BD Impressions

Fight Club Blu-ray impressions

I watched German Blu-ray Disc release of David Fincher’s Fight Club from Kinowelt last night. Prior to picking up a copy, I’d heard some negative reports about the disc’s image quality, including a review at Amazon.de which claimed it to be nothing more than a standard definition upconvert. I’m glad I researched the matter more thoroughly, because otherwise I would have steered clear of what is actually a rather good release. That’s not to say that it’s a flawless presentation by any means: a comparison at the AV Science Forum shows a very slight overall reduction in overall detail levels compared with the US DTheater tape from 20th Century Fox, while a couple of segments of the film, one near the beginning and one near the end, do demonstrate an overall blurrier look with less defined grain than the rest of the transfer, suggesting that perhaps these moments were taken from a different source (see capture 15 for an example of this).

Otherwise, this is a pretty impressive film-like presentation, one of only a small number of film-sourced (rather than DI-sourced) titles that I’ve seen in HD that haven’t been overzealously processed. Grain is moderate and very natural, and detail is pretty good too. It’s not razor-sharp, but I don’t think it was ever going to be. It’s definitely worth picking up if you can play Region B titles. I know some people have expressed dissatisfaction with it, saying a new master is needed etc., but I’m not convinced it could be made to look significantly better than it does now. I certainly don’t expect Fox’s eventual US release to improve on it in any meaningful way - and hey, it could even look worse, particularly if they decide to go to down on the degraining side of things. Once New Line get around to releasing Fincher’s Se7en, I would be overjoyed if it looks anything like this… but knowing New Line, they’ll probably pull a Dark City on it.

It also comes in a nice tin case, and has a tremendous DTS-HD High Resolution 7.1 mix (2046 Kbps, 48 kHz, 24-bit), suffering from none of the dialogue bleed and other problems which plagued the 7.1 audio on the previous BD I picked up from Kinowelt, Léon.

Fight Club
studio: Kinowelt; country: Germany; region code: B;
codec: VC-1; file size: 33.2 GB; average bit rate: 34.18 Mbit/sec

Chungking Express Blu-ray impressions

A bulging chest of swag was hauled aboard the HMS Whimsy today, including separate packages from the far lands of Germany and the United States of America. The former contained Blu-ray Disc releases of Fight Club and The Constant Gardener (both locked to Region B, I’m sorry to report), while the latter contained my first ever Criterion BD, Wong Kar-Wai’s Chungking Express.

I watched this tonight and, sacreligious as it will no doubt sound, I’m afraid it did very little for me. This is not a case where I can point to individual elements and say “this didn’t work” or “that didn’t sit well with me”: I can’t really criticise the film at all, and yet it just left me completely cold. It was as if there was some sort of barrier between myself and the film that prevented me from connecting with it. It just came and went and, to borrow a saying from my brother, “I don’t regret watching it but I don’t care if I never see it again.” I suppose some films are just like that: you can’t please anyone, and you’d be foolish to try, but (and here I’m only tightening the noose around my neck) I enjoyed My Blueberry Nights considerably more. Given my apparently-notorious dislike of most anime (while I love a lot of Western animation), perhaps it’s a cultural thing.

As far as the BD itself is concerned, I strongly doubt that this is going to be a demo title for anyone’s collection. As with my reaction to the film itself, I can’t pinpoint anything “wrong” with it per se, but, I suspect due to the limitations inherent in the source material, it basically looks completely natural without ever being overly impressive. I don’t doubt that it’s a completely faithful reproduction of the materials, but in that case the source materials can’t have been particularly amazing to begin with. It’s therefore extremely difficult to know how to rate a title like this. Taking into account faithfulness to the original materials, it’s probably a “10”, but, ignoring such concerns and concentrating on pure aesthetics, it would be considerably lower.

Sorry if this post comes across as overly negative. I have a huge amount of respect for Criterion’s dilligent efforts to retain a filmic look in the home video environment, but something we have to bear in mind is that a lot of the films in their catalogue, due to their very nature, simply aren’t going to have the “wow” factor in HD. That’s something to bear in mind when evaluating the quality of their discs. That said, it never ceases to amaze me how willing reviewers are to give Criterion the benefit of the doubt. I’ve yet to read a review of this disc that gives the image quality anything less than a glowing appraisal, and yet I feel pretty certain that, if the likes of Universal were to put out exactly the same disc, many would be calling it a sloppy effort and demanding that a new master be struck (ignoring the fact that a new master was created this year).

PS. If I hear the song California Dreamin’ one more time, I may inflict physical violence on the first person I find.

Chungking Express
studio: Criterion; country: USA; region code: A;
codec: AVC; file size: 29.2 GB; average bit rate: 40.66 Mbit/sec

La Femme Nikita Blu-ray impressions

La Femme Nikita, or Nikita to give it its correct title, is a film that I’ve owned on DVD for over a year now. I always intended to sit down and watch it, but, given how atrocious the DVD’s transfer was, I always seemed to come up with an excuse to watch something else instead. Luckily, Sony have now released the film on Blu-ray Disc, meaning that we can now finally throw away our blurry, aliased old standard definition discs. It’s altogether better-looking than Kinowelt’s recent BD of Léon, with a far more natural grain structure, superior detail and considerably less in the way of blown-out contrast. Some of the whites do look a little on the “hot” side, but a comparison with my old DVD revealed that they looked just the same there as well, so I don’t believe any boosting has been carried out - well, no additional boosting, at any rate. In any event, the master is new, judging by the presence of the 2007 Gaumont logo at the start.

By any standards, this is a very good-looking disc. However, when you consider that the source material is nearly 20 years old and the film is slightly more obscure than a lot of the titles being put out on BD, the end results look even more impressive. I was going to say “If you want a catalogue title done right, take it to Sony,” but then I saw Erik’s screen captures of Joan of Arc: The Messenger, another Besson film also released by Sony on the same day, and decided I’d just be embarrassing myself if I said that.

