Japanese Films on DVD/Blu-ray

[feckless boy]

I would say that the DVD Beaver screen caps do NOT looked sepia-toned to me -- having checked on two different monitors.;-} ;-};-} ;-};-} ;-};-} ;-};-} ;-}

Interesting. Can you see any difference between these two images?

[Michael Kerpan]

I see a considerable difference. ;-}

I just don't think I'd call the first one "sepia-toned" -- possibly because any color cast is much more faint than other things I've seen which are clearly sepia-toned. It definitely looks (feels) "warmer" -- which I don't mind at all. I think the seemingly non-updated (and therefore somewhat incomplete) subtitles are a more significant issue (especially for people who don't understand Japanese or who are not already familiar with the film).

Since the only available sources of Tokyo Story are no better than second generation, it could be possible that Shochiku's source actually had this toning and they chose not to color-correct it away this time. (As noted before, I have seen other "antique" versions that had a more distincly sepia-ish tone). It is an interesting issue -- and maybe someday someone with access to source materials will clarify just what is going one.

I don't _think_ DVDBeaver's screen captures are incorrect. All I would say is that, when watching the new Blu-Ray on its own, without having the prior UK Blu-Ray in mind (or at hand, for side by side comparison), one (i.e., me myself, at least) does not immediately think -- "this looks brownish." but rather "it looks pretty nice".

[manicsounds]

It almost seems like the "Spirited Away" DVD debacle in which the red was boosted, in this case the purple was boosted a tad.

[Calvin]

Have Shochiku restored all of their Ozu titles recently or only select films?

[David M.]

I don't _think_ DVDBeaver's screen captures are incorrect. All I would say is that, when watching the new Blu-Ray on its own, without having the prior UK Blu-Ray in mind (or at hand, for side by side comparison), one (i.e., me myself, at least) does not immediately think -- "this looks brownish." but rather "it looks pretty nice".

If your display hasn't been calibrated to neutral video white (illuminant D65) or the recommended D55 for black and white viewing (which is the colour temperature of carbon arc lamps used in projectors in the B&W days), it's probably adding a blue tint of its own, which would probably make a slight red tint effect less noticeable.

That goes for most computer monitor default settings too.

[Michael Kerpan]

David M -- very possible. My monitor's colors look generally okay, so I haven't worried. ;-} (

[longstone]

I watched the Japanese Blu of Tokyo Story all the way through last night with friends, although we both own the BFI set we deliberately didn't try any comparisons. As I said before I don't have much technical knowledge on monitor set up etc. or film restoration.
The film looks wonderful to me on the 4K restoration when simply enjoying the complete movie, it seems a huge improvement over the previous HD version I noticed way more detail in outside scenes and more depth on interior scenes. Whatever colour hue is or isn't added it all looked black and white enough to me. The Japanese Blu is region free and a bit cheaper than Japanese discs usually are so the clear intention seems to be to get this critically acclaimed film out to the widest possible audience. The frame wobbles are mostly gone completely and the light/dark fluctuations also vastly reduced, I am not experienced enough to know if they have introduced any digital artifacts or lost grain structure but I do think for most people buying this edition the viewing experience will be as good as it will ever be.
If the Criterion is identical but has improved English subtitles then that will be the definitive English friendly edition I'm sure.
They may of course tweak the hue but in real life enjoyment of the film I don't think it's at all noticeable.

[artfilmfan]

Hiroshi Ishikawa's third feature film, Petal Dance, coming out on DVD and Blu-ray in Japan next month. Too bad there are no English subtitles. And with those high prices of the Japanese releases, how can anyone get a chance to see it?

[feihong]

Dovetailing onto the last comment:

I don't know if this is the place to bring this up, but it's where I'm hitting the wall with my technology. I want to show people my Japanese blu-rays, with English subtitles. Movies that friends of mine wouldn't get to see otherwise, like Swallowtail Butterfly, the Taisho Trilogy, and the Shuji Terayama movies. There are enough English subtitle tracks floating around the internet to get that job done, but what's the best way people have found to do this? I suppose I could play my discs on my Mac through VLCplayer, loading the subs through the program, but My brand-new quad-processor Mac laptop seems incapable of playing blu-rays, through VLCplayer or anything else. Trying to figure out how to make this stuff work has been like trying to write a novel in a language I don't understand.

Anyone know a good site that covers all-region blu-ray with the Mac? Seems for some reason to be an obscure subject on the internet these days.

[repeat]

Maybe the moderator can move this to Technical Issues if it gets too, um, technical - but I too would appreciate any advice on this matter...

