Be very careful with any French laserdiscs that say they are "VO" (original version), meaning that they have their original audio tracks. While this statement is true, the French have a very nasty habit of subtitling the entire film in French, while at the same time excluding any other subtitles that would have been in the picture area during foreign language sequences! A perfect example of this is "Dances With Wolves" (Danse avec les loups 610049). Yes, the English audio tracks have beautiful sound but the second the Indians start to speak it is immediately apparent that there are no English subtitles in the picture area at all, but below the picture area you receive only French subtitles throughout the entire film! And as anyone knows this film is full of Indian dialogue and if you don't speak French the subtitles will not help you much. To make matters worse, the French decided to put the subtitles in the black letterbox at the bottom....what this means is that the when you zoom in on the picture to fill your widescreen TV, even the French subs are no longer visible! But at the same time the other French only laserdisc of this title (620049) has the subtitles for the Indians in the picture area which does not affect the zooming of the image!

The same also holds true for the French DVD of "Dances with Wolves"....Yep, you get your choice of either English or French, to be sure. But you be better be a French speaker or native Indian speaker if you choose the English audio because you will not find a single English subtitle on the entire disc, and that goes for both the theatrical DVD and the director's cut of the DVD!

All French laserdiscs that are marked as "VO" will have the same treatment if there is any dialogue requiring the use of subtitles...beware!!!

French laserdiscs were created for the French market, you know that, right?

Yes, I am aware because I live in France. But the disc in question is supossed to be the original version (version originale) They issued the original version at the same time as the French version. They both have exactly the same covers with different numbers too. The only difference is the diagonal banner in the upper left hand corner telling which version it is. I just have never understood the logic on French laserdiscs and DVD's since I have lived here. The same does not occur in Germany. One has to be very careful here with that type of thing. Studio Canal is particularly notorious for their dvd releases of English titles. All of their discs allow you to select either English or French, which is what you would expect. However, unless you watch it on a computer you are forced to watch the English version with French subtitles running since they flag their discs with a set of commands that do not allow a standard player to disable them. If you choose the French soundtrack you can enable or disable the subs as if by magic! There are many upset people here because of that, including some French, and it has been going on for years even though people have complained bitterly that they are not being given the choice.

Laserdiscs have no choice on subtitles like DVDs. Subtitles are burned on the image, so you either have it or don't. You can't disable or change to different language. I am sure you know this much. In the country of France where the official language and majority language is French, it makes sense to have French subtitles or French dub. Some people prefer original language even though they don't speak English. There are many reasons, one is the lipsync is not possible on dubbed films. So English soundtrack with French subs take care of this.

DVD is a different animal. You can have multiple languages and subtitles. The reason studios such as Studiocanal have English option for menus, language and all is the same disc is repackaged and sold in the UK and US market. Studiocanal is represented by lionsgate in the US. Instead of creating multiple masters, they have one which would work in multiple countries.

I don't understand your logic here. You are saying France should have had laserdiscs with English soundtrack and no subtitles. If subtitles are needed for some Indian language, it should be in English. If they had this, they would maybe sell 5 copies in France.

No, what I'm saying is that when France issued this special original language laserdisc in English they should have had the decency to have also included English subtitles into the picture area. I am fine with them running the French subtitles in the letterbox area too like they did. But you can't zoom into the picture and also read the subtitles! They released this same disc at the same time in French but put the subtitles into the picture area where it should be on a film like this.

French DVD releases by Studio Canal may be the same ones used by other countries like the UK. The only problem with them is that they never include English subtitles when a foreigner speaks (much like Jabba in Star Wars that require it to be understood). Pathe is another studio who practices this and their dvd release of Dances with wolves is a prime example....no English subs period! I don't see the point in releasing a dvd like this when both languages are not served equally. Star Wars European dvd's are perfect....you get as many as three languages and whichever you choose the title crawls and Jabba subs will be in the language you select. In France Pathe and Studio Canal also forces the viewer to watch French subtitles when the English audio track is selected, with no option of turning them off...very inconvienient when we have English speaking guests. Again, no other country in Europe produces dvd's like this that I am aware of except for France. The whole point of DVD, in addition to better video quality, was to give viewers options that were not available when laserdisc was released, like switchable subtitles. Now I buy only UK or German titles on DVD to eliminate that unecessary French headache!

sorry to post here but you do know that a disc released in another country has priority of their language.
the Japanese releases of Star Wars have Japanese subtitles when the aliens are talking too, its not even in any human language.
its also the case for other Japanese LDs, they will have the subtitles in the black and when you zoom you are out of luck.

sorry that the VO original version is not what you thought it should be.

also to note: Japanese release of Dances with Wolves would be the same, VO Original version with no English Subtitles
When Indians are speaking, only Japanese Subtitles.

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the rein-o official signature:

Yeah, it seems pretty daft to complain that a movie released in France has been entirely translated to French. What else would they do? Made for the U.S., when I saw this thing in the theater in high school, I could, as a native speaker of English and nothing else, comprehend all the spoken and subtitled sections. It sounds like when they make the French LD they did the same thing but for French people. At least they didn't dub it! *

Similar, since widescreen TVs with zoom features were almost totally unknown when this movie was released (quite likely no PAL ones were made, but someone can maybe prove me wrong there) complaining about zoom hiding the subtitles is basically saying that the home video producers should have known that wide TVs would become the norm in the late 2000s but ALSO that even though DVDs and BRs of the move exist, some people will complain because they're still watching the LD.

