Brent Gair
04-17-2005, 11:19 PM
A diverse group of people get on a small boat and go for a brief pleasure cruise.
Among our band of tropical pleasure seekers: a millionaire, a professor, a movie star.
A storm forces the boat onto the shore of an uncharted island where this woefully ill-prepared group must fend for themselves.
Recognize that story line? Of course you do. It's the 1963 Japanese film MATANGO. It was released in the U.S. as ATTACK OF THE MUSHROOM PEOPLE (What? You were expecting something else?).
The DVD is from Media Blasters and they've done a real nice job. More properly, I guess this disc is distributed by Media Blasters because it looks like Toho has done all of the work.
The disc is anamorphic widescreen. The package says 2.35:1 but I can say the film is much wider than that. I don't know if it's a transfer oddity or if the film is supposed to be so wide but it's a lot closer to 2.55:1 (much like the earliest Cinemascope). This will be tough to watch on a 4x3 TV set. Aspect ratio aside, the movie looks wonderful. I love the soft pastel quality of the film. Too many presentations today are annoyingly enhanced to a ridiculous degree of fake, electronically induced sharpness. This one actually LOOKS like a film.
The disc has a first class sound track with English 5.1, English 2.0, Japanese mono and a Japanese commentary track with subtitles. The movie itself also has English subtitles for those who want to see it in the original Japanese.
It's an entertaining movie on a real nice DVD. Another "highly Recommended" rating from me (which may or may not carry any weight :)).
Among our band of tropical pleasure seekers: a millionaire, a professor, a movie star.
A storm forces the boat onto the shore of an uncharted island where this woefully ill-prepared group must fend for themselves.
Recognize that story line? Of course you do. It's the 1963 Japanese film MATANGO. It was released in the U.S. as ATTACK OF THE MUSHROOM PEOPLE (What? You were expecting something else?).
The DVD is from Media Blasters and they've done a real nice job. More properly, I guess this disc is distributed by Media Blasters because it looks like Toho has done all of the work.
The disc is anamorphic widescreen. The package says 2.35:1 but I can say the film is much wider than that. I don't know if it's a transfer oddity or if the film is supposed to be so wide but it's a lot closer to 2.55:1 (much like the earliest Cinemascope). This will be tough to watch on a 4x3 TV set. Aspect ratio aside, the movie looks wonderful. I love the soft pastel quality of the film. Too many presentations today are annoyingly enhanced to a ridiculous degree of fake, electronically induced sharpness. This one actually LOOKS like a film.
The disc has a first class sound track with English 5.1, English 2.0, Japanese mono and a Japanese commentary track with subtitles. The movie itself also has English subtitles for those who want to see it in the original Japanese.
It's an entertaining movie on a real nice DVD. Another "highly Recommended" rating from me (which may or may not carry any weight :)).