East Side Stories

Like the Japanese Special Editions of other Gundam and Sunrise anime series, this is the first of three volumes that will condense the first 25-episode season of Gundam 00 into feature-length videos. They all feature some new animated sequences and some partially re-recorded dialogue.

Three separate stories all concern the relationships between adult children, their somewhat distant parent (or parents), and each other. Each of the three parts takes place in the present, and each in a different country. Father is set in the Northeast U.S., Mother in Dublin, Ireland, and Sister Brother in Paris, France. The film is a series of character studies, quiet, observational and non-judgmental. A comedy, but interwoven with threads of melancholy.

A strange mortician tells four horrific tales to three drug dealers that he traps in their local funeral parlor.

Nanni Moretti recalls in his diary three slice of life stories characterized by a sharply ironic look: in the first one he wanders through a deserted Rome, in the second he visits a reclusive friend on an island, and in the last he has to grapple with an unknown illness.

This omnibus release consists of three playlets filmed and aired during television's Golden Age, and starring some of the legends of film and television. The collection originally ran as a two-hour segment on December 14, 1959, on the anthology series The Play of the Week, broadcast locally in New York City via the independent radio station WNTA. Each "tale" in the anthology was adapted from a single tale by the inimitable Sholom Aleichem, regarded by many as the "Yiddish Mark Twain". Included are: "A Tale of Chelm" starring Zero Mostel and Nancy Walker in the story of a bookseller attempting to buy a goat; "Bontche Schweig" about a poor man (Jack Gilford) whose recent arrival in Heaven makes the angels cry; and "The High School" about a Jewish merchant (Morris Carnovsky) persuaded by his wife (Gertrude Berg) to let their son attend a particular high school despite the enforcement of quotas for Jewish students.

Four different couples have a romantic week over New Year's Eve. Both coming out of failed marriages, Ji-ho and Hyo-young are not open to the possibility of new love, while Jin-ah heads to the other side of globe and encounters Jae-hun.

It is August 12th. After the remote control to his boarding house's only air conditioning unit is inadvertently destroyed by spilled cola, "I" devises a plan to return to yesterday in a time machine to recover the remote before it breaks. However, his prankster friend Ozu cannot resist playing with past events, even if it means bringing the universe to the brink of destruction. Now "I" finds himself racing through time to avoid disaster.

A revolutionary is sentenced to death for his anti-national activities. And so begins a battle of wits between the prison officer and his comrades, who try to rescues him with the help of the reluctant hangman who has been selected to deliver the punishment.

A film of three intersecting love stories.