Thor

I really want this, but I really want this not to suck. (The transfer, I mean - the movie's one of my all-time faves, and strongly recommended.

Lokimok

173 minute movie & it has a commentary track. Wow. I have it on order with another movie so mine won't get shipped until at least the 22nd.

eXcentris

Another inquiring mind wants to know what Winstar/Fox Lorber did with this one before buying.

Richard Malloy

Harboring the same doubts about Winstar/Fox Lorber as you, I rented from Netflix. Got a shipping notice today. I hope to watch it this weekend.

Will report back unless someone can review it sooner!

schwartzm

I got mine from 800.com today, and it doesn't work! I've tried it in my DVD-ROM drive as well as my standalone player. The DVD-ROM says "No disc" and the standalone player just spits the disc back out.

Anybody else having this problem?

Mike.

brez

I just watched a few minutes of Yi Yi. The good news is it's anamorphic, the bad news the tranfer is a disaster. It looks like they used a ws VHS tape as the source. Doing an anamorphic transfer of an awful source is a cruel joke.

Mike

[Edited by brez on 05-10-01 at 03:17 AM]

dave955

Isn't it sadly amusing that the part of Winstar that is bankrupt is the parent company and NOT the DVD releasing firm? How bad must the parent company be for its lousy DVD subsidiary to be outperforming the company as a whole?

Thor

You know, I understand Madacy. They buy titles for dirt cheap, or use public domain titles. They could care less about the movie itself - they just want to make money. Sad, but I can at least understand the line of thinking.

BUT WHAT ON EARTH ARE THE PEOPLE AT WINSTAR THINKING? Clearly, there's got to be somebody there who loves cinema - you don't wind up with Edward Yang, Leos Carax, Takeshi Kitano, Santosh Sivan, Andrei Tarkovsky, John Woo, and Jean-Luc Godard in your catalog by accident. But how could they possibly take pride in the work that they've done? Do they actively enjoy demolishing great cinema? Is Edward Yang just such a profitable name that they can put out a shitty version of YI YI and still make money hand over fist? How expensive is it to do a transfer that doesn't look like ass? Why can Synapse films make a version of THE BRAIN THAT WOULDN'T DIE that looks better than 90% of Winstar's catalog?

(And yes, they get it right every now and then. That doesn't change things. To quote a fave album of mine: "Even a blind chicken finds a piece of corn sometimes.")

I dearly hope that Yang hasn't sold the video rights to the rest of his films to Winstar, and that somebody else takes them. In fact, I'll put the damn things out myself if I have to go into debt to do it if the alternative is Winstar doing it.

(I also have a grudge against Winstar because they offered in Home Theater Forum to send in any old F/L DVD you were unsatisfied with and they'd replace it with one of your choosing. I sent in RAN and asked them to replace it w. THE TERRORIST. Bad move, on two parts: 1. word has it THE TERRORIST is just as bad as, if not worse than, the RAN disc in terms of quality and 2. Five months later, I've yet to receive either THE TERRORIST or my copy of RAN back.)

Really, though. I operate a business. I understand why some business do things we as DVD fans don't like but that are good for business. But for the life of me, I don't understand how Winstar could be operated by a rational entity. Unless they despise good film and want to ruin its presentation for everybody.

Ah, I feel better. A little bit. But damn it, I really wanted to own this DVD, but I'm not going to buy a crap transfer.

theWitcher

Yi Yi arrived in today's mail, and I was able to watch a few minutes before trudging back to my cubicle.

To my eyes, it looks a hell of a lot better than most F/L DVD presentations I've seen, and better than most Asian movies I've seen on DVD.

My main concern is with the slight speedups that are particularly noticeable when a character traverses the screen. I'm not sure if this has anything to do with PAL-->NTSC conversion (or if this movie or transfer would have any reason to suffer this process) but I've frequently confronted this issue on my 2 1/2 yr old Sony player with F/L DVDs (particularly Rohmer titles, for some reason. However, with the Rohmer titles, that issue was just one of a laundry list of problems I encountered.)

But, all in all, I'm not disappointed to have purchased Yi Yi. It appears that Winstar is trying harder, and that their prices have dropped as well.

victor_vc

How is the commentary? By the way, I couldn't find the spec on Amazon, so are there any other extras?

Also, does anyone know of a dvd review search page? I couldn't find any review on Yi Yi on dvd.ign.com, here, dvdreview.com, or thedigitalbits.

Thanks.

garmonbozia

My copy won't play in my player so I'll have to watch it on my dvd-rom (which it does work in). I have had several discs lately not work for me at all in my player:

disc 1 of Do the Right Thing (Criterion)

both discs of Carnival of Souls (Criterion)

the 3 recent Alex Cox films from AB: Straight to Hell, Death and the Compass, and Three Businessmen

disc 2 of Life of Python

Scary Movie (can't say I care after actually watching that crap)

I never had any incompatibilities until my collection started to grow exponentially....I do have an older player.

eXcentris

Woudn't speeding up Rohmer films be a good thing?