Mainstream Cinema

More Blu-ray "exclusives" on HD DVD

Source: AV Science Forum

Courtesy of our friends at DeAPlaneta Home Entertainment and Filmax in Spain, several more titles that are Blu-ray exclusives in the US are due to be released on HD DVD between now and the first quarter of 2007. These include Underworld: Evolution, Saw and Saw II. The title that especially excites me, however, is Asterix and the Vikings - presumably the first ever high definition release of an Asterix film, not to mentioned the first 2D animated title. I'm practically soiling myself with excitement.

Oh, and for all you spaghetti western fans, The Good, the Bad and the Ugly is also listed.

First Optimum HD DVDs announced

Source: DVD Times

The HD DVD cause has just been given another boost as Optimum Home Entertainment, holders of the rights to several key European and Asian titles, have leapt into the fray, announcing Mathieu Kassovitz's La Haine and Roman Polanski's The Pianist for release on December 11th. Both films will of course be in 24 fps 1080p format, while audio will be comprised of a variety of DTS-HD options: French 5.1 DTS-HD Master Audio and German 5.1 DTS-HD Hi-Resolution Audio on La Haine, English 5.1 DTS-HD Master Audio and French 5.1 DTS-HD Hi-Resolution Audio on The Pianist.

I can already think of several Optimum titles I would love to pick up in high definition. The entire Studio Ghibli catalogue, anyone?

And my first HD DVD double-dip is...

Bet you didn't think I'd be double-dipping this early in HD DVD's life, did you? Well, neither did I, but the news that the UK release apparently featured a better transfer than its American counterpart made it difficult to resist. (Well, actually, this is not technically a double-dip for me, since my brother owns the previous version, but it does mean that we now have two copies in the house.) The US release of Serenity was one of the very first HD DVDs to be released, and it was also one of the first to be encoded, using an early and less efficient version of the VC1 codec. For the European release, therefore, the compressionists decided to revisit it and encode it more efficiently, partly to allow for additional language tracks to be included, thus facilitating a Europe-wide release of the same disc.

I know what you're thinking: "But Captain Whiggles, isn't Serenity your number one HD DVD demo disc?" It is, or rather was, because the US disc has just been knocked down a peg by its younger European sibling. No, the differences aren't massive, and I don't expect the majority of people to even notice them, but the new encode takes an already spectacular-looking disc and makes it look just a hair better. The most significant difference, if we can actually call it significant, is that the grain is very slightly more pronounced, further amplifying the film-like nature of the HD presentation. It also seems to be microscopically more detailed. This tends to be most noticeable in the form of improved definition of the skin texture during facial close-ups, although some of the wider shots also look a little crisper. Ultimately, I'm not sure I'd recommend that everyone immediately rushes out and picks up the UK release if they already own the US version, but the difference is there. I rated the US version a 10/10 for image quality, and I don't think I'd drop it to a 9 even having seen the UK version - perhaps more of a 9.8 (although I prefer not to get that specific when it comes to overall ratings). It's too bad I don't have more than one HD DVD player, and it takes upwards of a minute to switch discs, because that makes it pretty much impossible to perform any sort of a scientific comparison. I really hope that affordable PC drives and software capable of displaying titles in their full 1920x1080 resolution become available before too long, because I'm itching to subject some HD DVDs to the same in-depth comparisons as I currently do for standard definition material.

The UK disc also includes an additional bonus feature not found on the US release: the 20-minute A Filmmaker's Journey, which is not particularly substantial - but hey, the more the merrier!

A minor point, true, but the UK release has a much nicer cover. The US version, for some reason, has been designed to look like it houses some sort of intergalactic space porno, while the UK edition, while still a bit cluttered, looks considerably less embarrassing.

