September 2007

Inspector Negro rides again

Yesterday was pay day, so, during my lunch break, I took a wander over to Borders and picked up a copy of Day After Day by Carlo Lucarelli, the sequel to his giallo Almost Blue (see here for my review of that title). I wonder if there have ever been any plans to turn this one into a film, as Alex Infascelli did with Almost Blue? Either way, I’m looking forward to getting stuck into this one without knowing the plot and its outcome beforehand.

I’ll get cracking on it just as soon as I’ve finished the books I currently have out of the library - Mercy Alexander by George Tiffin and Rosemary’s Baby by Ira Levin.

HD DVD review: Silent Hill

Constituting a distinct improvement over the earlier Sony Pictures release in terms of image quality, Concorde Home Entertainment’s release of Silent Hill features an amazing transfer and impressive audio. Despite being bare-bones, I highly recommend that fans of the film, or those who are just dying to add another magnificent-looking disc to their HD collections, get their order in immediately.

Just over a year after launching on Blu-ray and receiving much criticism for its image quality, Silent Hill shows up on HD DVD courtesy of German distributor Concorde Home Entertainment. I investigate how this new VC-1 encode compares to Sony’s older MPEG-2 release.

It’s “we love Germany” day in the Land of Whimsy…

…well, not exactly, but everything I have to say in this post relates to Germany in some way.

First up, yesterday, I received a copy of The Lives of Others on Blu-ray from DVD Pacific. This German film, which won the Best Foreign Language film at the 2006 Academy Awards, is one of the few films I’ve picked up in high definition as a blind buy (so far, most of the HD DVD and Blu-ray releases I’ve received without having seen the films themselves beforehand have been free review copies), so I’m hoping the positive word of mouth doesn’t turn out to have been hot air.

I’ve had a brief look at the transfer, and it seems to be good without being exception. It’s AVC-encoded and comes on a BD-50, but, while detail is generally pretty good, there is some rather harsh edge enhancement on display, and also the tell-tale signs of noise reduction in the form of sluggish grain patterns. Don’t get me wrong, it’s by no means a bad transfer, but it certainly disproves the myth doing the rounds in certain circles that everything Sony is putting out these days is solid gold.

Luckily, I am considerably more impressed by the transfers of the German HD DVD releases of Silent Hill and the extended cut of Underworld, both of which arrived from Amazon.de today (huzzah for the Germans and their reputation for efficiency!). Actually, “more impressed” is putting it lightly because, pending a more thorough investigating during the process of watching both titles from beginning to end, both of these should be ending up in the “10/10” category on my HD Image Quality Rankings list (the most recent iteration of which can be viewed here).

Both films are VC1-encoded, and in both cases it turns out that the final releases were extremely accurately represented by the Concorde Home Entertainment promo disc that Lyris brought back from the IFA convention in Berlin. Silent Hill especially is just draw-dropping, having been minted from the same magnificent master that was used for Sony Pictures’ 2006 Blu-ray release, but, thanks to the increased efficiency of VC1 over MPEG2, exhibits none of the severe compression artefacts that plagued that release. Lyris has put up a couple of snapshots illustrating just how improved the compression is in the most problematic scenes, and, suffice to say, I urge anyone contemplating picking up this film in HD to abandon any thought of buying Sony’s version. Concorde are releasing their titles on both formats, so this improved version is also available to those restricted to Blu-ray.

Finally, Sony comes to HD DVD!

Underworld, meanwhile, doesn’t look quite as good, but that, I suspect, has more to do with the look of the film itself than the quality of the master or the encoding. Certainly, I can see no flaws at all that should prevent it from also attaining “10/10” status, and there are some moments in which the details are so pronounced, particularly in close-ups, that they practically leap off the screen. Oh, and I know it’s silly, but I did get a kick out of seeing the words “A Sony Pictures Entertainment Company” appearing on an HD DVD title, underneath the Screen Gems logo at the beginning of the film.

Audio-wise, German and English tracks are offered, the German variant in DTS-HD Master Audio, and the English in the lower bit rate DTS-HD Hi-Resoltion format (on Silent Hill, the German track is 6.1 discrete while the English track is plain old 5.1, while on Underworld, both tracks are 5.1). While it’s a little disappointing to see preferential treatment given to dubbed versions, it’s somewhat moot at the moment given the lack of hardware that can decode the high definition content of the DTS-HD audio codec (instead, current hardware falls back on a legacy DTS 1.5 Mbps stream). In any event, the English tracks on both films sound magnificent, although I’ll have to do a comparison between the Dolby Digital track on the Sony Pictures BD of Silent Hill and the DTS-HD variant on the Concorde HD DVD to see just how much of a difference there is. (It’s a real shame I don’t currently have the means to play the PCM 5.1 track on the BD, thanks to my PS3’s lack of analogue outputs and my audio receiver’s lack of HDMI support.)

