Criterion Newsletter (Part 2)

[zedz]

I had no idea Kes was so unknown / hard to get in the US. It's practically a national treasure in Britain. I wonder if they've thought of hitting up Jarvis Cocker for supplements?

[Alphonse Doinel]

Loach had this and plenty of his other films in full on YouTube, so I wonder if we'll be seeing a few more in the future?

[swo17]

It's cool that we were actually given a clue about a title that hadn't been unofficially confirmed already. I don't think that's happened since Che.

[SheriffAmbrose]

I wonder if they've thought of hitting up Jarvis Cocker for supplements?

Wait, why Cocker?

(This has aired occasionally on TCM in the States and I've seen it and love it, so great news!)

[FilmFanSea]

Regarding Kes. I bought the U.K. DVD from MGM back in 2003. The film itself is excellent. I believe it's 16mm blown up to 35mm. It has a grainy, verité quality. The MGM disc is barebones as I recall, so it will be nice to upgrade this one.

Edit: U.K. version is also non-anamorphic (1.66:1 letterboxed), so Criterion should be able to improve on the picture quality.

[HistoryProf]

It's cool that we were actually given a clue about a title that hadn't been unofficially confirmed already. I don't think that's happened since Che.

broadcast gnus? can't believe i don't remember that one

[NABOB OF NOWHERE]

I wonder if they've thought of hitting up Jarvis Cocker for supplements?

Wait, why Cocker?

South Yorkshire's own on the soundtrack...

Music by John Cameron. Limited vinyl and CD. This is the first ever issue of this original music. It is short and beautiful. I'll leave it to a pop star to explain:

"The sound of a long-lost childhood...The smell of a damp school cloakroom, from an age when comics were still printed on newsprint...But this is more than just another product of the nostalgia industry - put on this album & immediately you'll be soaring through the air, free of your earthly shackles: for this is the sound of a human soul in flight. A beautiful daydream antidote to an all too real South Yorkshire nightmare. "Tha' won't get me down t'pit." "Pig, Pig, Sow,Sow." "Tha' dun't like being called a bastard does tha'?" This is the real thing. This is beauty so fragile it hurts. This is music with the Jesses well & truly off." Jarvis Cocker

[Cold Bishop]

Intriguing. I wasn't expecting Kes so soon... :-k

[Sloper]

I love Kes - those who haven't seen it yet are in for a treat. And am I right in thinking that Cathy Come Home and Family Life have also not been released in America? It would be nice to see Criterion do justice to those soul-crushing little beauties. All three films should be required viewing for anybody thinking of starting a family!

[Prickly]

Long-time lurker jumping in...
I'm fairly sure that the film was dubbed for the American market and even in some London / southern cinemas as the Barnsley accent is fairly impenetrable at times. Wonder if they'd release it with two soundtracks.

[colinr0380]

If they were going to release a Ken Loach film it is only fitting that they did this one. A fantastic, moving film that still manages to effortlessly put recent fluffier and more heartwarming attempts at similar 'it's grim up north' material (I'm thinking Billy Elliot or The Full Monty) to shame.

And it's Brian Glover's debut and his finest hour as the brutal P.E. teacher!

The next question is (and apologies for posting about cover art outside of the dedicated thread): will they use similar cover art to the UK DVD, or be more hawkish about their imagery?

[charulata]

That two finger gesture doesn't translate very well outside the UK (Wikipedia - the V sign).
Growing up in the North, I was always lead to believe that the most straightforward translation of it was "f*@& off". "Victory" or "Peace" - or "two" - it is not!
It's pretty much become the iconic image of the film.

[Tribe]

Long-time lurker jumping in...
I'm fairly sure that the film was dubbed for the American market and even in some London / southern cinemas as the Barnsley accent is fairly impenetrable at times. Wonder if they'd release it with two soundtracks.

I doubt they'd release a dubbed version...I still can't understand a word they are saying in Ratcatcher (aside from "wee mouse") without subtitles.

[StevenJ0001]

I almost fell over when I saw that clue!! I am completely bowled over and ectsatic with this news!! One of the most painful yet beautiful films about childhood ever made.

Yesterday (literally), I was considering when to order the UK disc as I really felt like watching this film again, and suddenly today I don't have to make that decision--I just have to be patient and wait for the CC! Happy days.

I love that image on the UK cover.

[zedz]

I wonder if they've thought of hitting up Jarvis Cocker for supplements?

Wait, why Cocker?

South Yorkshire's own on the soundtrack...

Music by John Cameron. Limited vinyl and CD. This is the first ever issue of this original music. It is short and beautiful. I'll leave it to a pop star to explain:

"The sound of a long-lost childhood...The smell of a damp school cloakroom, from an age when comics were still printed on newsprint...But this is more than just another product of the nostalgia industry - put on this album & immediately you'll be soaring through the air, free of your earthly shackles: for this is the sound of a human soul in flight. A beautiful daydream antidote to an all too real South Yorkshire nightmare. "Tha' won't get me down t'pit." "Pig, Pig, Sow,Sow." "Tha' dun't like being called a bastard does tha'?" This is the real thing. This is beauty so fragile it hurts. This is music with the Jesses well & truly off." Jarvis Cocker

I believe he's quite fanatical about the soundtrack, the film, and the source novel, and has presented public screenings of it from time to time, so presumably what he has to say about it is worth hearing.

