Release Date??

For whatever reason, Kitano is viewed as merely a cult director, despite Zatoichi being HUGE, most of his films winning awards (actually -- haven't all of his films won an award at some point, aside from maybe Brother?), and Kitano being one of the most recognized and well known Asian actors of all time (with his appearance in Battle Royale, as well as mXc/Takeshi's Castle). Unfortunately, none of his films have done big business, aside from Zatoichi, which was huge, and I don't think BRother was a huge failure or anything, though it probably disappointed somebody, somewhere. One of the biggest problems with Kitano's films is that almost none of them have had very good DVD releases in the USA -- they've ALL had North America DVD releases, but not much care was put into most of the releases (Dolls, HANA-Bi, Zatoichi, and Sonatine are the exceptions, since each one has a GREAT dvd release; Kikajiro and Brother both look really really good but their DVD's are bare-bones). With the growing age of Netflix (especially Instant Watch), most people see films now through online rental, and Kitano's films -- while certainly having been seen by many, many people (and being generally well-liked) -- don't have respectable DVD Releases, which actually hurts his reputation here a bit, in my opinion. Look at John Woo; he was mostly known for a few American films, but with "Strangelhold" and some recent decent, clean re-releases of the Killer and Hard-Boiled on DVD/Blu-Ray, he's gotten quite a bit more popular (it doesn't hurt that you can buy his films at Wal-Mart now; Hard Boiled is there for $5 on DVD!). What Kitano needs is a respected company like Criterion to re-release Hana-Bi.. can you imagine how amazing that would be? What a package. That would be a perfect fit, too -- his more artful films would fit perfectly under the Criterion banner; I really think people would sit up and take notice.

I see Kitano as, one day, being USA-renowned as The Master, since he.. well.. is. Unfortunately, I don't see it happening soon, so I don't see this as ever having much of a North American theatrical release, though I certainly think it'll be his first film since Dolls to get a DVD release here (probably from a smaller DVD company, but a small release is better than no release -- god, we ALL took all those weekly Asian DVD's for granted, didn't we? A few years ago, I had like 30 Asian new releases added to my Netflix queue weekly -- now we're lucky to have 30 new releases a YEAR. I don't even think THE CHASER has come out here yet... no I'M A CYBORG BUT THAT'S OKAY... the best film of all time, 2000's EUREKA by Shinji Aoyama, hasn't come out despite being a perfect, logical fit for Criterion or Facets. Oh well!). We'll just keep our fingers crossed I guess.


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pre·ten·tious: characterized by assumption of dignity or importance.