Oddly enough, the UK release comes in a different type of case from what I've been used to seeing for HD DVD so far. The spine, this time, is much wider - the same width as a normal amaray DVD case, in fact. The reason for this seems to be to allow UK stores to fit those special plastic security tags that can only be removed by a dedicated machine. Oddly enough, the other UK HD DVD release I own, Warner's Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire, uses the same size of case as its US counterparts, so it may be that only Universal has opted to use this alternate design. Either way, if I end up buying more of them, my HD shelf, already almost full, is going to be filled up a lot more quickly!

Oh, and I also received, in the same order from Amazon UK, the ominous score to V for Vendetta by Dario Marianelli.

Mulholland Dr. HD DVD confirmed for March 2007

Source: Resetmag

Studio Canal have announced their second wave of HD DVD releases. A slew of titles, including one of my favourite films ever, David Lynch's Mulholland Dr., have been confirmed for release in France with a street date of March 5th 2007. Other titles include Lynch's The Elephant Man, Akira Kurosawa's Ran, and Terminator 2: Judgement Day, a title that, in the US, is a Blu-ray exclusive. The RRP for each title should be around €25.

A word of warning, though: this will be a very limited release, with the first run being comprised of only 4,000 copies for the four countries included in the release plans (i.e. only 1,000 copies for France). If you want any of these titles, therefore, get your pre-orders in as soon as they're listed!

V for Vendetta

For all its flaws, I admire V for Vendetta for being ballsy enough to tell a mainstream audience that blowing up buildings can be a legitimate means to an end. Warner's HD DVD release is far from the top echelon of high definition releases, but it constitutes a solid package overall, and the improvements to image, audio and extras should be enough to convince those who already own the DVD to upgrade.

Remember, remember... Okay, so it's the 5th of December rather than the 5th of November, but I've reviewed the recent HD DVD release of V for Vendetta anyway.

Disney aspect ratio conundrum

(Also posted at DVD Times)

In Disney fandom, there is a long-running debate surrounding the intended aspect ratios of a number of the studio's animated features, including everything from One Hundred and One Dalmatians (1961) up to and including The Fox and the Hound (1981). For a long time, the eight films encompassed by this 20-year period were all available on DVD in a 1.33:1 Academy aspect ratio, barring The Rescuers (1977), which was released in 1.66:1. No-one could really decide exactly which ratio these films were meant to be shown in: theoretically, they were all released at a time when cinemas equipped to display Academy material were no longer common, so it makes sense to assume that they would have been exhibited in a ratio somewhere between 1.66:1 (European widescreen) and 1.85:1 (American widescreen). This was substantiated somewhat by the admittedly unreliable IMDB, which listed an intended ratio of 1.75:1 for these titles.

The DVDs, however, suggested otherwise. Many argued that Disney would not have released these films in 1.33:1 on DVD if that was not their intended ratio, especially given their otherwise solid track record for presenting the other Animated Classics on DVD properly. Opponents of this theory pointed to The Rescuers as the odd one out, wondering why Disney would have made this film in widescreen and then gone back to the Academy ratio for their next project. Likewise, the obviously cropped DVD and VHS releases of The Fox and the Hound strongly indicated that something foul was afoot in Neverland.

The release of a new edition of Robin Hood, however, goes some way towards answering these various questions. Previously, this film was, like its counterparts from the 1961-1981 period, released on DVD in a 1.33:1 aspect ratio, which showed no obvious cropping. Personally, I always suspected that, barring The Rescuers and The Fox and the Hound, all the films of this 20-year period were being released in an open matte format - substantiated by the fact that zooming the DVDs in on a widescreen TV generally resulted in few if any framing problems. Now, Robin Hood has been released in a new "Most Wanted Edition" (how on earth do they come up with these titles?), and it turns out to be a 1.75:1 anamorphic presentation (i.e. with very thin black bars on either side of the widescreen frame). The Ultimate Disney review, which includes a screenshot comparing this release to its 1.33:1 predecessor, clearly shows that the earlier version was open matte. Indeed, flicking between the two captures of the same frame from both releases, it's clear that, on the left and right hand side of the frame, there is barely even a pixel's worth of difference. At the top and bottom, however, the new release obscures a considerable amount of the dead space that was present on the previous release.

