DVD

DVDs I bought or received in the month of April

• Casino Royale (R0 Finland, Blu-ray)
• Dragon's Lair (RA USA, Blu-ray)
• The Game (R0 USA, HD DVD)
• King Arthur (RA USA, Blu-ray)
• The Mario Bava Collection Volume 1 (R1 USA, DVD)
• A Scanner Darkly (R0 USA, HD DVD)

Somewhat slim pickings this month, and I note that the decline in my purchasing of standard definition titles continues, with only one actual DVD being bought. I wasn't sure whether or not to include Dragon's Lair, as it's technically a game rather than a film, but I suppose it's a borderline case, and, given the mechanics of how it operates and the inclusion of DVD-style bonus content, it ultimately makes the grade.

Can't we all just be friends?

A rather strange and annoying situation has arisen regarding a little program called DVD Profiler which many people use to keep online and offline catalogues of their DVD collections. DVD Profiler was created by an LLC company called InterVocative Software, and, until recently, everything was fairly straightforward. Then, things got a bit more complicated. One of the company's founders, Ken Cole, left to form a new company, Invelos. The parting was at the time believed to have been amicable, with InterVocative retaining the rights to the current iteration of DVD Profiler, version 2.x, while Cole was allowed to release and continue to support the new DVD Profiler 3 through Invelos. I, like many existing DVD Profiler customers, upgraded to version 3 for free and found it to be a major improvement on its predecessor.

Then, a few days ago, disaster struck. The Invelos servers went down without warning, taking with them the ability to update offline DVD collections with newly released titles, as well as the ability to upload and view collections online. As it turns out, InterVocative has sued Invelos. The details of the case or when it is scheduled to be heard are, as far as I can gather, unknown, but, as a result of this action, the Invelos server has been taken offline, royalling fudging things up for DVD Profiler 3 users. One popular theory seems to be that InterVocative suddenly found themselves losing a whole lot of customers to Invelos, and decided to throw their toys out of the pram. That said, the legality of Invelos' actions must be open to dispute if InterVocative are managing to take them to court. One thing's for sure, I hope this gets resolved swiftly. I like my DVD Profiler!

HD DVD celebrates first birthday with 100,000 sales

HD DVD turns a year old today (the official release date for the initial line-up of titles was April 18th 2006, although a few retailers started selling them early on the 15th, hence last Sunday's buyathon). With the format having made major gains in the charts recently, now seems like the perfect time to convey more good news: HD DVD has now passed a major milestone, having sold (not shipped, sold) 100,000 stand-alone players since launch. Note that this figure does not include the number of Xbox 360 HD DVD add-on drives sold.

In addition, Planet Earth on HD DVD became the first title on either format to reach a sales rank of 4 in the DVD sales charts (covering DVD, HD DVD, Blu-ray and the, ahem, special interest formats like UMD), ousting the previous king, Casino Royale on Blu-ray, with a high of 7, from its throne. Now that the disc drought of early 2007 seems to be at an end, HD DVD seems to slowly but surely be clawing its way back to its previous position. Clearly, the gap between the two HD formats is going to be a lot narrower than it was in the glory days of mid to late 2006, and I expect that both formats will overtake each other at various points throughout the coming months, but I must say that those who poo-pooed HD DVD and predicted its demise spoke rather too hastily. One thing's for sure, 2007 is going to continue to be very interesting.

The Bill Lustig syndrome

Blue Underground boss Bill Lustig recently gave an interview to Belgian site Cultfilms en Kultfilms, in which he discussed a number of pertinent issues, including his own career as a director, the status of upcoming titles, and, perhaps most importantly, the company's future. Sadly, the news does not appear to be good: apparently the DVD market is currently at a stage where saturation is so high that it's impossible for obscure titles to compete against the big guns and make a profit.

Still, we do have some nice releases to look forward to, the main one for me being the upcoming special edition of The Stendhal Syndrome, which will replace the Troma monstrosity as the official American release of this often-underappreciated 1996 gem from Dario Argento. I previously expressed reservations, based on Blue Underground's track record of often not including Italian audio options for such films (and The Stendhal Syndrome is a film that needs to be experienced in Italian). Any fears can be laid to rest, however, as, according to Lustig:

Will you feature both the English and the Italian versions?
Yes - the English and the Italian. We just finished the transfer in high-definition under the supervision of the director from the composite, so it's the definitive version.