On a semi-related note, can I ask Sony to please stop positioning their subtitles over the letterboxing on their 2.39:1 discs instead of placing them within the frame? This sort of thing basically makes foreign language films unwatchable for those with 2.39:1 displays, and is extremely irritating for the rest of us because it means our eyes are automatically drawn to the black at the bottom of the screen rather than the picture itself.

La Femme Nikita
studio: Sony Pictures; country: USA; region code: ABC;
codec: AVC; file size: 26.4 GB; average bit rate: 32.33 Mbit/sec

Shrooms Blu-ray impressions

Thanks to John for giving me an opportunity to view this disc… I think. No, it’s not particularly good - an Irish twist on the typical “moronic stoner kids get lost in the woods and are set upon by crazy killers” slasher movie formula, with the most blatantly obvious twist ending you’ve ever seen - but at least it provided me with some laughs, albeit of the unintentional variety.

On to the transfer: we have here an encode with an extremely small file size, particularly by Sony’s standards. To be honest, compression artefacts are less of an issue than I expected, but there is definitely some blocking going on in he background at times. There’s also some posterisation going on, with darker scenes suffering from compromised shadow detail. Lyris suggested that it might be that the filmmakers underexposed their material and then tried to compensate by boosting it digitally. That said, the overall detail levels are very good, despite a small amount of ringing resulting from a mild low pass filter (check the letterbox bars).

I was surprised by the lack of lossless audio - only a 640 Kbps Dolby Digital 5.1 track and a 224 Kbps 2.0 downmix are provided.

Shrooms
studio: Sony Pictures; country: UK; region code: ABC;
codec: AVC; file size: 10.9 GB; average bit rate: 17.98 Mbit/sec

My Blueberry Nights Blu-ray impressions

My Blueberry Nights is my second Wong Kar Wai film. My first was 2046, which I found pretty but vapid, and this 2007 effort, starring chanteuse Norah Jones, is similar, in that it’s once again pretty, albeit more so, and vapid, albeit more so. However, any film that has visuals so mesmerising that I can completely ignore a rather limp plot and uneven performances has my immediate respect: admittedly, I caught myself clock-watching by the time the Natalie Portman scenes near the end of the film were drawing to a close, but for a good 90% of the film’s duration I was held rapt by how incredibly beautiful every single shot was. This may be the the nicest-looking film I’ve seen since Amélie. Presumably the effect is diminished somewhat when viewed on a television, but I was lucky enough to be able to view it on a 123” display. The UK Blu-ray disc, from Optimum, is coded for Region B only, but thanks to the magic of the home theatre PC and its solutions to such errors, the studios can no longer deter me from giving them money. Strangely enough, I don’t think they’re going to thank me for lining their coffers.

Ahem, the disc… I’m going to make an assumption here and say that the film was heavily degrained at the DI stage. The result of this is that shots where the camera is in motion take on a very oily appearance, with the grain seeming almost like running liquid. Thankfully, the camera remains static throughout most of the film, and when it does move it tends to do so slowly, meaning that the problem is not as pronounced as it could have been. Detail is generally excellent, although it does vary and certain wide shots tend to become a little on the waxy side - again, I suspect, because of the degraining. Compression is very good on this single-layer AVC encode, and there isn’t so much as a hint of edge enhancement or detail reduction (beyond the side effects of the degraining). A shame, then, that someone forgot to set the black level properly, meaning that there is no “pure” black in the film, just dark grey. Look at the opening logos and you’ll see that the letterbox bars at the top and bottom of the screen are noticeable darker than what is meant to be the logos’ black background.

My Blueberry Nights
(Optimum, UK, AVC, 21.4 GB)

And yes, I’m aware that I need to see In the Mood for Love. I suspect I’ll hold out for a Blu-ray release of it, and I’ll certainly be picking up Chungking Express when Criterion releases it on BD later this month.

The Stendhal Syndrome Blu-ray impressions

I’m off work today with a stomach bug of some sort, and have been doing my best to distract myself from the stabbing pains and waves of nausea by putting my copy of the recent Blu-ray release of The Stendhal Syndrome, from Blue Underground, through its paces. Overall, we have what I consider to be a strong but problematic presentation, although to what extent these problems were avoidable is open to debate.

The first thing that struck me about it was how grainy it is. The grain is extremely pronounced and harsh, more so than The Counterfeiters, previously the grainiest film I owned in high definition. The intensity and appearance of the grain is such that Lyris immediately suggested that it had been artificially sharpened at some stage in the chain, and, after giving the matter due consideration, I agree. Judging by its appearance, the source material (a 35mm interpositive) was pretty heavy in the grain department to begin with, but, if our theory is correct, this has been unnecessarily accentuated digitally. It’s not awful by any means, and it looks considerably better in motion than in still frame form, but it does look a little on the harsh side and not very naturalistic. It also causes problems for the encoder, which simply can’t cope with this level of grain, meaning that virtually every shot in the film is crawling with tiny compression artefacts. Again, they aren’t overly apparent in motion, but are quite noticeable in still frame form.

I’m therefore happy to report that, other than these issues, I have no complaints about the image quality. Presumably, the same master that was used for last year’s standard definition release was used for the BD, and as a result it is far closer in terms of colour palette and contrast to that release than to the earlier Region 2 Italian DVD from Medusa, which, in comparison, looks decidedly washed out. Detail levels are pretty decent, although the heavy grain means that it never has the crisp clarity that so many crave for their HD presentations. Given that every single Blue Underground standard definition DVD I ever saw was over-zealously filtered, I’m extremely pleased that this odious practice doesn’t appear to have followed them into the HD domain.

