Blu-ray

Gophers… I hate gophers

Source: DVD Times

In an announcement that has genuinely surprised me, it turns out that the fourth film in the Indiana Jones franchise, Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull, will be getting Blu-ray release date-and-date with the DVD version after all. Previously, I opted not to get my hopes up, given that both George Lucas and Steven Spielberg are both notorious for dragging their heels when it comes to allowing their films to be released on new formats. I’m sure most of you will remember when Lucas’ Star Wars Episode I: The Phantom Menace came out on VHS but not DVD. Likewise, Close Encounters of the Third Kind is currently Spielberg’s only film to have been given an HD release, with Universal even going so far as to personally apologise to the director for announcing HD DVD releases of E.T. - The Extra-Terrestrial and Jurassic Park without his “permission”.

Anyway, it looks as if Paramount is really pushing the boat out for Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull, giving it a 2-disc Special Edition release packed with bonus content, all of it in HD. Oh, and being a Lucas production, it also carries THX certification. Big whoop.

Now come on, guys, hurry up with the original trilogy.

This is a joke, I take it

Yesterday, New Line’s US Blu-ray release of Dark City arrived from DVD Pacific, hot on the heels of my discovery that it had been molested by invasive digital tampering procedures. This is despite it receiving largely positive praise from most reviewers, but, as always, the pictures tell the truth that the words themselves do not.

Watching the disc tonight was a very unpleasant experience. This is not because I didn’t like the film: on the contrary, I thought it was excellent, and have now added it to my “movies I can’t believe I waited this long to see” list. My reason for not enjoying the experience was that, while virtually every shot in this film is an amazing, innovative piece of art, every single one of them is ruined by some form of digital meddling, whether that’s grain removal, sharpening or softening. This film should look amazingly atmospheric and film-like, and all of that is removed by this shoddy, amateurish transfer. Whoever was responsible for it should be ashamed of themselves.

New Line’s high definition output that I’ve seen has, so far, been problematic, to put it politely. That’s three out of four discs (Dark City, The Golden Compass, Pan’s Labyrinth) that have been ruined by utterly ridiculously levels of digital tampering, and another (The Orphanage) that has been taken from a source with a resolution lower than 1920x1080. The latter is not necessarily New Line’s fault - it may simply have been what the Spanish production company delivered to them - but it does mean that I have yet to purchase a single disc from them that is anything more than deeply flawed. While Sony are doing everything they can to preserve the integrity of the films under their jurisdiction, New Line seem to be intent on fucking up the heritage of the medium by systematically mangling their catalogue of titles. I sincerely hope that the recent acquisition of the company by Warner Bros. means that any future releases are removed from the hands of the incompetent clowns responsible for this desecration of Dark City.

DVDs I bought or received in the month of July

• All the Boys Love Mandy Lane (R0 UK, Blu-ray)
• Dark City (RA USA, Blu-ray)
• Gangs of New York (R0 USA, Blu-ray)
• Persepolis (RA USA, Blu-ray)
• Teeth (R1 USA, DVD)
   

Blu-ray Stendhal this year

Blue Underground’s web site has been updated to include a release date for the company’s upcoming Blu-ray release of Dario Argento’s splendid The Stendhal Syndrome: November 18th. This and Don Taylor’s The Final Countdown are the only two Blue Underground Blu-ray releases to have release dates, and, while I’m slightly surprised that this will by the first Argento film to be released in high definition (Jenifer doesn’t count), I’m more than happy that it’s on its way. Now hurry up with a release date for The Bird with the Crystal Plumage!

These are the hands that ruined a movie

What the hell do you call this? Good grief, it looks like someone took a dump and sealed it between the two layers of this BD-50. This is one of the worst high definition transfers I’ve ever seen, and it reflects very badly on Disney that they thought it was in an acceptable state for release. I’m not convinced that any additional commentary is necessary on my part: just look at the pictures, as they do a more than adequate job of conveying the sheer awfulness of this disc.

Gangs of New York
(Buena Vista, USA, VC-1, 38.8 GB)

Soon on this screen

It’s time for another rundown of the upcoming Blu-ray releases that I intend to pick up (finances permitting, of course). The second half of the year sees quite a few impressive titles debuting in high definition.