Sprechen Sie Englisch?

As with Warner’s HD DVDs and BDs, these titles go straight to the film itself after playing the company logo and the usual copyright warnings. They default to German audio with no subtitles, but a quick press of the Menu button brings up the main menu, allowing you to switch to English audio. Doing so automatically turns on German subtitles, but worry not, for they can easily be disabled via the menu or using the Subtitles button on your remote.

As has been reported elsewhere, there are no extras on either title. In the case of Silent Hill, the same was true of Sony’s release, so this can’t exactly be considered a downgrade, but for Underworld, Sony’s standard definition DVD of the extended edition, plus their upcoming Blu-ray release, are quite feature-packed. Myself, I’m not too bothered as I’ll be hanging on to my standard definition copy anyway for the included comic and concept art booklet, but for others not in this situation, the Sony Blu-ray version will probably be a more attractive choice for those who can play it

LA Times: “Warner’s next”

Source: Film Talk

I don’t make a habit of reporting on every rumour that crops up in the high definition format war, because, frankly, the vast majority of it is complete nonsense. However, this particular article, which comes from the Los Angeles Times, caught my eye, as it quotes “Hollywood insiders” as saying that

[t]he brinkmanship is intensifying. Another major studio, Warner Bros., is being courted by both camps and believed to be mulling over a lucrative offer that could bring such popular titles as “Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix” into the HD DVD camp, according to Hollywood insiders who requested anonymity because the talks were confidential.

(Full article here.)

Were this to come to pass, it would be huge. It should be no secret that both sides are likely to be actively courting the studios and making very lucrative offers in exchange for exclusivity deals - it’s a business, after all - so it stands to reason that there is a hint of truth in the article, whatever its source. After Paramount’s shock decision to support only HD DVD, both sides will have upped their game substantially. If Warner is actually actively considering renouncing their neutrality, then I honestly believe the writing could be on the wall for Blu-ray: as one forum poster put it, Warner, despite their neutrality, are basically Blu-ray’s biggest supporter. True, many of their releases are HD DVD-only, but they have given a massive number of titles to the Blu camp, and their back catalogue is arguably the most impressive of all the majors.

The gloves are well and truly off. The next few months are going to be very interesting.

PS. Have a look at how the Blu-ray die-hards (or “Smurfs”, as they are coming to be known with increasing regularity), are coping with these latest rumours, in this handy collation of posts over at High Def Forum.

Semi-decent version of Flour Flies coming soon?

Marin Spanic of German DVD publisher New Entertainment World (responsible for, among others, the recent release of The Iguana with the Tongue of Fire) has been teasing members of the DVD Maniacs forum with screen captures of a copy of Dario Argento’s long-lost giallo Four Flies on Grey Velvet which blows away every version available at the moment.

This film, the director’s third and the concluding part of the Animal Trilogy, is the only one of his films to not have a legitimate DVD release. Seemingly tied up in a series of endless rights dispute, it is only available in the form of a variety of heavily compromised bootlegs which fail to do is justice in any shape or form. These new captures, however, while not brilliant, are an enormous step up.

Little is known about the source at the moment. Marin would almost say that New Entertainment World is not releasing the film, but that he received a preview version comprised of excerpts from the film from a source that he is not at this stage able to disclose, and that he will hopefully be able to say more soon.

I don’t want to jinx this, but it looks like we might just get a half-decent release of this mistreated film before very much longer.

The biggest comeback since JR rose from the dead

If you’ve been reading this site for any length of time, you’ve probably had the opportunity to observe me waxing lyrical about the medical drama Casualty and its fall from grace. In spite of featuring an excellent two-parter penned by former writer Barbara Machin, which were as good as anything the show had to offer in its prime, the most recent series was the worst ever by a long shot, and, not for the first time, I was just about ready to give up on it entirely. Last night, however, such thoughts were banished from my mind. The 22nd series began this weekend, with a two-parter spread over Saturday and Sunday, and, if their quality is in any way indicative of what we can expect from the rest of the season, this might just be the most miraculous return to form I’ve ever seen on television.

