BD Impressions

The Silence of the Lambs BD impressions

Over the last couple of evenings, we’ve been enjoying some cannibalistic fun by watching the BD releases of The Silence of the Lambs and Hannibal. Until now, I’ve always been of the rather unusual opinion that Hannibal is the better of the two, but I must confess that, now, I’m beginning to reconsider this. About half-way through Hannibal, my brother commented “This is good, but they’re not really using Anthony Hopkins as much as they did in the first one.” I asked him if he knew that Hopkins only actually appeared for about fifteen minutes in Silence, and he was astounded. Many people have just such a reaction when it’s pointed out to them, and I take this as a testament to how powerful Hopkins’ performance as Hannibal Lecter is: he overwhelms the movie, and is the element people are most likely to remember, but in reality is screen time is very limited. By contrast, he is all over Hannibal (appropriately so, given the title), but somehow makes less of an impact. I’m not sure whether to blame Steven Zaillian’s script or Hopkins’ more nudge-nudge-wink-wink performance, or a combination of the two, but watching the two films one after the other, I found myself both appreciating Silence’s strength and noticing Hannibal’s weaknesses more than in the past. I still consider the latter a film of great beauty and don’t really feel that it’s possible to directly compare the two (I think doing just that is why so many people found the sequel to be a let-down), but let’s just say it’s wobbling slightly on the pedestal on which I previously placed it.

As for the image quality of the two films on BD, I’ve already covered Hannibal here. For The Silence of the Lambs, 20th Century Fox and MGM have served up an MPEG-2 encode - probably the same MPEG-2 encode that was prepared for the film when the BD was originally going to come out in early 2007. This disc has been subjected to some degree of criticism online, but I personally feel that it’s not as bad as some have suggested. A degree of grain reduction appears to have been applied, but it’s a long way indeed from looking like a waxwork museum in the Dark City vein. Some comparisons have been drawn to the far grainier theatrical trailer found in the disc, but I think it’s unfair to measure the level of grain found in it to that of the film itself, as the elements used for the trailer are likely to be at least a couple of generations removed from those used for the film master. Detail is less than stellar, but I suspect this was always going to be the case. The encoding, meanwhile, is not bad, although a smattering of compression artefacts can be seen on occasions, and become quite pronounced in the “epilogue” showing Clarice’s graduation (see Example 15).

My biggest complaint is the same one that I applied to the MGM DVD releases: the colour palette has, apparently, been changed somewhat from the film’s original theatrical exhibition. The now out of print Criterion DVD, the transfer for which was supervised by cinematographer Tak Fujimoto and approved by director Jonathan Demme, has long been held up as a more faithful representation of these men’s intentions. The MGM master tends to look a little overlit, particularly noticeable in the scenes “down in the dungeon”, which on the Criterion DVD are darker and have a slight reddish tint (symbolic, perhaps, of entering the bowels of Hell). The lighting in the MGM version looks a little too bright for what is meant to be a dank and foreboding place, and the beginning of Clarice’s second conversation with Lecter, which starts with the lights turned out, reveals some wonky shadow detail as a result of the gamma having been increased (see Example 5). The debate will no doubt continue as to just how right or wrong the Criterion and MGM versions are, but I know which one I personally prefer and am somewhat disappointed by how the film looks here. 6/10

The Silence of the Lambs
studio: 20th Century Fox/MGM; country: USA; region code: A; codec: MPEG-2;
file size: 20.7 GB; average bit rate (including audio): 25.06 Mbit/sec

Body of Lies Blu-ray impressions

This evening, we watched Body of Lies, Ridley Scott’s most recent film. I tend to find Scott rather frustrating as a filmmaker. On the one hand, he has one of the best visual eyes of any Hollywood director, and when he’s on the ball and has a decent script to work with, can turn out some truly terrific material. On the other hand, of late he has demonstrated a rather unfortunate habit of picking scripts that just aren’t all that involving. To this day I haven’t managed to make it through American Gangster, and I found Body of Lies to be similarly heavy-going. In spite of the topical material (or, actually, possibly because of it), I just didn’t find myself connecting with any of the characters. Leonardo Di Caprio and Russell Crowe are both fine actors, but their characters never really came to life for me, and more often than not I felt as if I was just watching them wandering from one plot point to another, with nothing to involve me along the way. Frankly, the film just sort of “is”, and while it’s technically extremely well-made, and well-acted across the board, I just wish I had more of a reason to care about what was going on.

