Love and Duty (WCL Exclusive Limited Edition)

[CelestialAgent]

$93? Are all Chinese releases this expensive? £70 is a little much for a blind buy for me.

[theosh]

$93??!!!???

Oh man! I really, really want this but don’t think I can afford that sadly. And that’s before shipping too.

[PGW]

... not to mention ~$35.00 shipping!

P.S. - Yeah, I went for it anyway.

[e_d]

I forget the last Diskino, I think Writer's Oddysey? But a Chinese seller on eBay had them for less than it cost on Buyoyo last I checked. May be a similar case if you wait and hope it shows up on there.

[e_d]

https://www.ebay.com/itm/WCL-Exclusi...y/265594919159

$99 USD and free shipping. This is the seller I was referring to in my last post.

[sprocket]

I decided to sign up for this at media psychos. My first group buy since The Wandering Earth.

These releases are so expensive. I'd rather wait for a cheaper, standard edition, but those are the exception with these releases.

It is what it is, but the film looks very interesting.

[e_d]

Originally Posted by sprocket

I decided to sign up for this at media psychos. My first group buy since The Wandering Earth.

These releases are so expensive. I'd rather wait for a cheaper, standard edition, but those are the exception with these releases.

It is what it is, but the film looks very interesting.

Let us know how much it winds up costing. I'm curious how much they're overcharging.

[sprocket]

I'm not in the US, so the figures won't mean much.

[PGW]

The ebay seller has more copies available, but jacked up the price so that it's now cheaper to buy it from buyoyo.

[PGW]

Release date bumped to 4-8 @ buyoyo.

Edit: Make that 4-15

Edit: Make that 4-28

Edit: Make that 5-6

[kishiro]

I heard it's delayed to sometime in May (due to delays caused by Covid-19 Omicron-outbreak in China).

[PGW]

I notice that buyoyo has significantly bumped up the price - which was already obscenely high. It's now $122.40 U.S. + shipping (!).

[e_d]

Mine shipped. Probably going to be 3-4 months until I receive it.

[PGW]

I just got the shipping notice as well. Happy to see it finally exists!

[apollo828]

Well, we now have some copies in the wild. Overall, it's looking like a wonderful, if quite expensive, package. Contents are as follows. Unless otherwise noted, everything has soft English and, where appropriate, Simplified Chinese subs.

Disc 1:
- Film (Cards have Chinese & English written on them)

Disc 2:
- "Filmstar, Genre, and Image: A Review of Love and Duty" (Discussion of the film with Duan Pengfei - NO ENGLISH)
- "The Rediscovery of a Significant Part in Film History" (80 minute interview with Tony Rayns. If this is anything like his other interviews for WCL, this should be a real treat.)
- "The Rediscovery of a Lost Film: Restoring Love and Duty" (Interview with Jerry Chiu, head of the Taiwan Film and Audiovisual Institute's Digital Restoration Department)
- "Stanley Kwan on Ruan Lingyu" (Self-explanatory interview)
- "Composing Love and Duty" (Interview with Maud Nelissen, the pianist who composed a new score for the film)
- "Restoration Demonstration" (Silent before/after footage comparison)

[qw0aszx]

Originally Posted by apollo828

"The Rediscovery of a Significant Part in Film History" (80 minute interview with Tony Rayns. If this is anything like his other interviews for WCL, this should be a real treat.)

You're in for a real treat for sure! This is pretty much an interesting film history lesson on early Chinese cinema.

What's more, although that 116p booklet is in Chinese only, the other 28p booklet, which includes the essay by Victor Fan and an interview with Maud Nelissen, is in English as well. Also, that 14p folding page is a detailed restoration report from L'Immagine Ritrovata, in English only.

[PGW]

The package arrived today. Well packed - it's in a box surrounded by a foam insert to prevent damage. There's a number on the bottom indicating that this is a limited edition of 700, and what your particular number is. The package is very nice, but not quite up to the best work of South Korea or Taiwan (the LE of "That Day On The Beach" is still the most gorgeous package I've ever seen).

The picture quality is impressive, considering the age of the film and that we're lucky a print of it exists at all. A couple of spots show brief nitrate decomposition, and there's an odd rolling pattern in the density which is probably the result of the way the film was stored. The acting, not surprisingly, is phenomenal, and there are several stand-out sequences in the directing as well. The piano score is a little too meandering for my taste, sometimes sounding like the composer is improvising whatever comes into her head. It's not too distracting most of the time, though, and I've certainly heard worse. The long lecture by Tony Rayns is very informative, though at times I found myself wishing he'd talk more about the actual film. The restoration demo is the same one seen on YouTube. The first extra is the only one that isn't English-friendly, which is a little surprising, since they went to the trouble to put subs on the other extras. I hope this gets licensed by Criterion, or one of the European companies. It's an important silent film, and deserves to be seen by a wider audience than the 700 of us who forked over >$100 to own a copy.

[qw0aszx]

A standard edition will be released next month.