The Ring Collection

Discuss releases from Arrow and the films on them.

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Orlac
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Re: The Ring Collection

#26 Post by Orlac » Sat Dec 22, 2018 5:04 am

I don't think the Grudge DTV movies ever got an English friendly release oddly enough.

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rapta
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Re: Forthcoming: Ring

#27 Post by rapta » Sat Dec 22, 2018 11:55 am

MichaelB wrote:
Fri Dec 21, 2018 7:23 pm
Added to a box set that already contains five features and a ton of extras?

What’s the weather like on your planet?
Is this set five? I only count four films - Ring, Ring 2, Ring 0 and Spiral (aka Rasen).

Pre-ordered the set from HMV last night when it was only £29.99. Not bad value at that price! :D

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colinr0380
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Re: The Ring Collection

#28 Post by colinr0380 » Sat Dec 22, 2018 12:20 pm

If this set features Sadako vs Kayako (aka The Ring vs The Grudge, unreleased on disc in both the UK and US so far) I would be very happy, but I don't want to ask for too much!
Last edited by colinr0380 on Sat Dec 22, 2018 2:47 pm, edited 1 time in total.

Orlac
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Re: The Ring Collection

#29 Post by Orlac » Sat Dec 22, 2018 1:29 pm

I'm rather baffled no-one has picked up Sadako vs Kayako. Maybe the Japanese owner wants too much money. I remember when J-Horror was everywhere.

Speaking of which - http://www.midnighteye.com/features/the ... -j-horror/

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The Fanciful Norwegian
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Re: The Ring Collection

#30 Post by The Fanciful Norwegian » Sat Dec 22, 2018 4:48 pm

In the U.S. it got picked up by the streaming service Shudder, so the absence of a physical release is unfortunate by not surprising. (At least non-subscribers can still buy or rent it on iTunes.)

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Cronenfly
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Re: Forthcoming: Ring

#31 Post by Cronenfly » Sat Dec 22, 2018 8:04 pm

rapta wrote:
Sat Dec 22, 2018 11:55 am
MichaelB wrote:
Fri Dec 21, 2018 7:23 pm
Added to a box set that already contains five features and a ton of extras?

What’s the weather like on your planet?
Is this set five? I only count four films - Ring, Ring 2, Ring 0 and Spiral (aka Rasen).

Pre-ordered the set from HMV last night when it was only £29.99. Not bad value at that price! :D
Is this still listed at that price? I can’t find it on the site.

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Ovader
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Re: Forthcoming: Ring

#32 Post by Ovader » Sat Dec 22, 2018 9:01 pm

Cronenfly wrote:
Sat Dec 22, 2018 8:04 pm
Is this still listed at that price? I can’t find it on the site.
I see it listed at £49.99 here.

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colinr0380
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Re: The Ring Collection

#33 Post by colinr0380 » Sun Dec 23, 2018 7:17 am

"We need a lot of fresh water to absorb Sadako's fury"

Re-watching Ring 2 again last night in the wake of this news, I think that I like it as much as the original film. It does not have the claustrophobic countdown to death structure of the first film but it features a lot of its own striking imagery (I love the eerie mix of nostalgic memory and supernatural psychic connection to the scenes set around the bench on the street) and is a great sequel in the way that it is bringing back almost every key character from the original film and furthering their individual storylines, rather than just a couple of them. The primacy of the tape as a means of transmission falls away a little as people tangential to the actual tape get haunted and marked by events they have witnessed rather than being outright killed, from the friend of the niece who died in the opening of the first film to the the boy Yoichi, to Miki Nakatani's character herself interestingly revealed as having psychic potential here. Developing the suggestion from the explanatory flashback from the first film that everyone probably has psychic projection powers to a greater or lesser extent, not just Sadako, though hers were amped up into a weaponised form by the long term trauma that she experienced.

And I also love the way that mid-way through the film we have two sets (or three with the police) of flawed groups of authority figures both cynically trying to use others to get to the tape with the journalist character being an enormous monster by letting someone else die to test out the theories of how the chain of transmission works (really a satire on how the news media uses its subjects, gives them false hope through reassurances of being there to support them, and then discards them once they have their story, an idea that later turns up again in a central televised exorcism sequence in One Missed Call. Only in this case the journalist has not reckoned with the latest victim, rather than Sadako, coming for electronic vengeance on him herself! And tragically none of his colleagues seem to care about his fate either), and the amateur parapsychological doctor (probably a more minor version of the central figure in Spiral) using that traumatised friend of the niece to try and 'recreate' the imagery and unleash a new tape. It probably makes sense that everything climaxes in an ironic, doomed to failure attempt to use science and technology to tackle ghosts before everything explodes in a phantasmagorical finale that is definitely wilder than the much more subdued (though perhaps more apocalyptic in its own way) ending of Spiral! But seriously for a doctor/scientist, that character should have known that swimming pools and electronic equipment would not mix!

