criterionforum.org

GaryC wrote:I haven't seen Score but is it any more exolicit than The Erotic Films of Peter de Rome?

Not remotely. We're talking erections, fellatio and some fairly non-explicit intercourse between the two male leads, and some extremely tame lesbian coupling between the female leads (the latter wouldn't have been a problem at all). Given the precedent, Arrow was entirely justified in expecting an uncut 18. (Ironically, at the same time they were expecting Baise-Moi to be cut, and it wasn't, so it's swings and roundabouts.)

In that case, though, the BFI sent in all the films and extras as one submission, so you had the contextual justification for individual films which were undoubtedly intended as "sex works" when they were made.

But my argument is that Score isn't a "sex work" - it's primarily a comedy of manners (and was in fact based on a dialogue-driven stage play) that just happens to have a fairly graphic but one-off sexual interlude - one-off in order to make it easy to cut without damaging the rest of the film (Radley Metzger was nothing if not a canny operator, and fully aware that he was pushing the envelope at the time). In other words, the BBFC is being blatantly inconsistent even within its own guidelines.

In my opinion the R18 needs to be revamped or done away with - or at the very least allowed to be sold by mail order - but that's something I've said before in this forum.

I don't have a problem with the notion of a classification specifically denoting "sex works" and neither does Arrow - the problem arises when it comes to selling such works commercially. Because of the ridiculously archaic (at least 30-year-old) restriction that R18 titles can only be sold over the counter of licensed sex shops, it is effectively impossible to make money on them unless you're directly involved in the management of the sex shops in question - because otherwise they have you over a barrel, and are fully and gleefully aware of the fact. (For instance, offering you £1 per unit which they then sell at £30, take it or leave it - and of course you have to take it, since you have no alternative outlet).

Literally all that would be required to transform the market would be lifting the restriction that such titles cannot be sold via mail order within the UK. Once that happens, you remove the sex-shop monopoly at a stroke, retain your original customer base and make scholarly projects along the lines of Distribpix's The Opening of Misty Beethoven and Barbara Broadcast commercially realistic. And all it takes is an almost insignificantly trivial change in the law to recognise the fact that in the era of YouPorn it makes no difference at all to the nation's morals but a great deal of difference to people who actually care enough about (s)exploitation cinema to recognise that some films deserve Criterion-style treatment even if Criterion themselves wouldn't touch them with the proverbial barge pole.

AlexHansen wrote:Quick turnaround to get it out before Cannes? Can't help but picture it as a way for Lars to thumb his nose (same for the Sundance screening).

Not if he ends up premiering the director's cut of volume 2 at Cannes, which has been the rumor ever since the long cut of volume 1 was announced for Berlin. (The Sundance screening was the same truncated version that's already opened in Europe, so it wasn't exactly a huge coup for the festival.) We don't know what version AE is opening next month, but I seriously doubt it's the longer cut.

MichaelB wrote:

In my opinion the R18 needs to be revamped or done away with - or at the very least allowed to be sold by mail order - but that's something I've said before in this forum.

I don't have a problem with the notion of a classification specifically denoting "sex works" and neither does Arrow - the problem arises when it comes to selling such works commercially. Because of the ridiculously archaic (at least 30-year-old) restriction that R18 titles can only be sold over the counter of licensed sex shops, it is effectively impossible to make money on them unless you're directly involved in the management of the sex shops in question - because otherwise they have you over a barrel, and are fully and gleefully aware of the fact. (For instance, offering you £1 per unit which they then sell at £30, take it or leave it - and of course you have to take it, since you have no alternative outlet).

Literally all that would be required to transform the market would be lifting the restriction that such titles cannot be sold via mail order within the UK. Once that happens, you remove the sex-shop monopoly at a stroke, retain your original customer base and make scholarly projects along the lines of Distribpix's The Opening of Misty Beethoven and Barbara Broadcast commercially realistic. And all it takes is an almost insignificantly trivial change in the law to recognise the fact that in the era of YouPorn it makes no difference at all to the nation's morals but a great deal of difference to people who actually care enough about (s)exploitation cinema to recognise that some films deserve Criterion-style treatment even if Criterion themselves wouldn't touch them with the proverbial barge pole.

