January 2009

Black Sheep Blu-ray impressions

I watched Icon’s UK Blu-ray Disc release of Black Sheep this evening. It wasn’t exactly high art, and it was neither funny enough to fully function as a comedy nor scary enough to work as a horror movie, but it certainly entertained me and wasn’t boring by any stretch of the imagination - a big step up from the last two BDs I watched (The Messengers and I am Legend, in case anyone’s interested).

Quality-wise, we have an AVC encode with an alarmingly low file size and bit rate - but, as I always say, bit rates aren’t everything. In fact, this film actually looks pretty good on BD, despite the presence of some fairly noticeable filtering and some degree of grain reduction. Otherwise, it looks pretty pleasing to the eye, with an agreeable level of detail and nothing in the way of unsightly compression artefacts. 8/10

Black Sheep
studio: Icon; country: UK; region code: ABC;
codec: AVC; file size: 10.8 GB; average bit rate: 18.04 Mbit/sec

The substance of style

Earlier this month, I posted about the 2008 edition of Prince of Persia, praising its audio-visual quality but criticising it for not offering enough of a challenge. This evening, I came across a very interesting article about the game over at Gamasutra, where writer Tom Cross eloquently offers a differing point of view, praising the game for its characters and story, and offering up the game’s style as its substance:

This Prince of Persia is many things good and bad, but for me, it has been one of the more enthralling experiences provided by a video game. It eschews frustrating, punishing gameplay tropes, and instead follows a hugely unpopular and successful (at its aim) path: it aims to create a continuous, enjoyable, flowing experience, one unhindered by the mechanical, artificial traditions of “achievement” and “fun” that so many games cling to.

Here is a game that asks you to enjoy yourself, and its fiction, and attempts to make these goals as attainable as possible. I can’t think of a more welcome trend to introduce to the industry, and I wish Ubisoft well, especially if they continue to produce products of such impressive quality and passion.

I can’t say I share Tom’s opinions on the game as a whole (and I’m afraid I’m one of those people who clashed with its sense of humour), but his argument is well-argued and serves as a solid “devil’s advocate” to my own views.

The lights are on but no-one’s home

Apologies for the lack of posts over the last few days. I know I promised a full review of Tomb Raider: Underworld, but the three people in the world who are on tenterhooks for it will have to wait slightly longer. The fact is I’ve been under the weather lately, having picked up that brute of a cold that’s been going round. My head feels considerably clearer today than it did yesterday, but I’ve still got quite a bit of catching up to do, including read an entire PhD thesis before my next meeting with my supervisors on Tuesday 20th. I’ve also, as of today, started attention a Junior Honours class in Italian cinema, hosted by one of my supervisors. Much as I’d like to, I won’t be attending every single class, because each session is five hours long, which, when you’re studying part-time, cuts a pretty big chunk out of your week, but it should provide a good opportunity for me to fill in some of the (fairly substantial) blanks that exist in my knowledge of Italian cinema.

Oh, and I picked up a new monitor for a ridiculously low price. More on it later, hopefully, once it’s been properly calibrated and I have a better idea of its strengths and weaknesses.

Waking the Dead: Series 6, Episodes 1 and 2: Wren Boys

Written by Declan Croghan; Directed by Tim Fywell

For some reason, no episodes of Waking the Dead aired in 2006. When Series 6 finally came round, in January 2007, around 16 months had passed since the end of Series 5. The show came back with a new producer, Colin Wratten (who came from EastEnders and, before that, Holby City), a new lead writer, Declan Croghan, and a new pathologist, played by Tara Fitzgerald. Unfortunately, while Waking the Dead doesn’t have much in common with the previous show I did a full run through, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, they do share one trait: both go off the rails in their sixth season.

Admittedly, Peter Boyd’s fall from grace is considerably less drastic than Buffy Summers’. Even at its worst, Waking the Dead still manages to retain a veneer of respectability, and I could never claim that these episodes are badly made (whereas some of the latter-day Buffy episodes were shockingly poorly written and directed). Instead, they just tend to feel rather empty, going from Point A to Point B, going through the motions but leaving no real lasting impression. One of the biggest losses come Season 6 is the team feeling that permeated the earlier episodes. Series 5 had its work cut out, having to make do without two of the five original characters, but it somehow managed to pull through, retaining the dynamic between the three remaining regulars and working hard to integrate the two newcomers. Such traits are not in evidence by Series 6. By and large, the characters behave like automatons, the interplay between them feels forced, and they function less as a team and more as a collection of people clocking in and out of the office.

It doesn’t help that the writers seem intent on ignoring any previously established continuity. Their biggest faux pas would come with Series 7 (which I’ll discuss when I get that far), but for now, the wheels are already being set in motion. Stella’s betrayal at the end of the previous series is never even mentioned, while Spence’s brush with death, which provided the cliffhanger between the two series, is brushed aside in a single reference to him having had a tattoo painted around his bullet wound. Seeing him laughing and joking about this with Stella, who played a part in his brush with death, is such a blatant breach of continuity that I find it nearly impossible to forgive. The fact that Felix is never once mentioned is also hard to swallow, although admittedly not entirely surprising, particularly if, as I suspect, she was only ever intended as a last-minute temporary replacement for Frankie.

