Today was my last day of work at the library until September! Now I am free! W00t!

Source: Dark Discussion

Arrow's R2 UK release of Dario Argento's The Card Player (Il Cartaio) has apprently been held back until October. It sounds like the Italian release, due out on August 25th, will be the first of the major releases to hit the streets. (There are some other releases due out slightly earlier, including Czech and Japanese versions, but I can't vouch for their quality, uncut status or inclusion of both English and Italian audio.)

eXistenZ (R1 Canada) arrived this morning: another birthday present.

We're half-way through the year now (or we will be on July 1st), and I've already received 55 DVDs this year (!!!), so I've split the DVD Collection page for 2004 into two sections: First Half and Second Half. I did this last year for 2003's DVDs as well, and it worked quite well. It helps keep the size and therefore load time of each page down.

I've ordered a couple of Japanese DVD releases.

From CD Japan, I've ordered the upcoming 4-disc Dario Argento box set I told you about earlier this month, due for release on July 23rd. It contains The Bird with the Crystal Plumage, The Cat O'Nine Tails, Tenebre and Phenomena, all with brand new anamorphic remastered transfers, something that all four films desperately need to some extent. At 15200¥ (£78), it's incredibly expensive, but the packaging looks superb and I desperately want decent transfers of these films, which it sounds like this release will deliver. In any event, if it disappoints, I'm sure this will fetch a tidy sum on eBay.

I also ordered the Japanese release of What Have You Done to Solange? from Amazon.co.jp. It has a really neat-looking cover and, more importantly, is said to have a superior transfer to the rather grotty, interlaced affair Media Blasters released in the US. Again, this is something of a gamble, but I'm a bit silly with money, it's my birthday soon, and I really like this film and want to get the best version possible.

Last week, I ordered my new video card, ASUS's Radeon X800 Pro, from SPD, with the expectation that it would arrive in time for my birthday so I could use it in conjunction with my new monitor. (As you may remember, the DVI output on my current video card is borked.) Well, today I learned that there had been yet another delay in the delivery of the cards, which will not now show up until July 6th (yeah, right, I'll believe that date when I actually see the card). There seem to be a lot of supply issues with these cards right now, but I really thought I was going to get it in time for my birthday.

Oh well, it's not the end of the world. I got my TFT out this evening to test it through the VGA output on my video card, and while it doesn't look perfect, it looks a lot better than it did on the crappyvision Iiyama TFT I had until last week. This'll certainly tide me over until my video card finally shows up.

I've done an in-depth comparison of Underworld (R1 USA special edition vs. R1 USA unrated extended cut).

Source: Melon Farmers

Michael Moore's controversial attack on George W. Bush, Fahrenheit 9/11, opened in the US recently, and looks set to achieve a new record in box office figures for documentary films. No doubt fuelled by Disney's refusal to distribute the finished product, Moore is hopefully getting his message across to a few more Americans in time for this year's elections. Although Moore has a habit of twisting what people say and exaggerating to the point of ridiculousness, anything that speaks out against the Bush administration is good as far as I'm concerned. I really look forward to seeing this film, which opens over here on July 9th.

Throw Bush out, throw Bush out, an audience in California's Orange County, a conservative stronghold, chanted as the lights went up after one showing.

Based on their recommendations in reviews at 10,000 Bullets, I've ordered two gialli on DVD: Umberto Lenzi's Seven Blood Stained Orchids from the US and Sergio Martino's Case of the Scorpion's Tail [Der Schwanz des Skorpions] from Germany.

I've written an introduction to the films of Dario Argento at DVD Times, including a brief bio, an explanation of his styles and short plot synopses and reviews for each of his 16 (so far) films. You can view it here.

After being down for slightly under a day, The DVD Forums are back with new board software and a disturbing new look that I'm still trying to get used to.

