Animation

Was Ratatouille robbed?

CNN has posted a very interesting article pertaining to Brad Bird and Pixar’s latest feature, Ratatouille, and its lack of a nomination in the Best Picture category at this year’s Academy Awards.

As you probably know by now, a new category, Best Animated Feature, made its début during the 2002 Academy Awards, essentially relegating animated fare as somehow separate from live action. In a sense, it’s not all that different from the fate that has befallen non-English language films with the Best Foreign Language Film category (introduced in 1947) or short subjects with the Best Short Film category. In a sense, there’s nothing to stop a film that corresponds to one of these categories (i.e. animated, foreign, short) from also being entered into the prestigious Best Picture category, but something of a glass ceiling is created. In effect, the impression given seems to be that, because these films have their “own” categories, they have their own sandboxes to play in and don’t need to intrude on the live action, English-language feature-length films.

I’m of two minds about this, personally. Unlike some, I personally don’t really think that the Oscars count for all that much at the end of the day; I do, however, take an interest in the way animation is treated by the Oscars, mainly because I suspect that it is, in some way, broadly representative of how the mainstream movie world (both the industry itself and filmgoers) views the art form. Animation is often regarded, whether consciously or not, as somehow inferior to live action, perhaps partly because it is so commonly associated with children’s entertainment. Therefore, part of me thinks that the Best Animated Feature is probably a good idea, because it allows films that would otherwise probably have been completely ignored the chance to share in some of the glory by having the chance to bag a golden man. (That said, it does have the unfortunate side effect of meaning that a set number of animated features have to be nominated every year, which leads to the likes of the 2005 awards, where the winning The Incredibles was ludicrously put up against Shark Tale and Shrek 2.) And hey, when all said and done, let’s not forget that Ratatouille is in the running for four other awards besides Best Animated Feature, among them Screenwriting (a bit bizarre for a film whose plot and dialogue evolved primarily on storyboards). It’s not as if it’s being completely left out in the cold.

But (and it’s a big “but”) my main problem with the Best Animated Feature category is that it essentially means that, in the foreseeable future, it’s unlikely that an animated film is going to be considered for the Best Picture category (Beauty and the Beast in 1991 being the only time this ever happened). Just as The Lives of Others and Pan’s Labyrinth were denied a Best Picture nod last year, the notion seems to be that animated (and foreign, and short) features are already covered elsewhere, so don’t have to detract from the attention being given to the “big boys”. In effect, “Best Picture” should really read “Best Live Action Feature-Length Picture Shot in English”,* which is a bit of a mouthful but probably a more accurate representation of the state of affairs.

* That’s not to say that animated or foreign-language films have never been or never will be nominated for Best Picture, but broadly speaking this tends to be the case. To date, only eight non-English language films and one animated film have been nominated in this category.

Writerspeak

I’m not sure whether John Kricfalusi was the first person to coin the term “writerspeak”, but his was certainly the first web site on which I read the term. He offers an excellent post pertaining to the writing of dialogue for animation, although I suspect that many live action screenwriters could benefit from reading it as well. In a sense, most of what he says is common sense, but sometimes you need to see things written down to actually understand the logic behind them.

John defines writerspeak as this:

A lot of characters in modern cartoons are simply mouthpieces for the writers. They speak in the writer’s voice rather than the character’s voice, tell the jokes that the writer and his writer friends think are funny, but are totally out-of-character for the character who is actually saying them. This common writer’s flaw is known as “writerspeak”.

I’d like to go one step further. I think there are basically three different categories of bad dialogue writing that can be claimed to be writerspeak:

1. A character suddenly says something that completely contradicts their personality because a writer thought of a funny line of dialogue and wants to show everyone how clever he/she is… even if the character is normally supposed to be a complete dolt. See just about every prime-time sitcom, animated or otherwise. In some shows, such as Family Guy, none of the characters have defined personalities anyway, so whenever someone speaks, it sounds like they’re suffering from schizophrenia.

It works both ways, though. Sometimes, a writer will make a character appear more stupid than they normally are for the sake of a joke. Here’s an exchange from the Season 2 episode of Buffy the Vampire Slayer, When She Was Bad:

Willow: I mean, why else would she be acting like such a B-I-T-C-H?

Giles: Willow, I think we’re a little too old to be spelling things out.

Xander: A bitka?

Not only is Xander’s contribution eye-rollingly unfunny, it demeans the character something rotten. He may not be the sharpest tool in the box at times, but are we seriously expected to believe that he can’t spell the word “bitch”? It’s an excruciatingly bad bit of dialogue, even by the already low standards of writerspeak, because the very joke that the character is sacrificed for doesn’t even work.

