Zatoichi DVD release in Canada
 

Hey, i've just got a question about this DVD. I was looking at it in Future Shop the other day and noticed no such mention about Sonatine on the 2nd disc and i'm wondering if anyone can confirm that it is in fact in the 2 disc set. This sort of decides whether i buy it or not. I enjoyed Zatoichi enough to definately want to see it again, but Sonatine would really warrant the purchase for me.


thanks

The US disc was released by Miramax and contains both films (Miramax owns the US rights to both). The Canadian distributor for ZATOICHI was Seville, and they don't own any rights to SONATINE, so their DVD does not include it.

arggh!

thanks a lot for your reply though, saves me a bit of money, might still get it if it comes down in price though

Hey, no problem, glad to help out a fellow Canadian. :) I ended up picking up the US version online at DDD, just for SONATINE (already have the Japanese ZATOICHI DVD). I haven't heard anything on how the Miramax ZATOICHI disc compares to the Seville disc.

I have the Seville disc and it looks like the same transfer as the Miramax release, i.e. "better" colors and detail level. Colors on other releases (including the Korean release which I also own) are much more muted and look washed out. I don't know what Zatoichi looked like theatrically but I've read on some sites that the pumped up colors on the Miramax release is not the look that Kitano intended for the film. And the DVDBeaver comparison gave the nod to the japanese release despite it's more muted color scheme.

I compared both of my versions last night and I was stunned by how good the Seville/Miramax version looked compared to the other one. So, regardless of that whole purist "director's vision" argument, in terms of personal preference, the Seville/Miramax release does look "better" to me.

Forgot to mention that the Seville version is a 2 disc set, and has more extras than the Miramax version.