Casualty, in recent years, has been characterised by many problems, not least a gradual ramping up of the number of episodes per series (going from 24 to 48 in the space of a scant eight years) and a slow but steady decline in the quality of the writing, acting and characterisation, while the “medical drama” aspect of this medical drama became increasingly sidelined in favour of second rate soap opera storylines revolving around who fancied who and managed to knock who up. The influx of soap content was gradual enough that it took a few years for the problems to become readily apparent, but by the sixteenth series everything more or less fell apart.

Last night, however, it felt as if someone had turned back the clock. While I don’t know if the five-week gap between Series 21 and 22 can truly be considered an end-of-series break, these five weeks would appear to have been put to excellent use, as the new production team, which came in towards the end of the previous series, have performed a blitzkrieg on the show. Rather than gradually phasing out the soap, they have done what was in my opinion the only thing they could have done: obliterated it entirely in the blink of an eye. The opening two-parter focused around a bomb blast in the centre of town which left the hospital swamped with casualties and barely able to cope, and in the process reaffirmed everything that the show used to be about.

Like last Christmas’ two-parter, the same storyline was told from two different perspectives, the first episode being shown entirely from the point of view of wide-eyed, bumbling new recruit Toby (Matthew Needham, a shockingly good screen debut), and the second through the eyes of world-weary Charlie (Derek Thompson, the only actor to have been there since the first episode), who, having lost all sense of purpose in the job he does, receives a generic letter commending him on 35 years of nursing. Showing the same events from two different points of view might seem like a cheap gimmick (and, when I first heard about it, I was worried that this would simply be an attempt to replicate the more superficial elements of the Christmas episodes), but the effect is extremely powerful, the first episode throwing the audience into the thick of an extremely confusing situation and the second adopting a perspective of jaded detachment.

In the first episode, the decision to feature a new character in every single scene certainly helped make a character who, on the surface, was quite annoying, more sympathetic. I felt that some of the narrative contrivances were a bit silly (Toby just happens to be in the vicinity of the bomb blast, then just happens to run into not one but two people in need of urgent medical attention on his way home), but by and large I found it incredibly effective. This was a properly character-driven episode, the like of which we haven’t seen for a long time. Oh, and the banter between the regulars was some of the best and most natural I’ve heard in a long time.

As good as the first episode was, the second just blew it out of the water, surpassing it in every way imaginable. If Episode 1 was trying to be the Casualty of old, Episode 2 actually was the Casualty of old. This was a true nursing-oriented episode, with not a shred of soap in sight: just 60 minutes about a normal guy trying to get through a job he no longer believed in, only to have has passion for it re-ignited before the end. Just as with Toby in the first episode, the way in which it was structured really helped get inside Charlie’s head, and the benefit of him being such a familiar face made it all feel that bit more real. You could really feel his total sense of displacement and uselessness, being treated like a spare part (oh, sweet justice, the writers finally seem to have noticed how they’ve been treating him for the last couple of years) and pushed around by people who didn’t value his experience and expertise. Seemingly innocuous moments like him lighting up a cigarette outside the hospital entrance, something he last did way back in Series 2 in 1987, hammered home just how close to breaking point he had come.

As for the terrorism storyline, it was handled quite well. Originally, the idea was for the perpetrators to be Islamic fundamentalists, but this concept was nixed by BBC standards and practice goons, who decided that it would be too “controversial”. The result? The bombers are now animal rights activists, who accidentally detonate their explosive device in a crowded street rather than at its intended destination. (I’m not sure why this is any less controversial - more likely, the BBC bosses are less scared of reprisals from animal rights activists than suicide bombers.) However, it ended up working a lot better than I was expecting, and the fact that one of the bombers was by far the most sympathetic of the guest characters (a superlative performance by Nigel Terry) gave the episodes a much-needed angle of balance, avoiding any sanctimonious hand-wringing.

