Tokyo Sonata BR/DVD

[pro-bassoonist]

Courtesy of our friends at The Times:

Eureka Entertainment recently announced that their new acquisition Tokyo Sonata (Kiyoshi Kurosawa, 2008) won the Jury Prize in the UN CERTAIN REGARD section of the Cannes Film Festival on Saturday 24th May. After a theatrical release this Winter, the film will be released on UK DVD and Blu-ray in the Masters of Cinema Series.

Tokyo Sonata joins “a healthy slate of 40 titles prepped for DVD/Blu-ray release over the next two years.” Of those 40 we’re not sure how many will make it to Blu-ray, so we’ve contacted Eureka to see if they can elaborate on the Blu-ray release slate. We do however already know through retail listings that Johnnie To’s Mad Detective is likely to be one of their first Blu-ray releases, with Amazon placing its release on 20th October 2008.

Tokyo Sonata is a portrait of a seemingly ordinary Japanese family. All appears normal until the father loses his job and tries to conceal the fact. Somehow an unforeseeable chasm appears within the family, only to spread ever so quietly and quickly to disintegrate them.

Official site:
http://tokyosonata.com/index.html

Variety:

When the father is canned at work, an average Tokyo family goes into slo-mo freefall in “Tokyo Sonata,” a quizzical dramedy by Kiyoshi Kurosawa that puts some fresh juice into the waning step of the onetime J-horror specialist. Movie never develops the blackly comic bite of others dissecting the modern Japanese family unit —classically repped by “Family Game” — and would also benefit from 10 to 15 minutes’ worth of trimming. But Kurosawa’s ironic, quietly spacey take on characters in massive self-denial is entertaining enough to attract modest arthouse returns beyond Japan.

When his company outsources its administration department to China, loyal salaryman Ryuhei Sasaki (Teruyuki Kagawa) doesn’t dare tell his family he’s been made redundant and spends his days queueing at a job center and dealing with his professional shame. Meanwhile, at home, wife Megumi (Kyoko Koizumi) goes about her duties with almost military precision, maintaining a facade of family life that only exists around the dinner table, with eldest son Takashi (Yu Koyanagi) and younger Kenji (Kai Inowaki), both equally disconnected from their tightly-wound dad.

Script, developed by Kurosawa and Sachiko Tanaka from an original by Aussie Max Mannix (“Dance of the Dragon”), has some early fun with the father’s attempts to hide his joblessness, in particular his chance meeting with an old friend, Kurosu (Kanji Tsuda), at a free-porridge charity outlet. In a similar quandary as Ryuhei, Kurosu has developed his joblessness into an art form, programming his cell phone to call him at regular intervals and, in a funny sequence when he invites Ryuhei home for dinner, even pretending the two work together in order to fool his wife.

But just like Kurosu’s wife, Megumi is not quite the home-making machine she appears to be. Already going quietly nuts trying to deal with her sons’ alienation and her own treatment by Ryuhei, she spots Ryuhei by chance one day lining up for his free porridge, but keeps the news to herself for the time being.

Kenji, in the meantime, has taken his life into his own hands, using his school-meal money for secret piano lessons (against his father’s wishes) and blossoming into a real talent under his teacher, Kaneko (Haruka Igawa). When all the family’s secrets and lies start to spill out, a chance event sends it unravelling even farther.

Though there’s nothing here that hasn’t been dealt with in other Japanese movies, pic benefits considerably from its pitch-perfect performances — especially Kagawa as the diminutive, wild-eyed paterfamilias, and the graceful Koizumi as the wife in desparate need of companionship. Kurosawa’s skill (seen in his best J-horrors) at suggesting so much more than appears onscreen is a further plus, without going into the mystical realms of his earlier non-horror, “Bright Future.”

Switch of tone in the final act, featuring an extended cameo by Kurosawa’s favorite thesp, Koji Yakusho, is more problematical, mixing broader comedy with a resolution that spells everything out too literally and at unnecessary length.

