Welcome to Akira Kurosawa info!  Log in or Register?

First review for Criterion’s ‘High and Low’

High and LowDVD Town has published what I think is the first review to surface for Criterion’s new double disc edition of High and Low, to be released on the 22nd of this month.

The review is fairly positive. You may want to skip to the second page for the technical details, although the review Christopher Long has some interesting comments to make about film snobbism on the first page.

Long concludes his review with the following: “If you own the original Criterion release, you should burn it and rush out to buy this re-issue. The extras are good, not great, but the improvement in the transfer is substantial. It’s more than worth the upgrade.”

While I wouldn’t encourage anyone to burn anything quite yet, it does sound promising indeed. And why wouldn’t it, Criterion has yet to let us down with their re-issues.

For more in formation about the availability of Kurosawa’s films on home video, see the sections on Kurosawa DVDs and Kurosawa Blu-rays.

More information about the release can also be found on the Criterion site. You can also order it from them directly for $32.


Share

Discussion

  link

Jeremy Quintanilla

I like having several version on the same movie.So far I have both Criterion versions of a Seven Samurai, Yojimbo, and Sanjuro. I will be sure to add High and Low.

  link

Fabien

One or two weeks ago, DVD Beaver published a technical review of this new edition.
Their conclusions are very similar to those of DVD Town.

  link

Vili Maunula

Thanks for the heads-up, Fabien! Too bad that DVD Beaver doesn’t (as far as I can see) offer any RSS feed, so I never know what is going on at their site. 🙁

  link

Fabien

Neither do I, and the reviews aren’t dated, and it’s difficult to find the desired information on the site.
I stumbled upon it totally by chance and was surprised to be the first to post it on another movie-goer board.

By the way, and not completely unrelated to this topic, Criterion seems planning a Rashomon release on september within the first box of the new Essential Art House collection.
I fear there is no further detail and this is unofficial but I may be mistaken.

  link

Vili Maunula

Interesting. Since I have not seen any pre-promotion of this myself, and the Criterion website seems silent about it as well, I assume that it must be just the first release of the film repacked.

Although there are rumours that Criterion intends to update all of their “first generation” Kurosawa releases like they have done with Yojimbo, Sanjuro, Seven Samurai and now High and Low. We’ll wait and see.

  link

Jeremy Quintanilla

News to me, thanks Fabien.

  link

Fabien

You’re welcome, Jeremy. :p

About this serie, in fact, Criterion shows a page about it, now : Essential Art House.

From what I read here and there, it features blatantly existing Criterion editions of the films, without (or with few) bonuses, making those great films more accessible (15.96$ per DVD).

Always from what I read, it could be the exact same films than those of the 50 years of Janus films box, but divided into boxset volumes, in which case we should see Ikiru and Seven Samurai in future volumes, cheapers and with new packaging.

(Sorry for being a little off topic.)

Leave a comment

Log in or Register to post a comment!