Ang Lee's Pushing Hands (1991) coming from Film Movement

[MifuneFan]

Film Movement will be releasing Ang Lee's debut film Pushing Hands (1991) on Blu-ray on May 10th, sourced from a 2K restoration.

https://filmmovement.com/product/pushing-hands

Blu-ray Features

Round Table discussion with filmmakers James Schamus, Ted Hope and Tim Squyres

16-page booklet with new essay by NYU Cinema Studies professor Zhen Zhang

SYNOPSIS
Having just moved from Beijing, elderly tai chi master Mr. Chu (Sihung Lung) struggles to adjust to life in New York, living with his Americanized son Alex (Ye-tong Wang). Chu immediately butts heads with his put-upon white daughter-in-law, Martha (Deb Snyder), a writer who seems to blame him for her own paralyzing inability to focus. But when Chu begins teaching tai chi at a local school, his desire to make a meaningful connection comes to fruition in the most unexpected of ways. The debut film of director Ang Lee, in a new 2K restoration.

Pushing Hands (1991) | Trailer | Ang Lee | Sihung Lung | Lai Wang | Bozhao Wang | Deb Snyder - YouTube

[Gacivory]

This is exciting!

[James Luckard]

Fantastic! The only Ang Lee film not on English-friendly Blu-Ray.

The restoration was released in Taiwan in 2013 and Germany in 2015, but my understanding is that neither release had English subtitles.

I collect his work, and I've been stuck with the decrepit DVD of this film for ages.

Thrilled to see this getting a US release.

Although I can't say I'm not slightly disappointed, as I had hoped Criterion would license the entire "Father Knows Best" trilogy, since the US BDs of The Wedding Banquet and Eat Drink Man Woman went OOP a few years back.

[Wernski]

Originally Posted by James Luckard

The restoration was released in Taiwan in 2013 and Germany in 2015, but my understanding is that neither release had English subtitles.

I own it; the Taiwan disc does include English subtitles.

[James Luckard]

Originally Posted by Wernski

I own it; the Taiwan disc does include English subtitles.

My mistake, I meant to say that the German disc has no Engilsh subtitles, while the Taiwanese disc only has the option of full English subtitles for the entire film, much of which is in English, it has no option of English subtitles only for the Chinese portions.

I believe the standalone 2013 Taiwanese disc was also pressed in very limited numbers. The more common way to find it is in the more expensive 2013 Father Knows Best Trilogy boxset, with The Wedding Banquet and Eat Drink Man Woman, which I already own on BD.

[James Luckard]

Originally Posted by MifuneFan

Film Movement will be releasing Ang Lee's debut film Pushing Hands (1991) on Blu-ray, sourced from a 2K restoration.
https://filmmovement.com/educational/film/pushing-hands[/CENTER]

Oh dear, the link says it's for educational purposes only, and that the BD will cost $150.

I hope they make it available to regular consumers too, at a lower price.

[MifuneFan]

Originally Posted by James Luckard

Oh dear, the link says it's for educational purposes only, and that the BD will cost $150.

I hope they make it available to regular consumers too, at a lower price.

They will. This happens with nearly all Film Movement Classic titles.

[James Luckard]

I'm really kind of astounded that Criterion didn't pick up the trilogy for a proper boxset.

The Olive releases of Eat Drink Man Woman and The Wedding Banquet were only available for a very limited time. I believe The Wedding Banquet was in print for less than a year. They both fetch crazy prices now.

[tehthomas]

Originally Posted by James Luckard

I'm really kind of astounded that Criterion didn't pick up the trilogy for a proper boxset.

The Olive releases of Eat Drink Man Woman and The Wedding Banquet were only available for a very limited time. I believe The Wedding Banquet was in print for less than a year. They both fetch crazy prices now.

Kinda crazy with those. I bought 'Eat Drink Man Woman' a while back and never opened and then saw the crazy prices. Now I'm in this weird spot where I never want to open it.

[James Luckard]

Originally Posted by tehthomas

Kinda crazy with those. I bought 'Eat Drink Man Woman' a while back and never opened and then saw the crazy prices. Now I'm in this weird spot where I never want to open it.

That one came out two years earlier, in 2015, but The Wedding Banquet came out in 2017, and they both went OOP in 2018, as I remember, so The Wedding Banquet was only available for a VERY limited time, which was never publicized, as far as I saw.

I'm glad I picked them both up when they came out.

[James Luckard]

Theatrical release coming April 1:

https://thefilmstage.com/ang-lees-de...pushing-hands/

Pushing Hands - trailer - YouTube

Presumably a Blu-Ray will follow in a couple of months.