Source: Ultimate Disney

Specs for the Italian release of the Lilo & Stitch 2-disc edition, scheduled for later this year. This DVD has been held back till 2005 in the US, where it will appear as a Masterpiece Edition (similar to Alice in Wonderland). The bonus materials are listed as:

- Audio commentary
- Full-length documentary, "The Making of Lilo & Stitch" with scene selections and notes
- 2 Animator Conversations: "Andreas Deja discusses Lilo" and "Alex Kupershmidt discusses Stitch"
- Deleted scenes & Early Concepts
- Chris Sanders' Photo gallery
- 2 new music videos: "Your Ohana", "Suspicious Minds" by Gareth Gates
- The Style Book of Chris Sanders
- The Story of Stitch
- A Conversation with Joe Grant and Dean DeBlois
- Ric Sluiter Interviews Maurice Noble
- Dean DeBlois pitches a New Sequence
- Mulan: "Mulan's Decision"
- Dumbo: "The Train Arrives"

Also included are most of the extras from the previous crappyvision release. I've no idea what the Mulan and Dumbo extras are, but everything else is pretty clearly labeled and sounds great... apart from the G-g-g-gareth G-g-g-gates music video, that is.

I've reviewed The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King (R1 USA) at DVD Times.

Mario Bava's Blood and Black Lace arrived this morning.

The Hills Have Eyes and Naked Lunch also arrived yesterday, but I'm saving them for my birthday.

The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King (R1 USA) finally arrived today. This is the second copy I ordered -- still no sign of the first one, along with Walt Disney on the Front Lines.

Overall I still think this is the worst of the three films by far. Structurally it feels really weak, and the ending is a never-ending series of vignettes, each more drawn-out and anti-climactic than the previous one. Peter Jackson also has no idea how to do battle scenes. Every one follows the structure of: (1) troops charge at each other, yelling, as much blares; (2) troops collide; (3) music stops as we get hundreds of brief shaky-cam shots of people killing each other, with very few shots lasting more than a second; (4) eventually, we go into slow-motion, and a female solo voice starts singing a mournful, wordless tune; (5) cut to the next scene.

In terms of image quality, this DVD is slightly better than the previous two. It's still filtered to fuck, but at least now there is some fine detail, even if it's not much. I'm pretty impressed by the encoding. They managed to cram 3 hours and 20 minutes of material on to a single disc, with no obvious compression problems.

The epic saga of Overclockers and the Shitty Monitor finally draws to a close today. To cut a long story short, I am getting my money back minus a 15% restocking fee.

Now here's the longer version.

This afternoon, as I was preparing to leave to get the bus to university so I could hand in my dissertation, the phone rang. It turned out that it was Overclockers.co.uk, so I put my brother on the line, since he is an expert at dealing with shitheads. And what a shithead the man on the phone was! Rather than actually listen to what we had to say, he blabbered on, reading from a pre-written script, telling us about how there was no problem with the monitor, and that the monitor could not be resold because it had been opened. Well, no shit! Of course it was opened! I had to open it so I good use it! I didn't buy the thing so I could send it back! And I would hope they weren't going to resell it, as reselling faulty goods is a strict no-no.

Anyway, at the end of the day, I'm getting my money back minus 15%. That's really as good as I could have hoped for given the circumstances. The situation certainly wasn't helped by the fact that the monitor sat around for several days before finally being sent off, meaning that we were beyond the 7-day returns window Trading Standards allow. As such, I guess I'm lucky to be getting the money back at all.

I guess it's all going to work out in the end, more or less. My new monitor, the Sony SDM-X73B, arrived yesterday, and it's absolutely fine. Ghosting is minimal, I spotted no dead pixels, and is doesn't buzz like a horny bumble-bee.

The moral of the story is don't buy from Overclockers UK. They are a bunch of assholes who will screw you if anything goes wrong. Their practice is an incredibly dubious one, and as such, they have lost me as a customer. Good-day to you, sirs. They have now been removed from my Links page.

As of this afternoon I am officially finished with my dissertation. It's in the can, all 13,500 words of it (including appendices), and has been handed into the departmental office. Right now I don't ever want to see a news broadcast again, let alone one from the BBC or ITV. This has been so much more work and has taken much longer than I ever anticipated. I just wish I'd chosen a topic that was of more personal interest to me, and indeed one that had had more previous research by other people. As it was, I was essentially working blind, since I had very little prior material to build on.