Unfortunately, the new pathologist, Eve Lockhart, just makes us yearn all the more for her predecessors. The writers are at great pains to ram down our throats the fact that the character is alternative and wacky, smoking foul-smelling cigarettes, burning incense in the lab, listening to reggae music at crime scenes, and so on. Unfortunately, the actress, Tara Fitzgerald, may be many things, but “wacky” is not one of them. Her attempts to be so come across as completely forced, and all too often end up veering towards “annoying” rather than the “charming” that I suspect the writers were going for. At least, however, she is a little more animated in these opening episodes than she would later become: come Series 7, she would barely alter her facial expression and tone of delivery at all. Her major gimmick, aside from her insincere wackiness and amazingly deep voice, is that she keeps a “body farm” consisting of a bank of old body parts, which sounds interesting in theory but in practice is only ever referred to a couple of times.

Anyway, the series begins with what is probably the least impressive episode of Waking the Dead to date. There was worse to come, but I remember the massive disappointment I felt when this two-parter initially aired a couple of years back. The basic plot is that the team are investigating the case of a teenage boy found drowned in a pit of concrete back in 1990. A teenage boy is dumped outside a Casualty department, badly beaten, and Boyd suspects there may be a connection. (I actually can’t remember what it is that causes him to suspect this, which says a lot about how much of an impact the storyline made on me.) This leads him and the team to investigate the community of travellers from which the boy came, along the way taking in the sights of a local abbey and a young nun apparently suffering from stigmata.

This episode does actually have a rather interesting theme: the combination of pagan and Christian beliefs and rituals. As far as I can gather, it’s a pretty accurate representation of the religious beliefs held in many traveller communities, harking back to the latter days of the Roman Empire’s occupation of Britain, when the occupying forces concluded that the easiest way to convert the local tribes to Christianity was to mix the doctrine in with their existing pagan traditions, resulting in (to quote Bremner, Bird & Fortune’s piss-take of the Archbishop of Canterbury, Rowan Williams) “an à la carte religion”. At the same time, though, I think that the episode’s greatest failing is that there are simply too many ideas scrambling for attention, resulting in it feeling incredibly disjointed and not very satisfying as a whole. In addition to the exploration of the travellers and their beliefs, we’ve got stigmata, hallucinogenics, Rottweilers straight out of The Omen, a goat demon who seems to have stepped straight out of Hammer’s adaptation of The Devil Rides Out, arranged fights which clearly own something of a debt to David Fincher’s Fight Club, a family tree as complicated as a spaghetti junction, a young mother offering her unwanted newborn child up to a benevolent angel (no, really), and the curious arrival of an envelope addressed to Mel containing a bracelet inscribed with Hebrew letters. The latter sets up a plot strand which is actually carried through the entire season before finally coming to a head in the final episode, Yahrzeit. I’d like to say that this storyline, which hearkens back to the good old days, provides a sense of continuity to the series and resolves Boyd’s feelings as regards Mel’s death, but I’m sorry to say that, for me at least, this is something that should have been done in Series 5 if at all. Barely mentioning Mel in that series and then taking up the storyline again over a year later, while introducing some whopping continuity errors in the process (more on that later), merely cements my ambivalence towards this season.

Holby connections: Gregory Foreman (Davy in this episode) has appeared in Casualty at various points in Series 22 as Charlie Fairhead’s son, Louis.

Red Alert 3 expands

This might be a bit premature from my point of view, given that I haven’t actually completed Red Alert 3 yet, but the game is to receive an expansion set in March. Straight from the horse’s mouth a CommandAndConquer.com:

The third iteration of the Command & Conquer™ franchise’s beloved Red Alert™ series is returning with Command & Conquer™ Red Alert™ 3: Uprising exclusively for the PC. An epic single-player campaign expansion, the standalone title catapults players deeper into the Red Alert universe, giving them more of the action-packed gameplay they have been clamoring for, while offering a gauntlet of new and compelling challenges with the new Commander’s Challenge mode. Command & Conquer Red Alert 3: Uprising will be available for digital download this March.

“Uprising is a game that in many ways reflects the feedback we have gotten from the Command & Conquer community,” said Amer Ajami, Senior Producer at EA Los Angeles. “We’re giving gamers more of what they want - more of the fast, fluid and fun gameplay, more of the story we began to tell in Red Alert 3 and more cutscenes featuring top-notch Hollywood talent. At the same time, we’re excited we’re going to be able to bring new things to the mix, including new units and the Commander’s Challenge, which is a great way for players to hone their skills and get deeper into the combat.”

Command & Conquer Red Alert 3: Uprising takes players into the aftermath of the epic battles in Red Alert 3, with the Soviets still reeling from a crushing defeat, the Empire of the Rising Sun desperately trying to regain both honor and identity and the seemingly victorious Allies finding themselves in the midst of corruption and deceit within their own ranks. In addition to four mini-campaigns, one for each faction and one bonus campaign centered on the origins of the Empire of the Rising Sun’s commando Yuriko, Command & Conquer Red Alert 3: Uprising will also introduce the new Commander’s Challenge, enabling the players to test their skills against a set of nine commanders from different territories and difficulty levels in 50 unique challenges with their own special rules and unique conditions.

In true Command & Conquer fashion, top Hollywood talent will be delivering the gripping story in full HD live-action cinematics. Fan favorites Gemma Atkinson and Ivana Milicevic will make their stunning return to the high ranks of the Allied and Soviet leaderships and will be joined by an all new set of stars, who will be announced soon.

Command & Conquer Red Alert 3: Uprising is a standalone game and does not require Command & Conquer Red Alert 3 to play. This product has not yet been rated by the ESRB, PEGI or USK. For more information about Red Alert 3, please stay tuned right here at RedAlert3.com.