I bought an external Blu-ray drive for my Mac recently, and quickly ran into the same issue: I Googled up the imaginatively titled Mac Blu-ray Player from a company called MacGo, which despite their dodgy promotion proved to be an excellent piece of software - EXCEPT it didn't seem to handle subtitle files competently. (BTW MPlayer OS Extended is the only player I've found that has no problem at all with .srt subs, but unfortunately it doesn't play Blu-rays, at least not yet. VLCPlayer has widely known subs issues in which the developers have consistently displayed utter disinterest, so I wouldn't bother fighting with it - although it is a good program for other purposes.)

After hours of fighting, downloading various different .srt files (because you never know where the problem is), making folders full of copies in different character encodings, fiddling with the program preferences etc. etc. I finally managed to get the MacGo player to work beautifully with a set of fansubs; I immediately registered it (the free version has a watermark), and forgot about it for a while. After a couple of weeks I was going to start watching a disc, the program suggested to download the new version, which I did - and apparently either lost some vital settings I had accidentally found, or else they've made changes to the program, because after that I can't get any fansubs to work with it, including the one that had previously worked like a charm. VERY frustrating.

BTW I seem to remember Nick W. (peerpee) tweeted not long ago that he had found a satisfactory solution for playing Blu-rays on the Mac, I wonder what that was and if it can handle fansubs.

(Oh yeah, and the MacGo would seem to be all-region - I played both Criterions and Region B discs on it, but I haven't done a systematic test)

[yoshimori]

Hiroshi Ishikawa's third feature film, Petal Dance, coming out on DVD and Blu-ray in Japan next month. Too bad there are no English subtitles. And with those high prices of the Japanese releases, how can anyone get a chance to see it?

Too bad indeed. I saw the film at its Hong Kong premiere, and it's certainly one of my favorites of the year. Even more ethereal than the first half of Su-ki-da - which, btw, is also just out on blu in Japan, sans subs, sadly.

[artfilmfan]

I haven't bought the Blu-ray of Su-ki-da; but I did buy the Blu-ray of Tokyo.Sora with the knowledge of the lack of subtitles. I was very disappointed with the picture quality of the Tokyo.Sora Blu-ray. Hopefully, someone will release Petal Dance with English subtitles.

[Takuma]

I haven't bought the Blu-ray of Su-ki-da; but I did buy the Blu-ray of Tokyo.Sora with the knowledge of the lack of subtitles. I was very disappointed with the picture quality of the Tokyo.Sora Blu-ray. Hopefully, someone will release Petal Dance with English subtitles.

Have you made sure there's no English subs on Tokyo.Sora? Amazon JP and some other Japanese retailers are listing English subs for Tokyo.Sora, Sukida, and Petal Dance. Sukida is also supposed to have French subs.

[manicsounds]

During the news this morning on Fuji TV, they did a report on the restorations of the Ozu color films, and they showed a clip of "Higanbana" (can't remember the English title offhand) and it looked outstandingly amazing. I'll be glad to upgrade the Eclipse box if Criterion ups them to the mainline on blu-ray.

They interviewed staff at the national film center taking care of the warped "wakame" negatives as they called them, the process of the restorations, with the warped frame adjustments, dirt and scratch removal, and getting the colors to be exactly how Ozu conceived them through staff that originally worked on the color productions and production notes.

The news said Venice will premiere the restorations, and then theatrically screened in Tokyo in November. Although I don't see any listings for the Ozu films being screened at Venice this year...

[yoshimori]

Have you made sure there's no English subs on Tokyo.Sora? Amazon JP and some other Japanese retailers are listing English subs for Tokyo.Sora, Sukida, and Petal Dance. Sukida is also supposed to have French subs.

I haven't been able to find any confirmation either way in a review or from someone who bought the discs. If anyone has, please post it here. Thanks in advance.

[artfilmfan]

I haven't bought the Blu-ray of Su-ki-da; but I did buy the Blu-ray of Tokyo.Sora with the knowledge of the lack of subtitles. I was very disappointed with the picture quality of the Tokyo.Sora Blu-ray. Hopefully, someone will release Petal Dance with English subtitles.

Have you made sure there's no English subs on Tokyo.Sora? Amazon JP and some other Japanese retailers are listing English subs for Tokyo.Sora, Sukida, and Petal Dance. Sukida is also supposed to have French subs.

My goodness! Thanks! After reading your post, I've checked the Tokyo.Sora Blu-ray and it does have English subtitles! I went by the information on YesAsia and CDJapan, both of whom say no English subtitles. So, I assumed they were right and watched it without trying to check that. I've watched the Tokyo.Sora DVD so many times such that I don't feel like needing English subtitles any longer when watching this movie (hence my purchase of the Blu-ray believing that there weren't English subtitles).

