Night Watch/Day Watch
 

From www.thedigitalbits.com...

Also, Fox has confirmed that Day Watch and Night Watch will both street on Blu-ray Disc on 9/9 (you'll find the temp cover art here). Day Watch (SRP $39.98) will include audio commentary with director Timur Bekmambetov, The Making of Day Watch featurette and trailers. Night Watch (also $39.98) will include commentary with Bekmambetov, a subtitled commentary by novelist Sergei Lukyanenko, 7 deleted scenes (with optional commentary by Bekmambetov), an extended ending, 3 featurettes (The Making of Night Watch, Characters, Story and Subtitles and The Night Watch Trilogy), trailers and 3 still galleries (photos, comic book and poster art). A 2-pack of both films will also be available on Blu-ray on 9/9 (SRP TBA).

Hopefully on the Blu-Ray they'll include the stylized subtitles for Day Watch, which were sadly absent from the DVD version.

I'm on these like gangbusters!

I always thought it was weird, Day Watch on Netflix (streaming) had the cool subtitles, but the DVD didn't.

Nice! But is Dusk Watch still coming out? I havent heard any news in a while.

Dusk Watch is supposed to be Timur's next project (after the soon-to-be-released Wanted).

Apparently it's taking place in the US and Russia this time, not sure how that is supposed to work. Considering Day Watch concludes Night Watch, it wouldn't be too hard to imagine them going in an entirely different direction (I never read the books).

And it's currently titled Twilight Watch.

That said, there hasn't been any fresh information on it in a long time, and the 2009 release date is just a placeholder.

Yup, just like the 3rd book in the trilogy.

Thanks for the news. Might have to pick up Daywatch (if the stylized subs are put back in) and upgrade my R1 copy of Nightwatch.

Wow. I can't believe they dropped the arty subtitles. That was part of the personality of the films. I was waiting for the price to drop on these two before biting, now, I won't bother. Thanks for the info.

So is there any way to get the version with animated subtitles? I really want to watch that one, rather than ruin it with dubbed english or boring subtitles.

Maybe someone could rip the netflix streaming version? I have 8 partial versions so far and none have the cool subtitles.

I suppose for now, just wait and see if they're on the Blu-Ray. If they aren't it'd be a massive, massive oversight.This is a late response, but Night Watch was a flipper, and one of the two sides contained the nifty subtitles. Day Watch was a single-sided release, and did not.

FYI,
Just got both titles from Fox and Night Watch says "Subtitled Commentary by Novelist Sergei Luk...". Is this what you meant?

No, that's not it. Do us a favor and watch both. Are the subtitles simply player generated, or are they burned onto the print? If it's the latter, do the subtitles seem to reflect the content happening onscreen at that point in time? A good example is in Night Watch, a kid gets a nosebleed in a pool. The nosebleed swirls into the text of the subtitles. I can't remember any specific ones from Daywatch, but there may be one where a character has a blade and slashes, cutting the subtitles in two (although that could have been in Nightwatch, as well).

I'll give both a watch tomorrow or Sunday...never seen either so I'm pretty excited to watch them.

If you (or anyone else) can provide me with a rough time estimate of the nose bleed I'll check it out now.

It's in the first 10 minutes of the film or so. There's a prologue, then the film proper starts. It's right after the prologue. I'm more curious about Day Watch, though, since that never had the cool subtitles on DVD, while Night Watch did.

I'll check both out now...

Does not look like it.

I selected the English DTS MA track as well as English (and then English SDH) track and both had standard subtitles "Come to Me..." in the pool with bloody nose.

(BTW, this film looks amazing. Great PQ right off the bat!)

Ok, just re-watched it with the pre-selected Russian Track with and without subtitles. Same thing as before...nothing special. I did, however notice that when it says "12 Years Later" a red dot moves around the screen below the text...almost like someone is using a laser pointer.

I found this video on YouTube showing exactly how it should look if it was animated
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gTWTR...eature=related
And it is not :-(

...and just checked out Day Watch - they look the same, standard subtitles.

It's not perhaps under the special features menu? In both cases the subtitles are only on the US cut, i.e. not the complete Russian version, or, I would presume they'd be on the non-"Unrated" version on the sequel.

This is disappointing. Perhaps another region will have the stylized version.