Audio-wise, things get rather baffling. In addition to the same 448 Kbps English and Italian Dolby Digital 5.1 EX tracks that were present on the DVD release, we also have two 7.1 tracks, both lossless: DTS-HD Master Audio and Dolby TrueHD. Frankly, I don’t understand the logic behind this, as the presence of one automatically makes the other pointless. I find this particularly confusing given that Blue Underground is a low budget independent label; I’d have thought they would have better things to spend their money on than licence fees for multiple audio formats. Personally, I wouldn’t have objected if one was English and the other Italian, but as both feature the inferior English dub, I can’t imagine either getting much of a workout on my speakers. English subtitles are also included, and they are, as far as I can tell, dubtitles rather than captions for the Italian audio.

One final note on the audio: the stereo mixes that accompanied the film on both the Blue Underground and Medusa DVD releases are missing in action. Now, I know that there is some debate as to whether the film was original mixed in stereo or surround, but this, coupled with a similar absence on Blue Underground’s BD of The Final Countdown (released theatrically in stereo), does give me some cause for concern. Are Blue Underground doing a Warner and neglecting to present these films with their original audio intact in HD? If so, Bill Lustig should know better, given the flack he received for his bungled remixes of (among others) Suspiria. Let’s put it this way: if The Bird with the Crystal Plumage arrives on Blu-ray in February sans its original mono English and Italian tracks, I will be sorely disappointed. My advice, in the unlikely off-chance that anyone is listening: ditch the redundant 7.1 remixes and include the original mix as a matter of priority. By all means include one lossless remix, but any more than that is overkill, particularly if it impacts on the film’s original audio.

The Stendhal Syndrome
(Blue Underground, USA, AVC, 35.1 GB)

Wall-E Blu-ray impressions

On Tuesday, my brother received his copy of the US Blu-ray release of Wall-E (the 2-disc edition, naturally, not the pointless 3-disc version with a useless Digital Copy to inflate the price tag). Almost immediately, he had to leave for London to receive Imaging Science Foundation (ISF) training, so I took the opportunity to nab the disc from his shelf and give it a quick run-through.

I should point out that, until I’ve watched the film on the big screen, which we should hopefully be doing over the weekend, I won’t be assigning the transfer an overall rating, but I was very impressed by what I saw and would, at this early stage, call myself 99% satisfied. As with the BD of Pixar’s Ratatouille before it, the look of Wall-E is smooth rather than pin sharp. I take this to be an intentional cinematographic choice; certainly, it allows the film to avoid the sterile look that plagues most CGI films. As such, while it doesn’t have the razor sharp look of, say, Open Season, it’s by far the more aesthetically pleasing of the two. There is, however, one mild caveat: compression. Don’t get me wrong, it’s almost completely flawless, but as soon as I saw the surprisingly low bit rate of 21.1 GB (on the disc, a total of 28.6 out of a possible total of 50 GB is occupied by data), I did begin to be rather concerned. This is by no means a compression nightmare, but eagle-eyed viewers may be able to spot some occasional artefacts affecting a handful of scenes combining fast motion with high amounts of detail. Take a look at Example 12 for an idea of what to (occasionally) expect.

Overall, it’s a highly impressive transfer, but Ratatouille remains Disney’s best-looking BD. I just hope the film is still as magical as I remember it being.

Wall-E
(Buena Vista, USA, AVC, 21.1 GB)

Hannibal Blu-ray impressions

Well, it took long enough, but Ridley Scott’s Hannibal has finally been released in high definition. In my opinion the best of the Hannibal Lecter films, this was one of my most eagerly anticipated titles for an HD release since both formats launched. It was initially announced for an April 2007 Blu-ray release from MGM in the US, but it disappeared into the same void that claimed several of the studio’s catalogue titles when distribution partner 20th Century Fox staged an abrupt exit from the format over copy protection concerns (LOL). Then, it showed up in the schedules again on the other side of the Atlantic, this time as a French HD DVD release from Universal. Unfortunately, as is so often the case with French home video releases, it missed its August 2007 release date and ultimately never surfaced. Luckily, however, German distributors Universum Film, UFA and Tobis have come to the rescue, releasing it on October 30th. My copy arrived today.

First, the good news. It’s region free, and includes separate English and German DTS-HD High Resolution (i.e. non-lossless) 6.1 audio tracks, with PowerDVD reporting a constant bit rate of 4.6 Mbps. English and German subtitles are included, both optional. Finally, all of the bonus materials from the original 2-disc DVD release have been ported over, including the Ridley Scott commentary, deleted scenes and 75-minute documentary Breaking the Silence: The Making of Hannibal.

On to the transfer, we have a VC-1 encode on a dual-layer BD50, and it’s an above average but not particularly amazing presentation of the film. The same master that was used for the various DVD releases appears to have been trotted out again here, as evinced by the higher than expected amount of print damage and gate weave that it exhibits (not that either of these are overly troubling, but for a film from as recent as 2001 they are surprising to see). The biggest problem appears to be noise reduction, which particularly affects the wide shots, giving them a waxy and insubstantial look. It’s not Dark City bad, but it’s closer to that particular disaster than I would have liked. Close-ups fare far better, as close-ups invariably do, and luckily they take up the bulk of the film’s running time. There’s a moderate amount of ringing on display, again most noticeable in the wide shots, while the grain tends to look a little clumpy. Detail is about average, never really “popping” but at least offering a sizeable improvement over the Region 2 Superbit DVD, previously the sharpest of the bunch (Julianne Moore’s delightful moustache, for instance, is for the first time readily visible during the tense climax in the kitchen).

In the overall scheme of things, I’d rate this somewhere around the middle echelon for catalogue titles. It’s nothing like as bad as, say, Universal’s worst, but at the same time don’t expect anything as ravishing as The Godfather: Part III or Scott’s Blade Runner. With a new master, I suspect the image quality could have been noticeably improved, but I have a feeling that isn’t going to happen any time soon. I certainly wouldn’t hold out for MGM to get off their fat asses and release it in the US: we’d be unlikely to see any significant gains in the image quality department, and they’d probably drop all the extras to boot. Basically, you can safely buy this with the assumption that it’s the best you’ll get in the foreseeable future.