July 29th, 2008:
- Dark City (New Line) (ORDERED)
- Doomsday (Universal) (ORDERED)

August 26th, 2008:
- The Nightmare Before Christmas (Buena Vista)

September 9th, 2008:
- The Omen: The Collection (20th Century Fox)

September 23rd, 2008:
- The Godfather Collection (Paramount)
- LA Confidential (Warner)

September 30th, 2008:
- The Texas Chain Saw Massacre (Dark Sky)

October 7th, 2008:
- Carrie (MGM)
- Sleeping Beauty (Buena Vista)

Daylight robbery

I was recently violated by the well-lubricated member of HM Thieves & Excise. As is commonly known, buying an item worth more than £18 from a non-European Union country and importing it into the UK incurs a fine quaintly described as a “customs charge”. Generally I’m careful to avoid going over the limit, or if I am buying something with a value of more than £18 to order from a store with a means of slipping the package under the radar, so to speak.

Unfortunately, neither of these safety measures were worth a damn when, on Monday morning, I received a card through my door from Royal Mail informing me that they were holding on to an item of mine with a £11.36 charge on it. Knowing that I hadn’t bought anything from outside the EU in the last few months that could possibly have such a charge, I was confused to say the least. Needless to say, I was even more confused when I handed over the cash at the sorting office only to be handed a copy of the Blu-ray release of Persepolis, ordered from DVD Pacific for the cost of £13.82.

You opportunistic little shits

Not only that, but, despite selecting the premium shipping option in order to ensure that the order reached me in time for my birthday, it failed to arrive in the UK until after it had passed - July 8th, according to the attached HM Thieves & Excise sticker. Of course, mail ordering is hardly an exact science, and there are an infinite number of variables that come into play when you have to send a package from one country to another. That doesn’t explain why the item reached Customs on July 8th and I wasn’t informed about it until July 14th.

So there you have it. Not only was I charged extortion money on a package that shouldn’t have been eligible, either Thieves & Excise or Royal Mail then held on to it for a further week for the privilege. I shall of course be claiming the money back, but, given that the charge is split between £3.36 of VAT (paid to Thieves & Excise) and a ludicrous £8.00 “handling fee” paid to Royal Mail, I can see this going on forever. I first have to claim back my £3.36, which will no doubt take an eternity, and only once that has been accomplished can I then get on to the robber barons at Royal Mail to get the other £8 back.

The moral of the story? Even when you’re on the side of the law, you still get buggered by the authorities. So, if you happen to dodge the odd customs charge or fiddle the system in some other way, I see no reason for you to feel bad about it.

Blu-ray review: All the Boys Love Mandy Lane

What this ultimately leaves us with is a fairly conventional and reasonably well-made exploitation flick with a bit of WB-style surface gloss thrown in to detract from the grit and grime of the bloodletting. Taken on these terms, it’s a fairly entertaining way of passing the time, but it’s hard to shake the impression that it puts a bit too much effort into achieving very little. Reviewed as a straight-up horror flick, it’s slightly better than average, but by purporting (and failing) to be something more, its makers may have ended up making it seem like more of a failure than it actually is… if that makes any sense.

Who is Mandy Lane and why do all the boys love her? It certainly isn’t for her originality or sparkling conversation. I take a look at Optimum’s upcoming all-regions Blu-ray release of All the Boys Love Mandy Lane.

Review at DVD Times.

Birthday bash

Thank you to all of you who wished me a happy birthday yesterday.

A couple of you wanted to know what sort of swag I managed to bag, and the answer is that, on the actual day, I didn’t get many presents. This is because my parents had already given me some money towards the new computer I put together at the end of May, so in effect I already had my main present. Still, I did pick out a couple of smaller goodies, including the Kane’s Wrath expansion set to Command & Conquer 3 and the Eye of the North expansion set to Guild Wars, both for PC. I also snagged an Xbox 360 controller, given that I’ve come to the conclusion that playing combo-based action games like Devil May Cry 4 with a keyboard isn’t the best idea.

Finally, the Blu-ray release of Gangs of New York arrived the day before my birthday, so I decided to throw it into the present pile just for the heck of it. Ultimately, I’m glad it wasn’t a “proper” birthday present, because the transfer really is absolutely horrible - every bit as Robert A. Harris and Xylon have said.

DVDs I bought or received in the month of June

• King Kong (R0 UK, HD DVD)
• The Kingdom (R0 UK, HD DVD)
• Phenomena (R1 USA, DVD)
• Stardust (R0 UK, HD DVD)
• Strictly Ballroom (R0 UK, Blu-ray)
• Tenebre (R1 USA, DVD)
   

“She’s terrible!”

…well, not very good, at any rate.

