Info on import Blu-ray titles

[ahsoka]

Searching various on-line stores, it seems Parts 1-3 of the Millennium Trilogy has only been released in the Nordic countries so far. Part 1 is out in France, Spain, Italy (also Pt.2), Germany, Canada and the Netherlands. None of these releases appear to be English friendly though.

[kannisto]

I got a shipping notice for Flickan from Boostep.fi today so I should receive it on Friday at the earliest. I'll post info & impressions then.

[kannisto]

Just ordered these from Megastore.se today:

- Luftslottet som sprängdes (no English)
- Beck 25 - I stormens öga (English subs included)
- An American Crime (English audio, 1080i50, very cheap now)

They are all indicated as being in stock so I hope they'll be shipped quickly. The first one (a.k.a. The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet's Nest, the third part of the Millenium trilogy) was just officially released today in Sweden.

EDIT: Got a shipping notice already

[ahsoka]

I got a shipping notice for Flickan from Boostep.fi today so I should receive it on Friday at the earliest. I'll post info & impressions then.

Sounds good, interested to hear about The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet's Nest and Beck as well!

Got Kamikaze Girls from the UK today. PQ seems quite good but audio is Dolby Digital 5.1 @ 448kbps only. Region free BD25 with optional English subtitles. All special features are on a PAL region 2 DVD but there's no PAL content on the BD itself.

[kannisto]

Sounds good, interested to hear about The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet's Nest and Beck as well!

Got Kamikaze Girls from the UK today. PQ seems quite good but audio is Dolby Digital 5.1 @ 448kbps only. Region free BD25 with optional English subtitles. All special features are on a PAL region 2 DVD but there's no PAL content on the BD itself.

Yeah, I'll post info on those 2 as well when I get them, probably next Monday or so... How's that Kamikaze Girls as a movie? It seems to be fairly well rated in IMDB at least.

[ahsoka]

Yeah, I'll post info on those 2 as well when I get them, probably next Monday or so... How's that Kamikaze Girls as a movie? It seems to be fairly well rated in IMDB at least.

I actually liked Kamikaze Girls more than I expected. I'm not exactly the target audience for this movie and a lot of the culture/fashion references went over my head! Overall, it was quite entertaining, especially the more comical and crazy parts. I'd rate it at about 3 out of 5.

[Exist2Inspire]

I got my shipping notification for The Mentalist - Season 1 from Germany. It won't be here for about 3 weeks, but i'll post my opinions on it when it arrives

[kannisto]

I actually liked Kamikaze Girls more than I expected. I'm not exactly the target audience for this movie and a lot of the culture/fashion references went over my head! Overall, it was quite entertaining, especially the more comical and crazy parts. I'd rate it at about 3 out of 5.

I wasn't quite sure if it fits my taste so I didn't order it so far but I might at some point, at least if the price is good

I picked up Gokusen: The Movie today 2nd hand as the price in Shibuya's Tsutaya had dropped to 2880 yen. They had 8 copies of those which is quite much as they usually have only 1 or 2 copies of each title that's available there. Whenever they have too many copies of something the price tends to drop quite nicely. I haven't seen that in any of the other 2nd hand stores at all.

I'm also trying to get Summer Wars 2nd hand as the price for it is a bit too much otherwise and I wouldn't really need all the extras that come with it. There seem to be external English subs available for that already. I placed a bid for it in an auction for the movie only (case + 2 discs) at Yahoo Japan Auctions, hoping to win that one at the end of today... Not quite sure though as there seem to be many bidders after that one. There are quite many copies available in Yahoo Auctions but mostly full sets and the prices tend to go even higher than a new set costs at Amazon JP. I figured that for this stripped down version the price just might stay reasonable but will have to see how it goes.

[ahsoka]

I wasn't quite sure if it fits my taste so I didn't order it so far but I might at some point, at least if the price is good

I picked up Gokusen: The Movie today 2nd hand as the price in Shibuya's Tsutaya had dropped to 2880 yen. They had 8 copies of those which is quite much as they usually have only 1 or 2 copies of each title that's available there. Whenever they have too many copies of something the price tends to drop quite nicely. I haven't seen that in any of the other 2nd hand stores at all.