Unfortunately, as is confirmed here, this will be a single player update only - a disappointment given that the expansion to Command & Conquer 3, Kane’s Wrath, covered both the single and multiplayer sides of the coin. That’s not a deal-breaker for me, though: actually, provided we get plenty more cheese-laden FMV sequences in the single player mode, I’ll be pretty happy. What potentially is a deal-breaker that, so far, it has only been announced as a “digital download” - i.e., you can’t pick up a boxed copy. That, to me, seems pretty shoddy. I know we’re getting less and less for our money as it is (anyone remember when PC games came in big chunky boxes with nice thick manuals and, if you were really lucky, a notepad? Nowadays we’re lucky if we get a DVD case an a 10-page booklet printed on toner-saving mode), but getting nothing but a link to a downloadable file for your money seems pretty rubbish. Hey, the only thing to separate it from a pirate copy would be the fact that pirate copies are free (and illegal).

Ah, we’ll see. As it is, it just seems like another way of EA ripping off their customers… which, hot on the heels of the DRM fiasco, is exactly the kind of negative publicity they don’t need, or so I would have thought.

I am Legend Blu-ray impressions

Back in September, I promised Land of Whimsy reader LGANS316 that I would watch and offer my thoughts on a number of Blu-ray titles, among them I am Legend. I don’t often get direct requests, so I’m somewhat ashamed that it’s taken me so long to get round to this one. (In my defence, it took forever for LoveFilm to send me the rental disc.) Anyway, we watched it tonight. I’m not going to say too much about the film, which I found amazingly dull for something featuring Will Smith fighting zombies and Emma Thompson curing cancer, and instead concentrate on this disc itself.

Referring back to LGANS316’s original request:

I am Legend - (Blu-ray) - In-depth analysis on the encode and whether the picture quality is really reference grade ? I discerned banding artefacts and compression noise on few scenes on my Panny Plasma but these claims were disregarded by AVS forum members which is fine. However there is some amount of DNR smearing going on in certain fast motion scenes.

Watching this title on my brother’s 123” projection screen, I can’t honestly say I noticed any instances of banding. However, this is not, by any stretch of the imagination, a reference grade title. As with so many Warner discs, it has been filtered and grain reduced, robbing the film of its original texture and eradicating high frequency detail. Whenever I’m watching a well-known actor, I tend to find myself mentally comparing his or her appearance on the disc in question with that of other releases, and throughout I was constantly reminded of 20th Century Fox’s I, Robot disc - a vastly superior product in every way. It just looks flat and underwhelming overall, with the depth of field tending to be artificially limited by the fact that nothing truly comes into focus, except in the most extreme close-ups. It’s also not all that brilliantly compressed - I detected instances of blocking during fast movement - symptomatic, perhaps, of Warner’s generally stingy bit rates. The theatrical cut (the version I watched) has an average bit rate of 23.37 Mbit/sec, including six 640 Kbit/sec Dolby Digital 5.1 audio tracks and a lossless TrueHD 5.1 track. Oh, and instead of using seamless branching, Warner have included two different versions of the film on the disc. No wonder the encoder was starved.

Is it an awful transfer? No, it’s not. It’s just an underwhelming one, and one that is symptomatic of Warner’s output in general. 7/10

I am Legend
studio: Warner; country: UK; region code: ABC;
codec: VC-1; file size: 16.4 GB; average bit rate: 23.37 Mbit/sec

And just for reference… I, Robot.

Waking the Dead: Series 5, Episodes 11 and 12: Cold Fusion

Written by Ed Whitmore; Directed by Richard Standeven

Series 5 draws to a close, and like Series 4 before it, it’s the end of an era. The casualties this time are long-serving producer Richard Burrell and lead writer Ed Whitmore, who both leave to do other things, and poor Esther Hall, who receives an even less auspicious exit than Holly Aird (whose at least got a brief mention in a conversation following her departure). It also closes on Waking the Dead’s first and to date only end-of-series cliffhanger, and an absolute whopper it is too - a situation made all the more frustrating by the fact that, back when it originally aired, we actually had to wait about 16 months for Series 6, only for it to be addressed in the lamest, more throwaway manner possible (more on that when I get on to reviewing Series 6).

Still, as season finales go, it’s a good one, thanks mainly to the “no holds barred” quality it has. With Mel’s death at the end of the previous series, we were shown that the regulars were by no means safe from harm, and so, when the lives of two of the main characters come under threat in this episode, we genuinely fear for them. At the heart of it all is Spence, who as I’ve mentioned before is, in my opinion, the least interesting of the original cast of five. He’s at his best in episodes that delve into his past (see also Series 3’s Final Cut), because they tend to be the only occasions on which he stops simply being a plod and is allowed to exist as an actual character. Here, in the classic “wrong man” tradition, he finds himself suspected of everything from destroying evidence to cold-blooded murder when vital evidence pertaining to a case he worked on as a uniformed PC back in the 80s goes missing from CCHQ (his pass having been used to gain access to the storage room), followed almost immediately by an arson attack on Central Lab in which further evidence pertaining to the case is lost.

Yeah, after watching the character for five years (six if you count the pilot), I’d find it a bit hard to swallow if he truly was corrupt, but that’s where the episode’s central twist lies. Again, I’d prefer not to give it away to those who are considering watching the series, so for the time being I’ll just say that someone on the team is involved in shady goings-on which have led to this situation, but aren’t fully aware of what they’ve got themselves involved in. As far as twists go, it’s a pretty good one, even if long-term viewers are unlikely to have any trouble fingering the culprit. Either way, it doesn’t really matter: the final half-hour is nail-biting stuff, and the cliffhanger I mentioned before could have been so good if the new regime that came in with the next series hadn’t completely dropped the ball.

