Zatoichi Not To Be

I came across a screener rip of Zatoichi: The Blind Swordsman the other day while Sven, Mike and I were discussing possible “guaranteed” choices for the next movie day. It was eventually decided to go with Dawn of the Dead (new Sarah Polley edition — yay!!) and Jesus Christ Vampire Hunter, since we could fit both of them into the available time. Also, we already have two other subtitled movies to show (including The Pornographers from my nominations).

So it’s Saturday, I have this freshly downloaded copy of Zatoichi and Mike has a new toy to play with: a DVD player with DivX support. Perfect! But alas, not so fast. My disk doesn’t work in the player; it doesn’t find anything. We test it out on Mike’s computer, and it can’t read any data. Something was definitely written, since it’s not recognized as a blank disk. Bummer. I can’t remember the last time I burnt a coaster with my burner! Mike starts downloading his own copy while we find something else to watch.

We decide on The Station Agent, a great little movie about unlikely friendships. I’d heard many good things about this movie, but catching it at the Princess never seemed to work out. I was impressed by how well the characters came across, and although not a whole lot happens in the movie, it’s really about these people and their day-to-day lives. I thought Peter Dinklage was very good, but in particular Patricia Clarkson’s performance stood out. I seem to remember reading that she was great in Pieces of April, so I’ll have to see if I can download that as well.

By the time we were done watching The Station Agent, Zatoichi had finished downloading. Mike burned a copy of that, and while his player recognized the files, it still wouldn’t play! Very strange. Obviously, The Station Agent worked fine, and he had tested out Good Bye, Lenin! earlier. All had the same encoding, and Lenin also involved a subtitle file on the disk. Zatoichi works fine when played on either of our computers. Very strange, indeed.

Perhaps his new player is picky. But from reviews he’s encountered, very little problems have been reported. It’s a pretty impressive machine, and it’s a sub-$100! My next player will have to have DivX (or whatever the codec-du-jour happens to be) support.