Arrow Academy has announced that it will add two new titles to its Blu-ray catalog:
The Mad Fox (1962) and
America As Seen By A Frenchman (1960).
The Mad Fox
In stark contrast to the monochrome naturalism of his earlier masterwork Bloody Spear at Mount Fuji, visionary master director Tomu Uchida took inspiration from Bunraku and kabuki theater for arguably his strangest and most lavishly cinematic film, The Mad Fox.
Amidst a mythically-depicted medieval Japan, a court astrologer foretells a great disturbance that threatens to split the realm in two. His bitter and treacherous wife conspires to have the astrologer killed, as well as their adopted daughter, Sakaki. The astrologer's master apprentice, Yasuna, who was in love with Sakaki, is driven mad with grief and escapes to the countryside. There, he encounters Sakaki's long-lost twin, Kuzunoha, and the pair meet a pack of ancient fox spirits in the woods, whose presence may be the key to restoring Yasuna's sanity, and in turn bringing peace to the fracturing nation.
Finally available outside Japan for the first time, Uchida's stunning, wildly stylised widescreen tableaux – using expressionist sets and color schemes – are highlighted in a world premiere Blu-ray release.
Special Features and Technical Specs:
- Brand new restoration by Toei
- Original uncompressed mono Japanese audio
- Optional newly translated English subtitles
- Brand new audio commentary by Japanese cinema expert Jasper Sharp, recorded exclusively for this release
- Original theatrical trailer
- Image gallery
- Reversible sleeve featuring original and newly commissioned artwork by Matt Griffin
- FIRST PRESSING ONLY: Illustrated collector's booklet featuring new writing on the film by Ronald Cavaye and Hayley Scanlon
U.S. STREET DATE: JUNE 23.
UK STREET DATE: JUNE 22.
America As Seen By A Frenchman
At the end of the 1950s, celebrated French documentarian François Reichenbach (F for Fake, Portrait: Orson Welles), whose lens captured the likes of Brigitte Bardot and Johnny Hallyday, spent eighteen months traveling the United States, documenting its diverse regions, their inhabitants and their pastimes. The result, America As Seen by a Frenchman, is a wide-eyed – perhaps even naïve – journey through a multitude of different Americas, filtered through a French sensibility and serving as a fascinating exploration of a culture that is both immediately familiar and thoroughly alien.
Prison rodeos; Miss America pageants; visits to Disneyland and a school for striptease; a town inhabited solely by twins; rows of newborns in incubators, like products on an assembly line – all these weird and wondrous sights, and more, are captured, sans jugement, by Reichenbach's camera, aided by whimsical narration (provided by, among others, Jean Cocteau) and a jaunty musical score by the late, great Michel Legrand (Une femme est une femme).
Titled L'Amérique insolite – literally "unusual America" – in its native tongue, America As Seen by a Frenchman lovingly renders the various eccentricities of Americana circa the mid-twentieth century, and proves the old adage that reality really is stranger than fiction.
Special Features and Technical Specs:
- High Definition (1080p) Blu-ray presentation
- Original uncompressed mono audio
- Newly translated English subtitles
- New video appreciation of the film by author and critic Philip Kemp
- Image gallery
- Reversible sleeve featuring original and newly commissioned artwork by Ignatius Fitzpatrick
- FIRST PRESSING ONLY: Illustrated collector's booklet featuring new writing on the film by Caspar Salmon
U.S. STREET DATE: JUNE 2.
UK STREET DATE: JUNE 1.