Mainstream Cinema

HD DVD review: Babel

One of the better modern films to see a high definition release gets an excellent presentation on HD DVD. The lack of extras is disappointing, but, given that this sparsity matches the film's standard definition counterpart, it's hard in this particular case to feel too short-changed. It may not be the sort of material to show off the full capabilities of your home theatre setup, but it's a solid representation of its source material, and as such, Babel gets my unreserved recommendation.

Courtesy of DVD Pacific, I've reviewed the HD DVD release of Babel, the third instalment in Alejandro González Iñárritu's loose trilogy of fractured narratives. The film receives an excellent presentation from Paramount.

Blu-ray review: Flightplan

Flightplan is one of the better-looking Blu-ray releases I've seen so far, with any visual flaws being inherent in the master rather than the fault of incompetent encoding. Once again, though, HD customers are being short-changed in terms of extras for no apparent reason. With an efficient codec like VC-1, and 50 GB of available space, there should be no reason to lose a few standard definition extras, but Disney have somehow managed to do so anyway. The Blu-ray exclusive extras, meanwhile, are not impressive enough in their own right to entice people to double-dip.

Jodie Foster trades one enclosed space for another, this time becoming trapped in a plane rather than a Panic Room. I've reviewed Disney's Region A release of Flightplan, which, in comparison with the DVD, gains a solid transfer but loses some extras.

Universal - HD DVDs suitable for all!

Source: The Digital Bits

Universal, after much silence on the HD DVD front, seems finally to be getting into gear with a reasonable-looking schedule of releases for the next few months. Most of their April and May titles have already been announced elsewhere, but there are a few additional nuggets of information here and there, and the material pertaining to June onwards is all new. I've listed the titles below, with the ones I'm personally interested in asterisked.

April - The Good Shepherd, Smokin' Aces, The Game*, The Jerk, The Hitcher, Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind*, The Nutty Professor

May - Alpha Dog, The 40-Year-Old Virgin: Unrated, Smokey and the Bandit, Hurricane, Skeleton Key, The River, Midnight Run, The Frighteners, The Big Lebowski, Dragonheart, Lost in Translation*

June - Breach, Bruce Almighty, Liar Liar, Sneakers, Born on the 4th of July, Scent of a Woman, Daylight, Monty Python's The Meaning of Life, Meet Joe Black, Mallrats, Being John Malkovich*, Mystery Men, American Me, The Watcher, Bulletproof

July - Billy Madison, The War, The Wedding Date, Dante's Peak, Cat in the Hat, Dead Silence, The Bourne Identity*, The Nutty Professor 2, In Good Company, Streets of Fire, Hot Fuzz, Sea of Love, Darkman, Shaun of the Dead, Deliver Us from Eva

August - Heroes: Season One

September - The Last Starfighter, Legend, Battlestar Galactica: Season One, For the Love of the Game, Knocked Up, Evening, The Getaway: Unrated, Patch Adams, Cat People*

Okay, so I can't exactly say I'm thrilled about every single title on that list, and I'm a little confused by how sparse August's schedule is (presumably they'll announce more titles at a later point, because I find it hard to imagine them only releasing a single title during the course of that month), but I have to say that, on the whole, things are looking up. By the looks of it, Universal will manage to fulfil their pledge of 100 HD DVD titles in 2007 after all.

DVDs I bought or received in the month of February

• American Psycho (RA USA, Blu-ray)
• Babel (R0 USA, HD DVD)
• Beatrice Cenci (R2 France, SD DVD)
• The Descent (RA USA, Blu-ray)
• Enemy of the State (RA USA, Blu-ray)
• Kingdom of Heaven (RA USA, Blu-ray)
• Masters of Horror: Pelts (R1 USA, SD DVD)
• Perversion Story (R0 USA, SD DVD)
• This Film is Not Yet Rated (R1 USA, SD DVD)

As you can see, a rather blue month for me - put that down to the giddy thrills of a new format to play around with. I suspect that, in future months, as the HD DVD side continues to ramp up production, there will be a more even split between the two formats as far as purchases are concerned.

Mulholland Dr. MIA?

Source: DVD Times

UK DVD distributor Optimum Releasing recently added three HD DVD titles to the catalogue on their web site: The Deer Hunter, Brotherhood of the Wolf and Mulholland Dr., the latter of which was a shoe-in for me and one that I immediately pre-ordered. However, DVD Times recently contacted Optimum for confirmation and was told that, while the first two titles will indeed by coming out, Mulholland Dr. has been "postponed indefinitely".

