Best Websites for Purchasing Hard-To-Find Films

For Japanese stuff, www.cdjapan.co.jp is a great site and service, and it is all in English.

i have at all the ones i named except subterranean cinema, which i just found the other day. i'm assuming it's just a small-time bootlegging outfit, but the guy has some really hard to find stuff.

be sure that if you order something from sites like vdb.org or canyoncinema.com to let them know your purchasing it for personal use only. whereas a rental for a public screening may cost $100 or more, a VHS for personal use (to keep, not a rental) may be only $20-30. I know most of vdb's jem cohen collection is available for sale at $30 each.

as far as i can tell with subterranean, the website acts as a catalog, and you have to contact the guy who runs it via e-mail to order stuff. i'm tempted to get the kenneth anger stuff, but i'm waiting on fantoma.com to release their collection--although every time i try to contact them for a release data, my e-mail is returned back.

I recently saw Serie Noire which is impossible to find in this country, but the quality looked like a 12th generation VHS.

I'd say that if you think of these ratings in the context of bootlegs (which these dvds are, obv.) then they are correct. Obv. they are not being viewed in the context of professionally produced videos and the ratings shouldn't be taken as such.

Also, from viewing these two dvds, the cover pictures are taken directly from their copies of the films and are indicative of the quality of the product. Now if only they costed less ...

We ought to just cut out the middleman completely and start doing a "movie share" through this site.

I don't feel guilt about sharing copies of films that are otherwise commercially unavailable in this country.

Man, you and me both. I'm still kicking myself for missing a screening in Chicago a year ago.

I know that in NYC the 3-hour cut is being released in March -- at least that's what I read. I'm assuming this will be the relase all over America.

Plus it's got Paul Bettany, Patricia Clarkson and a bunch of other 'now' stars.

My interested has been peaked in "the beaver trilogy". who has seen it? what's it all about? fill me in please.

The way the TAL piece is structured (suspensefully) really piqued my curiosity, but if you just want the facts, here ya go:

In 1979, director Trent Harris shot some footage of some weird kid whom he randomly discovered in Beaver, Utah. The kid is in love with Harris's camera, hams it up with various celebrity impressions, and the 20-minute film (the first part of the trilogy) culminates in the kid doing an Olivia Newton-John impersonation at a local talent show.

In brief, the second and third parts of the trilogy are the exact same footage reenacted, first by Sean Penn (in 1981) and then by Crispin Glover (in 1985). (Actually, I don't think it's entirely exact -- there are some interesting discrepancies in each part of the trilogy.) Each of these films was sitting around in Harris's closet until the late 90s, when, for whatever reason, he was inspired to finally release them as one film.

YouTube's getting better and better--found both Play It as It Lays and Puzzle of a Downfall Child on there tonight (also The Heartbreak Kid and Spielberg's TV-movie Something Evil).