| Greencine now rents the better DVD of Ikiru |
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| written by danleary25 |
January 31, 2004 - 9:32 AM PST |
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15 out of 15 members found this review helpful
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| The previous review was made before Criterion released their excellent new DVD of this film and Greencine only carried the inferior R0 DVD of Ikiru. PGraydon's review is still good, it's just that the "abysmal DVD" he speaks of is no longer the one Greencine rents out. |
| Great movie, abysmal DVD |
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| written by PGraydon |
May 31, 2003 - 9:55 AM PDT |
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17 out of 21 members found this review helpful
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I'm a huge fan of Kurosawa's work, and Ikiru didn't disapoint. The story is poignant and masterfully told; the presentation of office politics set against a man's search for the meaning of his life was at once insightful, disturbing, and humourous. It would be interesting to play this as a double feature with Ingmar Bergman's Wild Strawberries.
Though the film is excellent, enjoying it through this DVD is a challenge. The DVD is a Mei Ah company product, and the production quality is a terrible affront to such content. The print quality is poor, with numerous scratches. The transfer is very poor, with noticeable streaking on the right side of the screen and obvious pixelization. The sound is poor too, with numerous pops and cracks and the occasional entire phrase cut out.
The worst part of this DVD, though, was the subtitling. The titles appear to have been translated from Chinese translation rather than the original film. There are numerous misspellings, poor word choices, and complete mistranslations. Worse, the names don't match the characters! It appears that for the Chinese translation, Chinese names were given to the characters and these, rather than the original names, were romanized for the English subtitles. This was particularly distressing to me, because my (admittedly infantile) Japanese kept recognizing parts of the dialogue where the character's names didn't match what was presented in the subtitles.
The extras on the disc have value in name only. The synopsis and filmography sections contain very little information, and it is necessary to push a button once per screen to see it all in English.
I look forward to seeing this movie again sometime with a nicer presentation, preferably from Criterion. In the meantime, enjoy the film if you can, but be warned about the challenges you will face.
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