Kevin Gilvear at DVD Times has reviewed Optimum’s Region 2 release of Ran, which is due out on November 26th. Rather than spending any time with the movie itself, the review concentrates on the question which release of Kurosawa’s Ran is the best: the Criterion, Warner Bros. or Optimum one? The verdict seems to be that one should go with this new Optimum release because of its superb picture quality.
The review comes with a set of screenshots comparing the three releases, and I must personally say that I am not entirely convinced about the verdict. In fact, in all but one of the screenshots I prefer the warmer colours of the Criterion release.
Proceed to DVD Times for the full review.
I think the Studio Canal/WB DVD to be the best one yet, based off the review I dont think I’ll pick up the Optimum as I dont see much difference.
The Criterion one I own, to me it does have too much red saturation, The warmer image plays well it your watching to the movie with some lights in the room, but when I watch it in a small room turned theater and no lights the warm colors are noticeable and distracting, and some cases the reds slighty bleed into other colors.
I dont understand the whole region locks on DVDs and Video Games. The good things is all higher end DVD players have ways of removing the region lock