The reviewer admittedly does have some reservations about this new presentation, pointing to the fact that "some elements do feel slightly cramped in the vertical direction", and a few of the screen captures accompanying the review do substantiate this. I'm not particularly convinced, however, by the various arguments he puts forth in favour of 1.33:1 being the intended presentation (although, to his credit, he doesn't attempt to claim one or the other to be the "correct" way to view the film). It seems, to me at least, clear that Robin Hood (and, therefore, presumably also One Hundred and One Dalmatians, The Aristocats and so on) were exhibited theatrically at around a ratio of 1.75:1 (which falls fairly squarely between 1.66:1 and 1.85:1), therefore making this new DVD an accurate representation of its intended appearance. I consider Robin Hood to be one of the worst films from a generally poor period in the Disney studio's history, but I'm sorely tempted to pick up this new version and bin (or, more likely, eBay) my old fullscreen disc.

The only question now is why did they go to the effort to get Robin Hood right, but weren't willing to take this extra step for The Fox and the Hound?

Home Alone: Family Fun Edition

Dodgy name tag aside, this new release of Home Alone more than makes up for the inadequacies of its predecessor, and is unlikely to disappoint even the biggest Grinch. Whether or not you already own a copy of Home Alone, I recommend you pick up a copy of this solid new release forthwith, and partake of the Christmas spirit.

In the run-up to Christmas, a perennial festive favourite is dusted off for a long-awaited special edition release. I've reviewed the newly released R1 "Family Fun Edition" of Home Alone, and yes, given it a 10.

DVDs I bought or received in the month of November

• Alias: The Complete Fifth Series (R2 UK, SD DVD)
• Astérix et les Vikings (R2 France, SD DVD)
• Cars (R1 USA, SD DVD)
• Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire (R0 UK, HD DVD)
• Home Alone: Family Fun Edition (R1 USA, SD DVD)
• Lovers, Liars and Lunatics (R0 USA, SD DVD)
• Peep Show: Series Three (R2 UK, SD DVD)
• V for Vendetta (R0 USA, HD DVD)
• Veronica Mars: The Complete Second Season (R1 USA, SD DVD)

Some interesting titles this month, including my first ever British HD DVD. Although, given that it's actually just a US release relabelled, that probably doesn't count for much.

Alternative Bond titles

Source: Dark Discussion

Well, it made me laugh at any rate. Actually, it made me guffaw. And spit up a little. I had the good fortune to see Bond's Balls Get a Bloody Good Walloping quite recently, but I must confess that the majority of the others have so far passed me by. Bond Screws 8 Birds in This One, Lads sounds like a right cracker, though, as does All Black-skinned People are Drug Pushers, Pimps, Rapists and Corruptors of Civilised White Society... although I'm rather worried that the latter will now only be available under its politically-correct title of The Larger Majority of Black-skinned People are Drug Pushers, Pimps, Rapists and Corruptors of Civilised White Society. Ah well, that's the nanny state mentality for you.

Sorry America, we got your Potters!

Forgive me this moment of plagiarism, but I still think it's one of the funniest thread titles I've seen relating to this subject. As I laid out in an earlier post, Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire, still lacking an official date for its US released, came out on HD DVD in the UK on November 20th, and word quickly spread that, barring the inclusion on the cover of BBFC logos and the usual UK additionata (to borrow a phrase from Garth Marenghi), such as a quote from the Daily Mirror, this was actually just the as yet unannounced US release rebadged. Well, curiosity got the better of me and, despite only having a lukewarm reaction to the first two Potter films, I ended up ordering a copy from Play.com.

