Blu-Ray
One thing I know I’ll be getting when I go back to the U.S.: The Ultimate Matrix Blu-Ray set. Not just because I like the films, but because they are part of a new trend, one which I hope becomes the norm.
For a long time, Americans living in Japan have been in movie purgatory. We wait months for a movie to be released here, if it ever gets here at all. Movie ticket prices are high–$14 at discount price–and DVDs can be even more expensive. With classic DVD’s, you could buy them in the U.S.–but since there is region encoding, you have to make sure that you have a region-free player. If you wish to watch the film with Japanese people, however, forget it–Japanese subtitles are not included.
Blu-Ray discs have one nice benefit in this context: they have region encoding, but this time, Japan and the U.S. are in the same region, which means no more having to buy a special region-free player. But the problem of subtitles still remains–or at least, so I thought. As it turns out, many titles released actually do have Japanese subtitles included–though many are not listed as having them.
The Ultimate Matrix Blu-Ray set is an interesting example: it will have Japanese-language options only if your player’s menu is set to Japanese–they won’t show up otherwise. Contact does not list Japanese, but it apparently has the subtitles. The same with the Harry Potter movies, the new Batman movies, and several others.
This web site (in Japanese) lists Blu-Ray versions of movies with Japanese language options, and where they are sold internationally. This forum thread seems to keep a good running list in English. A few great guides if this is the kind of thing you’re looking for.
For the past 3 1/2 years I’ve been ripping DVDs (unwatched) I’ve been getting with the express intention of watching them in Japan, since if things go right I’ll be in a Ten Foot Square Hut somewhere between Shuzenji and Shimoda, with nothing to occupy my time but a MBP. I’ve got about 800 saved up, LOL, for the cost of $1200 + several hundred in media. Hopefully bitrot won’t hit . . .
> Not just because I like the films
OHMIGOD you LIKE the last two Matrix films?!?!?!?!?!?
Weren’t they, like, the biggest disappointment in modern pop culture until Rowling came along and published the last book of the Harry Potter series in 2007?
(I’m probably biased with the second event, being a Harry Potter fan.)
Actually I’ve forgotten the last two movies, but I remember (a) being quite disappointed in the plots, which didn’t make sense or let down the first movie quite badly, and (b) everyone else seemed to think the same way.
Here in Australia I believe it’s law for all DVD players to be region-free – or at least, if not made region-free, to be capable of being converted thus. I don’t have a clue why that is.
Ah, Google is my friend, here’s one web site explaining it:
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In many legal views code enforcement is a violation under the WTO free trade agreement. The coding of the players violates this specific law. This coding of DVD players has been seen as a serious violation of Trade Practices Act, as per the law set down by the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission. A similar ruling also exists in New Zealand. As a result the DVD players, which include portable car DVD players, sold in Australia and New Zealand, are all of region 0 standard, meaning that the players are capable of playing any DVD, irrespective of their region coding.
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yeah, region codes are pretty bogus. The argument is that it lets studios have delayed releases of new films overseas (AFAICT they wait from the film stock to come back from the domestic distributors so they can subtitle re-issue it to overseas customers) but they also region-code films made 40 years ago.
(since all the US movies I saw in Japan were pretty beat up I assume this film recycling was the industry norm)
I am mixed on the last two films; they have elements I like and that I don’t like. The biggest disappointment was the lack of answers; most of the mysteries posed in the first two films were left unanswered in a very unsatisfying way. For example, at the end of the second film, Neo destroys several squiddies just by thinking about it, and then gets injected into the Matrix and sent to the Limbo Train Station. How did this happen? All we are told is that it’s possible because Neo is somehow related to the “Source.” That comes off as being just stupid. I was expecting a much cooler answer–that, for example, the “real world” Neo had come to experience was simply another level of the Matrix and was in itself a computer simulation. But no, we just get mumbo-jumbo that means nothing.
There were scenes and story elements I didn’t like. The train station, for example. Or the Merovingian, who could have been a lot more interesting, but was apparently used just as a comic relief and a means to get things done. I expected his story to be more fully fleshed out in that he was a former iteration of Neo who then became jaded and decadent. And then there was Commander Lock, who seemed to be there just to be an asshole–didn’t really do much else.