You sure expect a lot from 20 year old home video versions of mediocre movies made for tertiary markets.

Btw, don't buy Japanese versions of Felini movies. You get no English or Italian subs, only Japanese...because it's a Japanese version, see.

* I'm sure there is a French dub, probably made for Canada. Barf.

Of course, I understand what you are all saying about foreign language releases being intended for the market they are released in. And the zoom thing is my own personal hangup. French is not a problem for me since I am fluent speaker of French, German and English. I am just ranting because I am so sick of the French treatment of foreign video here through the decades, when other countries here in the EU are quite respectful of that very thing. How many European countries do you know, besides France, that purposely program UOP flags into their DVD's that when the original language of a film is selected you are forced to watch French subtitles? And don't get me wrong, I am not talking about burned-in subtitles here either....these things are not burned in or you would see them when French is selected, which you don't. If you use a software player on a computer you can disable them, but not on any standard DVD player hooked up to your TV! I know of no other European country that does this to date! How would that go over in the United States do you think if DVD's were deliberately encoded to lock a subtitle into your picture when you selected the English version of a foreign film but were already fluent in the original language....not well, believe me and people would be up in arms over it!!! Now imagine that over half of the DVD's in France have these flags set on foreign DVD releases and I am sure you will see what I mean and how frustrating it is. Even the DVD's here do not always have accurate descriptions on the back as to what you are getting....that is the surprise you get at home when you insert the disc! I did not even mention that as recent as five or six years ago all foreign titles had their original openings removed and replaced by French ones....as if it had been almost a French release to begin with....now that is really going too far even by French standards. The internet (have to understand French) is full of people complaining about this fiasco here in France with video releases. I did notice that all the comments here were from people who all live in the US where this is never an issue (and many years ago, I too lived there). Here in France, English is a language that is studied for 7+ years by everyone....not an elective, but a requirement of everyone since the early 1950's. The French would have you believe that they do not speak English, but the fact is they do, and they do it quite well too or France would not hold the number one positition as the most visited spot on earth by tourists! But my point of all this is, is that if a video release can be screwed up, in France it will be screwed up and that is assured.

Anyway, this was just my opinion and a review that should have been taken for just that. It should not be a personal attack on me, which is what it has become. I have no desire to comment on this topic further....you either get it or you don't....and until you live here I doubt that will happen. That's my last word on the topic! Enjoy the review and take it for what it is worth.

I get the "complaint" though. Just as with "Dances with Wolves", the various "Star Wars" have all had english subtitles for the alien languages. In the VO versions of these films, the english subtitles are all removed and replaced with french subtitles. It's a target audience thing. For me, I'm a collector and have the VO versions only to complete a collection. If I want to watch "Dances with Wolves" (for example) in english, why would I put on the PAL French VO edition which is sped up 5%?

The Blu-ray release is excellent. The US release is the extended cut(234min) and the UK release is the theatrical cut(181min). I am not sure if you need the extended cut, I don't think the extended scenes added anything significant, just made the already long film longer:)

Below DVD release has some value to me. It was one of the first DTS encoded DVDs I bought in 1999. It is also one of the rare examples of bar none, cost no object, throw everything in DVD masters. It is one of the 30-35 ever full bitrate DTS releases with 1.5mbps allocated for the DTS soundtrack, later releases only had 750kbps. Instead of crippling video bitrates to fit a long movie onto 1 disc, this film is split into 2 discs, allowing average video bitrates above 7mbps (near DVD limit). I am sure the master is lifted from one of the LD releases but it is anamorphic enhanced for DVD. I like this release even better than the Terminator 2 Extreme and Ultimate Edition DVDs. The packaging is almost LD like except the size. I paid like $50 back in the day, it was an expensive DVD. I would rank it top 5 DVD ever released.
http://www.ebay.com/itm/Dances-with-Wol ... 567c028721

Japan got both!

4-disc set in DTS with both the theatrical and the extended cut on a limited set

http://page5.auctions.yahoo.co.jp/jp/auction/e164248543

It is still for high prices, even today.

Julien

I had this set. And I kept it until the Blu-ray came out. I think I only have 2 of the full bit-rate DTS titles left. At one point, I had the entire Universal catalog, but DVDs take up so much damn space. I really wish they would start packing them in mini LP jackets, like some of the Japanese CD reissues. LaserDisc takes up so much LESS space! (more depth, but less height and width).

Yes, I have it, too.- The Blu Ray release is absolutely fantastic and I only paid 5,99 $ on amazon.com ( US ) for it. That's the best value for money Blu Ray purchase in the entire world.
I have several full bitrate dts releases incl. the Japanese DVD of Sin City.

This is one of my very favourite movies. The Extended Cut however is way better than the Theatrical Version.

Oppo Blu-ray players have a useful feature to get around that problem with DVDs. It's called Subtitle Shift and you can use it to shift the 'forced' foreign subtitles off screen and out of view. Won't help with your LaserDiscs of course, and curiously enough it doesn't always work with Blu-rays either.