On the technical side of things, the show has now finally abandoned the cheap-looking, interlaced video format used for the previous 21 years and switched to a progressive, film-like appearance. The film effect (actually the result of shooting in 25p DigiBeta) is a big improvement on the tacky “remove every second line so everything looks like a jaggy mess” technique used on most TV shows shot on video but made to look like film, including sister show Holby City, which recently adopted this look. It actually looked like film on some occasions, and I thought the design of the bomb site, with all its smoke, debris and monochromatic colour palette, was hugely effective. For some reason, no director was credited for these episodes, but, whoever he/she was, they did a sterling job. They decided to shoot the scenes in the aftermath of the explosion in the manner of a horror film - a very effective choice. Yes, the overuse of clumsy, hand-held shots and haphazard editing remains, but the filmic look, coupled the more dramatic lighting, helped make it less objectionable than it has been for some time.

Seriously, I could rave and rave about these episodes all day, but I won’t bore you with the details. Suffice to say that, if the rest of the series is even a smidgen as good as this, I will be more than satisfied. I never thought they’d pull it off, but they really have brought Casualty back from the dead, and my faith in the programme has been restored, just when I thought there was no hope left. While I doubt that anyone could maintain a further 46 episodes of this quality, I would like to think that the ideology they represent will remain in place. Writers: please, please keep things going in this vein and don’t be tempted to go back to the soap and silliness.

HD DVD now bigger than Blu-ray

Source: AV Science Forum

In addition to having the lion’s share of studio support (something which now seems rather dubious given Paramount’s recent decision), the Blu-ray camp’s main reason to cheer has long been the higher capacity of their discs (50 GB for a dual-layer BD versus 30 GB for a dual-layer HD DVD). Well, as of now, that would appear to have changed, as the DVD Forum have just approved triple-layer 51 GB HD DVDs as part of the format’s spec. These new discs, which are believed to be fully compatible with current hardware, have effectively negated (and more besides - but who’s counting a gigabyte?) one of Blu-ray’s main selling points.

Of course, it remains to be seen whether any studios begin using them commercially (Paramount, at least, seem to be happy with 30 GB discs, at least judging by CTO Alan Bell’s recent comments on the issue), but the good news is that the technology are now there. I wonder how Disney, who helped develop the format’s HDi technology, only to jump ship in favour of Blu-ray because its increased capacity allowed them to cram more “Virtual Magic Carpet Tour”-type games on each disc, are now feeling.

Thanks to Lyris for drawing this to my attention.

Tarantan films presents…

Today I received my first ever high definition check disc - a review copy of the upcoming UK Blu-ray release of Paul Verhoeven’s Black Book from Tartan Films… or “Tarantan Films”, as the label misspells it. I already have the US version from Sony Pictures, due out on September 25th, on pre-order at DVD Pacific, and I intend to keep the order open in order to get the US-exclusive Verhoeven commentary plus other assorted extras, but the UK version, due out a day earlier, on September 24th, is a rather impressive package in terms of image quality, and one that Sony will have to work hard to better (if indeed they don’t just use the same encode).

For a start, Tartan have clearly decided to go the whole hog, delivering the film on a dual-layer BD50 disc with a 1080p AVC encode (no repeats of their early days with the DVD format here). The transfer, which hovers consistently around the 30 Mbit/sec rate, is very impressive, slightly pre-filtered and as a result exhibiting some mild ringing and not quite hitting the heights of, say, Open Season or King Kong in terms of fine detail, but otherwise absolutely magnificent.

For audio, as seems to be Tartan’s custom, the default track is a stereo affair (at 224 Kbps), with Dolby Digital 5.1 (640 Kbps) and DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1 tracks also included. Unfortunately, neither the Playstation 3 nor any other currently available player can decode the high definition audio content of such tracks, so it falls back on a legacy DTS 1.5 Mbit/sec stream, but to my ears it sounds very good in its own right and constitutes an improvement on its 768 Kbps predecessor from the DVD. I’ll have to do a more in-depth comparison between the two before offering my final verdict, however. Annoyingly, despite the bulk of the film being in Dutch and German, English subtitles are not enabled by default, making a pit-stop at the Setup menu (or a few button presses on the remote control) necessary before beginning the movie.

Tartan have also chosen to approach the presentation of their bonus content in a rather unusual manner, and this is likely to attract some consternation from certain parties. Whereas every other distributor I know either upscales their legacy 480i content or has the player itself switch to standard definition to play it, Tartan have embedded the material in a small window on the Extras menu. While this has the effect of making the quality look better (because it’s smaller, natch), it’s also going to be a bit of a pain in the neck for people with smaller displays. On a 40” screen viewed at fairly close range, it’s not that big a deal, but I wouldn’t like to watch it on my 20” monitor, or even on our older 32” TV.

