Shinobi (japanese)

[tormond]

Just finished watching this and WOW...just WOW

First off this is a WONDERFUL movie. Kind of a Romeo and Juliet with Ninjas. Great storyline and wonderful scenery.

PQ: I would give this a 4.5 out of 5. There are a few spots where I thought the picture looked a little "blocky" but to be honest I think that was film grain and/or VERY misty scenes where I saw it I don't think it was an encoding issue. The water/snow/forest scenes were some of the best HD I have ever seen.

AQ: I was watching this on my PC using the speakers on my PC using crappy onboard sound and to be honest I was blown away. There is actually very little dialog in the film and it is VERY music driven and I found several times where the emotion in the music score was overpowering and dialog was not needed (which is good as I was stunned by the visuals and reading subtitles was distracting me from the movie)

Extras: I have no idea. The entire disc is in Japanese with no english of any form on the disc (I was watching it using Videodrome)

All in all if you can find a copy of this and use a HTPC you won't be disappointed (or speak and/or read Japanese and don't need subs). There may be a BD version of this (I think there is) and or a HD DV verion with an English dub or subs but I am thrilled I bought this disc (and got it for a steal which makes it twice as sweet)

[johnnymac]

Yep, I would call $12.22 including shipping a steal. Please tell me you were willing to pay large $$$ for this so I don't feel bad for being outbid.

[tormond]

Originally Posted by johnnymac

Yep, I would call $12.22 including shipping a steal. Please tell me you were willing to pay large $$$ for this so I don't feel bad for being outbid.

I think I went $9 but I was sitting on top of it ready to go as high as $10

[bruceames]

Originally Posted by tormond

Just finished watching this and WOW...just WOW

First off this is a WONDERFUL movie. Kind of a Romeo and Juliet with Ninjas. Great storyline and wonderful scenery.

PQ: I would give this a 4.5 out of 5. There are a few spots where I thought the picture looked a little "blocky" but to be honest I think that was film grain and/or VERY misty scenes where I saw it I don't think it was an encoding issue. The water/snow/forest scenes were some of the best HD I have ever seen.

AQ: I was watching this on my PC using the speakers on my PC using crappy onboard sound and to be honest I was blown away. There is actually very little dialog in the film and it is VERY music driven and I found several times where the emotion in the music score was overpowering and dialog was not needed (which is good as I was stunned by the visuals and reading subtitles was distracting me from the movie)

Extras: I have no idea. The entire disc is in Japanese with no english of any form on the disc (I was watching it using Videodrome)

All in all if you can find a copy of this and use a HTPC you won't be disappointed (or speak and/or read Japanese and don't need subs). There may be a BD version of this (I think there is) and or a HD DV verion with an English dub or subs but I am thrilled I bought this disc (and got it for a steal which makes it twice as sweet)

Nice review. You said it had subtitles? Regardless, given it has little dialogue, I'm gonna put this on my wish list. Besides, I really like the cover.

[HD 335]

Cool, didn't know they released an HD DVD version of Shinobi: Heart Under Blade? And there is a BD version of this. According to this site, there is only Japanese subs. And I'm surprised the HD DVD version only has Dolby Digital 5.1
http://www.cdjapan.co.jp/detailview.html?KEY=HDB-1

There is enough dialogue that English subs would help bring details out about why the two hidden villages must fight.

[kannisto]

Shinobi is the first HD DVD movie release in Japan together with Finding Neverland, not counting the bundled stuff that came with HD-XA1. It was released on 28th of April 2006. It's the first HD DVD release by Shochiku Home Video.

It has a DD+ 5.1 Japanese audio track at 2046 kbps, not just DD. The video is in AVC with average / target bitrate at 23 Mbps.

I've had it a long time in my collection but I still didn't watch it. Maybe I should now I'm staying on sickleave today, got some kind of a stomach flu since yesterday evening.

The translated menu is like this:
Play from start ; Chapter menu ; Setup ; Trailer

The only extra is the trailer for the same movie, in full HD.

Setup menu has the selection for the two Japanese audio tracks: 5.1 and 2.0, and the setting for Japanese subtitles on/off. There are no English subs on the disc.

[tormond]

Yes there are no English subs (which is why I was watching it on my PC). I was using videodrome with a set of subs I downloaded to get the subs I was watching (reading)

Even with the subs there wasn't a ton of info about why the villages were at war or why they had a ban on it for 500 years that was lifted.. I just thought that Romeo and Juliet should always have had Ninjas.. would have made it a more compelling play in theatre classes

[kannisto]

I just watched this movie too on my PC with WinDVD9 Plus trying out Titledrome at the same time. It worked pretty well, but for some reason the Windows Vista start button was visible through the whole movie at the lower left corner of my display, it's not visible when I don't use Titledrome.

It was a bit of extra work in the beginning to synchronize the playback and the subtitles but after that it worked well, just can't stop or pause the playback or the subs have to be re-synchronized. At some point I felt the subs were a bit behind and I added playback speed for the subs making it 100.01% and somehow they seemed to be pretty fine after that all through. There were a couple of instances where no subs were shown for some small bits of dialogue, I guess that was just an issue with the original subs that I used.

The movie itself was very enjoyable, I liked it very much. Lots of ninja action together with the love story elements, quite a nice mix. It was well paced. The music and emotional impact were pretty strong as tormond also commented. I'll try to post some screencaps too. Couldn't get any screencaps, I only get blank ones, it's always a bit hit and miss with my workflow...

[jaamies]

I would recommend this to everybody! Great movie, fantastic picture quality and audio track is also great. I personally love this film and it´s a shame that it doesn´t have english subtitles.