2. A character tells us how they’re feeling or what they’re doing, despite it being blatantly obvious what’s happening if you just open your eyes and look at the visuals. Again, the sitcoms, whether animated or live action, are particularly strong offenders. This often manifests itself in the over-explanation of jokes. To quote the recent Simpsons movie, we see Fat Tony and his thugs hauling a bag which obviously contains a body towards the newly walled-off lake:

Chief Wiggum: Uh sorry, sorry, no dumping in the lake.

Fat Tony: Fine, I will put my “yard trimmings” in a car compactor.

Fat Tony and his men now walk off with the body. See, that on its own is quite funny. It’s an amusing sight gag that relies half on the presence of the body (shown visually) and half on the stupidity of Chief Wiggum (conveyed through dialogue). However, not content to simply leave it at that, the writer (one of the dozen or so credited as having worked on the script) has to spell it out for us in case we didn’t get it:

Lou: Uh, Chief, I think there was a dead body in there.

A lot of writers struggle to think visually. They feel that, unless an idea is expressed in dialogue, it won’t register. That’s probably because they spend most of the day staring at text typed up on a screen or on paper. Furthermore, if you’ve ever read a script, you’ll know that it’s much easier to read dialogue than to read descriptive text. For a start, it takes up less space. For another thing, it tends to flow better. Long, descriptive passages of action or non-action can be extremely tedious both to write and to read - it stands to reason, because the written word is simply not suited to describing visuals in a coherent, efficient manner. Scripts aren’t like novels - you don’t have the luxury of spending pages and pages describing a situation in minute detail. (Given that animation is traditionally highly visual, is it any wonder that cartoons written on scripts rather than conceptualised on storyboards are loaded to the gills with writerspeak?)

3. A character tells another something they already know for the benefit of the audience. The Rock contains an absolute doozy:

Chief Justice: This is for the sake of national security.

Womack: No, it’s the sake of national security that got us here in the first place thirty-three years ago. I knew some day this would come back to bite us. Forget it. He does not exist!

Chief Justice: He does exist! We just chose to forget about him for thirty years. We locked him up and threw away the key.

Womack: Oh, and a lot of goddamn good it did us. He broke out of two maximum security prisons, and if he hits the streets…

Chief Justice: He’s not going to hit the streets, Jim! Thirty years ago he was a highly-trained SAS operative. He is my age now, for Christ’s sake. I have to get up three times a night to take a piss!

Womack: We can’t risk letting him out. He’s a professional escape artist.

Before you ask what’s wrong with this exchange, bear in mind that both characters were already privy to all this information before they opened their mouths. It’s only one step removed from those phone calls where you only see one side of the conversation so Character A repeats back everything Character B said. (“Why, I’d love to come to a party at your place at six o’clock tonight. What’s that? You want me to bring a bottle of wine? But of course I will!”) I’m not sure who penned this Shakespearian exchange (Weisberg/Cook? Mark Rosner? Jonathan Hensleigh? Quentin Tarantino? Aaron Sorkin? Clement/La Frenais? They, among many others, contributed to the script, many of them uncredited), but it’s absolutely magical, one of the finest examples of writerspeak and makes me laugh every time I hear it.

I’m not claiming to be some sort of dialogue writing expert. Writing convincing dialogue is hard - I know this from experience. But really, there’s no excuse for some of the travesties I’ve mentioned above… unless they were meant to be intentionally funny, which I somehow doubt.

We are as gods… oh, wait, those halos aren’t meant to be there

As you can probably tell by the title of this post, the HD DVD release of Asterix and the Vikings isn’t perfect. It is, however, somewhat better than The Simpsons Movie, which is comparable in that it is one of only a very small number of digitally sourced, 2D animated titles released in high definition (the others I’ve seen being the very good-looking Les Triplettes of Belleville on HD DVD and the deeply underwhelming Paprika on Blu-ray).

The Simpsons movie was filtered, resulting in noticeable ringing around outlines, and so is Asterix, only less so. In many of the captures posted below, the ringing is difficult to miss, but it could have been a lot worse, and only results in a small reduction in the overall detail levels (I have some unfiltered 1920x1080 publicity stills to compare with the DVD captures). Compression is generally very good, despite the low bit rate, although, on a related note, there is some of the banding commonly associated with gradients in digitally-sourced animated features (see Shot 1), as well as a strange horizontal line artefact in a handful of shots (look closely at Asterix’s hair in Shot 11). I previously saw this on the Platinum Edition DVD of The Jungle Book, so I’m wondering if it’s another issue common to digitally sourced animation.

