To avoid having too many individual pickups in the post at various times I decided to focus a bit more on larger batches instead. Which is why I ordered almost all of the January pre-orders for Asian Cinema from Terracotta altogether, the only exception being the 88 Films titles as they were ordered a few months ago which arrived a month earlier than its release date and the Radiance Films titles because they can be tracked on their stock statuses by the distributor themselves.
First up we have a brand new Arrow Video release. This is a 2005 Japanese anthology film called Rampo Noir (乱歩地獄) directed by Akio Jissoji, Atsushi Kaneko, Hisayasu Satō & Suguru Takeuchi. I hadn't heard of this film prior but the artwork looked awesome. The first print edition includes a slipcase and booklet like previous Arrow releases.
Next we have two brand new British Film Institute releases, both from director Akira Kurosawa. With recent 4K restorations in Japan, BFI have been re-releasing his works onto either the 4K or Blu-ray format. In this batch there's his 1963 film High and Low (天国と地獄) and his 1949 film Stray Dog (野良犬), both are more of a crime/police drama compared to his more known samurai films. Both of these do have 4K Ultra HD releases in Japan but BFI must have decided it wasn't worth the upgrade. Each of these are first print editions which includes a booklet.
And to wrap up this batch we also have two brand new Eureka Entertainment releases, both also part of their Masters of Cinema range which in case you missed the recent notice that the booklets will now be part of the first-print run only going forward (and for their older catalog). Starting off with a classic Japanese horror film from 1997 it's Kiyoshi Kurosawa's Cure (キュア), re-released for 4K Ultra HD using the recent 4K restoration. When Eureka released the film years back it was an older transfer while Criterion put one out using the new restoration but only for Blu-ray. I really enjoyed this film and am happy to upgrade the release to this which also has great artwork.
Also arrived is Running On Karma (大隻佬), a 2003 Hong Kong film from directors Johnnie To and Wai Ka-fai, starring Andy Lau. I hadn't heard of this film prior but a lot of people were looking forward to this one and it looks promising so I can see why its placed under the Masters of Cinema banner than the Eureka Classics one.
