Animation

A scanner rotoscoped

Yesterday, I received a review copy of the upcoming (due out on April 10th) HD DVD release of A Scanner Darkly, from DVD Pacific.

Back when this film was released on DVD, I was interested to see it, due to director Richard Linklater’s rather odd choice of shooting it in live action and then applying a “cel-shading” effect to it, to give it the appearance of hand-drawn animation (a look initially popularised by video games like Jet Set Radio, although that particular title, of course, wasn’t shot in live action). It’s really the latest iteration of rotoscoping, a time- and cost-saving measure initially attempted by legendary animators Dave and Max Fleischer in the 1930s. The Fleischers quickly determined that rotoscoping simply wasn’t worth the time of day, because the results it produced, while requiring considerably less time and skill on the part of the animators, were, to put it bluntly, not good. Nonetheless, it would appear that many filmmakers have yet to learn the lessons that the Fleischers learned more than 70 years ago. These tend to be live action directors, who don’t really understand the point or potential of animation as a medium, and approach things from the frankly ludicrous perspective of trying to make it emulate live action as much as possible. This results in films that range from merely being stilted and clumsy (see Ralph Bakshi’s adaptation of The Lord of the Rings, which, unique and at times impressive as it is, falters when it comes to the sloppily traced character animation) to downright grotesque (Robert Zemeckis’ The Polar Express, among others).

A Scanner Darkly, sadly, falls somewhere between these two extremes. Characters, objects and even details like eyes and facial hair “swim” around the screen in a distracting and at times nauseating manner, movements strobe rather than looking organic, and the main question on my mind was “what was the point?” Why did Linklater go to the trouble of shooting all this material using real actors, only to scan his footage into a computer and slap what looks like a silly Photoshop effect over it all? What does the film gain by being animated (and I use the term loosely, because I consider rotoscoping as illegitimate a form of animation as motion capture)? The answer is nothing. Linklater sees the medium from the perspective of a live action director, and thus isn’t able to harness its unique qualities in the way that a proper animation director could. The end result is merely a gimmick - a “hey, it’s like a real-life cartoon” affair that is probably better suited to a technician’s demo reel rather than a commercial movie or (HD) DVD.

As for the quality of the plot itself (which, given that it is essentially just a live action film masquerading as animation, is ultimately the most important element)… well, I have to admit that I was really tired last night, and didn’t have the energy or patience to get through the whole thing, but, from what I saw… eh, it just wasn’t gripping me. It was okay, I guess, but I felt strangely uninvolved. Since I’ve got a four-day weekend (it being the time of year when Christians celebrate the death of their leader - go figure), I’m going to give it another shot when I’m feeling more awake. Well, I’ve got to - I need to review the damn thing. So far, though, my reaction has been one big “meh”.

DVD review: Peter Pan: Platinum Edition

It wouldn’t be too much of a stretch to consider Peter Pan to be the most disappointing release yet in the Platinum Edition series. While Disney has released other, poorer DVDs, it doesn’t seem unreasonable to expect something more from a line that the studio itself claims delivers “state-of-the-art bonus features” and top-notch audio-visual presentations. Those who don’t already own this title on DVD should pick this release up, if only for the inclusion of the mono audio, but those who have one of the earlier editions would be advised to consider whether it’s worth it in the long run.

Following the the second star to the right, I’ve flown away to Never Land to do battle with the nefarious Captain Hook in a review of Disney’s recent Platinum Edition release of Peter Pan…

DVDs I bought or received in the month of March

• Asterix and the Vikings (R2 UK, DVD)
• Casino Royale (RA USA, Blu-ray)
• Children of Men (R0 USA, HD DVD)
• The Devil’s Rejects (RA USA, Blu-ray)
• District B13 (RA USA, Blu-ray)
• Perfume: The Story of a Murderer (R0 Germany, HD DVD)
• Peter Pan: Platinum Edition (R1 USA, DVD)
• Resident Evil: Apocalypse (RA USA, Blu-ray)

It occurs to me that I haven’t received a a single standard definition DVD that I’ve actually paid for in over a month - Peter Pan and Asterix and the Vikings were review copies. This is a trend that I expect will continue in the foreseeable future: broadly speaking, I feel less and less compelled to actually pay money for standard definition titles. Obviously, it’s a different story with something obscure like the Bava box set I ordered earlier this week, which I know is unlikely to come out in high definition in the near future, if at all, but by and large, I’m finding myself with increasingly little desire to buy mainstream titles on DVD.

The king is dead - long live the king!

Source: Animation World Magazine

The Disney direct-to-video animated sequel is dead.

What more need be said? All hail Big John!

Seriously, I can’t even begin to describe how happy I am to finally see this news given official confirmation. I harbour no ill will towards the artists who worked on the likes of Bambi II, Cinderella III: Dreams Come True and, erm, Leroy & Stitch, but these “films” have run the Disney label into the ground for far too long. This should be proof, if proof was ever needed, that John Lasseter is absolutely serious about making the brand respectable again. Okay, I can’t say I’m too thrilled by the prospect of a CGI Tinker Bell movie, but it’s a long, long way from the sacrilege that has been committed since the concept of Disney cheapquels first came into being in 1994 with The Return of Jafar.

