My Latest Reason to Learn Japanese

Ai No Mukidashi [Love Exposure] is a 4 hour Japanese film hailed as both an "epic" and a "masterpiece" (on the IFC flyer) about (according to the flyer) "the son of a priest who become a pornographer, finds the love of his life, loses her to a woman, joins a cult, and becomes a street fighter…" I picked up the flyer at the New York Asian Film Festival before a screening of Vampire Girl vs Frankenstein Girl. VGvsFG was amazing but I could not strike the thoughts of Love Exposure from my mind.  Unfortunately for me all of the showings at the NYAFF were sold out and I was left with nothing but a few movie stills and the flyer. Upon my arrival back to my computer I searched frantically for any information I could find on when LE would be released on DVD and found a Japanese release date of July 24th. So, three discs worth of material, the film on the first two and a whole warehouse full of extra material on the third disc. And here I sit, with my 237 minute of film and ~180 minutes of bonus features, and not a single English subtitle to be found. I tried to watch it, I thought "I’ve seen enough Anime and  Kurosawa films to take this on." WRONG. "Well maybe if I just immerse myself in nothing but the Japanese language for a few days I’ll start to understand it." WRONG. So here I continue to sit, searching the internet every few minutes for a fan sub of a movie that hasn’t been on DVD a week yet. There’s always hope? I was about to look something up and end with something undoubtedly witty and inspiring. But I forgot what it was.