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Double-dipping, the DVD release practice we all love to hate: just when you finally bought the disc of a movie you love, a better version gets released. It has all existing cuts of the movie, it features a commentary with the director and the actor who got fired, and they fixed that annoying orange tint which plagued the version you just bought.
The term is used to describe the releasing of several versions, unannounced beforehand, with only a few months in between. As in: the company knew a better version was around the corner, but deliberately chose NOT to tell you.
Strangely enough, buying a better version of a movie you already own is ALSO called double-dipping, even though "upgrading" would probably be a better word.
If your DVD collection has a couple of hundreds of titles in it, there are probably a few you have bought twice. Or three times. Or...
Now I hardly ever double-dip. Or at least I tell myself I haven't made it a habit. Yet not only do I own several films twice, there is one I actually own 5 times, and I'm looking at a current sixth version as if it's inevitable that it'll be mine one day...
That movie is called "Ghost in the Shell" by Mamoru Oshii. And I only mean the first film. Not "Innocence" nor the "Stand Alone Complex" series, I really mean just the first film.
And funnily enough when I planned writing this article weeks ago I had no clue about the upcoming "version 2.0" that will be released later this year. When I heard about that I really thought someone was doing this to spite me or something...
Anyway, my list this month: the 5 versions of "Ghost in the Shell" I own. Check if yours is amongst them after the break...
I didn't even see "Ghost in the Shell" until it was shown at a Mamoru Oshii retrospective at the 2000 International Film Festival Rotterdam. It was on my list of films-to-rent from my local videostore, knowing it was one of the movies which had influenced "TheMatrix", but hadn't gotten round to it yet. Suddenly I got the chance to see it on the big screen so I went. And damn, the movie got to me in a big way, not the least because of Kenji Kawai's powerfully haunting score. It bugged me for days afterwards but couldn't find the soundtrack in stores anywhere (I wasn't too internet-savvy in those days...).
But at a videogame-store that actually sold anime as well, suddenly I found:
Number 5: the Manga UK VHS Double Pack.
For starters it had the original Japanese soundtrack instead of the English dub I had seen in the cinema. The Japanese track contained lots more information, so much in fact that the English subs had to run in three rows instead of the more usual two! Sound and video quality was quite high, in fact a friendly DJ recorded the soundtrack for me from this VHS-tape, ran some noise-removal filters and burned it on CD. I still have that thing and the quality is surprisingly decent...
Also it had something special: extras! Unheard of on VHS, this release actually had a separate second tape with a documentary on it.
But in 2002 I finally had me a desktop with a DVD-player in it and the leap in image quality astounded me. So one of the first disks I bought was:
Number 4: The first Manga UK DVD.
But for the wrong reasons.
Crisp visuals, brilliant clear Dolby 2.0 sound in Japanese and even Dolby 5.1 in English... What a shame both didn't line up. That's right, this disc allows you a choice between the English and the Japanese dub, but both are a full third of a second off sync with the visuals. An astounding blunder for what should have been one of Manga UK's flagship titles...
It didn't even stop there: the disc also featured the documentary of the VHS double pack, but in Japanese without subtitles. So if you don't speak Japanese, well... shame. Unbelievable.
Manga had the guts to re-release this with a fixed soundtrack and subs on the documentary, and call it a "Special Edition". Well, fixed... it was in sync with the visuals but the subwoofer-track had accidentally been dropped, making this a Dolby 5.0 instead of a 5.1...
Needless to say, I didn't upgrade just yet.
When I started to import stuff, it hit me that the Japanese would probably have a darn better DVD of "Ghost in the Shell" than the placebo I owned, and seconds later I found it on YesAsia. I had my fingers crossed it would feature English subs, and indeed it did!
But before I could order it my eye was drawn towards the alternatives YesAsia mentioned, one of which was something called:
Number 3: The Japanese Limited Collector's Edition.
For one thing the packaging: a tough cardboard slipcover which contained a hardcover book, with the DVD being part of the cover! And that book contained the full storyboards, so with my knowledge of the film I was able to ferret out some deleted scenes. Another booklet showed very intricate technical drawings of the designs and surroundings used in the film.
Visually, this was the best disc yet. But audiowise, astonishingly this only featured the English and Japanese Dolby 2.0 stereo tracks!
Huh? Digitally remastered, but they don' t include the DTS track for the first anime that actually had one in cinemas? Damn, even a decent Dolby 5.1 would have been nice. At least the 2.0 mix was a good one (and in sync for a change...).
Mind you, I knew Manga US had actually released a special edition with a DTS-ES 6.1 track (along with regular DTS 5.1 and Dolby 5.1) and I was eying it with great interest. But it was quite expensive and the visual quality was allegedly on the low side when compared to its Japanese big brother. So I kept with the Japanese, until...
... until I discovered Madman, Australia's main anime distributor.
Number 4: The Australian Special Edition.
Speaking of which, if there is one thing which I find jarring in this edition it's that it fails to include the original end credits, which were underscored by Kawai's third and most extensive rendition of the "Ghost City" theme called "Reincarnation". Instead, it features the 2000 re-release credits with the single "One Minute Warning" by Brian Eno and U2 (billed under the group name "Passengers").
Ah well, minor niggle...
Last but not best: I always want friends to borrow my DVDs so we can discuss the films afterwards, or just to help them discover something which I really liked. Obviously Ghost in the Shell sits high in that list.
But I noticed a strong reluctance in me to part even temporarily with my Madman edition, while I sure as hell won't let anyone touch my out-of-print Japanese edition, and I wouldn't force the UK edition I own upon my worst enemy.
And who has a working VHS these days?
So I clearly needed another edition. Luckily, Manga UK had a cheap double set which featured both "Ghost in the Shell" and its sequel-of-sorts "Innocence". My "Innocence" copy was the original Dreamworks one with the messed-up subtitles (these films REALLY don't get a break, do they?), so I liked the idea of owning a proper release of it, and get yet another copy of "Ghost in the Shell" which I could use to lend out to people.
Number 5: the new Manga UK one, part of a double-bill with Innocence.
The visuals are an NTSC-PAL conversion and have slight ghosting (haha...) and combing problems. It has an English Dolby 5.1 and a Japanese Dolby stereo track, and it has the "Passengers" end-track instead of the Kenji Kawai one.
But the soundtracks are in sync and this specific release is dirt-cheap. So for buddies, colleagues and neighbors this is the ideal version to lend out!
And this concludes my current line-up.
Guess what one of my first titles will be when I convert to BluRay? But before I'd buy a Blu "Ghost in the Shell" I'll look around for that one elusive edition which has it all... promise!