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| FILM: You can read my review of the film here. PICTURE: A huge improvement over the Hong Kong DVD with lots of strong colours. Also beats the drained looking Region 1 Tokyo Shock print too. SOUND: Both an original Japanese track (which is great and makes brilliant use of the dolby surround, especially during the Sesumu Terajima torture sequence) and an English dub, which is really bad, but worth listening to because it almost turns the film into an all out comedy. Basically it’s just people doing really bad Japanese accents and just reading the subtitles with no effort whatsoever. Also features a DTS 5.1 Japanese track, EXTRAS: (All On Disc 2) Interview with Takashi Miike (With Subtitles) Interview with Shinya Tsukamoto (With Subtitles) Interview with Alien Sun (In English) Interview with Tadanobu Asano (With Subtitles) Biographies/Filmographies Film Notes Trailers (Japanese and European) Press Kit (Interview, Storyboards, Behind The Scenes) Behind The Scenes Footage Production Stills/Photo Gallery Campaign Artwork As you can see, a wealth of extras here and all of them catering for the English speaking market (Bio’s are in English etc). It’s just a pity the audio commentary with Bey Logan and Alien Sun that appeared on the Premier Asia release doesn’t make an appearance. The interviews are quite lengthy and informative. A favourite moment of mine is when Tsukamoto says that he lied to his friends saying he’d worked out for 4 months to get the physique he appears to have in the movie. The interview with Asano is a treat too, he seems a very shy man, a testament to how much of a fine performance he gives in the movie. The behind the scenes footage is great to watch, broke down into specific scenes, mainly we see how the special effects were achieved. There are no subtitles for these sections but you don’t really need them as not a lot is said and its pretty easy to guess what’s being said anyway. VERDICT: Probabaly the best DVD release of Ichi to go for, It’s uncut with a great print and a humorous English dub. The main competition it has with the Premier Asia release is the Audio Commentary, but the Premier Asia release is cut by a few minutes. So the choice is yours I guess. There is also the Japanese release which has a commentary by Miike and Hideo Yamamoto, but this release contains no subtitles whatsoever. There are also various bootleg versions of this Dutch release available too, both 3 disc sets. One features the Ichi Anime on the 3rd disc, while the other features the Ichi-1 “prequel”. Both of these are presented with really swish packaging. |
| ICHI THE KILLER DVD Review (Dutch Release) By Yodasnoog |
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