As for the disc, Warner really impressed me here. I’m accustomed to finding their transfers rather underwhelming, so it was a delight to be greeted by this extremely crisp and, for the most part, nicely-encoded image. Grain is superbly reproduced and detail is excellent, with no evidence of filtering or sharpening of any sort. Over at the AV Science Forum, Joshua Zyber pointed out some macro-blocking in Chapter 31, describing is as “some of the worst macroblocking” he’d ever seen on a BD. Naturally, I was on the look-out for it, and it’s true, there is some blocking in this scene (the walls and roof in a hospital ward in certain close-ups of Mark Strong are affected - see Example 15). However, I personally would describe it as fairly minor and can name several BDs with significantly worse compression problems. It’s certainly the only blight on what is otherwise an absolutely stellar encode. 9.5/10

Body of Lies
studio: Warner; country: USA; region code: ABC; codec: VC-1;
file size: 25.5 GB; average bit rate (including audio): 28.45 Mbit/sec

The Constant Gardener Blu-ray impressions

This afternoon, I finally got round to watching Kinowelt’s Region B German Blu-ray release of The Constant Gardener, a great adaptation of the John Le Carré thriller that I previously saw back in 2006 on DVD. The BD is, I suspect, a fairly accurate representation of the source materials, which don’t exhibit a massive amount of detail, although this does vary on a scene by scene basis. What also varies is the grain retention: some scenes exhibit a naturally grainy veneer, whereas others (such as Example 2) appear noticeably noise reduced (pay attention to Ralph Fiennes’ face). It’s unclear at what stage this was carried out, but given the inconsistency I have reason to assume that it was done selectively at the DI stage. Meanwhile, compression is adequate, although certain wide shots do exhibit a degree of blocking (as in Example 6). An acceptable if slightly problematic presentation overall. 7/10

The Constant Gardener
studio: ArtHaus/Kinowelt; country: Germany; region code: B; codec: AVC;
file size: 29.2 GB; average bit rate (including audio): 32.54 Mbit/sec

Nick & Norah’s Infinite Playlist Blu-ray impressions

In a world where depressing, “serious” movies tend to get all the kudos, it’s sometimes difficult to shake the impression that feel-good films tend to get overlooked. The other night, I watched 21 Grams, which wasn’t exactly a laugh a minute, so it made for a nice change of pace tonight to sit down to Nick & Norah’s Infinite Playlist, Sony Pictures’ latest film to celebrate the joys of music piracy. This was very much a blind buy, but one that paid off: I can’t remember the last time I found a movie this damn enjoyable. On paper, there’s not really all that much to it - two misfits bond over their love of indie music and go on a night-time jaunt across New York City to locate a missing and intoxicated friend - but it left me with a great big smile on my face and warmed the cockles of my black and cynical heart.

Sony Pictures’ BD is very good, albeit with the caveat that the bit rate appears to have been decidedly inadequate given the film’s naturally grainy look, coupled with a lot of jittery, hand-held camerawork. The overall bit rate - just over 40 Mbit/sec - sounds pretty high on paper, although in reality much of this goes to the three Dolby TrueHD audio tracks, one Dolby Digital 5.1 track and two 2.0 commentaries. That leaves around 26 Mbit/sec for the video itself, which should have been enough, but the amount of mosquito noise on display suggests that whoever encoded this put it on what is known about the HMS Whimsy as Very Fast Mode™. It’s a nice-looking image overall, considerably more pleasant in motion than in the static screen captures below, but it’s a shame it doesn’t look perfect, as I believe it could have done. 9/10

Nick & Norah’s Infinite Playlist
studio: Sony Pictures; country: USA; region code: ABC; codec: AVC;
file size: 25.1 GB; average bit rate (including audio): 40.17 Mbit/sec

21 Grams Blu-ray impressions

Tuesday heralded the arrival of Alliance Atlantis’ Canadian Blu-ray Disc release of 21 Grams, the second Alejandro González Iñárritu film to make it to BD after Babel. So far, Alliance have released a bunch of titles on BD that aren’t currently available in any other country (including Sin City, A Nightmare on Elm Street and The Butterfly Effect), to date with all the extras stripped out. Still, if you’re not that bothered about bonus content - or (as is the case with 21 Grams) the film in question didn’t have many extras to begin with - then these releases are definitely something to be applauded.