The nightmare of Pan

Yesterday, I received a review copy of the new 2-disc Platinum Edition of Walt Disney’s classic, Peter Pan, from DVD Pacific. Mindful of both the unnaturally harsh look of the earlier (2002) DVD release of the film, as well as Disney’s unfortunate habit of going overboard during the restoration process of their older titles, I was rather curious to see how this enjoyable 1953 lark had fared on of what the publicity describes as Disney Home Entertainment’s most prestigious line-up of DVD releases.

Unfortunately, the new edition really is a bit of a mixed bag. While the rampant edge enhancement of the previous release is nowhere to be found, it seems that DTS Digital Images (formerly Lowry Digital), Disney’s regular partner in these ventures, have once again thrown artistic intent out of the window in an attempt to deliver an impossibly clean, “flawless” digital experience for the 21st century. By far the biggest problem is that the overall colour, brightness and contrast values of the image have been tweaked into oblivion. Tinkerbell was originally supposed to have an overexposed glow, which, on this release, has been dulled down severely, making the glow look more like a muddy shadow. Actually, “muddy” is the word of the day here: the colours are generally dull and sickly. The decidedly red Indians are now a gloomy shade of brown, more suited to something like Pocahontas than this altogether more fun and colourful cartoon world, while Captain Hook now looks like he has liver damage. Everything is so murky that the hand-inked, cel-animated characters, who should be vibrant, threaten to disappear into the backgrounds. I’ve inspected the DVD on both a monitor and a calibrated TV: it just doesn’t look right.

Respected cel restoration expert Stephen Worth, and animation directors Oscar Grillo and Milton Gray, have all criticised this new restoration, while Chuck Pennington has provided visual evidence that each subsequent home video release of Peter Pan has taken its visuals further and further away from Walt Disney and co’s original intentions. I’ve never personally seen the film on an actual print, but I feel more inclined to trust the informed opinions of experts like Stephen Worth than the staff of DTS Digital Images, who have shown a cavalier attitude towards artistic intent several times in the past, perhaps most significantly with Bambi, which was so heavily noise reduced in an attempt to remove any semblance of the movie ever having come from film that the image smeared and warped during camera movements.

Captain Hook is the greatest bastard ever.

Even the bonus content turns out to be rather disappointing. There really is very little here that wasn’t present on the 2002 release. In the past, just about every Platinum Edition has included a lengthy documentary or at least a series of informative featurettes on the film’s history and production. Not so with Peter Pan, which has to make do with a 15-minute made for LaserDisc featurette, a 20-minute piece showing ideas that didn’t make it into the final film, and a couple of other miscellaneous featurettes. The commentary, moderated by Roy Disney and featuring the observations of a combination of animators and critics, is of a high standard, but it too was already to be found on the previous DVD release. Of the new additions, the most significant is an abridged narration of an essay by Walt Disney explaining his reasons for making the film, while the games, read-along storybook and preview for a horrendous-looking CGI Tinkerbell movie can go hang for all I care.

It’s not the end of the world, though. Unlike the previous DVD, the original mono track has been included, at least on the US release (the European versions predictably lose this vital component of the original film, no doubt in order to make room for additional dubs). It’s too bad that, despite allowing the film to sound as was it was intended, those responsible for the DVD made no attempt to ensure that it looked as it was intended.

What would the unholy lovechild of Scooby-Doo and Family Guy look like?

Answer: this. I’m going to have nightmares for a week.

DVD review: Asterix and the Vikings

Despite these criticisms, Asterix and the Vikings leaves an overall impression of being one of the better adaptations of the series. We’ve been starved for traditional animation lately, and to see a new film that is not only hand-drawn but also drawn well is a rare treat indeed. Still, if you’re already a fan of the book, don’t expect this adaptation to convey the depth and tone of the source material, although, conversely, it may give you a newfound appreciation for what Goscinny and Uderzo were able to achieve in only 44 pages that the filmmakers struggle to convey in 75 minutes. That said, a new Asterix has been a long time in coming, and I only hope we don’t have to wait another 12 years for the next one.

I’ve reviewed the UK DVD of Asterix and the Vikings, the latest animated feature starring the wily yellow-whiskered Gaul, given a decidedly unimpressive release by Optimum.

Asterix in Britain

I received a check disc of Optimum’s recent UK DVD release of Asterix and the Vikings for review this morning (expect a review at DVD Times at noon tomorrow - one of the fastest turnarounds I’ve ever given a review disc, although the fact that the review of the film itself was already written helps).