In the UK, last week, ITV released its first batch of Blu-ray titles, among them classics like Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger’s Black Narcissus and David Lean’s Great Expectations - something of a departure, as I’m sure you’ll agree, from the usual slew of third-rate action spectacles that invariably end up being released in high definition. Eager to see what ITV was capable of, I picked up a copy of their release of Baz Luhrmann’s first film Strictly Ballroom.

It arrived this morning, and I’m disappointed to have to tell you that the results are considerably less than stellar. It appears that an old master has been used - a rather grimy one, and one that has been subjected to an alarming amount of grain reduction, sucking most of the fine detail out in the process. While it constitutes a noticeable improvement on the frankly pretty shocking American DVD from Miramax, that’s hardly the greatest advertisement for the Blu-ray format, and ultimately I can only really recommend this release to absolute die-hard fans, or at least those with less than discerning tastes.

Strictly Ballroom
(ITV, UK, VC-1, 18.2 GB)

Universal’s House of Horrors: Part 2 of 3

Yesterday, we plumbed the depths of the depressingly underwhelming Being John Malkovich, the improbably soft Brokeback Mountain, and Cat People, one of the worst-looking discs released on either of the HD formats. Incidentally, yesterday, I told Blu-ray users that they had transfers like these to look forward to once Universal started rolling out its catalogue titles on the format, but it turns out I spoke too soon. Blu-ray already has a Cat People of its own: The Longest Day, from 20th Century Fox. Click here to see what happens when John Wayne has a nasty encounter with the grain-sucking machine.

 
Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind
(Universal, USA, VC-1, 17.3 GB)

Another big steaming lump of cack from Universal. What are they actually thinking?

 
Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas
(Universal, USA, VC-1, 19.7 GB)

This one is actually quite a bit better than the others, but still falls short of acceptable standards. Ample evidence of filtering is present at all times. Really, you need to compare this with the horrendous standard definition DVDs from Criterion and Universal before it even begins to look halfway passable.

 
The Game
(Universal, USA, VC-1, 23.6 GB)

Actually, you know what? I’ve seen a lot worse. At least this one still looks like film, albeit film of the rather murky, ill-defined variety. I could be wrong, but maybe this is just what the movie looks like? Either way, it’s a hell of a lot more pleasant watch than Cat People.

Universal’s House of Horrors: Part 1 of 3

All right, you’re thinking, I’ve seen it all. I’ve marvelled at the exceptional level of detail in Spider-man 3, I’ve been wowed by the fantastic grain reproduction in Silent Hill, and I just can’t imagine an image that looks more all-round perfect than Ratatouille. Well, gentle readers, I present tonight, for the viewing pleasure of the hardened technophile, an inside look at the other end of the spectrum: the transfers so repulsive that you’d actually go out of your way to make sure people didn’t accidentally see them and somehow “get the wrong idea” about high definition. Over the course of the next three posts, I’ll be delving into Universal’s swamp of catalogue releases, and we’ll be asking ourselves how some of these travesties actually made it out the front (or back) door in the first place.

Attention, BD fans: don’t go celebrating the assimilation of Universal into the Blu-ray umbrella just yet. This is what you have to look forward to.

 
Being John Malkovich
(Universal, USA, VC-1, 18.9 GB)

To be fair, this is already a really dingy, unappealing film to look at, but it shouldn’t look this bad.

 
Brokeback Mountain
(Universal, USA, VC-1, 21.1 GB)

This one isn’t even a catalogue title, so why in the name of all that is pleasant does it look like this? Nincompoop reviewers talk about the amazing landscapes on display as if that somehow means the transfer is any good.

 
Cat People
(Universal, USA, VC-1, 19 GB)

This one looks like someone took a giant dump on the disc stamper and then had it pressed. People won’t actually believe an HD transfer can look this awful until you show it to them. This is pretty much as bad as it gets.

30 Days of Shite

We watched the Blu-ray release of 30 Days of Night this evening.

Seriously, if you’re considering giving it a go, my advice would be “don’t bother”. The premise is interesting, but the whole thing is botched on just about every possible level. Josh Hartnett makes for a dreadful, inexpressive lead, and the director, David Slade, seems to possess absolutely no sense of pacing, nor does he appear to have the first clue about generating tension. Scene after scene is botched by clumsy choreography and camerawork, and a general sense that he’s working with a script which simply doesn’t have enough material to withstand the running time. Whole days seem to pass in which nothing happens, and the situation becomes so tedious that the script resorts to having the characters arbitrarily say things like “We can’t stay here” (despite them having been perfectly safe in their current location for several days) and staging foolhardy escape missions that you just know are going to get someone killed. I’m normally the last person to bring out the “logic” card in what is ultimately a brainless splatter movie, but I find it hard to believe that anyone could be as stupid as this film’s troop of hapless dolts.

