ADDITION: Miramax Blu-ray - August 09': Once again Miramax are making some poor decisions - in my opinion. If the image looks boosted to you - that's because it is. Edge-enhancement and brightness boosting altering colors (and skin tones) is prevalent. It looks cleaner and more vibrant but at what cost. It also has more information on the side edges. So the image, in one respect is improved with double the file size and double the bitrate of the Artificial Eye, but the black mark is the extensive boosting. It looks carried over from the Miramax DVD compared HERE  where Henrik states: "Where all other editions of "Zatoichi" have the neutral colour composition of the original, Miramax has changed it to a more 'realistic" colour scheme, where fleshtones are more 'fleshy'. All in all the colours of the Miramax DVD are incredible vivid and looks stunning. It just isn't the way the film looked originally or elsewhere. The Miramax DVD is also the edition which is sharpest in details, but also suffers badly from edge enhancements."

Akin to the Miramax 'Hero' Blu-ray - This is a flaw - the DTS-HD Master 5.1 at 3933 kbps is wonderfully dynamic and strong - but it is only for the poor English DUB! The original Japanese audio is relegated to a 640 kbps at 5.1. So, they again give the DUB a lossless HD and the film's original audio isn't even rate DTS. Another bad decision Miramax.

Extras mimic the older Miramax DVD - As Henrik states in the original DVD comparison: "As additional material, Miramax has added the standard 40 minute Making of featurette in a dubbed form. This was expected and is indeed a great featurette. But then Miramax lives up to its nickname: MiramAXE. Following are four interviews. On all other DVDs this feature has 8 interviews running 48 minutes. On Miramax, there are only 4 (producer, sound, music and choreographer are missing). If that isn't bad enough, Miramax has also edited the interviews (read: Cut them in duration). For instance Nikamoto's interview runs 7:46 originally, on the Miramax DVD only 4:25. All in all, 8 interviews have been reduced to 4, and 25:57 minutes have been reduced by 4:28 to 21:29 minutes.

If edge enhancements and miramAX'ed interviews wasn't bad enough, Miramax also included a 5.1 Dolby Digital English dubbed track, which is nothing less than horrible. The dub's are uninvolved and the entire mood of the film is destroyed. To put an English dub on a film like this is quiet an insult." 

We really don't have any option but to recommend giving this Blu-ray a pass.

Gary W. Tooze

***

ADDITION: Artificial Eye Blu-ray - November 08': Firstly, for extensive comments on 7 different SD-DVD editions, exhaustively compared, see HERE.

This Blu-ray almost played on my Region 'A' player before resorting to HTPC. The Artificial Eye logo came up, a warning and the menu started before saying that it 'Cannot play this format.' This may mean the menus are in PAL but regardless I couldn't get this to play on my stand-alone machine. Through HTPC it was effortless and the single-layered disc gave me no problems.

The Blu-ray has all the extra features of the Artificial Eye Collector's Edition (from 2005) except the Fnac Masterclass (32:26). The "Making of" documentary is the same as on the Bandai, only in the PAL standard. It has English subtitles. As Henrik says " For a documentary about Kitano, this is quiet informative." Included are the interviews running 48 minutes - namely Kitano Takeshi (12:46), Mori Masayuki (3:37), Nikamoto Tatsumi & Tokora Hiroaki (7:49), Kurosawa Kazuko (7:11), Isoda Norihiro (5:52), Yanagishima Katsumi (5:15), Hideboh (5:34), Suzuki Keiichi (5:39) and Horiuchi Senji (7:18.)