116 The Hidden Fortress

[mteller]

Wondering if they ditched Armond White's essay

[matrixschmatrix]

Oh wow, a Prince commentary- that bumps this up to an immediate buy for me.

[EddieLarkin]

This one was never upgraded from its 2001 release during the DVD era, but I was always expecting it to, and so I've been putting off a purchase since around 2005. Nice to finally be seeing it!

Odd that the Perspecta track will be 5.1, when Perspecta was LCR only as far as I know. The Yojimbo and Sanjuro Blu-rays have 3.0 LCR tracks instead. Speaking of which, Prince's commentaries on those two are fantastic, so I have high hopes for this new one.

[swo17]

Oh wow, a Prince commentary- that bumps this up to an immediate buy for me.

For a moment there, you had my hopes up for more than just a Stephen Prince commentary.

[Jean-Luc Garbo]

Oh wow, a Prince commentary- that bumps this up to an immediate buy for me.

Prince more than makes up for any other scholar they could interview for the film. Between that and the Toho doc, this will be some very rich quality over quantity for the upgrade.

[manicsounds]

Nice to see some new extras on this release. Been eagerly waiting on this one, which the DVD was one of my first Criterion purchases. And it looks like the alternate 3.0 soundtrack has been bumped to a 5.1 track for this new release.

[Yaanu]

Wondering if they ditched Armond White's essay

The answer is yes.
Given White's recent reputation among film critics and film-critic critics, I wouldn't be surprised if this was more than intentional.

[manicsounds]

Although they kept the Armond White essay on the same-day announced George Washington upgrade. The Armond White essay is gladly ditched not just because it was by Armond White, but no one seemed to fact-check any of the info. Almost all the printed dates were wrong!

Also, I didn't expect a Kurosawa release, since they announced "Throne Of Blood" for January, now this for March. I've always expected Criterion to release a single director's work either at the same time, or anywhere between 6 to 12 months later.

[Yaanu]

Although they kept the Armond White essay on the same-day announced George Washington upgrade. The Armond White essay is gladly ditched not just because it was by Armond White, but no one seemed to fact-check any of the info. Almost all the printed dates were wrong!

Ouch.

I would imagine they keep this essay and others like it for archival purposes. You can find essays for LaserDisc releases on their website, after all.

[Drucker]

Blu-ray review at DVDBeaver. Definitely seems to be more information at the top of the frame.

[manicsounds]

bluraydefinition
blu-ray.com

[manicsounds]

So, finally got around to watching the blu-ray (as well as Throne Of Blood), and listened to the Stephen Prince commentary, and I think I said it before but I will say it again.
Although he knows his stuff and he is clearly a very good talker, he really has to work on his Japanese pronunciation... just irks me how bad he gets names and info wrong by mispronouncing (He sometimes says "RokuROta" (which is correct), but most of the time he says "RokuRUta", in another commentary he pronounced Masaki Kobayashi as "MasaKAI Kobayashi", rhyming with "Die". For a scholar who has studied and watched this stuff, he really needs to do something about his hearing.

But then again, some people are just really bad at learning a second language, or even pronouncing a second language.

I still remember in high school German class, when learning "der, die, das", there was one American girl (who actually was very smart) just kept saying "DARE, DEE, DASS". I kept thinking, "C'mon! At least TRY to pronounce it like the Germans do!"

[zedz]

Although he knows his stuff and he is clearly a very good talker, he really has to work on his Japanese pronunciation... just irks me how bad he gets names and info wrong by mispronouncing (He sometimes says "RokuROta" (which is correct), but most of the time he says "RokuRUta"

I know. All through listening to this commentary I had this totally inappropriate song going through my head. Made for a very peculiar viewing experience, needless to say.

[colinr0380]

It could be worse: I still have nightmares about Channel 4's big Kurosawa film season in Christmas 1999 which was the last gasp for this kind of huge dedicated foreign language film season on mainstream UK television and tied in with a screening of the Alex Cox documentary Kurosawa: The Last Emperor (in which the director's name was regularly spoken!). Which was only marred by the continuity announcer pronouncing Kurosawa's name wrong (doing it similar to "Kerwosuwer") before every damn film!

[Orlac]

It could be worse: I still have nightmares about Channel 4's big Kurosawa film season in Christmas 1999 which was the last gasp for this kind of huge dedicated foreign language film season on mainstream UK television and tied in with a screening of the Alex Cox documentary Kurosawa: The Last Emperor (in which the director's name was regularly spoken!). Which was only marred by the continuity announcer pronouncing Kurosawa's name wrong (doing it similar to "Kerwosuwer") before every damn film!

I recall with delight watching Channel 4's late night Godzilla season in X'Mas 99. They showed several films, including the original, in Japanese with subtitles. But the intros by a pair of "comedians" were tacky and obnoxious, and in one they mixed up the intros so we never saw the one for Mothra Vs. Godzilla, as they showed the Hedorah one instead.

Here's an example - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4nYFpDeFL8Y" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

[colinr0380]

Ah yes, I remember that duo from their series Vids, which was the companion piece to the video game focused Bits and part of the late night 4Later strand for the last couple of years of the 90s. Despite the crude comedy skits Vids was interesting in being one of the few shows to tackle the wide variety of VHS releases coming out at the time, from indie films to skateboarding videos, to mondo documentary, arthouse and exploitation. I remember being introduced variously to both Eating Raoul and Sex & Zen from the eye-popping clips on the show!

I also seem to remember the Christmas Godzilla movie season being the end of all that, with no further episodes of Vids following and indeed even the 4Later strand coming to an end that year.