Let's just hope they remember to throw in English subtitles, unlike some of those multi-language Anchor Bay titles where the non-English dubs are essentially useless unless you speak the language.

Information has also been provided on the bonus content:

Would you consider letting Dario Argento do an audio commentary in subtitled Italian?
Well - no - we're not doing an audio commentary, but we're shooting an interview with him next thursday. Him and Asia and Guiseppe Rotunno, Sergio Stivaletti and the author of the book. We're shooting those interviews in Rome on the 18th and the 19th. And when I say 'we' - I'm not going to Rome, it's going to be David Gregory who works for me.

I'm slightly disappointed by the lack of a commentary (I had hoped that we'd get another of Alan Jones' excellent efforts), but the interviews sound excellent. Sign me up for this release.

Update, April 15th, 2007 10:02 PM: Apparently Lustig was misquoted in the original interview, so "director of the composite" should read "director of photography" (i.e. Giuseppe Rotunno).

DVD image comparison: Black Sunday

As you may have noticed, yesterday was Friday the 13th, and I celebrated in grand style by watching an 'orror film (as Letícia Román would say), in this case Mario Bava's Black Sunday with audio commentary by Tim Lucas, as found on the new disc in The Mario Bava Collection Volume 1 from Anchor Bay. This is a title that continues to leave me rather cold, as many of Bava's more celebrated films inexplicably do. It's beautifully shot, and Barbara Steele is magnificent (the perfect blend of horror and beauty), but it doesn't grip me in the way that The Girl Who Knew Too Much does. I suppose that, generally speaking, you could argue that this is because I prefer gialli to gothic horror, but that doesn't explain why my reaction to Blood and Black Lace is similarly lukewarm, or why Suspiria is my favourite Italian film, horror or giallo.

Anyway, I've put together a comparison between the old Image Entertainment disc (kindly supplied to me by Lee) and the new Anchor Bay one. It's so close that I'm not going to call it either way. The new Anchor Bay disc is minutely more contrasty than the Image version, giving the illusion of a slight detail boost, and some print damage has been cleaned up. Both exhibit noise reduction artefacts in the form of "crawling" grain during camera movement. As with The Girl Who Knew Too Much, the sound on both releases is effectively the same, although the AB version is 2-channel mono rather than single-channel. There is also little appreciable difference between the extras, although the newer release does gain a US trailer, TV spot and Barbara Steele biography while losing the rather informative text-based notes on the Italian version of the film. All things considered, they more or less cancel each other out.

Ultimately, if you already own the Image Entertainment DVD, I don't see much point in rushing out to pick up the Anchor Bay release. However, the fact that it is packaged in The Mario Bava Collection Volume 1 with four other Bava titles, many of which do contain noticeable improvements on their predecessors, means that many people will no doubt end up with this disc anyway.

HD my left walnut

As most people will be aware by now, there have been some amazing high definition transfers on both HD DVD and Blu-ray, and some rather less than amazing ones. When you're working with a native resolution of 1920x1080, you'd better hope that your master is of the highest quality, because little flaws that would go unnoticed in standard definition will stick out like sore thumbs. The two titles most commonly dragged out for a public for a ritual flogging are Sony's House of Flying Daggers and The Fifth Element on Blu-ray, transfers that are generally regarded to constitute a decidedly miniscule improvement on their DVD counterparts. Indeed, even Sony have apparently realised this, given that they are currently in the process of preparing a new version and setting up a disc replacement programme.

Unfortunately, it seems that the crown for worst HD transfer must pass from Blu-ray to HD DVD. AV Science Forum member Xylon recently started providing side by side comparisons of standard definition and high definition titles, many of which admirably demonstrate the undeniables improvements that are possible in HD with even the least visually inspiring films. Unfortunately for certain less than proficient reviewers, however, these highly effective demonstrations have shown up their amateurish postulating for the sham that it is. These screenshots serve to confirm many of the opinions I've been expressing for a while now, e.g. that Batman Begins looks underwhelming, while Serenity looks fucking incredible.

The shit really hit the fan a few days ago when Xylon posted a comparison of Steven Soderbergh's Traffic, released last September on HD DVD by Universal. When initially released, many people commented that the transfer looked less than stellar. Such individuals were quickly put in their place by being told that Traffic intentionally looked rough and grainy, and that they shouldn't expect 3D whizz-bang effects and crystal clarity from every title (a sentiment that I fully agree with). Now, however, Xylon's screengrabs demonstrate the truth that dare not speak its name:

Traffic on HD DVD is a 480i upconvert.

