3 Korean titles from France

[xradman]

I just finished going through 3 Korean Blu-ray releases from Elephant Film. They are all region free. bbbluUnfortunately all 3 titles are less than optimal for various reasons.

Running Wild (Yasoo) (2006)

IMDB on Ya-soo

Video: 1080i60 encoded in AVC
Audio: Korean dts 5.1, French dts 5.1
Subtitles: English, French, Off
International cut ~124 minutes

Picture is very contrasty with very intense colors. Faces appear orange, but I suspect that this might be intentional as certain scenes are intensely blue.

Bloody Tie (Sasaeng Gyeoldan) (2006)

IMDB on Sasaeng Gyeoldan
Beyond Hollywood Movie Review

Video: 1080i50 encoded in AVC
Audio: Korean dts HD MA 5.1, French dts HD MA 5.1
Subtitles: English, French, Off
117 minutes

Why this is encoded in 1080i50/p25, I haven't a clue. How it ends up at 117 minutes (same length as NTSC DVD) when playing with 4% PAL speedup is a mystery as well. This title may not be playable with many US TV and Blu-ray players.

My Wife is a Gangster 3 (Jopok Manura 3) (2006)

Wikipedia article on Jopok Manura 3

Video: 1080i60 encoded in AVC
Audio: Korean dts 5.1, French dts 5.1
Subtitles: English, French, Off
115 minutes

I watched this first with Korean audio and subtitles off, however since about half the dialog is in Chinese (?Mandarin), this was not suitable since there is no forced subtitles for Chinese dialog. Korean dts 5.1 audio also had significant distortion (as if it was clipping).

I applaud Elephant Films for releasing these titles without region coding and including extensive supplemental features. But I can't help wondering why they did not encode these as 1080p24 and include lossless original audio (lossless audio is included in Bloody Tie). Due to these deficiencies, I can only give a lukewarm recommendation for these 3 French releases.