I recently bought Eastern Eye's Violent Cop and Boiling Point dvds. The picture quality wasn't nearly as bad as I expected. The color / contrast level was way too strong, but I managed to make the picture look pretty nice by adjusting my TV and DVD settings. The soundtracks were fine, too. The biggest problem was the subtitles on Boiling Point. There's nothing wrong with the translation (I guess), but the timings were terrible. Most of the time they were ok, but often the lines appeared too late (at least the first 20 minutes) and sometimes too early. There was one scene that was a complete mess and it was actually hard to know who was saying what thanks to bad timings. I always said the subtitles I make myself are not "professional quality" (which is true) but none of my scipts ever had this bad timings.
Now, the subs are not a complete disaster, and you shouldn't let that stop you from buying this otherwise great disc. These subs didn't ruin my movie experience, and the film isn't very dialogue driven. I'm not even gonna bother fixing the subs myself (at least yet).
Overall I think Eastern Eye did pretty well. That's something you can't say about the their terrible Hana-Bi transfer. I wonder how they will do with Dolls... (not that I would buy it anyway as I already own the terrific Bandai release). But I'm looking forward to their release for Isle. I really hope they get that one right.
I'm really looking forward to The Isle too with the Korean DVD OOP it will have to do regardless:
1. R1 and HK R3 - DD2.0 and mucky non-anamorphic (as in mucky not just because it's non-anamorphic).
2. UK R2 - DTS and anamorphic but cut
3. Korean R3 - DD5.1 and anamorphic + uncut but OOP
As for Violent Cop R4 I hear it's really good and easily beats the competition.
I have the R4's of Violent Cop & Boiling Point and they're both lovely. The sub timing on Boiling Point was fine IMO, but I'm clearly not as anal retentive as you to notice.
Some people aren't happy unless they have something to bitch about. If it's not about something as trivial as a yellow sub font, it's about something as equally trivial like a massive 4-hour epic film being split over 2 discs and the person bitching about having to get off their lazy arse halfway through to change the disc.
That's hypocritical considering how much you bitch about remixing and NTSC to PAL.
To many the latter is trivial. It's all about priorities. I dislike having to get up when I know the film would easily fit on 1 disc (that would be under 3 hours not 4 hours) without looking worse but yes it's no biggie.
I bought Seven Swords: Deluxe Edition which splits the film.
Yellow Subs also really annoy me but again it's no biggie except if it was on a black and white film then I'd have to think twice about buying the DVD (luckily I've only seen that on the Korean Seven Samurai which Criterion are re-releasing anyway). As it would make the film unwatchable.
If two identical releases were out but one had white and another yellow. I'd for the white subtitled version unless the yellow one was considerably cheaper.
EvaUnit02 wrote:The EE release of Kwaidan (1964, Japan) is the best English-friendly release available.
It's the only English subtitled release of the uncut version (the Criterion is cut) and it has a native PAL transfer. (source)
For now yes BUT I'm sure the Eureka UK R2 will beat it. There's are proper PAL too.
The UK R2 is part of a range (not big I know but nice), has lovely cover art and a 74 page book. They really take care over their Masters of Cinema range.
bradavon wrote:That's hypocritical considering how much you bitch about remixing and NTSC to PAL.
Fair enough, but NTSC-PAL conversions (and PAL-NTSC) are a different kettle of fish. They look like absolute shit when you try to watch them in prog scan. Don't you have a HDTV LCD set Brad? Don't you bother with progressive scan?
If two identical releases were out but one had white and another yellow. I'd for the white subtitled version unless the yellow one was considerably cheaper.
I'd go for which ever is cheaper as well. Even if the release is $2 cheaper, I'd still go for it.
For now yes BUT I'm sure the Eureka UK R2 will beat it. There's are proper PAL too.
The UK R2 is part of a range (not big I know but nice), has lovely cover art and a 74 page book. They really take care over their Masters of Cinema range.