In the process of re-checking, I've just noticed that it says "1080i High-Definition" on the back cover. My Blu-ray player was set to 1080p. So, I'll watch it again this weekend with the player set to 1080i and will report back whether the picture will look better.

With this discovery, I think it's safe to believe that the Su.ki.da Blu-ray does have English and French subtitles, just like the DVD (which I also have).

By the way, should you like Tokyo.Sora and Su.ki.da, check out his 17-minute short film that is available on DVD (no English subs, of course, unless I've failed to check it after all these years watching it). The short film is very charming.

This leads to Petal Dance. Now that we know that the information at YesAsia and CDJapan regarding subtitles are incorrect, it's probably safe to believe the information at other sites that say it does have English subs. Hmmm, now I must decide whether I should pay for that high price for the DVD or Blu-ray. Can some company come to the rescue and release it at a reasonable price?

[Takuma]

Glad to be of help. I was also mislead by web stores not listing subs until I read the product description, where the info was nicely hidden.

(a couple of other Japanese releases with "hidden" subs also come to mind... Love Exposure and Himizu BD's, and March Comes in Like a Lion DVD at least were subbed despite many retailers claiming otherwise)

I think I will rent Petal Dance at some point after it comes out, so I can give confirmation about the subs then. However, I'm gonna be quite busy around that time, so I can't really give any promises about when...

[artfilmfan]

I watched the Tokyo.Sora Blu-ray and DVD again to get a better assessment of the Blu-ray. The image on the Blu-ray is generally cleaner (but not much sharper than the DVD). However, the colors of some of the indoor scenes (and these are important scenes in the movie) on the Blu-ray lack the vibrancy that can be seen on the DVD.

The English subtitles on both are the same, except that the font on the Blu-ray is smaller and more pleasing to the eyes.

The next time I want to watch this movie again, most likely I will return to the DVD.

[Takuma]

Rented Petal Dance dvd yesterday. It has English subs.

The film is mesmerizing. The cinematography is breathtakingly beautiful and you can feel the winter breeze coming through the screen. Aoi Miyazaki is at her absolute best here, and Sakura Ando has never been this good before. There's a 4 minute single shot scene in a car that is especially brilliant. I didn't expect Ishikawa to be back in this good form after a downwards trend with the second half of Su-ki-da and Kimi no yubisaki, but this is almost as good as Tokyo.Sora. Only Yoko Kanno's soundtrack is a bit too obvious/artistic, but thankfully sparsely used.

Will buy the BD at some point. Hopefully has better image than the DVD, which has tons of endge enhancement. Don't let that prevent you from seeing the film, though.

[artfilmfan]

Thanks for the report on Petal Dance. That screen capture looks very beautiful. I will buy the Blu-ray at some point. Considering that his previous films were never released elsewhere outside Japan, the currently available Blu-ray and DVD are likely to be the only choices.

[Michael Kerpan]

I would order Petal Dance -- but for the government shutdown which has put an end to virtually discretionary expenditures.

Interesting to see that others also feel part 2 of Su-ki-da had real problems -- I never really could figure out exactly how things went awry in this.

[artfilmfan]

I watched Su.ki.da again last night. I still feel the same way about it, that it is not as good as Tokyo.Sora.

it's interesting to see the shift in colors from the fist half to the second half. Green grass, sunny and blue sky, white clouds, tradition houses in the countryside of the fist half are replaced with concrete sidewalks in the city, gray sky, hazy sky, an empty apartment ...depicting the harsh realities of everyday life that the two face as adults.

It took some getting used to to see different actors playing the roles of the two leads in the second half. But I forgot about that fairly quickly. I couldn't help it, but I noticed two major things that could have been improved in the second half. The first one is when the two first met in the recording studio after not having seen each other for seventeen years. They don't recognize each other at all. There is simply no reaction at all from either one of them to indicate any recognition. How is that possible? The second thing is, I think the actress who plays Yu in the second half is miscast.

[Michael Kerpan]

The second thing is, I think the actress who plays Yu in the second half is miscast.

Hiromi Nagasaku is an excellent actress -- but it was indeed hard to see Aoi Miyazki's character growing up to be her (supposedly same) character. My recollection is that Miyazaki's scenes in the first half routinely featured noticeably longer takes than Nagasaku's in the second.

[Calvin]

Three more ATG films coming up on Blu-Ray:

The Youth Killer (Kazuhiko Hasegawa)
Funeral Parade of Roses (Toshio Matsumoto)
Shura (Toshio Matsumoto)

[perkizitore]

I really hope MoC upgrades their DVD of Roses, Japanese blu-rays are too expensive!