Blah. Not enough to make me cancel my order, but they really did add to the charm of each film.

One of my local Best Buys had Day Watch out on the shelf early. The $34.99 price tag quickly caused me to put it back on the shelf.

I noticed Night Watch has the Unrated label on the back art at DVD Empire. I know Day Watch was always unrated here on video, but the DVD for Night Watch was rated R.

Does this mean we should see a new cut on the Blu-Ray?

Was considering these, but the movies themselves are sheer novelties to me and sadly, the cool subtitles were the most memorable part (and the ferris wheel in Daywatch).

Thanks Fox.

I looked everywhere...could not find anything that would include the animated subs.

Night Watch run time is 114 Minutes (and says Unrated)
Day Watch run time is 149 Minutes (and says Unrated)

The Night Watch DVD was a flipper with two cuts, the R-rated cut had the cool subs.

Yeah, from the looks of it, the movies just didn't do well enough in the US to warrant doing the sub effects on the Unrated versions of the films.

I thought the only difference on the different sides of the DVD was the 5.1 track. I watched the Russian 5.1 track with the custom subs.

Are you saying the other side had the unrated cut with normal subs and the English dub 5.1 track?

How's the quality on these discs? Worth getting if you're a fan with the DVDs already?

It's been a while since I watched the regular DVDs, but I watched both Blu-rays tonight and though they both looked pretty great.

Yes, I believe the longer cut is the original Russian edit and it does not have the cool subs, just standard player-generated subs.

For me the biggest reason to upgrade is for a Russian audio track that isn't messed up. The Russian 5.1 track on the original dual-sided DVD for Night Watch had frequent crackling coming from one the mains throughout the film. I thought my speaker was messed up, but the crackling was there no matter how quiet the volume was. After re-securing all the wiring and still having an issue, I went online and found others were posting about the same issue. It was not present on the English dub track on the other side.

I'm confused about "Night Watch". I know that the DVD had different versions on each side. I thought the dual layer side had English audio only. I assumed it was the shorter cut. The single layer other side had Russian audio and the cool subtitles.

So, on the original DVD, which was the Russian theatrical cut? Which was the longer cut? Which cut has the commentary? And which cut made it to Blu-ray?

On the original DVD, there are two cuts. One side had the American cut, which had the burned-in animated subtitles. You could watch this in English or Russian. The other had the Russian cut, which only had a Russian audio track, and player generated subtitles. This is the version on the Blu-ray.

Not exactly. The Blu-ray is 114-minute international cut with the opening voiceover dubbed into English. It matches exactly the IMDb description of the American cut.

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0403358/alternateversions

It has only player-generated subtitles.

The Russian theatrical cut was 10 minutes longer, I believe.

Really? That bugs the hell out of me. I presumed the reason we didn't get the awesome burned in subs and the reason it said unrated was because it was the Russian cut. Fucking Fox.

Day Watch "Unrated" is the longer Russian theatrical cut, but not Night Watch. I assume that Fox slapped an "Unrated" label on Night Watch only as a marketing ploy to tie in with the sequel. As near as I can tell, it's the same cut available on DVD, but without the cool subtitles.

You mentioned earlier that, "On the original DVD, there are two cuts. One side had the American cut, which had the burned-in animated subtitles. The other had the Russian cut." Is that true of the Region 1 DVD? I thought that was only the case in Region 2. None of the DVD reviews for Night Watch I looked up mentioned having both cuts in Region 1.

It's been so long since I watched Night Watch on DVD, I'd have to go back and double check. I'm not sure I even own it anymore.

Yeah, it's true in R1, although both versions I purchased were ex-rentals. Still, I would be surprised if the rental version contained more than the retail release without some sort of trumpeting of this fact on the cover.

It's actually a little weird, but "Night Watch" and "Day Watch" the films are actually parts 1 and 2 (with some minor changes) from the book "Night Watch" (kinda like a 3-novella novel) - nothing from "Day Watch" the book has actually been filmed yet (same book format), and I haven't actually read "Twilight Watch" yet. "Day Watch" the book does carry over everything from the first book, but with the introduction of new characters and different perspectives and opinions from the narrators (being that they're mostly members of the Day Watch - although Anton still has some chapters as the narrator/main character as well).