Unfortunately, both audio tracks (English and French) are out of sync, lagging slightly behind the video. It’s incredibly distracting, since, given the nature of animation timing, even knocking the sound out by three or four frames can be very noticeable.

Astérix et les Vikings
(M6 Vidéo, France, VC-1, 12.9 GB)

Hello, it’s me, I’m back from the sea

Well, not literally, because I wasn’t anywhere near the sea. But it is indeed me, and I am indeed back. As I mentioned previously, I was away at my gran’s funeral, which was held down in Warwick, meaning that we had to head down a day early and come back a day late. I’m not sure what I can really say about it (“I’d give this funeral a 6/10” doesn’t sound quite right), except that the cremation was set to a piece of music by Ennio Morricone, chosen by my aunt. Unfortunately, it wasn’t anything daring like the opening title theme to Four Flies on Grey Velvet, which would have been an eye-opener indeed (although I do think Come un Madrigale could have worked), but rather a piece from one of his Hollywood projects, The Mission.

Anyway, over the last three days, I’ve spent about twenty hours sitting in the back of a car, so I’m understandably not feeling entirely loquacious at the moment. Just a quick note to say that the French HD DVD release of Asterix and the Vikings and the US Blu-ray release of Volver were waiting for me when I got back this evening, so I’ll be discussing them in due course. Hopefully tomorrow, but I’ve had very little sleep over the last couple of nights, due to a variety of factors, so I’ll be hitting the hay before too long. I need to be up at 6:30 for work anyway.

PS. Thanks for all the well-wishing, people. For those who asked, no, this was not exactly an unexpected death. My gran had Dementia and had been going south for a long time. She more or less spent the last month of her life unconscious, and I think most of us would have agreed that it was better for her to go now than to hang on in there without any real quality of life.

DVDs I bought or received in the month of January

• 28 Weeks Later (RA USA, Blu-ray)
• Cat People (R0 USA, HD DVD)
• Eastern Promises (R0 USA, HD DVD)
• Factory Girl (R2 UK, DVD)
• Little Children (R2 UK, DVD)
• Munich (R2 UK, DVD)
• Pan’s Labyrinth (R0 USA, HD DVD)
• The Plague Dogs (R2 UK, DVD)
• The Simpsons Movie (RA USA, Blu-ray)
• Y Tu Mamá También (R2 UK, DVD)
   

DVD review: The Plague Dogs

The Plague Dogs is a film that I can honestly say I don’t ever want to watch again, and I mean that in the best possible way.

I’ve reviewed Optimum Home Entertainment’s recent release of The Plague Dogs, Martin Rosen’s second and final animated feature and a spiritual successor to the earlier Watership Down. Optimum’s DVD includes both the shorter theatrical cut and the much longer director’s edition.
 

I’ve got the joy, joy, joy, joy down in my heart…

Apologies for the lack of updates yesterday. So far this year, I’ve done a pretty good job of posting at least one new item every day, but last night, I wasn’t feeling jolly enough to turn my mind to the wonders of the interweb. The reason for that is that I’d just watched Optimum’s recent DVD release of The Plague Dogs, a check disc for which I’d received on Tuesday for review at DVD Times. I’d never seen the film before, but I had seen director Martin Rosen’s previous animated feature, Watership Down, so I knew I shouldn’t expect a laugh riot. I also knew how the film would end, but despite this, the final scene hit me like a punch in the gut and left me emotionally drained in a way that I can’t remember a film having done to me in over a decade.

I’m currently in the process of putting the finishing touches to my review, and late last night, while sitting in front of my computer writing about the final scene, I did something I’ve never done before: I sat there and bawled my eyes out. It’s not a perfect film, and in fact along the way there is some frankly boring and meandering material, but it’s worth sitting through for the ending, provided you don’t have a problem with feeling like shit for some time afterwards.

The review should go up at midday (GMT) today, and I must say I’ll be relieved to get this over with, because I don’t particularly want to think about the film again for a long time, much less rewatch it.

The Warner shopping list

With Warner’s HD DVD support on the way out, it no doubt stands to reason that the titles they have already released on at format will now only be on store shelves for a limited time. With that in mind, I thought it would be useful to put together this little post together, cataloguing Warner titles that are either not (yet) available on Blu-ray, or are available on Blu-ray in inferior versions, therefore giving people the opportunity to pick up any titles they want before it’s too late.

Please note that this list is not complete by any means, so if you spot any missing titles, or title that are there but shouldn’t be, then please leave me a comment and I’ll make the necessary changes.