Hannibal
(Universum Film/UFA/Tobis, Germany, VC-1, 33.1 GB)

Update, November 5th, 2008 09:16 PM: I should point out that the extras are all standard definition PAL rather than NTSC, and as such won’t play on North American equipment.

Léon Blu-ray impressions

Remember Léon (known as The Professional in the US)? Great film, looked absolutely terrible in every single incarnation on home video. Seemingly no-one could get it right, with even the so-called Superbit release being nothing more than a harsh, ringy mess with absolutely no detail whatsoever. (See here for evidence of just how appalling it looks.) When I first heard that the film had been released on Blu-ray by German distributor Kinowelt, my initial reaction was to assume that it would simply be more of the same. After all, the most recent US release, the 2005 version laughably referred to as a “Deluxe Edition”, was claimed to have come from a high definition master, and I made the not unreasonable assumption that the same master would simply be regurgitated for Blu-ray. Then, however, I was linked to screen captures of the new release by regular Land of Whimsy reader FoxyMulder, which, despite exhibiting a severe amount of contrast boosting, looked infinitely better than I’d expected.

I ordered a copy, which turned up on Friday. First, I’m sorry to have to report that this disc has been locked to Region B only, denying those of us with Region A players the right to watch this great film. As such, I’ve only been able to watch it on my 20” PC monitor and examine the encode at its native resolution in VirtualDubMod, so my impressions don’t necessarily correlate with the experience of viewing it on a decent-sized setup. (No doubt I’ll eventually have some means of watching Region B titles properly, but until then, I won’t be assigning a concrete rating to this disc or giving it a place in the HD Image Quality Rankings checklist.)

The disc itself comes in a very nice metal case, just like the one used for Warner’s UK Blu-ray release of Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street. It looks very slick, albeit in a minimalist sort of way. The disc is dual layer and features both the shorter theatrical cut and longer integral version of the film, achieved through seamless branching (the file size listed below covers only the integral version). Separate English and German DTS-HD Master Audio 7.1 tracks are included, as well as optional German subtitles. Finally, all of the bonus content from the aforementioned Deluxe Edition DVD has been ported over, barring the pop-up trivia track. This release also gains a DTS 2.0 (1.5 Mbps) isolated score, which I believe was previously featured on the old American single-disc and German 2-disc DVD releases. All in all, if you don’t mind the loss of the trivia track (and I can’t imagine many people mourning it), this is by far the most comprehensive package to have been released for the film so far.

As for the transfer, how is it? Well, like I said, much better than I expected. It’s an AVC encode, and it appears to have been taken from a completely different master, given that it carries the 2007 100th anniversary Gaumont logo at the start rather than the 1990s “map” version used for all previous releases. (Incidentally, I really hate it when studios do this, replacing their old studio logos when they re-release films. The French companies appear to be particularly fond doing of this.) As previously mentioned, contrast boosting has been applied, and in places it becomes excessive, blowing out the highlights completely and mangling shadow detail. This is particularly pronounced in shots 1 and 2 below, and is in my estimation similar to the utter travesty that was last year’s remastered version of Suspiria. Luckily, Léon features a far more muted palette than Argento’s masterpiece, so the effect is considerably less distracting overall. Still, it’s very disappointing that someone (Gaumont, I’m presuming) decided to do this, as it’s an odious practice and one that is every bit as destructive as noise reduction or edge enhancement.

That aside, it’s a rather nice-looking disc. Not stunningly perfect by any stretch of the imagination, but a solid presentation and a significant step up from the dreadful DVDs. Detail is good if not great, and while there is some ringing, I’m guessing it’s optically induced rather than the result of deliberate edge sharpening or filtering. Some noise reduction appears to have been applied, but it’s not overly destructive. Overall, despite the flaws, it’s well worth picking up, provided you can play the disc.

Léon: The Professional
(Kinowelt, Germany, AVC, 25.9 GB)

Chicken Run Blu-ray impressions

Who knew that Aardman Animation’s Chicken Run had been released on Blu-ray? Not me, at least until the other day, when I accidentally stumbled across it on Amazon’s French web site. Taking a gamble, I placed an order for it. It arrived on Tuesday, and I’m happy to report that not only is it region-free (and without the hindrance of forced subtitles), it’s also a rather nice-looking disc. It doesn’t look amazing, but it’s a hell of a lot closer to how I would have liked The Nightmare Before Christmas to look than the version Disney ultimately ended up putting out. While some grain reduction have been performed, it’s of the temporal rather than spatial variety, meaning that it hasn’t led to the image being eroded or rendered waxy or watercolour-like. Unfortunately, some artefacts are present (look what happens to the axe in Example 13, below), but it’s a far more agreeable looking image overall. (The comparisons are valid, I think, given that both use stop motion animation, and both were shot on 35mm film, unlike, say, the digital Corpse Bride.)

Chicken Run
(Pathé/Studio Canal, France, VC-1, 15.8 GB)

The Omen (2006 remake) Blu-ray impressions

And I’m finally done with all four films in the box set. The reviews of Damien: Omen II, The Final Conflict and the 2006 remake of The Omen are now scheduled to go live at various points throughout October 31st. (If there’s time, I may actually try to get another horror review done as well.) My thoughts on the transfer of the 2006 remake, along with screen captures, are below.

