Third Window Films Discussion Thread

[Mansinthe]

Originally Posted by rewak

Lets take Vulgaria as an example. It's a very niche movie, it's fan base the kind of people who know how to import, and it had already been out on Blu subbed with extras not found on the TW release for months before TW picked it up. So why would they re-buy it? They're not just picking niche movies, for the most part they're picking ones that are already out there subbed and not offering any incentive to double dip.

same people are buying well go usa releases while the Hk Are avaible months already. or buying criterion movies while there was already a MoC for a better price

[jonboy24]

Originally Posted by Mansinthe

what have american accends to to with thirdwindowfilm releases?
these movies dont have dub at all.


i dont think such a small label is abel to afford big korean revenge movies.

Read the posts. I was clearly talking referring to comedy anime being dubbed

[logboy]

prices do drop, so I tend to wait for most stuff to get to sub £10 prices these days. pre-orders only placed on stuff I know I'd watch immediately, for no more than £13 typically. also have a backlog to pick from. just a case of time altering habits, but I'd also say my knowledge is in a different place and the films I'd buy quickly have become fewer as the distance between what I want and what I can find official releases for has grown.

I think Adam torel has great taste, but there's a sense of trying to retread ground & second guess buyers that's creeped in and it means less interesting choices & sense of slight stagnation, when I'd like for there to be space for exploration - dont know how you solve that one, as I think it connects to a freer sense of where to spend money that people don't have right now, in general, and haven't had for a few years.

[Pooch]

HI,

I have bought a lot of Third Window titles, and I do like their works for the most part.

But like many people, risking £10 on ANY title, I know little-to-nothing about, is a gamble I don't always want to take. Trailers aren't always reliable. Nor are the write-up's on the back of cases.

Moreso I'm less likely to gamble on a Third Window DVD release, when Fopp will frequently, nigh almost certainly, reduce those titles to £5 relatively quickly. At that point, yes, I am more likely to take a risk. That's not to say I don't or wouldn't ever pre-order a Third Window title. I do, and have done in the past, e.g The TETSUO Double-bill, the LOVE EXPOSURE Blu-Ray release, etc. The past three Third Window titles I bought, one was a pre-order (TESTSUO 1 and 2), and the other two I bought for £5 each from Fopp, and were a gamble (CONFESSIONS and CONFESSIONS OF A DOG.) Thankfully, I liked all three releases, but as I say, taking a risk for £10 (or £12 or whatever the standard Retail Price is for a new Third Window release on DVD/Blu-Ray) is not something I do lightly. Certainly less so these days, with the cost of living going up so much!

I understand why Adam is so frustrated, and sympathise with him and his staff at Third Window Films, but unfortunately, every small, independent, and niche label struggles. It's not unique to him, nor to Third Window Films, or even down to the choice of titles you select to release. It's down to the UK public simply not wanting to risk foreign-language films, no matter how great they may be. UK people simply seem averse to subtitles! (Their loss!) The number of times I try and get friends to watch an amazing movie, and because it has subtitles, they hold-up their hand, and say "I don't want to read a film. I want to watch it!" is ridiculous.

Unfortunately, the UK fanbase for films like that of Shinya Tsukamoto, Takashi Miike, Sion Sono is miniscule at the best of times. And whilst I doff my hat to Third Window films for giving value-for-money on their releases, by including substantial extras and often decent quality, meaty extras (hour-plus-long documentaries, extended interviews with the cast or director, behind the scenes material, etc), I'm still taking a gamble on a film, if I know little about it.

I am lucky in that my local library stocks most Third Window films, so I can rent first, before I buy. However, I've been disappointed with some of Third Windows recent releases. Not because the releases were poor. Not because they weren't interesting. Simply because they didn't live up to the expectations.

HIMIZU was a mediocre film, despite getting a lot of positive reviews. I just found it too bleak and ultimately unsatisfying. As for KOTOKO, jeez, that was a horrifically bad film! Really soulless, depressing, and even more directionless. One of the worst films I've ever seen, and hence, a massive disappointment.

I would really hate for Third Window to disappear, but maybe they need to strike a balance between re-releasing better known, or more populist titles from Asia, alongside the riskier, more niche stuff. If they only want to release stuff that purchasers have to gamble on each time, then they aren't going to sell enough to make releasing any more films onto UK home viewing formats, which would be a criminally awful scenario.


Pooch

[Mansinthe]

HIMIZU was a mediocre film, despite getting a lot of positive reviews. I just found it too bleak and ultimately unsatisfying. As for KOTOKO, jeez, that was a horrifically bad film! Really soulless, depressing, and even more directionless. One of the worst films I've ever seen, and hence, a massive disappointment.