Not only that, it actually looks worse than the DVD, with additional ringing and what appears to be even less fine detail. I really am absolutely flabbergasted, especially given some of the reviews that have emerged. The notorious Peter M. Bracke of High-Def Digest gave the transfer a 4/5 and said this:

Bottom line, this HD DVD transfer delivers. The source material is as good as the film stock allow, with no major defects visible such as print tears or distracting blemishes, though grain is intentionally excessive for much of the film. Black levels are consistent throughout, while contrast is all over the map. Some story threads have whites so blown out that fine detail is all but obscured, while others are bathed in darkness or excessively saturated colors. Thus, there is some noise and smeared hues, but again it appears intentional. Overall detail and depth to the image is about as good as can be expected. No, I was never blown away by the presentation as I've been with other HD DVD releases, but then I never anticipated otherwise.

The infamous Joshua Zyber of DVD Talk, meanwhile, rates it 3/5, and claims that

The disc looks exactly like the film is meant to look, and it actually has some fascinating textures, but this just isn't the type of movie you buy for crystal clear HD image quality. While certain scenes show off the High-Def fairly well (primarily the blue-filtered Michael Douglas segments), on the whole there isn't much fine object detail or depth. Aside from some minor edge ringing in a few scenes, the disc represents the movie's intended style faithfully and I can't fault it for that, but most viewers will probably not find it a huge upgrade over standard DVD.

Sorry, but the comparisons speak for themselves, and, coupled with some additional screen captures from a still crummy-looking but undeniably superior 720p broadcast version, it's difficult to imagine anyone trying to claim that Universal have done anything other than screw up royally. Unfortunately, this is not the case: Zyber is currently ransacking what little dignity he has left by attempting to poo-poo the screenshots and tell us that what we're seeing is untrue.

Josh Zyber, Peter Bracke: please consider retracting your reviews. The visual evidence speaks for itself, and not even the most blinkered individual could attempt to claim, based on the screenshots in question, that the Traffic HD DVD is anything other than a standard definition upconvert. Reviews such as these bring this profession into disrepute and mean that prospective buyers cannot make an informed decision about their purchases. Worse, they give lazy distributors ample reason to pump out any old garbage and charge a premium for it rather than spend money on new, decent-quality masters. Based on these phenomenally misguided reviews (and I'm sorry, but in this particular instance, we are talking about fact, not opinion), I highly doubt that I will ever trust a single article from these two writers ever again.

More ill-informed reviews:

DVD "Authority"
Upcoming Discs

One thing that should be remembered, however, is this: as ignorant, ill-informed and damaging as these reviews are, they are the small fry in this debacle. The people who should truly be hanging their heads and grovelling for apologies are Universal, who blew a 480i master up to 1080p, slapped it on a disc and had the nerve to sell it as "The Look and Sound of Perfect".

Update, April 12th, 2007 09:08 PM: A separate thread has now appeared at AVS, with the topic starter demanding (rightfully so) that Universal acknowledge their screw-up. Unfortunately, Mr. Zyber is continuing to make a fool of himself by refusing to admit the obvious.

DVNR - an illustrated demonstration

News is incredibly slow in movie-land at the moment, for some reason (although I apologise for not reporting on the announcement of the impending release of the DreamWorks classic Norbit sooner), so I've essentially been browsing the web for things to report on. During my adventures, I came across a rather interesting DVD image comparison on a French forum called Sans Commentaire. The title under the microscope is Rob Zombie's highly entertaining The Devil's Rejects, specifically the Canadian release by Maple Pictures (which presumably uses the same master as the US Lions Gate version) and the French release by Metropolitan. As many of you probably know, this film was shot on 16mm, giving it a harsher, grainier look than its predecessor, House of 1000 Corpses. Why should you give two hoots? Why, because the screenshots of the Metropolitan release demonstrate just how destructive DVNR (digital video noise reduction) can be on a grainy source. Look especially at the second capture, and what happens to the texture of William Forsythe's skin. The same thing happens again in Capture 6, where poor Captain Spaulding now looks like he's wearing a wax mask rather than mere face paint (look what it does to his scraggy beard too).