(If anyone wants to read my dissertation, feel free to email me.)

It's unlikely that there will be any further updates until Wednesday. I eventually got my dissertation draft back from my supervisor and I have A LOT of changes to make. I'm currently working full-tilt to get half of the thing rewritten in time for my Wednesday 12pm deadline.

Peace out.

Last night I ordered my new TFT: the Sony SDM-X73B. It was the last one Dabs had in stock. A few days ago I went to PC World where they had this model running on a demo rig, and I got to play around with it, test a DVD on it, etc., so I know what I'm getting this time. Most importantly, it has a 16 ms reponse time, meaning that there will be much fewer trails they were on the Iiyama crappybox I got.

The reason I'm ordering now is that I didn't want to get into a situation where my birthday arrived and I had no present. I still don't know what's happening with the one that got sent back. I think the best case scenario is that they take it back and charge me the 15% restocking fee. Worst case scenario, they'll refuse to refund me and either send it back to me or rend a replacement. In that case, I'll have no choice but to try to flog it on eBay. Words cannot express how pissed off I am about this matter.

I still need to get a new video card, but there seems to be a short supply of the new Radeon X800 Pro cards right now. Hopefully I'll be able to get my hands on one soon, as a TFT without DVI-out is like Hugh Hefner without a penis.

I finally finished watching Angel Season 4 last night, after having left the final few episodes lying on the shelf for a couple of months, since I simply hadn't had much time to actually sit down and watch it.

Overall, there are a number of problems with this season. It gets off to a rocky start, since at the beginning of Season 4 the show lost both co-creator/showrunner David Greenwalt, and Tim Minear, the executive producer and in my opinion the best Buffyverse writer bar none. Greenwalt quitr over an argument with Fox and Minear went off to work on Joss Whedon's short-lived pet project Firefly (he returned later when Firefly was cancelled to write and direct the season finale). As a result, the running of the show was put into the hands of Jeffrey Bell, a rookie who had only joined the Angel staff the previous season. I suspect that many of this season's problems are due to inexperience.

Unfortunately, this season goes the way of the final two Buffy seasons. In other words, everything gets dark and no-one is happy. This isn't good darkness like Wesley's growing isolation in Season 3: it's "you don't love me any more" and "you're not my father" soap opera angst. Connor, Angel's son, proves to be a bad addition to the show. He's infuriating, and the actor, Vincent Kartheiser, is bad. And while the likes of Wesley and Fred are still fun to watch, they mess up Cordelia's character somewhere rotten and don't give her any closure (she went into a coma and disappeared from the show at the end of the season, getting only one episode in Season 5 to round her off).

There are some nice spots, however. The character of Gwen (Alexa Davalos) is neat, although she just shows up a handful of times when she's needed and disappears when she's not. It's also great to see Faith (Eliza Dushku), even if it's only for a handful of episodes. The Angel writers certainly manage to handle her character a lot better than the writers on Buffy Season 7 did when she crossed over there after her Angel stint this season. And like I said before, the characters of Wesley and Fred are great, as always.

Overall, though, I think this is the weakest season (bearing in mind that I haven't seen more than a couple of episodes of Season 5 yet). 6/10.

Witchcraft, politics, S&M... kinkyness and confusion reign supreme! I've reviewed Baba Yaga (R0 USA) at DVD Times.

Normally, I see an average of 10 hits to my site per day. Today, however, thanks to my Big Brother screencaps and posting about this at the DVD Forums, I have so far had 111 hits!

Your kind Uncle Whiggles had the DVD recorder at the ready and has snapped pictures of the action ensuing!

Above: Kick-off time.

Above: Marco and his posse beat a hasty retreat, dragging Emma with them, filled with glee about the mess they have made.

Official: this year's season of Big Brother is the best yet. Last night there was the most amazing argument, followed by a fight with a number of people needing restrained, possible racial slurs, security stepping into the house and one housemate having a panic attack.