And reinforcing everyone else, this is a fantastic film, even if you're not a fan of latter day Loach. Family Life is incredible too, but it would be an even harder sell to American audiences, I'd think.

[colinr0380]

I'm not really a huge fan of recent Loach films (though I think Ladybird, Ladybird, seemingly often overshadowed by coming between the more comfortably confrontational Raining Stones and Land and Freedom, is a masterpiece!), but Kes is a truly great film. Family Life is as well - sort of a rawer, semi-documentary teenage version of something like A Woman Under The Influence, with all that stifling family love and miscommunication aggravating the situation rather than helping!

I guess I just prefer the Loach films where the norms of the family are pitted against the norms of the state (police, teachers, doctors, social services, politicians etc). I think Loach in recent years expanded that to cover extended families (political groups, groups of friends in gangs, workmates, broken families) but in films like Family Life, Ladybird Ladybird and Raining Stones (even Kes in the most heartbreaking way) blood relatives are shown to be able to hurt each other far more deeply and with more of a casual callousness than anyone else can - even the state.

[NABOB OF NOWHERE]

I'm not really a huge fan of recent Loach films (though I think Ladybird, Ladybird, seemingly often overshadowed by coming between the more comfortably confrontational Raining Stones and Land and Freedom, is a masterpiece!), but Kes is a truly great film. Family Life is as well - sort of a rawer, semi-documentary teenage version of A Woman Under The Influence, with all that stifling family love aggravating the situation rather than helping!

I'm glad you brought up Ladybird Ladybird Colin as I think it rates up there with the rawest of Pialat and les freres Dardennes. Probably one of Loach's most abrasive characters yet the compassion that claws its way through never becomes cloying or lubricative in a way that the later/latest films seem to suffer from.
If my house had a flagpole I'd be flying a banner for Kes as it's one of those films that seen at the right moment in your life will stay forever.
Incidentally, not long ago I had a meeting with a 'Head of development' about one of my scripts dealing with a problematic young lad. Summing up the meeting with a curt regret that they couldn't take it further because of the problems of selling a film with a young protagonist I asked how they would consider marketing Kes nowadays. Unfortunately there was no answer forthcoming as she had never heard of it. There encapsulated in a moment is the malaise of the British Film Industry. Perhaps a Criterion edition might redress the balance but I'm not betting the farm on it.

[Tom Hagen]

Between this and forgetting about Melville's aviators in Breathless, I'm batting 1.000 for the month.

[colinr0380]

Agreed Nabob! The woman at the heart of the film is never sympathetic in an easy way (quite a feat to make a mother figure such a divisive character!), and it is one of the very few films where I've found myself watching a character make stupid, self-destructive decisions that hurt everyone around her, and yet still am able to feel for her, trapped in an utterly hopeless cycle of repetitive actions. But I love the way that the central relationship depicted might be a tempestuous one, but feels like it contains a genuine love there - albeit cruelly stretched to breaking point by internal factors that then get picked up and magnified by external ones.

Possibly naively, I think if more people were 'forced' to watch this film perhaps then Britain could at least start to have a healthier attitude to so many important issues that the media and politicians casually bandy about and that are still 'hot topics', if not hotter topics, now: 'unfit' mothers; taking children into care; the British 'underclass'; immigration and the labour market. So many of these issues are shown to be far more complex than anything portrayed in the latest kneejerk headline or point scoring political speech. The 'human element' that makes this film so moving is powerful, as you say, not for tugging the heartstrings in an easily manipulative manner but to show that even the 'worst', or most neglected, people in our society are in their particular situations for a reason and still deserve a sensitivity in treatment that is all too often denied to them.

But perhaps the above is why the film is so rarely shown (in addition to the raw brutality of the material, I guess). Some films can be too powerfully revealing of a society.

Please Criterion, if you are reading this, consider Ladybird, Ladybird for release!

[zedz]

Haven't got much to add except that Ladybird, Ladybird is far and away my favourite latter day Loach, and I think it's largely down to Chrissie Rock. As Colin says, she manages to make the character-who-makes-self-destructive-decisions (a stock figure of many recent Loach films) compelling and plausible, whereas in many Loach films that figure's actions seem motivated by plot necessity rather than coherent psychology. Even her too-good-to-be-true love interest works in the film's hard-earned context.

[tavernier]

Wacky Lizardman in the October newsletter:

[mteller]

Wall Street on Blu-Ray? That's all I've got.

[trixster]

My first thought was Fear and Loathing.

[Flike]

That's all I could think of also... unfortunately.

[onedimension]

Night of the Iguana on blu?