Ozu DVDs

[Nick Wrigley]

> I'd heard the same story about the Panorama disks but unfortunately it
> doesn't seem to be true. The Shochiku disks are dual layer while the
> Panorama disks are single layer. They may have received the digital 
> files
> from Shochiku but if so they've been compressed and reauthored to a 
> lower
> quality

I didn't know this, but a friend in Japan with the Japanese set has 
commented on how at some points of stillness in a scene it looks as if 
the DVD has accidentally been paused because there's absolutely no 
natural shimmer of light or film grain during these moments. This 
smacks of poor DVD compression techniques where everything is frozen by 
an algorithm to save disc capacity.


> (probably at the same time the punctilious Japanese subtitles were
> replaced with the sloppy rubbish that Nick mentions below).

So the Japanese discs have Japanese subtitles? That's interesting...


> It really does make a difference: at least when projected, movement in 
> the frame is
> noticably choppier on the Hong Kong disks. Also, as Yoshida Kiju also
> pointed out at Michigan this weekend, Ozu's is an art of repetition 
> with
> subtle differences -- that's hard to appreciate when lines are not
> subtitled, or the subtitle is actually for the previous line of 
> dialogue...

or just plain unintelligible! :( -- it's really a shambles. I doubt 
anybody could really get anything out of the AN AUTUMN AFTERNOON 
English subtitles on the Panorama disc. A real shame.

-N>-
www.mastersofcinema.org
www.ozuyasujiro.com