Basically, last Friday, there was a fake eviction, in which two contestants, the infuriatingly possessive Michelle and the charmingly stupid Emma, were removed from the house and, without the other contestants' knowledge, placed in a secret room with a plasma screen, where they could watch and hear everyone else in the house. During their stay in the secret room, they were privy to a number of derogatory comments made about them by the other housemates, including a claim by Victor, the big wannabe gangsta, that Emma was a racist and had called him a "nigger" to his face. Emma hotly disputed this, and got so angry that she would probably have gone and strangled him if she hadn't been restrained by Michelle. As the days passed, they heard yet more insulting comments about them and began to hatch a plan of revenge.

Last night they were placed back in the house, to the shock of all on sundry. The two scheming witches soon began stirring up trouble by telling a small number of housemates, including camper than camp Marco and former male Nadia, what had been said by Victor and his partner in crime, Scottish muscle-man and former bin-man Jason. Things became quite heated as Marco decided to goad Jason, who threatened to punch Marco. Far from backing down, Marco went into a corner to snigger as Victor stepped in to restrain Jason and was immediately attacked by Emma, who allegedly told him to "stop acting like a black man". (I didn't hear this particular line, but others are adamant that they did.)

While Emma and Victor were being restrained from tearing each others' eyeballs out (both threatening death on each other), Glasgow University art student Shell had a panic attack in the bedroom. At this point, the live feed went dead and viewers were treated to extended shots of the Big Brother garden. Shell, meanwhile was, it seems, rushed to hospital, security stepped into the house and Victor was hauled into the diary room for a good talking to. Emma was removed from the house and locked in the secret room to calm down.

Right now, the live feed has returned and the house has returned to some form of normality, but it's pretty clear that things will never be the same. The house is very much split into two camps now, and it looks as if the camp consisting of Jason and Victor is very much going to take the fall for something that was largely instigated by the infuriating Marco and his posse of girlfriends.

Heads will roll at Channel 4/Endemol for this, I guarantee it. They engineered it by creating the bedsit, returning the two girls and plying everyone with alcohol. It was only a matter of time before this kind of thing kicked off, given the number of volatile personalities there are in this house this year. It made for superb viewing, but it would surprise me if Ofcom step in over this and shut the show down. I seriously hope not.

So how do the various housemates emerge from this mess?

Ahmed - Performed some sort of miracle by managing to sleep through most of it, waking up, stepping over the vomiting Shell on his way to the toilet, then returning to bed.

Dan - The schmoozer drifted between both sides of the fence, trying to calm things down and actually coming out of this quite well.

Emma - Incredibly stupid, volatile and potentially racist. It's probably best if she is thrown out of the house for the safety of both herself and others.

Jason - Creep, although admittedly provoked. He went for Marco and then pretended it was all nothing to do with him.

Marco - Evil little bitch. The sight of him winding people up, sitting back and grinning as the shit hit the fan, and then claiming complete innocence, was stomach-churning indeed.

Michelle - Actually came out of this looking better than I was expecting her to. Although she definitely deserves some of the blame for winding people up, once things heated up she pretty quickly backed down and did her best to restrain the retarded Emma.

Nadia - Not particularly guilty, although she spent a good deal of the fight laughing.

Shell - Oh dear, it really got to her. I thought at first that she was a bit of a drama queen but it's pretty clear she wasn't faking that panic attack. If her best buddy Vanessa leaves on Friday (see below), she's going to crack.

Stuart - Like Dan, he acted as peacemaker and jumped the fence several times. Of all the contestants, he probably comes out of this the best.

Vanessa - What a bitch, but then we knew that already. Everything is "me, me, me". "I can't degrade myself by living with these animals!" Don't let the door hit you in the ass, you self-obsessed sissy-girl. She's up for eviction on Friday, along with Dan, and there's no way he'll be the one who gets the boot.

Victor - Hard man likes to act tough, but I think he's going to take a lot of flak he doesn't deserve for this. He seems to have been scapegoated for the whole affair, but from what I can see he didn't really start it. He only got mad when Emma supposedly told him to "stop acting like a black man" (which I didn't hear) and then told him her family would kill him (which I definitely did hear). He's all talk and no action. I think he should be placed on a final warning but definitely not evicted.

