Rashamon/Throne of Blood BFI R2 releases

[kanedaa]

Hi all.

Did anyone pick either of these titles up???

Rashamon (http://www.play.com/play247.asp?page=title&r=R2&title=96308)

Throne of Blood (http://www.play.com/play247.asp?page=title&r=R2&title=96309)

any thoughts? picture/sound? AFAIK they're both 4:3 originally, so they can't screw up the ratio (or so you would think!) but how are the prints?

dave.

[Hendrik]

...ahh... I got stung once with a bfi DVD release (their deplorable Saló) so I prefer to wait until the verdict on these discs is out - or until the Criterion versions are released...

. . . :D . . .

[Michael Brooke]

I'm with Hendrik - <I>Salo</I> was a shockingly poor transfer and <I>Yojimbo</I> wasn't anything like as good as it should have been. These titles at least don't need anamorphic enhancement, but I'm waiting for independent reviews (i.e. <U>not</U> <I>Sight & Sound</I>, whose overwhelming thumbs-up verdicts on BFI titles is more than a little embarrassing considering the same organisation publishes the magazine!)

[Snuffy]

To be fair BFI's Seven Samurai was superior to the less than perfect Criterion edition. Even so, thus far the Kurosawa pantheon has not really been faithfully represented on DVD.

These first generation releases are bound to be superseeded in the course of time though. As with most high brow cinema, patience is a virtue.

[Henry]

I'm waiting for BFI's release of La Belle Et La Bete. I hope it'll have a better picture than the Criterion version which has a quite a lot of print damage.

[will]

I'm waiting for the Criterion Rashomon, but picked up Throne of Blood. The print is acceptable and overall seems quite well encoded with good sharpness and detail. At the moment there are no alternatives so well worth it IMHO.

[gZa]

Originally posted by Snuffy
To be fair BFI's Seven Samurai was superior to the less than perfect Criterion edition. Even so, thus far the Kurosawa pantheon has not really been faithfully represented on DVD.
Would you care to add to that statement?

Speaking as someone who's watched the Criterion version several times - the last one being on Sunday directly following an afternoon spent in the Curzon Soho watching the film projected. :rolleyes: - I find it to be as good a video representation as I've seen.

Also the BFI version DOESN'T have the excellent commentary by Micheal Jeck, but rather a half-assed one that only covers bits of the film.

[kanedaa]

for those that don't know we should find out about Rashamon (that was slated for Oct 16th!) tonight at the HTF chat with Criterion :)

dave.

[Michael Brooke]

I ended up taking the plunge with <I>Throne of Blood</I> and have just finished watching it - a full review will be up on Bullets'n'Babes at midnight tonight, but here's a sneak preview of what I had to say about the transfer side of things:

<I>My heart sank during the opening shots, as both fog and digital artefacts drifted across a decidedly soft and grainy landscape, but these thankfully weren’t a fair reflection of the print as a whole. For the most part, it’s in very good physical condition - spots and scratches are generally kept to a minimum, though I was less happy to see some obvious tramlining (look at the scene where Washizu and Miki ride through the forest at the beginning) and obtrusive reel change marks. But at its best, the picture is often superb, with a satisfyingly wide dynamic range, inky blacks and brilliant whites that still retain plenty of detail in the shadows and highlights (the almost-but-not-quite bleached-out shots of the evil spirit must have presented an encoding challenge).

The transfer is somewhat variable - at its best (and this applies to a fair chunk of the film) it’s terrific: admirably sharp and clear. But there are artefacting problems when the fog rolls in, there’s some very noticeable edge enhancement, particularly in exteriors and well-lit interiors, parts of the image are occasionally prone to momentary freezing, and there’s a serious encoding error around the 80-90 minute mark in the form of a vertical line of digital noise about a quarter of the way in on the left-hand side of the screen - it looks as though the transfer has over-reacted to a very faint print tramline (a similar though less obtrusive example recurs towards the end). There are also disappointing individual sequences such as the shot of Washizu returning to his castle through some worryingly smeary and poorly-defined fields, and Miki’s funeral is at times startlingly grainy (though this is probably a characteristic of the original).

I don’t want to put anyone off this DVD, because at its best it ranks among the most satisfying DVD versions of a Kurosawa film to date, and the problems are likely to be far more visible on the large 43” set used to review this disc than they will be on a more conventional system - but the defects are annoying, as most of them seem to be down to poor quality control rather than inherent drawbacks in the original materials. The film was originally framed in 4:3 (Kurosawa wouldn’t shoot in widescreen until the following year’s <B>The Hidden Fortress</B>), so anamorphic enhancement wasn’t necessary.

The sound isn’t much to write home about, but then it never was. A perfectly adequate rendition of the original 1957 mono track, it has a limited dynamic range, obvious distortion at the top end or whenever voices are raised and plenty of instances of background hiss and crackle - though it’s hard to tell whether this is the fault of the original or the BFI, and I suspect it may well be the former. It’s a pity, though, that more effort wasn’t made to clean up some of the more obviously faulty elements: a digital scrub of the background crackle would have paid rich dividends.</I>

[cowfeet]

Does anyone knows if the coming french (http://www.amazon.fr/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/dvd/B00005QT0P/tech-info/402-6492617-7835367) Kurosawa box have english subs?

[kanedaa]

Originally posted by cowfeet
Does anyone knows if the coming french Kurosawa box have english subs?

Sadly no, like most French discs they rarely provide English subs. Looks to be a top set too, you'll find a little more discussion on it HERE (http://thedvdforums.com/forums/showthread.php?s=&threadid=20619&highlight=rashamon) and better specs HERE (http://www.dvdfr.com/dvd/fiche.php3?id=4287)....

and Brooky :) talk about turnaround, buys it today, watches it today, and gives a detailed analysis of it today!! top stuff - look forward to the full review.

EDIT - top site you run their cowfeet - found it extremely useful on many occasions.

dave.