179-180 The Pornographers & Warm Water Under a Red Bridge

[rapta]

Brilliant news, hoping for Intentions of Murder but will take anything at this point. I suggested before they could go in for Profound Desires of the Gods too as it has a 4K master already, but just might need regrading.

[Omensetter]

The "MV" from the Radiance 2026 teaser is probably A Man Vanishes. It lacks a blu-ray, it's ATG, and it's clearly something Simeoni would go for. Unless there's something I'm missing.

[yoloswegmaster]

Aren't most of the ATG titles with Toho or am I thinking about something else?

[Calvin]

Aren't most of the ATG titles with Toho or am I thinking about something else?

It's more complicated than that. I think some are, some aren't. Oshima's films seem to have been licensed directly from his estate/Oshima Productions and the MoC release of A Man Vanishes seems to be been licensed from Wide Productions

[rapta]

Yes, and others were licensed through different companies (as evidenced by Arrow's The Taisho Trilogy and the Yoshida and Jissoji sets, BFI's Funeral Parade of Roses, and Third Window's recent Directors Company releases too). I've not personally heard of a restoration of A Man Vanishes, but that's not to say Radiance couldn't accomplish that in-house if the materials were available.

I feel like a Nikkatsu title feels more likely at this point, as that's how their restoration of The Pornographers came to fruition. We'll see though, there's a chance they could have got the newer 4K restoration of Vengeance is Mine from Shochiku, but as we know by now they like to avoid clashing with the Criterion library (unless they can offer a substantial improvement).

[Calvin]

Although presented in SD, I think the MoC DVD of A Man Vanishes was from a then-new HD master; I could see Radiance upgrading it if they thought it was justified - either technically or, with any luck, by fleshing it out into a wider Imamura documentary release.