The Seven Samurai: Special Edition (Korean R3)

bradavon · Post by **bradavon** » 18 May 2005, 00:14

Aren't they forced?

Where do you source subs Lourdes? Thanks for the informative post btw.

Lourdes · Post by **Lourdes** » 18 May 2005, 01:28

The BFI Kurosawa discs I've seen (5 or 6) all had forced rather than burnt in subs. Like French releases, a licensing restriction imposed upon them. I've not actually tried dealing with forced subs (ripping or disabling) but I know that it's possible. I believe it's a UOP (User Operation Prohibited) which prevents the operation of certain functions (so no skipping copyrights etc) so I'm sure I won't have to do anything more than turn them off. And I use AnyDVD in any case which claims to remove UOP's along with its region free and other functions.

I get most subs from Kloofy's and a few from ScriptClub. And others from fans who have produced their own, such as jereon at ADVDG who has compiled a fair few. As I'm sure you know subtitles are stored as images so to produce text based ones you have to OCR them. This is an annoying process and is rarely error free so when possible I like to do that myself so I'll ask someone with the DVD for the subs in the original format. Although with many releases I can do this myself, English subtitled releases sometimes have extras that are nice to have.

Of course timing is a problem but if a film isn't cut then all you have to do is re-synch the start and end lines or adjust the FPS if there's a NTSC/PAL difference. Very easy to learn and most rewarding, I've got a large collection of scripts for my DVD's and it's nice to be able to watch films without any Engrish! Only drawback is showing unsubbed DVD's to someone else, only 10-15 mins actual work but you've got to encode the DVD which can take 45mins-3hours depending on your spec. You can do the same for audio too, and anything else of course. I've a few audio or commentary tracks (from releases that I own, wouldn't pinch these) on my HDD. I play most DVD's on my PC these daysso I don't bother making perfect DVD's (the pick of AV and Extras) anymore. Too much diskspace or £3-5 for a DVD-9. But I did that when I used a normal player.

It's a bit dodgy since in the UK it's illegal to rip copy protected items. Almost all DVD's use CSS Encryption so... And of course if you don't own the release that the subs came from you're pirating them. Translations do cost money after all. But I'm fine with it personally. It's not so bad.

memetic · Post by **memetic** » 18 May 2005, 01:41

That's a lot of work. Subtitles are often pretty bad on Asian-released DVDs though. With the imminent advent of HD-DVD though it's looking like the user will be able to specify font size, colour, and position - which will be very cool. There are already DVD players that can adjust subtitle position (such as some Panasonic players) which is great if you have that annoying situation with subtitles being out of image area on a 4:3 letterbox feature.

Unless there's been a re-release, the BFI Seven Samurai disc I saw had burned-in subtitles, not forced. It's also a shorter cut of the film: 190 mins instead of 207 mins.

Lourdes · Post by **Lourdes** » 18 May 2005, 02:08

Blu-ray has vector based unicode support along with High-Res bitmap support for effects. HD-DVD only has bitmaps, possibly slightly better than they are at the moment but I doubt there's much difference.

It's not like I'm keeping the disc, just renting it as I still don't own it. But convinient to get it when I came accross this topic

EvaUnit02 · Post by **EvaUnit02** » 18 May 2005, 05:09

The subs on the EE Kurosawa DVDs I've viewed have been excellent, but used modern English. Eg "They're", "sucks". Doesn't bother me though.

bradavon wrote:As for Ran the R4 has DD5.1 instead of DD2.0 (R2, whichever you prefer) but has the Making of. in the correct AR of 1.66:1. Not that it really matters IMO.

As I generally prefer remixes I'm getting the R4 over the R2. The correct AR Making Of. is a bonus.

I've viewed R4 Ran. Good choice, the DD5.1 remix is excellent IMO and the transfer (sourced from Studio Canal) is gorgeous (craps from great heights onto the R1 Wellspring judging from screen comparisons). If I remember correctly, the language of the subs felt appropriate to the film's period (ie no modern colloquiums). You may also want to double-dip for the reportedly excellent commentary tracks on the R1.

5.1 remixes of stereo tracks tend to have no drawbacks, unlike 5.1 remixes of mono tracks.

grim_tales · Post by **grim_tales** » 18 May 2005, 08:38

memetic wrote:Unless there's been a re-release, the BFI Seven Samurai disc I saw had burned-in subtitles, not forced. It's also a shorter cut of the film: 190 mins instead of 207 mins.

Eh? No its' not. All the BFI is missing is the short intermission score which lasts 5 minutes or so. Other than that it contains exactly the same footage as the Criterion. And the 190mins takes into account PAL speedup BTW which probably explains the discrepency.

Eva I agree saying "sucks" er.. sucks

when you're dealing with old Japanese, but how would you say "they're" differently?

ICE-angel · Post by **ICE-angel** » 18 May 2005, 17:55

bradavon · Post by **bradavon** » 18 May 2005, 19:20

Thanks Lourdes. That seems like an awful lot of work just to get better subs when most are already decent on the DVD anyway.

Besides I hate watching films on a computer.