Kotoko was one of my favorite releases of the last 2 years. cuz of the depressing mode and the arthouse style

10 GBP doesnt seem much for a new movie. 0.o
other labels charge more for new releases.

[charnier]

I thought Himizu was relatively upbeat for Sono, compared to his other films such as Cold Fish and Guilty of Romance.

And Pooch, I think the potential for people watching film/tv with subtitles is certainly there - check out the Amazon sales statistics for the Danish dramas The Killing (Forbydelsen), and Borgen, and they've been released for quite some time. It's a question of exposure - when BBC4 screened these, they became popular thanks to word of mouth.

It certainly does not help that the TV schedules are nowadays filled with complete and utter crap; there was a time when Channel 4/Film 4 used to screen terrific foreign films, while BBC 2 did the American classics, and BBC 1 did the late night B movie. Happy days back then.

[Mansinthe]

people get each year more stupid. probably that happens to people that watch only stuff like transformers, avengers , battleship, iron man , sharknado

most people dont have a attention span for a 120min+ movie. thats why weinstein is doing their "dumb people" us cuts for movies like (wuxia) dragon and grand master

[Pooch]

Hi Charnier,

Originally Posted by charnier

And Pooch, I think the potential for people watching film/tv with subtitles is certainly there [snip]

The potential is there, but they're still a tiny group of people. 500,000 people watched FORBRYDELSEN on BBC4. That's all very good. But 3 MILLION people will watch daytime repeats of DAD'S ARMY, or THE GOOD LIFE, despite the fact that both of these shows are always repeated, and are both easily available to buy.

Episodes of TOP GEAR, EASTENDERS, CASUALTY can all get 5 million viewers, without breaking a sweat, and no trailers being shown. A major sporting event, can acrue 10-million plus in viewing figures. Around 18 million people watched the Men's Wimbledon Final this year. Twelve million people waited for news of the Royal Baby birth!

So, yes, foreign-language dramas are becoming more acceptable, but compared with 99% of other stuff, it pales into insignificance in terms of numbers of viewing figures. And most UK TV viewers, don't all buy copies of these same foreign-language shows when they come out on DVD/Blu-Ray. Around 50-60% of people will buy them. The other 40-50% don't and won't, no matter how good the show was.

Originally Posted by charnier

It certainly does not help that the TV schedules are nowadays filled with complete and utter crap; there was a time when Channel 4/Film 4 used to screen terrific foreign films, while BBC 2 did the American classics, and BBC 1 did the late night B movie. Happy days back then.

I concur. I still remember the joys of BBC2's MOVIEDROME seasons on Saturday and Sunday nights, back in the 80's and 90's. It was through Alex Cox, and then Mark Cousins, I discovered real cinema. Proper films, made for intelligent audiences, that were really worth watching. And even Film Four when it used to be a pay channel, was a channel I paid for, because it showed truly great films.

Not anymore though. Look at the average week's worth of films on the main BBC channels, or Film4, and it's the same mediocre, Hollywood garbage! The same dumb, pap that fills up the multiplexes each week, shown repeatedly. How many times do ITV2 really need to show MAMMA MIA, the Bond films, THE MUMMY TRILOGY and spin-offs, THE MATRIX series, etc, etc?!

I will happily stand-up and shout from the rooftops to recommend any good foreign-language film or TV show, but TV networks just don't care. They insist on showing the same old films, because it's cheap, it's convenient, and it requires no effort.

Thank God, for BBC4 and Sky Arts 1 and 2 for their great foreign-language shows, like HARD, ROMANZO CRIMINALE and to a lesser-extent MAISON CLOSE.


Pooch

[Yami]

Channel 4 recently had a short season of Satyajit Ray films but they were on in the wee hours of the morning so only people who specifically wanted to see them would have tuned in.

Film4 has shown Third Window's Confessions a few times. But, yeah, film
on television is deplorable. Bring back Moviedrome.

[SimBelm]

I was quite taken aback when Film4 showed Glauber Rocha's Black God, White Devil last week (damn does that film hit hard on a rewatch). Since then I've been scouring the TV guide more often and finding the odd film, The Marriage of Maria Braun, Carnival of Souls, The Shop Around the Corner, Obsession, Blithe Spirit, They Live by Night, The Thief of Bagdad.

[Mansinthe]

if you want to watch such movies better get hulu+ / netflix / mubi..

[charnier]

Originally Posted by Pooch

I concur. I still remember the joys of BBC2's MOVIEDROME seasons on Saturday and Sunday nights, back in the 80's and 90's. It was through Alex Cox, and then Mark Cousins, I discovered real cinema. Proper films, made for intelligent audiences, that were really worth watching. And even Film Four when it used to be a pay channel, was a channel I paid for, because it showed truly great films.