The remake of The Omen was actually one of the first Blu-ray discs to be released by 20th Century Fox, back in November 2006. As such, it mirrors most of its counterparts from that period in that it features an MPEG-2 encode on a single layer BD-25 disc. The transfer, in the film’s original aspect ratio of 1.85:1, it pretty good for the most part, with a good if not stunning level of detail and no obvious problems with the deliberately muted colour palette. Unfortunately, the aged codec and the low bit rate afforded by the single layer disc, combined with the moderate amount of grain that is present throughout, means that minor but noticeable artefacting is a fairly common occurrence. On the plus side, I can see no sign of filtering or artificial grain reduction, meaning that, artefacts aside, the overall look is pleasingly film-like. Don’t be put off by the blurry-looking 20th Century Fox logo at the start - immediately afterwards, the quality improves considerably.

The Omen (2006 remake)
(20th Century Fox, USA, MPEG-2, 18.9 GB)

The Final Conflict Blu-ray impressions

Once again working through my Halloween reviews for the various films in The Omen Collection, I’ve done a few screen captures for The Final Conflict. My thoughts on the transfer, copied and pasted from the upcoming review, are below:

After the slight blip that was the transfer for Damien: Omen II, image quality picks up substantially for The Final Conflict, bringing it almost to the same level as that of the original film. In fact, as far as overall detail levels are concerned, number three may actually be the strongest of the lot, albeit probably thanks to differences in the photography and the improvements that were made to Panavision lenses in years between the films being shot. Once again, the image looks very film-like, with only some minor noise reduction causing any problems for the bulk of its duration. Unfortunately, the final confrontation in the ruined church grounds lets the side down, with some over-zealous NR resulting in very waxy textures and an overly synthetic look which is at odds with the rest of the film.* Still, a very impressive transfer overall for a not exactly treasured catalogue title.

* This corresponds with the final screen capture, below.

The Final Conflict
(20th Century Fox, USA, AVC, 31.8 GB)

Damien: Omen II Blu-ray impressions

Having already reviewed the Blu-ray release of Richard Donner’s original classic, The Omen, I’m currently working on reviews of the two sequels and John Moore’s 2006 remake for DVD Times’ Halloween reviews special. I can’t promise to get through them all in time for the 31st, but I’ll do my damnedest, and this afternoon I put together my review of the first sequel, Damien: Omen II. I took the opportunity to do some screen captures for this site, and my thoughts on the transfer, copied and pasted from the review, are below:

Presented in its original 2.35:1 aspect ratio, Damien: Omen II looks significantly weaker on Blu-ray than the other two films in the trilogy. Like them, it features a 1080p, AVC encode on a dual layer BD50 disc, but detail is substantially lower. This is most pronounced in the opening sequence in the Middle East, where the image looks decidedly diffuse and almost defocused. After that, things do improve quite noticeably, but it never manages to attain the crispness of the other instalments. On the plus side, there is once again little in the way of digital manipulation, meaning that, even though the level of detail is less than stellar, it always looks like film rather than digital video. A handful of shots do suffer from an excessive amount of noise reduction, but they come and go virtually in the blink of an eye, and the rest of the film appears to be unaffected. (See 00:12:30,* 01:17:50 and 01:33:00 for the worst offenders.)

* This corresponds with the second screen capture, below.

Damien: Omen II
(20th Century Fox, USA, AVC, 31.1 GB)

How the West Was Won: SmileBox vs. flat

As an addendum to my earlier post on Warner’s magnificent Blu-ray release of How the West Was Won, I have, by popular demand, included a few screen captures comparing the SmileBox version with the standard “flat” formatted edition. Superficially, the SmileBox version appears to demonstrate an increased level of sharpness, but in reality I suspect that this comes from an added amount of edge enhancement, and that there is no actual gain in real world detail. There is a small amount of haloing in some shots on both versions, but, in the case of the flat version, I’m not convinced that this was added digitally but rather is an optical or lens effect (don’t quote me on that, though - I could be mistaken). Either way, the ringing is accentuated in the SmileBox version - check out the edges of hat brims in particular, not to mention the curves at the top and bottom of the screen in the SmileBox version.

Ultimately, I definitely favour the flat version, but others may disagree, arguing that the SmileBox version is a more faithful approximation of the film’s original theatrical exhibition.

Example 1
(Left: SmileBox version; Right: flat version)

Example 2
(Left: SmileBox version; Right: flat version)

Example 3
(Left: SmileBox version; Right: flat version)

Example 4
(Left: SmileBox version; Right: flat version)

Example 5
(Left: SmileBox version; Right: flat version)

Warner accidentally releases really detailed BD

I often think that Warner tend to release the most underwhelming high definition discs of the lot. While Universal have put out some almighty cock-ups, they have also released some excellent-looking titles, particularly where there newer films are concerned. In contrast, a lot of Warner’s material just tends to look above average, with virtually every title being afflicted by some degree of filtering, robbing the image of detail. (I actually laughed out loud when someone described Lions Gate’s filtered MPEG-2 re-release of The Descent as having been “Warner’d”.) Recently, however, I began to hear very good things about Warner’s Blu-ray release of How the West Was Won, and decided I had to see for myself.

My copy arrived yesterday, and golly, yes, this is an amazing-looking disc. In actual fact, I can’t think of a single other disc that demonstrates this level of detail. As is widely known, How the West Was Won was shot in Cinerama, employing three separate cameras filming in synchronisation, with the three resulting 35mm negatives being projected side by side. The result is a phenomenal level of detail which goes well beyond what the 1920x1080 resolution of full HD is capable of. This release contains two separate versions of the film, the first a standard “flat” presentation in a 2.89:1 aspect ratio, and the second a “SmileBox” version emulating the curved “wraparound theatrical experience”. The latter is obviously only an emulation of the original experience, given that none of us have curved televisions or projection screens (if I’m mistaken, let me know!), so I ultimately found myself favouring the “flat” presentation, but it’s nice of Warner to have provided both versions, allowing the viewer to decide how they want to experience the film.

Screen captures are included below. Marvel at the sheer level of sumptuous detail on display in them.