EDIT: It sounds as if, while the live feed was cut, Vanessa got into a fight with first Nadia and then Michelle. She's now claiming to have been attacked.

The news right now is full of football hooligans who have traipsed over the sea from England to Portugal in order to support their favourite team. Supporting them seems to consist of smashing glass, screaming racist slurs, attacking police officers and destroying the locals' establishments. This is absolutely nothing new, and although I realize that the troublemakers are a minority, I can't help wondering if there is some genetic deficiency in English football supporters that causes this to happen. Football fans from the rest of the world generally manage to be relatively civilized when they go to another country to watch their heroes kick a ball around a muddy field, but a special group of English fans seems to have an uncontrollable desire to wreck others' livelihoods and insult the people who live in the country that has shown them so much hospitality. I'm normally against capital punishment but some of these hooligans need a good kicking. Or perhaps castration.

Guess what? I find out today that my monitor hasn't actually been sent back to Overclockers. It's still sitting at Glasgow University where the mailman was supposed to send it off to Parcel Force... only he forgot. I have no idea what happens now. I'm certainly well outside the 7 working day return deadline, so it's no use me quoting trading standards to them now, as "I" haven't even adhered to them. Right now I can only hope that Overclockers will take it back, charge me the 15% restocking fee and be done with it, because it looks like that will be the best I can hope to get out of this affair. There's nothing quite like everything fucking up at once, is there? Monitor buzzes and leaves trails. DVI-out on my video card breaks. Overclockers turn out to be assholes. Monitor doesn't get sent off. Fucking great.

Source: Digital Spy (thanks to Marc for the link)

You may remember my little news post a while back about Fox News' outlandish report on the BBC getting their knuckles rapped for their involvement in the David Kelly affair. Well, after receiving 24 complaints about the comments made by Fox News presenter John Gibson, Ofcom has looked into it and made a few statements about the affair.

Most amusing is the fact that Fox News seemed to think that typing the phrase "BBC anti-American" into Google and getting 47,200 hits was proof that the BBC was anti-American. Don't get me wrong, I have no love for the BBC, but even they do not deserve to be lied about in such a way.

Barbet Schroeder's Single White Female was on Channel 5 tonight. Despite the 4x3 transfer (either cropped or, I suspect, open-matted from 1.85:1), I found the film quite intriguing and very enjoyable. Bridget Fonda plays Allison, a woman who discovers that her fiancé is cheating on her. She throws him out and advertizes for a flatmate, who soon arrives in the shape of Jennifer Jason Leigh (who also starred in The Hitcher). Her new flatmate, Hedra ("Heddie"), is a strange individual: extremely clingy and possessive, and desperate to imitate Allison in every way, even going a far as to have her hair cut and dress exactly like her. Things become a lot more disturbing when Heddie reveals her murderous tendencies, and the whole thing turns into a veritable bloodbath.

I really enjoyed the film. It takes a while to get going, but once the fun starts it becomes consistently engaging. The performances by the leads are excellent, especially Jennifer Jason Leigh, who does a superb job of playing a woman with a mental disorder. The photography, by Suspiria veteran Luciano Tovoli, is also very moody, with great lighting. So, great film, definitely worth seeing.

Baba Yaga (R0 USA) arrived this morning.

I've reviewed Dellamorte Dellamore (R2 Italy) at DVD Times.

DVD Soon is back now. They've changed their IP address from 64.254.228.226 to 64.254.228.116, and until people's ISPs update their lists the http://www.dvdsoon.com URL won't work.

Anyhoo, I ordered the R1 Canadian DVD of David Cronenberg's eXistenZ, and it was so cheap that I also ordered Doggy Poo, and Korean stop-motion animated film about a little turd who ponders the meaning of life.

The Girl Who Knew Too Much (R0 USA) arrived this morning. Widely regarded to be the first filmed giallo, it isn't perfect, but it's definitely very good. It has a great deal in common with Hitchcock's earlier work, especially The 39 Steps, the look and feel of which I was constantly reminded. I love the look of black and white films -- the use of light and shadow, the otherworldliness, etc. -- I really have to get more. It's hard to believe that this and Ed Wood are actually the only black and white DVDs I own. I think it's a shame the advent of colour more or less put and end to it, as I see no reason why the two formats could not have existed side by side.