I don't think we're disagreeing at all here. I don't know if this still happens, but at least one UK-based website was offering R18s by mail order, as they claimed they were (at least officially) posting them from overseas into the UK. I bought my one and only R18-rated DVD (Deep Throat) from them, but they no longer seem to be in business.

But along with the titles you suggest, a change in UK law would allow distribution of the likes of Thundercrack! (which I admittedly haven't seen but would seem to be aimed at the cult audience rather than the dirty-mac audience for "sex works"). Those Good Old Naughty Days is made up, like the Peter de Rome DVD, of nothing but intended "sex works", but in context is intended for broad-minded arthouse audiences. The dog scene (a dog licking a man's erect penis while he's having sex with a woman, presumably entirely of its own accord, if I remember rightly from ten years ago) may be problematic due to changes in UK law since then, but I am not a lawyer.

GaryC wrote:I don't think we're disagreeing at all here.

We're not at all, and I know you're familiar with the details - I was just spelling them out for the benefit of those who weren't.

But along with the titles you suggest, a change in UK law would allow distribution of the likes of Thundercrack! (which I admittedly haven't seen but would seem to be aimed at the cult audience rather than the dirty-mac audience for "sex works").

Indeed, which was the argument put forward to the BBFC when it was submitted for video classification. I daresay it's possible to use the film as masturbation material - there are several fairly prolonged sex scenes - but it wouldn't be my first choice: it's shot in black and white 16mm and is essentially an "old dark house"-style horror film populated by unattractive weirdos. And it's another film where its definition as "a sex work" is very much in the eye of the beholder.

Those Good Old Naughty Days is made up, like the Peter de Rome DVD, of nothing but intended "sex works", but in context is intended for broad-minded arthouse audiences. The dog scene (a dog licking a man's erect penis while he's having sex with a woman, presumably entirely of its own accord, if I remember rightly from ten years ago) may be problematic due to changes in UK law since then, but I am not a lawyer.

I wouldn't want to be the lawyer defending that!

I suspect the 2009 reclassification of bestiality as "extreme pornography" would mean a compulsory cut, just as we're not going to bother submitting the unexpurgated version of the more graphic "Oberhausen cut" of Borowczyk's A Private Collection to the BBFC, since this contains genuine bestiality that goes much further than The Good Old Naughty Days, of a kind which is clearly proscribed by the criminal law. In other words, there's no point paying the BBFC to recommend cuts that we already know we're going to have to make, as we can't get anything stronger than an 18 for the Borowczyk box and that part of the film goes well beyond even R18.

Although I hope we can get away with less destructive pixilation of the contentious footage than the German distributor applied to the version on the Immoral Tales Blu-ray, which dissolves into digital blocking so obtrusive that if I hadn't already been familiar with the film I'd have assumed that something was wrong with the disc or player!

If in fact "Nymphomaniac" gets an R18, what if Artificial Eye decides to make it a web exclusive instead? Either direct from AE, or from Amazon or other places. Wouldn't that be better than just a seedy sex shop counter?

manicsounds wrote:If in fact "Nymphomaniac" gets an R18, what if Artificial Eye decides to make it a web exclusive instead? Either direct from AE, or from Amazon or other places. Wouldn't that be better than just a seedy sex shop counter?

I'm pretty sure that counts as "mail order" and would therefore be prohibited. R18s can only be sold in sex shops.

Calvin wrote:I'm pretty sure that counts as "mail order" and would therefore be prohibited. R18s can only be sold in sex shops.

Yes, that's exactly the position. And the problem.

The bizarre thing about this whole area is that, if I'm remembering correctly, the documentary Inside Deep Throat (given an 18 BBFC rating) featured clips of the titular act of the original film! But I presume in the context of a documentary about the original feature, rather than a sex work 'purely created for titillation', they were allowed to do that!

Hypocritical it may be, but I'm not complaining too much as I get the impression if the boat was rocked too much that censorship would be increased rather than lessened! But I certainly agree that it cordons off a whole area of cinema from being economically viable to distribute.

