Kwaidan (Blu-ray)

I previously bought and watched the regular Criterion version of the Masaki Kobayashi masterpiece Kwaidan (1964), but was inspired to get the Blu-ray version. It is Kobayashi's re-imaginings of four classic tales of horro that were adapted from collections written by Lafacadio Hearn. For one, it is a wonderful visual spectacle, which looks great in the 2K digital restoration and secondly, it has several attractive special edition features: new 2K digital restoration of director Masaki Kobayashi’s original cut, with uncompressed monaural soundtrack, audio commentary by film historian Stephen Prince, interview from 1993 with Kobayashi, conducted by filmmaker Masahiro Shinoda, new interview with assistant director Kiyoshi Ogasawara, new piece about author Lafcadio Hearn, on whose versions of Japanese folk tales Kwaidan is based, trailers, new English subtitle translation, and an essay by critic Geoffrey O’Brien. I was pleased to find out that Film historian Prince has written a book about Kobayashi that is due to come out later this year, A Dream of Resistance: The Films of Kobayashi Masaki. (Original Kwaidan review)