NOTE: The below Blu-ray captures were taken directly from the Blu-ray disc.

ADDITION: Grasshopper Film Blu-ray (April 2022): Grasshopper Film have transferred Ming-liang Tsai's 2020 film Days to Blu-ray. The package has two Blu-rays discs - the first with the feature (and extras) and more supplements on the second BD. The image is in 1080P with a very high bitrates and looks flawless with certain shots by Jhong Yuan Chang appearing achingly beautiful. The image quality is as strong as you would expect from a modern film to HD digital.

NOTE: We have added 16 more large resolution Blu-ray captures (in lossless PNG format) for DVDBeaver Patrons HERE

On their Blu-ray, Grasshopper Film offer the choice of a DTS-HD Master 5.1 surround track or a linear PCM stereo track (both 16-bit) in the original Mandarin language (there is very brief inconsequential dialogue.) Days has setting sounds - food preparation, street noises, markets etc. -  but I didn't notice any deft separations. There is also no score - it is minimalist cinema with plenty of silence. Grasshopper Film two discs are Region FREE Blu-ray and, as per the filmmaker's intentions, offer no subtitles for the feature:

On the feature Grasshopper Film Blu-ray they include a 1/2 hour Press Conference with Tsai Ming-liang, Lee Kang-sheng and Anong Houngheuangsy following the world premiere of Days at the 2020 Berlinale. There are no subtitles but the Mandarin responses voiced over with translations. Also on the first BD is  trailer for Days.

The second Blu-ray has a feature a documentary by Tsai Ming-liang's; Afternoon from 2015. It is basically a 2 1/4 hour conversation on filmmaking by director Tsai Ming-liang and actor-director Lee Kang-shen filmed in four static takes. Wandering is a new (2021), 34-minute short film by Tsai Ming-liang. It was was filmed at "the Dune" in Yilan, Taiwan, where the eight films in his 'Walker' series were being shown. There is a 27-minute video interview with the director recorded at Tsai Ming-liang's Studio - New Taipei City, Taiwan in November, 2021. Lastly, is “Director Tsai’s Cafe Gallerie,” an image gallery featuring exhibition posters and photographs from the cinema operated by Tsai Ming-liang that opened in 2011 in Taiwan. In 2011, Tsai Ming-liang opened a cinema and cafe on the 4th floor of Taiwan's Taipei Zhongshan Hall. It is curated by the filmmaker himself, that mostly showed classic Hollywood and international films. The cinema closed in 2014.

Ming-liang Tsai's "Days" is more of his personal, contemplative, slow cinema with an incomprehensible vérité edge. We are now aware of Lee Kang-sheng’s superfluous third nipple. Tsai's muse also has the nagging neck problems that we saw expressed in 1997's The River. In Days he gets acupuncture. The themes of vulnerability, loneliness, fragility, and intertwining of separate lives that we saw so deftly expressed in Vive L'amour are here. There is intense beauty here too - the countryside at twilight, an abandoned warehouse... It's a wonderful film that is, certainly, not to all tastes. It makes one feel so special to appreciate it and be invited into this quiet, human, world of resignation.   I am thrilled with the Grasshopper Film Blu-ray package filled with other cinema from the director, interviews, press conferences and interesting gallery. For those who 'grok' the director's work - succinctly capturing life's rhythms - this is a must-own. Pure cinema at a level we rarely see.

Gary Tooze