Third Window Films Discussion Thread

[Richard A]

Just received my copy of Tsukamoto's Gemini in the post from HMV, complete with the gorgeous slip, I'm happy to say.

[Eibon]

Mine arrived today and while I absolutely adore what Third Window are doing with their range and introductions to obscure titles, I have to say I'm hugely disappointed with the picture quality here. I preordered a long time ago but I wish I held back for a review. It's the reverse of my Snake of June experience wherein I had heard bad reports on print damage but when I bought it subsequently, I recognised them for what they were - genuine print anomalies that still bettered the previous DVD releases and not unique problems to the blu ray release.

In this case, I'm comparing the release to my Japanese (Warner) DVD. I will say from the outset I've only looked at the first 5 minutes but I am seeing a very uneven image and smeary grain structure will no additional detail over my SD version. For example, at 3:22 on the DVD, I made a note to see if the writing on the wall would be sharper in the blu ray by comparison. Imagine my surprise when I watch the same scene on the blu ray and find, not only can I not see sharper writing, I can't even see the wall or the glassware cabinet to the left. The scene is shrouded in impenetrable shadow.

I'm going to give this the benefit of the doubt at this stage (that it's as per director's intentions), especially given Tsukamoto's strong ties with the label, however all of the wonderful period detail that set this work apart from other Tsukamoto works, is lost here and I can't see myself returning to the disc unless I want to listen to the commentary. I will of course, watch it through to the end before passing proper judgement but I would like to hear other opinions from anyone else here.

[agent999]

Gemini looks very different to how I recall it looked on DVD which I thought was amazing at the time. The Blu Ray looks harsher to me, for want of a better word.

[Dan8700]

Originally Posted by agent999

Gemini looks very different to how I recall it looked on DVD which I thought was amazing at the time. The Blu Ray looks harsher to me, for want of a better word.

Originally Posted by Eibon

Mine arrived today and while I absolutely adore what Third Window are doing with their range and introductions to obscure titles, I have to say I'm hugely disappointed with the picture quality here. I preordered a long time ago but I wish I held back for a review. It's the reverse of my Snake of June experience wherein I had heard bad reports on print damage but when I bought it subsequently, I recognised them for what they were - genuine print anomalies that still bettered the previous DVD releases and not unique problems to the blu ray release.

In this case, I'm comparing the release to my Japanese (Warner) DVD. I will say from the outset I've only looked at the first 5 minutes but I am seeing a very uneven image and smeary grain structure will no additional detail over my SD version. For example, at 3:22 on the DVD, I made a note to see if the writing on the wall would be sharper in the blu ray by comparison. Imagine my surprise when I watch the same scene on the blu ray and find, not only can I not see sharper writing, I can't even see the wall or the glassware cabinet to the left. The scene is shrouded in impenetrable shadow.

I have to thank you both for leaving these comments. I took my Korean DVD (an exact port of the Warner disc) and made a comparison with Beaver caps. Objectively, the BD has a black crush. This is a fact, and not a positive one. That said, I find the HD master superior and more akin to what Tsukamoto was trying to do back then with filters and cinematography. Not to mention that the SD master has inconsistent, poor black levels and stretching issues. In short, I believe the HD master is definitely "more Tsukamotian" (Tsukamoto-esque??) , just too bad for the too harsh black levels.

ps. as I'm in a hurry, several matches are not the same frame; also the BD caps are taken from the US disc, so the Third Window one could be a bit different (but I doubt it).

DVD master


BD master

[Rutger Lundgren]

Ouch, this definitely doesn't look to my liking. How does the Mondo Macabro release compare to this?

EDIT: Oh, wait, those are the MM caps? Then is this release pretty much identical?

[Dan8700]

Originally Posted by Rutger Lundgren

EDIT: Oh, wait, those are the MM caps?

Yep. The TW one should be from the same master, but we don't know for sure yet.

