Janus Films

[dwk]

New Seven Samurai poster from Sean Phillips

[ryannichols7]

the Toho nut has finally cracked for Criterion. was inevitable after we knew the BFI has been working with them. hopefully we see a lot more come forth soon

[dwk]

Lincoln Center's upcoming Jacques Rozier retrospective is being done "in collaboration with Janus Films.'

Jacques Rozier

August 16-22

It is well-established that the French New Wave forever changed our understanding of what a film could be, playing with both the medium’s formal conventions and Hollywood’s immortal iconography to produce some of cinema’s most stylish and enduringly influential works. Yet, for as large as such figures as Jean-Luc Godard, François Truffaut, and Éric Rohmer loom within standard accounts of this incomparably fertile period of film history, less well-known are the works of their contemporary Jacques Rozier, whose 1962 debut feature, Adieu Philippine, was a particular cause for the critic-iconoclasts of Cahiers du Cinéma. Across five idiosyncratic, episodic features, and an assortment of fiction and documentary short films, Rozier distinguished himself from his peers through his fixation on the idea of vacations as theatrical staging grounds upon which his magnetic actors could play and simply be, making him something like a more lighthearted (though no less complex) counterpart to his fellow New Waver, Jacques Rivette. It is remarkable that Rozier’s influence has been so profoundly felt considering how rarely his singular films have screened outside of France. On the occasion of an assortment of new restorations of his signature films (including Du côté d’Orouët [1973] and Maine-Océan [1986]), Film at Lincoln Center presents a long overdue (and appropriately summer-set) retrospective dedicated to this unheralded legend of French cinema.

Organized by Florence Almozini and Dan Sullivan. Presented in collaboration with Janus Films.

[therewillbeblus]

I thought Du côté d’Orouët was the one title excluded in the previous announcement, but this indicates it's receiving a new restoration and part of the pack now

[Red Screamer]

Sideshow and Janus Films have acquired the rights to Alain Guiraudie’s Misericordia

I loved it and I can't wait to take friends to see it when it comes out near me. A film with formal ideas and a sense of purpose, where every shot was carefully planned! — a novelty at Cannes, somehow. I'd recommend going in cold, since the film plays a delightful cat-and-mouse game with audience expectations, as it starts off unassuming, with a set of familiar elements, and then builds, in a perfectfully controlled slow-burn, into something fairly singular.

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My main comparison would be a rural Woman in the Window, a dry comedy made from anxiety dreams. But with the way this film works, the murder, the comedy, and the procedural elements all seem unlikely until they start to appear. The film's style is fairly classical, spatially laid out and composed for relationship dynamics, surprises, or psychological zeroing in—the recurring side characters are even treated like the vivid faces of contract players on the studio rosters of yesteryear. But this traditional form is undercut by the fact that the characters are more or less inexpressive and the streaks of surrealism and comedy keep us uncertain, or should I say the hints of possible surrealism and possible comedy, since the strength and skill of the film is in how it lives in, and continually widens, that in-between space, keeping you guessing at what it's doing and how to react.

With its limited, familiar elements, Miséricorde makes meaning through repetition: of times, locales, situations, actions. It's about rituals and how everything gets absorbed into the vortex of cyclical routines of this town, which breed a particular variety of rural claustrophobia. In opposition to that rigid structure, you have the chaotic (in terms of film conventions) element that the main character has or creates a sexual undertone with just about every other character in the movie. His faced is aged-boyish, like a vintage ragdoll of Alain Delon, and he doesn't seem to have much in the way of charm, but slowly, one by one, each of his relationships takes a sexual turn, all unfulfilled. Which is how the film turns from a rural noir into a droll comedy. In my screening, silence at the beginning gave way to the nervous titters of an audience not sure of how much of the film's humor is intentional which then in turn, in the film's final third, gave way to the roars of a room of people being won over, in fair play, in a game they didn't know was being played. The film's Catholic and gay themes are fused and deepened in this uneasy handoff between genres, as all threads climax at once in the film's disarming final stretch, with a priest being the only character whose words cut through the otherwise intentionally anodyne dialogue, as he embodies both a disturbing philosophy and the film’s simmering tenderness and loneliness without ever becoming a character we can fully trust.

I'm not yet familiar with Guiraudie's other films (a wrong that will soon be righted), but I knew going in, from attending a reading of his a few months ago, that Miséricorde and his last film, Viens, je t'emmène (aka Nobody's Hero) were drawn from his critically acclaimed novel series (Rabalaïre and Pour les siècles des siècles, so far). This film is wonderfully unliterary, so I went to go read more about the novels to see where the connection was. I was surprised to find that the books seem to be maximalist in place of Miséricorde's minimalism, and the narrative thread its based on is taken in a wild, completely different direction

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with the priest giving some of his foraged psychedelic mushrooms to the main character to help him cope with his guilt, which results in the character's death. Which results in his soul entering the priest's body. The two souls duel over one body and over the novel's narration as they try to solve the practical, theological, and sexual problems of this situation. For example, the priest is known in the town for sleeping next to people who are recently bereaved or otherwise in need. Needless to say, that ritual becomes even dicier than it already might have been with an unpriestly mind inside of his body. All of which adds a funny shading to the final shot of this film.

[yoloswegmaster]

The Kaiju Kingdom reposted an "exclusive" report that Toho is working with Janus Films to distribute Godzilla Minus One.

This is highly likely not true since the Twitter account posting that is GeekGab's alt account, as well as producer Kazuaki Kishida straight up calling it fake news.

In other Godzilla news, the Music Box in Chicago was screening Godzilla vs Biollante a couple of days ago and it was apparently the 4K restoration was used as the source. Hopefully this means that the 4K restoration is used when it shows up on the Channel next month, as well as for the Heisei-era boxset that will eventually come out.