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March 27th 2002 A site overhaul took place today. Pretty much everything has had a facelift ready for Ozu's Centenary in 2003. To celebrate, I have added the complete texts from the Japanese book "Ozu Retrospective: 90th Anniversary Of Ozu's Birth" (1993). |
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February 7th 2002 Today, Jon Mulvaney of the Criterion Collection in New York announced that: "Criterion has tentative plans to release at least one Ozu title in 2002. I doubt, however, that it will be Floating Weeds. I'm afraid that's all I know at this time." |
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February 6th 2002 Les Films de ma Vie released a two DVD Box set recently consisting of "Le voyage a Tokyo" ("Tokyo Story") and 'Le gout du sake" ("Autumn Afternoon"). They are PAL Region 2 discs with only French subtitles. Ozu egroup member Michael Kerpan writes: "Tokyo Story looks better than the New Yorker video, but probably not any better (and perhaps not quite as good) as the [newer] Hong Kong VCD. The "Autumn Afternoon" does look a bit better (especially colorwise) than the New Yorker video. There aren't any significant extra materials on either disc." |
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October 7th 2001 A raft of updates. Firstly there is Chishu Ryu's words about Yasujiro Ozu from the Spring 1964 issue of the UK magazine "Sight & Sound"; Chishu Ryu's obituary from the same magazine in 1994 - both are in the RESOURCES section (Many thanks to Jeffrey Kuo for sending these); the Floating Weeds essay by David Ehrenstein from the Criterion Laserdisc (thanks to Neil Babra). Furthermore, a proper overhaul of the FILMS page has been made; Early Summer Criterion Laserdisc essay by Bruce Eder (Thanks go to Jeffrey Kuo); The Ozu Bibliography: I've made a start with this, I plan to add to it regularly so that it can be somewhere near definitive. I've also had the much appreciated help of Gary Tooze who provided lovely colour screen grabs of Criterion's GOOD MORNING DVD for the STYLE section. |
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August 29th 2001 Added a scan of the Miyagawa obituary from the UK "The Guardian" newspaper in 1999. |
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May 14th 2001 Nick Wrigley has reviewed the Criterion Collection DVD edition of OHAYO ("GOOD MORNING") at DVD Times (the largest UK DVD review site). This is the first Ozu DVD to be released in the West and its lack of extras is unfortunate, but the high quality print is remarkable to behold. Click here or on the picture to read it. |
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January 30th 2001 New Yorker Films have apparently reduced the price of their Ozu on VHS. They are now a quarter the price they were. Let's hope if they eventually decide to release Ozu (or Bresson) DVDs that they aren't $80 too. |
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August 17th 2000 Fantastic developments at the University Of Tokyo where there is an OZU EXHIBITION and website which talks at length about digital restoration of Ozu's films and a collection of Ozu related materials, including the note-books of Ozu and his longtime cameraman Atsuta. |
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June 20th 2000 There are currently no Ozu films in print on VHS or DVD in the United Kingdom since Tokyo Story was deleted in 1999. Write to Artifical Eye if you'd like to complain. |
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June 19th 2000 There is a Yasujiro Ozu email list here. There are currently only eight members - if you can contribute, please sign-up (it's free). |
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June 10th 2000 Criterion (USA) are to release "Ohayo" on DVD in the next few weeks. |
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September 10th 1999 Kazuo Miyagawa, cinematographer for Ozu, Kurosawa, & Mizoguchi, passed away on August 7th 1999 (February 25th 1908 - August 7th 1999). Click to see the UK newspaper "The Guardian" obituary. |
