A blog post about my weekly purchases. Not an average week, but I covered VHS, DVD, and Blu-ray! Yeah!
It’s a solid martial arts film with a great ending, but it’s not my favorite from the Shaw Bros.
Last year I received the “AK100: 25 Films of Akira Kurosawa” Criterion box set as a gift for my birthday. It comes with most of Kurosawa’s films, but it is missing a few (“Ran,” “The Quiet Duel” and “Dreams” being the three that immediately come to mind). I sought out and purchased the ones that were not in the collection…yet one of Mr. Kurosawa’s films constantly evaded me: “Dersu Uzala.”
Every time I went to buy this film on DVD, used or new, I found that the price just did not seem right. Or the copy didn’t feel right (Description: In good condition. No case. Slight scratches = Yeesh?). I also kept getting the sneaking suspicion that Kino would release a Blu-ray disc of this film…which I’m hoping still happens eventually.
Finally, last week, I gave in…sort of. I didn’t buy the film on the DVD format, but instead purchased it on the VHS format. Why the VHS format? Because it just all seemed to line up. The price was right. It’s widescreen. It’s Kurosawa. And while there will be better presentations of this in the future (or so I hope), right now this will do just fine.