It arrived today, and the rumours are true: when you pop the disc in, you're greeted with an FBI warning screen, followed by the Warner logo and the same annoying and bombastic Warner HD DVD trailer that they've included on every single one of their releases so far, then an MPAA PG-13 logo, followed by the film itself. If the studios continue to follow this model of simply repackaging (and re-labelling) the US discs, this strikes me as being a good thing, for two reasons. First: it cuts down on costs, meaning that a single master can be prepared for both North America and the UK (and any other English-speaking territories, as well as other locations like France and Spain, provided the extras are comprehensively subtitles, given that these discs tend to include French and Spanish dubs). Second: it should help bury the horrible legacy of PAL speed-up in films and dodgy NTSC to PAL standards converted extras. At the moment, Potter is a rare beast indeed: a 24 fps film with 30 fps NTSC extras that you can pick up off a UK store shelf. Hopefully this trend will continue.

Anyway, enough of that - how's the disc? Superb, is the answer. In fact, it comes very close to toppling Serenity from its "best HD DVD transfer" throne. It's amazing that Warner can put out an edge enhanced, slightly filtered and noise reduced release like V for Vendetta one week, and then release something that, to my eyes, looks almost completely untampered the next. This is an amazing looking transfer, with excellent detail and a rich, smooth, film-like look, and the fact that there are no real problems with compression is a phenomenal achievement given the number of difficult moments in this film - crowd scenes, underwater chases, firework displays, not to mention dodgy CGI fire-breathing dragons. This is very much a 10 out of 10 affair, with my only concern being some prominent edge enhancement in a couple of background shots in an early scene, which is so much heavier than anything else in the film (or indeed the shots in question) that I'm pretty sure it was a result of some effects work rather than the encoding.

As for the film, I enjoyed it more than the first two Potters, although it is to my mind still heavily flawed, not to mention far too long. As has been something of a trend recently, it's also fairly clear that, rather than being a stand-alone film, it's merely a single part in a much larger story. This wouldn't have been a massive problem were it not for the fact that the film ends on a "to be continued" note in all but name: in the final half-hour, a hideous villain and arch-enemy of Harry's escapes from his prison and comes after him, but nothing is done about this and, as is usually the case, the film ends with the school year ending and the characters heading their separate ways. Harry might have said, "Gee willickers! There's a terrible villain who wants to kill me on the loose, but we'll deal with him next term." I did, however, appreciate the somewhat darker tone when compared to the first two films (I still need to see Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban, the third film), and the child actors seem to be improving as they grow older.

Oh yeah, and I also finally received my long-awaited copy of Amber Benson's new film, Lovers, Liars and Lunatics, which she wrote, produced, edited, directed and starred in. The disc was posted to me by Ms Benson herself, judging by the fact that the signature on the customs declaration matches the signature on the front cover (she signed the first 500 copies). Full thoughts and impressions will follow as soon as I've had a chance to watch it, but, having taken a glance at a couple of minutes, I should probably warn you that the transfer is interlaced and non-anamorphic (although, unlike Amber's previous film, Chance, it's shot on 35mm film rather than video).

Update, December 19, 2006 05:54 PM: Fixed dead link.

New DVD image comparison

See just how bad the previous release of Home Alone was in my latest DVD Image Comparison!

This is my house - I have to defend it!

My copy of the recently released R1 US special edition (sorry, "Family Fun Edition") of Home Alone arrived this morning. If you've been reading this site for an extended period of time, then you've probably read at least one of my rants about the appalling picture quality of the previous bare-bones release of the film. Home Alone is probably my all-time favourite Christmas movie, and I'm not ashamed to say that. Growing up, it was always a huge part of the festive season for me, and, despite knowing every single line by heart, it never gets old. As you can probably imagine, I was absolutely elated to hear that Fox were finally bringing this classic out of the vault and giving it the full-on special edition treatment.

You know how these posts of mine usually go, don't you? Bla bla bla, I was so looking forward to this, bla bla bla. What usually comes next is the "What a phenomenal disappointment" rant... so here it comes.

Just kidding. I'm actually very pleased with this DVD. It's not perfect, by any means: a considerable amount of temporal noise reduction has been applied to the image, and, like most of the Fox DVDs I own, it looks rather soft (some of which may be a result of the original photography, but at least some of which is the result of digital tomfoolery). Still, when all said and done, it could have looked considerably worse, and I don't need to tell you that it's a vast improvement on the yellowy, smeary, artefact-ridden disaster that was its predecessor.

