Is anybody still stuck with that crummy Miramax DVD for Mononoke? The colors are bleached out for some unknown reason. I've never understood why this is. The film's brown and green earthtones are turned into a pale white; it's as if the entire cast of characters hailed from northern Minnesota.
Mononoke was the first Miyazaki movie I had seen; up to that point, I had a passing interest in anime, but only really paid attention to the few "big" movies that would arrive every year or two. Akira, Ghost in the Shell, Ninja Scroll, Metropolis, yadda yadda.
Mononoke revealed layer after layer of depth, far more than the simple "be nice to mother nature" moral. This is a far more nuanced, complex, and tragic film than anything we had been exposed to. In Japan, this movie became a blockbuster phenomenon. In America, it was lost to the masses, save for a small, devoted fan base that continued to grow. If you were smart enough, you realized Hayao Miyazaki was someone to watch.
If you have the chance to see Mononoke on the big screen, do it. This is a movie made for the theaters, not the television sets.
5 comments:
Once again, the copy of Mononoke that I own is the American Miramax copy.
Which copy should I buy? Why is the Miramax one bad?
Add this to the discussion on the Porco Rosso DVD.
The Miramax DVD is crummy because the picture is all bleached out. Also, there aren't any extras to speak of. If you can compare to, say, the Japanese Region 2, you'd be shocked at the difference.
The Miramax Mononoke DVD is badly in need of an update. It is the oldest Ghibli DVD in North America, after all.
I'll attempt to reinstall Windows XP on my computer this weekend. If successful, I'll capture some screenshots to compare.
This is the one I want?
50$!!
Yes, that's the Japanese Ghibli ga Ippai DVD. I have that one, and it's excellent. The set includes three discs: the movie in Japanese w/ English subs on disc one, storyboards on disc two, and "international" version, with eight (!) language soundtracks, including the Miramax dub, on disc three.
And, yes, Ghibli DVDs now cost over $50. You can thank the collapsing US Dollar for that. But the old price used to be $45, so no big deal.
I would recommend the UK DVD release as a more affordable alternative. It retains all the original colors of the Japanese DVD without the ridiculousness price.
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