Waking the Dead: Series 5, Episodes 9 and 10: Undertow

Written by Oliver Brown; Directed by David Thacker

Undertow is actually a rather better episode than I’d remembered, but it still suffers from the problem that plagues the other Series 5 episodes that don’t focus specifically on the past of one of the main characters: it seems almost like filler, as if the writers were really excited about delving into regulars’ back-stories and were simply treading water with the episodes in between. Here, the chance activation of the credit card of a murder victim sets in motion a chain of events that leads the team to suspect Steven Hunt (Stephen Moyer), a man currently serving the final stretch of a prison sentence for benefit fraud, of a series of past murders and attempted rapes. Lacking sufficient evidence, and meeting only hostility from Hunt and his family, Boyd decides to have him tailed when he is released, hoping he slips up and they get the evidence they need to pin on him before he finds his next victim.

As with Subterraneans, there’s no real effort made to conceal the killer’s identity: if there isn’t a giant sign saying “Guilty!” over Hunt’s head the moment he is introduced, then it’s well and truly lit up and flashing in neon by the one-hour mark. It’s not a negative as such, but it’s the second storyline of this season to follow such a formula, although at least this time round the audience isn’t constantly several steps ahead of the police. Actually, the writer of this episode does a rather good job of exploiting the team’s frustration at being 99% sure of the culprit’s identity but unable to do anything about it. For me personally, the most interesting aspect of the storyline was Grace’s use of the geography of the various attacks to help work out the killer’s identity, working from the hypothesis that most people don’t go further afield than they have to.

That said, particularly in the second half, things get a bit farcical, with Boyd first trying to drown Hunt, much to Grace’s consternation (“Why didn’t you just slap him about like you usually do?” she demands frostily - me thinks someone somewhere is taking the piss), and then agreeing to a completely asinine entrapment scam with Stella as Hunt’s bait. (We’re supposed to believe that, despite having been tasked with tailing him in the most obvious manner imaginable, Hunt isn’t going to recognise Stella as part of the police force.) As such, we end up in a situation where Part 1 is superior to Part 2, a problem which also plagued the two previous storylines in this series. I don’t dislike this episode by any means. The interplay between the team is still as good as ever, and the banter is often highly amusing, but it’s a minor effort overall.

Waking the Dead: Series 5, Episodes 7 and 8: Straw Dog

Written by Declan Croghan; Directed by Jim O’Hanlon

“Look, we’re not monsters, Sarah.” - Detective Constable Stella Goodman
“Speak for yourself.” - Detective Superintendent Peter Boyd

The following year, Declan Croghan would become Waking the Dead’s lead writer, presumably based on the strengths of this two-parter, which stands out as being by far the best of Series 5. Beyond any great flair in the writing however, this is Sue Johnston’s chance to shine as Grace, for once, steps into the spotlight to become the focus of an entire story. The backdrop is the first case she ever worked on with the police, back in 1980 - a particularly nasty affair involving a serial killer who chopped off his victims’ fingers and sent them to the senior investigating officer, DI Harry Taylor (Tom Ellis). In the present day, the man convicted for the murders, Tony Greene (David Norman), alleges that his confession was beaten out of him, with Grace softening him up psychologically before turning him over to Harry, a man with a suspiciously high rate of success in securing confessions. During the retrial, at which Grace is giving evidence, another victim is abducted and one of his fingers sent to CCHQ, along with a demand that Grace admit that Greene is innocent. As a result, Grace is forced to come face to face with her past and consider that what she remembers as a triumphant first success may in fact have involved her playing an unwitting role in a case of corruption.

Incidentally, at one point in the past I suggested that this episode contradicted an earlier mention by Grace of “kids she never sees” by implying that she never married or having children. Watching it again now, I don’t think it’s quite as clear-cut as this. Yes, it’s true that the scene in question, where Grace strongly urges Felix to have children if she gets the chance, does hint at a sense of longing on Grace’s part, but it’s far from conclusive. (And let’s not forget that she is shown to be wearing a wedding ring throughout. Actually, wait a minute - that in itself creates another inconsistency, as in the final episode of Series 2, Grace stated that her marriage didn’t last.) This scene, by the way, is a very good one, sensitively written and well acted by Sue Johnston and Esther Hall. Material like this would become increasingly less common by Series 6, so it’s very much appreciated here. Equally effective is the scene at the end of the first part, where Grace speaks directly to the abductor via the press. In fact, it’s possibly my all-time favourite moment in the history of the series: the writing has a simple but powerful quality, and the combination of the music and acting succeeds in taking it to another level entirely.

More than any other episode of Waking the Dead, this one relies very heavily on flashbacks, telling two concurrent stories - one in the past and one in the present. Once you get past the fact that the 1980 incarnation of Grace (Emma Lowndes, who otherwise does an impeccable job of mimicking Sue Johnston’s inflections and accent) looks a little too young (that, or the present-day incarnation looks a little too old), it’s possible to appreciate the rather effective recreation of a bygone period, with keen attention to the costume and production design. I’m also impressed by the fact that Croghan was able to create a convincing past for Grace which helps flesh out her character without detracting from or overly contradicting what we already knew about her. What lets the episode down, though, is the killer’s identity. I’d prefer not to spoil things too much for those who haven’t seen it, but let’s just say that it’s a predictable old cliché that reinforces a certain stereotype often perpetuated in films and television programmes about serial killers. It’s not enough to sour things completely, but it does mean that the denouement is less impressive than the setup. Even so, it’s the last of the truly great Waking the Deads, in my opinion. From this point on, possibly only Yahrzeit and Skin can hold a candle to what came before.