This is a kick in the teeth for me, given how much I was looking forward to seeing one of my favourite films in high definition. It's still scheduled to come out in France from Studio Canal on March 5th, but my fear is that it will have forced French subtitles when English audio is selected. The technical specs for the disc list only French subtitles, which should have warning signs going off already. Indeed, tonight I checked out my copy of Studio Canal's Basic Instinct HD DVD, and sure enough, if you select French in the country selection screen when you pop in the disc, the only audio options available to you are French or English with French subtitles, despite the fact that the disc is crammed full of an array of audio and subtitle languages. If the French edition of Mulholland Dr. is only intended to be sold in France, then chances are we will be unable to select anything other than these two language options.

All is not lost, though. Just today, ChoicesUK updated their listing for the UK release by adding the final cover art, complete with English text and BBFC certificate. This does give me an admittedly slim hope that the UK release has actually not been cancelled after all, and that the Optimum representative DVD Times spoke to simply got their wires crossed. I admit that I'm probably just clutching at straws, though, and, if it does turn out to be cancelled, I'm just going to have to pick up the French release after all, forced subs or not.

Update, March 1st, 2007 11:23 PM: According to DVD Times poster ShawnDuhast, who contacted Optimum, Mulholland Dr. will be coming "sooner rather than later", but there is no confirmed release date yet.

Warner talks HD

Source: Home Theater Forum

On Monday night, in a live chat with Home Theater Forum, Warner Home Video unveiled some of its plans for the next year, including a considerable amount of material pertaining to HD DVD and Blu-ray. I've selected a few of what I consider the most important announcements:

• Warner's intention, wherever possible, seems to be to keep bonus content the same across the board for DVD, HD DVD and Blu-ray (although, obviously, DVD releases won't be able to have In-Movie Experience features).
   
• Warner isn't commenting on New Line's releases, as they only handle distribution, not content.
   
• North by Northwest will not be released until 2009, its 50th anniversary. A new master will be created, since the one used for the DVD release is 1080i only. (Hopefully they won't go overboard with the DVNR this time, then.)
   
• Michael Mann's Heat is due to be released in 2008.
   
• A deluxe Blade Runner box set will be coming out later this year, with comparable extras to the standard definition release (presumably this also means that it will feature an extravaganza of different cuts of the film).
   
• Deliverance, Poltergeist and LA Confidential will all be coming out this year, the former as a 35th anniversary edition and the latter as a 10th anniversary edition.
   
• Many Kubrick titles, originally expected in 2006, will see the light of day this year.
   
• The studio is considering new high definition masters of Hammer films for DVD, HD DVD and Blu-ray.
   
• There will be many further high definition announcements in the next few weeks.

By the very nature of these web chats, it's all still a little sketchy at this stage. Most glaring is the fact that the ongoing Blu-ray interactivity issues (which apparently are causing Warner to hold back a lot of titles with the In-Movie Experience, on both Blu-ray and HD DVD, in order to avoid accusations of "favouritism") are not discussed, so we're still no closer to knowing when the big guns like the Matrix trilogy will be seeing the light of day (although a tentative schedule does exist for France, where the local Warner division presumably couldn't give two hoots about the people whining about "favouritism"). Still, some good titles have been confirmed, and I for one look forward to seeing what else gets announced in the coming weeks.

Oscar the Grouch strikes again

Source: BBC News

And the results are in! I've seen so few of the nominees that there's not much point in my commenting in too much depth, but, at a cursory glance, Ennio Morricone picked up a long-overdue Oscar in the form of an "Honorary Award", Martin Scorsese has finally been granted the Oscar for which he has been snubbed so many times in the past (too bad it had to be for a remake of a Hong Kong film, created for idiots who can't read subtitles), Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest can actually claim to have won the same number of Academy Awards as Babel, and a film that isn't actually animated won Best Animated Feature (what a crock!).

Of mice and men

Variety has posted an interesting article on the current changes taking place at Disney Animation Studios following the appointment of new bosses Ed Catmull and John Lasseter. No radically revealing information is conveyed that wasn't already known (or guessed), but it's a good read nonetheless.

