Makoto Shinkai’s latest film, 5 Centimeters per Second aka A Chain of Short Stories about Their Distance, will receive its first english subbed dvd release later this week when the HK dvd hits the streets. Korean and JP dvds were already released, but without subs. R1 release should be on its way also (possibly December). The film both looks amazing and has received extremely positive feedback.
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I’ll try to write something about 5 cm tomorrow, but first lets get The Place Promised in Our Early Days out of the day:
[quote=“Hung Fist”]
The Place Promised in Our Early Days (Japan, 2004) – 5/5
When a director’s debut film is a masterpiece one shouldn’t expect the next one to be as good. That doesn’t seem to apply to Makoto Shinkai. At least on the first viewing The Place Promised in Our Early Days felt about twice as good as Voices of a Distant Star. It’s still not perfect as it’s a bit over-written and stumbles with some scifi content that could’ve been left out for the most part. Nevertheless, if it wasn’t for Shinkai’s next film, which is out on dvd but hasn’t reached my mail box yet, I’d say it’s gonna take a decade before we’ll see another movie as beautiful as this.
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Sorry, forgot about this.
Excellent film indeed. Like all of Shinkai’s films 5 cm is about distance, both physical and emotional. The film is not quite the tearjerker the directors earlier films were, but it also avoids their (minor) problems. No more unnecessary scifi stuff or complex plotting. The focus is on characters and nothing else. The film consists of three related episodes, running 25, 22 and 14 minutes.
As for dvd I made the mistake of buying the HK disc first. Turned out to be an Edge Enhancement heaven. Now I’m a happy owner of the R2J. Dvd comparison here: <LINK_TEXT text=“Bullets 'n' Babes - Index page … php?t=4213”>5 Centimeters per Second - R1 vs. R2J vs. R3HK - Bullets 'n' Babes</LINK_TEXT>