By the way, I apologise for having left this project hanging in the lurch for so long. I fully intend to complete it… provided I can work up the stamina to sit through the remainder of Series 6, that is.

Holby connections: director Jim O’Hanlon has helmed several episodes of Casualty and also wrote one episode in 2004.

Exotic treats from foreign lands

Although the vast majority of sites specialising in Blu-ray Disc news seem only to report on titles being released in America, a veritable treasure trove of titles lies beyond the borders of the US of A. It pays to keep an eye on what’s being released further afield - something which, in my laziness, I must admit I don’t always do. Imagine what a pleasant surprise I had, then, when, browsing the AV Science Forum today, I discovered that Alliance Atlantis in Canada are planning to release a whole host of titles unavailable on BD anywhere else, including Se7en, The Butterfly Effect and 21 Grams (thread here). Additionally, Sony’s UK wing will be releasing several titles on April 6th, including David Fincher’s Panic Room (thread here). Call me crazy, but I actually find myself revisiting it more than any of Fincher’s other films. Sure, you can argue that Se7en, Fight Club and Zodiac have more meat to them, but in terms of sheer entertainment I just love this unashamed piece of B-movie fun.

In any event, these four titles are must-buys for me. I actually had a hankering to watch Panic Room again recently, but I’m glad I held off, knowing that an HD release isn’t too far off. I mean, the bare-bones UK DVD is pretty nice as far as standard definition goes, but still…

Blu-ray review: The Messengers

A friend of mine once commented to me, in relation to another film entirely, that writing anything about it was a challenge because you can’t review thin air. I find myself in exactly the same boat with The Messengers: it doesn’t exist in a tangible form so much as it merely floats around in the ether for 90 minutes before promptly disappearing without a trace. It’s neither obnoxious nor offensive… it just is, which I would argue is just about the worst thing a film can possibly be. If you want to watch a recent ghost house movie, I recommend The Orphanage, which exploits the premise far more effectively and actually creates something approaching a lasting impression. Unless you have trouble sleeping, give The Messengers a miss.

I manage to cure my insomnia with The Messengers, a tiresome little haunted house movie starring Kristen Stewart (Panic Room, Twilight) and directed by the Pang brothers (The Eye), which should serve as a warning to any other promising filmmakers considering making the leap to Hollywood.

Review at DVD Times.

Right - let’s go adventuring

I completed Tomb Raider: Underworld last night. I’m working on a full review at the moment, which will hopefully go up later in the week, but, for the time being, let’s just say that it’s a great game that I heartily recommend. Legend is still my favourite game in the series since the Crystal Dynamics reboot - actually, scratch that, my favourite of all time - but this is a very strong follow-up that continues the story and develops the gameplay in a plausible and agreeable way. My main complaint would be the at times obtuse nature of the puzzles: I had to use a walkthrough on a number of occasions, generally after a good half-hour of running around in circles trying to work out where to go next. This is, in fact, my main reason for preferring Legend, which was considerably less daunting (although not a cakewalk by any stretch). Otherwise, though, I definitely recommend this game to those who enjoy platforming adventures in this mould, particularly those who, like me, found the similar Prince of Persia 2008 too simplistic.

Planet Terror Blu-ray impressions (long post)

My long-awaited copies of Planet Terror and Death Proof on BD arrived yesterday. We watched the former last night, and it was quite an interesting experience. As I’m sure just about everyone is aware, Planet Terror was shot digitally but, in an attempt to recreate the “grindhouse” aesthetic, director Robert Rodriguez intentionally added several layers of fake degradation, in the form of heavy grain, missing frames, splices, tramlines, dirt, scratches and other assorted artefacts. The end result is about as far from what most people expect from the high definition experience as you can get, to the extent that many have questioned the point of buying these films (Death Proof is similarly affected) in HD. I’ve always found such attitudes puzzling, since, from my perspective, lowering the resolution and adding a whole extra layer of digital artefacts, as you would get with the DVD editions, seems simply to be making the whole situation ten times worse. With the BD versions, you get something that is arguably closer to a “true” grindhouse experience, because the 1920x1080 resolution allows you to see every scratch, fleck and particle of grain, in addition to the underlying detail.

That’s not to say that the effect is entirely convincing. Watching the film at this high a resolution ably demonstrates that, while Rodriguez and co clearly wanted to evoke the aesthetic of damaged film, they don’t really understand how the process works. When the image warps and bends, it’s clearly the work of image manipulation software, and it’s somewhat distracting when you notice the same library of scratch effects being re-used again and again. That’s not to say that it’s an unpleasant experience, but I suspect the effect would have been a whole lot more convincing had Rodriguez done what Quentin Tarantino did with Death Proof and actually shot on film then physically degraded the elements rather than relying on computer trickery to fake it.

(Screen captures after the jump…)

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Just a little something to whet your appetites…

Mondo Vision’s official web site has finally been fully launched, now with complete information on the currently announced releases as well as the company itself. An extract from their philosophy:

We hope to be around for the years to come, and to give viewers the chance to experience some unique films from around the world, which would otherwise remain buried: a feast of insights into cinema at its most obscure, excessive, and marginalized, aimed at adventurous cinephiles eager to uncover lost and forgotten gems of subversive cinema. For us and our audience, these unique films and their respective directors represent filmmaking at its most challenging and brilliant. We hope you’ll join us!

