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FYI, the Chinese bootleg of the French release of Love Streams and A Child is Waiting has removable French sub-titles. Looks great and no subtitles in the way. No extras though, but who cares for the price.

Newsflash! Recently I was browsing Amazon and ran across this:



Cassavetes Directs: John Cassavetes and the Making of Love Streams

Apparently it was published in July, but I'd never heard a peep about it anywhere. I just got my copy and although I'm only halfway through, so far it's phenomenal. It's a very detailed, day-to-day account of the actual shoot, and I daresay that even Ray Carney's estimable work is not as revealing -- even revelatory -- regarding what it must have been like to have actually been on set with the man.

Michael Ventura also directed I'm Almost Not Crazy: John Cassavetes - The Man and His Work, about the making of Love Streams, which is a must-see (assuming you can manage to track it down).

Lemmy Caution wrote:FYI, the Chinese bootleg of the French release of Love Streams and A Child is Waiting has removable French sub-titles. Looks great and no subtitles in the way. No extras though, but who cares for the price.

So where do you purchase this Chinese bootleg?

SO it seems that the French release is officially out of production. Anyone have any news to the contrary? And any news about that chinese release?

Trevor B wrote:SO it seems that the French release is officially out of production. Anyone have any news to the contrary? And any news about that chinese release?

Unfort so. There are a few venders selling the French release on Amazon. You could try those. The prices aren't too bad yet, but soon they'll probably go up.

Hi there

I have not seen Cassavetes' Love Streams, though I have seen a few tiny snippets. I've heard about the French release with the non-removable subtitles, and decided I do not want to pay something like over 60AUD or more for the French DVD. eBay prices are ridiculous, as is amazon.

I've heard about the Chinese release/bootleg? and I want to purchase or get a copy, as the french subtitles are removed apparently. I've searched, and I simply have not been able to find this Chinese release online. I do not really want to download any torrent either, I'd prefer to buy the DVD for the best quality. So can anyone help me and others, locate where we and/or I could buy the Chinese release which has the subtitles removed? please where can this DVD be purchased online?

If this is not possible for whatever reason, then could someone [redacted request to bootleg] ... Not available on DVD has Love Streams, but they said it has the non-removable subtitles. I really want to watch love streams, its unfortunate that such a film is near to impossible to get a hold of.

thank you

You can buy it on amazon for $32.

Trevor B wrote:SO it seems that the French release is officially out of production. Anyone have any news to the contrary? And any news about that chinese release?

In 2006 & '07 the 2-disc Love Streams/A Child is Waiting was everywhere (in China, that is). Haven't seen it around in well over a year, but some shops have some titles around forever (I think Sgt. Kabukiman holds the unofficial record, at about 5 years).
I'll see if it is still available anywhere and report back.

For questions about Chinese Dvd's, you can PM me.
A veritable Dvd paradise here in the land of copywrongs.
My kevyip is completely out of control, and sometimes even stalks small children when the moon is full.

Fyi - you can get Love Streams as a single disc DVD from France. Image quality is perfectly fine. If anyone is interested I can make some screenshots of the movie. Subs are removable (at least on my DVD player).

sir karl wrote:Subs are removable (at least on my DVD player).

You lucky bastard. On mine they are not.

I really hope for a release with english subs (couldn't even find fansubs...) since the dialogue can be hard to understand sometimes for non native speakers.

Anyone who can remove the subs is lucky indeed. I hoped that my old Oppo would be able to do it but no luck. I'm sort of puzzled why, if they're in fact player-generated subs, the player doesn't give the option not to turn them off. According to Oppo tech support, none of their firmware upgrades on any of the players can deal with this kind of problem.

One solution to these discs where the subs are player-generated yet 'forced' by the DVD authoring is to rip and re-burn them on a computer. This does require some knowledge of the tools, though, since you have to 're-author' the disc in a sense. If you look around on Google you'll see there are many freeware tools for doing this on Windows machines; on Macs, you're better off with a combo of commercial apps (DVD Studio Pro) and free ones (Mac the Ripper, MPEG Streamclip). Forced subs are really a kind of secondary regionalization beyond region locking that we're all pretty much bypassing at this point.

