It's not every day that I review Chinese bootlegs, mainly because this is the first one I've got ;-), but the story behind it is - I think - worth sharing, so here you go:

I love Jakubisko's films, so I was really looking forward to owning "Bathory" on DVD (AND Blu-ray, me doing these comparisons & whatnot ;-)). Sadly, the domestic (Czech) release is being postponed for almost a year now (currently, the DVD is scheduled for Oct 12 & the Blu-ray for Nov 2), but a friend of mine from abroad, who's been to this year's Festival de Cannes, managed to get a "promo" disc there. He promised to send it to me, but kept forgetting about it, so I eventually stopped reminding him, and started looking for the DVD in the place where many a rare item is to be found - eBay. And what do you know - I found this copy there, short on description, but advertised as "rare," so I went for it immediately. I don't have to tell you how surprised I was when it finally arrived. Laugh? I nearly started! :-D But the cover sure put a smile on my face:

More importantly, the presence of Romanian subtitles on the disc made me Google furiously, which in turn lead to the discovery of the Romanian edition reviewed above, which the Chinese bootleg is "based" on. Now, getting the Romanian DVD was an adventure all by itself, since Romania must be - to quote from a fitting post I found on the Internet - "the winner of the 'Hands off our DVDs' award," luckily, there was this place where many a rare item is to be found... (c:

Anyway, as it turned out, the Romanian "original" is nothing spectacular (soft, poor compression (see below), etc.), although it does look better than the Chinese "replica" (what a surprise). I'm really curious how the Czech editions are going to look, since - according to sources on the Internet - the delay is due to "the film undergoing image clean-up***** to deliver better quality on DVD & Blu-ray." "A load of bullshit!" me says - how much restoration does a film shot in 2008, and we're talking here the most expensive Central European film ever made, need? The delay is more likely due to the fact that - according to other sources - Jakubisko Film went bankrupt, because the film didn't gross as much as expected. Still, if the former "rumour" is true, I'd only be glad...

*the film & menus occupy 4.35 GB only, but two of the film's VOB files are duplicated (under different file names), increasing the total amount of data by approx. 2 GB
**it's in fact the 2.0 track encoded as 5.1, i.e. only the two front channels are used
***the English subtitles are a joke - most probably Google-translated from Chinese:

The waiting is finally over! Well, almost - the special "book" edition came out on November 2, the single-disc edition (identical with the 1st disc of the SE; cover on the right) a week later, but the Blu-ray has been postponed (again) until November 30. Now, was it worth the wait? To be frank, I don't think so. Firstly, I'm not convinced the PQ is the best we could possibly be getting, even though all the delays were supposedly caused by "image clean-up to deliver better quality on DVD & Blu-ray." Since Jakubisko Film = (presumably) Jakubisko himself was involved in the production, I won't dig into the cropping & different colour timing (as compared to the Romanian edition), but note e.g. the wrinkles, or rather the lack thereof, under Ferenc's eyes in the below 1080p blow-up of frame 18252 (normal: Bontonfilm / Jakubisko Film, mouse over: Pro Video - requires JavaScript). If they meant that kind of clean-up, then I'd prefer to have had it "dirty."

Another deficiency is the lack of English soundtrack. Given the fact that the star of the film, Anna Friel, is British, and the film was - for the purpose of international distribution - shot in English, I'd say it's a major disadvantage. RE the extras, this is being advertised as "one of the most feature-packed DVDs of a Czech film," but - again - I beg to differ. There are the two soundtrack CDs, yes, but the DVD extras are nothing to write home about. The Making of, that's good, the 7 minutes of deleted scenes, passable, the photogallery & trailers, OK, but the rest... The Profile is just clips from Jakubisko's films - in fact a rehash of what we've already seen on his older DVDs, e.g. here, the ad for the aforementioned older DVDs is downright pathetic, and the "Plaváček" Foundation featurette, well, that's nice, but not related to the film at all. I certainly expected more from "the most expensive Central European film ever made." (For an example of a really feature-packed DVD of a Czech film, look no further than here.)

(Oh, there's also the book(let):



Not many Czech DVDs come with a book... Or a music video - will forget my own head next! So I think I might have been a tad too harsh criticizing the extras... ;-))

(BTW, there's also a Russian edition (cover on the right), out for a couple of weeks already, but I won't be getting it - 4 DVDs + the eventual Blu-ray is overdoing it a bit already, or so I've been given to understand by my dear wife... (c:)

*with the same subtitle tracks as the main feature
**the lyrics in Old Church Slavonic are also available as an optional subtitle track

Again, compared to the Romanian DVD, the picture here is cropped, and the colours are different, but for all I know this is the director-approved edition = the reference. As expected of Blu-ray, the PQ is a leap over the DVDs, especially in terms of (the lack of) compression artefacts:

In the extras department, there's everything from the 1st disc of the SE + a bunch of Blu-ray exclusives, however, most of the latter are textual notes, and as such could have already been included on the DVD - it's not like they take Gigs of space...

Still, this is the version to own... at the moment! ;-)

Trailers for "Chaw" (1:55, in Korean) & "Incendiary" (1:32, in English) run before the menus appear, but it's possible to skip them using the RC.

I know I said I wouldn't be getting another version of Bathory, but 3 is a lucky number, 7 is a lucky number, so the average - 5 - must be even luckier, right? ;-) This version has been brought to my attention by a reader of my site, Todd, and I couldn't say No to $11.50 delivered (here), could I?

Anyway, I'm not going to go into detail here, since the choice is obvious - if you're able to follow spoken Czech, go for the Blu. Otherwise, the Thai edition is the easiest (and cheapest) to get.