At the same time, Mondo Vision has given the authoring house the go-ahead to post screen captures from Mondo Vision’s upcoming second DVD release, Andrzej Zulawksi’s 1975 film L’important c’est d’aimer (The Important Thing is to Love), which stars Romy Schneider, Fabio Testi, Jacques Dutronc and Klaus Kinski. As with the already available La femme publique, this will be the first ever release of the film to fully cater to English speakers. Currently, those not fluent in French have to make do with a frankly horrible-looking mess from German label New Entertainment World, released under the title of Nachtblende. I’ve actually read reviews which praise this catastrophe, so I can only imagine what the feedback will be like once Mondo Vision’s edition hits the shelves.

Some screengrabs from the Mondo Vision version:

And here’s the Nachtblende disc that it’s up against:

Note: we have reason to believe that both transfers were minted from exactly the same source. Make of that what you will.

The Messengers Blu-ray impressions

The thing about buying a movie blind, having never seen it before and knowing next to nothing about it, is that you’re taking a risk. It might turn out to be great and it might turn out to be awful, but it you don’t take the plunge, you’ll never know. That may be stating the obvious, but the notion of risk-taking is something that doesn’t seem to ever have occurred to the makers of The Messengers, a “scary house” movie so bland and innocuous that it feels like a 90-minute void rather than a film. The first English-language feature directed by the legendary Pang brothers (The Eye, Bangkok Dangerous), I’m tempted to assume that the language barrier is the reason for them failing to extract anything that might be classed as performances from the cast (which includes Kristen Stewart, she of Panic Room and the current smash hit, Twilight), but then again the script they’re working from is so anaemic and riddled with implausibilities that I don’t think anyone could have made something worthwhile out of it.

My advice? Watch The Orphanage instead.

In what seems like a sick joke on the part of the authoring team, Momentum’s BD (UK, all regions) is very nice indeed. In addition to an impressive Dolby Digital 5.1 (640 Kbps) track, which does a fine job of highlighting the fact that lossless audio is not the be all and end all of HD sound, the transfer is very nice indeed, particularly given that it is an MPEG-2 encode on a single-layer BD25. Are there any imperfections? Well, there is some block noise in the shadows at times, as well as a small number of instances of banding on gradients, and some minor quantisation that really shouldn’t be visible during “normal” playback. Otherwise, I didn’t notice any major issues when watching the film on a 123” display, so, barring these niggles, there’s nothing to complain about at all. Except the film, that is. 9/10

The Messengers
studio: Momentum; country: UK; region code: ABC;
codec: MPEG-2; file size: 18.6 GB; average bit rate: 29.56 Mbit/sec

Prince of Persia (2008) final impressions (long post)

Note: this is not a full review as such, but rather a final summing up of some points I didn’t address in my initial post on the game.

We’re only a few days into the new year and already I’m falling behind in my promise to post more. If I’d been keeping up with myself, I’d have told you that I completed Prince of Persia 2008 a couple of days before Christmas. What has motivated me to post about it now is an interesting video feature about it made by Shamus Young, whose blog, Twenty Sided, is one of my daily pit stops. In Shamus’ view, Prince of Persia is “the most innovative game of 2008”. Well, with a claim as brazen as that, I just had to watch the video to find out his reasons, particularly given that my reaction to the game was somewhat more lukewarm.

I’ve only come across a small number of bloggers who write extremely intelligently about games, and Shamus is one of those precious few. His arguments regarding Prince of Persia and the accessibility of games in general make a lot of sense, and I’m even tempted to say I agree with him 100% as far as his overview of the situation goes. Where I disagree is with regard to the desired outcome. In a nutshell, Shamus would like to see everyone playing games, and he believes the best way to do this is to effectively level the playing field. He presents Nintendo’s Wii as an example of this strategy working. Unfortunately, from my perspective, the Wii is a prime example of what I don’t want to see happen to gaming on a widespread basis. Ignoring the fact that I find most of the games on that platform dull and anaemic beyond belief (something which Shamus addresses, pointing out that, while the Wii’s games may not appeal to everyone, the overall philosophy behind them can and should be carried over to other styles), I find the whole concept of a “casual” gaming platform where everything is dumbed down to appeal to the lowest common denominator repellent. True, the end result is that everyone’s in the same boat, but that’s only because the control system is so clumsy that everyone, regardless of their gaming ability, ends up thrashing around like a disabled jellyfish.

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Operation red menace

Attention, comrades! Who can withstand the charms of Tim Curry hamming it up with his most overdone Rrrrrrussian accent?

Ivana Miličević certainly can’t, which is presumably why she can’t keep a straight face during this mission briefing FMV. Call me crazy, but when I can tell people have had a lot of fun making something, I definitely find myself more likely to enjoy the end product. Silly, intentionally hammy video sequences like these are the perfect antidote to the sort of overblown, pompous imitations of Hollywood that we’re increasingly finding in computer games. The fact that the editor had enough of a sense of humour to leave the aforementioned flub in just seals the deal. You can watch the FMV in question on YouTube at http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=16Mpc3ux4Wk - skip ahead to 4:25. (Miličević, by the way, appeared in Casino Royale as Mads Mikkelsen’s girlfriend - the one who did very little other than to almost have her arm lopped off. She also played Riley Finn’s annoying wife in that dreadful Season 6 episode of Buffy the Vampire Slayer, As You Were, the only redeeming feature of which was that at least it wasn’t Hell’s Bells, which followed immediately after it. I’m still undecided as to whether her role here constitutes a step up or a step down from these. At least here, she and Tim Curry have fun trying to outdo each other in the “ridiculous accent” stakes.)