Expect a full review at DVD Times in the near future. After a fairly lengthy period of what I can only term writer’s block, I’m finally getting back into the sway of penning regular reviews.

Happy birthday, Dario Argento!

Dario Argento turned 67 today, and he celebrated the event in style last night with the world premiere of his new film, Mother of Tears (La Terza Madre), at the Toronto International Film Festival. Mannfan over at Dark Discussion is doing the admirable job of collecting together the various reviews and opinions that have been cropped up all over the web from those who were lucky enough to attend last night’s screening. It seems fairly clear that it’s going to be as divisive as any of Argento’s recent films, with those expecting something identical to Suspiria and Inferno likely to be sorely disappointed.

Of course, I’ll reserve judgement until I’ve seen it for myself. I just hope I don’t have long to wait.

Soon on this screen…

The good news is that the HD DVD releases of Silent Hill and Underworld are now shipping from Amazon.de… at least for some of us. My copies went out just before midday, but the official word from Concorde Home Entertainment is that Friday is the target date for availability.

It would also appear that there will be no extras on either of these discs. Supposedly, if they sell well, future titles from Concorde will include bonus materials. For Silent Hill, which was bare-bones in its Blu-ray incarnation too, this isn’t that much of a big deal, but Underworld in its standard definition incarnation (and, presumably, the US Blu-ray version due to be released on September 25th as well) was quite feature-packed, so that’s a bit of a shame. Oh well - provided the image quality is excellent, I won’t be complaining too much.

HD DVD review: Dawn of the Dead (remake)

The HD DVD release of Dawn of the Dead is a definite improvement over the standard definition release, maintaining all of the original bonus features and boasting a solid transfer and audio mixes. Of course, the upcoming release of Romero’s superior original version on Blu-ray is likely to put this release in the shade, at least in terms of the quality of the film itself, but those who enjoyed Snyder’s reimagining are highly recommended to trade their DVD copies for this new release.

Halloween comes early this year as I review Universal’s recent HD DVD release of the 2004 remake of Dawn of the Dead.

The latest HD image quality rankings

I have a new favourite HD demo disc: it’s Sony’s Blu-ray release of Open Season. Sony gave Lyris a stack of free Blu-ray discs when he went to make his reportings on their format in Berlin last week, and this was one of them (one of the others, unfortunately, was Black Hawk Down, which looks horrendous). While the film itself is doing my tits in, it’s hard to deny that the visual presentation is absolutely stellar - the sort of quality you can get when you feed a pristine source into an advanced codec like AVC.

I’ve taken the opportunity to update my HD image quality rankings chart, and have also included the codecs used for each release.

10/10

• Open Season (Sony Pictures, UK, Blu-ray) - AVC
• Corpse Bride (Warner, USA, HD DVD/Blu-ray) - VC1
• King Kong (Universal, UK, HD DVD) - VC1
• Casino Royale (Sony Pictures, USA, Blu-ray) - AVC
• The Descent (Lions Gate, USA, Blu-ray) - AVC
• Serenity (Universal, UK, HD DVD) - VC1
• Serenity (Universal, USA, HD DVD) - VC1
• Black Snake Moan (Paramount, USA, HD DVD/Blu-ray) - AVC
• Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire (Warner, UK, HD DVD) - VC1
• Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man’s Chest (Buena Vista, USA, Blu-ray) - AVC

9/10

• Babel (Paramount, USA, HD DVD) - AVC
• Looney Tunes: Rabbit Hood (Warner, USA, HD DVD)* - VC1
• Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl (Buena Vista, USA, Blu-ray) - AVC
• Mr. Bean’s Holiday (Universal, UK, HD DVD) - VC1
• Children of Men (Universal, USA, HD DVD) - VC1
• The Bourne Supremacy (Universal, USA, HD DVD) - VC1
• The Adventures of Robin Hood (Warner, USA) - VC1
• Miami Vice (Universal, USA, HD DVD) - VC1
• Resident Evil: Apocalypse (Sony Pictures, USA, Blu-ray) - MPEG2
• Layer Cake (Sony Pictures, UK, Blu-ray) - MPEG2
• Dawn of the Dead (remake) (Universal, USA, HD DVD) - VC1
• Blood Diamond (Warner, USA, HD DVD/Blu-ray) - VC1
• Reign Over Me (Sony Pictures, UK, Blu-ray) - AVC
• Casablanca (Warner, USA, HD DVD) - VC1
• Kiss Kiss Bang Bang (Warner, UK, HD DVD/Blu-ray) - VC1
• A Scanner Darkly (Universal, USA, HD DVD/Blu-ray) - VC1