Here's the thing: Rob Zombie shot The Devil's Rejects in 16mm for a reason... and no, it wasn't because he couldn't afford to go to 35mm, as evinced by the fact that both it and House of 1000 Corpses cost an estimated $7 million. He shot it that way because he wanted it to look raw and documentary-like, a callback to similarly rough and ready 70s exploitation flicks like The Texas Chain Saw Massacre. Attempting to remove, or more accurately, smother the grain not only destroys the film's texture, making it look unnatural and digital, it also goes against the grain (apologies for the unintentional pun) of what the director was trying to achieve. On the Maple DVD, The Devil's Rejects features some compression artefacts as a result of the visual complexity of the grain pattern, but this is, in my opinion, vastly preferable to the diffuse smush that the Metropolitan disc seems to be.

Mother of spoilers

Source: Dark Discussion

Mariana, who runs the Ode to Azia Asia Argento tribute site, has kindly scanned and uploaded a two-page article on the upcoming The Third Mother from the Italian newspaper l'Espresso. Apparently the text is extremely spoiler-intensive, even going so far as to give away the ending, so you may not want to look at it if you read Italian. Ignoring the text however, however, you can still enjoy the rather fuzzy and hard to make out photos from the film itself and the set, which showcase, among others, Asia Argento and the Mother of Tears herself, Moran Atias.

Composer Claudio Simonetti has also posted about the film on the forum for his web site, and Dark Discussion member Mannfan has kindly summarised some of the most important points:

- The music is done and the mixing of the Italian and English tracks has just been done.
- Simonetti worked almost 4 months on the soundtrack... there are some nods in this music to Jerry Goldsmith, Bernard Herrmann, Carl Orff... its style is classical and also a bit Gothic, especially in the use of choir... Simonetti is very proud of his music, one of his most beautiful and accomplished.
- The cinematography is dark but beautiful and full of colours in the same time!
- The film is full of actions and violence (Walter Fasano's editing is very good), with many different locations... the scene(s?) in the catacombs are very good.
- The film is full of Lee Wilson's digital effects and Sergio Stivaletti's effects.
- The witches are very, very sexy!
- There is one of Dario's most striking shots in his whole career, a 4 minute and 10 second sequence without cuts (?) when Asia's character is entering an old house.

Unfortunately, it's not all good news. The rumours of the film being cut by distributor Medusa Film are apparently true, and Nick from Dark Dreams has warned fans to expect a film that "will not be Dario's original vision". I just pray (not literally, of course) that a version that does represent what he wanted to make eventually sees the light of day on DVD.

DVD image comparison: The Girl Who Knew Too Much

I've put together a DVD image comparison, pitting the new Anchor Bay edition of The Girl Who Knew Too Much, found in The Mario Bava Collection Volume 1, with the older, out of print Image Entertainment release.

I've seen a couple of reviews describing the new transfer as a marked improvement on the old one, but I'm not sure why. The same master has clearly been used for both, although the Anchor Bay version has been subjected to some DVNR (digital video noise reduction). This has the result of cleaning up some of the more distracting damage on what was admittedly a very rough-looking print, but at the same time it also freezes the grain patterns, resulting in an image that, overall, looks more "fake" and digital than its predecessor. There's also a smidge more edge enhancement on the AB transfer.

Both discs feature pretty much the same audio and subtitles - the Image track is 1.0 mono, whereas the AB track is 2.0 dual mono, but this ultimately results in no appreciable difference. Like most gialli, The Girl Who Knew Too Much was shot with the actors speaking English and then post-dubbed. As a result, the Italian dialogue doesn't match the lip movements of the actors on screen. However, because the Italian and American cuts of the film are so different, matching up the English audio to the Italian cut would probably not have been feasible. In any event, it seems that rights issues have prevented the American version, entitled The Evil Eye, from being included on this disc, and those legal problems probably extend to the audio.

The clear winner, in terms of extras, is the AB release. The Tim Lucas commentary is excellent, and the John Saxon interview, while brief, is enlightening and entertaining. The Image disc does have a couple of filmographies not found on the AB release, but I doubt anyone will mourn their absence.

A scanner rotoscoped

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

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

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

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

HD DVD review: Children of Men

Presenting one of 2006's best films with a stellar transfer and audio, and some genuinely informative extras, this HD DVD of Children of Men is one of the best high definition releases I've seen so far, and one that gets my unreserved recommendation. In fact, I'd even go so far as to recommend that those who are currently not yet HD DVD-ready pick up a copy, if they don't already have a copy of the DVD, given that the DVD side includes all of the content from the stand-alone release.