My birthday is in less than a month's time, so I ordered a couple of DVDs: the R1 2-disc set of Wes Craven's The Hills Have Eyes, and the 2-disc Criterion of David Cronenberg's Naked Lunch. I'll probably also order Existenz, another Cronenberg film, fairly soon, but unfortunately DVD Soon, the cheapest place to obtain the extras-laden Canadian version (as opposed to the barebones US disc), is down right now.

Oh yeah, and I got the result of my Phonetics oral/dictation through the post this morning: A1. This is the first A, let alone a top-band A, I've ever had at university.

Take the quiz and find out which serial killer you are most like.

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Wow. Weird film. Weird and intriguing in an odd way. It definitely wasn't what I was expecting, and I'm still trying to make sense of the events in it -- if indeed they're even supposed to make sense. I definitely enjoyed it, though. I thought it was nicely shot and paced, featured good performances and had some very entertaining dialogue. I also approved of the way the fact that Donnie's sister was gay was just mentioned briefly a couple of times as an aside, rather than making it a big deal. Too often in films, when minority characters are portrayed, they are only in the film because they are a member of a minority group, or because the story specifically calls for it.

I think that Michele Soavi's Dellamorte Dellamore, an earlier film that has a similar mood and style, did a better job of it, but that doesn't mean I don't like Donnie Darko. On the contrary, I thoroughly enjoyed it.

8/10

Kennedy looks to three party politics
Lib Dems hail three-party contest
Blair losing voters' trust

First, the good news. Of the three main political parties, Labour has now fallen into third place. Now the bad news: that means that Vampire Howard and his vile Conservative party are now in first place. However, this does mean that the Liberal Democrats now have a lead over Labour, and I would like to think that they have some chance of making it into first place at the government elections next year. We can only hope, I guess. (Much as I dislike New Labour and Tony Blair, the thought of having Vampire Howard in charge fills me with dread.)

And now, I must hang my head in shame. I didn't vote yesterday. I completely forgot all about it. Still, the government elections next year are what really count, and I'll make a point of voting when it comes to them. For America, however, the race is on to Kick Bush Out this year, so let's all cross our fingers for that one too.

I've finally finished the first draft of my dissertation and will be handing it in to my supervisor for her comments tomorrow. This is a huge weight off my shoulders, and although I probably still have some changes to make, I feel like I've passed a major milestone.

So here are all the updates I haven't had a chance to post:

- Big Brother 5 - Topless female mud-wrestling! Right up my street! And Ahmed losing it and smashing plates! Looks like this season is actually going to be exciting after all.

- My monitor has been sent back to Overclockers UK and I am waiting to hear from them about my refund. Once that's through I'll go ahead and order my Radeon X800 Pro and Philips 170B4BS TFT from Dabs Direct.

- I've now lost more or less all hope of ever seeing my DVD Pacific package containing The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King and Walt Disney on the Front Lines. Royal Mail have probably lost it. I've ordered another copy of ROTK, and if both turn up, I can eBay one sealed. This is, I think, the first time a [package I've ordered has gone missing, and it probably won't be the last, but thankfully such occurences seem to be rare.

Severe apologies for the lack of updates recently. I'm currently slogging towards the end of the first draft of my dissertation and should hopefully have more time to post news, review DVDs, etc. once that's out the way.

This morning, my TFT went back to Overclockers via recorded delivery with a stiff letter warning them that they are required to conform to Trading Standards' guidelines for mail-order purchases, stating that, if an unsatisfactory item is returned within seven working days of receipt, it must be accepted and the cost refunded.

I now know what I am going to do regarding the monitor situation. Once the money is returned, I will be buying the same monitor that Lyris has: a Philips 170B4BS. I have seen this monitor in operation so I know what I am getting this time round. Also, because my video card's DVI-out is bum-jiggered, because I want a faster card and because the Philips monitor costs less than half of what I paid for the Iiyama, I will also be ordering ATI's brand spanking new Radeon X800 Pro, the amazing results of which have been demonstrated admirably on this thread at Guru3D.com.