8/10

• Silent Hill (Sony Pictures, USA, Blu-ray) - MPEG2
• Kingdom of Heaven (20th Century Fox, USA, Blu-ray) - MPEG2
• The Bourne Identity (Universal, USA, HD DVD) - VC1
• Ghost Rider (Sony Pictures, UK, Blu-ray) - AVC
• Mulholland Drive (Studio Canal, France, HD DVD) - VC1
• Constantine (Warner, USA, HD DVD) - VC1
• The Matrix (Warner, USA, HD DVD) - VC1
• Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow (Paramount, USA, HD DVD) - VC1
• The Matrix Revolutions (Warner, USA, HD DVD) - VC1
• The Matrix Reloaded (Warner, USA, HD DVD) - VC1
• The Devil’s Rejects (Lions Gate, USA, Blu-ray) - MPEG2
• Unleashed (Universal, USA, HD DVD) - VC1
• Red Dragon (Universal, USA, HD DVD) - VC1
• Looney Tunes: Robin Hood Daffy (Warner, USA, HD DVD)* - VC1
• The Skeleton Key (Universal, USA, HD DVD) - VC1
• Land of the Dead (Universal, USA, HD DVD) - VC1
• Syriana (Warner, USA, HD DVD/Blu-ray) - VC1
• V for Vendetta (Warner, USA, HD DVD) - VC1
• The Machinist (Toshiba, Japan, HD DVD) - AVC
• Sleepy Hollow (Paramount, USA, HD DVD) - VC1
• Million Dollar Baby (Warner, USA, HD DVD/Blu-ray) - VC1
• Flightplan (Buena Vista, USA, Blu-ray) - VC1
• Batman Begins (Warner, UK, HD DVD) - VC1
• Van Helsing (Universal, UK, HD DVD) - VC1
• Wolf Creek (The Weinstein Company, USA, HD DVD) - AVC

7/10

• Charlie and the Chocolate Factory (Warner, USA, HD DVD) - VC1
• Arlington Road (Sony Pictures, USA, Blu-ray) - MPEG2
• The Exorcism of Emily Rose (Sony Pictures, UK, Blu-ray) - MPEG2
• Tears of the Sun (Sony Pictures, UK, Blu-ray) - MPEG2
• Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas (Universal, USA, HD DVD) - VC1
• The Mummy Returns (Universal, USA, HD DVD) - VC1
• King Arthur (Buena Vista, USA, Blu-ray) - AVC
• Paprika (Sony Pictures, France, Blu-ray) - MPEG2
• Perfume: The Story of a Murderer (Constantin Film, Germany, HD DVD) - VC1
• The Fifth Element (remastered) (Sony Pictures, USA, Blu-ray) - AVC

6/10

• Chicago (Buena Vista, USA, Blu-ray) - AVC
• Enemy of the State (Buena Vista, USA, Blu-ray) - MPEG2
• Fantastic Four (20th Century Fox, UK, Blu-ray) - MPEG2
• Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind (Universal, USA, HD DVD) - VC1
• Lost in Translation (Universal, USA, HD DVD) - VC1
• Lara Croft: Tomb Raider (Paramount, USA, HD DVD) - VC1
• Hostel (Sony Pictures, UK, Blu-ray) - MPEG2
• The Fountain (Warner, USA, HD DVD/Blu-ray) - VC1
• An American Werewolf in London (Universal, USA, HD DVD) - VC1
• Troy (Warner, UK, HD DVD) - VC1
• Being John Malkovich (Universal, USA, HD DVD) - VC1
• Brokeback Mountain (Universal, USA, HD DVD) - VC1
• The Game (Universal, USA, HD DVD) - VC1
• Basic Instinct (Studio Canal, France, HD DVD) - VC1

5/10

• District B13 (Magnolia, USA, Blu-ray) - MPEG2
• Crank (Lions Gate, USA, Blu-ray) - MPEG2
• Black Hawk Down (Sony Pictures, UK, Blu-ray) - MPEG2

4/10

• Brotherhood of the Wolf (Studio Canal, France, HD DVD) - VC1
• La Haine (Studio Canal, UK, HD DVD) - VC1
• American Psycho (Lions Gate, USA, Blu-ray) - MPEG2

* Found on the The Adventures of Robin Hood HD DVD.

