Hou Hsiao-hsien

[hearthesilence]

I just hope these restorations are worth waiting for. I still can't sit through Flowers of Shanghai - it looks absolutely atrocious. (It used to screen in 35mm here in NYC almost every other year, and though one of those prints is a touch too bright, it was still far better than the Blu-ray.)

[Maltic]

I just hope these restorations are worth waiting for. I still can't sit through Flowers of Shanghai - it looks absolutely atrocious. (It used to screen in 35mm here in NYC almost every other year, and though one of those prints is a touch too bright, it was still far better than the Blu-ray.)

You then wonder if it will ever be be screened in that 35mm again.

Cinemateket in CPH has a WKW retro in October, and yes, you guessed which versions will be screened, despite the DFI having 35mm's from the original Danish runs for a number of the films.

[ryannichols7]

rather interestingly, Criterion's daily account tweeted about the new restoration. it obviously can mean nothing, as the Daily account tweets about tons of films unrelated to CC (there's tons of Tsai Ming-liang tweets but I'm still waiting on Janus to rescue What Time is it There?), but given that Infernal Affairs went from a tossed off Janus tweet to a full blown announcement in just a few months makes me look more closely at this sort of thing.

personally, I look forward to it (I've never seen the film due to how hard it is to track it down) but this is one of those situations where I'll believe it gets a release when I see it. much like A Brighter Summer Day its one of those scarcity situations where it can create a reputation due to that. I find it wild this film gets talked about more than Daughter of the Nile and Millennium Mambo which are generally a bit easier to find (the former having BD releases on both sides of the Atlantic) and fantastic films in their own right. this also happens with Yang, as I think Taipei Story is a substantially better film than the more formerly rare one, though I know that's a minority opinion.

anyway, the rights situation has been such a mess, will definitely be a miracle if we see it come to home video. I'd have to imagine The Puppetmaster would come soon after

[dda1996a]

I love HHH, but those two films you mentioned (aside from Mambo's opening shot, which ranks among my most favorite) are far from his best in my opinion. I feel he misses when he tries to capture "the youth" that isn't in a way connected to his own youth/memories.
If anything, Dust in the Wind is my personal favorite (but I haven't seen all the 90s films except for Flowers)

[ryannichols7]

and see I couldn't disagree more, while I'm not fully Taiwanese, basically every image I have of what Taiwanese life at that age is captured perfectly by both of those movies (and the rebellious nature of Goodbye South Goodbye, which I also love). it's echoed by Tsai in some of his films and Yang in his as well. I think the ideas of memory and nostalgia explored in Millennium Mambo are extremely touching, and Daughter of the Nile's listlessness incredibly spot on, especially when the world around you feels crazy. Hou captures his films in contemporary Taipei and Keelung wonderfully, and as someone who's been to both places I think he had his finger on the pulse of both very well

I have more than a few friends (in Taiwan and elsewhere) that have all given me the same sort of general idea that Hou's more "serious" historical works with male protagonists are rated more highly due to...well, those exact reasons. after witnessing that be the case with Yang I tend to have that concern with Hou as well. Daughter and Mambo remain two of my very favorite films, and I hope the more "highly regarded" films I do find to be of similar quality

[Michael Kerpan]

Mambo and Daughter are probably my favorites too (along with Dust in the Wind).

[The Fanciful Norwegian]

There's an interview (in Mandarin) with TFAI chairman Tony Lan detailing the process. It seems they have scanned the original negative and regraded it to approximate the original theatrical experience. Technically not a restoration and TFAI did designate "digital version" instead "digitally restored version" to it. Lan, however, casually threw the word "restoration" around in the interview and stressed the minimalist approach given the good condition of the original material. So, as you said, it's probably a situation where a full-on restoration was not called for.

The very fact they would do this sort of publicity for the restoration makes me more convinced that this could be the real deal and it might finally get out there to the public at large. At any rate, I'm grateful that the TFAI makes the restoration/remaster distinction at least some of the time, since I feel like the usual thing for a film of that vintage (or even newer in many cases) is to bill any new scan as a "restoration."

What gets my hopes up for future releases is actually the involvement of the producer Chiu Fu-sheng, who supplied the original negative. And there's hints of possible commercial releases for this digital version in the press.