[Eibon]

UPDATE: I tried it on the projector and there was a lot of artifacting and flashing blocks of noise throughout the opening black backgrounded credits and within shadow detail and night scenes. The colours and brighter scenes look great and while there's less background detail compared with DVD, I'm forming the opinion that it's probably less an issue with the look and colour/contrast and more of an encoding or compression issue. It's really ugly looking, in the main.

[thirdwindowfilms]

Originally Posted by Dan8700

Yep. The TW one should be from the same master, but we don't know for sure yet.

Ours is the same master as the MM release, though our release is on a dual layer bluray while the MM release is on a single-layer bluray (with the same extras).

The main difference between GEMINI and our other Tsukamoto releases is that the other Tsukamoto releases were from newly created masters which Tsukamoto supervised, yet GEMINI is from its original production company HD master, so wasn't something that Tsukamoto himself was a part of the process.

[ravenus]

I'm assuming David M did the Mondo release, would that be wrong?

[Dan8700]

Originally Posted by Eibon

UPDATE: I tried it on the projector and there was a lot of artifacting and flashing blocks of noise throughout the opening black backgrounded credits and within shadow detail and night scenes. The colours and brighter scenes look great and while there's less background detail compared with DVD, I'm forming the opinion that it's probably less an issue with the look and colour/contrast and more of an encoding or compression issue. It's really ugly looking, in the main.

Thanks for the report...

[DukeTogo84]

I'm not sure if I'm in bizarro world all of a sudden by the Gemini Blu-ray is a HUGE improvement over the DVD. From color to to detail, to pretty much everything. There have been a few mentions of the DVD having more detail? What the?

As someone who watched the hell out of Gemini on DVD, the Blu-ray was somewhat of a revelation in terms of how much better it looks, especially on a larger screen. Again, I feel like I'm in bizarro world with some of the comments here.

[CelestialAgent]

Originally Posted by DukeTogo84

I'm not sure if I'm in bizarro world all of a sudden by the Gemini Blu-ray is a HUGE improvement over the DVD. From color to to detail, to pretty much everything. There have been a few mentions of the DVD having more detail? What the?

As someone who watched the hell out of Gemini on DVD, the Blu-ray was somewhat of a revelation in terms of how much better it looks, especially on a larger screen. Again, I feel like I'm in bizarro world with some of the comments here.

I’ll happily take a BD with a few flaws over a DVD

[Eibon]

Originally Posted by DukeTogo84

I'm not sure if I'm in bizarro world all of a sudden by the Gemini Blu-ray is a HUGE improvement over the DVD. From color to to detail, to pretty much everything. There have been a few mentions of the DVD having more detail? What the?

As someone who watched the hell out of Gemini on DVD, the Blu-ray was somewhat of a revelation in terms of how much better it looks, especially on a larger screen. Again, I feel like I'm in bizarro world with some of the comments here.

Well, I don't think anyone suggested otherwise and nobody's saying it's not a better option than the DVD but I was simply asking for others to comment and share their experience. We do have to be careful to be very fair to Third Window who do broadly sterling work (although they are not perfect, for example typos in the subs of Stardust Brothers) and probably have limited resources. Adam has kindly shared insight into the provenance of the master and that's great to know. It's a given, as CelestialAgent has said, that the blu is better to have than the DVD but the simple fact is that this is much darker and the grain resolution is not very well managed. My only comment in regard to comparing SD and HD was that I had wanted to examine the resolution improvement in a scene (where the twilight-lit room was bathed in light) and I had fixed a point of comparison on the wall containing Japanese script. I was surprised to find the wall was not visible in this lit room on the overly darkened blu-ray so there was no text to compare. Furthermore, just ahead of this scene, the pan from Yukio's mother includes a wide wall-mounted scroll of text which is clear in the DVD but is just a black panel in the blu-ray (3:18). There's a delicate houseplant in the scene at 4:13-4:15 behind Rin that is shrouded in darkness so that only the few petals hover above her head like a solar flare, disembodied from anything.