Sprinting zombies look even more ridiculous in HD

My copy of the remake of Dawn of the Dead on HD DVD arrived from DVD Pacific this morning.

The DVD always stood out to me as being one of the better standard definition releases, so my hopes were high for its high definition debut. Luckily, I wasn’t disappointed, as this is a very nice-looking transfer. Not perfect, but towards the higher end of the quality spectrum all the same. It has a very contrasty look, with the highlights often ending up being blown out and shadow detail rather limited, but this replicates the look of the film when I saw it at the cinema, not to mention the DVD, which seems to have come from the same master, as evinced by the slight increase in ringing and print damage during scenes that have been spliced in for the director’s cut.

Rewatching the film for (if my memory serves me correctly) the third time also allowed me to warm to it a little more. Don’t get me wrong, it’s still in the shadow of the original, but it’s enjoyable enough and has some genuinely funny moments. It is inconsistent, though, seeming quite well-made in places and then somewhat shoddy in others, while the characters, with the exception of the asshole mall cop CJ, are all incredibly one-dimensional, and the writer’s attempts to give them pathos fall incredibly short. Some moments are so ridiculous that I can’t help wondering if the filmmakers were being tongue-in-cheek - I’m thinking particularly of the sacrifice made by Michael who, knowing that he has been infected, stands heroically on the pier watching his friends sail off into the sunset - cue swelling music and Ving Rhames with the Stars and Stripes emblazoned behind him. I’m just amazed he didn’t salute.

DVD review: Spooks: Season 5

Season 5 comes across as Spooks’ weakest so far, sacrificing credibility and its ensemble cast in favour of increasingly unbelievable situations and an annoyingly narrow focus. The DVD release, likewise, is the most disappointing of the bunch, making the high £39.99 RRP seem particularly extortionate given the lack of bonus materials.

In preparation for the launch of its sixth season on BBC1, I’ve reviewed Contender Home Entertainment’s DVD release of Spooks Season 5, presenting all ten episodes on five discs.

The Giallo Project #7: The Sweet Body of Deborah

Alternative titles: Il Dolce corpo di Deborah; Director: Romolo Guerrieri; Starring: Carroll Baker, Jean Sorel, Evelyn Stewart, Luigi Pistilli, George Hilton; Music: Nora Orlandi; Italian theatrical release date: March 20th, 1968

The newly married Marcel (Jean Sorel) takes his American bride, Deborah (Carroll Baker), to his home town of Geneva to celebrate their honeymoon. However, he hasn’t been home long before he begins receiving all sorts of reminders of the untimely demise of his ex-girlfriend, Suzanne (Evelyn Stewart). The papers all say that she committed suicide, but an old friend, Philippe (Luigi Pistilli), menacingly accuses Marcel of murdering her. Soon, it becomes clear that someone is playing a very sick game with both Marcel and Deborah, who both begin to wonder how they can trust each other.

I like to class gialli such as this one as “Mills & Boon Gone Wrong”. All the familiar traits are here: handsome European stud romances glamorous American woman and they run away together to various exotic locales (here Geneva and, as this was a French co-production, Nice, both lushly photographed in the manner of a tourist video). Then, throw in a bit of blackmail, double- and triple-crosses and some murders, and you’ve got yourself a giallo in the same vein that was later exploited to great success by the likes of Sergio Martino. In fact, a glance at the list of players both in front of and behind the camera shows this to be very much an early forerunner to Martino’s ventures: Luigi Pistilli, Evelyn Stewart and a bearded George Hilton (as a charmingly unapologetic peeping tom) make up the roster of suspects, while Ernesto Gastaldi penned the screenplay, Nora Orlandi provided the score, Luciano Martino (brother of Sergio) served as producer, and Sergio Martino himself receives a credit as production manager. The jet set aesthetic that Martino would so often visit is also clearly established: this film is populated by wealthy decadents with too much time on their hands and a predilection for watching topless dancers gyrate to swanky lounge music with an air of bland indifference.