For a long while I'd believed that Chiu was the holdup, having been told by someone at third- or fourth-hand that he'd left the industry (which is true) and no longer had any interest in his film library. But that second claim is clearly incorrect, given that Chiu has always been happy to discuss his film work and seems rightfully proud of it. Plus the films he did with Zhang Yimou have been significantly more available, albeit spottily. Given the vague but persistent talk of Triad involvement I wonder now if the issue has something to do with Yang Teng-kuei, who was initially brought onto A City of Sadness as a production manager but took over the financing after Hou went over budget. Yang was very openly known as a co-founder of the Heavenly Way Alliance and went to prison for a couple of years after the film was done for running an underground casino. He was released in time to invest in The Puppetmaster, and he also has credits on Goodbye South, Goodbye and Flowers of Shanghai, but it appears he might not have been an investor in those (and with Shochiku on board I imagine their production was a bit more "regularized"). Yang died over a decade ago, but I doubt someone with his background left things all nice and tidy. Of course, another explanation is that Chiu and Hou had some beef that was only recently settled. (Incidentally, Jack Kao said at the premiere that Hou was supposed to attend but pulled out due to a Covid diagnosis.)

[derekbd]

Very exciting news re. A City of Sadness although I think the current dvd release is one of the better SD Hous, but the image is very soft. Hopefully an HD restoration will bring out more details, and especially shadow detail. Fingers crossed for a physical release.

I've never been able to buy a DVD of A City of Sadness, but I've only been a fan of Hou and Taiwanese cinema for 7-8 years. I do have a pirated copy of the full DVD that is, I'm told, the best release to have ever been issued. It is indeed soft; I'd say it's a very soft image that is severely lacking in contrast and colour detail.
I've been desperate for news of an HD re-release and here it is! Well, I understand that being shown in cinemas and at festivals doesn't guarantee a new disc release soon, but at least the first steps have been taken.
While I certainly agree with others that the Flowers of Shanghai restoration and bluray release were extremely disappointing, I'm heartened by the news here that no restoration of City of Sadness was necessary, only a re-scan.
However, one other issue regarding the existing DVD that has been a source of extreme frustration is the translation for the subtitles. I've studied the film and made copious notes, partly to understand the complex plot (especially being mostly ignorant of the events depicted), but also to note where the translation has made obvious, glaring mistakes. These usually concern character and place names, the most horrible when a letter is being read, at around the 2 hour mark, Wen-ching writing to Hinomi:

Hinoe got married and lives in the mountains.
I can't tell you where.
She doesn't want her family to know.

Then at 2:01:58 the subtitles of the written text is confused. The beginning makes sense except we can't tell who is saying which bits. One group of sentences seems to switch writer.

"This is no place for you".
...
"They suggested marriage to Hinomi,
but it's you she loves."

THEY (who are THEY?) suggested that HINOE marry HINOMI... but SHE'S HIS SISTER.
And everyone knows that Hinomi and Wen-ching are in love. d'uh

I've been desperate for a proper translation.

[The Fanciful Norwegian]

It should be emphasized that there's no legitimate English-subtitled DVD—any edition with English subs is a fansubbed edition, unless it was transferred from the UK VHS or the Taiwanese laserdisc. I'm not sure where those subtitles came from, but if they were transcribed from the LD then that might account for the poor translation of the letters, since the Taiwanese LD didn't have subtitles for those and they may have been subtitled by someone not really fluent in English, perhaps with the aid of a machine translation tool. The 35mm print I've seen definitely had subtitles for all of the intertitles and I don't recall any glaring issues.

