Criterion's next Toho DVD comes two years after their release of Hidden Fortress, although their commitment to bringing all of Toshiro Mifune's and Akira Kurosawa's classic films to DVD is still clear. This DVD is very reminiscent of Criterion's first Toho DVD, Seven Samurai, but also shows how far they have come these past five years. The print used in the film is as good as one would expect to find from a movie this old. It starts out rather scratchy, but as time goes the scratches become less frequent, to the point where they all but disappear. Artifacting is sadly present through out, and is very noticeable during scenes where lots of fog baths the screen. Audio is noticeably better, near flawless for a movie this age, and while it does sound "off" in some scenes this probably has more to do with the actual film than the DVD as the treble and bass were "tampered" with before the film's release. The extras on this disc are what really make it shine, and show Criterion's new commitment to creating extras for these films beyond simply including a trailer, which they did as well. The film contains audio commentary by Michael Jeck, a Japanese film expert. While Micheal Jeck's commentary is not quite as informative as the one he did for Seven Samurai, he still manages to not tread over anything he stated before allowing for the commentary to still be more than worth your while even if you heard his previous commentary on Seven Samurai. As a DVD first, Criterion has included two, different, English subtitle tracks for the film. The first is by Linda Hoaglund, a renowned translator of Japanese, while the second is by Donald Richie, a Kurosawa enthusiast. While both subtitle tracks are nice, I personally found Linda's to be the more interesting of the two to read, which happens to be the default subtitle track. As yet another added bonus, Criterion has included a 21 page booklet with a essay by Stephen Prince on Kurosawa and Shakespeare, from which The Throne of Blood is inspired by Macbeth. The booklet also contains notes from Linda Hoaglund and Donald Richie on their individual subtitling methods. Most interesting is Linda's notes which mentions that Criterion also asked her to do new subtitles for The Bad Sleep Well, Drunken Angel, and I Live in Fear among others; hopefully a taste of future Criterion DVDs yet to come. As a last note, this DVD marks a change in direction for Criterion in terms of menus. The menus here are noticeably more diverse than earlier releases by them and the first is animated with sound, a very nice improvement, and all are done in a stylistic cell shaded fashion like the cover. Bottom line is that this is a excellent DVD packed with original extras on one of Kurosawa's more famous films.