Execs note repeatedly that they're trying to make the Mouse "a director-driven studio," a mantra that has served Pixar well with a braintrust of talented helmers that includes Lasseter, Brad Bird ("The Incredibles"), Pete Docter ("Monsters, Inc.") and Andrew Stanton ("Finding Nemo"). Catmull repeatedly states that the days of studio exec interference are over.

Reassuring though this is, it still somewhat contradicts the news that Chris Sanders recently left the studio, handing his pet project American Dog over to Chris Williams (although whether he was ousted or left of his own accord remains unclear). Clearly, despite the mantra that Disney is going to be "director-driven", the buck ultimately stops with Lasseter. Since he's given us an uninterrupted string of hits since 1995, this probably isn't a bad thing, but it is slightly worrying when the director of what is surely Disney's best film in the last decade (Lilo & Stitch) ends up leaving over "irresolvable creative differences" with Big John.

HD DVD extravaganza

After a slow start in 2007, the HD DVD ball seems finally to be starting to roll with the announcement of some of highly anticipated titles being added to the schedule. First of all, Warner has finally broken their silence and added A Scanner Darkly and Dog Day Afternoon to their slate, both announced for both HD DVD and Blu-ray with a street date of April 10th. The former is one that I purposefully held off buying in standard definition because I suspected that an HD release couldn't be too far off. The latter... well, I must confess I've never seen it, but Sidney Lumet and Al Pacino sounds like a solid combination, and I'm aware of how highly it's regarded.

Perhaps even more significant, however, is the appearance on the HD DVD Promotion Group's site, www.thelookandsoundofperfect.com, of a banner announcing the song and dance razzmatazz extravaganza Dreamgirls as "coming soon to HD DVD". Why is this big news? Why, because this would be the first DreamWorks title to appear on either high definition format. Because DreamWorks is owned by the format-neutral Paramount, a Blu-ray release is presumably on the cards too, with a March 20th release date being rumoured but not confirmed.

It's all good news as far as I'm concerned. It's always great to see a new studio jumping into the HD arena, especially a heavyweight like DreamWorks (sign me up for HD American Beauty and Gladiator).

Update, February 21st, 2007 11:24 PM: Better add Clint Eastwood's Flags of our Fathers to the DreamWorks list too.

Mulholland Definition

(Thanks to ShawnDuHast)

A while back, I reported that I'd cancelled my pre-order of the French HD DVD release of Mulholland Dr. due to a worry that it would have forced French subtitles when English audio was selected. A post at the AV Science Forum suggested that Optimum was planning on releasing it in the UK at around the same time, and it would appear that this was correct, because ChoicesUK now have it up for pre-order for a very reasonable £14.99, with a release date of March 26th. Of course, I've placed my order - this will be the first title in my personal Top 20 list of films (Top 5, actually) that I'll own in high definition.

Comedy hanging in Simpsons movie

The first full (i.e. non-teaser) trailer for the upcoming The Simpsons Movie has arrived online. It does indeed look truly awful - just as bad, if not worse than, the most recent seasons of the TV show - but what really caught my attention is the fact that the film seems to have a comedy strangulation scene in it. What's wrong with a hilarious hanging, you might ask? Well, I would have thought nothing, but apparently the British Board of Film Censors have other ideas. Back in March, I reported that they had vandalised Out West, an episode of The Ren & Stimpy Show, removing the closing "Hanging Song" and the entire narrative justification for the episode. A little later, they practiced similar butchery on an episode of Satoshi Kon's anime series Paranoia Agent, presenting the Video Recordings Act 1984 as flimsy justification for their mangling (despite plenty of hanging scenes, both hilarious and otherwise, being allowed in films in the past).

Now, both Ren & Stimpy and Paranoia Agent are obscure enough, at least in the UK, for any backlash against their destruction to be muted at best... but I wonder if the BBFC will be so cavalier with something as well-known and popular as The Simpsons? We will be watching them closely, and we will be checking to see whether or not they take the scissors to this beloved franchise and risk incurring the wrath of thousands of spotty-faced fanatics. Now we'll see whether the BBFC are completely unbiased and only censor when they absolutely have to.

If you want to discuss this matter with the BBFC, who deface art for a living, I suggest you send them an email.

Blu-ray review: Enemy of the State

Disney's Blu-ray release of Enemy of the State screams "catalogue title". With no additional extras and a transfer based on an old master that really isn't of an acceptable standard in 2007, this is yet another release that's difficult to recommend to all but the most ardent fans of the film. While it's undoubtedly better than the standard definition DVD, it could, and should, have been so much better than this.