How the West Was Won
(Warner, USA, VC-1, 35.5 GB)

Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull Blu-ray impressions

Yesterday, my brother received his copy of the Blu-ray release of Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull, which provided our nocturnal viewing entertainment. This was my second time seeing the film and my brother’s first, but I think our impressions were largely the same: it’s entertaining, and its heart is in the right place, but you can’t compare it to Raiders of the Lost Ark, probably my favourite action-adventure movie of all time. I’m not even sure you can put it in the same league as the first two sequels… although, that said, there is nothing as irritating in Crystal Skull as Kate fucking Capshaw in Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom. Instead, we get a somewhat underused Karen Allen, but you know what? Kudos to Steven Spielberg and co for bringing her back as a romantic interest for Harrison Ford rather than going down the more predictable route of pairing Shia LaBeouf up with a younger woman. It’s pretty unusual to see a romantic pairing between characters close to the age of drawing their pension in a Hollywood blockbuster, and dare I say it a tad more convincing than the alternatives.

It’s reassuring to see that Ford has still got what it takes to portray an albeit slightly slower, more gristled Indy, still able to hold his own in the action set-pieces. Unfortunately, the same can’t be said for Spielberg and Lucas, whose direction and script are the areas in which the film feels the most stale. There’s a “going through the motions” feel to a lot of the material, and I suspect that, ultimately, neither of these men is the same person they were when they made the original trilogy. Meanwhile, the over-reliance on CGI, CGI-generated UFOs and, worst of all, CGI-generated comic relief animals, feels out of place in an Indiana Jones film. (Although I’ll grant you that the UFOs portrayed in the film are no more absurd than the notion of a cup granting eternal life, as in Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade.) Still, I can’t say it bored me for a second, and when the lights came up I certainly felt suitably entertained.

Transfer-wise, Paramount’s BD is very nice indeed. I’m not sure I’d put it in the upper echelon of HD presentations, as it’s not the most detailed image I’ve seen, and I’m pretty sure at least some grain reduction was done somewhere in the chain (it’s odd that Spielberg apparently fought tooth and nail with Lucas to shoot this on film rather than digitally, because a lot of the time it’s all but grainless), but there’s nothing overly destructive to glimpse. Given the technological changes that have taken place in the last couple of decades (CGI and the use of digital intermediates, to name but two), it’s unsurprising that Crystal Skull is, visually speaking, the odd one out in the series, but, regardless of Spielberg’s cinematographic choices, the film looks great on Blu-ray and is another sterling effort from Paramount.

Oddly enough, though, I can’t really say the same about the audio. We both felt that there was something lacking, and I think Dan Ramer’s review at DVD File sums it up best:

The lossless TrueHD 5.1 is quite nice, but surprisingly unimpressive. All the right elements are there. […] And yet, I came away with the distinct impression that the dynamic range is a tad lacking. I had to pump up the gain by 6 dB to attain dialog loudness parity with other BDs. And even with the gain turned up that high, the sound effects didn’t have that visceral bite that satisfies. This is a wholly adequate track, but I expected a demo-quality experience.

 
Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull
(Paramount, USA, AVC, 34.1 GB)

Sleeping Beauty Blu-ray impressions (long post)

On Tuesday, I received my copy of Sleeping Beauty, the first of Disney’s animated classics to make it to Blu-ray. A 2-disc set (plus an utterly pointless “bonus DVD” version glued to the front cover), this Platinum Edition was quite clearly an extremely cost- and labour-intensive undertaking, and you can read more about the process in a very interesting interview with Theo Gluck, Director of Library Restoration and Preservation for Walt Disney Studios Motion Pictures, as well as an interview with the considerably less informed Sara Duran-Singer, Senior Vice-President of Post Production at Disney.

Of course, what I’m sure everyone wants to know is how the end product looks. I’ll make this simple right off the bat: if you want a general, non-critical response, go and read any of the multitude of reviews written on various web sites that give it ratings of 100% or 10/10 and call it the best thing since sliced bread. For a slightly more in-depth analysis, read on.

First of all, let’s be clear about one thing: this is not the Sleeping Beauty that was released in cinemas in 1959. What I mean by that is that it is subject to the same degree of clean-up and revisionism that Disney has applied to the home video releases of its more prestigious animated titles since the Masterpiece Edition DVD of Alice in Wonderland in 2004 (I’m discounting red-headed stepchildren like The Aristocats and The Fox and the Hound, which were subjected to considerably less rigorous treatment). In other words, any trace of film grain has been scrubbed away, the colours have been altered (quite substantially, in some instances), and it essentially now looks like a film that was made in 2008 rather than 1959. Oddly enough, when something similar was done to Patton for 20th Century Fox’s recent Blu-ray release of that title, cinephiles the world over were up in arms. When Disney does it to their animated films, however, there is a curious lack of uproar. Perhaps it’s because, as an animated film, certain narrow-minded individuals don’t believe it to be worthy of “serious” attention? I doubt that this is the case, however - a brief glance at any number of film-related forums will reveal dozens of people who clearly love the film dearly and are over the moon about this new Blu-ray release.

That’s absolutely fine. I’m glad that people are enjoying this new disc, and have absolutely no problem with that. My concern is with the technicians at Disney, whose house practice of scrubbing the grain from their films goes completely against what I’m looking for when I pop a disc into my player. If a film never had grain to start with, then fine - I’m not expecting something like Ratatouille or Beauty and the Beast, both created entirely in the digital domain, to be sourced from prints (although, sometimes, I do think it would be nice). In the case of a film from the 50s, though, seeing something that has been processed to the extent that it no longer looks like it ever touched film is more than a little off-putting.

