Blu-ray

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

Deeper descent

You may remember, when I wrote my review of the US Blu-ray Disc release of The Descent, that I mentioned that two completely different colour grades of the film appeared to have been created, with the US BD showing a completely different colour palette from my old 2-disc UK DVD. This wasn’t simply a case of the colours having been pushed slightly in the direction of, say, accentuating the reds or the blues, or the contrast having been tweaked: someone had to have gone in and altered the digital intermediate. (You can see a couple of examples of these differences if you visit my review, the second of which shows one of the most extreme instances of this discrepancy.) Personally, while I hold the US BD up as one of the best-looking high definition titles ever released, I’ve always been slightly disappointed that the darker, richer “UK grade” hadn’t made it to BD.

Until now, that is. Recently, Icon Home Entertainment released The Descent on BD in Australia. Discussing this new release at the AV Science Forum, poster kingkong650, having noticed differences in the colour palette when compared to the older US release, said:

Following on from what I mentioned in a previous post about the difference in colour I noticed between the US MPEG-2 version and the Australian version, I decided to investigate a little bit further, so I went looking for my UK DVD of The Descent, the version where I watched the film for the first time, to see what the colours were like on that version. Once I finally found it under piles of dvds stashed away, what I saw was pretty interesting.

The part where I’ve really noticed a big difference in colour is just after they arrive at the hole, when they’re preparing the ropes and harnesses to go down. The US MPEG-2 version has a strong blue tint while the Australian release’s colours are more natural looking and also seem a little brighter. When Juno goes down the hole and looks up, in the US version the light streaming through the hole looks white and the reflection on her face is tinted blue, while in the Australian version, the light streaming down is more golden and the reflected light on her face reflects that.

When I put the UK DVD in and jumped to the same bit in the film, the colours were very similar to the Australian version, with the light looking golden rather than white and no sign of the blue tint of the US release. It’s bizarre that they released different colour schemes for this film. Makes me wonder which one the director considers the definative version?

You can follow the discussion that ensued for yourselves, but the long and short of it is that we think the Australian BD has the same colour timing as the UK DVD. I’ve been trying to avoid double dipping of late (except when it comes to upgrading titles I own on DVD to BD), but my admiration for this film, and my preference for the “UK grade”, caused me to cave in and order myself a copy of the new edition from DVD Crave. A full comparison will be carried out once my copy arrives. Given that the US BD (well, the AVC version at any rate, rather than the inferior MPEG-2 re-release) is one of the best-looking titles out there, the Australian release will have its work cut out trying to match it, let alone beat it, but word of mouth so far seems very promising.

PS. In case anyone’s wondering, the Australian release has been confirmed to be region-free, just like the US version.

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.

Exotic treats from foreign lands

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

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

Blu-ray review: The Messengers

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

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

Review at DVD Times.

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

That was the year that was

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

 
Zeros and Ones

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

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

 
At the Pictures

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

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

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

 
Bibliothèque

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

 
Song and Dance

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

Top 10 HD Transfers of 2008

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

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

Happy New Year 2009!

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

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

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

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

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

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

DVDs I bought or received in the month of December

• December 4, 2008: My Blueberry Nights (Region B UK, Blu-ray)
• December 8, 2008: Chemical Wedding (Region 2 UK, DVD)
• December 8, 2008: Bodies: The Complete Collection (Region 2 UK, DVD)
• December 8, 2008: Home Alone (Region A USA, Blu-ray)
• December 8, 2008: La Femme Nikita (Region ABC USA, Blu-ray)
• December 11, 2008: Fight Club (Region B Germany, Blu-ray)
• December 11, 2008: The Constant Gardener (Region B Germany, Blu-ray)
• December 11, 2008: Chungking Express (Region A USA, Blu-ray)
• December 17, 2008: From Dusk Till Dawn: The Trilogy (Region 2 UK, DVD) [gift]
• December 24, 2008: Profondo Rosso (2-disc edition) (Region 2 Italy, DVD and WMV9 HD disc)
• December 27, 2008: Hannibal Rising (Region ABC UK, Blu-ray)
• December 27, 2008: Night of the Living Dead (Region B UK, Blu-ray)
• December 27, 2008: Transformers (Region ABC UK, Blu-ray)
• December 27, 2008: The Island (Region ABC UK, Blu-ray)
• December 31, 2008: Trial & Retribution: The Fourth Collection (Region 2 UK, DVD)

Quite a haul to round off the year.

DVD image comparison: Profondo Rosso

On Christmas Eve, my copy of Medusa’s R2 Italian 2-disc edition of Profondo Rosso arrived. While the first disc contained in the package is exactly the same as the underwhelming single-disc (standards converted) edition released by the company the same year, the second features a high definition (1440x816) presentation of the film encoded in Microsoft’s Windows Media Video 9 format. Playable only on Windows PCs and featuring only a 5.1 remix of the audio in Italian (with no subtitles of any kind), it’s understandably less than ideal, but what it does do is hint at what a hypothetical Blu-ray Disc release might eventually look like.