Continuing DVD Times' high definition coverage, I've reviewed the Blu-ray release of Enemy of the State, a rather underwhelming disc with paltry extras and a disappointing transfer.

Gangs of New York coming to HD DVD after all!

Source: Zona DVD

Remember how back in September I posted that UK distributor Entertainment In Video was planning on releasing Martin Scorsese's Gangs of New York on HD DVD? If so, you'll probably also remember that in October I posted that bad news that EIV was backing Blu-ray exclusively. In any event, their slate of titles ended up being put back to March 2007 (presumably to coincide with the upcoming European launch of the Playstation 3), and I can now report that, thankfully, we don't have to wait for EIV to put out their version, only to discover that it's region-coded, because the good folks at Manga Films in Spain are putting out an HD DVD version in March too. No specifications are currently available, and the release date isn't any more specific than "March", but I'll update you with details as they emerge. With this, plus other interesting titles such as Asterix and the Vikings, Perfume: The Story of a Murderer and The Good, the Bad and the Ugly, not to mention Blu-ray "exclusives" like Underworld: Evolution and Saw, Spain is turning out to be an unexpectedly good source of titles for HD DVD owners.

Babbling about Babel

My review copy of the HD DVD release of Babel arrived today, via DVD Pacific. This is the first HD DVD I've picked up all month, due to the complete dearth of titles available for the format, and I'm happy to report that it's a rip-roaring success. Shot in a combination of 16mm, 35mm spherical and 35mm anamorphic, the greatly divergent visual styles could have spelled disaster, but thankfully whoever encoded this disc knew their stuff. This is Paramount's first AVC title, having previously used VC-1 for all their releases (their Blu-ray versions, meanwhile, continue to be MPEG2, since Sony handles that side of the deal), and, in contrast to the over-compressed Wolf Creek from The Weinstein Company, there is very little in the way of artefacting on display here. There are a lot of scenes that must have been hard to compress, from the shaky-cam grainy look of Morocco to the pulsating lights in the various Japanese nightclubs, and occasionally you can spot the odd slip-up if you're paying close attention, but otherwise this is more or less (and I usually hate to use this term) a reference quality transfer. Detail is exemplary, colour and contrast are variable but appropriate, and there is only the slightest hint of minor edge enhancement in a handful of shots. All in all, a very high 9/10.

The film itself is very good too. Alejandro González Iñárritu builds on the fractured narrative style of his previous films, Amores Perros and 21 Grams, using the same concept of disparate events involving unconnected characters coming together in different ways, although this time on a global rather than local scale. In broadening the scope, he loses some of the intimacy and focus of 21 Grams, but it's a great film nonetheless and one that I would certainly like to see pick up a few Oscars in a week's time.

And so the delays begin

Source: High-Def Digest

Remember when the Blu-ray camp announced a massive array of titles at CES in January, to be released during the first half of this year? Well, Fox, never one to break its promises, has indefinitely postponed a considerable chunk of that line-up. Eleven titles now no longer have a release date, among them two of the films I was most looking forward to on the format, Hannibal and The Silence of the Lambs. It just goes to show that the Blu-ray team may indeed have shot themselves in the foot by making so much noise about their software releases at CES. While the HD DVD studios will presumably spend the next few months announcing titles that are actually coming out, I wouldn't be surprised to see Fox, Disney, Sony et al announcing further delays and cancellations.

See? When you announce your entire six-month slate of releases at a single event rather than staggering them over a longer period, the only possible news you can announce from then on will be of the bad variety. I hate to say "I told you so", but...

Delivery debacle

My copy of the Blu-ray release of Ridley Scott's director's cut of Kingdom of Heaven arrived today from DVD Pacific. At 194 minutes, this is one of the longest title to be released on either of the two HD formats, as far as I'm aware beaten only by the 198-minute Spartacus on HD DVD. Anyway, on DVD, this cut of Kingdom of Heaven came in a lavish four-disc set, splitting the film across the first two and showcasing a wealth of extras on discs three and four. For the Blu-ray release, all of the extras, barring the trailer, have been disposed of. And why? Would it really have been so hard for them to include an extra disc - even a standard DVD9 or two - including the extras? Was space on the BD50 really so scarce that they couldn't toss in the three audio commentaries at a low bit rate? The first question can be answered by simply stating that Fox are cheapskates and have already built up a reputation for diddling customers over when it comes to extras on their Blu-ray releases. The second question can also be answered by going down the "Fox are cheapskates" route: instead of licensing a more efficient codec, they chose to encode the movie using bloated old MPEG2, and in doing so ensured that the only element of the disc that's "Beyond High Definition" is the pop-up menu.

