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Kwaidan - Japanese Horror Film Premieres on BD

Criterion Releases Long Version in the US

Masaki Kobayashi's horror film Kwaidan was made in 1964 and is a 3-hour-long anthology movie comprised out of 4 separate stories. It won the Jury Prize at the Cannes film festival and got an Oscar nomination in the US.

In order to get the film's runtime down to a more digestible 120 minutes mark, the 2nd episode was removed from the work in the US. Also, Criterion released an international version several years ago where all episodes were included but it still wasn't complete with its duration of 163 minutes. In the UK, the full version is available with its entire 3 hours on DVD. And that is the version that will also be on the new Blu-ray that Criterion will release this year. It has excellent bonus materials on board as you can see here:

  • New 2K digital restoration of director Masaki Kobayashi’s original cut, with uncompressed monaural soundtrack on the Blu-ray
  • Audio commentary by film historian Stephen Prince
  • Interview from 1993 with Kobayashi, conducted by filmmaker Masahiro Shinoda
  • New interview with assistant director Kiyoshi Ogasawara
  • New piece about author Lafcadio Hearn, on whose versions of Japanese folk tales Kwaidan is based
  • Trailers
  • New English subtitle translation
  • PLUS: An essay by critic Geoffrey O’Brien

The Blu-ray comes out in the US on October 20th, 2015. You can order it at Amazon.com.

Release: Aug 11, 2015 - Author: sausagemoo81 - Translator: Mike Lowrey

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