All About Lily Chou Chou [Blu-ray]

This film is right up there with Hana & Alice for me. Quite a unique coming-of-age drama. If you are up for a good drama that is a little bit different, I definitely recommend giving this a try. Film Movement's blu-ray has excellent PQ, nice artwork and an insert with a very informative essay. I really like when they go the extra mile to give movie fans top quality releases like this. It is good to know that Criterion and Arrow are not the only two companies capable of delivering these wonderful releases.

The movie looks beautiful, I feel this version is better than the AppleTv version.

this film encapsulates the life sustaining magic of music, how it shapes and keeps us going in times of hardship.. especially in those years of struggle for identity in the face of harsh but ultimately impersonal social forces that hammer us from all sides , attempting to mold us into whatever shape is called for in the zeitgeist . music is the refuge that we go to for restorative solace . sad but beautiful film.

Let me first state that my one-star rating has nothing to do with the film itself, it is a rating of the DVD. I truly consider this film, "Riri Shu-Shu no subete", to be one of the greatest works of art ever created in the cinematic medium. I own the Japanese DVD (both the normal and collector's editions), and the British edition as well. I was happy for American audiences when I saw this was finally coming out on DVD in the USA, but I have changed my mind after finally getting my hands on the disk. It is simply awful. The video transfer is ghastly to behold, and as if this weren't bad enough, the audio is even worse. What can the DVD producers have been thinking? Here we have a film that is utterly glorious to behold, and even more glorious to listen to, a film where the music forms an extremely important part of the whole, and all we get is this crappy disk? The whole thing looks like it was filmed through a vaseline-smeared fog (while the original is digitally crisp and clear like a spring morning), and the music sounds as if is coming from a battery-driven cassette-player that has seen much better days. It makes me sad to the point of weeping, and very angry inside. It is totally disrespectful to the art and care that went into the making of this amazing film. I hope that the cast and crew will never see or hear this edition - I'm quite sure they would be devastated to see how their work has been ruined by the hands of others. Fortunately, I have the perfectly produced Japanese disks to go back to. Even the European edition, although far from perfect, is much, much better than this travesty. I confess that I only bought this, because it contains the Japanese "making-of" with subtitles, because the Japanese original doesn't have any subtitles and my Japanese is not much good. I was glad to be finally able to view the "making-of" feature with the needed subtitles, but here again there was disappointment: why, oh why, did they have to cut 20 minutes out of this excellent documentary? I could hardly believe it, because there is no obvious reason for the cuts. I am going to try my best to forget that this disk exists. It really hurts to know that many people are going to see this film for the first time in this edition. It is a thought that makes me incredibly sad, because this is a film I dearly love, and would like everyone to see in its full and splendid glory. The Ether has been polluted. Here's a translation of the first of Lily's songs in the film, translated from a Japanese translation of the Okinawan: ARABESQUE blue sky blue sea birdsong blue sky blue sea birdsong of the south when the white flowers blossomed a girl was born the girl was named after the flower blue sky blue sea birdsong blue sky blue sea birdsong of the south when the white flowers blossomed a girl was born the girl was named after the flower the girl was named after the flower blue sky blue sea birdsong when the red flowers blossom

very good movie.

