Ringu

[Andrew]

I don't know how I missed this, but the DVD is out.  Good quality transfer, widescreen and few extras - but DVD!  I was browsing Best Buy the other day while picking up a present for a friend and saw the cover.  I let out a little, "Ohhhhh!" and picked it up.  Some guy said, "Hey, that is some other movie.  This one is 'The Ring.'"  My response to this was, "No, this was the original.  The American remake was not awful, but I want this one.  I want it right now."  As I strode toward the register the guy picked up "Ringu."

Watching the film on a 5th or 6th gen copy, in all Japanese (I can only speak very small parts of Japanese), did not convey the whole film.  Excellent addition to my serious horror collection.

[Pancho]

I almost got a copy of this.  It was at a local store and the price tag was handwritten but had faded so that it read $5.99.  Needless to say I was amazed and almost ran to the counter where it rang up as $35.99.  I would have forked over the extra money but I'm a broke high school kid so when I opened my wallet it was empty.  A very sad day in my opinion.

[Brian Ringler]

I saw it at blockbuster and it was $26 dollars there, I'll have to rent it before I decide if it is worth that much

[Brother Ragnarok]

Three things about this flick.  1.  Where the hell were you that a domestic DVD costs 36 bucks?  Goddamn ripoff for anything that's not multi-disc special edition blah blah blah.  2.  The movie kicks ass, buy it.  3.  I got my copy as an extra tape when I got Wild Zero on eBay, so mine was a decent quality dub.  I had never seen it before, so discovering the importance of the dub was really creepy.  That, and my phone rang not five minutes after the tape was rewound.

Brother R

[Ash]

I would've demanded the $5.99 price!

If you raise somewhat of a stink, most stores will bow to your demands on the price to keep your business and admit that they made a mistake by not keeping a close eye on their merchandise.

It was their fault that they let the price tag fade.

I would've made a big deal out of it and told them that if they don't want that kind of thing to happen in the future then they had better keep an eye on faded price tags and get out that pricing gun and keep 'em up to date!!

Sometimes that's what you have to do to get what you want for a certain price!

It has worked for me on numerous occasions.

But don't go overboard and make such a scene that other customers start turning their heads to look at you because they can hear you screaming at the cashier or manager.  

Just be polite about it.

That's me though...

[Paquita]

thank goodness i get a $5 discount!  my roomate came busting in and told me about it a few weeks ago cos her boyfriend works at a record store!!  isnt the word ringu kinda funny? when she came in and said "THE JAPANESE RING IS OUT ON DVD NOW WE CAN BUY IT YAY!!..    ... RINGU!!!!!!" that was funny! hehe!! GOO!

love colleen

[Neville]

I'm starting to think I ruined the whole fun watching the american remake first. The US version looked interesting enough to me, besides its complete lack of subtility. After that the original looked dull to me. Now I'll have to wait some time before watching it again.

[Skaboi]

Yeah, you have a point.

I recently bought a pair of Quicksilver sunglasses in a surf shop for 29.99 because the first two was smudged out.  :)
200 dollar discount!  WHOOHOO!

[Brian Ringler]

Wow, I'm an idiot I meant best buy not blockbuster, slight loss in intelligence on my part

[BryceDavid]

I saw Ringu last night. I wasn't too impressed by it. The DVD transfer was terrible. It was totally dark. At times I couldn't see anything. Anyway, it wasn't bad but I wasn't scared by it. And there are too many implausible things that didn't make much sense, like the couple experiencing the flashbacks just by touching the old man. Hmm...

[Chadzilla]

The implausible things were why the Americans made a remake of it.

[Pancho]

I dunno, I'm pretty laid back about that kind of stuff.  It feels like bad karma to me, plus I work as a cashier so I feel for the guys.  Maybe I'm just a door mat, I don't know.

[Andrew]

I think so social differences might be at work here.  I have watched a lot of Japanese and Chinese films.  Their vision of spiritual forces is different from ours at times.  "Ringu" is genuinely chilling to me.

The man had psychic powers.  What he found, upon watching the tape, was a force far beyond his and full of malevolence.  The woman received visions too, either from her affliction with the curse or his emotional closeness to her (they do have a child).

[BryceDavid]

If the husband had psychic powers, it wasn't really well demonstrated. I don't see any other scene in the movie that tells us he might have psychic powers. Strangely enough, I thought the woman was the one with the psychic powers, not the husband.

But the way I see how the flashback scene works is like this: because the couple are hexed with the curse, when they touch the old man, they can see where this hex originated from, shown in a vivid flashback. That's what I think the filmmakers tried to do. There's a 'force field' around the two (remember the distorted photos?). But even if this how it's supposed to be, I still think it wasn't elaborated enough and simply looked implausible.

[jmc]

I saw the original a couple of years ago, from one of those dodgy video places.
The remake I just saw last week.  I like both--I think they complement each other.
pretty well.   I like the remake's faster pace, but not their tendency to overexplain things, and I agree that some of the characters in the remake are pretty flat.  All in all, I think it's an example of a remake that works.  I wish all remakes could be as good.

For obvious reasons, I think both films work better on video.  Does the Ringu DVD have the "cursed" video as one of the extras?  I read that the Japanese DVD release had it.