Wondering about a large boxed set of Kurosowa movies

[ewaffle]

This is avaialbe on Ebay:





It is said to contain the following: 01 Rashomon

02 Seven Samural

03 Red Beard

04 Throne Of Blood

05 The Bad Sleep Well

06 Ikiru

07 Stray Dog

08 Drunken Angel

09 Scandal

10 The Idiot

11 Sanshiro Sugata

12 Sanshiro Sugata 2

13 The Men Who Tread On The Tiger's Tail

14 The Hidden Fortress

15 No Regrets For Our Yonth

16 One Wonderful Sunday

17 Shizukanaru Ketto

And also that We guarantee that all products we sell are brand new, factory sealed, and authentic.
NO COPY OR BOOTLEG ITEM HERE. We directly purchase from officially licensed publishers and distributors."

But they would no matter what.

Does anyone own this box or has anyone heard anything about it?

According to the ad copy it has English, Chinese and Japanese subtitles which makes me think it moght have originated ing Kroea.

Any help greatly appreciated

[Brian Thibodeau]

My first instinct is bootleg, regardless of the claims.

Considering the website (and email address) on the box is that of the actual retailer and not the distributor just seems fishy.

I noticed the Cary Grant Collection at their website features 14 films versus a mere 5 in the American set that features the same package art, and all for a mere $18 U.S./140 Yuan.
http://www.trboy.com/products_vi.asp?classid=895

Of course, even if they are boots, they could very well be lifted from the Criterion discs, which would make them a great bargain, but a shady one for sure. On the other hand, they could be lifted from the old Mei Ah Kurosawa discs, which had horrible VHS-grade transfers and rotten subtitles (if any). Whether they've been lifted with permission is another story...and judging from all the "box sets" like this one that litter the Chinese Malls down here, I'm skeptical. Even if they are legit, would the rights-holders would turn over the best source materials to a market they know fuels the majority of the world's supply of pirate movies.

Tough call. I suppose for $20, I'd be curious to see what you get.

Another ebayer selling the set claims the following:

We Do Not sell BOOTLEGS or ILLEGAL COPYS. We strictly pick up products from government approved suppliers. View Invoice click Here. All items listed here are official released, licensed products in China.

Considering the Chinese government also openly supports a bootleg Disneyland theme park near Beijing, I'd be wary of many items sold by suppliers the government supposedly approves of.

[dleedlee]

Buyoyo also carries the 17 film set:

http://www.buyoyo.com/cgi-bin/ncommerce ... 1&curr=USD

[dandan]

it used to be a set of four different box-sets, but it looks like bo-ying (a legitimate company, with unlicensed releases) have gone all out and combined them. here's a post i made at kfcc on the subject, focussing on the films that were included in the sets i got;

'rashomon'





'ikiru'





'stray dog'





'the bad sleep well' (on two discs)





'red beard' (on two discs)





'throne of blood'





'the hidden fortress'





'seven samurai' (on two discs)





so, as you can see, they're not that bad. i've seen worse attempts at kurosawa releases, but don't fool yourself that you're getting something great, fantastically cheap.

this set is an adequate way to see a bunch of kurosawa films on the cheap; it is not a cheap way to collect his films.

the subs are sometimes a bit of a struggle, but everything is pretty watchable.

hope that helps to make your mind up, either way...

[Brian Thibodeau]

Well, they certainly do look like a passable way to get a good overview of the director's work. Some of those subs look like they might be similar to the ones used on the old Mei Ah discs, but I no longer have those to compare. I remember the video on them looking about as good as these, which is just so-so, but hardly intolerable. It's still kinda sad that Boying can be called a legitimate company when they don't licence their releases (which essentially makes these bootlegs), but then I suspect they're not the only one getting away with it these days. Does Boying also own the website on the package (trboy.com) I wonder? The way they're positioned on the box, that web address and the email address almost look like they were added after the fact, so perhaps Boying makes "regional" packaging for various distributors.

[ewaffle]

Wow--thanks dandan, dleedlee and Brian.

I purchased the Criterion releases of Sanjuro, Yojimbo and Throne of Blood recently and will continue to do so--Barnes and Noble in the U.S. discounts them 10% from the SRP, plus they are having three DVDs for the price of two sale, plus an additional 10% as part of their membership plan so the three of them were about $64 before sales tax, $68 after.

Obviously Criterion is the way to go and I don't buy pirated goods, which these probably are, so I will continue to save my spare change and look for sales on the real thing.

[Brian Thibodeau]

In case anybody's interested, DVDPlanet buys used DVDs (preferably in mint condition) for store credit, which would be a good way to offset the cost of future Criterions, which I'm told are rarely cheaper anywhere else (excepting your B&N sale of course). I just found this out last night, so apologies if I'm late to the game as usual.

I'm gonna ship some old cheapies to them this weekend when I visit the states (quite surprising the kind of stuff they'll pay for—even old Brentwood junk). For the most part, I'm not losing very much over what I paid for this first batch, and since I've watched all of them at least once, I expect to lose a bit, but in most cases, the difference is less than than what it would have cost me to rent the damned things in the first place (let alone if I could even find them). Should get about $90 for 15 discs (no big studio stuff, mind you), so at about $6 a pop, that's not bad, considering some of these only cost $5 to start with. I could probably get more through the Amazon Marketplace, but some of them have already been sitting there for months with no takers, and I'm getting tired of the clutter!

DVD planet's quote machine:
http://www.dvdplanet.com/quotemachine/



..

[Masterofoneinchpunch]

FYI: Drunken Angel has been rumored to be out in a few months on Criterion.

Also the BCI R1 release of Shizukanaru Ketto (The Quiet Duel) is actually not bad with decent interviews and liner notes. http://www.deepdiscount.com/viewproduct ... Id=5739607 (cheaper there than DVD Planet)

It would be nice to see region 1 copies of (if anyone knows of them or good copies of other regions please post here):
Scandal, The Idiot, Sanshiro Sugata, Sanshiro Sugata 2, The Men Who Tread On The Tiger's Tail, No Regrets For Our Youth, One Wonderful Sunday