In early 2010, I found this movie in the low 90s of Adam Jahnke's "Top 100 films of 2000-09," and I rented it, and liked it a lot, for its atmosphere and visual style and music. Soon I went after both soundtracks ( Kokyuu & All About Lily Chou-Chou Original So ). This summer, I thought of the movie again, checked for Blu-Ray (none available yet) and got the DVD. A few reviews here were confusing, about how this particular DVD release (Home Vision Enter't.) was some kind of sub-par travesty of the visual / sonic integrity of the "real" film. To try to be fair, I tried two DVD versions (description and link to other DVD version below**) of the movie to see for myself. I saw no differences between the two, and thought the visuals were all fine, as crisp and clear as they ever needed to be, and the sound was fine on both, too. (Then I read the comments to these disgruntled reviewers, and I agree that there may be something -- unsuspected pirated copy; bad equipment; confusion over the personal digi-camcorder-filmed sequences; unrealistically high cinematic expectations of a digital-era filmwatcher, who knows? -- that colored their views. Maybe I should've gone after yet another version of the DVD [there are at least two others] to truly vindicate their complaints, but someday the Blu-Ray will come along and render all of these complaints mute anyway.) But again, for now, I think the stunning cinematography and artful lighting and the music and soundscapes are presented perfectly. [**FYI, this HVE DVD has more chapter breaks than the other one. This DVD's extras includes a small BTS documentary, a Salyuu music video, an essay by the director, bio / filmography, and trailers. All About Lily Chou has no extras, although the packaging is pretty, with info on the director's career in the paper insert. Although the packaging is Japanese or Chinese, the DVD is Apparently multi-regional...Apparently] The plot and content of this 2001 film is already pretty well described in the product descriptions and the other reviews, so I won't repeat those. So, who is this movie really for? Certainly not a general audience. There are many harsh topics covered / implied in this film, some more vividly than others. (Details in next paragraph) After a personal preview, and depending on your teens' character / attitude, you could conceivably make it the springboard for a major discussion about many aspects of teen life, the hard and the light, the bad and the good. Granted, there's some dark and depressing stuff in this story, but there are also some lighter and more uplifting aspects, too, that almost balance it out. A list of harsh story elements, for those trying to determine whether, how, and who to let watch (brace thyselves): --Extended masturbatory cruelty scene, the action of which is mercifuly off-screen or briefly in very low-light background, but the poor kid keeps going, even after his main tormentors leave --Plenty of "adult" language, name-calling, multiple thefts in various parts --Mild parental abuse early in the film --Many instances of clique-ing and cruel rejection and putting down of outsider kids --A stranger in Okinawa is hit by a motor vehicle; brief shots of road made bloody by his injured head --Post-Okinawa protagonist out-bullies a bully by knocking him off a desk, throwing a chair at him, cutting off a mass of his hair, and treating him like a dog, making him wallow naked in the mud --Suicide implied / corpse / funeral --Mildly-implied instance of the practice of enjo-kosai --Implied rape in abandoned textile factory --Apparent off-screen knife-kill during a stampede/panic --Assorted other cruel acts (these are teenagers, after all, some of them fitting the definition of bullies) Also, aside from the drama, this film can be really trying and confusing on several levels. You have to have subtitles, and it's a very textual film, anyway, with a lot of epiliepsy-inducing chat-room text clacking/flashing across the screen in various sequences. It's a stylish and dramatic movie, low on harmless popcorn-munching action sequences. It's over two hours long, and the pace is often slow enough that you really do feel all of that time passing. (via calmness, boredom, shock, or suspense). There's a temporal dislocation, with the middle part being a long prequel to the rest of the movie. There's a degree of cultural divide, since this is about characters in Japan, with their own customs, terminology, obscure cultural references, and unique practices and problems. (The film's Wiki article, with links to the film's own website, can be quite helpful in this regard.) Even so, most of the main characters are teenagers, going through so many of the various issues and trials of all 21st-century teens across the world. So, would this only appeal to Japan-o-philes, anthropologists/ sociologists, film students, foreign film fans, art film lovers, fans of artier pop music, and various teenagers (for different reasons, despite the more depressing aspects)? I'd like to think the potential appeal of this film can be broader than that, despite the heavier situations, for there is light, life, and beauty in this movie, too.

It comes with an hour of a behind the scenes documentary done in a similar style as the movie.

...this is a wonderful film. Fanstastic music, cinematography, acting, and story. A brilliant piece of work from director Shunji Iwai. My favorite film of all time. Buy it. Now. ;)

Merci au vendeur

Einer der schönsten Filme der Welt, assoziativ, wirr und intim wie der Blick in ein Teenager-Tagebuch. Die digitale Kamera fängt ausrisshaft und in giftig gesättigten Farben eine Welt ein, die für ihre jugendlichen Protagonisten mehr und mehr aus den Fugen gerät. Hier führen alle Figuren ein Doppelleben: einerseits als verschlossene, scheinbar abgestumpfte, in einer unerbittlichen Hackordnung gefangene Mittelschüler im realen Leben, andererseits als empfindsame, nach Bestätigung und einem Gefühl von Zusammenhang suchende virtuelle Persönlichkeiten auf den Messegeboards im Internet. So offen sie in ihren naiven, emotionalen Bekenntnissen auf den Fan-Seiten eines Pop-Sternchens ihr Innerstes nach außen kehren, so wenig gelingt es ihnen, sich in der wirklichen Welt tatsächlich zu berühren. Es gibt Gewalt, Prostitution, Vergewaltigung - von den engelsgesichtigen Jugendlichen mit gleichmütiger Miene vollzogen und hingenommen. Und dennoch liegt ein seltsam betörender Schleier über allem; so himmelhochjauchzend-verzweifelt nimmt man sich selbst und die Welt eben nur einmal wahr, und der inzwischen leidlich erwachsene Zuschauer kann sich mit Wonne und Schaudern zurückerinnern an die Sehnsüchte, die ihn mit fünfzehn umgetrieben haben.

Jamás creí tener está palicula en mis manos y en Blu Ray, increíble espero vendan más.

Grande film poco noto.

I'm not going to go too deep into the film, because if you're reading this it's probably because you want to know whether it's worth buying and not for somebody to spoil it for you. So yes, buy buy buy! But be prepared to think. The film doesn't give you much of a chance to fall behind, but if you keep up it's well worth it. Beautifully presented, fluent story telling and although somewhat slow in places, you won't get bored. I love this film, although i didn't really appreciate it until the day after i watched it and remembered certain scenes. What are you waiting for? [