Its kind of a film all about events that do not particularly involve Sadako but more about all of the fallout on supporting characters from the first film trying desperately to understand and contain the situation until almost the last half hour when the actual central figure finally, unfortunately (for the characters!) gets dredged up and unleashed again.

As a side note, one frustrating thing about the old mid-2000s Tartan DVD edition of Ring 2 in the Ring Trilogy boxset that I noticed again on this re-watch is that the English subtitles go out of sync about half way through until the end of the film, occurring about ten seconds after the onscreen dialogue! Which becomes a little confusing during back and forth conversations! I think this was the early days of digital removable subtitles for Tartan (the original early 2000 DVD releases had the burnt in theatrical subtitles that unfortunately disappeared against white backgrounds, so at the time even out of sync digital removable ones were a bit of a step forward!) so I am at least hopeful that the Arrow set will not have that issue and present the films in the UK for the first time without problems with the subtitling!

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mfunk9786
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Re: The Ring Collection

#34 Post by mfunk9786 » Mon Jan 14, 2019 5:10 pm

Can anyone confirm whether the box set will be playable on Region A players?

David M.
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Re: The Ring Collection

#35 Post by David M. » Mon Jan 14, 2019 5:12 pm

No, it's Region B.

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mfunk9786
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Re: The Ring Collection

#36 Post by mfunk9786 » Mon Jan 14, 2019 5:15 pm

Drat. Not enough to get me to buy another region free player, but it's a shame it's not coming out here!

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kcota17
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Re: The Ring Collection

#37 Post by kcota17 » Mon Jan 14, 2019 5:21 pm

Did you have one that broke? I want to invest in one but am scared that they don’t last very long.

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mfunk9786
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Re: The Ring Collection

#38 Post by mfunk9786 » Mon Jan 14, 2019 5:31 pm

Yeah, the LG BD630 that I got from Bombay Electronics rarely plays discs without issue anymore, and has been relegated to being our bedroom Blu-ray player before it's permanently put out to pasture because of the unreliability. It was sold with what was touted as a lifetime warranty, but when I contacted them about the issues with the player they responded that it was only the region free capability that they guaranteed the functionality of, not the player itself.

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Adam X
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Re: The Ring Collection

#39 Post by Adam X » Mon Jan 14, 2019 11:59 pm

I've had a modded Oppo for over 6 years now, and it's never had an issue. Like any electronics, I'd imagine the quality of what you buy is mostly down to the manufacturer, along with a bit of luck.

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tenia
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Re: The Ring Collection

#40 Post by tenia » Thu Feb 28, 2019 5:08 am

James White's article on Restoring Ring.

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Cronenfly
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Re: The Ring Collection

#41 Post by Cronenfly » Fri Mar 08, 2019 3:06 pm

Buy now if you want this. It’s sold out via the Arrow store and is a bestseller on Amazon.

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colinr0380
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Re: The Ring Collection

#42 Post by colinr0380 » Mon Apr 01, 2019 4:49 am

"They had just started snogging when they died"

I re-watched Ring over the weekend and it looks great in this edition from the way that the subtitles do not blend in with the white lamp in the opening scene any more, to how the flurry of separate shots showing fingernails embedded in the wall of the well are much easier to see! The British-ism noted above was also very amusing. I assume that there is a branching option to change it to "making out" or something similar for the US edition? ( :) )

So far I have listened to the David Kalat commentary and watched the Ring Legacy featurette. The featurette was OK, although less for the run through of the history of the series from a general audience perspective (which repeats the basics of what Kalat says in much more detail in his commentary) and more for being able to show a lot of the covers of the various Asian horror films, and US remakes, that followed in the wake of Ring's success and for the namechecking of Tartan Video's important role in this with their "Asia Extreme" branding, a practice which itself drew a bit of criticism at the time for risking narrowing down the range of material into just horror and actions titles, releasing for example everything by Park Chan-wook (including the rather uncharacteristic I'm A Cyborg, And That's OK, smuggled in under the "Extreme" branding) compared to a director such as Hong Sang-soo going almost entirely undistributed in English-language territories until the early 2010s.

Similarly the main reason that I am going to be keeping my mid-2000s Tartan Video "Ring Trilogy" DVD set (aside from the lenticular cover of course!) is that under the "Asia Extreme" brand and cover of the Ring series they managed to also smuggle in the completely unrelated Hideo Nakata romantic drama(!) Sleeping Bride as an extra feature on the set!