Yes, I now own a copy of Command & Conquer: Red Alert 3. As I mentioned in a previous post, EA have relented somewhat and released a patch for the game, allowing users to deactivate their copies and no longer be limited to the idiotic “five installs only” cut-off. Is the situation ideal? No, it absolutely isn’t. You still have to connect to EA’s server to activate your copy, just so you can play it at all (and that includes the single player mode), which is all well and good until EA either goes down the can or decides to stop maintaining the activation server (whichever happens first), and, in the event of a system crash, preventing you from manually disabling your copy, that means one of your five activations will be lost to the ages. Still, I can’t deny that this is a step in the right direction, and it gives me confidence that EA may, at least, have come round to the fact that their moronic rights management implementation may have done them considerably more harm than good. (Similar deauthorisation tools have also been released for Bioshock and Spore, the latter being the game that kicked off the public backlash against this whole sorry affair. Of course, whether similar tools will be released for Mass Effect, Crysis Warhead et al remains to be seen. Frankly, I’m not holding my breath.)

Still, at least I am now able to enjoy a very fun RTS punctuated by FMV sequences that are every bit as entertaining as the game itself. EA have created a great game here; it’s just a shame they had to turn so many potential customers away from it with their needless DRM.

That was the year that was

With another year been and gone, now seems like a good time to sit back and reflect on the past 365 days. I’ve experienced some highs and lows, the lowest of which would undoubtedly be losing my last two surviving grandparents in the space of a few months. On the upside, I feel that I’ve begun to make real progress with my PhD, which is finally evolving into something tangible, the process of which will no doubt continue in 2009. Otherwise, I can’t say that very much has changed for me. I continued to work part-time in my job at the library, with the various rounds of staff transfers mercifully passing me by and life continuing as before. Is it my dream job? No, I should say not, and I’d be lying if I said I didn’t go through periods of finding it (and the Great British public) incredibly frustrating. However, all things considered, I can think of plenty other less desirable jobs I could be doing. At least this one is convenient and, all things considered, reasonably well-paid.

 
Zeros and Ones

In relation to the battle between rival high definition formats Blu-ray and HD DVD, last year’s annual round-up included the statement “With no end to the format war in sight any time soon, 2008 looks set to be another interesting year.” Well, it seemed that I’d barely finished writing those words when the HD DVD camp threw in the towel. To be honest, the writing had been on the wall for some time, but several people, myself included, still adopted an “It ain’t over ‘til it’s over” mentality in the early days of 2008. With Warner’s abandonment of the format only a few days later, however, the writing was well and truly on the wall. Within days, the game was up and the remaining HD DVD-supporting majors (Universal and Paramount) were pledging allegiance to the Blu flag. In any event, once the stragglers got up and running, it turned out to be a pretty damn good year for HD content, with some truly amazing transfers seeing the light of day, while the arrival of several high profile titles such as The Godfather trilogy and The Dark Knight, plus the certainty afforded by there now only being a single HD format, undoubtedly contributed to more people taking the plunge and lending their support to the platform.

I bought myself a new computer - a full tower system after my brief dalliance with the world of small form factors the previous year. After relying on my more technologically competent relatives in the past, I was quite pleased with myself for managing to build the whole thing from scratch myself - seriously, deciphering some of those poorly translated user manuals practically requires a diploma in itself. I also upgraded my PC’s aged Creative audio system with some nice new Logitech speakers and a veritable beast of a subwoofer. I also ultimately succeeded in going region-free for Blu-ray playback, thanks to SlySoft’s AnyDVD HD software, allowing me to use my system as a multi-region HD home theatre PC.

 
At the Pictures

This year, my brother put together a pretty impressive projection system, accompanied by a meaty sound setup, allowing us to enjoy a film-watching environment that more closely approximates the big screen experience. Despite this, however, my overall viewing figures were somewhat reduced in 2008 compared with 2007 (themselves a reduction from 2006). I maintain a log of all the films I watch, and the total tally for 2008 is 128, 67 of which were first time viewings. The increasingly wide array of available Blu-ray titles certainly led to me taking increased risks with titles I hadn’t previously seen, but at the same time caused me to be far less likely to tune in to television broadcasts of films. (I watched 56 films on Blu-ray, 44 on DVD and 14 on HD DVD, versus 7 on TV.)

I got the opportunity to see several what might be termed “significant” films, among them the great - 28 Weeks Later, Across the Universe, Atonement, Bonnie and Clyde, Close Encounters of the Third Kind, Dark City, Eastern Promises, Enchanted, Fight Club, The Fly (the David Cronenberg version), Juno, The Life Before Her Eyes, The Maltese Falcon, A Matter of Loaf and Death, Mean Girls, One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, The Orphanage, Persepolis, The Plague Dogs, Rabid Dogs, The Shining, Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street, Volver, Wall-E - the good - The Adventures of Baron Munchausen, Almost Famous, Blow, The Brave One, Chungking Express, La Femme Publique, Grindhouse, Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull, Kiki’s Delivery Service, Memento, My Blueberry Nights, Nikita, Resident Evil: Extinction, School of Rock, Shaun of the Dead, La Vie en Rose - the disappointing - 30 Days of Night, All the Boys Love Mandy Lane, The Dark Knight, Doomsday, Gone Baby Gone, Running Scared, Tekkonkinkreet - and the downright dreadful - Freddy Got Fingered, Omen IV: The Awakening and, last but not least, Seytan.