Every “bump in the night” cliché is routinely trotted out, and, despite characters dropping like flies in the most brutal manner imaginable, it’s impossible to care about any of them, as they are simply too bland and unlikeable. Most of them are completely interchangeable, to the extent that, every time a character said “Where’s [insert name here]?” or “What about [insert name here]?”, my immediate response would be “Search me! I don’t even know what [insert name here] looks like!”

After hearing good things about this film, I felt utterly robbed by it. Thats 113 minutes of my life that are gone forever.

HD Image Quality Rankings updated

I’ve performed some updates on the HD Image Quality Rankings page, moving several 8/10-rated titles down into the 7/10 bracket. Among these are several of the more noticeably filtered Warner titles, along with such disappointments as The Simpsons Movie and Sony’s somewhat unjustly lauded re-release of The Fifth Element. Two titles have also been pulled out of the prestigious 10/10 category and moved into the still highly impressive 9.5/10: Silent Hill, for having slightly elevated blacks (which can be corrected using the brightness control on your display, which you shouldn’t really have to do), and King Kong, for some minor compression artefacts.

It’s something of an indication of how good the best high definition transfers look that I am actually currently in a position of having to demote less impressive transfers. I consider this to be very good progress, given that, for the most part, even the best-looking standard definition DVDs were still heavily flawed.

Stair-stepping ahoy!

On Wednesday, I finally got round to watching The Orphanage on Blu-ray. I knew next to nothing about the film beforehand, so was very pleased to discover an excellent piece of work, definitely one of the best horror films I’ve seen recently and every bit as good as, if not better than, the other recent film to bear Guillermo Del Toro’s name, Pan’s Labyrinth (although he mere produced The Orphanage, which was in fact directed by a fellow called J.A. Bayona). I highly recommend checking out this film if you haven’t seen it yet - an imaginative and highly effective take on the “spooky old house” and “creepy child” sub-genres.

The Blu-ray release, unfortunately, is marred by the fact that it appears to have been taken from a source with a horizontal resolution of less than 1920 pixels. A certain blockiness is evident throughout in diagonal edges, which take on a stair-stepped quality: look, for example, at Fernando Cayo’s nose in Shot 7 and Mabel Rivera’s cheek in Example 9. Basically, it’s like a less extreme version of the effect visible in Warner’s early so-called “1080i upconverted” transfers. It’s not dreadful, and it’s somewhat ironic that the end result actually looks somewhat better than the full 1920x1080 The Golden Compass in all its noise reduced glory, but it’s disappointing nonetheless. New Line’s HD output, so far, has been pretty problematic to say the least, and it’s a shame (but not entirely surprising) that reviewers haven’t been picking up on these faults.

The Orphanage
(New Line, USA, VC-1, 26.1 GB)

My compass is pointing to DVNR

New Line were caught red-handed applying grain-reduction techniques to their Blu-ray and HD DVD version of Pan’s Labyrinth, and ever since, the more observant of us have been keeping close tabs on their treatment of films in high definition. The good news is that The Orphanage, about which I shall be posting later today, managed to escape from their clutches unmolested, but The Golden Compass has not been so lucky. Posters at the AV Science Forum were quick to pick up on a waxy appearing affecting several shots, along with the pictures to prove it. None of this was conclusive, though, particularly given that some of the shots posted looked absolutely fine, so I decided to get hold of a copy of the disc to judge for myself.

My copy arrived the previous Saturday, and, having now gone through it with a fine toothcomb, my overriding impression is that two things are going on here. First of all, certain actors, particularly Nicole Kidman, have been fleeced with the same technology that assaulted Johnny Depp’s cheeks and nose in Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street and Milla Jovovich’s face in Resident Evil: Extinction. As unpleasant as the results are, this is ultimately an artistic choice employed by the director and as such is not something for which we can blame the technicians who encoded the disc.

Secondly, however, a fairly heavy grain reduction pass appears to have been applied to the entire film. I have no idea whether this was done to the original DI master, or specifically for the Blu-ray release, but either way the results are somewhat less than pleasant. This is something that can’t really be conveyed with static screenshots, but the grain has stopped being moving detail and has instead become something more akin to a static pattern imposed upon the image. The process also appears to suck fine detail from objects such as walls, fabric and the actors’ skin, resulting in an image that, much of the time, looks pretty synthetic and unappealing. It appears to be present throughout, but the fact that its severity seems to vary on a shot by shot basis (compare Daniel Craig’s face in Shots 4 and 5) suggests to me that this was done on a per-scene basis at the DI stage.