David Kalat's commentary was excellent as always. He is very much focused on explaining the circumstances behind the entire "J-horror" movement. I was aware of the middle section of this, but found a lot of very interesting new material in Kalat's discussion both of the pre-Ring period and the films of the more recent decade. Kalat mentions the 1995 TV movie noted on the previous page (which despite the dismissal both in the commentary and in the featurette as just being a nudity filled exploitation version of the material, just makes me want to see it more! Especially as it is suggested despite the nudity to be one of the more faithful adaptations of the Suzuki novel. Whether that is potentially for the better or worse is embodied in the Ring/Spiral aspect on this set already!) but also the history of Japanese horror (the inevitable Ghost Story of Yotsuya and Kwaidan) and early entries in the 1990s ghost subgenre (amusingly cheekily described by Kalat as "haunted schools filled with wet girls"!) including an emphasis on the Scary True Stories series and the through-line of Norio Tsuruta writing and directing this apparently key series of films and eventually being brought in to direct Ring 0: Birthday. The focus Kalat puts on this Scary True Stories series has certainly interested me in wanting to track this down at some point, along with Hideo Nakata's Don't Look Up (and on a side note, Nakata's documentary on Joseph Losey!)

On the other end of things, Kalat also talks about the recent Japanese entries into the Ring universe from this decade. Sadako 3D and its sequel apparently take their cues from Koji Suzuki's Spiral rather than Nakata's 'replacement sequel' Ring 2! And apparently all the contributors on the disc so far like Sadako vs Kayako, though noting that it is more tongue in cheek than the more serious original entries (but then who would expect anything else from a "vs" film than monster-clash fun?)

Kalat does not really talk too much about the on screen action of the film (though he does stop to let the cursed video play out without interruption), but he does make some interesting interpretative comments in the final section about how the sense of anxiety in the film, where characters can only briefly be 'saved' by spreading the virus wider, taps into a kind of post-Aum Shirinkyo cult age and while the technology is charmingly dated by this point (though I type this surrounded by a wall of VHS tapes!) the whole premise of course anticipates 'viral videos' whilst simultaneously harking back to chain letters!

I would go a little further and suggest that whilst there is some praise in the commentary for the way that Asakawa "puts all of her journalistic skills into practice" in trying to solve the mystery (which she does, making this as good a 'research' film as Candyman in some ways), that really also needs to be counterbalanced by the sense that it was only the journalistic nose for an intriguing story that actually caused the whole crisis to widen beyond that initial circle of unfortunate teens in the first place! I think there is an interesting subtext there towards an idea of journalism manufacturing its own boogeymen and thinking that it is in control of the story behind them and how they get presented to their audience, only to find that the story takes on a life of its own or might not perfectly fit the neat narrative closure that has been created to tie everything together!

____

I thought that I would add a couple of notes on the film on re-watching it. I think I mentioned this in the Straw Dogs thread a few years ago, but I think there is a rather subtle homage to that film in Ring, with the girlfriend frustratedly changing one of the teacher's equations on his blackboard as she sees him go off with his ex-wife early on in the film; and then the teacher notices and changes it back just before the infamous finale.

Speaking of the ending, whilst I was a little harsh on the American remake a little earlier in the thread I really like the subtle differences between how the aftermath of the teacher's death plays out between the films. In Ring the heroine arrives after the girlfriend has found the teacher's body and is sitting outside the apartment in a state of shock. The US remake actually feels much more brutal in the way that the heroine (updating the technology to mobile phones compared to listening to the death powerlessly on a landline from her home) races to the ex-husband's apartment whilst listening to him being killed through her phone, and gets to the scene before anyone else. Then she pockets 'incriminating evidence' that might link her to the scene (compared to taking the video after everything has been tidied up with neither the authorities or the girlfriend having noted the significance of the video, which in some ways ties in with Asakawa taking the photo developing slip from her dead niece's room earlier on. And of course both the authorities and the girlfriend are going to start belatedly realising the significance of the tape in Ring 2!), and even worse hides on the stairs from the oblivious girlfriend and allows her to go into the apartment and discover the body instead of trying to spare her from the sight of it. Naomi Watts' playing of the character is much more brittle and on the edge compared to Nanako Matsushima's version of the character. I think that I prefer the 'compassion' of the original Ring more than the detached callousness of The Ring in that moment, but I do think that it was an interesting and bold choice to go in for the remake.