Titles which feature superior audio on HD DVD:

- The Ant Bully (TrueHD)
- Happy Feet (TrueHD)
- Lady in the Water (TrueHD)
- Nip/Tuck: The Complete Fourth Season (1.5 Mbps on HD DVD, 640 Kbps on BD)
- The Phantom of the Opera (TrueHD)
- Superman Returns (TrueHD)
- Training Day (TrueHD)
- The Wicker Man [remake] (TrueHD)

Titles which feature VC-1 encodes on HD DVD but MPEG-2 on BD:

- The Fugitive
- Good Night, and Good Luck
- Kiss Kiss Bang Bang
- Rumor Has It
- Space Cowboys
- Training Day

Titles which are limited to 1080i output on BD:

- Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines (replacement programme expected)

Titles which feature more extras on HD DVD:

- 300
- Blood Diamond
- Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire
- Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix
- Pan’s Labyrinth (New Line)
- Troy: Director’s Cut

Titles which are currently only available on HD DVD:

- The Adventures of Robin Hood
- Batman Begins
- Caddyshack
- Casablanca
- Charlie and the Chocolate Factory
- Constantine
- The Dukes of Hazzard
- Excalibur
- Forbidden Planet
- Grand Prix
- The Matrix Trilogy
- Mutiny on the Bounty
- The Perfect Storm
- Poseidon
- Troy (theatrical cut)
- V for Vendetta
- Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory

It stands to reason that, with PiP now working on Profile 1.1 Blu-ray players, Warner will begin to release titles originally delayed on Blu-ray because the functionality wasn’t there, including Batman Begins and The Matrix Trilogy. Older catalogue titles such as Casablanca and Mutiny on the Bounty reportedly sold poorly on HD DVD, and have no technological reason not to have been released on Blu-ray, so it may be that Warner will simply write them off as expensive mistakes until high definition media has a larger market hold.

Update, January 7th, 2007 02:25 PM: Added Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines, which on BD is limited to 1080i output rather than full 1080p (thanks to Jayson for pointing this one out).

Update, January 7th, 2007 08:01 PM: Added Training Day to the audio section and Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory to the “not available on BD” section. Thanks again, Jayson.

Update, January 10th, 2007 06:51 PM: Removed Million Dollar Baby from the “Titles which feature VC-1 encodes on HD DVD but MPEG-2 on BD” section, as it is in fact a VC-1 encode on both formats (thanks, Anthony).

Update, January 11th, 2007 08:59 AM: Added various titles to the audio section (thanks, Anthony).

Feature: Top 10 HD Transfers of 2007

In years gone by, I’ve done articles, either for DVD Times or for this site, to celebrate the best (and sometimes worst) DVD releases of the year. For reasons too complex to get into (translation: I can’t remember them), I didn’t do one last year, but I decided that I couldn’t repeat this oversight again. So, with that in mind, I’ve taken a break from complaining about edge enhancement, filtering and dodgy standards conversions to say nothing but nice things. Be amazed at my coverage of the Top 10 HD Transfers of 2007.

A $75 million turkey

My first two optical discs of 2008 arrived this morning, and I’m sorry to say that neither one turned out to be particularly impressive, albeit for different reasons. The first, The Simpsons Movie on Blu-ray, I’ll discuss in a minute, but for the moment, I want to take a moment to discuss Cat People on HD DVD (the Paul Schrader remake, not the Val Lewton original), which features, hands down, the worst high definition transfer I’ve ever paid money to see. Okay, so Traffic and Spartacus (both also from Universal, as it happens) both look worse, but I didn’t pay to see these.

From start to finish Cat People has been attacked, and I mean attacked, with the edge enhancement and noise reduction filters, to the extent that every high contrast edge is surrounded by a large white outline, and every time the camera moves the screen turns to mush, while every texture, from skin to fabric to hair, looks like wax. Even more infuriatingly, the clips that play behind the main menu look nothing like this. They are alive with unmolested film grain and, beyond the still-visible edge enhancement, generally look pretty tolerable. Now don’t get me wrong: I suspect that the master used was less than stellar to start with, as is true of many catalogue titles from Universal and other studios. However, I also suspect that, had the image simply been left alone, it would have looked no worse than the likes of Enternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind and Lost in Translation, which fall way below my standards of acceptability but are at least watchable. Cat People is just… ugh.

Now, on to the main point of this post (no, I’m not done ranting): The Simpsons Movie. I’ll probably be doing a full review for this at some point, so I’ll withhold my comments about the transfer until then, save to say that the ringing that some people have pointed out is indeed present from beginning to end, and you’ll no doubt be able to see the evidence on my brother’s site when he does his own post on the subject very soon. (Incidentally, it really sticks in my craw when people don’t themselves see problems that have been identified with transfers, and illustrated through solid evidence, and have the audacity to claim that those who do see them either have faulty equipment or have somehow got “a bad copy” of the disc in question. If you have even the slightest comprehension of how digital replication works, then you’ll know how ridiculous the latter is.)

