READIN

🦋 Box Set

My package arrived in the mail today! -- Well it arrived Monday, no-one was home to sign for it; I picked it up at the post office this morning. (WTF? There is now overnight parcel service from Shanghai to New Jersey! This totally boggles my mind. Makes the large sum the seller was charging for postage seem much more reasonable.)

And, well, it seems legit. I have not yet popped a disc in the player to watch it; but all the dvd's are there, and marked as region 0. It weirds me out a little that I can't find any reference to this collection (The Master of Cinema: Werner Herzog Collection) anywhere on the web except for Chinese e-bay auctions. It's a pretty recent collection, includes a movie from 2005. This seems like it might be a signal of piracy but I can't figure out what the incentive is for pirates to produce a 24-dvd collection of Werner Herzog, with obscure titles and professional-looking packaging and everything -- the target audience seems tiny. (Also weirding me out is the inclusion of disc #23, My Best Friend by Patrice Leconte. Which one of these dvds does not belong?)

Well unless somebody convinces me it's unethical, I will be buying more box sets from this seller -- s/he has collections of all the classic directors I'm interested in.

Title list below the fold.

Update: Note if you're thinking about buying this, many of the titles will not play on a US region DVD player -- the seller claims they are region 0 but this is false in many cases. Also some of the discs have screwed-up aspect ratio.

(Note: strange how the editors of the collection translated some of the titles and not others, and a few into French. Not sure what this means.)

1. Signs of Life (1968)
   Audio: English,Dutch
   Subtitles: English,Chinese
2. Auch Zwerge haben klein angefangen (1970)
   Audio: English,German
   Subtitles: German,Chinese
3. Fata Morgana (1971)
   Audio: English,German
   Subtitles: Chinese
4. Land des Schweigens und der Dunkelheit (1971)
   Audio: Dutch
   Subtitles: English,Chinese
5. Aguirre, the Wrath of God (1972)
   Audio: German
   Subtitles: English,Chinese
6. The Enigma of Kaspar Hauser (1974)
   Audio: English,German
   Subtitles: English,Chinese
7. Herz aus Glas (1976)
   Audio: German
   Subtitles: English,Chinese
8. Stroszek (1977)
   Audio: German
   Subtitles: English,Chinese
9. Nosferatu : Phantom der Nacht (1979)
   Audio: German
   Subtitles: English,Chinese
10. Woyzeck (1979)
    Audio: German
    Subtitles: English,Chinese
11. Fitzcarraldo 1 (1982)
    Audio: English
    Subtitles: English,French,Chinese
12. Fitzcarraldo 2 (1982)
    Audio: English
    Subtitles: English,Chinese
    (I am assuming this disc is The Burden of Dreams: Making "Fitzcarraldo".)
13. Wo die grünen Ameisen träumen (1984)
    Audio: English
    Subtitles: German,Chinese
14. Cobra Verde (1987)
    Audio: German
    Subtitles: English,Chinese
15. Cerro Torre : Schrei aus Stein (1991)
    Audio: English
    Subtitles: Chinese
16. Tod für funf Stimmen (1995)
    Audio: English
    Subtitles: Chinese
17. Little Dieter Needs to Fly (1997)
    Audio: English
    Subtitles: Chinese
18. Invincible (2001)
    Audio: English
    Subtitles: English,Japanese,Chinese
19. Wheel of Time (2003)
    Audio: German
    Subtitles: Chinese
20. The Wild Blue Yonder (2005)
    Audio: English
    Subtitles: Chinese
21. The White Diamond (2005)
    Audio: English
    Subtitles: Chinese
22. Grizzly Man (2005)
    Audio: English
    Subtitles: English,Spanish,Chinese
23. Mon meilleur ami (2006)
    Audio: English,German
    Subtitles: English,Chinese
    (I'm particularly confused about this -- this is a French film by Patrice Leconte. No idea what it's doing here. Well, one idea: that is is holding the place of Klaus Kinski: My Best Fiend, which has a vaguely similar title and which I would expect to see in this collection. But, well, that seems like a poor/incomplete explanation.)
24. Rescue Dawn (2007)
    Audio: English
    Subtitles: English,Spanish,Chinese

posted morning of Wednesday, May 21st, 2008
➳ More posts about Werner Herzog
➳ More posts about The Movies

I got this exact same box set at one of the many pirated DVD shops in Shanghai. The Shanghai pirate shops have
amazing selections, and have many boxed sets of famous
directors for about $1 per DVD. It seems they make up the boxed sets themselves. Usually the quality is
pretty good, but occasionally there are problems--for
example, Herzog's movie about the dwarf rebellion doesn't have any English subtitles. I got a Wong Kar-Wai boxed
set, and half of the movies had subtitles only in French
and Chinese. But hey--you get what you pay for.

posted morning of December 8th, 2009 by steve

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