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Must say I'm very glad to see KWAIDAN get such a direly needed upgrade. I've enjoyed the film since seeing it in college in some long-ago Japanese Film Class. I've turned assorted people on to it over the years, too. Maybe this release will alleviate the film's comparative obscurity.

Call me crazy - but I would love to see a remake set in the south

Blind blues player
visitations by JEB Stuart's cavalry
Psalms painted on him by old Baptist preacher


the end music exactly the same

yeah...and then one set in old Ireland

Blind Irish harpest
visitations by Vikings
Psalms painted on by old catholic priest

the end music exactly the same

Something has been nagging at me for a while now...I love the new cover, but are they ever going to add Kobayashi's name to it? I honestly can't think of a Criterion release that doesn't have the directors name on it.

Maybe they are keeping it the same with the old DVD, which also didn't have Kobayashi's name on the cover.
There are the few, like the Beastie Boys set, Harold Lloyd films, and Godzilla without director's names on the cover.

And the Spy Who Came in From the Cold.

There could be a contractual issue preventing the use of the director's name on the cover, as was the case for Spy.

Judging from the screen shots, I much prefer the colors in the MOC release.

Really? The skintones in the MoC look too red, like the Criterion Ozu transfers. The Criterion may lean a bit yellow/green (especially that first "Mr. Skin" cap), but it fits for a movie about ghosts.

I don't think people look "sunburned" in the MOC version (a la Criterion Ozu) -- and I think the coloration in Criterion's Kwaidan look drab.

Michael Kerpan wrote:Judging from the screen shots, I much prefer the colors in the MOC release.

The watermelon grab clinches it. Moc bested Criterion with the dvd, so here's hoping they have a crack at the blu upgrade.

I prefer the 'red' Criterion Ozu's, as it happens. I understand the 'green' look is technically corrent, but for me Criterion criterion did a wonderful job of enhancing Ozu's sublime use of colour in his later films. Cherished dvds' I'll never part with.

Michael Kerpan wrote:Judging from the screen shots, I much prefer the colors in the MOC release.

Huh, I thought we were begging them to give every Japanese film a green wash so the films look more Asian, now that they're doing it we're not?

I think the Criterion Blu seems to go _way_ too far towards pasty paleness (for non-ghost characters) -- looking at skin tones. And MOC has the best looking water melon.

I judge each release on its own merits.

I decided to pre-order the Criterion Blu-ray, and but I'll keep the MoC DVD as well.

What I am seeing in the screenshots of the 2K restoration is a considered attempt (successful or not) to do the color timing for each segment independently. In some images the color looks very light, even pale as some of you have noted. In other places it is *more* saturated than in the other versions. Skin tones are also all over the place, depending partly on makeup and lighting. The one Blu-ray image of a male face in "natural" lighting without heavy makeup has really nice, natural-looking skin tones.

What I thought odd about the MoC (or the AVChannel shot, for that matter) shot of the painted sunset was that it shows no yellow on the bottom, just shades of red and orange. As to shots showing skin tone, to me the MoC now shows as being more to the red than the rest. I'd lean to the possibility of a different master altogether.

htom wrote:What I thought odd about the MoC (or the AVChannel shot, for that matter) shot of the painted sunset was that it shows no yellow on the bottom, just shades of red and orange. As to shots showing skin tone, to me the MoC now shows as being more to the red than the rest. I'd lean to the possibility of a different master altogether.

I've long felt that the MoC edition had too much of red bias. But that doesn't mean that the color time on the new 2K restoration is ideal, either, just that it's different. I want to see it in motion before I make a judgment.

I find it had to tell from a few screen caps. Still looking forward to watching this in HD. Saw it at the theatre once and once on DVD. Am I right that The Woman of the Snow was cut on its original US release ? It's by far me favourite and most visually stunning sgment of the lot.

Lost Highway wrote:I find it had to tell from a few screen caps. Still looking forward to watching this in HD. Saw it at the theatre once and once on DVD. Am I right that The Woman of the Snow was cut on its original US release ? It's by far me favourite and most visually stunning sgment of the lot.

I believe the short cut of the film was what was screened at Cannes in 1965 as well, so the long version may have first become available to Western audiences with the MoC DVD.

It's potentially confusing to refer to just a "short" and a "long" version because there were three key versions. The shortest was the three-part 125-min. version, missing The Woman of the Snow (cut for the Cannes premiere because Kobayashi believed it would be too long for festival audiences otherwise) and was also the one screened in the US in 1965. The medium-length version was the 161-min. one released on DVD by Criterion (and years earlier on tape by HVE) with all four parts but with some cuts, and then the 183-min. complete version was the MoC DVD and of course the new Criterion. There is some more information about the latter two back on page one of the thread.

Just got my copy of Kwaidan. There's no booklet. Anyone get a booklet with theirs?

Does anyone know if the 3-hour cut of this film will be pushed to Hulu?

Smafdy wrote:Just got my copy of Kwaidan. There's no booklet. Anyone get a booklet with theirs?

See here for what your copy should look like.

I have had the CC LD, CC DVD, MoC DVD, and now the CC Blu. The image on the CC Blu is amazing (as it appears on my plasma, anyway) and is to be preferred to all previous home video versions.

Also, the Stephen Prince commentary is well worth having (Mr. Prince talks almost incessantly for the 3 hours). He talks about the sound design more than anything else, something I particularly appreciate hearing about.

This just in from JM:

I hope this email finds you well. I'm happy to report that Kobayashi's
original cut of Kwaidan, which runs 183 minutes, will be going up on
Hulu tomorrow, just in time for Halloween!

Stephen Prince.... interesting information but how he murders Japanese pronunciation is just cringing... It's bad enough he pronounces the title as "kWaidan" when the "W" is silent, but even KA-EE-suke Kinoshita? C'mon man!
At least he pronounces Masaki Kobayashi's name right this time. I can't remember which, maybe Kurosawa's "Ran" in which he said "Masa-KAI" and not "Masa-KEY"...

At least Christopher Benfey in the extras knows how to pronounce "Kwaidan" as "Kaidan".