About the heading: Things are Bad, but this is just the Beginning; we haven't even truly started to get into The Bad Times yet - if you're not Hispanic, Palanstinian, a foreign student or a resident alien, you might find that statement slightly laughable & naive. Being an American, that's slightly permissible, since those who aren't MAGA or MAGA adjacent/sympathetic still believe that there is still a chance to turn things around - despite the fact that we've continually squandered every chance given so far.
While America (and specifically Whyte America - because nothing of note actually happens in this country until Pissed-Off Whyte People get involved) does its Hamlet-bit trying to convince itself it still has a soul), it feels like one is just Freefalling Thru The Fuckery until things coalesce into some definite action.
While that slowly happens - I watch movies. I write. At least until I can't do either one or the other.
Or both.
Mondo Vision is a boutique label that has been solely dedicated to making the work of Polish director Andrzej Zulawski available on physical media since the late 2000s. Releasing packed Limited Editions (expanded booklet, card swag and an OST CD) and Special Editions (booklet only) starting with LA FEMME PUBLIQUE (The Public Woman), L' IMPORTANT C'EST D'AIMER (The Most Important Thing: Love), L' AMOUR BRAQUE (Limpet Love), SZAMANKA (She-Shaman), POSSESSION and LA NOTE BLEUE (The Blue Note), MV's releases were a true labor of love for Zulawski's work - early video releases were OOP (Anchor Bay's DVD) or were of dodgy quality (PolArt's DVDs of DIABEL and GLOBIE). MV did hi-def transfers, approved by Zulawski and had great extra features such as a Zulawski commentary and meaty featurettes, the pinnacle being their blu-ray edition of POSSESSION.
But excellence don't come easy; the periods between releases got longer and longer, the market changed with people wanting DVD, then blu-ray, then 4K discs. Hardest of all was Zulawski's death in 2016. After the release of LA NOTE BLEUE in 2017, MV went silent and rumors that the label was dead seemed to be turning out legit. By now, Zulawski's films were getting easier to find -new blu-rays from Kino-Lorber (L'AMOUR BRAQUE) and Film Movement (L' IMPORTANT...) not to mention POSSESSION releases on blu and 4K UHD, turning it into THE EVIL DEAD of boutique releases.
Just out of reach was The Polish Trilogy - TRZECIA CZESC NOCY (The Third Part of the Night), DIABEL (The Devil) and NA SEBRNYM GLOBIE (On The Silver Globe). The last two got DVDs, but the transfers weren't great; TRZECIA got a pretty good DVD from UK label Second Run. Complicating things further was the Polish Government's foot-dragging in restoring those films until nearly the end of Zulawski's life and then wanting a large amount from Western countries/labels to licence them. The first blu-ray release of the Trilogy was a Japanese set which had no English subtitles and nudity blurred on GLOBIE. The Eureka 'Masters of Cinema' release of the Trilogy just a couple of years ago set the quality bar high, with French and German releases soon to come. And if you had an all-region Blu-ray player, things were Good, since it seemed that there was NEVER going to be a Mondo Vision disc.
Until this March, when a very strong hint was dropped on the Bluray.com forums that MV would be making an announcement soon. Shortly after the Eureka release MV changed their heading to GLOBIE's head graphic and "Coming Soon" - but nothing since then. Then in April - Easter month, very appropriate - MV came back from the dead with the announcement of the Limited and Special Editions of GLOBIE, release date set for the end of May. So imagine my surprise when a package showed up just after the first May weekend! A good gesture on MV's part, if you ordered directly from them.
This is also their first 4K UHD release; most companies have been doing UHD/Blu combos for the past few years, but like the DVD/Blu combos that slowly phased out when Blu took a bigger share of the market, I suspect that more of the specialty labels will start going exclusively 4K in the near future. And what that means is at somepoint, the hardware will have to be upgraded. So it was finally time to pull the trigger to go 4K - especially before the tariff bullshit goes into effect. And it made sense to again, go all-region and have the ability to play Anything. I'm still pretty much a format slut.
Eureka's Zulawski set is still worth getting, if you're region-free but not 4K yet: the tranfers are great and extras are solid. But if you are 4K ready, then I'd say Mondo Vision's release will stand as the definitive release of the film.
It's an interesting artifact - it was originally planned for release in 2012 and most of the extras are from that time - the Zulawski commentary, obviously; that alone makes it definitive and Daniel Bird's featurette on the making of the film. The newest extra is the documentary ESCAPE TO THE SILVER GLOBE (2021), which was also part of the Eureka release. I sprung for the Limited Edition with an expanded booklet (more essays), card/poster swag and the OST CD - which more than justified getting this edition. The score by Andrzej Korynski, a long-time Zulawski associate is fabulous, and this is its first official release.
As to the film itself - it's an adaptation of Zulawski's great-uncle's (Jerzy Zulawski) science-fiction trilogy from the early 1900s THE LUNAR TRILOGY, comprised of On The Silver Globe, The Conqueror and The Old Earth, a work very influential on Stanislaw Lem (SOLARIS) and literary sci-fi in Europe. Not known at all in Western countries - it didn't get its first English translation and publication until 2021. In terms of epic science-fiction, this would be on the level of DUNE - which coincidentally, Alejandro Jodorowsky was attempting to adapt to film at roughly the same time, which never came to fruition. GLOBIE almost had that fate; that story of the film's production and near-death probably being more known than the actual film and which ESCAPE TO THE SILVER GLOBE gets into with much detail.
Epic SF in film didn't fully come into existence until the 60s - the George Pal productions of the 50s (WAR OF THE WORLDS, CONQUEST OF SPACE, etc.) were precursors visually, but Kubrick's 2001: A SPACE ODYSSEY is usually considered to be the first, although a good case could be made for the 1963 Czechoslovakian IKARIE XB-1 directed by Jindrich Polak. There were efforts like some of the East German DEFA films such as SIGNALS; Tarkovsky's SOLARIS continues in that vein and GLOBIE could've continued that path, had it not been hindered, uncompleted and unseen/unknown. STAR WARS usurped and supplanted the idea of Serious Epic SF; it was epic, but it was also pastiche based on the FLASH GORDON serials and not serious at all - that came later with the Prequel Trilogy and its offshoots which tried to infuse Seriousness and Meaning into what had become a franchise with varying results.
A quick factoid illustrating SF Film - STAR WARS, NA SEBRNYM GLOBIE and DAMNATION ALLEY were all in production roughly during the period 1975 - 1977 and of those three, GLOBIE was finally seen in 1987, which would drastically limit any potential influence it could've had. Its most direct descendant is Aleksei German's 2013 adaptation of HARD TO BE A GOD (though I personally find it to be a slog). But would seem to have put out a vibe; see Tarkovsky's STALKER (1979), Peter Fleischmann's 1989 adaptation of HARD TO BE A GOD, and of course, David Lynch's DUNE (1984) - although Fleischmann and Lynch are steered closer to the STAR WARS Epic SF aesthetic than Zulawski and Tarkovsky were.
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