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any word on the MRA/Accent dvd of Pen-Ek's Last Life in the Universe"?

Its not showing on any upcoming lists for me, hope its coming - Accent still lists it on its (update??) site as 'coming soon' - hope they haven't folded!

Accent have not folded but have been working with MRA in releasing their DVDs. Michael DVD recently reviewed their DVD of EUROPA which is a fine DVD. At the recent Melbourne International Film Festival they had quite a few films screening there which are due for release in the next few months such as:

Mary (Abel Ferrara, 2005)
Sheitan (starring Vincent Cassel)
Mutual Appreciation (Andrew Bujalski)
Invisible Waves (Pen-ek Ratanaruang)
Pusher Trilogy (Danish trilogy of crime/drug films)

hopefully Last Life will come out before Xmas.

Some nice films in that list - I wish I was still in Melb!

Hey Marty, what was good at MIFF?

And where do you place 'No Direction Home' in Scorsese's ouvre? I love it!

wbumble, I thought Abel Ferrara's Mary was terrific. Mutual Appreciation was also great. Other films that were my faves include:

Three Times
A Prairie Home Compansion
Workingman's Death (best doco of MIFF)
A Scanner Darkly
Flanders
Jonestown: The Life and Death of People's Temple
This Film is Yet Unrated
Pusher 3
Cocaine Cowboys
United 93
TV Junkie

SOOOOOOO - is there a blu-ray in production of this?

None available at the moment.

Does anyone know who owns this now? It’s bizarre that it was at least somewhat popular in the states on its initial release and now it’s completely MIA from any English-subbed home video anywhere, as far as I can tell

I never understood the popularity of this film, unless it was a symptom of Peak Chris Doyle (or an understandable crush on Asano Tadanobu, who was making a bunch of masterpieces at the time). I'd found Ratanaruang's previous features 6ixtynin9 and Monrak Transistor similarly unremarkable, but nobody was claiming them as modern classics.

It looks like he's kept busy without making much in the way of further ripples (including a recent TV series remake of 6ixtynin9). Has anybody kept up with his later work?

I thought this and Monrak Transistor were well-made and sweet, and I own DVDs of both, but they probably have not held up. There was a real wave of excellent (or at least interesting) Thai films at the time—arthouse, horror, and action—but Apichatpong Weerasethakul broke away from the pack, everyone else just kind of fell away, and the arthouse crowd started watching Romanian films instead.

I wish I had an answer on the distribution. I would assume Palm Pictures’ license has (or is about to) run out for US distribution. Fun City’s Morvern Callar disc proved that films can be liberated from Palm limbo, so there could be hope for this one, but I don’t think there would be much interest.

There’s still a lot of Doyle love out there. I bet it could be sold through that. I totally see someone like Kimstim releasing it if they could.