Unfortunately, Optimum clearly felt the need to ensure that this disc fit in with their DVDs of the first six Asterix films, which means that it’s not a particularly impressive release at all. The transfer is a slight improvement on its French counterpart, which looked overly harsh and with some oddly jagged outlines. The lines in this new release are still slightly too jaggy for my liking, and there are a few visible compression artefacts here and there, not to mention the fact that the whole image has a rather filtered appearance to it, but the rampant edge enhancement has been tamed, resulting in a smoother and overall more eye-pleasing images.

Unfortunately, that’s where the good news ends. The French DVD featured English and French audio tracks (both 2.0 and 5.1) and subtitles, but all Optimum provides is a 2.0 English track - not even any subtitles (take that, disability anti-discrimination enforcers!). Okay, so the film was made in English, but the French dub was, in my opinion, the better of the two, and, in any event, I don’t understand the justification for leaving out the 5.1 mix. It’s not as if the film was made in stereo!

Oh, and there are no extras.

I really don’t understand Optimum. They put out some amazing discs, including what it probably the best all-round version of Howl’s Moving Castle in the world, not to mention what seems to be a fully-loaded special edition of Pan’s Labyrinth (a film I really want to see, by the way, although I’m holding out for an HD DVD release), but they’re also capable of putting out some absolute junk. Okay, so Asterix and the Vikings hardly fits under the category of “junk”, but it’s decidedly underwhelming nonetheless, particularly when a much better version can be had in France… oh, and supposedly an HD DVD is being released in Spain at some point within the next couple of months from DeAPlaneta. Now I sincerely hope they get that right.

That Trojan horse never looked so wooden

According to the News of the World, Troy is “the greatest sword and sandal epic of all time”. Well, I don’t know about that (although something tells me that this is a little unlikely), but I do know that this is yet another high definition title that received rave reviews despite being, well, fairly average-looking. It’s simply not very detailed at all, and there is some ugly ringing around highly contrasted edges. Odd, then, that the Warner logo at the very start of the film basically looked flawless, and yet, as soon as the first image appeared on the screen, it immediately felt as if I was watching the thing through a dirty window.

Where did I get a hold of Troy from? Well, Lyris received a Toshiba HD-E1 (the European equivalent of the American HD-A1) HD DVD player to review today, and Toshiba were kind enough to bundle the disc with it. These companies really need to start selecting better titles to include as review samples! Panasonic, after all, included the mediocre-looking Fantastic 4 with their DMP-BD10 Blu-ray player as well. Discs like these really don’t make good first impressions - why not throw in something that’s more or less flawless like Corpse Bride, if you want that pristine digital look, or Serenity or The Descent if you want something rich and film-like? At least Microsoft had the right idea and included a copy of the magnificent-looking King Kong with the Xbox 360 HD DVD add-on.

On a related note, Lyris has done a very nice rant about the underwhelming quality of so many Blu-ray releases on his new site. It’s well worth a read, and there’s even a nice picture of the hideous-looking American Psycho for you to marvel at.

Amateurism as a style

Apparently, this is style.

I’ve been meaning to do a rant about this subject of amateurism for some time now. At the risk of sounding like a crusty old fart (at the tender age of 23), I’m becoming increasingly aware of how poorly produced so many products are, whether it’s packaging, music, DVD transfers, films or television. Something that, in my eyes, has come to define this decade so far is a misguided notion of “irony” - a belief that, by saying or doing something, you’re actually saying or doing the opposite. In the absolute broadest sense, it means you have garbage masquerading as quality. Therefore, a TV show like Shameless isn’t amateurishly shot - it’s “raw and gritty”. A boy band who dress in suits and ties, and spend hours making their hair look as if they’ve just been dragged through a hedge backwards, aren’t a bunch of sad-sacks - they’re somehow cool. A music video with some baggy-eyed, messy-haired twentysomething barely even attempting to mime the lyrics of his song isn’t a complete layabout or a pretentious tosser - he’s full of burning passion. And so on and so forth.

You can see this all the time - you only have to turn on the TV and you’re more than likely to be assaulted with a barrage of trendy amateurism. I’ve ranted before about badly-animated shows like South Park and Family Guy, asking why they look so awful. The reason, apparently, is that they look like that on purpose. Why? Well, I’ve yet to receive a coherent answer to this. There seems to be this bizarre belief that, by making something look awful, it somehow comes closer to illustrating real life - only I don’t know about you, but my life isn’t the badly-deinterlaced, shakycam nightmare that is Shameless, or any of those other shows that are receiving accolades for their apparently realistic portrayal of the world. A clunky piece of garbage like Hoodwinked gets praised for having “style” (so that’s what they’re calling it these days - “Honey, come and see the style the dog has left on the carpet”). Actual good-looking cartoons like Ren & Stimpy: Adult Party Cartoon don’t even get to run for a full season while ugly, has-been sitcoms like King of the Hill and The Simpsons are likely to remain on the air indefinitely while we all wither and die. Recently, the local news showcased an animation student who was convinced he was the Scottish answer to Pixar - his “film” turned out to feature the sort of graphics that would look embarrassing in a 1995 Playstation video game.

