RocShemp

Damn. So what's a good region A friendly release of Ponyo that has lossless Japanese and wont destroy my wallet the way I'm sure the Japanese BD release will?

Doctorossi

Uh... a copy of the Japanese release that someone gives you as a gift?

RocShemp

Well it's not like I see you rushing to give me such a gift.

Doctorossi

I haven't even given myself that gift. How is Ponyo? I've yet to see it.

RocShemp

It's a sweet film but the conclusion is a bit too "easy". I'd rather not say more as it'd be delving into spoilers. Needless to say, that one gripe aside, it's a very enjoyable movie that leaves you with a smile on your face.

Giles

the Hong Kong release at around 40 bucks.

Josh Z

It's lesser Miyazaki, IMO. It's aimed at very young children and doesn't have as much for adults to enjoy as most of his movies. His environmentalism preaching is also more heavy-handed than usual. However, the movie still has some beautiful imagery.

Doctorossi

Thanks, Josh. That's pretty much what I anticipate.

Ringmaster

I agree about the beautiful imagery, but disagree about the movie not having much in store for adults IMO. I felt that the love shared between the children was very moving and something I definitely wouldn't find typically in a Disney film. It's worth a rent if you're apprehensive, but don't be surprised if you end up loving it.

Back to the topic: Any news on Spirited Away arriving on blu-ray?

PhantomStranger

That is basically my take on Ponyo. It's firmly aimed at children as the story is not that complex.

manicsounds

Disney. They always had the rights. Since the movie was rated "PG-13" they didn't want to release it on their Disney label, so they slapped the Miramax logo on it back at that time.

Hiro11

My kids and I love these movies and watch them together so they're pretty special for me. However, Disney's handling of Ghibli on digital media has always been irritating to me. The USDM DVD releases took years to come out and then were compromised when they were finally released. Music changed on English tracks, non-5.1 Japanese tracks, English clumsily slapped over Japanese signs, weak extras and worthless second discs to justify top-dollar pricing etc. The USDM Kiki and Castle DVDs were particularly irritating.

Now with blu-ray, it's more of the same. It's again taking them years to release these movies in the US. Admittedly, the Nausicaa and Ponyo releases were better blu-rays than DVDs (Ponyo better than Nausicaa), but they were still humdrum, nothing special releases. While these are certainly "niche" movies, they have sizable cult audiences. They certainly have larger potential US audiences than many other movies that get better treatment in digital media. Disney should put a bit more effort into them, the US Ghibli audience is the type that wants super-deluxe versions and would pay for them.

What I want is the Japanese DM releases of these movies with the added English dub released here as the US version. This will never happen. I suspect Disney has signed contracts with Ghibli to differentiate (meaning "make worse") the US versions to ensure that Japanese customers pay the big bucks for their domestic versions. It's annoying.

Doctorossi

I'd put it the other way around, as the Nausicaa Blu-ray has lossless Japanese audio (thank god!) and the Ponyo disc, sadly, does not.

manicsounds

"Castle In The Sky" US BD review on DVDBeaver.

Both English and Japanese are lossless dts-HD MA 5.1 and 2.0 respectively, as they should be.

Although the screencaps show the English language title, and the dubtitle capture, I'm sure that Disney has both English and Japanese credits, plus English subtitles for the Japanese and the English dub. Don't have 100% confirmation, but in the review, there is a screencap of the languages screen saying "English, English SDH, French".

manicsounds

DVDBeaver sadly says that the "Castle In The Sky" subtitles are both in fact dubtitles, both being the same wording except the SDH track having [sound effects] etc. Also, apparently only has the English language credits.

Giles

boooo

they did that with Nausicaa too

Doctorossi

Well, in an ideal world that's what a proper job would look like, as the caption track should be made from the same translation as the standard subtitles.

Whether that's what's actually going on here is certainly more doubtful.

milo bloom

I'm not following you. The subtitles/closed captions for the English dub should follow the English dub, the subtitles for the original audio should be direct translations of the original language. They shouldn't be the same, there's always going to be little differences simply due to cultural idioms and such.

Doctorossi

Why should one be a translation and the other a transliteration just because one is going to be spoken by voice actors and the other displayed as text? The goal is to translate the original language, so shouldn't there be one "best" translation of each line of dialogue (that would then be used for both the subtitles and the dubbing)?

milo bloom

No, they should not be the same at all. The point of subtitles for the original language track (say, Japanese) would be to present the dialog in a translation as close to the original intent of the script as possible, including directly translating cultural expressions or idioms, even if they don't make sense in the new language (say, American English).

The point of captions (and especially those for deaf/hard of hearing, or people like me that simply have trouble with dialog sometimes) is to present a direct transcript of the newly dubbed language. Imagine this scenario, you have a few people watching anime, originally made in Japanese, and for whatever reason (no judging), they chose the English dub. And since there's a person that's hard of hearing in the group, they go ahead and turn on the English subtitles. If there's some sort of joke that was trans-literated into English for the dub, but directly translated for the English subtitles, then you've got some people getting the joke, and others not.

Subtitles of the dub should be just like closed captions of something like, Downton Abbey or Doctor Who. Yes, they're in English, but sometimes the accents make it hard for me to understand certain words, and I need the subtitles just to get what's being said. That's the purpose of subtitles or captions for the deaf/hard of hearing.

Doctorossi

That would be an interesting approach, but I don't know where you get the idea that it's the way it "should" be. Translation is translation is translation.

milo bloom

It certainly is not.

An easy example is something like Super Milk Chan. The English dubs from a few years ago (released on DVD and, I believe, Adult Swim) were absolutely incomprehensible because they were direct translations with all kinds of Japanese cultural idioms and references left intact.

Compare it to something like the Shin Chan dubs of recent years, they knew the cultural jokes wouldn't work, so they just wrote entirely new stories. When we watched them on [adult swim] years ago, we'd often have the Closed Captions on because I simply couldn't make out some of the dialog, and it would be a direct transcript of the new dub, not the original language.

Does that make more sense? Even if it's not a complete re-write of the story like the Americanized Shin Chan, there's still enough of a change in the flow of the language that the subtitles for the original audio and the subtitles for the dubbed language should be separate tracks.

Doctorossi

Oh, but it is.

Your Super Milk Chan example is a good one and I could add a couple more (like His & Her Circumstances). However, I can also give you several thousand examples which demonstrate titles like Super Milk Chan to be the absolute exception to the rule. Namely, almost every other foreign-language movie ever translated into English.

It's a valid approach, but if it's an industry standard, 99.9% of subtitled releases are doing it wrong.

Brent L

Is it foolish of me for thinking that I'll just wait for the US releases and get them using the Disney BD Club?

manicsounds

Bluraydefinition reviews "The Secret World Of Arrietty" They do not comment on the subs being literal subtitles, dubtitles, or both. But they do comment that signs and others change from English to Japanese, depending on the spoken language. I guess this means credits are in both English and Japanese as well.