One of the most powerful films of the last year arrives in high definition. I've reviewed Universal's HD DVD/DVD combo of Children of Men, given a stellar audio-visual presentation and some insightful extras.

The Girl Who Was DVNR'd Too Much

My copy of The Mario Bava Collection Volume 1 arrived yesterday. Unfortunately, I didn't get a chance to go through it in depth (that probably won't happen till the holiday on Friday, or perhaps Thursday night), although I did rip the Tim Lucas commentary on The Girl Who Knew Too Much to my MP3 player, and listened to it today at work (which I can do when I'm doing data entry and licking stamps - it's a little harder to do when I'm on the phone to someone!). It's a solid, very interesting track and well worth listening to, although I don't think it's quite on the same level as the track on Blood and Black Lace, the only other Lucas commentary I've heard (to date). I'm a big fan of his style of mixing factual information about the cast and crew members, and the production, with his and other critics' interpretations some of the key elements in the films he discusses, and it's a format that I personally try to emulate in my (admittedly inferior) fan commentaries. (Speaking of which, I'd really like to do another of these one day, if I ever get the time.) There are quite a few blank spots in this track, in comparison with that of Blood and Black Lace, although it's possible that these only jumped out at me because I was listening to the audio without any visuals.

I've also had a look at the presentation of the disc itself. I must say that I really like the menus Anchor Bay have gone for with this, and presumably the other discs in the set. They're static and clearly laid out, but stylist and well-designed, with music from the film in question playing in the background. As far as the transfer is concerned, I get the impression that Anchor Bay have used the same rather tattered print that was the source of the old Image Entertainment DVD. I've no idea whether or not a more pristine source exists, but, to tell you the truth, I've always considered print damage to be a far less obnoxious artefact than the variety of types of digital interference that can be added at DVD level. The latter applies to this new transfer, which has been heavily noise reduced, presumably in an attempt to conceal the admittedly at times severe print damage, as well as slightly edge enhanced. The result is a transfer that looks superficially superior, and will probably fool a lot of the online review sites, but which in my opinion is not as good as its predecessor. I personally believe that restorations should either be done by hand (i.e. manually "painting out" individual instances of damage) or not at all. The film now looks a little too false and processed, at least based on the scenes I looked at. I'll give it a closer look when I get the chance, and will of course do a full image comparison, probably at the weekend, but for the time being, my judgement is that I prefer the Image disc for its presentation of the film itself, but prefer the new Anchor Bay disc for its excellent commentary.

DVD review: Peter Pan: Platinum Edition

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

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

April 1st Criterion extravaganza

The Criterion Collection, a continuing series of important classic and contemporary films, has just announced the addition of several extremely prestigious titles to their ever-growing library. Why, there's Problem Child, Manos: The Hands of Fate, Crossroads: A Britney Spears Tale, and even Road Trip! With prices ranging from $39.99 to $79.99, this is clearly an exclusive range, so which one will you be purchasing first?

DVDs I bought or received in the month of March

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

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

A big box of Bava

To celebrate my final day of freedom (I start a full-time job tomorrow - eek!), I decided to head over to DVD Pacific and pre-order the upcoming The Mario Bava Collection Volume 1 box set, released by Anchor Bay on April 3rd. This five-disc set includes Black Sunday, Black Sabbath, The Girl Who Knew Too Much, Knife of the Avenger and Kill, Baby... Kill!, three of them with commentaries by famed Bava scholar Tim Lucas. I already have the old Image Entertainment DVD of The Girl Who Knew Too Much, and a copy of Black Sunday, but I have nothing against picking up new versions of them, especially with the addition of commentaries and, hopefully, improved transfers. DVD Savant has posted a review of the set, and it sounds like a top-notch release. I know that Dark Sky Films had their own version of Kill, Baby... Kill! due for release until it was suddenly and mysteriously pulled, and that it featured a Tim Lucas commentary not included on this Anchor Bay version, but I'm not sure I want to scour eBay in the hope of finding one of the few rare review copies that made it out before the cancellation delay.

Update, March 27th, 2007 08:27 PM: As Tim Lucas points out, the Dark Sky release has not officially been cancelled, merely delayed with no current new release date.

The nightmare of Pan

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

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

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

Captain Hook is the greatest bastard ever.