So, what’s the deal? Does nobody actually aspire to high standards any more? Why is it that I can turn on the TV and think “Wow, I could do better than that”? And I’m not trying to be pompous here - I think that just about anyone could make a more visually appealing show than Family Guy if they actually put their mind to it, while the average home movie doesn’t look that much worse than the latest episode of Casualty. There are, of course, occasional exceptions - Peep Show, for instance, is able to use its wonky looks for a purpose, and, of course, there are occasions where the underlying material is good enough to make the ham-fisted execution bearable, like early episodes of The Simpsons, which, ugly as they are, are damn funny - but, for the most part, virtually everything I ever see on TV has me asking myself, “How on earth did this get made?” There are plenty of good artists, musicians, filmmakers and so on around, so why does it always seem to be the crap that gets commissioned?

Oscar the Grouch strikes again

Source: BBC News

And the results are in! I’ve seen so few of the nominees that there’s not much point in my commenting in too much depth, but, at a cursory glance, Ennio Morricone picked up a long-overdue Oscar in the form of an “Honorary Award”, Martin Scorsese has finally been granted the Oscar for which he has been snubbed so many times in the past (too bad it had to be for a remake of a Hong Kong film, created for idiots who can’t read subtitles), Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man’s Chest can actually claim to have won the same number of Academy Awards as Babel, and a film that isn’t actually animated won Best Animated Feature (what a crock!).

Of mice and men

Variety has posted an interesting article on the current changes taking place at Disney Animation Studios following the appointment of new bosses Ed Catmull and John Lasseter. No radically revealing information is conveyed that wasn’t already known (or guessed), but it’s a good read nonetheless.

Execs note repeatedly that they’re trying to make the Mouse “a director-driven studio,” a mantra that has served Pixar well with a braintrust of talented helmers that includes Lasseter, Brad Bird (“The Incredibles”), Pete Docter (“Monsters, Inc.”) and Andrew Stanton (“Finding Nemo”). Catmull repeatedly states that the days of studio exec interference are over.

Reassuring though this is, it still somewhat contradicts the news that Chris Sanders recently left the studio, handing his pet project American Dog over to Chris Williams (although whether he was ousted or left of his own accord remains unclear). Clearly, despite the mantra that Disney is going to be “director-driven”, the buck ultimately stops with Lasseter. Since he’s given us an uninterrupted string of hits since 1995, this probably isn’t a bad thing, but it is slightly worrying when the director of what is surely Disney’s best film in the last decade (Lilo & Stitch) ends up leaving over “irresolvable creative differences” with Big John.

Comedy hanging in Simpsons movie

The first full (i.e. non-teaser) trailer for the upcoming The Simpsons Movie has arrived online. It does indeed look truly awful - just as bad, if not worse than, the most recent seasons of the TV show - but what really caught my attention is the fact that the film seems to have a comedy strangulation scene in it. What’s wrong with a hilarious hanging, you might ask? Well, I would have thought nothing, but apparently the British Board of Film Censors have other ideas. Back in March, I reported that they had vandalised Out West, an episode of The Ren & Stimpy Show, removing the closing “Hanging Song” and the entire narrative justification for the episode. A little later, they practiced similar butchery on an episode of Satoshi Kon’s anime series Paranoia Agent, presenting the Video Recordings Act 1984 as flimsy justification for their mangling (despite plenty of hanging scenes, both hilarious and otherwise, being allowed in films in the past).

Now, both Ren & Stimpy and Paranoia Agent are obscure enough, at least in the UK, for any backlash against their destruction to be muted at best… but I wonder if the BBFC will be so cavalier with something as well-known and popular as The Simpsons? We will be watching them closely, and we will be checking to see whether or not they take the scissors to this beloved franchise and risk incurring the wrath of thousands of spotty-faced fanatics. Now we’ll see whether the BBFC are completely unbiased and only censor when they absolutely have to.

If you want to discuss this matter with the BBFC, who deface art for a living, I suggest you send them an email.

Throwing my toys out of the pram

Back when Pixar Animation Studios was acquired by Disney back in May 2006, one of the first changes made by John Lasseter, Pixar’s Creative Vice President and the new CCO of both animation departments, was to shut down production of Toy Story 3, a sequel being produced without Pixar’s authorisation by Disney themselves. Now, it seems that production will go ahead after all, although this time by the Pixar team. The bad news, though, is that John Lasseter will not be directing (unlike the previous two Toy Story films). This is not in itself particularly surprising, given that, with his responsibility for running both animation studios, finding the time to direct a film into the bargain would be pretty much guaranteed to be out of the question. It’s still a shame, though, and the news that Michael Arndt, the screenwriter of Little Miss Sunshine, is writing a script for it, fills me with dread. I’ve not seen Little Miss Sunshine, so I’ve no opinion on it one way or the other, but I’m incredibly suspicious of the notion of a live action screenwriter penning a script for any animated film, let alone a Pixar film, given that the studio has always prided itself on having actual artists develop their storylines. Still, the film will be directed by Lee Unkrich, who has served as co-director on several Pixar projects, including Toy Story 2, and let’s not forget the fact that, for all these setbacks, this will be a 100% Pixar venture, so I’m sure there’s hope for it yet.

