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Wife's Heart is yet another very fine Naruse film -- and Mifune's character is very urbane and gentle.

The only Ozu film that Mifune could ever have appeared in was his 1961 End of Summer (made for Toho) -- and Mifune was very busy that year. Ozu did come up with a prominent cameo role for another Toho super-star Hisaya Morishige (and also a part for Toho actress Yuko Mochizuki).

Shochiku's blu-ray release looks pretty nice. Criterion come on!

Allow me to say, Criterion R1 blu - hell yeah.

Exactly 6 months after the Japanese BD release, and 1 month after the MoC release. Criterion obviously has more extras than the UK MoC, and the only difference will be the booklets.

Blu-ray.com

Slightly pillarboxed for some reason.

Yeah, screencap taking mistake? So it seems the UK disc is still slightly wider?

Battle of Algiers is like that, too.

That's to compensate for overscan, yet again a wise move by Criterion that shall be lambasted by everyone

Anyone who cares that much about missing 2% or whatever of the image around the edges should just buy a system that doesn't overscan. And they shouldn't buy the CC of High and Low either.

mfunk9786 wrote:That's to compensate for overscan, yet again a wise move by Criterion that shall be lambasted by everyone

I think every proper HDTV has an option to turn overscan off. Pillar/windowboxing Blu-ray releases is pointless.

It is indeed paradoxical that Criterion continue to take care about a mostly-CRT issue while releasing a movie on a state-of-art support.

I'm not entirely convinced it's overscan-related because the aspect ratio is actually narrower than the MOC -- meaning Criterion may have cropped the sides instead of windowboxing the entire image, which is what you're supposed to do for overscan-proofing. Unfortunately none of the Blu-ray.com caps correspond to DVD Beaver's caps of the MOC, and since I don't own the MOC, I can't confirm if the Criterion is actually cropped (another possibility is that the Criterion shows more information and the MOC is cropped on the top and bottom).

Some of the Blu-ray.com caps correspond with the UK review caps on the same website. It does look like the Criterion is cropped to the same extent on the sides as in High and Low, while MoC is slightly cropped at the top and bottom. Although for me, the cropping at the sides seems to be doing more damage, and the Criterion looks a bit blackness-boosted anyway so I'll be going for the MoC...

eerik wrote:

mfunk9786 wrote:That's to compensate for overscan, yet again a wise move by Criterion that shall be lambasted by everyone

I think every proper HDTV has an option to turn overscan off. Pillar/windowboxing Blu-ray releases is pointless.

We've been over this so many times, but it seems that Criterion is more concerned for the 99.9% of their potential customers who have no idea what 'overscan' is and even if they did would have no idea how to go about turning it off, but nevertheless deserve to see the all of the films they've paid for. The problem is that the majority of HDTVs still have a default overscan, so the problem remains the same now as it did when they introduced the practice and windowboxing is far from pointless.

I mostly just find it odd that one of the first titles they're doing this for on BD is one where the portion of the picture you might lose through overscan is surely no more than the amount of the image you're already losing in comparison to the MoC. I wouldn't normally consider this cropping substantial enough to complain about, but by the same token, I wouldn't really consider that people watching an image affected by overscan are getting a substantially compromised viewing experience.

Minkin wrote:Criterion Cast has made the side-by-side comparison...

While it is the same scene (and possibly the same shot) it isn't the same frame. Same thing for the other corresponding caps. (There is one cap that is probably matching frames and it looks like the Criterion has more info at the top of the frame. ) But, it looks like the Criterion is matted on the sides giving it an aspect ratio of 2.35:1 and the MOC isn't, giving it an aspect ratio of 2.45:1.

I think (and someone will correct me if I'm wrong), if you saw the film projected it would be closer to the Criterion 2.35, but neither is wrong. A bigger issue is how harsh the Criterion looks.

link to comparison of a matching shot
(Thanks Sandro)


MoC gains more at the top and sides, loses a slither at the bottom. The Criterion looks possibly edge enhanced compared to the MoC, unless it's just the increased contrast.

Verdict: No one will notice shit with whatever copy they end up buying

It looks as though this is a similar situation to Vampyr, in that MoC opted to present the Shochiku master as supplied (the booklet explicitly says that they were happy with it), whereas Criterion have opted to give it a light going-over - hence the increased contrast.

The screencaps they chose focus on close-ups, but the Criterion DVD and Blu are totally murdering the more architectural wider shots, with people being cut off in the middle of their bodies. It makes no sense, I don't understand how they chose this cropped look. I actually noticed this when I watched the DVD not that long ago, and they replicate it with the Blu. I'm surprised the reviewers aren't more offended by this anomaly.

Does anyone (more knowledgeable than I am) have a clue why Criterion could have opted for cropping the picture? That is, of course, if we rule out the possibility of of an error or oversight. Other than this, the image of the Criterion seems to me slightly better than the MoC because of the contrast.