The extras are all of a high standard, and, unusually, myself and Lyris, who generally doesn't rate extras particularly highly, actually made our way through the entire contents of the disc without getting bored. Writer John Hughes, who supposedly banged out the script over the course of a weekend, is nowhere to be found, but director Chris Columbus, actors Macaulay Culkin and Daniel Stern, and a variety of crew members, are all over the bonus features, which include a neat little retrospective documentary as well as some archive materials from the time of the film's original production and release. Also included are a variety of deleted scenes, many of which are a hoot, and the contents of which actually made it into the novelisation I read when I was about eight years old. Finally, there's a great commentary with Columbus and Culkin, who gently take the piss out of the film and themselves, and provide a great deal of informative and fun anecdotes about the production.

I'm very surprised to find myself saying this, but this is actually one of the best DVD releases I've come across this year. Okay, so it's not exactly a multi-disc epic with seamless branching and a DTS-ES audio track, but it does exactly what it says on the tin and provides you with just about everything you could want for this film. With this, the special edition of The Omen and the extended cut of Kingdom of Heaven, Fox have certainly been releasing some decent packages recently. Let's hope we can eventually convince them to jump aboard the HD DVD wagon!

Casino Royale: confessions of a layman

I'll say it upfront: I'm not what you'd call a Bond fan. Oh, I've seen a fair share of the films, and have enjoyed a number of them to some degree, but I'm by no means a completist, and can't recall ever seeing one that I've absolutely loved. Even the strongest, most strait-laced ones, which, for me, have been the two Timothy Dalton ventures, had their moments of high camp that were at best annoying and at worst verged on bringing the whole thing crashing down. As such, my review of Casino Royale should be taken very much as an outsider's point of view. What I liked and disliked about it won't necessarily be the same things that a hardcore Bond fan will like and dislike.

The short version: this is a very good film. Actually, it's close to being an excellent film, with only a handful of problems preventing it from being a top-tier effort. I'll get on to these in due course, but first, I must say that I really liked this "reboot". In the past, Bond films seem to have gone lurched back and forth between serious to camp, with a Licence to Kill being followed by a Moonraker (well, that's chronologically incorrect, but it serves the purpose of illustrating the series' two extremes). As you can probably gather, I prefer the former, and found Timothy Dalton's hard-edged, merciless portrayal of 007 to be far superior to Roger Moore's nudge-nudge wink-wink camp antics. Even Dalton had his flaws, though, for me, stemming mainly from the fact that, when the scripts called for him to be more light-hearted, he seemed hopelessly out of his depth.

Casino Royale is no Roger Moore romp. It's the first Bond film I've seen that is completely straight-faced. That's not to say that there isn't humour in it, but the humour is subtler, derived not from Bond foiling the terrorists and parachuting down to Felix Leiter's wedding all in one swish movement (a particularly cringe-inducing moment in the otherwise commendable Licence to Kill), but rather from various dry retorts that, while self-conscious, ultimately serve the characters rather than playing to the gallery. (Bond's response when asked whether he wants his Martini shaken or stirred put a smile on my face.)

The change in tone is partially due to the script, but also in no small part to the casting of Daniel Craig as Bond. Back when various actors were being touted as successors to the bland Pierce Brosnan (not a fan, sorry), I immediately latched on to him as my preferred choice (although the alternatives, ranging from Hugh Jackman to Orlando Bloom, meant that there really wasn't much of a contest as far as I was concerned), and was most pleased when he got the part. People, however, were criticising the choice before they even saw a frame of footage: "Craig's too ugly, he's not sophisticated, he's... he's... he's blond!" To that I say "Phooey!" Craig is certainly nothing like any of his predecessors, but, in my opinion, he comes the closest of all to making Bond seem human. Timothy Dalton was tough, sure, but I always saw him as more an attitude than a real person. Craig, in contrast, doesn't really have the sophistication of some of his predecessors, but this "blunt instrument", as M (Judi Dench - whose retention, despite this reboot, didn't bother me anything like as much as I thought it would) puts it, lives and breathes in a way that the others, for me, didn't. (That said, bear in mind that I've yet to see George Lazenby's turn in On Her Majesty's Secret Service, regarded by a number to be Bond's most human turn.)