-------------------------------

Good news on R4 Ran. How is "They're" modern English? It's been used for decades and probably more.

EvaUnit02 · Post by **EvaUnit02** » 19 May 2005, 01:57

ICE-angel wrote:
grim_tales wrote:If EE are subtitling their classic Kurosawa film releases with terms such as "sucks" (can you give an example, by the way ?)

Hidden Fortress: Some of the dialogue of the two bumbling peasants, if I recall correctly. I don't own the disc, so I can't give any specific examples.

Anyway who give a shit as long as it's not Engrish or dubtitles?

gojensen · Post by **gojensen** » 19 May 2005, 09:00

who's to say that old japanese farmers didn't say "this sucks..."

And if they didn't, the phrasing they would have used probably would be meaningless in today's setting to any but japanese historians... so they "modern" it up a bit (or they'd need to insert half screen anecdotes every other minute

). Everyone does this, to a larger or smaller degree though. Still I haven't read the EE subs so I'm not sure how bad they are (I have the disc though...)

As for the Korean Seven Samurai, it looks vastly superior to the Criterion. But it has yellow subs, which I found really odd on a black and white movie. I've yet to view this disc aswell (mainly because my first disc was scratched to hell

) but from the small glimpses I previewed it look just great... oh and I think they smartened up the dialogue here aswell...

So I'm guessing the "ultimate" release will be Criterions re-release when, and IF, it happens - as it's rumoured to have to different subtitle tracks. Pick yer flava!

memetic · Post by **memetic** » 19 May 2005, 15:30

grim_tales wrote:Eh? No its' not. All the BFI is missing is the short intermission score which lasts 5 minutes or so. Other than that it contains exactly the same footage as the Criterion. And the 190mins takes into account PAL speedup BTW which probably explains the discrepency.

Calculating both cuts down to the second, removing the interval (which runs for 5m12s) and accounting for PAL speed-up, the Criterion version still runs a full 4 mins longer. On top of that IMDB does list the UK 190 min cut separately to the "US restored cut" of 207 min. Looks like they're different cuts.

grim_tales · Post by **grim_tales** » 19 May 2005, 16:26

Hmm. I didnt know that.

I'm sure BFI were using the longest available print of the film at that time (to them).

ICE-angel · Post by **ICE-angel** » 23 May 2005, 17:35

grim_tales · Post by **grim_tales** » 23 May 2005, 17:43

Throne of Blood was actually based on Macbeth. Ran was based on King Lear

Lourdes · Post by **Lourdes** » 23 May 2005, 22:06

Whilst I prefer Criterion subtitles to those from Eastern Eye I'm still not satisfied with them. They're a bit too stale and literal and the translators never seem to give them much though. My pet hate is the use of "fence" and "fencing" in their Samurai films, that one really gets on my tits.

memetic · Post by **memetic** » 24 May 2005, 03:11

ICE-angel wrote:About the running times of Seven Samurai, I'm perfectly sure that all discs out there have and always had the same cut as stated previously. You can attribute any differences in the running time to PAL/NTSC, and/or logos and/or credits, and/or the intermission, and/or inaccurate times stated on the cover and web sites, as usual. I see no point in creating confusion where it doesn't exist, so instead of relying in speculation please post physical evidence if you'd like to insist there are different cuts of the movie in said discs.

Who said I was relying on speculation? I don't have any other information besides my own number-crunching, but I'm working with exact numbers, not speculation.

The exact run-time of the Criterion Seven Samurai is 206m27s.

Remove intermission: 206m27s - 5m12s = 201m15s

Apply PAL speed-up to length of Criterion: 201m15s x 0.95904 = 193m00s

Exact run-time of the BFI Seven Samurai is 189m11s

Difference between the two is therefore 3m49s

That's more than just a Janus logo. Any ideas?

grim_tales · Post by **grim_tales** » 24 May 2005, 09:41

According to IMDB, the UK runtime of 190 mins is based on a 1991 re-release of the film. Since Criterion brought their disc in 1998/9 and the BFI one came later I find it hard to believe that 190m was the longest version available to them.
I'm confused now..

Werent there 2 Criterion releases of this film?

gojensen · Post by **gojensen** » 24 May 2005, 11:33

just because the BFI released it later doesn't mean they went and got a new print... that would mean a reclassification with the BBFC (presumably) which costs £s.

As for the Criterion re-release... the first print included a sample of how the print looked when they got it from Toho, and how much they cleaned it up. Apparaently Toho didn't like this "negative" advertising of the Toho archives so they forced them to remove the clip. (The first release also had selectable subtitles, while the second release had forced subtitles ... which may also have been why Toho came chasing after Criterion).

ICE-angel · Post by **ICE-angel** » 05 Jun 2005, 14:46

Lourdes · Post by **Lourdes** » 05 Jun 2005, 17:57

I watched the BFI DVD a few days ago, I didn't notice anything missing but it certainly wasn't resubmitted to the BBFC and 'm not very familiar with the film. But anyway the BFI disc isn't much of a contendor even if it is a decent enough release.