All that said, there was a great deal in both later films that was very enjoyable. Certain philosophical themes such as control and fate were explored, making the story more than just eye candy. But the eye candy is a big part of the enjoyment, of course. The Burly Brawl, the Highway Chase, the Battle for Zion, and the Final Confrontation between Neo and Smith. The love story was fairly well handled and was mostly emotionally satisfying.
Not that it couldn’t have been better–just that they were not huge disappointments, at least not for me. But then, I do have the ability to put up with a lot of dumb stuff in movies and enjoy them for their better elements.
See my reviews for both movies written after they came out: Reloaded here (spoiler review here), and Revolutions here (spoiler review here).
@Luis
Hmm. My rows of less-than symbols seemed to delete everything between them in my first attempt at a reply; weird!
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The biggest disappointment was the lack of answers; most of the mysteries posed in the first two films were left unanswered in a very unsatisfying way. For example, at the end of the second film, Neo destroys several squiddies just by thinking about it, and then gets injected into the Matrix and sent to the Limbo Train Station. How did this happen? All we are told is that it’s possible because Neo is somehow related to the “Source.” That comes off as being just stupid. I was expecting a much cooler answer–that, for example, the “real world” Neo had come to experience was simply another level of the Matrix and was in itself a computer simulation. But no, we just get mumbo-jumbo that means nothing.
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We’re on the same page after all. I’ve watched the first movie a couple of times, but the other two only once (and thus I’ve forgotten many of the details). But I remember THE BIG QUESTION posed at the end of movie #2 – how could Neo affect the squiddies in the real world? And for all the fan enthusiasm, the debates, all the theorising … in the end they just didn’t address it at all. Which is horrible, and pathetic, and cowardly, and just ruined the last movie – and the series – for me.
Still, reading your comment, I *am* reminded of things that were pretty cool, if they could be enjoyed as just stand-alone events, like the comic book superhero type of clashes.
Which movie had the party/dance that went on forever? That was weird, I thought.
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just that they were not huge disappointments, at least not for me. But then, I do have the ability to put up with a lot of dumb stuff in movies and enjoy them for their better elements.
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That’s the difference between us; I just couldn’t forgive them for posing such interesting and challenging questions/issues in the second movie, only to deliberately drop everything in the last.
Just use the “blockquote” HTML tag–I do, and it works well in comments. Don’t know if that’s because I’m admin or not, but give it a try.
Well, they did address it–just in a vague, unsatisfying way. Neo asked the Oracle, and she just said it’s because he was connected to “the Source,” which, in effect, is like saying it was “magic.” As I mentioned, I thought it would be a lot better if in the end, it turned out to be just another layer of the Matrix. That originally there was no Zion, and that’s why things failed–so the machines, unwilling to give up full control, invented the “real world” level of the Matrix–but Neo’s squiddie killing could have begun to unravel that, showing a bug in that programming that allowed him to do something that should have been impossible. Neo could discover this, and the real world would again come up to the writers as being definable–either an even worse state than before, or a better one. For example, it could turn out that the Earth was so uninhabitable that humans could not possibly survive in it–or it could have turned out that the real world was actually not bad, and the machines were enslaving us when it was not necessary. Or anything. A lot could have been done with that, but instead, they just threw it away.
However, all that doesn’t make me not enjoy what they did do. Come to think of it, another point I liked was the Oracle/Architect duality–intuition vs. logic. And I liked the idea of not being able to see beyond choices, and Morpheus’ faith transforming as it did. I loved the conversation between Neo and the Architect–logical hyper-verbosity vs. terse, simplistic emotionalism played deadpan only as Reeves could play it (and Neo’s quantum-state responses on the screens was a clever touch). For me, if you can discard the crud and find nice stuff underneath, I am happy enough. Sure, it wasn’t the gold nugget I was hoping for, and having to wipe away the muck made it less fun–but finding a good-sized silver nugget is not a bad thing. That’s one of the problems with sequels to great movies–many people can’t enjoy them if they are less than the originals. I see each one as a separate thing, and if there’s interesting stuff in a movie, I can enjoy it. And as far as most movies go, there was more good stuff here than most deliver.