Anyway, click here for a full comparison featuring the US Anchor Bay DVD, the recent Danish release from AWE, and the two Medusa discs - the standard DVD and the WMV9 version.

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

Priceless

Dropping a tetralogy down to a trilogy for a UK release is predictable. Failing to notice that the cover artwork consists of a giant “4” is priceless.

Reap what you sow

Zavvi, the UK version of what used to be called Virgin Megastore, has gone into administration. Now, this may have had something to do with its main supplier, Entertainment UK (which also provided the bulk of Woolworths’ goods), having recently gone down the crapper, but I’d imagine replacing the memorable Virgin brand with a name as stupid as Zavvi didn’t help either. Either way, I decided to make the most of their clearance sale on Saturday and picked up a few Blu-ray titles at reasonable prices: Hannibal Rising (the one Hannibal Lecter film I’ve yet to see - don’t worry, I’m well aware that it’s supposedly awful), George A. Romero’s Night of the Living Dead, and, because there’s no shame in watching the odd bit of mindless crap from time to time, Mr. Michael Bay’s The Island and Transformers (the latter an upgrade over my brother’s HD DVD copy, given the BD’s inclusion of lossless audio).

I’ve already done image galleries for the HD DVD versions of The Island and Transformers, which feature the same video encodes on BD, and will be doing the other two titles before too long. However, as a little sneak preview, I must say I’m very impressed by how good Night of the Living Dead looks. I’m an unrelenting pessimist and wasn’t really expecting much, particularly given how bad some of this film’s DVD releases have been, so I was pleasantly surprised when I popped the disc in to find a transfer that is, at least based on my initial cursory examination, the equal of Warner’s Casablanca.

Was Santa good to you?

Well, another Christmas has been and gone. I’ve decided to put my PhD work to one side until the New Year, but I’m back to work at the library tomorrow, so it doesn’t really feel like I’ve had much in the way of a festive break this year. Alas, I can’t really complain, as it’s simply the luck of the draw: I work Wednesdays and Saturdays, and, with Christmas falling on a Thursday this year, I’ve missed out on any additional days off. Next year, with Christmas on a Friday, I’ll end up with a more generous stretch of time to put my feet up.

Anyway, presents! In something of a change in tradition, I didn’t get any movies this year. (As it happens, I’m still waiting on the US Blu-ray releases of Planet Terror, Death Proof and the Canadian Sin City, but, seasonal postal delays being what they are, I’m not entirely surprised that they didn’t show.) Instead, I contented myself with two packets of sour flavour Jelly Bellies, as well as Tomb Raider: Underworld for PC and the 3-disc Legendary Edition of Echoes of War, a symphonic recording of compositions from Blizzard Entertainment’s Warcraft, Starcraft and Diablo series of games. Oh, and a copy of the From Dusk to Dawn trilogy on DVD from my work colleagues. My final gift, which I’ve actually had up and running since the middle of November (hence it not really feeling like a Christmas present as such, although technically it was), is my very nice speaker setup, which remains something of a rarity for me in that it’s one of the few pieces of computer equipment I’ve bought and had not one single complaint about.

In that past, we’ve generally had the grandparents from both sides of the family over for Christmas dinner, but this year, with all but one of them being six feet under, things were a little different. As a result, myself, my parents and my brother did something we’ve never done before and actually went out for our evening meal, to the Kama Sutra on Sauchiehall St.

Afterwards, we trooped back home to watch the premiere of the new Wallace & Gromit film, A Matter of Loaf and Death, which aired last night on BBC1. I personally enjoyed it a lot, even if it did feel a bit, well, slight in comparison with the previous shorts. It did feel like something of a return to form after the feature-length The Curse of the Were-rabbit, however, which for all its strengths felt like it was lacking the special something which made the shorts so memorable. In any event, Nick Park’s masterpiece remains, for me, The Wrong Trousers, which is just about as perfect as storytelling can get.

Profondo Rosso AWE DVD impressions (long post)

Note: I am extremely grateful to Thomas Rostock for setting me up with a copy. Thanks!

Another World Entertainment is a Danish DVD company whose mission statement is “to try to secure the best possible transfers and extras available and to lavish attention on each film through booklets, trivia and other bonus features.” They have already released a handful of giallo titles, including Duccio Tessari’s Puzzle, Lucio Fulci’s The New York Ripper and Sergio Martino’s Torso, and the latest film to come under their radar is Dario Argento’s Profondo Rosso/Deep Red, called “the giallo to end all gialli” by someone whose name has unfortunately escaped me. Earlier in the year, Thomas Rostock, the person responsible for masterminding this release, contacted me to let me know about it and discussed various matters with me. What follows are my honest opinions on the finished piece, going into as much detail as possible. (Note: I am grateful to Thomas for filling me in on some of the historical issues surrounding this film’s life on DVD.)

[Continue reading "Profondo Rosso AWE DVD impressions (long post)"...]

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