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

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

Perfume: The Story of Rampant Filtering

About a week ago, I ordered a copy of the recent German HD DVD release of Perfume: The Story of a Murderer from Amazon.de. It's the latest film from Tom Tykwer, and it tells the story of a young man who, driven to create the perfect perfume, starts knocking off young ladies. As you can probably guess, it's somewhat different from Run Lola Run, the film for which Tykwer is best known. For one, it's a period drama set in 1700s France, and as such doesn't have any insane video game/music video editing and visual styling (although it does have some pretty whacked out moments). Anyway, it arrived today, and it's basically a watchable enough film, although heavily flawed. It's both over-long and tonally very inconsistent, and suffers from a rather underwhelming performance by the lead, Ben Whishaw. I wouldn't call it a must-have by any means, but I found it rather intriguing, and it certainly makes a change from the Men & Guns type of films that tend to be released on both high definition formats.

Unfortunately, despite some positive advance word, I have to report that the transfer is rather disappointing. While I was watching it, I thought it looked rather soft and underwhelming, but fairly watchable. Some distracting noise reduction artefacts are apparent, but no problems with the compression. Then, I switched to the extras menu and selected the theatrical trailer, which is presented in full 1080p high definition (a feature that more HD DVD titles need to have). One word: wow. The trailer looks so much better - so much crisper and better defined - that it blows away the transfer of the film itself. I'm really getting sick of this. It happened all the time with standard definition DVDs (The Lord of the Rings films being particularly egregious examples), but I really would have expected better from studios producing high definition content. There's no excuse for it apart from plain old stupidity. Seriously, if the transfer of the film had looked like that of the trailer, it would have been a 10/10 easily, perhaps even knocking Casino Royale and Corpse Bride off their respective thrones. As it is, though, this is a very low 6/10 and a very high disappointment.

You take the blue pill...

Oh, wait. Sorry - the blue pill isn't ready yet. It's been delayed due to continued BD-Java problems. The red pill will, however, be ready for you to swallow on May 22nd, at which point you'll be able to see just how deep the rabbit-hole goes.

What am I babbling about? Why, the announcement of The Ultimate Matrix Collection for HD DVD, of course. The Matrix was one of the most hotly anticipated high definition titles last year (and rightly so - it certainly helped sell plenty of DVD players, so chances are it will do the same for HD DVD), with many expecting it to arrive at some point in the run-up to Christmas. When it failed to materialise, customers were understandably disappointed, but it seems that Warner are intent on making up for lost time by releasing what looks set to be the single most comprehensive and all-inclusive high definition box set to date. In addition to the first film, the shoddy The Matrix Reloaded and The Matrix Revolutions (which I haven't actually seen - Reloaded was that bad), each film will include an In-Movie Experience feature and all of the extras from both the original and Ultimate Matrix Collection standard definition releases. (Read the full press release at the AV Science Forum. (A slightly cheaper, less extras-intensive version, The Complete Matrix Trilogy, will also be available.)

Part of me is slightly disappointed that the films are not being released separately, given that I only really want the first one. Then again, this does sound like the HD DVD box set to die for, and part of me really wants to listen to the notorious "critic commentaries", in which an increasingly disgruntled group of film reviewers lay into the trilogy. Knowing me, I'll end up splurging on the full package - unless, of course, I can get a review copy.

Oh yeah, and in case it wasn't clear enough from the little reference to one of the film's iconic scenes at the start of this post, the Blu-ray release will be arriving "later", giving the HD DVD version free reign until it deigns to put in an appearance. Many will no doubt say "Oh, it'll come eventually," but how many format-neutral customers are going to wait for that? It certainly looks like Warner have delivered a Pirates of the Caribbean beater to wipe the smirks off the Blu-ray fanboys' faces come May.

Casino Royale high-def comparisons

A nice chap has put together a comparison between the standard definition and Blu-ray releases of Casino Royale - well worth checking out if you remain unconvinced as to the benefits of high definition. I particularly recommend having a look at the third image - when watching the film, this shot was the one that leapt out at me personally as the most obvious example of the stunning amount of detail that you can get from 1080p. You can even read the lettering on the wine bottle - HD product placement!

By the way, I've pre-ordered the supposedly uncut Korean Blu-ray release of the film from YesAsia. It's due for release on March 29th, at which point I'll sell off my cut US copy.

Update, March 21st, 2007 05:43 PM: There's a whole thread filled with comparison screengrabs, from both HD DVD and Blu-ray, at the AV Science Forum.