I thought the movie was quite OK, definitely worth getting at 2880 yen. Havn't seen the Gokusen TV Drama, think that would've helped enjoying the movie more. Still thought it was quite entertaining. Watched an English subtitled version before watching the BD.

[kannisto]

I thought the movie was quite OK, definitely worth getting at 2880 yen. Havn't seen the Gokusen TV Drama, think that would've helped enjoying the movie more. Still thought it was quite entertaining. Watched an English subtitled version before watching the BD.

I was looking for external subs for Gokusen The Movie but couldn't find any yet, hopefully sometime later. It seems to have a lot of dialogue, though I guess it can be followed fairly well without subs too.

I received Flickan today, it's a BD 25, region B locked and the movie is encoded in 1080i50, but luckily my main setup can nowadays convert 1080i50 to 60hz I guess the movie may have been shot at 25 fps as the runtime is matching with IMDB's indicated runtime so there's probably no speedup.

                                                                                                                Total   Video                                             
Title                                                           Codec   Length  Movie Size      Disc Size       Bitrate Bitrate Main Audio Track                          Secondary Audio Track
-----                                                           ------  ------- --------------  --------------  ------- ------- ------------------                        ---------------------
(Nordic) Flickan (The Girl)                                     AVC     1:35:54 22,042,281,984  22,581,326,544  30.64   24.52   DTS-HD Master 5.1 3316Kbps (48kHz/24-bit) DD AC3 5.1 640Kbps

I will post more details and impressions in a separate thread within a couple of days, I'll try to watch it first this weekend. PQ looks very good at a glance. Subtitles are available in Swedish, Norwegian, Danish, Finnish and English. Extras are just some SD PAL movie trailers (Flickan, Freestyle, Knerten, Pool Boys).

[kannisto]

I received these from Megastore.se today:

- Luftslottet som sprängdes (no English)
- Beck 25 - I stormens öga (English subs included)
- An American Crime (English audio, 1080i50, very cheap now)

Took a quick look at Luftslottet som sprängdes (The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet's Nest) and Beck so far, both are region free.

Luftslottet is on a BD50, an AVC encode (24 fps, not 23.976) with a rather rough & gritty PQ as was the case with the 2nd movie in the Millenium series as well (must be the shooting style). Original Swedish audio as DTS-HD MA 5.1 (24-bit) and DD 5.1 448 kbps, optional Swedish HoH, Finnish and Norwegian subs. Trailers of the 3 Millenium movies as an extra. No English.

Beck is on a BD25, a VC-1 encode (24 fps, not 23.976) with very good looking PQ. Original Swedish audio as DTS-HD MA 5.1 (24-bit) and DD 5.1 640 kbps. Optional English, Swedish HoH, Danish, Finnish and Norwegian subs. I didn't notice any extras.

I'll post more details on these a bit later.

[ahsoka]

Got Hatsukoi (First Love) from Taiwan yesterday. Region free BD25 from Pony. English, Traditional/Simplified Chinese subtitles. The Japanese release is a BD50 and has a higher bitrate but PQ seems OK on the Taiwanese disc. Audio is DTS-HD MA 7.1, the Japanese BD has TrueHD/PCM 2.0 only. No extras.

[kannisto]

^ Interesting Taiwanese release, I wonder how they got a 7.1 track for it. I liked the movie on Japanese BD with external subs.

[kannisto]

Veronika Decides to Die is released by AtlanticFilm in Sweden today, in case somebody's interested:
http://english.megastore.se/template...itemid=2177981

Not in stock at Megastore now. Discshop has the actual case pics:
http://www.discshop.se/shop/ds_produ...e=bluray&&ref=

Last Operations Under the Orion should have been released today as well and I would have been interested in buying that but Megastore only lists the DVD version for some reason. Discshop has the BD entry listed but no actual case pics so they probably haven't received any stock yet:
http://www.discshop.se/shop/ds_produ...e=bluray&&ref=

[KSC2303]

Got Hatsukoi (First Love) from Taiwan yesterday. Region free BD25 from Pony. English, Traditional/Simplified Chinese subtitles. The Japanese release is a BD50 and has a higher bitrate but PQ seems OK on the Taiwanese disc. Audio is DTS-HD MA 7.1, the Japanese BD has TrueHD/PCM 2.0 only. No extras.

Is the movie any good? I usually love Japanese movies and the taiwan blus seem to be pretty cheap...