In other Disney news, the Variety article linked to above (which I’m translating into something resembling English here) reports that the rumours were true and that Lilo & Stitch co-writer/co-director Chris Sanders is no longer with the company, and that the reins for his upcoming pet project, the CG American Dog, have been passed to Chris Williams, who served as a story artist on several of the studio’s films, including Lilo & Stitch. Whether Sanders left voluntarily or was given the boot is unclear, but one thing’s for sure, the end result is sure to suffer without his guidance. Oh, and Lasseter and Disney/Pixar animation president Ed Catmull have refuted the rumour that Disney would be switching back to an exclusively 2D slate after the release of their upcoming Meet the Robinsons, although they did confirm that 2D was well and truly back at the studio, with the John Musker/Ron Clements project The Frog Princess, expected to be the next in line for release after American Dog, being traditionally animated.

So much to see, so little time

It looks as if this is going to be quite a busy month for me as far as reviews are concerned. In addition to Brokeback Mountain (HD DVD) and Waking the Dead: Series 4 (DVD), which are hold-overs from January that I still need to complete (and I really should also do a write-up on last year’s Waking the Dead: Series 3, for the sake of completeness), I’ve also put in reservations for this month’s upcoming releases of Lucio Fulci’s Perversion Story (personally, I prefer its more literal translation title of One on Top of the Other), and Dario Argento’s episode for the second season of Masters of Horror, Pelts. Having already seen both, albeit not in the most ideal form, I’m expecting to lavish praise on the former and deliver a more lukewarm appraisal to the latter, although I am looking forward to seeing them both again.

I’ve also managed to snag a chance to review Paramount’s upcoming (February 20th) HD DVD of Babel, the latest film by Alejandro González Iñárritu, whose previous film, 21 Grams, I thought was excellent. Incidentally, it’s nice to see Paramount finally releasing something in high definition, even if its arrival does little more than to highlight how threadbare their slate of titles is: barring this, Failure to Launch and Payback are the only titles they have announced for 2007 so far. Oh, and interestingly enough, for Babel they would appear to have abandoned VC-1 as their HD DVD codec in favour of AVC (the Blu-ray variant is MPEG2, because Sony handles their HD release on the Blu front).

Oh, and I finally got fed up waiting for Amazon.fr to ship my copy of Beatrice Cenci, and ordered it instead from Fnac, who actually have it in stock. In the past, I’ve found Amazon (.fr, .co.uk, .com - you name it) to be irritatingly slow for deliveries. Basically, unless it says “Usually dispatched within 24 hours”, it’s more or less a foregone conclusion that it won’t actually ship for weeks, if at all. The same is true of the recently released Grande Collection edition of Asterix and the Goths, which I also cancelled from Amazon and ordered from Fnac (its partner in the February release schedule, Asterix and Obelix All at Sea, did, however, leave Amazon in a reasonably timely fashion). Amazon.co.uk did, however, dispatch my copy of the score to The Iron Giant, which I ordered last night, in less than 12 hours. Luckily, I should be able to afford all these expenses, given that I punted my Xbox 360 HD DVD add-on to a friend for £130 today.

Yet more HD DVD captures

These shots are from Corpse Bride, which has emerged as one of the strongest-looking high definition discs. As before, these screen captures simply don’t do the transfer justice, and, until I can get to the bottom of this softening that seems to be going on, I’m going to have to warn against taking these as being indicative of the actual quality of HD DVD.

Nocturnal wanderings

I can’t remember precisely when I first enthused about the impending release of Nocturna, a delightfully twisted-looking nightmarish animated feature from Spain, but I have a feeling it was pretty close to when I first launched this site in 2001. Anyway, it’s been put back and put back, but it seems that it might finally be coming out. A new trailer has surfaced on YouTube, boasting a release date of Summer 2007. Judging by the colour scheme and line style, it’s taken on something of a Les Triplettes de Belleville influence since the last publicly available footage was released, but it still seems to have enough of its own flavour. In any event, it’s great to see more traditionally animated features in the pipeline, and I for one hope this gets a theatrical release here instead of going straight to DVD (or, more likely for me, HD DVD, given that Filmax is an HD DVD partner).

You can find more information (and pictures) at the official web site.

Update, January 15, 2007 02:12 PM: There’s another trailer here. You can also see artwork from directors Victor Maldonato and Adrian García’s next project, Monsieur Collieu, here, and a trailer, here.

This year’s HD DVD releases

Source: HD DVD Promotion Group

Here is a partial list of some of the 300 new titles we can expect to see on HD DVD this year in the US. Note that I’ve omitted concert, nature show and “screensaver”-type releases to concentrate on films and the odd TV show. I also haven’t included titles that already have a street date.