In part, that's due to the way the writers build up his relationship with Vesper Lynd (Eva Green, a fantastic actress and a Bond girl who, unusually, seems to have been cast for her acting abilities as much as her looks). Theirs is a relationship that begins as a series of thinly-veiled sniping matches, but which eventually becomes one of mutual dependence, as both find that the job they have to do is no walk in the park. The scene in which Bond comforts a tearful Vesper, who has just seen two men killed in front of her, packs more emotional punch than any other scene that I've seen in the series. You get the feeling that Bond genuinely cares about this woman and that, had things been different, their relationship would have gone further. (I'm trying to avoid spoilers here.) Oh, and it also helps that Green is convincing as an intelligent secret service agent - Denise Richards she ain't.

But what of the setting? A casino hall didn't sound to me like the most exciting location in which to set a 140-minute film, not least because I know nothing about cards. Well, the truth is that it doesn't matter. I still know nothing about the game that was being played, despite Bond's handy explanation of it to Vesper, but in reality it's not necessary to understand the details in order to become engrossed. The casino, while the backdrop of a significant portion of the film, is really just that - a backdrop - with more interesting events being played out against it. Lest anyone be under any misconceptions, it's also worth pointing out that the entire film is not set there: Bond doesn't reach the casino until over an hour into the film.

Oh yes, and it's bloody. This film is vicious - far more so than Licence to Kill. The Bond of this film gets beaten and bloodied, and he gives as good as he gets: I can see where the notion that Craig is a thuggish Bond comes from, for he really is absolutely ruthless in the various action scenes, thrashing his opponents within an inch of their lives and, on several occasions, killing in cold blood. Nothing quite lives up to the sheer brutality of the opening bathroom beating (although the torture sequence comes close), but the approach to violence throughout the entire film is more visceral and realistic than anything we've seen before. This time, we actually believe that Bond stands a chance of failing - he's pitted against people who are more than a match for him. As befits this grittier Bond, the film was shot in the inherently grainier Super35, compared to the smooth Anamorphic Panavision of its immediate predecessors.

Having tossed around so many superlatives, I now feel inclined to point out the areas in which the film is more problematic. I essentially have three main complaints:

1. The product placement. This film, which features gratuitous advertisements for everything from Sony Ericsson phones to Blu-ray discs, leaves you in doubt that Bond is now property of Columbia Pictures.

2. The title sequence. The song is forgettable, but the execution of the graphics themselves is cringe-inducing. The concept - a "cards" motif that also showcases the new Bond - is pretty decent, but someone decided to apply a cheap, quasi-animated "cel-shaded" effect to it, which looks like something out of a video game.

3. The pacing. I didn't mind the length, surprisingly enough, but I do agree with criticisms that the final act is rather anticlimactic. My understanding is that Ian Fleming's original novel was more or less the second act, and that the bulk of the first and third acts were fabricated for the film. It's a difficult situation - I'm not sure how I would have done things differently had I been writing it - but, despite an explosive climax in Venice, it feels a bit like an over-long afterthought after

Highlight below to reveal spoiler text:
the main villain has been disposed of.

All in all, though, I had a blast. This one, for me, more than lived up to the hype, and I can't remember ever becoming so engaged by a Bond film before. After 20 films playing to largely the same formula, I'm glad they shook things up with a leaner, meaner interpretation, and that, for once, the public seems to have accepted it. 9/10.