Alliance have provided 21 Grams with a reasonably satisfying if flawed presentation. Unlike Babel, this film did not receive a digital intermediate, so the colour timing and other post production work were done in the lab, and the source used for the HD master is, naturally, a print. The grain structure is at times very pronounced, while on other occasions it is less noticeable, suggesting that, as with Babel, Iñárritu used a variety of film stocks. Unfortunately, the lack of space afforded to the encode means that the grain can tend to get a bit clumpy at times. Certain moments also look like they may have been grain reduced, but this is not consistent by any means, so I’m unclear as to whether an NR pass was carried out on a handful of select scenes, or the whole thing received NR and the scenes shot on grainier stock weren’t so noticeably affected. In additionm, some shots display prominent ringing which looks like the effect of deliberate sharpening rather than the natural halos that can sometimes occur optically. There is also quite a bit of block noise and posterisation in the shadows in certain shots, which can be pretty distracting. 7/10

21 Grams
studio: Alliance Atlantis; country: Canada; region code: A; codec: AVC;
file size: 18.1 GB; average bit rate (including audio): 20.84 Mbit/sec

Hannibal Rising Blu-ray impressions

This evening, before we sat down to watch the UK Blu-ray Disc release of Hannibal Rising, my brother said to me something along the lines of “You’ll enjoy this, but it isn’t a Hannibal Lecter film.” He was absolutely right. Getting any pleasure out of this shameless cash-in penned by Thomas Harris himself requires you to forget what came before it… or rather after it, given that this prequel purports to show us the making of a madman. Try as he might, Gaspard Ulliel fails to convince us that he could possibly grow up to be Anthony Hopkins (or Brian Cox, for you Manhunter aficionados), and certain events call into question what happens later in the series:

Highlight below to reveal spoiler text:

So, it doesn’t really fit in with Hannibal, The Silence of the Lambs or even Red Dragon. What the film does do, however, is function rather effectively as a black comedy. I’m not sure how intentional the humour was (probably not very, all things considered), and if you hated the wryness of Hannibal you’ll absolutely loathe this, but I certainly wasn’t bored for a second. It ultimately boils down to little more than a rollicking period piece slasher movie, with the dapper Young Hannibal (that was the film’s working title, by the way) slicing and dicing his way through a cavalcade of loathsome individuals, not one of them with a single redeemable bone on their bodies. In that regard, the film clearly takes the easy way out by failing to provide us with any moral quandaries. At best, it’s a minor distraction, and if you compare it to any of the previous entries in the series, it understandably falls flat, but in my opinion it’s not the turkey the mainstream press have made it out to be.

Unfortunately, with their BD release, Momentum have continued their tradition of espousing a fondness for MPEG-2 video and lossy audio. The transfer is actually reasonably pleasing, with an acceptable (if not stellar - it’s definitely filtered) level of detail and accurate blacks (I actually feel compelled to point this out after the overly grey Butterfly on a Wheel, viewed previously). Alas, there are some occasional but quite prominent compression artefacts (see Example 7 for the worst instance I could spot), and the quantisation noise introduced by the MPEG-2 encoding prevents the grain from looking entirely natural. Finally, a handful of moments appear to suffer from reduced detail and a distracting amount of ringing (see Examples 3 and 6). These moments, which I suspect are the result of monkeying around at the DI stage, don’t last for long, but they do mean that the overall image is rather inconsistent. 7/10

Hannibal Rising
studio: Momentum; country: UK; region code: ABC; codec: MPEG-2;
file size: 17.4 GB; average bit rate (including audio): 19.18 Mbit/sec