The one film that comes to mind that had both a simultaneous 18 rated and R18 sex shop release was that Tartan Films DVD of Bertrand Bonello's The Pornographer, starring Jean-Pierre Léaud. The 18 rated version removed a thirty second sequence of ejaculation from the climax(!) of a sex scene, while the R18 left it unedited. Wasn't there something about the 18-rated version having an explanation of where to go to buy the uncut version in its liner notes? (And from the other point of view imagine the disappointment of a sex shop patron who picked up that particular arthouse film to find only thirty seconds of hardcore action!) Although that DVD was released around a decade ago, long before 9 Songs, Intimacy, Romance, Destricted, Peter De Rome, etc pushed the boundaries of 18 rated discs.

Having said that I think Tartan released The Idiots at the same time as The Pornographer and that got through unedited, which might bode well for Nymphomaniac!

The certificate that Misty Beethoven received was an R18.

I just re-watched the Peter de Rome films a few days ago and there certainly are a number of penetration CUs, the most notable being in Underground. The most interesting film in that set is Prometheus which, given its (arguably) non-consensual scenes of whipping, anal fisting, and urethral fingering, would be considered totally unacceptable for the R18 category and refused a certificate had the BBFC not deemed it artistically worthy enough to skirt around the boundaries of obscenity law. Same with both Baise-Moi and Taxi Zum Klo. I would have assumed that if they were willing to pass instances of fisting in something that was shot with the specific intention of being a sex work, they would have no problem with some playful oral in something like Score that wasn't. The current laws governing the distribution of pornograhpy in the UK have essentially placed the BBFC in the position of dictating which depictions of sexual acts are 'artistic' enough for general public consumption. They claim they're only interpreting and applying the law as it currently stands, yet will bend over backwards to pass content they personally believe to have sufficient merit. It's just like James Ferman were back in charge.

Back in the topic of Nymphomaniac though, I haven't read any reports of exactly how explicit the 4-hour cut is. The BBFC have been rather kind to von Trier in the past so I can imagine they'll try to pass it uncut. It may end up being a case like Bruce LaBruce's Raspberry Reich wherein they allow some explicit material to stay but remove those not "exceptionally justified by context". Goodness knows exactly how they determine what is and isn't.

Misty Beethoven was passed R18 by the BBFC back in 2005 and Arrow were the distributor. According to the Melonfarmers site it was "released on the Joybear label". Are they associated with Arrow? At the same time Arrow submitted The Private Afternoons of Pamela Mann, but that was cut by 8:59 for a R18. As per the BBFC: "Compulsory cuts for R18 required to remove scenes showing woman being explicitly sexually assaulted in a manner which eroticises and endorses sexual violence in accordance with BBFC policy, guidelines and the Video Recordings Act 1984."

Tartan did get a R18 for an uncut version of The Pornographer but I've no idea how many copies they produced and if they were ever found in sex shops or simply sat in Tartan's warehouse. That film is not a "sex work" by any stretch of the imagination and the cuts do obscure a plot point.

There's only the one "deep throat" clip from Deep Throat in Inside Deep Throat, but given the documentary context and a lot of sociological discussion in the film that was probably why the BBFC allowed it at 18.

It's so sad that in a supposedly liberal country in 2014 that adults cannot make their own, easy choices are what is suitable to watch, even if the material is entirely legal - and what's deemed illegal, even at R18, in Britain is another ludicrous matter entirely. The mandatory classification of material through the BBFC should be a relic of a past age of conservative censorship.

I always give my missus some stick about how her country has banned the likes of Borat and Bruno, but the sad truth of the matter is that we're little better. Different, but we're still saddled with censorship of different forms.

david hare wrote:But that's why we have the internet, n'est-ce pas?

Some years ago I downloaded from the ether a number of films then banned in Oz including Tras el Cristal. While none of this film is is hardcore or anything other than simulated, the whole tone of the picture and its voyeuristic gaze on the material was completely appalling to me (to ME) and it seems to be a progenitor of a whole sub genre of pedo giallo torture porn (More or less explicit) which is peculiarly Spanish in its invocation. I nuked the DL after I'd watched it and never thought of it again, until now.

But yes, all censorship is the control of ideas. Oz is currently experiencing a government of literally Fascist aspirations it its desire to shut down any and every element of free speech and hand the reigns of media control to its best mate, the appalling old cunt Rupert Murdoch. No matter this isn't even in the realm of censorship of sexual material, but like that issue all censorship is cut from the same totalitarian cloth.