That said, for what it is, Sleeping Beauty looks very good indeed. Excellent at times, in fact. There is an extremely impressive amount of detail in the backgrounds, for example in shots 4, 8 and 9 below. The encoding is, for the most part, extremely good (barring a few isolated instances of artefacting). The expanded 2.55:1 aspect ratio (versus the 2.35:1 ratio of previous releases), greatly improves the image composition and reveals all sorts of details at the sides of the frame that were clearly intended to be seen. Unfortunately, barring the overly clean look, you also have to contend with the tell-tale side effects of such heavy noise reduction, mostly in the form of mangled outlines: take a look at the spears in shot 2, or the owl’s eyes in shot 7. For a particularly destructive example, gawp at the mess that is shot 5 - by far the worst-looking few seconds on the disc and something that is, mercifully, the exception rather than the rule.

There is a final point that I would like to make: the issue of the colours. As with the Platinum Edition DVD of Peter Pan, there has been some amount of debate as to the colour timing of this release. A comparison with previous releases of the film (such as the one performed by Chuck Pennington at the Golden Age Cartoons Forum) reveals major differences, and often not for the better. Look at the various different versions of the shot of Aurora and the three fairies (the first one in Chuck’s comparison): the 2008 DVD release, which is derived from the same master as the Blu-ray version, looks noticeably “off”, particularly in terms of Fauna (the green fairy)’s outfit. Put simply, the colours clash and don’t “read” properly. Contrast this with the previous releases, all of which look more natural. For an even more egregious example, take a look at shot 5, previously discussed above: there is far too much similarity in the different shades of blue in Merryweather’s costume for the image to read properly as a whole. Compare this with the 2003 DVD release, where there was proper delineation between the different shades of blue, making the image much easier to look at rather than a mish-mash of clashing hues.

Now, Disney staff have been quick to point out in interviews that the original animation cels and backgrounds were used as a reference during the colour timing. However, I rather fear that they have missed the point here: essentially, they are neglecting the fact that the artists specifically chose colours with an eye towards how they would ultimately look when printed to film, which is obviously not going to be the same as how they look on paper or an animation cel. Warner did exactly the same with their Looney Tunes DVDs, with equally problematic results. A couple of comments on the subject can be read at Cartoon Brew. Says Eric, in the context of the Looney Tunes DVDs:

Maurice Noble [stylist and co-director on many of the Looney Tunes cartoons] once explained to me how he would over saturate the colors in a character or a scene to compensate for the inferiority of the film. Once on film, the color would be toned down to about what he intended. This is where you could run into a problem during restoration.

This is followed by a post by Jeff Kurtti, a film historian and authority on all things Disney. What he says is particularly pertinent to Disney’s art practices:

The true reference point for restoration is a primary color film positive source, not the original animation art.

Studios such as Disney did extensive color testing on cel set-ups to determine how paints, backgrounds, and exposures would affect the final film image, many of the animation art colors are purposely distorted in order to “read” correctly on film. (There is a selection of camera tests like this on the “Snow White” laser disc and Platinum DVD.)

Alice (of Wonderland fame) on cels, for instance, has decidedly green blond hair, in order to “read” on film as golden yellow.

(Emphasis mine.)

Ultimately, my overall impression of this transfer is that, flaws aside, it is a very good one. It could have been a great one. However, thanks to Disney’s revisionism practices, it falls shy of perfection, meaning that, as good as it is, there are a number of moments that will take observant viewers out of the film itself, which I’m sure we will all agree is never a good thing. Overall, I’d say that the massive improvement in detail makes this a more than worthwhile upgrade over the previous standard definition releases, but it’s frustrating thanks to the number of things that have gone wrong along the way. Take a look at the captures below and judge for yourselves.

Sleeping Beauty
(Buena Vista, USA, AVC, 17 GB)

NB: thanks to Lyris for providing some of the screen captures.

Carrie Blu-ray impressions

Today, I got to check out my first ever MGM Blu-ray disc in the form of Carrie. As you may or may not know, 20th Century Fox has, as of 2006, taken over the distribution of MGM’s titles on home video, so it is their logo that appears when you hit “Play”, and, I suppose, ultimately their responsibility. Fox received a lot of flack in the earliest days of Blu-ray, for their excessively high RRPs ($40 for every title, even catalogue ones), their favouring of the outdated MPEG-2 codec and their tendency to lose a substantial amount of bonus material during the DVD-to-BD transition. (Of course, some might counter by pointing out that, out of all the major studios releasing titles in HD, Fox is the only one to have included lossless audio on every disc right from the get-go.) To cap it all, Fox disappeared off the face of the HD map for the better part of 2007, citing concerns over weaknesses in the format’s copy protection. With the arrival of the new and improved (and supposedly impenetrable) BD+, Fox rejoined the fray… only for BD+ to be cracked within the week. Oddly enough, I don’t feel a shred of sympathy for them.

Anyway, Fox have made some improvements to the situation, gradually transitioning over to AVC instead of MPEG-2, and generally doing a better (but still well away from perfect) job of including the extras available on existing standard definition editions of films. And, of course, they haven’t done another disappearing act since the BD+ debacle turned out to be little more than hot air.

Unfortunately, for all the gains made by Fox, the people in charge of putting together their MGM titles are still labouring under the misconception that we are living in the dark ages. Bare-bones, single-layer, MPEG-2 discs devoid of all extras are the norm - in fact, I can’t remember the last MGM title to carry anything more than a trailer. And that’s assuming the discs come out at all - two years down the line, I’m still waiting for The Silence of the Lambs and Hannibal. Ultimately, the MGM crew give the impression of treating HD as little more than an afterthought, and it’s because of this (and the lack of film I would actually want to buy from them) that have held me back from investigating their output at all until now.