Butterfly on a Wheel Blu-ray impressions

If there’s anything good to have come out of the fact that Zammo has gone into administration, it’s that the branches that are still open are flogging their remaining goods at cut rates. Books, clothing and posters are all going for 50% of the advertised prices, and there are some fine deals to be had on DVDs and BDs as well. In the case of the latter, I picked up the UK release of Butterfly on a Wheel on Wednesday - a blind buy that didn’t pay off. (I also snagged Donkey Punch and George A. Romero’s Diary of the Dead.) This suspense thriller stars Gerard Butler, he of 300 who’s good at looking constipated and emitting gutteral roars (in 300, it was “Sparrrrtaaaaaaa!”; in this film, he just bellows “Aaaaabbyyyyy!” a lot), and Pierece Brosnan, who is under the misconception that growing a couple of days’ worth of stubble and putting on a horrendously overdone Northern Irish accent makes him seem menacing. Unfortunately, it’s nothing more than a bland and improbably plotted piece of glossy, slickly-produced twaddle that should have gone straight to TV… and indeed it did in the US, where it was released under the title of Shattered. After we watched it (on Friday), my brother turned to me and said “This is the worst film I’ve ever seen on Blu-ray.” Had I had the presence of mind, I would have reminded him that we also watched Norbit, but I guess my brain had been turned to mush by preceding 95 minutes of tedium.

Oh well, at least it’s got Maria Bello in her pants. Actually, screw it, even that isn’t enough to save this train wreck.

For what it’s worth, Icon’s all-regions disc is actually pretty good, albeit with an irritating audio sync issue which affects both the lossy Dolby Digital and lossless DTS-HD Master Audio tracks. The AVC encode suffers from little if any noticeable compression issues, and detail is, for the most part, quite pleasing. The whole image has been slightly pre-filtered, with ringing visible around high contrast edges, such the letterbox bars and the on-screen credits, but, while this is less than ideal, it doesn’t affect the look of the film as negatively as something like Kung Fu Panda. On the other hand, the blacks look quite milky, although it’s unclear whether this is a fault in the original photography or a problem specific to the transfer. (I’m leaning towards the former, since the black screen against which the first few credits are overlaid is “proper” black, unlike, say, Silent Hill, where the black level is off from beginning to end.) 8/10

Butterfly on a Wheel
studio: Icon; country: UK; region code: ABC; codec: AVC;
file size: 19.6 GB; average bit rate (including audio): 29.61 Mbit/sec

Domino Blu-ray impressions

I wasn’t particularly impressed with Domino, Tony Scott’s loose biopic of real-life bounty hunter Domino Harvey, when I first saw it back in 2006. In fact, my overall recommendation as regards this giddy fever dream was “Save your money for real drugs.” That said, it’s not a film I forgot in a hurry, and, when it was released on Blu-ray last month, I found myself with a hankering to see it again. My copy arrived on Monday, and I watched it last night. Admittedly, I enjoyed it somewhat more than on my first viewing, but I still found the stylistic elements (particularly the self-conscious editing style and eye-searing contrast) irritating and the script muddled and of the patchwork variety. Despite this, though, it managed to hold my attention throughout, and on some level Keira Knightley is actually quite effective as the gun-toting bounty hunter with a silver spoon in her mouth.

As for the disc itself, I can’t say I was expecting a great deal, given that it is the joint product of Warner and New Line, who together hold one of the most dubious track records in the HDM world. Much to my surprise, therefore, Domino actually turned out to be a very impressive-looking release. It’s sometimes tough to rate image quality with a film as stylised as this, particularly given the deliberately unnatural colours and contrast, the rarely-static camera and the deliberate “degradation” techniques such as the introduction of colour bleeding (see Example 13). Still, my overall impression is that what we’re seeing here is mostly excellent and a faithful representation of the film’s intended look. Unfortunately, a frequent Warner shortcoming - inadequate bit rate - rears its ugly head here in the form of a smattering of compression artefacts (see Example 8 for the most noticeable instance). Otherwise, though, it’s all good. 9.5/10

Domino
studio: New Line/Warner; country: USA; region code: ABC; codec: VC-1;
file size: 18.5GB; average bit rate (including audio): 20.8 Mbit/sec

Monster Blu-ray impressions

A deeply underwhelming looking disc, this. Okay, so the film was never intended to look like a million dollars, but even taking into account the deliberately gritty-looking visual style, this is still a pretty grotty-looking disc. There may at some point have been detail in the image, but a significant amount of it has been eroded away by grain reduction, which, coupled with some ropey encoding, results in an unnatural, digital-looking image. Artefacting is especially prevalent in the shadows, resulting in an image that is quite unpleasant to look at a lot of the time. Daylight scenes generally fare slightly better, but even these don’t appear too hot thanks to the lack of detail, which prevents all but the close-ups from looking impressive. Frankly, it has the look of one of those muddy HDTV broadcasts that you can’t stop yourself from involuntarily shuddering at when you see captures of them at the AV Science Forum. 5/10