Anyway, what of the transfer itself? It's impressive, and in the upper echelon of Blu-ray efforts. No, it's not The Descent or Silent Hill, and it doesn't hold a candle to HD DVD greats like Serenity and Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire, or even almost-but-not-quite titles like King Kong and The Adventures of Robin Hood. It is very good, though: a solid 8/10 affair marred only by some artefacting in the opening snow-laden scenes (MPEG2, look at you!) and some mild but persistent edge enhancement. Obviously, I've not watched the entire film yet, so I may uncover some additional problems when I go through it with a fine toothcomb, but first impressions would put it more or less on a level with Constantine and Robin Hood Daffy.

My copy of the French collector's edition DVD release of Lucio Fulci's Beatrice Cenci also arrived today, from FNAC, along with the two most recent "Grande Collection" Asterix books (interesting that one, shipped on the final day of the last month from Amazon.fr, arrived on the same day as the other, shipped four days ago from FNAC). I've given it the once-over, and it appears to have a decent if unremarkable transfer (it's 1.85:1, which appears to be the intended aspect ratio, although some of the opening credits on the right-hand side are barely contained within the frame on a zero-overscan display), although the lack of English subtitles is going to be a bit of a pain. Still, at least my French (rudimentary) is better than my Italian (non-existent), so I suppose I can probably just about muddle through with the help of the subtitles.

Blu-ray round-up

A plethora of Blu-ray discs went through the patented HMS Whimsy benchmarking system today, starting with American Psycho, which arrived from DVD Pacific this morning. Unfortunately, this is hands-down the worst high definition transfer I've seen to date. In fact, it's downright guff, with edge enhancement that makes An American Werewolf in London's ringing seem mild, and intrusive noise reduction that destroys the texture of the actors' faces, making it look like everyone has taken a bath in a tub of grease. Indeed, I'd go as far as to say that I'm strongly considering selling it on and just hanging on to the standard definition version: it's not that the HD version looks worse, but I can probably get more money by selling it than I would with the DVD. That's how bad this looks.

Next up, Hostel, a rental copy of which arrived from LoveFilm. It's not as bad as American Psycho, but it's pretty naff, marred once again by edge enhancement, which gives it a decidedly harsh appearance. How can a master for a film little more than a year old look this bad?

The film itself was pretty disappointing too. It's part of the recent wave of exploitation horror movies originating from the US, such as Saw and The Passion of the Christ, which have no actual purpose beyond repulsing the viewer with as much mindless gore as possible. In these films, there is no real plot to speak of, and the violence takes the form of sadistic torture carried out against defenceless prisoners with no justification. I have a feeling that this type of film is going to come to define the horror genre in the early 2000s, just as the late 90s were characterised by self-referential, "post-modern" Scream rip-offs, and the 80s became known for their Halloween-inspired teen slashers. For the first 70 minutes, it's frankly tedious, a sort of bizarre look at an imaginary, squalid, barbaric Eastern Europe populated by skinhead ogres and busty, sex-crazed sirens who lure innocent young American boys to their deaths. If it's meant to be ironic, it doesn't come across, with the two aforementioned Americans neither annoying enough to give cause for cheer when they finally started getting hacked up, nor likeable enough to care what happens to them. The final 20 minutes do constitute something of a reversal of fortunes, with the sole survivor turning the tables against his torturers and staging a dramatic escape attempt, but it's too little, too late. 4/10

Finally, Lyris received his DVD Pacific order containing Chicago and Flightplan. Unfortunately, the grossly edge enhanced Chicago looks like it's going to be another title to go up on eBay in the very near future. Flightplan, meanwhile, looks considerably better, albeit not stunning. It's one of a tiny number of Blu-ray titles to be encoded with VC-1, the codec more commonly associated with HD DVD.

Blu-ray, so far, has been a really, really mixed bag. Basically, I've seen two stellar transfers, several mediocre ones, a couple of poor ones and one outright awful one. Obviously, I've only seen a small number of Blu-ray titles in comparison with those available on HD DVD, but at this stage it's fairly clear which format is delivering the more consistently impressive experience.