Sorry if this felt like it was written in the style of an essay. I've been beavering away at my dissertation all day, and am more or less unable to see straight. At least the end is in sight.

It's good to be back. I'm sorry, but it is. I used that TFT for a little under a week, and now that my CRT is back up and running and I've got used to the different "feel", I'm scratching my head as to why I ever went for a TFT in the first place. They take up less space, yes, but the look of the CRT is much better in my opinion. It feels "solid", whereas the TFT feels artificial and weak. The contrast and colours are much richer on my CRT, and I don't get any of the horrible trailing or buzzing. I'm sure there are good TFTs out there, but my experience has not been a positive one, and it's seriously put me off buying one in the future. If TFTs are the way of the future, the manufacturers had better get themselves sorted out pretty quickly, because I don't think it's acceptable to buy a screen and get the experience I've had with mine.

Ugh. I've gone back to my CRT and will be attempting to return the TFT to the supplier. I'm sorry, but it's just not usable to me. It has two main problems:

(1) There is a buzzing sound coming from it that's doing my head in. It gets worst when there is a lot of text on screen. The bigger the text, the louder the buzz. And if this thread is anything to go by, this buzzing appears to be quite common on Iiyama TFTs.

(2) Unacceptable ghosting. I tried playing the UT2004 demo and the whole screen was a mess of trails and artefacts. Also, for DVDs, live action movies play okay, but animated movies, of which I own quite a lot, are reduced to a jittery, artefect-ridden nightmare, with the black outlines of the animation pulsing around and leaving loads of trails.

Which is a shame, since other than that it is a really nice monitor. I'm really disappointed with this purchase. I'm still not sure whether I'll get a different TFT or just get my money back.

Have fun with the amazing Star Estimator! Simply enter a photo of yourself, click the appropriate buttons, and it will tell you which three celebrities you most look like. Apparently, I'm a cross between Erik Palladino, Freddie Mercury and Tim Robbins. Gee, it's, like, an honour, y'know.

This time last week, I made a news post extolling the virtues of Channel 4 and their reality TV money-maker Big Brother. I pointed to the completely ridiculous and exaggerated personalities of the contestants as proof that this year's show would actually be worth watching.

How wrong I was. So-called anti-gay asylum-seeker Ahmed is hugging ultra-camp homosexual mincer Marco, self-professed genius Stuart is proving himself to be as big an idiot as anyone else, and yesterday, Big Brother production company Endemol scuppered their own ship by removing the most interesting person in the house: socialist anarchist activist lesbian "Kitten". The reason? Breaking three rules. These "rules" include writing on a mirror (after being told housemates could decorate the house however they wanted), not going to the Diary Room when told to, and attempting to carry the portable fridge into the bedroom. What a rebel!

I suspect that Big Brother has lost me as a viewer. While footage of Kitten refusing to leave the house, only to concede defeat when the remaining contestants were told that they would lose £10,000 of the £100,000 prize for every minute she remained, followed by her "This is for the queen!" double-fingered salute on exiting the building, made for remarkably entertaining TV, the show has quite clearly shot its load within the first of its ten week running time. With the nutty but extremely entertaining Kitten gone, I see no reason to tune into the show any more. It looks like all we're going to get from now on are silly word-games, sunbathing and banal "tasks" like "play pass the parcel".

Fight the power!

Source: Euro Horror DVDs

Euro Horror DVDs reports that the film Death Laid An Egg is no longer part of the line-up for Blue Underground's The Giallo Collection Vol. 2. Whether this means that it will be replaced by another title or the collection will only include five films instead of six is unclear.

Today I met up with a bunch of friends from university to revise for our oral phonetics exam (which takes place next Monday). In between discovering that I have a lot of work ahead of me if I have any hope of being able to get through the exam, I perused Woolworths -- a store that sells CDs, DVDs, confectionary and baby toys and is usually inhabited by large old ladies -- and discovered that they were having a "2 for £10" sale on select DVDs. I have trouble passing up bargains, especially if they involve DVDs, but the only two titles that piqued my curiosity were The Blair Witch Project and Book of Shadows: Blair Witch 2. I've seen them before and thought that both were relatively good films, although each in a different way, so I decided to buy them.