[MifuneFan]

Blu-ray officially releasing on May 10th

https://www.amazon.com/Pushing-Hands...v%2C204&sr=1-1

https://www.importcds.com/pushing-hands/850021115623

[James Luckard]

Originally Posted by MifuneFan

Blu-ray officially releasing on May 10th

https://www.amazon.com/Pushing-Hands...v%2C204&sr=1-1

https://www.importcds.com/pushing-hands/850021115623

Fantastic! I can finally retire my appalling, prehistoric DVD.

[MifuneFan]

Cover art

[MifuneFan]

Extras:

Blu-ray Features

Round Table discussion with filmmakers James Schamus, Ted Hope and Tim Squyres

16-page booklet with new essay by NYU Cinema Studies professor Zhen Zhang

[Brad1963]

Film Movement has pre-order for $19.99

https://www.filmmovement.com/product/pushing-hands

[James Luckard]

My Film Movement BD arrived today.

The review here says that it looks weirdly bright and milky, as if the gamma is off:

https://www.blu-ray.com/movies/Pushi...314257/#Review

I skipped around and noticed the same thing.

That said, the ancient DVD is absolutely unwatchable. I bought it a while back to complete my Ang Lee collection, but after starting it, I decided that it was so wretched that I didn't want my first time seeing the film to be in this form. The DVD looks like a repurposed VHS master, it's 4:3 open matte and has absolutely no detail.

Unfortunately, for many years it was the only way to view the film in its intended version for English-speaking audiences, with subtitles for only the Chinese portions.

The long-OOP Taiwanese BD had only full English subs for the entire film, while the German BD has no English subs.

I'm going to watch the film tomorrow or the next night, and I'll do some comparison captures from the DVD and the Taiwanese BD, which I don't own but can get captures from. I don't know the film, so I can't match frames until I've seen it.

However, I took a brief look at the Taiwanese BD tonight, and it does not seem to have the milky look of the Film Movement BD. That milky look might be a technical error.

They look like they might be based on the same master, however, which seems pretty old.

More in a day or two.

[James Luckard]

So I just watched the disc just now.

The movie: a charming, beautifully observed little film, demonstrating stunning technical skill. Ang Lee may have had few resources here, but his breathtaking ability to stage a scene for the camera was there from the beginning.

The disc: Watchable. Just barely.

This is possibly the worst BD I've ever seen. I'm talking Family Plot bad.

It's a combination of two things:

1) the gamma problem is clearly a technical error. It's bad enough in daylight scenes, where everything looks milky and desaturated, but it's absolutely hideous in night scenes, where everything looks totally off. (Note that the gamma problem is present in the trailer above too, I compared it to the BD.)

2) possibly the worst compression I've ever seen on a BD. If you had told me I was watching a DVD, I'd have believed it. This doesn't even look like HD, honestly. In fact, a couple of times, when there was a static background in a scene, the background froze completely, so it looked like a bad CGI effect.

In addition, the master has had so much DNR applied to it that there is zero fine detail.

I'm 99% sure this is the same Taiwanese BD master, only with the gamma nuked.

Unfortunately, this is the only way for an American audience to watch this film easily.

The film is set in New York, and is about 50% Chinese and 50% English, quite often mixed in the same scene.

An unsubtitled version, like the German BD, would be incomprehensible to most Americans.

Meanwhile, the Taiwanese BD, with English subtitles for both Chinese and spoken English, during scenes where both languages are being spoken very quickly, becomes a jumble of competing subtitles that is completely bewildering.

Also, the subtitles are not great. I compared a few scenes to the ancient US DVD, and those are much better. These appear identical to those on the Taiwan BD, and they're fairly clunky at times. A few times, they were briefly incoherent. Once, they even mistranslated a conversation about going back to Mainland China to be about "Taiwan," making the remainder of the conversation, about visiting Beijing, nonsensical.

This isn't a visually stunning film, it's mostly set in one house, so again, the disc is watchable, but be prepared for minimal quality.

[James Luckard]

Here are some comparison caps:

Taiwan BD:


US BD:


Taiwan BD:


US BD:


Taiwan BD:


US BD:


I just wish the review here had a capture or two from one of the truly dark night scenes, so you could see the absolutely mindblowing level of swarming pixels from the dreadful compression.

[James Luckard]

BTW, here's a comparison with the utterly unwatcchable open matte US DVD, from 1999, which I swear must have used a VHS master, it doesn't even look like a digital source:

Taiwan BD:


US BD:


US DVD: