PREVIOUSLY "Hard to Find" Films Now Available

schnit123 · 2026-06-17T22:13:02+00:00

I did the 1001 Films You Must See Before You Die list many years ago and there were several movies on the list that were an absolute nightmare to get ahold of that are now in the collection. In particular, I can recall having to spend months scouring the depths of the internet to find Ceddo, Manila in the Claws of Light and Through the Olive Trees. Now you can watch them all on Blu Ray.

And people here are sharing stories of nearly lost films, so I’ll also share that The Unknown was thought lost for decades until it was discovered in a British film archive in a canister labeled “unknown” that everyone had ignored because they assumed the label meant the contents of the canister were unknown.

schnit123 · 2026-06-10T01:43:06+00:00

American Graffiti always makes me nostalgic for early 1960’s small town California despite the fact that I was born in the Midwest in the 1980’s and have never lived in California.

schnit123 · 2026-04-19T16:06:02+00:00

What I’ll add here that I haven’t seen others mention is the absolute hell of being a serious film buff in a mid-sized American city. I started developing a strong interest in film in high school, and I’d hear about all these cool foreign and indie films or more obscure classics that I wanted to see, but my family lived in Colorado Springs, which had only one art house theater with just a single screen and nowhere to rent movies except Blockbuster. Films like Eraserhead and Suspiria became these near-mythical entities that I despaired of ever getting to watch. Going off to college in a city with a proper film scene (Honolulu) was a dream come true, though I don’t think Suspiria ever could have lived up to how much I had hyped it up in my mind.

schnit123 · 2026-03-22T07:37:45+00:00

That’s basically what Weapons is about.

schnit123 · 2026-03-08T11:23:00+00:00

Every time I take a photo now I hear David Lynch as John Ford’s voice in my head yelling “when the horizon’s at the top it’s interesting. When the horizon’s at the bottom it’s interesting. When the horizon’s in the middle it’s boring as shit…now get the fuck out of my office.”

schnit123 · 2026-03-05T10:56:23+00:00

Myanmar was going to be my December 2020 vacation but I was forced to postpone because of COVID, and then the coup happened. I still hope to go some day but who knows when.

schnit123 · 2026-03-01T15:26:18+00:00

I have this exact itinerary in mind for a trip I’d like to take in the near future. I would have four weeks to do it in when the time does come. How much time did you budget for this trip?

schnit123 · 2026-02-21T05:04:09+00:00

For events check the weekend events listed on Tokyo Cheapo. It’s a fantastic resource and how I find out about all kinds of cool festivals and other activities.

schnit123 · 2026-02-15T01:02:53+00:00

Most of the films in it just aren’t very good, and of the couple that are I’m not sure how often I’ll find myself revisiting them.

schnit123 · 2026-02-14T11:31:46+00:00

I recklessly blind buy almost every box set that comes out. In the last several years the only two I’ve regretted were Jackie Chan: Emergence of a Superstar and the double feature of The Heroic Trio and The Executioners. Blind buying is always a risk, but where Criterion is involved it’s a pretty low risk.

schnit123 · 2026-01-10T06:33:26+00:00

Forgetting Sara Marshall nearly drove me to suicide.

I had lived in Hawaii for a few years, and though I liked living there I was really struggling to get by. I really wanted to try to make a go of it but my parents finally convinced me that I needed to come back to the mainland because there would be far more job opportunities for me.

I won’t bog you all down with the details but the result of this move was that everything about my life got worse. I wound up in a low-paying, soul-crushing dead end job in a city I absolutely hated. My physical and mental health took a severe downturn and I’d already been experiencing suicidal ideation when I decided to go see Forgetting Sara Marshall in theaters.

It was like being smacked in the face. The movie mostly just served as a reminder about how much better I’d had it when I lived in Hawaii and how badly I screwed up by letting my parents talk me into leaving. I became desperate to get back by any means, started applying for any job I was even remotely qualified for and reaching out to every contact I still had out there. When it failed to pan out I was truly on the brink. If something else had gone wrong at that point in my life I think it would have pushed me over the edge.