I'm pretty sure this is the first time I've had this problem, aside from burnt-in subs of course. It probably wouldn't be worth going getting and using the necessary tools unless I knew I'd be doing the same for several other discs. Another obstacle is that my Macbook can only burn to single-layer DVD-R, so I'd be pretty much forced to split up Love Streams over two discs. Much easier to just try and just ignore the French subs.

Good point about the authoring forcing the subtitles as an additional kind of region coding. However, if the licensor wants to dissuade people in the U.S. from buying the French DVD, it would make more sense if they actually released it in R1.

Can VLC not ignore forced machine generated subs?

A Spanish DVD of Love Streams with purportedly removable subtitles is available on amazon.

Amazon Japan have a new DVD of Love Streams for around $30 (with removable subs). I haven't seen any of the other discs, but this one is pretty grainy...

Love Streams



The electric filmmaking genius John Cassavetes and his brilliant wife and collaborator Gena Rowlands give luminous, fragile performances as two closely bound, emotionally wounded characters who reunite after years apart. Exhilarating and risky, mixing sober realism with surreal flourishes, Love Streams is a remarkable film that comes at the viewer in a torrent of beautiful, erratic feeling. This inquiry into the nature of love in all its forms was Cassavetes's last truly personal work.

SPECIAL FEATURES

• New 2K digital restoration, with uncompressed monaural soundtrack on the Blu-ray
• New audio commentary featuring writer Michael Ventura
• New video essay on actor Gena Rowlands by film critic Sheila O'Malley
• New interviews with executive producer and director of photography Al Ruban and actor Diahnne Abbott
• Interview from 2008 with actor Seymour Cassel
• "I'm Almost Not Crazy..."—John Cassavetes: The Man and His Work (1984), a sixty-minute documentary by Ventura on the making of Love Streams
• Trailer
• PLUS: A booklet featuring an essay by critic Dennis Lim and a 1984 piece by Cassavetes on the film from the New York Times

Yes!!!

•New audio commentary featuring writer Michael Ventura
•“I’m Almost Not Crazy . . .”—John Cassavetes: The Man and His Work (1984), a sixty-minute documentary by Ventura on the making of Love Streams

The electric filmmaking genius John Cassavetes and his brilliant wife and collaborator Gena Rowlands give luminous, fragile performances as two closely bound, emotionally wounded characters who reunite after years apart. Exhilarating and risky, mixing sober realism with surreal flourishes, Love Streams is a remarkable film that comes at the viewer in a torrent of beautiful, erratic feeling. This inquiry into the nature of love in all its forms was Cassavetes's last truly personal work.

Was there a sale on modifiers?

Finally! YAY!

Can't wait to finally check this out. The only Cassavetes films I've seen so far are the one's Criterion has released. I really need to get around to the rest of his films; I love what I've seen.

I wonder if Kino might have picked up A Child is Waiting. Would welcome it from Criterion, but a nice Blu transfer from anyone would be fine at this point. Extras of substance seem unlikely anyway, given Cassavetes' ill will towards the finished product.

This looks like a fine package indeed. Coupled with Ventura's book, I can't imagine anyone asking for a more comprehensive treatment of this title.

Cronenfly wrote:I wonder if Kino might have picked up A Child is Waiting. Would welcome it from Criterion, but a nice Blu transfer from anyone would be fine at this point. Extras of substance seem unlikely anyway, given Cassavetes' ill will towards the finished product.

Does Fox have distribution rights to all the old MGM/UA titles? If so, I guess it would be up to them to release it. I wish we could see an assemblage of Cassavetes' version, but some context from a biographer like Marshall Fine would be welcome.

I hope Ventura takes a lot of time to talk about Cassavetes' work in the theatre and how that served as the genesis for Love Streams. I guess it would be too much to ask for a Jon Voight interview since he starred in the original stage production, but I'm just happy to have this great movie finally out on blu.

If any of you are interested in this film and have not yet read Michael Ventura's book Cassavetes Directs, I cannot recommend it highly enough. After years of a steady diet of Ray Carney-heavy Cassavetes scholarship, Ventura's reporting and insights were relevatory. One of the best books on the filmmaking process that I have read.