Finally found a copy.

I swore off pirating movies long ago and so I’ve been trying to track this movie down for quite some time. I’m too previous-level for Netflix and I kept forgetting to look for it at Rocket Video when I lived in L.A.

When I moved to San Francisco, I was lucky to have Lost Weekend just a few blocks away from my house. Actually I’ve been very fortunate to have great video rental stores every city I’ve lived in. I Luv Video in Austin, Rocket Video in Los Angeles, and now Lost Weekend here in San Francisco. Any video rental shop that sorts by director is alright in my book.

I’m kind of in a bind now though. After this one, there’ll only be Air Doll left, and then I’ll have seen all of Koreeda’s films. It’s only after you’ve hunted down every film from a filmmaker that you admire and then look for more when there isn’t any do you realize how painstaking it is to make a great film, one after another. Years pass. You sit on your hands and wait. Check IMDB and wait.

Last time this happened to me, it was with Edward Yang. Some of his early films didn’t even make it to DVD (if Criterion reads this blog, please get on that shit). I went to the ends of the earth trying to find a copy of A Brighter Summer Day. Then news came that he died of cancer in 2007. Such a huge loss for cinema. You can’t just replace an Edward Yang. Just like you could never replace a Hirokazu Koreeda.