Toho re-issues 2007

I am not sure if this has been reported previously but Toho re-issued 21 films in Nov/Dec last year. I discovered this when I bought a copy of The Most Beautiful from Yes Asia.

Here are links to the Toho site for each film: http://kurosawa.jokerman.net/toho.html

The Most Beautiful is a huge improvement on the very poor Mei Ah (which I think was transferred to DVD from a Laserdisc). Although it has some dirt and scratches it has good contrast throughout most of it. Only problem it has no English sub-titles.

The Most Beautiful included a brochure for the rest of the collection and I have scanned it and uploaded it here along with the cover & disc for The Most Beautiful. Note there is some sort of ad for the Sanjuro remake on the front.

Cost of most disc equates to about US$40. Not sure if they ship internationally from this site. Tiger’s Tail might be worth getting next.

I have posted some screen shots here:

http://kurosawa.jokerman.net/tmb.html

If you have the Mei Ah version, you will know how brilliant these look in comparison.

These, indeed, look really good. How much did it end up costing you after the postage?

Since I would imagine The Most Beautiful to be among the very last Kurosawa films to be made available in English with a decent transfer, it might be worth our while to work through the Mei Ah subtitles and see if we, even as non-native speakers, could perhaps polish the subtitles somewhat.

It was about US$40 (free postage). I have now also ordered Tigers Tail & Dodeskaden. I also thought that it would be worthwhile trying to adapt the Mei Ah sub-titles for this and Tigers Tail if the Toho is a big improvement in quality.

Only problem is that my Mei Ah copy is faulty (I got a replacement but it had the same problem). So I have never been able to rip the sub-titles off it.

I’ll send you my backup copy of the Toho to see if you can add the polished Mei Ah sub-titles.

I forgot to mention, i have already started to fix the Tigers Tail Mei Ah sub-titles. I fixed things like changing “driver” to “porter” and “wine” to “sake” .

Some of the the other Manglish is not so easy to work out. I have some new local friends who speak some Japanese, so I’ll try and enlist their help.

Do you have this?

I’m not fluent, but I think it’s a very good translation.

I think I have every word of the subtitles here, too, btw…

Thanks Lewis. I’ll see if I can match it up with the Mei Ah sub-titles. I have therm here (unedited):

http://kurosawa.jokerman.net/04_Tigers_Tail-English.srt

I don’t have the VHS version, but am hoping the Toho DVD will be a big improvement when it arrives in a week or 2.

Lewis, I just had a quick check of the last lines. You have:

“A turtle lives on top of a rock…”

Mei Ah has:

“A fly is on the rock”

I am off on a business trip for a few days, so I will have a closer look when I get back.