Throwing my toys out of the pram

Back when Pixar Animation Studios was acquired by Disney back in May 2006, one of the first changes made by John Lasseter, Pixar's Creative Vice President and the new CCO of both animation departments, was to shut down production of Toy Story 3, a sequel being produced without Pixar's authorisation by Disney themselves. Now, it seems that production will go ahead after all, although this time by the Pixar team. The bad news, though, is that John Lasseter will not be directing (unlike the previous two Toy Story films). This is not in itself particularly surprising, given that, with his responsibility for running both animation studios, finding the time to direct a film into the bargain would be pretty much guaranteed to be out of the question. It's still a shame, though, and the news that Michael Arndt, the screenwriter of Little Miss Sunshine, is writing a script for it, fills me with dread. I've not seen Little Miss Sunshine, so I've no opinion on it one way or the other, but I'm incredibly suspicious of the notion of a live action screenwriter penning a script for any animated film, let alone a Pixar film, given that the studio has always prided itself on having actual artists develop their storylines. Still, the film will be directed by Lee Unkrich, who has served as co-director on several Pixar projects, including Toy Story 2, and let's not forget the fact that, for all these setbacks, this will be a 100% Pixar venture, so I'm sure there's hope for it yet.

In other Disney news, the Variety article linked to above (which I'm translating into something resembling English here) reports that the rumours were true and that Lilo & Stitch co-writer/co-director Chris Sanders is no longer with the company, and that the reins for his upcoming pet project, the CG American Dog, have been passed to Chris Williams, who served as a story artist on several of the studio's films, including Lilo & Stitch. Whether Sanders left voluntarily or was given the boot is unclear, but one thing's for sure, the end result is sure to suffer without his guidance. Oh, and Lasseter and Disney/Pixar animation president Ed Catmull have refuted the rumour that Disney would be switching back to an exclusively 2D slate after the release of their upcoming Meet the Robinsons, although they did confirm that 2D was well and truly back at the studio, with the John Musker/Ron Clements project The Frog Princess, expected to be the next in line for release after American Dog, being traditionally animated.

The Day of the Jackal/Casino Royale

At first glance, it might seem strange to be reviewing these two books together, but there are in fact some valid reasons. Both are spy thrillers written by journalists turned novelists, both take place in Cold War-era France, and both were adapted into successful and highly enjoyable films which were, by and large, very faithful to their literary roots. Oh, and finally, I started reading one within hours of finishing the other, so there.

Beyond that, though, the similarities do admittedly end. The Day of the Jackal's draw comes from its staunchly realistic portrayal of the events depicted, and Frederick Forsythe's painstaking, some might say anal, attention to detail. Far from making the book boring, this actually increases the tension, because everything is conveyed so precisely and in such a journalistic style that it becomes easy to forget that this is in fact a fictional tale. This feat is made doubly impressive because virtually anyone reading the book will know that Charles de Gaulle was not assassinated, so the outcome can never be in any doubt. The Day of the Jackal is definitely a page-turner - and I mean that in the best sense of the phrase, not in the "this book has short chapters and is printed in a large typeface on small paper" sense of The Da Vinci Code.

Casino Royale, meanwhile, may be many things, but it is not a page-turner. It's certainly a brief and enjoyable read, but it didn't have the draw of The Day of the Jackal that made me eager to start another chapter as soon as I'd finished the last. Despite the fact that Ian Fleming's novel is much shorter than Forsythe's, I'd estimate that I actually took roughly the same number of days to read both. Whereas The Day of the Jackal seems painstakingly real, Casino Royale is clearly a work of escapism, fantasising about the sexy, cutting-edge life of espionage while sidelining the doldrums of paperwork and surveillance.

Both books are fairly light on character development, although this tends to work in the favour of Forsythe's novel. We never get to know much about his protagonist, the Jackal, apart from the fact that he is ruthless, methodical and slightly cynical, and that he lavishes great care on guns. We never manage to get inside his head and, perhaps contrary to expectations, this is what makes him scary. Bond, on the other hand, is a little more open as a character, in that we are often privy to his thoughts, and he is certainly an intriguing fellow: a sexist, a cynic, committed to the task in hand almost to the point of insanity, and someone who probably has a lot of emotional baggage but has learned how to "lock it away" in his mind. He's not very likeable, and I get the impression that this is intentional. He doesn't seem real, though: more of a construct than a character... although this may change with Fleming's later novels - I haven't read any of them, so I wouldn't know. Both books are, on the whole, very enjoyable, although The Day of the Jackal is the better of the two by a country mile.