Maybe suggesting in the remake that we are seeing another cycle of another psychic child with dead parent about to meet a horrible end, perhaps even one at the hands of their parent? (Whilst in the 1998 film Yoichi seems much more to stand in hopeful contrast to the abused Sadako than as another potential Sadako himself, something which is only more underlined in Ring 2)

Listening to Kalat's commentary about Ring 2 being 'for the fans' and watching Ring again did remind me that Ring 2 is that rare sequel that is made so close to the first film (not as close as Spiral though!) that it is able to further almost every single character's journey with all of the same actors in their roles, which really helps to expand things out. Of course Miki Nakatani's girlfriend character is the prime example of this, but the journalist colleague, the friend of the niece from the opening scene, even the people running the inn on the island, all reappear and are given their due in Ring 2, as if to atone for Spiral having completely thrown everyone but a couple of characters away from the first film! Even the bench on the street gets its own narrative arc furthered in a nice way!
Last edited by colinr0380 on Fri Apr 12, 2019 3:30 am, edited 11 times in total.

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tenia
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Re: The Ring Collection

#43 Post by tenia » Mon Apr 01, 2019 4:56 am

colinr0380 wrote:
Mon Apr 01, 2019 4:49 am
I assume that there is a branching option to change it to "making out" or something similar for the US edition? ( :) )
The release is UK-only, but it makes it even simpler !

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colinr0380
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Re: The Ring Collection

#44 Post by colinr0380 » Mon Apr 01, 2019 4:58 am

It makes sense that they could get away with "snogging" in that case!

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Lost Highway
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Re: The Ring Collection

#45 Post by Lost Highway » Mon Apr 01, 2019 5:18 am

I always thought Ring 2 is one of the great, underrated sequels, I actually prefer it to the original. I’m a fan of films where scientists investigate the supernatural and Ring 2 reminds me a lot of what Nigel Kneale did in the 60s and 70s.
Last edited by Lost Highway on Mon Apr 01, 2019 8:04 am, edited 1 time in total.

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Adam X
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Re: The Ring Collection

#46 Post by Adam X » Mon Apr 01, 2019 5:46 am

I feel much the same way, aside perhaps that I still enjoy the first film more. I originally saw Ring 1 & 2 at the local festival screening (MIFF), either as a double bill or on sequential nights (don't remember which, other than they were the beginning of the festival garnering larger and larger crowds), which I thought aided in enjoying the second film more for seeing them in such close succession - likely for the reasons Colin mentions. I've long felt that the general disdain for the sequel was down to most people not seeing them that way and not appreciating the development of the characters. Or maybe they just don't like Nigel Kneale-esque tales?

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colinr0380
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Re: The Ring Collection

#47 Post by colinr0380 » Mon Apr 01, 2019 6:07 am

I wonder if it is also that Ring's rigid countdown structure with the date stamp relentlessly appearing to add to the sense of approaching, inescapable death (even if stopping the countdown turns out to have been dealt with earlier than anticipated!) is so strong that any follow up that does not use it might inevitably pale in comparison, even if it has so much else to offer. Ring 2 is about people who are all operating at least one remove from the epicentre of events but can still feel the aftershocks and has a slightly looser approach to the 'rules' of the situation, which is both what makes it a little less of a stand alone piece, but also a fascinating furthering of the story in surprising directions.

EDIT: I like the Nigel Kneale comparison Lost Highway! I wonder if The Stone Tape influenced the writing of Ring at all, especially in the way that it too is about characters who think they have solved the mystery but then turn out not to! (It would be ironic if it had done, since the whole basis of the research in The Stone Tape is about trying to beat the Japanese to the development of a new recording medium!)
Last edited by colinr0380 on Sat Apr 06, 2019 4:20 pm, edited 1 time in total.

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Adam X
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Re: The Ring Collection

#48 Post by Adam X » Mon Apr 01, 2019 7:24 am

That sounds likely, but you know, I’ve not seen these films, I think, in maybe 15 years, so I don’t really have any recall of what I even like about them. Looking forward to changing that, though.

Especially given the chance to see Rasen. It’ll help me figure out if it was that film or the original telemovie that I saw part of at a friend’s house years ago. All I remember is a spectacularly slow dolly in on two characters talking.

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colinr0380
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Re: The Ring Collection

#49 Post by colinr0380 » Tue Apr 02, 2019 7:21 am

By the way, a good discussion question for Ring 2 relates to the ending, and I will be curious to see if it gets debated in the extras when I reach that disc (Although this also might depend on whether it gets translated differently in this new edition):
SpoilerShow
Is Sadako's final (only) line "Why are you the only one to be saved?" said to Mai (the Miki Nakatani character), as the plucky rescuer or more addressed to Yoichi himself?

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Lost Highway
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Re: The Ring Collection

#50 Post by Lost Highway » Tue Apr 02, 2019 8:52 am

I haven’t watched them in a while and was too broke to import the recent Arrow set, though I have the German BD release which doesn’t look too bad.

I haven’t kept up, but will there be a budget release of these films by Arrow further down the line ?

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