kenho

Hong Kong has just released a new dvd on a documentary on Kurosawa called " Message From Akira Kurosawa - For Beautiful Movies ".

I think it is a good docu on the artistic thought of Kurosawa told by the director himself and has many on the set footage.

I bought the Japan dvd release (no Eng sub) a few years ago. This Hong Kong release has Eng sub indeed.

See below link:

http://www.dvdshelf.com/cgi-bin/ncom...251&LANGUAGE=1

dleedlee

I noticed this too. Is it the same as the documentary that was shown on PBS and also on R1 dvd?

http://www.dvdplanet.com/product_lis...692&format=DVD

Prancetron2000

I'd also like to know this.

Foxhound

I agree, I've bought it two, It's Region 3 encoded. Very impressive. Kurosawa-san is indeed one of the greatest director's of all time.

Prancetron2000

Is it the same DVD as the R1 release?

jbannow

Just got this disc in and it is not the same. I watched the first few minutes of it and they are definitely different.

It should be noted that this is completely subtitled as far as I can tell.

bboisvert

Hi jbannow... can you give us a brief review when you get to watch the whole thing. Basically, is there any decent info/interviews/footage that would make it worth getting, or is it just a basic, by-the-numbers recap of his career?

Thanks!

jbannow

Watched the R1 "Kurosawa" documentary and then the R3 back to back last night. Having just read Kurosawa's autobiography this week I found the R1 disc pretty repetative ... it basically recapped his book. The R3, however, had extensive interviews with Kurosawa and behind the scenes footage from Rhapsody in August. Please note that I have not yet seen the extra interviews on the R1 disc.

The documentary is broken into chapters such as Script, Storyboard, Editing, etc. and has interviews with Kurosawa and his colleagues and then footage from some of the movies showing what it is talking about. I found it very interesting. Glad I picked it up, though it was a bit short at 80 minutes with no extras to speak of.

Note that this is definitely a R3 disc, and it is in Japanese with English subs. The subs seemed pretty good and the picture quality seemed fine to me for what it is. There were some points where there was Japanese text in one corner and Chinese / English in the other, all the while with subtitles running across the bottom. This was a bit confusing. Other than that it was a great disc.

Hope this helps.

- Jeff

RichDB10

Sorry to drag up an old thread...but is this documentary the same as the one included on the new Ikiru Criterion DVD?

chopchop27

While I haven't seen the R3 release, based on the descriptions given here I'd have to say with about 99% certainty that this is the same docu that is apart of the Criterion Ikiru release. Same title, contains a lot of footage of filming from Rhapsody in August, and is broken down into various facets of filmmaking - all of which are things people have described this docu as having.

RichDB10

I figured as much..but thanks anyway.

jbannow

I just compared the region 3 and the first documentary on the Ikiru Criterion and they are indeed the same. The length is identical as is the content. The criterion seems to have different (better) subtitles as well. Let me know if you want to know anything else.

- Jeff