Update, May 10th, 2007 07:52 AM: I'm disabling comments on this entry due to the ridiculous amount of spam it has been receiving.

The latest HD image quality rankings

Time for the latest high definition image rankings update. This one is particularly noteworthy because, thanks to a combination of buying various titles myself and renting a handful to give the once-over, I've been able to add Blu-ray releases to the list. (I would have liked also to have added Hostel and S.W.A.T. to the list, but some dumdum managed to render the rental copies I received unreadable by attacking the data surface with some sort of CD cleaner and a rather coarse rag.)

Of the new additions, there are a few surprises. Chiefly, it seems that once again my views on image quality are out of step with those of the bulk of the reviewing populace. Silent Hill was held up to be wildly inconsistent, with some moments of awful image quality, when in reality it is a stunning-looking disc. Fantastic Four and Tears of the Sun, meanwhile, both received charitable if not outright ecstatic reviews, when in actual fact it turns out that both have been subjects to a disturbing degree of digital manipulation. Of the two, Fantastic Four is the worse, but Tears of the Sun is not what I expect from HD either: edge enhanced and with a strangely "waxy" look to it (not to mention more compression artefacts than I've seen on any other Blu-ray title), it sums up the sort of excessive tinkering I hate to see in a transfer. Perhaps, though, these fake-looking, processed, edge enhanced titles are what people actually want? How else can you explain the rave reviews of the likes of Brokeback Mountain on HD DVD, and of standard definition titles like The Lord of the Rings, Final Destination 3 and the remake of The Hills Have Eyes? The same goes for the HD DVD of Batman Begins (which, along with some other titles, I also rented), which is the worst-looking Warner disc I've seen this side of Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. Far be it for me to say "Everybody's wrong except me", but sometimes that's genuinely how I feel.

10/10

• Corpse Bride (Warner, USA, HD DVD)
• Serenity (Universal, UK, HD DVD)
• Serenity (Universal, USA, HD DVD)
• Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire (Warner, UK, HD DVD)
• The Descent (Lions Gate, USA, Blu-ray)

9/10

• Looney Tunes: Rabbit Hood (Warner, USA, HD DVD)*
• King Kong (Universal, UK, HD DVD)
• The Bourne Supremacy (Universal, USA, HD DVD)
• The Adventures of Robin Hood (Warner, USA)
• Miami Vice (Universal, USA, HD DVD)
• Silent Hill (Sony Pictures, USA, Blu-ray)
• Doom (Universal, UK, HD DVD)
• Casablanca (Warner, USA, HD DVD)
• Kiss Kiss Bang Bang (Warner, UK, HD DVD)

8/10

• Unleashed (Universal, USA, HD DVD)
• Red Dragon (Universal, USA, HD DVD)
• Constantine (Warner, USA, HD DVD)
• Looney Tunes: Robin Hood Daffy (Warner, USA, HD DVD)*
• Land of the Dead (Universal, USA, HD DVD)
• V for Vendetta (Warner, USA, HD DVD)
• The Machinist (Toshiba, Japan, HD DVD)
• Sleepy Hollow (Paramount, USA, HD DVD)
• Million Dollar Baby (Warner, USA, HD DVD)
• Batman Begins (Warner, UK, HD DVD)
• Van Helsing (Universal, UK, HD DVD)

7/10

• Wolf Creek (The Weinstein Company, USA, HD DVD)
• The Exorcism of Emily Rose (Sony Pictures, UK, Blu-ray)
• Tears of the Sun (Sony Pictures, UK, Blu-ray)
• Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas (Universal, USA, HD DVD)
• The Mummy Returns (Universal, USA, HD DVD)
• Charlie and the Chocolate Factory (Warner, USA, HD DVD)
• Enemy of the State (Buena Vista, USA, Blu-ray)

6/10

• Fantastic Four (20th Century Fox, UK, Blu-ray)
• Lara Croft: Tomb Raider (Paramount, USA, HD DVD)
• An American Werewolf in London (Universal, USA, HD DVD)
• Brokeback Mountain (Universal, USA, HD DVD)
• Basic Instinct (Studio Canal, France, HD DVD)

* Found on the The Adventures of Robin Hood HD DVD.