A few months back, I had a question in this very topic:
Ardvark - April 5, 2008, 5:35pm
A few posts back I wished I had more autographed discs. Well, someone was listening…
The Korean Limited Edition of Lee Myung Se’s “M” arrived. With a nice little surprise for me on the inner booklet!
Scribble on the booklet! Uhm… does anyone know whose signature this is?
Well, since X has returned, I asked him and he kindly confirmed it was writer-director Lee Myung-Se’s signature.
I’m tempted by that Warlords set. If you watch it soon, lemme know if the extras are subbed, that will decide for me.
Yep, I can confirm that a vast majority of the extras on The Warlords: Director’s Edition are indeed English subbed, including the directors commentary.
I’m tempted by that Warlords set. If you watch it soon, lemme know if the extras are subbed, that will decide for me.
Yep, I can confirm that a vast majority of the extras on The Warlords: Director’s Edition are indeed English subbed, including the directors commentary.
Dang. Well, CDWow has it for $22 shipped. If I still trust them…
Oh Ard Vijn why did you have to show me this most recent addition to your collection??!!!! Now I too must have this animated classic in my possession. Just ordered from DVDfromKorea. Thanks for the the enticing photos
Well, specially for you, TheDoug, here’s another one!
The Taiwanese edition of Michel Ocelot’s “Kirikou and the Sorceress”.
And it features one of the weirdest pieces of packaging yet:
Yes, it’s a goody-bag! These are the shrinkwrapped contents:
Unfoiled, these are the film, the soundtrack CD, a lovely book, and a mysterious set of cards:
The contents opened up:
I’ll be posting a review on the mainsite but in short:
-There are four tracks on this: Chinese 2.0 and 5.1, and the original French 2.0 and 5.1.
-English subs!
-Image is non-anamorphic Mpeg 2. Ouch! That’s almost like vcd… mind you, this seems to be true for all English-friendly versions of “Kirikou”, there isn’t a stellar one yet…
-The soundtrack CD turns out to be exactly that: instead of Youssou N’Dour’s score it seems to feature the entire Chinese 2.0 track. Huh?
-Can anyone tell me what those cards are about? A teaching method or something?
-The book is absolutely gorgeous, and more than twice the size of the one in the Korean “Azur & Asmar” set.
Hmmm…interesting. It’s one of those sets that initially seems worthy of acquiring and then there’s the “devil in the details…” That video format seems to be the downside of this set, but I’m going to hold off an further opinions till I read your full review in your upcoming review on Twitch. (That’s not to say I might not order this one as well)
Here’s my latest addition. I don’t know if I’d call it my most “beautful” box set, but considering its from Zoke Culture, its not bad. As you can see this comes with a 32 page glossy booklet along with a Region 9 encoded “Red Cliff” feature/extras disc. The second dvd is a John Woo DVD-5 anthology which are just excerpts from his various past features (1986-2002). I kind of like the twist-tie thingie on the heavy weight cardboard box which holds all the goodies. (Someone told me Zoke Culture put out an Infernal Affairs set similiar to this set)
Here’s my latest addition. I don’t know if I’d call it my most “beautful” box set, but considering its from Zoke Culture, its not bad. As you can see this comes with a 32 page glossy booklet along with a Region 9 encoded “Red Cliff” feature/extras disc. The second dvd is a John Woo DVD-5 anthology which are just excerpts from his various past features (1986-2002). I kind of like the twist-tie thingie on the heavy weight cardboard box which holds all the goodies. (Someone told me Zoke Culture put out an Infernal Affairs set similiar to this set)
Golden oldie here: the Korean Special Edition of Akira Kurosawa’s “Seven Samurai”.
The reason why I bought this was that at the time the CineKorea release was the best affordable English-friendly version in the world. The transfer used here ran rings around even the Criterion release, and equaled the far more costly Japanese edition.
Also included was the terrific English commentary track by film historian Michael Jeck, same as on the Criterion.
Note that I said “...at the time…”, because in 2006 Criterion struck back with a stunning re-release which put them back on top again. So if you want to know which version to buy, until 2006 I would have said “go Korean” but now I say “go Criterion, but make sure you have the re-release!”. The Criterion rivals the CineKorea audio and video, but has a veritable slew of English-friendly extras.
Anyway, back to the CineKorea release.
This is what it looks like:
Inside that slipcover is the Amaray with the two discs, a nice book (featuring more than 50 pages of Korean text, but also a gallery of worldwide movie posters) and a reproduction of the most-used Korean poster.
Everything opened and/or unfolded:
Mind you, even though I declare Criterion the current winner, this version is SO good that I won’t upgrade it until Criterion releases its BluRay version. The CineKorea edition has the film itself at very high quality, and the Michael Jeck commentary, and for now I’m happy enough with that.
