| A barebones release with so-so picture quality.
Fans of Juzo Itami's "ramen Western"
are better off importing the R2. |
| Video: |
 |
| Fox Lorbor is a company not known for its
high standard of quality. Their DVD releases of
Ran and In the Realm of the Senses
feature two of the worst transfers to be found
on any DVD. In the case of Tampopo, the
video presentation is far better those two awful
releases, but still leaves a lot to be desired.
It's pretty soft and not very detailed, looking
more like a laserdisc than a DVD. I also noted
one instance in which a scene goes bright
for a few seconds before returning to normal,
but I'm not quite sure it's a fault
of a transfer or was an intentional part of the
film. The image is also very slightly window-boxed.
The film is presented in its original 1.85:1
aspect ratio and is not anamorphically enhanced
|
| Audio: |
 |
| The audio is okay. Nothing too spectacular
about it, but nothing really bad about it either.
It's perfectly serviceable, if unremarkable.
The DVD comes with removable (a real rarity for
a Fox Lorbor DVD) English subtitles.
|
| Extras: |
 |
| None. Zilch. Zippo. Goose egg. All you get
is filmographies of Nobuko Miyamoto, Tsutomu Yamamoto
and Juzo Itami. These filmographies look terrible
and don't even include short bios of Miyamoto,
Yamamoto and Itami. |
| Overview: |
 |
To anybody who either enjoys this film but
doesn't own it on DVD or wants to see this film,
I recommend you skip this DVD and track down the
Japanese R2, which not only has far better special
features and picture quality but is English subtitled
as well. |
- J.L. Carrozza |
