Customer Reviews

Ashes of Time [VHS]

5 star:		(12)
4 star:		(3)
3 star:		(3)
2 star:		(5)
1 star:		(12)

 

 

This DVD is a botched production job, and Amazon will charge you to return it because it's "not the result of our error." Amazon's error is to distribute this dog of a product. Wait for a better release. Caveat emptor.

The sound track lags several seconds behind the picture (and the subtitles) for the first 45 minutes of the movie. And there's a lot of dialog. It's almost impossible to figure out who is saying what to whom.

But maybe the visuals alone are worth it? Not really: The bottom quarter of the picture is blacked out, to cover the Chinese subtitles -- which nonetheless peek out from time to time when there are two lines of them. This provides a nice black background for the English subtitles (which contain the predictable dumb typos), but wouldn't you like to see the whole picture? I know I would.

Only a couple of times, there are pixilated intrusions of images from some other movie, with white people in it, for a second or two. Spoils the willing suspension of disbelief, you know?

And only once, there is a snatch of dialog in English -- not likely part of this movie, whose setting is earlier than the advent of English.

You don't need to spend any money on this product. Amazon should be ashamed of itself for selling it.

This is great movie. No doubt about it, but quality of DVD is horrible. Picture sometimes got blurred, sound is very low quality. This is worst DVD ever. Movie is more then worth to watch, but not from that DVD.

This is one of my favourite movies of All Time - the story is moving, the cinematography is painfully beautiful, and the characters are fascinating.

The DVD mastering, accoringly, is perhaps the greatest injustice the movie could have possibly suffered. The source from which the DVD was dubbed was in *terrible* condition. Your local rental store's VHS copy probably looks like it's in better shape. The picture is very scratchy.

Even worse is the subtitling. The subtitles in the VHS version were very thoughtfully written and give a good sense of the poetry of the original script. The only problem is that they are sometimes a little (read: teeny bit) hard to read. The DVD version "overcomes" this problem by BLACKING OUT the bottom 20% of the screen and displaying new subtitles on the black bar.

Two problems with this method - they didn't resize the picture at all. You simply lose the bottom fifth of the picture. Also, the subtitles in the DVD version are a much poorer translation of the original. They are almost comical at times, they depart so far from Wei's original vision.

I would whole-heartedly recommend this movie to anybody, especailly lovers of Hong Kong cinema or Asian period peices. Please save yourself a lot of disappointment, though, and pick up the VHS version.

Seriously: the sound is the worst I have encountered on any DVD release, a big part of the screen is covered with a dark grey box to cover the original subtitles - there is a lot of video jittery things going on, it all adds up to my conclusion that the DVD version is transfered from a very, very bad analog copy. On top of all, the subtitles are totally out of sync and awfully misspelled. Dont buy this unless you are a fanatic WKW fan who already own all other releases......

'Ashes of Time' is the rarest of Wong Kar Wei's films and best remembered as the one that so confounded him that he went off and made 'Chungking Express' to clear his mind before finishing it. Actually, it's worth remembering in its own right, as he brings his uniquely romantic take on the world to the fantasy swordplay genre with the expected unexpected results. There are swordfights, most of them pretty good, but the fantasy is kept to the bare minimum with the focus on the emotional cost of being a professional killer. Love is lost and so are memories, vengeance is sought and denied, characters meet but fail to connect, secrets are kept and regrets shared, all filtered through Leslie Cheung's inn on the edge of the desert where he acts as agent for killers for hire. The interest here isn't in action but reasons, and in the emotional cost of pursuing a life of violence, all captured via his usual dreamlike imagery and poetic confessional narration. Part Hong Kong, part European, part Leone (acknowledged/plagiarised at times in the score), not everything works, but the parts that do are quite magnificent, whether it's a woman tracing her hand over the sleeping body of a man who is not her lover or the curiously memorable shots of the horse thieves waiting their turn in a battle.

It can get confusing - not only do the characters sometimes blur into each other but he even hires both Tony Leungs for key roles in the same film while Brigitte Lin plays dual roles and, just to add to the clarity, the film's chronology is very misleading - but it's worth bearing with. A film I'll definitely be returning to, and I suspect more than just the once.

However, this DVD edition is one to avoid for reasons already outlined in other reviews here. Instead, track down the Hong Kong Mei Ha release: the picture quality is grainy, but the English subtitling is much better handled.

This too is my favourite Wong Kar Wai movie. The non-linear story of love, lost, betrayal and regret is achingly beautiful. The cinematography is stunning. It's almost worth watching the film just for that alone. That said, it's not an easy movie to watch at all. It's one of those that require repeated viewings. And it's definitely one of those that you either hate or love. There are actually 2 dvd versions of this movie. The one released by World (?) video is hideous. However, if you can find the one released by Mei Ah, I hear it's pretty good. I'm going to sell my horrid dvd version of the movie and try and pick up the Mei Ah version.

This is without doubt my favourite Wong Kar-Wai film. It was brilliantly executed, beautifully set, and the story is very well thought out.

I'll have to agree with the previous post, however - the DVD edition of this movie is a travesty. They put a black bar over the old subtitles to make the new ones more readable - at the expense of 20% of the screen. The transfer is horrible, too.

My hearty recommendations for the VHS version, though - perhaps one day Tai Seng will do the DVD community justice with this title.

This is a spectacular film to behold. One of Wong Kar-Wai's best but the DVD transfer is the worse I have ever seen. No budget involved basically. Half of the frame is missing because of the subtitle bar. One can deal with the slight inaccuracies in translation but the subtitles aren't in sync with the images. Perhaps, buy the cheaper VHS edition if you are really desperate to own.

I can't judge the quality of the film because the DVD is so terrible. The transfer is poor - it looks like a VHS to DVD copy. The English subtitles cannot be turned off. They were placed in a gray (not black) bar that covers a third of the frame. You can see the Chinese subtitles peeking out during long lines, so it is clear that this was a cover-job. Wait for a better release - save your money. I think Wong Kar-Wai would be embarrassed

It would be unfair to judge a film by a poor presentation, so I'll decline any comment about what I saw of the film itself. But this dvd is a big disappointment, especially considering the price. I think it's more than 20% of the picture that's matted out to hide the old subtitles; I think it's closer to 30 (several times you can see some of the old subtitles above the new ones). There's alot of picture missing and I frankly gave up watching this after a couple tries. At some point I'll finish, just to justify my purchase to myself. But I won't buy any more products from the company that put this one out, that's for sure.