I'm well aware of the Eureka "Masters of Cinema" range and it'll prolly indeed beat the Madman release of Kwaidan. But the MoC range IS the UK equivalent of Criterion and thus costs a premium. £16-22 per release - very expensive for most and especially so for me (exchange rate). I wish these fucking Criterion-esque labels would crawl out of their arses and make their releases affordable.
EvaUnit02 wrote:The sub timing on Boiling Point was fine IMO, but I'm clearly not as anal retentive as you to notice.
It's not that I want perfect timings, it's just that I own about 300 dvds and Boiling Point has clearly the worst timings of them all. No other dvd I own comes even close.
Like I said, I thought these were good releases. But overall I think EE is a bit over-rated. Maybe I don't know what I'm talking about, but to me it seems their best releases are ports of other releases (like The Bride With White Hair). They've got many good releases, but their release is rarely the best one available. They've also managed to ruin some of my favourite films with terrible transfers (like Hana-Bi, Sword of Vengeance and Lady Snowblood).
And about subtitle colour, I would always get the best release available, but if there's two identical releases, one with white and one with yellow subs, then I would definitely choose the one with white subs. Even if it costs a bit more.
Brad I think Seven Samurai is actually over 3 hours (PAL), just. The old BFI release was 190 minutes long.
Eva, BTW if you go to Play.com you'll find many of the Masters of Cinema series well under £16-22 (some for £9.99).
EvaUnit02 wrote:Fair enough, but NTSC-PAL conversions (and PAL-NTSC) are a different kettle of fish.
In your opinion.
EvaUnit02 wrote:They look like absolute shit when you try to watch them in prog scan. Don't you have a HDTV LCD set Brad? Don't you bother with progressive scan?
Yes and Yes but no I don't notice it so ergo it can't bother me, unless it's a really bad conversion (most aren't IMO) then it does.
grim_tales wrote:Brad I think Seven Samurai is actually over 3 hours (PAL), just. The old BFI release was 190 minutes long.
Thanks but did I ask?
Oh wait you're talking about splitting films. Two points it's 10 minutes over the 3hr mark so nothing as far as compression goes and it's a very old film so really doesn't need the extra space 2 discs would afford. Just my opinion.
Madman of late have been putting out some stella titles. The French release is missing English subs right? The Korean release was decent but it's OOP and didn't have English subtitled extras anyway.
I only own "Bruce Lee - Lost Interviews" so far. I own the UK R2 which they licensed from Madman, it's identical right down to the logo.
I plan to get "Twilight Samurai" (Native-PAL, Full-rate DTS and a little extra) and "Breaking News" (Some exclusive goodies) one day too but "The Isle" will be my first proper Eastern Eye DVD purchase.
The Isle cover art is up, it's a bit ropey but not to bad either IMO:
It seems EE is releasing Azumi 2 on July 26th. Probably good news to someone who wants it subbed and with a decent transfer (surely their transfer will beat the horrible UK disc).
Totally under-rated film. Sure, the story sucks (and there was so much potential after the first film) but the action is great and Aya is the cutest girl in world. The first half an hour is pretty bad, but the rest is almost non-stop action. 4/5
Going a bit off topic but here's a little comparison between Amuse Soft and Optimum.
NOTE: don't pay any attention to the minor difference in framing, that's only a result of my incompetence in trying to make both caps the same size without loss of quality.
Mind if I add some caps from the TF1 (just for comparison) ?
I used to be "the man who loves the movies you hate".
Now I'm just "that weird french guy with a cat avatar who comes to BnB once a year for no reason and then disappears again".
Tom2681 wrote:Mind if I add some caps from the TF1 (just for comparison) ?
Good idea (as long as they don't look better than my R2J )
How about a new thread. That way people could find it easier. I even found the 'delete post' button... Or maybe this should be in the french topic... I don't know, do what you want, feel free to steal my caps.
OK. New post in the french thread (working on it).
I used to be "the man who loves the movies you hate".
Now I'm just "that weird french guy with a cat avatar who comes to BnB once a year for no reason and then disappears again".
)
