhaps — of Godard’s early career, La Chinoise serves as both cautionary tale and early sign of fascination with the political currents that would soon lead to the next period of JLG’s life and work. — “The revolution is not a dinner-party.”

SPECIAL EDITION CONTENTS:
• High Definition (1080p) Blu-ray presentation
• Original mono DTS-HD Master Audio 2.0
• Optional English subtitles
• Audio commentary by film historian James Quandt
• Interviews with actor Michel Semeniako, assistant director Charles L. Bitsch and second assistant director Jean-Claude Sussfeld
• Denitza Bantcheva on La Chinoise, the author discusses the film and its politics
• Behind-the-Scenes TV Report featuring footage with Godard and the cast
• Venice Film Festival press conference featuring Godard and scenes from the production
• Theatrical trailer
• Reversible sleeve featuring original and newly commissioned artwork by Matthew Griffin

FIRST PRESSING ONLY: Illustrated collector's booklet containing vintage writing by and discussions with Jean-Luc Godard and beyond: passing through the landmark “Struggling on Two Fronts” interview; the “Two Hours with Jean-Luc Godard” journal; notes on Anne Wiazemsky’s 2012 memoir-novel Une année studieuse [A Studious Year]; a tribute to Wiazemsky, Léaud, and Berto; vintage archival imagery; newly translated material; and more."

[Rob4]

L’Atlantide is a must have for me

[keirarts]

I may be in a minority here but I'm also hoping for more Japanese exploitation pictures. I know a lot of people on here get disappointed but the Miike releases, outlaw gangster and battles without honour titles were all day one purchases for me

[bizarre_eye@Cult Labs]

Originally Posted by keirarts

I may be in a minority here but I'm also hoping for more Japanese exploitation pictures. I know a lot of people on here get disappointed but the Miike releases, outlaw gangster and battles without honour titles were all day one purchases for me

I'd like to see stuff like Blind Beast get a release as well as Miike titles like Gozu and Visitor Q.

My quick Arrow wish list for 2018 (not that it matters as they don't read the forum but anyway...)

Arrow Video 2018 wish list:

- And Soon the Darkness
- Anguish
- Blind Beast
- The Blind Dead Films
- Blood for Dracula / Flesh for Frankenstein set
- Don't Open Till Christmas
- Eyes of Fire
- Fade to Black
- Gothic
- Gozu
- Litan
- Malpertuis
- Martin
- Matango
- Targets
- Twisted Nerve
- Visitor Q
- Zeder

Arrow Academy 2018 wish list:

- Clean, Shaven
- Dementia
- Häxan
- Hour of the Wolf
- Hush... Hush, Sweet Charlotte
- I Will Walk Like a Crazy Horse
- Jigoku
- Noisy Requiem
- Pandora's Box
- Simon of the Desert
- The Virgin Spring
- Viy

A fair few probably wouldn't be possible due to rights etc. but I can still dream...

[The Reaper Man@Cult Labs]

Originally Posted by Michael Brooke

Damn, you're good. Arrow will probably cancel it now in a fit of pique.

How dare I have a laugh at the Arrow Academy label!