Last week I successfully won an auction for the out of print R1 DVD of Disney's Lady and the Tramp. Imagine my fury when it arrived yesterday and turned out to be a bootleg! It's a perfectly working bootleg -- a direct copy of a single layer DVD, so no recompression or other funnies -- but a bootleg nonetheless. As such, I feel incredibly angry about paying close to £10 for it, but on the other hand I don't want to give up the DVD. I'm hoping some agreement can be reached regarding this.

A pic of my monitor in all its working glory:

I've rooted out the sourced of my problems for my TFT. It turns out that the DVI output on my video card suddenly and inexplicably died. I am still able to connect via analogue, and although the quality is not quite as good (a bit softer, some moire on test patterns), this will hold me over until I inevitably upgrade my video card in the very distant future. (I'm thinking about putting together an all-new rig with a new motherboard, processor, RAM and video card, perhaps in a year or 18 months.)

I'd take a picture of my monitor in all its working glory, but unfortunately Lyris' camera's battery ran out. So you'll just have to wait, you slavering beasts.

So my new TFT arrived today. What a great monitor! I was having a whale of a time with it for about half an hour, then this happened:

Great. Wonderful. I really want a monitor where the only colours are blue and green. This is, quite obviously, going to have to go back. I sincerely hope Overclockers UK will send a van to pick it up, or will at least reimburse me for shipping, because quite frankly this is unfuriating. I'm glad I ordered it well ahead of my birthday, as I foresee this fiasco going on for some time.

Source: Dark Dreams

Summer 2004 looks like a great season for Argento DVD releases, with UK and Italian discs of Il Cartaio coming soon, as well as...

... this extremely nice-looking French release of Profondo Rosso. With a cover design clearly inspired by the style and layout employed by Criterion, one wonders if the quality of the release will match it. The current Anchor Bay is fine, barring an infuriating freeze at the end while the credits role, as opposed to the continually moving image the credits were meant to have.

Also coming is:

A four-disc Japanese box set, featuring The Bird with the Crystal Plumage, The Cat O' Nine Tails, Tenebre and Phenomena. All of these films are still needing a decent release, and anamorphic digitally remastered transfers with both English and Italian audio are promised on them, so this could be the set to do them justice.

I've come across two more edits in the Chinese Tom and Jerry set:

- The version of Saturday Evening Puss presented is the one that has been re-animated to replace Mammy Two-Shoes with a skinny white woman, and the voice has been dubbed over with an extremely bad performance by the usually good June Foray.
- In His Mouse Friday, the visuals are intact but the cannibals' voices have all been muted out.

Source: Dark Discussion

DrPhibes at Dark Discussion reports that Anchor Bay is planning a US release of Dario Argento's Trauma for the first half of 2005. They are making an effort to track down the source materials for the longer Italian cut and make this the longest English release to date. I assume they'll do what they did with Profondo Rosso and include the additional scenes in Italian with English subtitles, unless they actually manage to track down the original English language audio for these scenes, that is. Anyway, this is great news and will probably be the best release of the film yet. Anchor Bay have a good track record for image quality, so at the first least it should be better than the UK and French releases.

Blizzard has released another small patch for the aged Starcraft. Nothing major -- only a few bug fixes. To see the fixes, click here. Connect to Battle.net to download.

Dellamorte Dellamore (R2 Italy) arrived this morning. This is my first introduction to the films of Michele Soavi, who was previously Dario Argento's assistant director and occasional bit-part actor in his films throughout the early 80s.

My missing DVD package from DVD Pacific still hasn't turned up. I'm pretty convinced now that Royal Mail has lost it -- it's been around 3 weeks now and my orders to DVD Pacific have never taken much more than a week to arrive in the past. I really hope DVD Pacific will send it again, but I'm somewhat doubtful given their stance on non-courier deliveries.