• 2001: A Space Odyssey (Warner)
• The 40 Year Old Virgin (Universal)
• Above the Law (Warner)
• American Pie Presents: The Naked Mile (Universal)
• American Pie: Unrated (Universal)
• The American President (Warner)
• Angels in America (HBO)
• Austin Powers: International Man of Mystery (New Line)
• The Aviator (Universal)
• Awake (The Weinstein Company)
• Band of Brothers (HBO)
• Battlestar Galactica (Universal)
• The Black Dahlia (Universal)
• Blade (New Line)
• Blade Runner (Warner)
• Blood Diamond (Warner)
• The Blues Brothers (Universal)
• The Bourne Identity (Universal)
• Braveheart (Paramount)
• Breaking and Entering (The Weinstein Company)
• Bruce Almighty (Universal)
• Bubble (Magnolia)
• Bullitt (Warner)
• Catwoman (Warner)
• A Clockwork Orange (Warner)
• Coach Carter (Paramount)
• Conan the Barbarian (Universal)
• Contact (Warner)
• Cowboy Bebop (Bandai)
• Dante’s Peak (Universal)
• Dark City (New Line)
• Dawn of the Dead [remake] (Universal)
• Deadwood: Season 1 (HBO)
• Decameron (The Weinstein Company)
• The Dirty Harry Collection (Warner)
• DOA: Dead or Alive (The Weinstein Company)
• Elizabethtown (Paramount)
• Enron: The Smartest Guys in the Room (Magnolia)
• Eraser (Warner)
• Executive Decision (Warner)
• The Exorcist (Warner)
• Eyes Wide Shut (Warner)
• Face/Off (Paramount)
• Flags of Our Fathers (Paramount)
• Forest Gump (Paramount)
• Friday (New Line)
• Friends: Season 1 (Warner)
• From the Earth to the Moon (HBO)
• Galaxina (BCI)
• The Getaway (Warner)
• Ghost (Paramount)
• Ghost in the Shell (Bandai)
• Golgo 13 (BCI)
• The Good Shepherd (Universal)
• The Goonies (Warner)
• Gothika (Warner)
• Grease (Paramount)
• The Green Mile (Warner)
• Grindhouse (The Weinstein Company)
• Hannibal Rising (The Weinstein Company)
• Hard to Kill (Warner)
• Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets (Warner)
• Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire (Warner)
• Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban (Warner)
• Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone (Warner)
• Idlewind (Universal)
• Inside Man (Universal)
• Killshot (The Weinstein Company)
• Last Legion (The Weinstein Company)
• The Lemon Drop Kid (BCI)
• Lemony Snicket’s A Series of Unfortunate Events (Paramount)
• The Libertine (The Weinstein Company)
• The Lord of the Rings Trilogy (New Line)
• The Maltese Falcon (Warner)
• The Mask (New Line)
• The Matrix (Warner)
• The Matrix Reloaded (Warner)
• The Matrix Revolutions (Warner)
• Maverick (Warner)
• Mission: Impossible (Paramount)
• Mission: Impossible 2 (Paramount)
• Mrs. Henderson Presents (The Weinstein Company)
• The Music Man (Warner)
• Mystic River (Warner)
• Natural Born Killers (Warner)
• Next of Kin (Warner)
• Night of the Werewolf (BCI)
• North by Northwest (Warner)
• Ocean’s Eleven (Warner)
• Ocean’s Thirteen (Warner)
• Ocean’s Twelve (Warner)
• One Last Thing (Magnolia)
• Passenger 57 (Warner)
• The Player (New Line)
• Pride & Prejudice (Universal)
• Red Planet (Warner)
• The Return (Universal)
• Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves (Warner)
• Rush Hour (New Line)
• Save the Last Dance (Paramount)
• Scarface (Universal)
• School for Scoundrels (The Weinstein Company)
• School of Rock (Paramount)
• Scoop (Universal)
• Se7en (New Line)
• The Shawshank Redemption (Warner)
• The Shining (Warner)
• Sin City 2 (The Weinstein Company)
• Singing’ in the Rain (Warner)
• Sister Street Fighter (BCI)
• Soldier (Warner)
• Son of Paleface (BCI)
• The Sopranos [various seasons, it would seem] (HBO)
• Spawn (New Line)
• The SpongeBob SquarePants Movie (Paramount)
• Star Trek: First Contact (Paramount)
• Star Trek: The Original Series (Paramount)
• Superman: Ultimate Collector’s Edition (Warner)
• That’s the Way of the World (BCI)
• Transamerica (The Weinstein Company)
• Twister (Warner)
• The Ultimate Star Trek Movie Collection (Paramount)
• US Marshals (Warner)
• Vanilla Sky (Paramount)
• Vengeance of the Zombies (BCI)
• The War at Home (Magnolia)
• The War Within (Magnolia)
• The West Wing: Season 7 (Warner)
• Wild Wild West (Warner)
• The Wizard of Oz (Warner)

Obviously this is not a concrete list - we can probably expect to see considerably more titles from Universal than are included here - but there are many, many titles in that list that I will definitely be picking up.