The blu ray may benefit from some richer colours but all of the black shadow is clumpy and noisy in my setup, so I merely want others to share their valid opinion. I am not suggesting the disc is faulty or messed up, just different. I wondered if Tsukamoto oversaw this and now it's been confirmed that he didn't, I can assume it's probably not 'correct'. Was the earlier Japanese DVD with more visible image sanctioned by Tsukamoto? Who can say? What I do know I'd hoped for a higher resolution version of a perfectly serviceable legacy DVD. A lot of the scenes in the blu ray look terrific so I am trying really hard not to discourage people from getting this wonderful film. It's fine, simply different from what people might expect if they already have a copy of another release.

EDIT: I just took a look (further back in release timeframe) at my Hong Kong VCD (which is abysmal by comparison), but I'm happy to report it appears identical to the blu ray in terms of colour palette so I'm going to take the view that it's probably more likely to be a direct transfer of the film print (with burned in subtitles) and probably indicates that indeed the blu-ray is more likely to be the most accurate representation of the director's intentions. It also seems reasonable to assume the Japanese DVD was brightened artificially to reveal more info unnecessarily. I mean, if two of the three releases I have to hand are like this, they must be right.

So in summary, EVERYONE here is to buy this and let me know what they think of the movie, the colours and the grain. The movie is amazing, the commentary is probably worth the price alone and the supplements are great (the Japanese DVD didn't have the behind-scenes video).

[nitin]

Originally Posted by ravenus

I'm assuming David M did the Mondo release, would that be wrong?

He did.

[jackranderson]

Love and Peace

[smokebelch]

Oh wow! Just noticed that 'Taste of Tea' has been released, one of my all time favourite films. Order placed!- be cool to see the making of with subtitles too as I've only ever owned the Japanese DVD version.
As others have mentioned would love Funky Forest on Blu too, hopefully Taste sells enough to warrant it. Have the Japanese DVD of that too, but would like an HD upgrade.

After Sharkskin Man & Party 7 'Taste of Tea' was such a change of pace, but a welcome one. A very highly recommended film, warm hearted and gentle with a lovely lilting dub tinged score by Little Tempo. I'm very much looking forward to a rewatch in HD

[Ben_C]

Originally Posted by smokebelch

Oh wow! Just noticed that 'Taste of Tea' has been released, one of my all time favourite films. Order placed!- be cool to see the making of with subtitles too as I've only ever owned the Japanese DVD version.
As others have mentioned would love Funky Forest on Blu too, hopefully Taste sells enough to warrant it. Have the Japanese DVD of that too, but would like an HD upgrade.

After Sharkskin Man & Party 7 'Taste of Tea' was such a change of pace, but a welcome one. A very highly recommended film, warm hearted and gentle with a lovely lilting dub tinged score by Little Tempo. I'm very much looking forward to a rewatch in HD

Watched my copy of ToT the other day. Still has some cracking little moments, like when Tadanobu Asano’s uncle character lobs that stone off the bridge (and what comes after), the

[Show spoiler]cosplay dudes on the train, and the random guy who starts taking photos in increasingly strange positions

, and how can we forget the uncle’s story about his first

[Show spoiler]open-air turd

[Morriford]

Adam, is there any chance of you releasing some of Shozin Fukui's titles? I would love a Blu-Ray copy of either 964 Pinocchio or Rubber's Lover.

[jjlikesonions]

Originally Posted by Morriford

Adam, is there any chance of you releasing some of Shozin Fukui's titles? I would love a Blu-Ray copy of either 964 Pinocchio or Rubber's Lover.

Those would absolutely be dream releases for me. 964 Pinocchio is very close to my heart. It's on par with Tetsuo imo. Both titles on DVD sell for $20 - $60 USD on ebay, very regularly.

[Morriford]

Originally Posted by jjlikesonions

Those would absolutely be dream releases for me. 964 Pinocchio is very close to my heart. It's on par with Tetsuo imo. Both titles on DVD sell for $20 - $60 USD on ebay, very regularly.

My Brother has the unearthed DVD's so I'm good borrowing them for the moment but a nice boxset off all four of his films and his shorts on Blu-Ray would be incredible.