After 11 damn years!
While people are all high and mighty on Hunger Games at the moment, Anchor Bay is gearing up their release of the seminal Japanese classic film that shares many of Hunger Game’s themes. Kinji Fukasaku’s greatest and final film Battle Royale, a movie hailed by many, including Quinton Tarantino as one of the best films ever made is finally arriving on DVD for the first time in America. It’s currently on a small theatrical tour here in the US, which I had the pleasure to catch while it played in LA two weeks ago. Anchor Bay has set a March release date (right around Hunger Games) for the DVD and have released this first trailer for it.
I like it. Then again, I’ve been gonzo over Battle Royale since it’s release in 2000. I was a mere sophomore in high school and this film blew my fragile little mind. Actually no, but it was the second in a trifeta of films to be released in a years time to really make me want to actively pursue film making (the first and third being The Matrix and Versus respectively) While Battle Royale has been available on DVD in many bootleg and import forms, it’ll be nice to finally own a DVD of it with all of the special features translated in some for to English so I can understand what the hell everyone is saying. My deluxe Korean box set is wonderful, but nothing besides the films are translated. This is a title to definitely double dip on.