Monster
studio: EMS; country: Germany; region code: ABC; codec: VC-1;
file size: 18.54GB; average bit rate (including audio): 24.32 Mbit/sec

Another bonzer Aussie BD

Back in February 2007, Lions Gate released Mary Harron’s film American Psycho on Blu-ray Disc in the US, and a thoroughly cack-handed job they did of it too, delivering an image so processed that every single edge had masses and masses of ringing surrounding it, and all the actors looked like they’d been deep fat fried. To add insult to injury, Lions Gate encoded their horrible image in MPEG-2 on a single layer disc, and junked most of the extras from its DVD counterpart.

Flash forward just under a couple of years, and the film materialises on BD in Australia, under the auspices of Sony Pictures. Now, I try not to judge books by their covers, but come on: Sony or Lions Gate? Who would you trust to get the job done? I ordered a copy, which arrived yesterday, and we had a fine evening watching Bruce Wayne… sorry, Patrick Bateman… slicing and dicing his way through a variety of yuppies, hookers and bums. So, is the Australian disc an improvement on its woeful US counterpart? You bet it is. No, it’s not a stellar-looking title by any means, suffering from a degree of ringing and a slight diffuseness, but it’s a significant step up all the same. The upgrade to an AVC encode on a dual layer disc gives the film more room to breathe, reducing artefacting, while detail and overall realism are greatly improved thanks to considerably less ringing and noise reduction. By the looks of it, the same master was used for both discs, but Sony managed to restrain themselves from subjecting it to the added round of digital post-processing applied by Lions Gate. You just have to look at Examples 13 and 14 to see how much less distracting ringing there is, and Examples 6 and 8 to see how the reduced filtering makes subtle (and some not so subtle) improvements to the overall level of detail. Unfortunately, as with the Lions Gate release, a number of the extras are still MIA (the same ones, actually), but, in every other respect, the Australian release constitutes a major upgrade from the miserable-looking US disc… meaning that Lions Gate got pantsed by the Aussies twice in a row (c.f. The Descent).

(Screen captures after the jump…)

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Australia to the rescue

My copy of the Australian Blu-ray Disc of The Descent, distributed by Icon Home Entertainment, arrived today (along with some other BD goodies which I’ll hopefully get a chance to post about tomorrow evening). You may remember my post from a week ago which outlined the situation regarding this release and its rather dramatic colour palette difference from the US version put out by Lions Gate. So, how does it measure up? Given that the pressing of the US release which features the superior AVC encode is now extremely hard to come by, with the poorer quality MPEG-2 version having all but replaced it, is this Australian version, itself AVC encoded, an adequate replacement? The answer is “yes”… and then some.

First, some screen captures. There are so many significant differences between the two versions that I ended up with a large number and struggled to cut it down to a reasonable amount. Eventually, I settled on 20 images for each, down from approximately 70 beforehand (!!). Hopefully these give you some idea of the improvements made with the Australian release.

(Screen captures after the jump…)

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Donkey Punch Blu-ray impressions

Last night, we watched a rental copy of Optimum’s Region B Blu-ray Disc release of Donkey Punch, a British horror movie from 2008. I didn’t really know anything at all about it going in, but I ended up being pleasantly surprised by it. Note that I’m using “pleasantly” in the loosest possible sense of the word, as in actual fact it’s a pretty nasty little movie that rarely pulls any punches and is the absolute antithesis to the PG-13 “horror” movies Hollywood tends to churn out over the summer. (It’s also considerably nastier than many of the so-called “torture porn”* R-rated Hollywood horrors, if only because psychologically it’s a whole lot more unpleasant.) I didn’t actually know what the enonymous “donkey punch” of the film’s title was, and for those who are in the same position as me, I’m not going to spoil it. Instead, I’ll just say that the film is tense, ballsy and unpredictable, and definitely worth a look if you’re tired of your horror movies always coming in one of the two approved configurations (PG-13 horror-lite or R-rated “torture porn”).

So, tarmaccing, huh?