No, my blithering will primarily be restricted to the film itself and what a tragic waste of time it is.

I like The Simpsons, I really do. The first five seasons are almost consistently hilarious, and, for all their bland animation and shoddy timing, they are pretty hard to fault. However, I think it’s fair to say that the show has not been at its prime for some time now, and the only thing worse than a has-been show is one that is unceremoniously hauled on to the big screen, where the flaws become even more readily apparent.

I saw The Simpsons Movie late last summer and was thoroughly underwhelmed by it. Foolishly, I thought that a second viewing might improve my appreciation of it, so I decided to pick up a copy of the Blu-ray release. Besides, we’re somewhat starved for high definition traditional animation, so, as the saying goes, beggars can’t be choosers. Unfortunately, I now find myself wishing I hadn’t bothered. The simple reason for this is that, second time round, I already knew the story, so there was nothing, and I mean nothing, left to engage me. Had this, the result of the toiling of fifteen writers, god knows how many animators and a gaggle of overpaid actors who sound like they’ve never taken voice direction in their lives (that’s $75 million to you and me), been broadcast as part of the regular series, it would have been the worst episode of The Simpsons I’ve ever seen (bearing in mind that I stopped watching regularly at around Season 11). As it stands, it’s three times longer than the worst episode of The Simpsons I’ve ever seen, which means that it’s actually three times worse than the worst episode of The Simpsons I’ve ever seen. And I’ve seen the one where Homer gets raped by a panda.

I don’t often say “Can I have an hour and a half of my life back?” after watching a film, no matter how bad, but I’m going to say it this time. I honestly can’t understand how anyone could have a positive word to say about it. The sad part is that it isn’t even awful. It’s just empty, bland, insincere and ultimately pointless. It’s not even funny - I laughed at it perhaps three times: once at Bart’s “doodle”, once at the gag where Bart defaces the Wanted picture of his family (itself a retread of a gag used at least twice before in the show), and then at the one genuinely funny line in the entire film: “You just bought another load of crap from the world’s fattest fertiliser salesman!” Which, oddly enough, is exactly how I felt when I remembered I’d given 20th Century Fox my money for this film.

So can I have an hour and a half of my life back, please?

Update, January 3rd, 2008 09:52 PM: Lyris’ post, with pictures, can now be found here.

It’s sweepstakes time!

Top 10 films of 2007:

1. Black Book (Netherlands/Germany/Belgium: Paul Verhoeven)
2. Zodiac (USA: David Fincher)
3. The Lives of Others (Germany, Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck)
4. Planet Terror (USA: Robert Rodriguez)
5. Sicko (USA: Michael Moore)
6. Hot Fuzz (UK/France: Edgar Wright)
7. Ratatouille (USA: Brad Bird)
8. Death Proof (USA: Quentin Tarantino)
9. Black Snake Moan (USA: Craig Brewer)
10. Mother of Tears (Italy/USA: Dario Argento)

(Also posted at DVD Times)
 

Top 10 optical disc releases of 2007:

Black Book (Blu-ray, Sony Pictures, USA)
Blade Runner: 5-disc Complete Collector’s Edition (HD DVD, Warner, USA)
Cars (Blu-ray, Disney, USA)
Casino Royale (Blu-ray, Sony Pictures, Finland)
Children of Men (HD DVD, Universal, USA)
Hot Fuzz (HD DVD, Universal, UK)
Mulholland Drive (HD DVD, Studio Canal, France)
Ratatouille (Blu-ray, Disney, USA)
Silent Hill (HD DVD, Concorde, Germany)
Les Triplettes de Belleville (HD DVD, France Télévisions Éditions, France)

(Also posted at DVD Times)

 
Notes: These lists are based solely on what I myself have seen of the films and discs released in 2007. I make no claims as to them being all-inclusive. Some of the films listed were still playing in UK cinemas in 2007 despite being released in 2006. The top optical disc releases were chosen from a combination of the quality of the films themselves, the audio/visual presentation and the extras.

The Year in Review, 2007

Well, another year has been and gone. We’re all a year older, but probably not much wiser. As usual, I’m going to do a brief run-down of various events and issues that I’ve touched on in my news posts over the year. It’s generally not my style to comment on current affairs, so I won’t be saying anything about the murder of Benazir Bhutto, Tony Blair’s departure from office or anything like that. This year, I’ve decided to split things into several sections.

