To cut a long story short, when I was at secondary school, I suffered from what I called "unprescribed insomnia", that is, I never felt the need to see a doctor to explain my consistent sleeping defects, some nights two hours, other times 72 hour blocks, the situation was insane but I felt it worked to my advantage by allowing me extra time to watch so many films (maybe 6 a night). The situation changed when I became employed, with 6am wake-ups, 9 hour days, by the time I got home (whether that would be through lifts or its alternate, a lengthy bicycle ride), I had no stamina to, for example, last through a 90 minute film without falling asleep before the halfway mark (in this case, it could be days before watching anything again, which, in my view constitutes a non-productive existence). After 2 years and 3 months in the 8 - 5 routine, I then became a "mature" (22 or 23) student at University and that's where my sleeping patterns began to become erratic. In social terms, a typical university student (aka. Nosferatu) sleeps during the day and arises at night whereby sleep might come into play sometime between 2 - 8am... this is a problem for me as I pretty much awake between 6 and 7am every morning (force of habit), regardless of what time I go to bed the night/morning before. Bed at 10pm, awake at 6. Bed at 4am, awake at 6. A built in alarm clock with unalterable factory default. So, I tended to swing between the two states of (un)conscious (insomnia and narcolepsy).
Fast forward to Monday's screening of the new Rivette film and by the time I had reached the cinema (film started at 4pm), I was absolutely exhausted, almost to the point of delirium. Prior to the film's opening credits, I spent the time trying to find a comfortable position in a part of the cinema where the seats are only OK, suffice to say, I thought I had found it slightly outstretched with my head resting against the back of the chair (no headrests). Not good. A day later I suffered the consequences and through a combination of fatigue (which I had gone to see the doctor about - looking like a leftover from a Romero film), and the evils of a stinking cold, it seemed my body couldn't repair the damage my "sitting" position had caused a few days before. Drowsy, passive and any movement around the lower back region ready to cause disembowelment have meant my incapacitation for the last three days. So rarely do I get ill, the last trip to the doctor was for the rare condition amongst healthy young people known as pneumothorax (aka collapsed lung), that was a year ago and before that, must be something like 3-4 years... up to 5 year increments.
In other news: I received Edward Yang's A Brighter Summer Day (1991) on a dual layer DVD+R from AsiaFilm, this film has no official distribution in any English speaking country (or, to my knowledge, *any* country as an official release). Sadly, on the reverse is written:
This Brighter Summer Day DVD is published by Asiafilm.com
This masterpiece film is not currently being distributed in any video format worldwide, so we are making this available as a service to film lovers. If you know how we can contact Edward Yang to try to distribute BSD on DVD in North America, please contact us at (940) 497-FILM. Thank you and enjoy!
Unfortunately, as of 29th June 2007, there was no way of reaching Mr. Yang. R.I.P.
[with thanks to Jonathan Rosenbaum for pointing me out to this DVD via his page on the cinemascope website]
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2 comments:
I wonder how the DVD of Brighter Summer's Day that you received differs from the laderdisc transfer. Does it have hard-coded subtitles? How is the quality?
I wonder how the DVD of Brighter Summer's Day that you received differs from the laderdisc transfer. Does it have hard-coded subtitles? How is the quality?
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