Not anymore though. Look at the average week's worth of films on the main BBC channels, or Film4, and it's the same mediocre, Hollywood garbage! The same dumb, pap that fills up the multiplexes each week, shown repeatedly. How many times do ITV2 really need to show MAMMA MIA, the Bond films, THE MUMMY TRILOGY and spin-offs, THE MATRIX series, etc, etc?!

I will happily stand-up and shout from the rooftops to recommend any good foreign-language film or TV show, but TV networks just don't care. They insist on showing the same old films, because it's cheap, it's convenient, and it requires no effort.

Thank God, for BBC4 and Sky Arts 1 and 2 for their great foreign-language shows, like HARD, ROMANZO CRIMINALE and to a lesser-extent MAISON CLOSE.


Pooch

I totally agree and give me the pay channel back any day - I remember Film 4 once showed Bob Le Flambeur at 6 pm on a Friday. Nowadays, you're lucky if the schedule has omitted to show Shooter for the third time in a week.


And Moviedrome - that brings back memories! The Big Combo, Exotica, Mad Max 2, Dead Ringers, The Great Silence, Faccia a Faccia, Requiescant, Django, Major Dundee etc. Alex Cox and the Beeb did Sunday night proud back then. Will any of these films be screened on terrestrial tv again? I doubt it.

[mattyl149]

When I do my update videos on YouTube I always really praise the Third Window releases

I'm going to do an in-depth collection look for Third Window, as I own all their releases. I only have 90 subscribers at the moment, but I want to give them some more exposure

[Sinthetic]

Here is a UK exclusive trailer for Land of Hope

The sales figures are worrying, but this Thread is proof that no one apart from the core few give a shit.

Some random thoughts about the output:

Vulgaria was a load of shit, jokes about ****ing animals are never going to do it for me. Not even Popping Candy could save the film, that says it all.

Tetsuo double pack was fantastic and I would rate it extremely highly out of all the worldwide Asian releases.

Kotoko I hugely disliked. I'm a massive Tsukamoto fan but that one was just too much for me.

Himizu was a real return to form for Sono. I'm quite sick of watching the borderline gross stuff that he has put out recently (Cold Fish/Guilty of Romance) and it was nice to be reminded of his good work here, it definitely gave me vibes of Love Exposure.

Let's see how it goes with Hope and Bullet Ballet.

[SimBelm]

I wasn't too impressed by Land of Hope, I thought it was overlong, messy, and at times emotionally manipulative, but it did feel like very personal subject matter for Sono and I did end up quite touched by it. It reminded me of Kore-eda a little bit, however it seems Sono is heading back out of that territory for his upcoming Why Don't You Play in Hell?.

[DjangoDiabolik]

*Warning: The following post is full of subjective hypothesis*

I own three Third Window blu rays, but admittedly they're all films by directors I already knew of. Those films being Tetsuo, Love Exposure and For Love's Sake. I'd seen Tetsuo and Love Exposure before I bought the blu rays, but For Love's Sake even though it was Miike I doubted buying initially as I hadn't even heard of it.

I think a large part of it is that websites, blogs, etc that deal with Asian films just aren't as popular as they used to be and so even a Takashi Miike film isn't as easy a sale as it used to be. I'm at risk of sounding like an old man here (despite being 25), but eight or ten years ago people that did their best to promote your Battle Royales, Suicide Club, etc are now shilling for Marvel, Legendary Pictures etc. Thanks to the uber-corporatization of comi-con the kinds of film fantatics that should have replaced me and people like me are now tricked in to shilling major pictures due to viral marketing. They aren't desperate to find out what's going on in the rest of the world like we used to be. How has Ace Attorney, a Miike film based on a really popular videogame not got an American or English release yet? It isn't pushed at Comic con, that's why.

I don't think it's something that can really be bought at a label level as it's a larger problem with film geekdom (which has turned in to faux geekdom).

For Love's Sake is my favourite film of the year so far and I recommend it to everyone I can, but it's tough to get people to recognize it as it's just a name to them.

The internet used to be the place to push this stuff, and we've let the major studios steal it from us.Unless you specifically hire a social media team most websites who used to write about whatever they desired won't even talk to you. It's why I gave up writing for major sites. It's sad.

