New old movies

If you live in Japan, you get to watch American movies three months later than everyone else, and for more money to boot. Well, in the theater, anyway; if you’re renting disks it’s quite affordable but you get to wait six months instead. I’ve never gotten into the whole “download movies from the internets” thing, but I suppose that route is there for people who can’t wait to watch in a bit more comfort than a computer chair offers.

A few coming up that I’m interested in seeing are There Will Be Blood and No Country for Old Men. I’m a huge fan of Cormac McCarthy (thanks to James for cluing me in to him many years ago). I must admit this is my least favorite of his books—with the possible exception of The Sunset Limited (Amazon page), but I haven’t gotten to that one yet, so no ranking there. But I’m interested to see what happens when this makes it to the screen in the hands of the actors and directors involved with this project.

(I never saw the 2000 adaptation of All the Pretty Horses, but I’ve never seen reviews of it that made me feel like I was missing out. Would be nice to see someone in Hollywood approach the entire Border Trilogy in a serious fashion.)

McCarthy’s page at IMDB says that not only The Road but Blood Meridian and Outer Dark are also in production now. I wonder about the possibility of doing a good transition to the screen with those two—particularly Blood Meridian, which features massive violence and supernaturally intelligent bald giants and such. However, Ridley Scott is listed as the director for it, so maybe there’s a chance we’ll see a compelling Judge Holden on our movie screens. For me, on my TV six months later.

Good information on Cormac McCarthy is available at this site.

04/21/2008 | Japan, books, film | Comments

3 Responses to “New old movies”

  1. Posted by: adamrice - 04/21/2008

    I’ve never read any McCarthy, but No Country for Old Men is an amazing movie. There Will Be Blood also amazing.

  2. Posted by: foomfoom - 04/21/2008

    Downloads don’t have to be for the computer chair. There are DVD downloads out there usually 1-2 months after they hit theaters in the States. And full HD releases a week or four before the BD drops anywhere. They can all be viewed comfortably on your TV any number of different ways.

    Now there is the whole moral dilemma thing, but while I’m not saying it’s right, when you look at release lists (very typical)
    and ticket/disc prices in Japan it’s hard to feel too bad about it.

    But then there is the whole issue of subtitles which sort of throws a wrench into things. You can find subtitles for any major motion picture or TV show in any language except Japanese. It’s not fun trying to do a simultaneous interpretation of an entire movie (let alone 3 and a half seasons of Lost). I actually did find a set of subtitles for Spider-man 3, but it was full of 萌～s and わんばんこ～s

  3. Posted by: lunamania - 04/22/2008

    The Road was my first venture into McCarthy-land and it was terrifying, but i stayed up all night reading it. Almost as scary as Saramango’s Blindness!

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