 
Life Itself

Life™ was somewhat different for me this year. The biggest change was, fairly obviously, that, at the end of March, I landed myself a full-time job, working for the NHS on their Smoking Cessation programme. I spent four and a half months working thirty-seven and a half hours a week in an office, entering data and phoning people to ask them whether they had managed to successfully stop smoking, and, while I’m not about to claim that this was the most unpleasant way anyone could ever spend four and a half months, I won’t deny that I was extremely relieved to see the back of the place in August, at which point I went into a part-time Library Assistant position at the Gallery of Modern Art. To say that I find this job vastly preferable to my previous one would be the understatement of the year, and that’s not just because I work fewer hours.

On a not entirely unrelated note, my application for funding for my PhD was unsuccessful, but my four and a half months of back-breaking (I kid) labour with the NHS was enough to pay for my first year of part-time study, and more besides. I started the PhD, on portrayals of gender in the giallo (following on from my MLitt dissertation on the same area), at the end of September and, while illness in November prevented me from making as much headway as I would have liked, the work that I’ve done so far has certainly gone a long way towards getting me back into the swing of things, academically speaking, and I look forward to properly delving into my subject of choice over the next twelve months.

 
Zeros and Ones

The big technological issue of 2007 was the ongoing battle between the two rival high definition home video formats, HD DVD and Blu-ray, and the perpetual game of teeter-totter in which each format continued to vie for supremacy, engaging in a conflict of words as much as sales. A war in which what your opposition doesn’t have is every bit as important as what you do have, the biggest surprise was undoubtedly Paramount’s shock decision, in August, to ditch Blu-ray entirely and concentrate on HD DVD. With no end to the format war in sight any time soon, 2008 looks set to be another interesting year.

For me, my most significant purchase was that of a Japanese Playstation 3, reneging on my single format stance and embracing neutrality. Personally speaking, the balance continues to lie firmly in favour of HD DVD in terms of exclusive titles (a fact only compounded by the aforementioned Paramount decision), but I can’t deny that it’s nice to be able to own and watch high definition copies of Casino Royale, The Descent and Ratatouille.

I also bought three additional pieces of hardware: a new desktop PC in May, an Xbox 360 HD DVD add-on drive in July (to replace my clunky and oversized stand-alone HD-A1 player), and a Blu-ray enabled laptop in October. In the case of the latter, my original intention was to use it primarily for PhD work, although, in reality, I’ve got just as much, if not more, use out of it as a convenient means of taking screen captures from Blu-ray discs.

 
At the Pictures

Perhaps largely due to my period of full-time employment, I watched somewhat fewer films this year than in the previous two years. By my calculation, I watched a total of 164 films, 77 of which were ones that I hadn’t seen before, down from 216 (99 new) in 2006. Still, I did manage to see several significant films, including the great - 2001: A Space Odyssey, Babel, Black Book, Black Sabbath, the Final Cut of Blade Runner, Blood Diamond, Children of Men, Full Metal Jacket, Grindhouse, Hot Fuzz, Inside Man, Life of Brian, The Lives of Others, Pan’s Labyrinth, Ratatouille, Sicko, This Film is Not Yet Rated, Zodiac - the reasonably good - 1408, Anchorman: The Legend of Ron Burgundy, Borat: Cultural Learnings of America for Make Benefit Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan, Brokeback Mountain, Brotherhood of the Wolf, The Bourne Ultimatum, Chicago, Crank, The Game, Hard Candy, Idiocracy, Mission Impossible, Mission Impossible III, Mother of Tears, Perfume: The Story of a Murderer, Red Road, Syriana, Tideland, Transformers - and the guff - Aeon Flux, Fantastic Four, The Fountain, Futurama: Bender’s Big Score!, Hostel, House of the Dead, The Matrix Revolutions, Mission Impossible II, Norbit, Paprika, A Scanner Darkly, The Simpsons Movie and the remakes of Poseidon and The Wicker Man.

Best new film I saw in the year? Either Black Book or Children of Men. Worst? Without a shadow of a doubt, Norbit.

I bought or otherwise received 118 films on disc, 42 of which were HD DVDs, 31 Blu-ray discs and 45 standard definition DVDs. I wrote 44 reviews for DVD Times, down from last year’s 66. Of these, 16 were for HD DVDs, 12 for Blu-ray discs and 16 for standard definition DVDs.

 
Bibliothèque

I read the following books: Legion by William Peter Blatty, The Naked Drinking Club by Rhona Cameron, Casino Royale by Ian Fleming, The Day of the Jackal and The Odessa File by Frederick Forsythe, Carrie by Stephen King, The Historian by Elizabeth Kostova, The Red Dahlia by Lynda La Plante, Rosemary’s Baby by Ira Levin, Almost Blue by Carlo Lucarelli, The Dead Hour by Denise Mina, The Mephisto Waltz by Fred Mustard Stewart, Odette by Jerrard Tickell, Mercy Alexander by George Tiffin, and The Devil Rides Out, Gateway to Hell, Strange Conflict and To the Devil - a Daughter by Dennis Wheatley. Which, now that I think about it, is a heck of a lot more than I’d expected.