[logboy]

Originally Posted by DjangoDiabolik

*Warning: The following post is full of subjective hypothesis*
I'm at risk of sounding like an old man here (despite being 25), but eight or ten years ago people that did their best to promote your Battle Royales, Suicide Club, etc are now shilling for Marvel, Legendary Pictures etc. Thanks to the uber-corporatization of comi-con the kinds of film fantatics that should have replaced me and people like me are now tricked in to shilling major pictures due to viral marketing. They aren't desperate to find out what's going on in the rest of the world like we used to be. How has Ace Attorney, a Miike film based on a really popular videogame not got an American or English release yet? It isn't pushed at Comic con, that's why.

i don't think you're wrong here, but i'd say there are aspects that are missing. lots of more interesting stuff was coming out - and lots more in general too - earlier in the century. plenty of people would write about it, in pretty obvious places, but, even when people had money and a sense of excitement about how much more stuff from across asia was available, this didn't necessarily transfer into sales. i can remember mentions of typical titles released in america selling a handful of thousand copies, which, given how large america is, is pretty disappointing.

perhaps it's realistic to say that although people loved to portray themselves as open-minded for liking something foreign, there was a strong sense people also heavily resisted or resented the effort involved in digging through so much stuff... you can pretty much take your pick from domestic releases from HK and korea, and yet the crowd that did explore the more unusual / less obvious end of things were so dispersed that perhaps anything other than the film with lots of buzz around it would sell a few dozen copies to a few dozen different individuals who happened to live stateside and have that varied a taste in films. i'd also imagine that the predominantly young and relatively casual audience dropped-off gradually as they hit a slightly higher age bracket, or they just tired themselves out of their interest; perhaps then we can also admit that as it's been fashionable (to some extent) it's going to appear to be unfashionable for a while - it might come back into style, or we might see a lot of the fansubbers who pick out obscurer films influencing a more academically-tinged look back across all the masses of films that asian countries made over the decades.

as for sites schilling, they get into this habit by trying to build and maintain an audience that makes the effort of typing and following information worthwhile. then, if they're lucky enough to be thought of as worthwhile for free films and other goodies, they take it as a perk rather than a payment. personally, i can no longer trust pretty much any recommendation of a third window release by any site - not that i need the pointers, just that i'm an ex-blogger that's fascinated by the flaws of that culture in relation to asian films in general - as it's usually far too keen to say everything is great when it just looks (relatively?) bland in comparison to other stuff there's zero interest in when it comes to viewers watching it or licensees releasing it. japan makes hundreds of films a year, and all we get is retreads of the same kind of stuff? bizarre, as far as i'm concerned.

[deepbreathsanddeath]

Originally Posted by Sinthetic

Here is a UK exclusive trailer for Land of Hope

The sales figures are worrying, but this Thread is proof that no one apart from the core few give a shit.

Some random thoughts about the output:

Vulgaria was a load of shit, jokes about ****ing animals are never going to do it for me. Not even Popping Candy could save the film, that says it all.

Tetsuo double pack was fantastic and I would rate it extremely highly out of all the worldwide Asian releases.

Kotoko I hugely disliked. I'm a massive Tsukamoto fan but that one was just too much for me.

Himizu was a real return to form for Sono. I'm quite sick of watching the borderline gross stuff that he has put out recently (Cold Fish/Guilty of Romance) and it was nice to be reminded of his good work here, it definitely gave me vibes of Love Exposure.

Let's see how it goes with Hope and Bullet Ballet.

Vulgaria looks awful. Not something I really want to watch and definitely not something I have any desire to own.

Tetsuo double pack = awesome.

Kotoko was AMAZING IMO.

Anything by Sion Sono is greatly appreciated. Haven't seen Land of Hope but I've pretty much loved everything from him so far and will honestly collect anything he puts out. Keep them coming TWF!

I personally like and have a lot of desire to collect their horror, extreme titles and titles by cult directors. At this stage I think TWF really need to rethink their output. There are things people want to own and there are things people just want to watch. In this day and age people just illegally download movies they only want to watch.

When it comes to Asian cinema, there's even less that the general public will want to own. You've really got to play it safe half the time and rely on Asian directors who have a name for themselves and a fan base. Nothing wrong with adding lots of safe titles as well as obscure ones occasionally. You're pleasing the Asian film fans and you're making money.

[Sky_Captain]

Vulgaria did make me want to buy the missus some popping candy, though...

[Yami]

Originally Posted by deepbreathsanddeath

When it comes to Asian cinema, there's even less that the general public will want to own. You've really got to play it safe half the time and rely on Asian directors who have a name for themselves and a fan base. Nothing wrong with adding lots of safe titles as well as obscure ones occasionally. You're pleasing the Asian film fans and you're making money.

Just out of interest, what currently unlicensed title would you consider "safe"?