DVD Kichiku Dai Enkai
Arts Magic DVD

image

The movie is displayed in 4:3, with quite a low quality ; some scenes are blurred and the 8mm camera doesn't seem to fit for fast moving scenes, so we can see some pixels occuring on screen. Anyway i guess it's a choice to editor to have kept the original image of this cheap independent movie. It's part of the identity of the movie so a improved quality would have certainly denatured the work.

sound

ccording to this, why didn't they keep the original mono stream on the DVD. Indeed, the movie is showed with a Dolby Digital stream. By the way, the sound quality announced by the Dolby label is not what expected ; we can't really feel a surrounding atmosphere, even in the forest sequence which would have been the best moment to show a great surrounding work. Instead all the sounds seem to come from the front side and only the basses are well-rendered. The little disappointment is that the stream is not synchronized with the image ; indeed, the is about a 200~300 ms offset, which is really noticeable on “hit” sounds (when the sword man hit the wall with his katana for example).

subtitles

Good subs.

special features

The second DVD begins with the biography and filmography of Kazuyoshi Kumakiri (the director) and Shunsuke Sawada (An actor), and then show “the making of Kichiku Dai Enkai” which displays some parts of the shooting, especially the first scene, the scenes difficult to make and the ending scene ; the good thing is that it's quite funny to see how they enjoyed shooting violent sequences (all the crew taking a photo around the blown up head to keep a record). After this entertaining video we can see the reactions during the Taormina Film Festival, with commentary of Akira Terashima, Tomoshiro Zenzai and Kazuyoshi Kumakiri who talk about the historical and political background of the movie, and then the purpose and a little of the making.

So after this is the menu with crew and cast interviews ; to begin with the first interview is Tom Mes, who first talk about the political background and try to explain some part of Japanese culture and politicin order to understand the movie ; so he go on explaining the choices of the film maker to complete is art studies. So the most interesting interview is the one of Kazuyoshi Kumakiri, who first explain why he chose to make a movie about 70's rebel students for his ending art work, then tell us about the way he could have receive some money to shoot the film and how he used the few amount he earned ; he goes on talking about first reactions of the public (during the university premiere where he first presented the movie, before students and friends) and then how this movie helped him in his career. Next to see is the cameraman who especially talks about the shooting and the work with the director and his career after this movie. So the last interview is the main cast together (4 actors) who tell us about the way Kumakiri was working with them, that they had a lot of fun and some hard times, and so they tell some anecdotes on the shooting stage.

All those interviews give a different eye on the movie and most of all, tell us about some very interesting things like the historical and policitical background, the purpose and the making of the movie. Although i didn't like the movie, i am quite glad to know more about it due to these useful interviews.

menus

Simple 2 DVD box ; still with main theme as background.

quality/price ration

This DVD is interesting especially for the nice interviews and is quite respectful of the original image and sound. 25$ is not too expensive for this release.
All our thanks to ArtsMagic USA for providing us with the DVD.

16 October 2004
Elise | his/her reviews