Technical credits are modest but get the job done, with especially subtle use of the limited space in the family’s home by distaff d.p. Akiko Ashizawa, who shot Kurosawa’s far more visually ornate “Retribution” (2006).

Camera (color), Akiko Ashizawa; editor, Koichi Takahashi; music, Kazumasa Hashimoto; production designers, Tomoyuki Maruo, Tomoe Matsumoto; sound (Dolby SR), Masayuki Iwakura; visual effects supervisor, Shuji Asano; associate producer, Raymond Phathanavirangoon. Reviewed at Cannes Film Festival (Un Certain Regard), May 17, 2008. Running time: 119 MIN.

Pro-B

[logboy]

it's good to have an early announcement of a good home for this film in the UK... it bucks the trend so much that it's hard to avoid the confusion that will be caused by the continued desire to see this simply appear as soon as possible; you'll already see comments posted in places akin to "sounds cool, i want the dvd now - when is it out?".

It will be interesting to see how well people hold out on picking up the first subbed appearance on disc (as is predominantly the case for those of us that are interested in such films, it seems) in the hope of a superb treatment, by those of us that won't yet (ever?) buy into it as part of a possible convenient festival appearance or small-scale cinema release.

i would guess it will be a very long time before even MoC gets this out. the cinema release in japan is september; DVD release there in perhaps a year from now, maybe? taking a guess, it will hit MoC late next year, earliest, so as to not tread on the toes of a domestic japanese release too much...

[NoirFan]

Interesting to see MoC finally tackling modern films- this along with Mad Detective and La Vie de Jesus.

[pro-bassoonist]

http://tokyosonata.co.uk/

Pro-B

[Giles]

US theatrical release: March 13, 2009

[marty888]

Saw this at the NYFF in October - absolutely wonderful movie. I will probably see it again when it opens theatrically, and the eventual DVD purchase is a given!

[NoirFan]

DVD pre-order is up at Amazon with a release date of 5/18/09, but no Blu-ray as of yet.

[logboy]

Originally Posted by NoirFan

DVD pre-order is up at Amazon with a release date of 5/18/09, but no Blu-ray as of yet.

why the dvdbeaver code in the URL ?

[Dan Average]

Because he copied the URL from DVD Beaver, probably. Here's a referral-free URL if it bugs you.

[logboy]

Originally Posted by Dan Average

Because he copied the URL from DVD Beaver, probably. Here's a referral-free URL if it bugs you.

I find it underhand. it's also much harder to copy a code with a referal in it than to take the URL once linked through, because once the page loads it's
no longer clear there was a referal element in the link...

[Dan Average]

I don't know what browser you're using, but on Firefox the URL remains unchanged after clicking through, referral element and all. It's no more or less difficult than copying any other URL.

[DVD Guy ATL]

Available for pre-order on Blu-ray:
http://www.amazon.co.uk/Tokyo-Sonata.../dp/B001RM92FE

[dmkb]

Thanks for the link - I'm really looking forward to this one.

[Cosmic Bus]

Preordered the Blu-ray with a grandiose flourish! I've been waiting so long to see this, so another three months won't kill me...

[NoirFan]

Theatrical Trailer

[NoirFan]

Extras, from DVD Times:

* HD transfer of the film in its original aspect ratio
* Newly translated optional English subtitles
* Making of Documentary (60 minutes)
* Japanese press junkets, cast and crew interviews, award ceremonies (39 minutes)
* Original UK theatrical trailer
* 28-page booklet containing a brand new essay by writer B. Kite

[Cosmic Bus]

The delay from May until the end of June is disheartening. I hate how movies can go from theater to DVD in the span of 12 weeks unless it's something I want to see, then they're happy to take months upon months to get it out.

[NoirFan]

Sorry, I should have mentioned the changed release date: it's now June 22nd. MoC are really lagging behind Criterion in the Blu-ray department.

[NoirFan]

Blu-ray.com review

[Brent L]

Awesome, thanks for posting that!