 
Song and Dance

I snagged the following CDs: The Bird with the Crystal Plumage (Ennio Morricone), Blood Diamond (James Newton Howard), Cars (Randy Newman), The Descent (David Julyan), Grindhouse: Planet Terror (Robert Rodriguez/John Debney/Graeme Revell), The Iron Giant (Michael Kamen), Kingdom of Heaven (Harry Gregson-Williams), Mother of Tears (Claudio Simonetti), The Professional (Eric Serra), The Secret of NIMH (Jerry Goldsmith), Serenity (David Newman), This is the Life (Amy MacDonald), V for Vendetta (Dario Marianelli), Veronica Guerin (Harry Gregson-Williams), Why Bother? (Peter Cook and Chris Morris).

 
Well, all in all, I think that’s it for another year. Look back on it, it reads a bit like a shopping list with the occasional personal titbit, but I suppose that’s the way of things in our evil capitalist society. Anyway, here’s to a great 2008 and yet more wanton spending.

DVDs I bought or received in the month of December

• 28 Weeks Later (R2 UK, DVD)
• Blade Runner: 5-disc Complete Collector’s Edition (R0 USA, HD DVD)
• The Bourne Ultimatum (R0 USA, HD DVD)
• Four Flies on Grey Velvet (R0 Germany, DVD)
• Halloween: Unrated Director’s Cut (R1 USA, DVD)
• Inside Man (R0 USA, HD DVD)
• Jackass Number 2 (R2 UK, DVD)
• Looney Tunes Golden Collection: Volume 5 (R1 USA, DVD)
• Masters of Horror: Season 1, Volume 3 (RA USA, Blu-ray)
• Masters of Horror: Season 1, Volume 4 (RA USA, Blu-ray)
• The Psychic (R1 USA, DVD)
• Running Scared (R0 Germany, HD DVD)
• Sicko (R1 USA, DVD)
• Tekkonkinkreet (R2 UK, DVD)
• Tideland (R0 Germany, HD DVD)
• Veronica Guerin (R2 UK, DVD)
• Wolf Creek (R0 UK, HD DVD)

A pretty shockingly large line-up to send off 2007. I guess I should count myself lucky that several of these were either free or Christmas presents.

DVD debacle

One of the neat things about writing for DVD Times is that, every so often, we have a disc clear-out, where unclaimed or spare review copies are given away for free to any reviewer who wants them, without the need to review them. This morning, I ended up with sealed retail copies of 28 Weeks Later and Tekkonkinkreet. I know that both these titles are available on Blu-ray, but given that I have no idea whether I’ll consider them to be worth the asking price (I’m in the minority that didn’t think much of Weeks’ predecessor, 28 Days Later), I figured this would be a good opportunity to sample them before deciding whether to commit to buying their high definition variants.

*cough* I also ended up with a check disc of Jackass Number 2. *cough*

All I want for Christmas is you

Perhaps you haven’t noticed, but it will soon be Christmas - a mere eight days to go. While virtually everyone I know is running around in a flap, braving the cold winds of Glasgow in December, not to mention the bustling crowds of like-minded last minute shoppers, I find myself sitting back with a look of rather smug self-satisfaction on my face. I, you see, have discovered the wonders of Internet shopping, and the savings in time, money and worry that come with it. With more or less everyone else’s gifts accounted for, I decided it was time to give some thought to myself and what I would like to receive for Mithras’ birthday.

First up, a couple of games: the Collector’s Edition of Unreal Tournament III and The Witcher. Unreal Tournament III you already know about, from my previous complaint about the desaturated visuals in its pre-release demo. It’s undeniably a fun game, though, and the saturation control can, to some extent, be used to compensate for the predominance of grey and brown. The Collector’s Edition, in any event, looks somewhat interesting, given that it comes with an art book and a DVD exploring the history of the franchise and the making of this instalment, not to mention ten hours’ worth of tutorials for the Unreal Editor.

The Witcher, meanwhile, is not a game that I’ve had an opportunity to experience for myself, but it sounds like an interesting attempt to do a complex, non-linear single player RPG that eschews traditional notions of good vs. evil and allows the player’s choices to impact the story and world in a very noticeable sense. Ironically, the game’s qualities seem to have been overshadowed by the controversy surrounding the publisher’s decision to censor female nudity from its American release (the European versions are intact), calling into question all sorts of debates regarding the games industry’s bizarre relationship within the human body (you can dismember it as much as you like, but God help you if you happen to spot a nipple).