[jegharfangetmigenmyg]

For a long while I'd believed that Chiu was the holdup, having been told by someone at third- or fourth-hand that he'd left the industry (which is true) and no longer had any interest in his film library. But that second claim is clearly incorrect, given that Chiu has always been happy to discuss his film work and seems rightfully proud of it. Plus the films he did with Zhang Yimou have been significantly more available, albeit spottily. Given the vague but persistent talk of Triad involvement I wonder now if the issue has something to do with Yang Teng-kuei, who was initially brought onto A City of Sadness as a production manager but took over the financing after Hou went over budget. Yang was very openly known as a co-founder of the Heavenly Way Alliance and went to prison for a couple of years after the film was done for running an underground casino. He was released in time to invest in The Puppetmaster, and he also has credits on Goodbye South, Goodbye and Flowers of Shanghai, but it appears he might not have been an investor in those (and with Shochiku on board I imagine their production was a bit more "regularized"). Yang died over a decade ago, but I doubt someone with his background left things all nice and tidy. Of course, another explanation is that Chiu and Hou had some beef that was only recently settled. (Incidentally, Jack Kao said at the premiere that Hou was supposed to attend but pulled out due to a Covid diagnosis.)

Thanks for this information. I was actually wondering why Hou were nowhere to be seen in the footage from the premiere. I think you're comments are a great supplement to Tony Rayns' storytelling in the featurettes spread on the Hou blu-ray releases in the West. I think I mixed up Chiu with Chang Hwa-kun who, if I understand it correctly, is the colourful gangster who helped finance Hou's early work. He's also listed as co-producer of The Puppetmaster along with Chiu and three others (https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0107157/fullcredits/) so maybe one of those five could be the reason why it seems to never get its restoration?

[derekbd]

It should be emphasized that there's no legitimate English-subtitled DVD—any edition with English subs is a fansubbed edition... if they were transcribed from the LD then that might account for the poor translation of the letters, since the Taiwanese LD didn't have subtitles for those and they may have been subtitled by someone not really fluent in English, perhaps with the aid of a machine translation tool.

Thank you for the details.

[The Fanciful Norwegian]

I think I mixed up Chiu with Chang Hwa-kun who, if I understand it correctly, is the colourful gangster who helped finance Hou's early work. He's also listed as co-producer of The Puppetmaster along with Chiu and three others (https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0107157/fullcredits/) so maybe one of those five could be the reason why it seems to never get its restoration?

I don't think Chang Hwa-kun had any particularly strong background in organized crime, though like Hou he probably moved in those circles. He came up in movies the old-fashioned way and met Hou during the production of a film on which Hou was an assistant director and Chang was the prop manager. He was a co-founder of the production company that Hou and Chen Kun-hou started after The Sandwich Man and worked with Hou through The Puppetmaster. They supposedly remained good friends and Chang stayed busy producing movies right up to his death a couple of years ago. He worked a lot with Miike, starting with Bodyguard Kiba 2 in 1994 and ending with First Love in 2019. He also discovered Jack Kao.

Jan Hung-tze is an interesting guy who's worn a lot of hats over the years (including one of the first Taiwanese record producers/concert promoters to specialize in rock music) and was a cheerleader for the New Cinema in his role as a journalist. He was largely responsible for publicizing the cuts imposed on The Sandwich Man (which led the censors to reverse themselves) and made it his mission to attract investors to the New Cinema directors—he wrote a somewhat famous article for a business weekly called "Hou Hsiao-hsien Is a Safer Investment Than Jackie Chan," the argument being that Hou's films may not make money in Taiwan but could easily recover their budgets through international sales. He logically moved into producing himself and convinced Chiu Fu-sheng to back A City of Sadness. He worked with Hou through Goodbye South, Goodbye and then became Taiwan's first big e-commerce tycoon. I have no idea what sort of relationship he has with Hou these days (if any), but he frequently talks about his days in the film scene and wishes he had worked more with Edward Yang.

I can't find much about Chang Hua-fu, which is odd because he and Hou go way back—he was a production assistant on some of Hou's early films as a screenwriter and worked with him as a producer right up through Three Times.

Part of the problem with pinpointing a common thread that might explain why two of Hou's most esteemed films have been all but MIA for so long is that Taiwanese cinema has a bunch of "producer" roles that don't map neatly onto the ones we're familiar with. So most English credit lists for The Puppetmaster have five people under the titles "producer" or "executive producer," but in Chinese their credits are all different: Chang Hwa-kun's is more like a production supervisor, Chang Hua-fu was the line producer, Jan Hung-tze is credited as "planner," Yang Teng-kuei has a top-level credit that kind of combines a producer and an executive producer, and Chiu Fu-sheng is the "presenter." Only the last two are likely to have had a financial stake in the film.

