Studio Ghibli's latest - Tales of Earthsea (plus DVD authoring question)

[SuperBeatBoy]

I imported the japanese version when it first came out and i agree with what you sad Evilboris. Its a total mess of a movie. Shame really as there hasn't been a stinker by Studio Ghibli until this one.

[merf]

we went on Monday to a screening of this in the Barbican's Japanimation series.

some woman spent 45mins at the start telling us why it was ****e, then the film spent 2hrs confirming her view.

I adore the Ghibli films and can't really find any redeeming feature in this, though interestingly 2 first timers we took along thought it was beautiful and quite good.

I couldn't believe this was developed from a series of books at it seemed so lacking in story, characters and a fully developed world. the plot was so labourious too, nothing ever seems to happen.

We decided to go back and watch Mononoke, Spirited Away and Nausicaa in one evening to get rid of the taste of this.

ps

anybody find some of the scenes near the end reminiscent of Ico at all ?

[EvilBoris]

My girlfriend commented it looked like th castle from ico. Although I can't recall any cell shaded bricks in the ico castle that i knew were going to collapse before they actually did.

[Roddie]

I imagine so, all the other Ghibli films came out here eventually. I haven't had a problem with the subs on previous JP Ghbili discs other than Cagliostro, which used terrible dubtitles instead of subtitles, but if you do want a Western sourced disc it's sure to come out in the US many months ahead of any release here.

The US often gets the best transfers too, but sadly the worst cover art. The transfer on Earthsea as I mentioned is pretty dire, and I really wish Ghibli would hire someone who acually has a clue about these things.

I believe the R1 of The Cat Returns also has the dreaded dubtitles. I don't know about the R2 because I've always been too scared to pick it up in case it has...

[EvilBoris]

Does it matter too much either way , it's not like you can understand what they are saying in the audio anyway. The majority of the ghibli films we have watched have been the uk releases and they've all been fine apart from kiki's which only had the hearing impaired subtitles with the sound effects in text

[Gruce]

One version of the dubs for Cagliostro is voiced by Metal Gear Solid's David Hayter. Reason enough for me to hunt down that specific version.

[Roddie]

Does it matter too much either way , it's not like you can understand what they are saying in the audio anyway. The majority of the ghibli films we have watched have been the uk releases and they've all been fine apart from kiki's which only had the hearing impaired subtitles with the sound effects in text

Of course it matters, if you're watching with dubtitles, you might as well be watching the dub.

At the start of The Cat Returns, there are subtitles coming up when there's not even any audio, so they've obviously added dialogue; then there's 'shimatta' being translated as 'shoe', censorship; and then you hear 'ohayou' but the subtitles say something other than good morning, so they are changing the script. All these things happen in the first minute of the film, so I'm sure there are plenty more changes throughout the rest of the film.

I like to see the film as it was originally intended, not as Disney think it needs to be skewed to make English dialogue fit the animations or changing and censoring the dialogue to what they think is more suitable to a western audience.

[saif]

The subtitler "rewrites" the script anyway as the subs can differ from the spoken word a fair amount. The question is really whether you trust them more or the dubbers more.

I usually trust the subbers.

[Lyris]

Anyone see Pom Poko? I guess the hardcore fans of that will have found the English translation to be a bit of a kick in the ... pouch

Not surprised to hear the Japanese version looks nasty, I remember being shocked at how blurry (and windowboxed! Why!) Howl's Moving Castle was. I ended up getting to see the US and UK releases with the latter being the best one.

[Concrete donkey]

Anyone see Pom Poko? I guess the hardcore fans of that will have found the English translation to be a bit of a kick in the ... pouch

Picked up a Hong Kong Pom Poko some years back with a bunch of other studio ghibli movies from a store in London. Really enjoyed it and felt it was quite off beat and imaginative. It felt a little long though. Haven?t watched it again in years though. Still haven?t watched Earth Sea either.

[Roddie]

When I originally saw Pom Poko, it was the dub and I wasn't too taken with it, was diffcult to get past the narration by Brain of Pinky & the Brain. I picked up the DVD and enjoyed the subtitled version a lot more, but I still don't think it ranks as one of the better Ghibli's. There are some parts of it I really like, but it's longer than it needs to be and feels too much like Takahata trying to make a Miyazaki film. I'm much bigger fan of his films that don't have the fantasy element, like Only Yesterday and Grave of the Fireflies.

[Lyris]

I'm not that keen on anime in general to be honest, I like my animation to be cartoony. But I like Spirited Away and Totoro, hopefully I'll get to see Earthsea some day.

[EvilBoris]

The general jist of this thread is not to bother with Earthsea unless you want to spend 2 hours watching a dud.

[merf]

The general jist of this thread is not to bother with Earthsea unless you want to spend 2 hours watching a dud.

agreed, any other ghibli film but this one !

[Lyris]

How did this happen!

Has anyone seen the PAL version of Tales from Earthsea that Optimum Releasing have put out?

Bar a few compression artefacts, the video transfer is excellent! It looks like it's unfiltered so for once actually uses Standard Def resolution! Wow, it feels weird to say that about an SD DVD.









Nice to not be disappointed by an SD DVD for once... now let's just hope I like the film!