by lhb412 » Tue Jul 09, 2019 7:20 pm
Okay, I'm skimming through the release right now and so far I have picked up on two rather insignificant problems. The first is that there is no pop up menu, as is common with Blu-rays, and instead you have to go to the main menu like with a DVD. The other is that subtitles seem to be automatically turned on, like they expect you to go for the Japanese version, so when I turned on the American version it was closed captioned. So, two things inconvenient in that you have to press one more button than usual!
(Edit: I took the disc out and inserted it again and went directly to the English version and didn't have the problem of the subtitles instantly appearing. I guess the previous time selecting the Japanese version first turned on the subtitles.)
Other than that, this release looks fabulous. It's the same nice print that Sony used but with this Blu-ray transfer everything just pops more. I popped in the DVD and watched a single one minute scene concentrating on the finer details and then popped in this Blu-ray and watched the same scene and I just noticed much more detail on the people's faces and m the miniatures and whatnot. Solid picture.
It contains the superlative commentary track from Sony's release, but they've also gone out of the way to scrounge up extra material from the Columbia vaults from this film's initial English release. Both a black-and-white teaser (which I have never seen) and a color trailer for the American release are presented, and the image gallery contains every publicity still, lobby card, and every permutation of the poster art for print and advertising and so forth. In addition to the extras, the packaging is just awesome. You really feel like you've got something special in your hands, and everything seems to be a real sturdy build, even the plastic sleeve that goes over the steelbook.
I haven't watched the whole film yet, but it seems the subtitles might be new and maybe more accurate? The Japanese names have the proper accent marks im them that most translations tend to leave out just to make everything seem a bit more palatable for English. Someone who understand Japanese could better tell about this.