[derekbd]

I don't think Chang Hwa-kun had any particularly strong background in organized crime...

Thank you so much for this information that I would never have access to otherwise!

[The Fanciful Norwegian]

The Millennium Mambo restoration opens at the Metrograph in NYC on December 23rd. Can't find confirmation online but I'm told that Kino Lorber is the U.S. distributor.

[aurevoir]

The Millennium Mambo restoration opens at the Metrograph in NYC on December 23rd. Can't find confirmation online but I'm told that Kino Lorber is the U.S. distributor.

Metrograph is calling it "a Metrograph Pictures release." Still wondering if this is the same DCP they showed a year ago...

[ryannichols7]

so basically, this is gonna suffer the same fate Goodbye Dragon Inn did here in the states and play at Metrograph every month or so, randomly get a run at Regal cinemas nationwide, but never get a disc release...so we'll have to rely on a UK (or Korean) label to put out the new restoration with English subs. I did message Spectrum and they confirmed their UHD isn't going to have English subs due to "contractual issues" which is fair. Second Run did an amazing job with Tsai's film, I hope Eureka (easily the most likely candidate given they've released great Hou discs in the past) come through with Millennium Mambo

again, I'm not one of those people that thinks Criterion needs to release every title, but this is one I was really hoping they'd do. I've gotten many friends to enjoy Flowers of Shanghai thanks to its easy availability, all of Hou's other work unfortunately doesn't get the same rep here (I contend Daughter of the Nile would be pretty popular if it got a better marketed/handled release)

[beamish14]

(I contend Daughter of the Nile would be pretty popular if it got a better marketed/handled release)

Oh, absolutely. It’s his funniest and “warmest” film by far, and a smart distributor could do a lot with it

[The Fanciful Norwegian]

The Millennium Mambo restoration opens at the Metrograph in NYC on December 23rd. Can't find confirmation online but I'm told that Kino Lorber is the U.S. distributor.

Metrograph is calling it "a Metrograph Pictures release." Still wondering if this is the same DCP they showed a year ago...

Can I ask where? I'm not on their mailing list and the only mention I can find on their website doesn't mention Metrograph Pictures (compare their previous announcement for the reissue of L'intrus). Kino has put out at least a couple of Metrograph titles on Blu (Downtown 81 and Duet for Cannibals off the top of my head) so maybe they'll both release it.

[bad future]

A Bigger Splash (1974), The Raft and The Competition, to name a few more Metrograph titles that Kino has released on disc. Really curious that the list doesn't include any of what I would think are the bigger gets, like Possession or the Rohmers. I didn't even realize they had the Tsai! Could Metrograph's deals for these films not cover physical releases? Maybe they're really taking their time getting supplements together?

[aurevoir]

The Millennium Mambo restoration opens at the Metrograph in NYC on December 23rd. Can't find confirmation online but I'm told that Kino Lorber is the U.S. distributor.

Metrograph is calling it "a Metrograph Pictures release." Still wondering if this is the same DCP they showed a year ago...

Can I ask where? I'm not on their mailing list and the only mention I can find on their website doesn't mention Metrograph Pictures (compare their previous announcement for the reissue of L'intrus). Kino has put out at least a couple of Metrograph titles on Blu (Downtown 81 and Duet for Cannibals off the top of my head) so maybe they'll both release it.

Near the end of the program book.

[yoloswegmaster]

The 4K remaster for A City of Sadness is set to be theatrically released in Taiwan in late February. Here are the official touring posters:

SpoilerShow

[beamish14]

The 4K remaster for A City of Sadness is set to be theatrically released in Taiwan in late February. Here are the official touring posters:

SpoilerShow

I would love to purchase the bottom one.

[cj-535]

The 4K remaster for A City of Sadness is set to be theatrically released in Taiwan in late February.

And here's the trailer: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E024kZuGxCE

[Michael Kerpan]

And here's the trailer: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E024kZuGxCE

Looks mostly pretty great (compared to my memories). Oh, how I hope there will be an easily-obtainable subbed blu-ray release of this.

[feihong]

Always held off on watching this particular movie, for some reason. I'm excited to be able to see it in high quality soon. Looks very gorgeous, very interesting.