This is not a bad-looking disc, per se, but it’s also pretty far removed from what film looks like. Perhaps this was what writer/director Chris Weitz intended for his movie, but, if so, his is not a taste that I share.

The Golden Compass
(New Line, USA, VC-1, 24.1 GB)

Omenisms

One of the more annoying aspects of any new home entertainment format is that the studios have an unfortunate habit of releasing their less than stellar titles before their classics. Such was the case with 20th Century Fox, who rather bafflingly chose the 2006 remake of The Omen, a execrable little film about which I have already written in some detail, as one of their Blu-ray launch titles. At the time, I was a little peeved, to say the least, that this woeful excuse for filmmaking had been given the 1080p treatment while the original, in my opinion a horror classic, continued to languish in the standard definition pit.

Luckily, Fox have seen the error of their ways and have just announced an Omenistic extravaganza for this September. In addition to a standalone Blu-ray release of the original (and best) The Omen, they will also be putting out a box set containing the horrid remake and the less than stunning sequels, Damien: Omen II and The Final Conflict (the hilariously dreadful third sequel, the TV-originated Omen IV: The Awakening, is, perhaps mercifully, nowhere to be found).

Provided Fox doesn’t cancel or postpone this release, as they have a habit of doing, this should be one of my key purchases this year. I make no bones about the fact that I think The Omen is a magnificent film, easily my favourite of the “Big Three” US horror films of the late 60s and 70s (although I concede that The Exorcist and Rosemary’s Baby are technically “better” films). I doubt I shall be bothering with the box set - an RRP of $129.98 is a bit steep for one classic, one turd and two hack jobs of limited value - but the stand-alone release should go down a treat this Halloween.

Snow, sand, softness and sharpness

The look of this BD is best described as “inconsistent”. Some shots look extremely good and indeed rank up there with the best of high definition, but on other occasions things tend to look a bit soft and filtered. This is particularly evident during the earlier scenes which take place against the snowy backdrop of 12th century France. In some instances (such as Example 2), I wonder if the image was pre-filtered to prevent the dense snow from choking the life out of the MPEG-2 encoder. Having said that, this is certainly one of the best MPEG-2 encodes I’ve seen, perhaps beaten only by Sony’s Resident Evil: Apocalypse.

Kingdom of Heaven: Director’s Cut
(20th Century Fox, USA, MPEG-2)

The best pics in London

On Wednesday, while on my lunch break, I spied in the local Borders the UK Blu-ray release of Tim Burton’s latest extravaganza, Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street, complete with a rather fetching tin case. Back when Paramount originally announced this for release on HD DVD in the US, it was one of my most anticipated purchases, so you can imagine my disappointment when the HD DVD was cancelled and the film then failed to materialise on Paramount’s Blu-ray slate, despite (as far as I can gather) all of their other cancelled HD DVDs making the jump to Blu-ray. Luckily, Warner, who own the rights in the UK, have come to our rescue with an extremely nice release indeed, one that more than does the film justice and ranks among the best the studio has ever released for either format. The one failing, as seems often to be the case with the bit rate misers at Warner, is that some visible compression artefacts do creep in at times, one of the most offensive examples of which is visible in the first screen capture.

When you look at these pictures, you may notice what looks like smearing in the fine details of Johnny Depp’s face. Unfortunately, this is the result of the process that seems to be being used more and more frequently on big budget films - an automated spot/wrinkle remover which I’m sure is very flattering for the actors but has the unfortunate side effect of making them look like porcelain dolls. It was inconsistently applied in Resident Evil: Extinction, making Milla Jovovich look at times as if she was made of plastic, and it appears to run rampant in The Golden Compass (the details of which I shall go into in a future post). For Sweeney Todd, however, oddly enough it appears that only Depp’s cheeks and the bridge of his nose are affected, and it only seems to have been applied to close-ups. It’s not a failing of the transfer, but it does provide an example of how really good high definition transfers make this sort of tomfoolery easier to spot. Ironic, really, when you consider that it was probably applied in the first place because someone got ants in their pants about “imperfections” on actors’ faces being more visible in HD.

Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street
(Warner, UK, VC-1, 27.1 GB)