ATI to the rescue

nVidia be gone! The Canadians have come to restore my sanity! My ATI Radeon X1950XT arrived this morning - for some reason, Chillblast sent me a PowerColor model rather than the Sapphire one I ordered, but, as they are exactly the same card, only with a slightly different fan and a different box, I’m not particularly bothered. In any event, I installed the thing this morning, and in the process found that I had to chuck out my case fan, because the card itself comes with the largest fan I’ve ever seen, and meant that there simply wasn’t enough room in my PC’s case. In any event, the case fan’s only real purpose was to cool the video card, so I suspect that its own dedicated fan will perform exactly the same function without any real difference in the long run.

Anyway, despite my criticisms of ATI’s Catalyst Control Center and its dependence on Microsoft’s .NET framework, I’m so glad to be back to it. nVidia’s control panel, while not exactly bad, had numerous problems, including the fact that features available in the newer system, integrated with the most recent driver releases, are missing from the older and more functional classic control panel (and vice versa). It’s also nice to not have to reset my overlay settings every time I boot the computer and every time I want to watch a video.

I did, however, have a rather nasty surprise when I popped in Ren & Stimpy: The Lost Episodes in order to test DVD playback. Put simply, when I enabled AVIVO acceleration in PowerDVD (AVIVO is essentially ATI’s version of the advanced hardware video playback functions called PureVideo by nVidia), I noticed that a massive amount of noise reduction was being applied, resulting in outlines and colours trailing, with the contents of one shot being ghosted into the next. The control panel featured no way of disabling this, but a quick search in Google revealed this thread, where it was revealed that, after dragging their feet for some time, ATI had finally acknowledged the issue and provided a registry tweak to turn off noise reduction completely. It’s not the world’s most perfect solution, but ATI deserve credit for actually listening to their customers, unlike nVidia, who have failed to fix the overlay colour temperature bug, despite it having existed for over a year. (I will, however, give nVidia credit for allowing users to modify noise reduction and edge enhancement settings as they see fit… although this too seems to be fraught with problems for some users.)

Once the noise reduction had been successfully disabled, I was pleasantly surprised to discover that the AVIVO deinterlacing is actually superior to that of nVidia’s PureVideo. As you may recall, every so often PureVideo’s otherwise commendable motion adaptive deinterlacing would slip up, resulting in the fields jumping every few seconds. Not so with AVIVO: in fact, I watched an entire 15-minute stretch of Ren Seeks Help and didn’t notice a single problem.

Oh, and just for shits and giggles, I ran Futuremark’s two graphical benchmark applications, 3DMark ‘03 and 3DMark ‘05, to see what, if any, difference the new card made to performance. As I suspected, it appears that my CPU is the deciding factor, given that there’s only so much a new graphics card can do if the CPU itself isn’t equally cutting-edge. Still, I did see my 3DMark ‘03 score jump from 12,582 (12,836 on the GeForce) to 15,106, while my 3DMark ‘05 score went from 6,067 (5,875 on the GeForce) to 7,749. Not the world’s most amazing statistics, and I doubt it will result in any major improvements to my gaming performance, but a definite rise nonetheless.

The Year in Review

2006 - the year of HD

Note: I’m not going to cover worldwide hot topics like the execution of Saddam Hussein or the continued botch-job that is the situation in Iraq. This is simply a set of personal musings about my own experiences this year.

On a technological front, by far the biggest development on the HMS Whimsy this year was the arrival of an HD DVD player - a late change from our original intention to pick up a Blu-ray player. Originally, I had expected to perhaps have half a dozen titles in high definition by the end of the year, but have in fact ended up with 21 (plus another two that Lyris bought). Certainly a number of these are films that I probably wouldn’t have bought had their been a better selection available, but still, if you’d told me that, a mere six months after its launch, the format would included crystal-clear copies of Casablanca and The Adventures of Robin Hood, not to mention more obscure cult titles like An American Werewolf in London and Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, I wouldn’t have believed you. All in all, HD DVD got off to a great start in 2006, with I only hope will continue to be bettered in 2007.

Including both standard definition and high definition, I bought or received for review a total of 107 DVDs. I wrote 66 reviews for DVD Times (two down from last year’s record of 68), and went to the cinema a whopping two times. I watched 216 films (including those watched more than once), 99 of which I had never seen before. These tended to be of the more obscure variety, although I did see a number of “major” (both in the sense of being “important” and of being blockbusters that just about everyone ended up seeing) titles that had, for one reason or another, passed me by until last year, including Trains, Planes & Automobiles, Welcome to the Dollhouse, Sympathy for Lady Vengeance, The Tragedy of Macbeth, Blade Runner, Tout Va Bien, Wallace & Gromit: The Curse of the Were-Rabbit, Collateral, Corpse Bride, The Piano Teacher, Theatre of Blood, A History of Violence, V for Vendetta, 5x2, Bitter Moon, Walkabout, Fritz the Cat, Vertigo, Exorcist II: The Heretic, The Descent, The Constant Gardener, Serenity, Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man’s Chest, The Bourne Identity, The Bourne Supremacy, Duck Soup, Strictly Ballroom, The Fifth Element, Ghost World, Cars, Investigation of a Citizen Above Suspicion, Being John Malkovich, Black Sunday, The Omen (remake), Witchfinder General, Topaz, Torn Curtain, Casino Royale, Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire, Miami Vice, Basic Instinct and The Adventures of Robin Hood. Quite clearly, this list features some real gems and some absolute garbage, including gems that I thought would be garbage and garbage that I thought would be gems.