Donkey Punch was shot using some sort of reasonably high-end digital apparatus, and this is readily evident in Optimum’s BD, which alternates between looking very good and not very good at all. The whole image has been slightly filtered, as evinced by the consistent ringing at the top and bottom edges of the 1.85:1 frame. Luckily, there aren’t many high contrast edges in the film, so this is less destructive than it is in, say, Kung Fu Panda, which I watched a couple of days ago and which suffered from exactly the same issue. Compression artefacts do show up on a number of occasions; see, for example, shots 3 and 5. By far the biggest issue, though, is digital noise. Shots which take place in bright light generally look very good indeed, but many of those that take place in the dark are afflicted by a large amount of pronounced interference, which looks nothing like film grain and gives the image a rather cheap, home-made appearance. It’s an unfortunate byproduct of the digital photography, which means that what we find on the disc is pretty much an accurate representation of the source materials (barring the filtering), but it’s not nice to look at. 6/10

Donkey Punch
studio: Optimum; country: UK; region code: B; codec: AVC;
file size: 18.5 GB; average bit rate (including audio): 26.76 Mbit/sec

* Note: I actually hate the term “torture porn”, but it’s in such wide usage that it seems to be the most straightforward way of conveying the sort of films I’m talking about.

Death Proof Blu-ray impressions

We watched the BD of Quentin Tarantino’s Death Proof last night, and I must say that the film has gone up a little in my estimation since I last saw it. While, previously, I felt that only the final half-hour was worth anything, I actually found myself getting into the first half a lot more this time round. I wonder if it has anything to do with the fact that, watching it in high definition on a 123” screen, I was able to appreciate the vibe Tarantino was aiming for much more easily. I’m not sure whether this is true or not, but what I do know is that, after the first half, when the focus switches from one set of girls to another, I began to lose interest, and that didn’t pick up until the justly lauded final half-hour. The fact that Tarantino, for some reason, opts to dispense with the deliberately degraded film stock once he moves on to Zoë Bell and her chums, does a lot to back up my earlier theory. Simply put, there’s something cool and atmospheric about watching a bunch of people wittering away in Tarantino-speak on what looks like a beat-up old print, but, when doing the same with another bunch of people, only this time on a pristine print, the effect is lessened considerably. Still, barring that sag in the middle, I do think this is a pretty decent film. It’s no masterpiece, for sure, but I’m not convinced it’s the train wreck some people think it is. I just wish it could have been edited a little tighter. Tarantino’s biggest problem is that he’s infuriatingly self-indulgent (and I’m not just talking about him inserting himself into roles in his movies).

On to the transfer, and, as with Planet Terror, it’s quite difficult to objectively assess the image quality, because once again the look is intentionally that of a grubby old print, at least for the first hour or so. The big difference is that, unlike Robert Rodriguez, Tarantino actually shot his segment of Grindhouse on film, and then physically degraded the elements, rather than resorting to artificial digital trickery. As a result, it looks a whole lot more authentic than anything in Planet Terror, and vastly more atmospheric. Perhaps as a result of the real world degrading, Death Proof is significantly less detailed than its partner in crime, but in my opinion more pleasing to look at overall.

Moving on to the “clean” half of the film, this part is much easier to critique because, this time round, it’s not meant to look bad. Perhaps because he didn’t want a repeat of the overly clean Kill Bill, Tarantino opted not to go for a digital intermediate on this film, so the master used for this BD is derived from a print source. Wisely, The Weinstein Company have opted to leave the material alone, so the grain appears to be intact. There is a degree of softness to the image, and some prominent haloing (see Example 14 for a particularly pronounced example), but I suspect that this is down to the source materials rather than any trickery on the digital front. Aesthetically, it’s not as nice as a lot of recent films on BD, but I’m fairly convinced it’s a faithful reproduction of the film elements.

As with Planet Terror, I’m going to refrain from giving this disc an overall rating for image quality, but, looking at the “clean” segment alone, I suspect a high 8/10 or low 9/10 would be in order.