I also picked up a couple of German HD DVD releases from Amazon.de: Wayne Kramer’s Running Scared and Terry Gilliam’s Tideland. The former is a film I know next to nothing about, but the transfer appears to be extremely good, and I do like to take the odd risk now and then with my movie watching (Inside Man certainly paid dividends, and I liked Kramer’s previous film, The Cooler). Tideland, meanwhile, I’ve wanted to see for a while, even if the word of mouth has been largely negative so far. Interestingly, it is also, as far as I can tell, the only release of the film to present it in its original theatrical ratio of 2.35:1: most DVD releases are open matte at 1.78:1, while the UK release is in a ratio of 2.25:1, which is supposedly Gilliam’s preferred ratio. (It may turn out that the HD DVD is also 2.25:1, despite what the packaging claims, but I figure that either is preferable to having an open matte 1.78:1 presentation, so I won’t be too fussed either way.)

Oh, and, surprising as it might seem, I haven’t yet completely given up on the world of standard definition. I ordered the Region 1 US releases of Michael Moore’s Sicko and, carrying on a tradition that was started back at Christmas 2003, the latest release in the Looney Tunes Golden Collection series, Volume 5. I actually have no idea which cartoons are included in this line-up - I like to be pleasantly surprised, although I’m not holding out too much hope for Coal Black and de Sebben Dwarfs making an appearance any time soon.

100% genuine animation!

We watched the Blu-ray release of Ratatouille on the wall this evening. Given that we decided not to see it at the cinema, due to the fact that Jamie Oliver overdubbed a character for the UK release (an annoying trend with CGI movies that seems to have started with Shrek 2, getting British celebrities and other non-entities to replace the voices of minor characters, presumably because all the kids will say “Hey, mummy, I want to see Shrek 2! It’s got Jonathan Ross and Kate Thornton’s voices in it for ten whole seconds!”), this was the closest we were able to get to a genuine theatrical screening of the film, and I must say it definitely benefits from the big(gish) screen treatment. I also spotted the image below during the end credits crawl, and it certainly make me chortle.

Blu-ray review: Ratatouille

All things considered, this is a superlative release. The audio-visual quality is so impressive that, if it had been bare-bones, this disc would have been getting my unreserved recommendation. As it is, you may have to sift through the material on offer to get to the juicy bits, but there is a wealth of information on offer provided you are able to put up with the less than ideal menu system. Ratatouille on Blu-ray is just what this diner ordered.

I’ve reviewed Disney’s Region A Blu-ray release of Pixar’s latest film, Ratatouille, after having promised not to abuse this opportunity to use as many metaphors about cooking as possible.

HD DVD review: Les Triplettes de Belleville

It’s great to see more traditional animation becoming available in high definition, particularly when it’s a film as good as Les Triplettes de Belleville. With its solid audio-visual presentation, this release is a must-have for HD DVD-ready animation aficionados.

“Swinging Belleville rendez-vous…” I’ve reviewed the recent French HD DVD release of Sylvain Chomet’s excellent Les Triplettes de Belleville.

DVDs I bought or received in the month of November

• 2001: A Space Odyssey (R0 USA, HD DVD)
• A Clockwork Orange (R0 USA, HD DVD)
• Eyes Wide Shut (R0 USA, HD DVD)
• The Fly (RA USA, Blu-ray)
• Full Metal Jacket [remastered edition] (R0 USA, HD DVD)
• The Mario Bava Collection Volume 2 (R1 USA, DVD)
• Pan’s Labyrinth (R0 UK, HD DVD)
• Peep Show: Series 4 (R2 UK, DVD)
• Ratatouille (RA USA, Blu-ray)
• The Shining (R0 USA, HD DVD)
• Soldier of Orange (R0 UK, DVD)
• The Stendhal Syndrome: Special Edition (R0 USA, DVD)
• Tokyo Godfathers (R2 UK, DVD)
• Les Triplettes de Belleville (R0 France, HD DVD)

A good month for high definition, this, and another expensive one too.

Hair of the rat

If I ever met Pixar’s Rick Sayre, I would shake him warmly by the hand and say “Thank you, sir, for a job well done.” The guy is possibly the best professional encoder in the business - he struck gold with the PAL DVD of The Incredibles, and he’s done so again with Ratatouille. Even the absolute best HD releases generally have mild compression artefacts if you pause and zoom in close enough to inspect them in minute detail. Not so with Ratatouille. The image is, to my eyes, completely flawless. It just doesn’t get better than this.

Ratatouille
(Disney, USA, AVC)