In terms of television, meanwhile, I watched the first two seasons of Veronica Mars and the final season of Alias. I also went through the entire seven-season run of Buffy the Vampire Slayer, with its steadily diminishing returns post-Season 5 gradually driving me towards the brink of suicide (I exaggerate). The long-running medical drama Casualty also celebrated its 20th anniversary, with the launch of the first three series on DVD - it’s anyone’s guess how long they will continue this, given that each series becomes progressively longer, until they eventually run for more or less the entire year. Speaking of Casualty, that particular show shocked me in delivering perhaps the best two hours of television I’d seen all year, with the much-heralded return of former writer (and Waking the Dead creator) Barbara Machin for a one-off guest writing gig. Much to my delight, the magnificent Garth Marenghi’s Darkplace was finally released on DVD, although the same team’s follow-up, the satirical chat-show Man to Man with Dean Learner, turned out to be a huge disappointment. The fifth season of Spooks also aired, and, while it was suitably engaging, it sacrificed some of the subtlety of previous years in favour of increasingly unbelievable conspiracies and hostile takeovers. Oh, and on the TV/film front, Channel 4’s dedicated film channel, FilmFour, became free in July, providing the UK with its first free-to-air channel dedicated to movies.

After over a year’s worth of procrastination, I finally recorded a new fan commentary, this time for Dario Argento’s Profondo Rosso. Once again, feedback for this seems to have been largely positive, although it’s anyone’s guess what I’ll think of it myself when I finally brave listening to it again.

The Third Mother, the long-awaited conclusion to Argento’s Three Mothers trilogy (started with Suspiria and Inferno in 1977 and 1980 respectively), finally went into production, wrapping at some point in late November/early December, with a projected May 2007 release date. Argento also helmed another episode in the American Masters of Horror television series: Pelts turned out to be less shameful than 2005’s Jenifer, but a far cry from his home-grown exploits nonetheless. Meanwhile, the much-feared Hollywood remake of Suspiria was finally axed.

After much talk of the two companies going their separate ways, Disney bought Pixar and instated John Lasseter as the joint president of feature animation for both studios. Shortly before the end of the year, it was announced that, following the release of Meet the Robinsons, Disney would be abandoning CG animation entirely and returning to the hand-drawn realm in which it made its name.

Once more in the animated world, John Kricfalusi, the creator of The Ren & Stimpy Show and the industry’s last great hope, started up an excellent blog in February. July also saw the release on DVD of Ren & Stimpy: The Lost Episodes, containing six new installments featuring everyone’s favourite dog and cat duo, three of which had never even aired on TV. Sadly, there seems to be no indication that sales of the DVD have persuaded Paramount to order more episodes.

I got into computer games this year to a far greater extent than I had for some time, picking up Guild Wars: Factions, Guild Wars: Nightfall, The Movies: Stunts and Effects, Dreamfall: The Longest Journey and Lara Croft: Tomb Raider: Legend, as well as replaying Baldur’s Gate II: Shadows of Amn, Icewind Dale II, Starcraft: Brood War and Warcraft III: Reign of Chaos. Lyris also picked up the new Nintendo Wii console in November, resulting in much enjoyment as all on sundry made asses of themselves waving its newfangled controller about. Oh, and Blizzard Entertainment “postponed indefinitely” (read “cancelled”) its troubled console action game Starcraft: Ghost, much to the disappointment of the three or four people that still cared about it.

I also bought rather more technological gadgets than is normal for me: I picked up a digital camera in February, and a swish new widescreen LCD monitor in June. I also replaced my Creative Zen Micro MP3 player with a Sony NW-HD5 in November, and made the mistake of buying an nVidia-based video card for my computer in December (the replacement ATI model will hopefully arrive soon after business returns to normal after the New Year holiday).

In September, I finally finished my MLitt, handed in my dissertation, and, much to my shock, was awared a Distinction. Unable to find a job, I went on unemployment benefit - what fun.

Oh, and on the web site front, September saw a new site design and a return to Movable Type as a publishing platform after slightly over a year with Blogger. In November, meanwhile, I finally got sick of my useless host, Fuitadnet, constantly screwing up and making life difficult, and moved to Donym, where the rent is cheaper and everything runs much more smoothly to boot.