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Ran (Masterworks Edition) Actors: Tatsuya Nakadai, Akira Terao, Jinpachi Nezu, Daisuke Ryu Director: Akira Kurosawa Number of Items: 1 Picture Format: Anamorphic Widescreen Format: Color, Widescreen, Dolby Audience Rating: R (Restricted) Running Time: 160 minutes Studio: Wellspring Media, In Aspect Ratio: 1.85:1 Region Code: 1 Product Group: DVD Release Date: 2003-04-15 Buy from Amazon |
 "Fantastic film, but strange picture"I just got this yesterday and immediately stuck it in the player. I have to agree with the last reviewer; I was disappointed in the the picture on this disc. I was looking forward to it after the distastrous previous edition, but this picture seems both fuzzy and unnaturally colored. The green of the grass seemed unearthly. Many of the colors seem extremely bright. I skipped around in the first commentary track and that sounded very enjoyable, and of course this is one of the most wonderful films ever made, so if you have not seen it, you better. I am surprised to hear praise of this new DVD presentation. It makes me wonder if some discs are better than others?  "EXCELLENT"This is the DVD that many Kurosawa fans have been waiting years for and it doesn't disappoint. The film is beautiful. The commentaries are great. Overall, I have only one complaint about the DVD: in the trailers section, the two trailers included are the European and Home video trailers. They're good, but I would much rather have had the original Japaneese and American trailers and maybe the re-release trailer from 2000. Overall, I highly recommend this DVD to any film buff. Excellent. I can only hope that more of Kurosawa's films are re-released in such a manner on DVD. "Still not perfect"Yes, the movie is a masterpiece, though it is only loosely based on King Lear. There is no Edmund, no Edgar, no Gloucester, and the "king" Hidetora's tragedy stems in part from his past murders and cruelties, and not, like Lear's, from mere pride, stubborness and anger. The older Fox-Lorber DVD has somewhat washed-out color and framing problems. But at least on my equipment this Masterworks DVD has color that is too bright, with bleeding, sparkling, strobing, and a generally very "hot" image, not at all film-like. The disc does look great on my laptop computer's LCD screen, but a small screen is not how one wants to watch an epic. Buy this DVD if you don't already have the Fox-Lorber version, but don't spend the money just to replace the Fox-Lorber; this isn't enough of an improvement.  "Ran (Masterworks Edition) is also NOT A GOOD DVD TRANSFER!"I can't believe it. I have been cheated twice now. The first edition of Ran was terrible. The new "Hi-Def" version is disappointingly mediocre. It just isn't very good. Sure, now it has the right geometry on a widescreen TV and they fixed the horrible centering issue, but the quality of the video is very MEDIOCRE and sometimes POOR. For one thing, the color seems like it is overdone and unnatural. Secondly, the overall picture is often fuzzy, though sometimes acceptable. Thirdly, there are "sparklies" all over the place, where complex shapes or fine lines are PIXELLATED HORRIBLY and broken, causing vibrating movements and undulating saturation. I find this nearly intolerable. If you have a widescreen TV, you'll surely notice this. If you have an old "standard" set that isn't too big, it might hide some of this in the "fuzziness" of the scanlines, but probably not all of it. I am just very angry that this supposed chance at doing the film justice has been totally wasted. I saw Ran IN A THEATRE and it was FANTASTIC. Not so on the DVD. It looks like [poo]. Here is a letter I wrote to the deplorable company Wellspring, which apparently handled this ...job:To Whom it may concern: I have a technical problem with the new edition of Ran, "The Masterworks Edition". Basically edges and lines in the picture tend to vibrate and jitter, and are very pixellated, causing a distutrbing and distracting motion and distortion in the overall image. It actually gives me a headache to watch it. I find it hard to believe that you would go through the trouble to produce a new "Hi-Def" transfer and basically do such a poor job with the transfering and compression of the video. I returned the first copy I bought at Virgin Records for another one, and the same problem exists on both. I have a Toshiba widescreen HDTV television for enjoying just such movies as this, and I am shocked that the picture is so grainy and problematic. Can you explain this? I have included some screen shots for you to look at. The first set is where the Lords are meeting for the first time. The four frames to show how the star in the crescent of the clan symbol distorts and "sparkles." See the white rectangles and compare the regions. Some are darker in spots, some are lighter. They are all "splotchy". When you put frame after frame up like this, you get a "sparkling" effect, which is very annoying. In the second set, the white rectangles highlight the "sparkling" in the white lines in Hidetora's hat. You can clearly see that in some frames the line is "solid" and in other frames it is clearly "broken" or "perferated." Again, this creates a disturbing effect in motion. I'm not sure what you can do about this, but I have to say I'm disappointed in your compression techniques or whatever filters you ran this through. Any information in answer to this problem would be appreciated. At the very least, perhaps future DVD's done by your company will not have this problem. "Movie wonderful, DVD treatment horrible"There is now doubt about the quality of this film. Ths issue is the substandard encoding or transfer used for this new DVD. Through out the first 40 min. of the film, there are intances of both horizontal and vertical blanking - a static which appears on all vertical and horizontal lines. It is also obvious that this film was mastered from a film print and not the interpositive -- the blacks are fuzzy and the dark scenes look as if they have a scrim or screen over them. I also noted two instances of sound drop outs. All of these are issues which could have been fixed. It's very sad that greater care wasn't taken with this film, and at the price point which Winstar is charging, they should have at least tried to get it right. Hey Winstar -- third times the charm..... |