Best film I saw this year? Definitely Atonement. Worst? Oh, come on, do I even have to answer that? I saw Freddy Got Fingered, for god’s sake.

 
Bibliothèque

Much to my chagrin, my reading this year was pretty limited. In addition to perusing a number of academic tomes as part of my PhD research, I sat down with The Field of Blood, The Last Breath, Garnethill, Exile and Resolution by Denise Mina, Day After Day by Carlo Lucarelli, An Unsuitable Job for a Woman by P.D. James, Demo by Alison Miller, The Deceiver and The Fourth Protocol by Frederick Forsythe, and Above Suspicion by Lynda La Plante. I also re-read Mercy Alexander by George Tiffin, and tucked into The God Delusion by Richard Dawkins - the latter serving as my sole piece of non-fiction reading that had no direct relation to my PhD. I also started Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy by John Le Carré, a celebrated classic that I must admit I’m making very slow progress with indeed.

 
Song and Dance

I picked up the following CDs: Atonement (Dario Marianelli), Echoes of War: The Music of Blizzard Entertainment (Eminence Symphony Orchestra), Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull, The Pink and the Lily (Sandi Thom) and Planet Terror (Robert Rodriguez).

Top 10 HD Transfers of 2008

2008 has been quite a year for high definition. In addition to the emergence of Blu-ray as the clear winner of the format war with HD DVD, it has seen the steady growth of HD as a mass market option, with sales becoming increasingly healthy - aided, no doubt, by the release of high profile titles like The Godfather trilogy and The Dark Knight. That the latter shifted some 1.7 million copies in its first week, accounting for 13% of the film’s sales on home video, demonstrates that Blu-ray is well on the way to becoming a format not just for AV and cinema enthusiasts but also for the general public.

For my first feature of 2009, I look back over the past year with my picks for the best-looking high definition releases of 2008, boiling the year’s impressive output down to a list of ten particularly distinguished titles. Head over to DVD Times to find out what made the grade.

Happy New Year 2009!

Well, 2008 came and went a lot more quickly than I was expecting. I’ll be doing one of my usual annual summaries later, but for now I thought I’d do something completely new and write down some New Year’s resolutions. In the past, I’ve scoffed at such practices, believing that, if you want to change something, the best time to do it is now, not when you hang up the new calendar. However, I’m beginning to come round to the notion that, sometimes, we all need an extra little kick to do the things we know we should do but can’t face up to, and the start of a new year seems like as good a time as any to make an actual commitment. So, without further ado, here are my goals for 2009, in no particular order:

Write more reviews. Once upon a time, I was quite prolific as a writer at DVD Times. In 2008, however, my output slowed to a trickle. Some of this can be blamed on my workload: I’m researching a PhD and also holding down a part-time job. That said, I could definitely stand to make better use of my free time, so my first resolution for 2009 is to attempt to write one review per week. These might not all be fully-fledged, in-depth pieces like my Wall-E Blu-ray review, which was a massive undertaking, but I could at least stand to write technical reviews of BDs whose DVD counterparts have already been covered either by myself or other DVD Times reviews.

Pay off my student loan. When I did my undergraduate degree between 2001 and 2005, I took out a student loan. Given that I lived at home and was within easy travelling distance of the university, I qualified for the smallest available loan, something which I am now exceedingly glad of, having heard the figures bandied about by some former students (particularly those in the US - yikes!). In comparison, £2,500 feels quite maneagable, and, in any event, payment will be facilitated somewhat by a generous donation I received from a dead relative on Christmas Day (thanks, Gran).

Lose weight. In Spring of 2005, I lost a considerable amount of weight in a short space of time. Unfortunately, some of that has subsequently piled back on, and while I’m far from as large as I once was, I could stand to be smaller. I can also see myself ending up on the slippery slope to becoming a fatty again, something I don’t particularly want to happen. I don’t subscribe to any particularly outlandish diets: my weight loss system is basically “Three square meals a day, five portions of fruit and nothing else in between.” It worked in 2005, and it can work again in 2009. All it takes is a little willpower in the first couple of weeks, and then I don’t even miss the crisps, sweets etc.

Watch more films. I saw a number of “significant” films in 2008, some of which I’ll list in my review of 2008 post. In general, though, viewing figures were down: I saw a total of 67 films for the first time, a mere seven of which were released that year. I’m not much of a cinema-goer these days - I tend to think it’s just not worth the hassle - but I could have done better. I still can’t believe I didn’t at least go to see Quantum of Solace. I know some people try to watch a film every single day, but that’s just not possible from my point of view: as much as I’d like it to, my entire life doesn’t revolve around watching movies. I’m not going to make a pledge to watch X number of movies this year, as I surely wouldn’t be able to keep to it, so I’m simply going to say “I’ll do better.”

Post more. I definitely wrote considerably fewer posts for this site in 2008 than I did in 2007. While I wouldn’t say I neglected the site as such, I do think I could have written more. While I’m not a believer in posting something every day simply for the sake of it, on far too many occasions I neglected to post a news item that either myself or others would have found interesting simply because I couldn’t be bothered. I’m not sure what the solution to this is, but I know some people have a habit of setting aside a specific time of the day for blogging, so that’s one possible answer. In any event, expect to see more activity at Land of Whimsy in 2009.