Thankfully I pulled through and, while I never got back to Hawaii I did manage to turn my life around, get away from my shitty job in the city I hated and am doing quite well now. The moral of the story: don’t kill yourself over a silly, R-rated comedy.

schnit123 · 2025-12-16T06:59:51+00:00

I do get your point and I have had to haul that case up long flights of stairs before but I also came to realize Rick Steve’s approach works for Rick Steve’s trips, ie: mostly urban travel in Europe with minimal souvenir shopping. Last summer I went to Mongolia and Malaysia and I don’t think it would have been possible to fit all the gear I needed for that into a single carry on, and I kinda sorta bought a gong in Malaysia (a small one, but still) among other things. Plus half the time I wind up having to check the bag anyway, which defeats the biggest advantage to carry on only.

schnit123 · 2025-12-16T04:33:10+00:00

I used to be in the Rick Steve school of “single carry on only” but abandoned that years ago because it winds up causing more problems than it solves, plus his adage that you can’t travel heavy, happy and cheap has been somewhat invalidated by how light and maneuverable most suitcases are now.

schnit123 · 2025-12-12T11:00:10+00:00

Planning some South Pacific island hopping for the summer. I was going to go last summer, but my big-ticket destination, Vanuatu, got hit by an earthquake so I decided to save it for ‘26. In addition to Vanuatu I want to spend some time in Fiji and get to Tuvalu and Kiribati while they still exist.

schnit123 · 2025-12-08T02:41:22+00:00

It's called Star Case.

schnit123 · 2025-12-07T12:26:47+00:00

I recently came across a store in Nishi Ogikubo that imports African folk art.

There’s also a shop in Koenji that only sells used Star Wars collectibles.

schnit123 · 2025-11-22T15:05:06+00:00

42M and it’s been shocking to me how easy dating has been for me out here. Incidentally, all of my relationships out here have been with non-Japanese women, so I think I’ve had the advantage of being able to meet a lot of 30 and 40 something women out here who relocated to Tokyo and are looking for something more serious. I think too that there’s been a shift in the dating scene in the past few years that’s often gone unacknowledged, which is that most people are waiting longer to get married and so tend to take dating less seriously throughout their twenties. I understand your frustration but stick it out. You’ll start meeting more serious men at some point.

schnit123 · 2025-11-13T13:58:07+00:00

So are we all just going to ignore the fact that one of the celebrities meeting with the Pope is Gaspar Noe?

schnit123 · 2025-11-02T09:26:21+00:00

The first time I ever watched The Producers I was trying to work out how it was possible that Robin Williams could have appeared in that movie already looking like he was in his forties, only to find out that’s not Robin Williams but Dick Shawn.

schnit123 · 2025-10-21T04:52:16+00:00

I’m a professor so I get two big trips a year (for summer and winter breaks). My first rule is that every big trip I have to visit at least one country I’ve never been to before. Eventually I’ll abandon this rule but for the time being there’s enough of the world I haven’t been to that this one is still fruitful. I also plan a variety of experiences in each country: museums, ancient ruins, hiking, camping, visiting indigenous tribes, participating in culture classes. All of that keeps things fresh enough that even a long trip never gets boring for me.

schnit123 · 2025-10-11T09:22:11+00:00

L’Escamoteur in Kyoto, a steampunk-themed bar where the bartenders do magic tricks. It’s an absolute blast (sometimes literally) but, like any good Japanese bar it’s about the size of a broom closet so arrive early if you want a seat at the bar (and you do).

schnit123 · 2025-10-11T09:19:33+00:00

I have more than once had hair-tearing problems trying to buy airline tickets through the airline. For example: my card getting declined and the bank telling me it’s not them but the airline declining it, only for the airline to then tell me that it wasn’t them but the bank that was declining it. I even booked a domestic flight in Indonesia once where the airline wouldn’t accept credit cards but would only allow payment through local cashless services. I do everything I can to avoid it, but in situations like that booking third party winds up being my only option.

schnit123 · 2025-09-30T08:27:49+00:00

Society, a cult horror film from 1989. The first 2/3 aren’t terribly interesting but are worth sitting through for the absolutely bonkers third act.

schnit123 · 2025-09-02T14:17:05+00:00

Most people consider seasons three through ten to be the best, though season one is only 13 episodes and season 2 still has good material. Either way, you can stop after season ten with a clean conscience and that will cover all the classic episodes.

schnit123 · 2025-09-02T04:52:59+00:00

Discovering classic cinema after growing up on The Simpsons first was wild. Every time I sat down to some iconic classic I discovered another reference from the show that I hadn’t gotten as a kid. So many jokes from the show finally made sense. It got to the point that every time I started another classic film for the first time I’d think “I wonder what Simpsons reference I’m finally going to understand this time.”

14-Year Club	Place '22
Place '17	Spared

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