What’s missing is the urban slasher element popularised by Dario Argento: as a pre-Bird with the Crystal Plumage giallo, the emphasis is more on the melodrama and internalised anxiety than on black-gloved killers stalking and killing a roster of victims. There are no on-screen deaths at all until the final act, and the pace tends to become a bit stodgy at times, with Baker looking harangued and spending a lot of time in bed and in various stages of undress. Yet, it’s still considerably more engaging than the last giallo I watched, Naked You Die, and that has a lot to do with the plot, which Gastaldi skilfully drives from one twist to the next, even if the final major twist, which Gastaldi would go on to use again and again, is difficult to swallow, given that it directly contradicts what we have already seen. It also helps that there is distrust on both sides: the film alternates between Marcel and Deborah’s point of view, with both suspecting each other of foul play, and as a result we’re never quite sure how the land lies.

There are also some genuinely nice moments of style on display, with the occasional use of flashbacks to convey Marcel’s past with Suzanne, with a scene in which they canoodle against a backdrop of autumn leaves falling in slow motion seems to anticipate, albeit in a romantic rather than sinister context, the “rape in the rain” scene in Martino’s The Strange Vice of Mrs. Wardh. Likewise, a shot in which Marcel watches a striptease act through a brandy glass, the liquid distorting and colourising his (and our) viewpoint, is an interesting touch, the scene in question anticipating something similar that would show up in Giuliano Carnimeo’s The Case of the Bloody Iris (also written by Gastaldi and produced by Luciano Martino), albeit with considerably more visual panache and less relevance to the plot. There’s some deliciously outdated fashion and decor on display, all manner of crazy dancing, and even a bizarre musical game of Twister. Oh, and I’m not sure if it’s a major point, but this strikes me as being the only giallo I’ve seen to feature a scene with a woman coming during sex.

Next time, I’ll be returning to familiar territory with Lucios Fulci’s One on Top of the Other, a film with many of the same hallmarks as this one.

Ach ja! HD DVD ist wunderbar!

Tomorrow sees the release of the HD DVD versions of Silent Hill and Underworld in Germany, and I have extremely high expectations.

These two are fairly high-profile Sony-owned films, and as such are Blu-ray exclusives in the US, but, thanks to the magic of no region coding, viewers from around the world can enjoy these titles, owned in Germany by Concorde Home Entertainment, on HD DVD. Silent Hill was one of the earliest films to be released on Blu-ray in the US, and while it clearly came from an impeccable master, demonstrating eye-popping detail and unmolested film grain, the combination of MPEG2 encoding and a single-layer BD-25 proved to be too much for it to handle, resulting in noticeable compression artefacts in several scenes.

Lyris, returning from the IFA 2007 consumer electronics show, brought back a promotional disc featuring excerpts from several Concorde releases, including these two, and let’s just say that, unless something goes seriously wrong, they could both be 10/10 discs. In particular, Silent Hill appears to be from the same master as the Blu-ray release, demonstrating comparable detail and the same quality of grain reproduction, but, with the added benefit of more efficient VC-1 encoding, should blow away its Sony counterpart. Underworld looks equally incredible, although, not having seen the soon-to-released US Blu-ray version, I’ve no idea how it compares. Luckily, both versions will feature the extended unrated cut.

When Lyris bought the Blu-ray release of Silent Hill earlier this year, we both agreed that, with improved encoding, it would basically have been a perfect transfer. Now, fingers crossed, we’re actually going to get that perfect transfer. Cue cries of “It’s so grainy! I thought this was supposed to be HD!”

Click the images above for larger versions.

Update, September 4th, 2007 10:43 PM: It looks as if these titles may have been delayed. Amazon is now saying that they will be dispatched within “1 to 3 weeks”, while an AV Science Forum member living in Germany is reporting that none of the electronic stores seem to have copies yet.

I’ve seen some bullshit in my time…

…but this has got to take the cake. My dad bought a copy of What Hi-Fi? Sound and Vision, a UK technology publication that prides itself on being “The world’s No. 1 home entertainment magazine”. While flipping through it, Lyris alerted me to an article that reviewed and rated different brands of mains cable. My initial thought was “You must be joking”, but, as I sat down and read the one-page exposé from beginning to end, my eyes began to bug out of my sockets, while my jaw grew slacker and slacker with each word I read.

I may not be the world’s biggest technology expert, but I can tell you for a fact that many of the claims being made by this article are complete and utter bunkum. Seriously, read it for yourself, soak up the outright nonsense being fabricated by the (curiously enough, uncredited) writer, and then ask yourself how anyone in their right mind could seriously believe £325 to be a worthwhile investment for a power cable. I’m just surprised there wasn’t an accompanying article telling you to colour in your music CDs to improve the audio clarity.