By way of no more than a lament I cannot believe the things that are going on in OZ now, and I have to say - as much with regret as anything - I am so glad we left and resettled here where, while the government is barely even competent and has the usual share of Tammany Hall backhanded petty crooks (like the Auckland Police chief) and snouts in the trough, it basically keeps its civility. And not coincidentally its censorship policies seem to be more or less in line with British regulation at their least restrictive.

But you always have to fight these forces of control. They are always at the mercy of the day's politicians, regardless of how much people bray about them being "arm's length".

The only occasion I remember the NZ OFLC being out of step with other recent censor bodies was their banning of the 2012 remake of Maniac. Australia passed it as R 18+ and the BBFC at 18, the latter at least uncut.

I haven't seen Tras el cirstal. It has never been submitted to the BBFC though there have been occasional UK showings over the years. Amazon UK has copies of US and Spanish DVDs and a US Blu-ray for sale.

Meanwhile, back to the topic to hand, the BBFC have passed both parts of Nymphomaniac uncut for an 18 certificate. The more detailed BBFC "Insight" descriptions aren't up yet, but basic details are:

Volume I - "Contains strong real sex and very strong language". Running time 117:26

Volume II - "Contains strong violence, strong real sex and strong sex references". Running time 123:43

Anybody know yet whether we'll be getting any extras on the oft delayed Querelle Blu? I had hoped that maybe the delays had something to do with acquiring the otherwise impossible to find Wizard of Babylon but I suppose that's hoping for too much...

GaryC wrote:Release windows are getting shorter - AE/Curzon Film World releases have up to now come out on disc four or five months after the cinema releases, and this one is two and a half months.

Bastards is released in cinemas on 14 February and then on DVD on 14 April, so the window is getting even shorter.

John Cope wrote:Anybody know yet whether we'll be getting any extras on the oft delayed Querelle Blu? I had hoped that maybe the delays had something to do with acquiring the otherwise impossible to find Wizard of Babylon but I suppose that's hoping for too much...

Querelle Special Features:
Mini-Documentary: "Twilight of the Bodies: Fassbinder in Search of Querelle"
Presentation of the film by director Volker Schlondorff
Original Theatrical Trailer

I have a review copy of Mouchette playing as I type this, and can confirm that it looks and sounds very nice indeed - I last saw the film in 35mm, and don't recall the print being anything like this pristine.

In terms of extras, it improves on the pretty much barebones Nouveaux DVD but falls well short of the Criterion DVD, in that the only extra is Theodor Kotulla's 30-minute making-of documentary Zum Beispiel Bresson (For Instance, Bresson). Annoyingly, at least for those whose French is better than their German, everything in French (including Bresson's interviews) is swamped by an obtrusive German voiceover before being subtitled in English - was the Criterion presentation like this?

Are the subtitles imposed on it?

Sadly, yes. So I'll have to assume that the same is true of Au hasard, Balthazar too.

Not ideal, but blimey, a year having passed since these were announced, their existing at all is something to be grateful for.

Spoke too soon. Just got an email from Amazon notifying me of yet another delay on Au Hasard Balthasar. Now slated for the end of March.

FFS, as the young people say. Balthazar now pushed back to MAY. That's a year and a quarter since it was listed.

"Oh, Jeanne, pour aller jusqu'à toi, quel drôle de chemin il m'a fallu prendre."

http://www.zavvi.com/blu-ray/5-films-by ... 15414.html
Can somebody provide any detail? Is that a repackaging?

It's just a repackaging of the five individual releases.

Querrelle scores 3.5 out of 5 for the video on AE's Blu-Ray on Blu-Ray.com

The high-definition transfer is not identical to the one Gaumont used for their Blu-ray release of Querelle, but it appears to have been sourced from the same restored master the French label worked with. Generally speaking, detail and clarity tend to fluctuate as the action moves from one location to another, but these fluctuations are part of Xaver Schwarzenberger and Josef Vavra's very unique photography. To be perfectly clear, different filters and color enhancements have been used to achieve a certain 'dreamy' look. Light and shadow are also manipulated in unique ways to enhance the ambient atmosphere. There are no traces of problematic sharpening adjustments. Some extremely light denoising corrections have been applied, but the film has a moderately stable organic look. Viewers with large screens and projectors, in particular, should be very pleased with the improved image depth. Also, I would like to mention that while viewing the film I did not notice the light flicker which I spotted on the French release.