Death Proof
studio: Weinstein; country: USA; region code: ABC; codec: AVC;
file size: 27.7 GB; average bit rate (including audio): 34.92 Mbit/sec

Kung Fu Panda Blu-ray impressions

I don’t like to tar an entire studio with the same brush, but broadly speaking I haven’t thought much of DreamWorks’ animated output. Barring their collaborations with Aardman, most of their stuff leaves me cold, with unattractive character designs, stiff animation, bland celebrity voices, irritating pop culture references and a lack of actual story development. Tonight, though, we watched the UK Blu-ray Disc of Kung Fu Panda, a rental copy of which has been sitting on my desk for some time, and I have to say it entertained me. It still suffered from some of the same problems that have plagued other DreamWorks films, most notably the overuse of celebrity actors who no-one remembers for their voices, as well as some truly hideous-looking character designs, but it was, overall, an enjoyable 92 minutes and certainly a whole heap better than, say, Shrek. Overall, I’d say it clocks in a couple of pegs below Pixar’s worst, which would be (in my opinion) A Bug’s Life.

Transfer-wise… well, this one has been praised in virtually every circle as “perfect”, “reference quality”, etc. Some viewers do seem to be under the impression that digitally-sourced animation is inherently flawless and couldn’t possibly look bad on BD. Unfortunately, in the wrong hands, it can. Discs like Ratatouille and Open Season are basically perceptually perfect (at least to my eyes), but, at the other end of the spectrum, The Simpsons Movie and Asterix and the Vikings, both of which are traditionally animated but were composited entirely on computers, suffer from needless low pass filtering, which removes the finest level of detail and adds unsightly ringing to edges with his contrasts.

Unfortunately, Kung Fu Panda is in this latter category, again thanks to filtering. The overall effect is actually far from awful, and indeed I can even understand why many people have failed to notice this problem, but it’s definitely there, and it’s consistent throughout. If you look at any of the screen captures below, you’ll see that the letterbox bars at the top and bottom of the image suffer from a mild amount of ringing. This sort of thing is almost always indicative of filtering of some sort, and indeed if you look at, for example, the branches in Example 13 or the rope bridge in Example 14, you can see clearly the extent to which it affects the image as a whole. In the end, it’s definitely a very watchable transfer, but it’s a shame it looks like this, because it didn’t have to. Digital animation may not automatically look perfect, but it could and should. 8/10

Kung Fu Panda
studio: Paramount; country: UK; region code: ABC; codec: AVC;
file size: 22.8 GB; average bit rate (including audio): 35.44 Mbit/sec

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

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.

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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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

Home Alone Blu-ray impressions

It took some time, but I’m finally able to provide you with direct screen captures for Fox’s recent Blu-ray Disc release of Home Alone.

A slightly revised master appears to have been used compared with that which found its way on to the 2007 Family Fun Edition DVD release. Some additional dirt and scratches have been cleaned up, and a grain reduction pass also appears to have been applied: the DVD actually shows a more pronounced grain structure, which is rather unusual. The compressionist on this title actually contacted me regarding its appearance, and, since he/she has stated that he/she did no additional filtering or noise reduction, we must assume that these steps were carried out at an earlier stage in the chain. In addition to the slightly “digital” look the film now has as a result of the grain reduction, it also has a somewhat soft appearance, but I suspect that this is largely representative of the original materials rather than because of any monkeying around with the master. The bottom line: not an amazing-looking disc by any stretch of the imagination, but watchable enough. 6/10

Home Alone
studio: 20th Century Fox; country: USA; region code: A;
codec: AVC; file size: 30.6 GB; average bit rate: 42.64 Mbit/sec

L.A. Confidential Blu-ray impressions

Not exactly an awe-inspiring image, but I’ve seen considerably worse. It’s a Warner title, and as such I have my suspicions that it has been subjected to the studio’s usual injection of mediocrity. Certainly, it has the look of having been slightly grain reduced, and I suspect that the highest frequency details have been filtered out as well. The picture is fairly flat-looking and never really comes to life, so to speak, while even in the closest of close-ups, there is a degree of softness that I suspect wasn’t part of the way it was shot. Overall, it’s basically what I’d term a reasonably nice-looking catalogue title, and, on the plus side, I can’t spot anything in the way of deliberate edge enhancement, but it’s fair to say I wasn’t exactly overwhelmed by this disc. 7/10

L.A. Confidential
studio: Warner; country: USA; region code: ABC;
codec: VC-1; file size: 31.6 GB; average bit rate: 32.9 Mbit/sec