Anyway, Carrie - how is it? Well, one thing’s for sure, the specs are typical MGM - MPEG-2 encode, single-layer disc, no extras apart from a trailer, DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1 remix, alongside the original mono mix. For the latter alone MGM immediately gains points over the likes of Warner, who routinely omit the original audio of their films in favour of distracting remixes. That’s the strongest point in this release’s favour. Otherwise, there’s not much praise that can be heaped upon it, although we need to bear in mind the source materials: the image looks rather diffuse and murky, but then I doubt that Carrie ever looked razor-sharp to begin with. Grain reduction is evident in places, although not consistently, and at times the grain does look reasonably natural. It’s definitely no Patton or Dark City, that’s for sure. It’s unclear what the source material is - Lyris suspects a print rather than the original negative - but, if this is the case, it’s difficult to know whether going back to an earlier generation would have resulted in any appreciable improvement to the perceived image quality. It’s a tough one overall, and I doubt that it’s going to impress anyone (the “I want everything to look like a Pixar movie” crowd will complain about the grain, and the “I want films to look like film” lot will probably be equally unimpressed, albeit for different reasons), but I’ve seen plenty of high profile titles subjected to extensive restoration work which look a lot worse. It’s certainly no worse than a lot of the shovelware put out by Universal.

Carrie
(20th Century Fox/MGM, USA, MPEG-2, 18.5 GB)

Well, slap my face! The Omen looks great!

So yeah, I ended up shelling out for the no-holds-barred 4-disc super-duper The Omen Collection, containing the original three films and the dreadful remake, instead of staying sensible and just picking up The Omen on its own. The original reason for this was that the 4-disc version was an announced with a release date of September 9th, while the single-disc version ended up being put back to October 7th. Being an impatient bugger, I decided to splash out on the earlier but more expensive release. Ultimately, of course, the 4-disc set ended up being delayed too. Still, for better or for worse, the package arrived today, and, once I’d finally finished the latest draft of my PhD’s literature review, I wasted no time in cracking it open and investigating how the films looked.

“Very good indeed” is the answer. I guess the fact that my hopes for the image quality of this film on Blu-ray were not exactly high says a great deal about what a pessimist I’ve become. Now, before anyone asks, I’m not one of those people who believes that older films can’t benefit from the HD treatment: nothing could be further from the truth. It’s simply that, in my experience, older films are not always treated with the care and attention they deserve. Imagine my surprise, then, upon discovering that The Omen has been granted a rich, sumptuous, film-like transfer exhibiting few of the artefacts one tends to associate with catalogue titles that haven’t been treated appropriately (and Fox, it has to be said, have been prime offenders in the past). It manages to stay crisp and detailed and with a pleasing amount of grain left intact - although it does have the “sharp but slightly diffuse” look of films from that period that were shot anamorphically and with the use of lens filters. Rest assured, though, that it’s a pleasant kind of diffuseness rather than the ugly sort you get when the detail has been sucked out digitally. Essentially, it looks completely natural. No Patton, this!

To briefly sum up the other titles, Damien: Omen II looks noticeably softer than the first film, but I suspect it always looked this way. In any event, the original DVD release had the same issue in comparison with its two counterparts in SD. Detail does improve as the film goes on, but it never “pops” and almost looks unfocused at times. The Final Conflict, meanwhile, is a lot closer in terms of its overall look to the first film, although, in our brief run through it, Lyris was quick to draw my attention to some noise reduction artefacts in one of the darker scenes. More details on these titles once I’ve had a chance to watch them properly.

As for the remake, well, I don’t plan on watching it any time soon, but from the brief glance I took at it, it looks to be a pretty good presentation of a recent film. It was one of Fox’s first Blu-ray releases, and features an MPEG-2 encode on a BD-25, with the mild compression artefacts you’d expect. It also, surprisingly enough, exhibits less detail than the original Omen, but I suspect that this has more to do with the cinematographic choices than any tampering at the mastering end.

So, thank you, Fox, for transferring the original, a true classic, properly and not Pattonizing it. I never expected it to look this good and, as a result of my expectations being exceeded considerably, I now have a big smile on my face (although the fact that I’ve reached another milestone in my PhD work might also have something to do with that). And, as an added plus, the original mono tracks (and 2.0 surround for the third film) are present and correct in addition to lossless DTS-HD MA 5.1 remixes.

The Omen
(20th Century Fox, USA, AVC, 22.5 GB)

It’s Keira Knightley HD Screen Capture Day aboard the HMS Whimsy

…well, not really, she just happens to appear in both the films I’ve put under the magnifying glass. First up is King Arthur, a rather mediocre cash-in on the whole medieval war epic craze by Jerry Bruckheimer and friends, which arrives on Blu-ray with rather odd transfer that virtually defines the word “inconsistent”. Its “look” seems to change on a virtually shot by shot basis, going from noticeably edge enhanced and undetailed to completely natural-looking and razor sharp, and from virtually grain-free to extremely rough and grainy. Sometimes the grain is extremely clumpy, other times it looks very natural. This often happens multiple times within the same scene, and I’m at a loss to explain it.

The bottom line is I just don’t know what to say about this disc. Sometimes it looks stunning, other times it looks quite disappointing, and everywhere in between.

King Arthur
(Buena Vista, USA, AVC, 32.1 GB)

Up next is Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man’s Chest, an even worse film but one with a considerably more consistent transfer. Actually, this one is pretty close to perfect. Some very mild compression artefacts are visible at times, but broadly speaking only if you’re scrutinising for them. The only other flaw in this transfer is a very odd moment in the final third of the film, just before the sword-fight which takes place on a water wheel, where, for a single shot only, the entire image suddenly seems to drop to a lower resolution with lots of visible jaggies. Actually, it looks a lot like the Weinstein Company’s train-wreck of a BD for 1408. This shot lasts for less than a second and is easy to miss, but I spotted it the first time I watched the film and thought “What the hell?” It’s really the only negative thing I can say about this otherwise stellar disc, and it lasts for a fraction of a per cent of the running time. The rest of the time, it looks like this:

Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man’s Chest
(Buena Vista, USA, AVC, 32.1 GB)