V for Vendetta

My HD DVD of V for Vendetta finally arrived today from Amazon.com. Incidentally, I'm glad I decided to order my copy from them - my regular supplier, DVD Pacific, seem to have only just got copies in stock, and, in any event, Amazon's shipping times and, for HD DVDs, prices, seem to be pretty much the same as DVD Pacific's anyway.

Anyway, the disc. This is a very good but not outstanding presentation. I'd put it in the same category as the likes of Constantine and Million Dollar Baby: essentially, a smooth, rich presentation with a pleasing amount of detail and no visible compression artefacts, but not an out of this world eye-popper like Serenity (to date, still the most incredible home video presentation I've ever seen of a film) or Unleashed. Some edge enhancement is visible, and the image doesn't have the crispness of some of the more stellar titles, but it is all in all a very nice-looking transfer.

As for extras, we get an exclusive In-Movie Experience, which I've briefly sampled and found to be somewhat better than those found on the likes of Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. Also, all of the extras from the 2-disc special edition DVD have been ported over. And yes, that includes the Natalie Portman SNL short so tragically absent from the UK DVD releases.

Expect a full review at DVD Times by the end of the week.

Oh, and it seems that, despite HD DVD players not yet being available in the UK, Play.com are already shipping copies of Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire, a title which is not yet available in the US. The word on the street is that this is actually a US disc, right down to the FBI warning and MPAA ratings screen at the start of the disc. If nothing else, this bodes well for future UK HD DVD releases, at least from Warner.

Torn Curtain: North by North Leipzig

After the disappointment of Topaz, I was dreading this, a film seemingly even more reviled than that particular misadventure. As luck would have it, though, Torn Curtain is in a completely different league. The reviews may have been a bit muted, but I thoroughly enjoyed what is essentially a European North by Northwest, featuring a double agent, Professor Michael Armstrong (Paul Newman), who, along with his girlfriend Sarah (Julie Andrews), finds himself on the run from the East German authorities from whom he has been tasked to procure vital information about an anti-missile defence system.

I'll begin by stating what doesn't work with this film. Yes, it's true that Paul Newman and Julie Andrews are incredibly miscast (especially the former, who is never convincing as a brilliant nuclear scientist). Hitchcock made it known to them in no uncertain terms that he didn't want to be making the film, and the hostility on the set permeates throughout their performances. It's also true that, like Topaz, Torn Curtain features another disappointing score (Hitchcock and Bernard Herrmann had a massive falling-out during the scoring process, with the two never working together again, with the replacement score by John Addison coming across as bland and, again, too light-hearted). Furthermore, there's very little new on offer here, with the script (originally penned by Brian Moore but redone by ghost-writers after Hitchcock threw most of his work out) cobbling together various ideas from other films in Hitchcock's career, ranging from the "two lovers on the run" theme of The 39 Steps to the "spy manipulates girlfriend for the greater good" motif of Notorious.

Are these problems? Absolutely, but they don't stop Torn Curtain from being an immensely enjoyable film. Newman actually makes a reasonably effective hero provided he's not trying to pass himself off as a scientist, and, while the plot is nothing new, it didn't bore me for a minute. In fact, I'd go so far as to say that I was riveted throughout, and, in the run-up towards the climax, it all becomes incredibly tense and exciting. It may play like something of a greatest hits package, in much the same vein as Argento's Non Ho Sonno, but by and large Hitchcock is reusing material that was successful for a reason, and continues to work the second time round. It also has Lila Kedrova (who I knew for her role in Massimo Dallamano's The Cursed Medallion) hamming it up something rotten, which is definitely a good thing. The most acclaimed moment, however, and rightly so, is a sequence in which Armstrong and a peasant woman find themselves forced to murder Armstrong's "minder", Gromek (Wolfgang Kieling). Memorable for showing just how difficult it is to kill a man (stabbing him and bludgeoning him with a shovel don't work, so they eventually have to push his head inside an oven and gas him), it shows that, even if he wasn't having the time of his life making this lower-tier effort, Hitchcock was still able to rise to the occasion and deliver something truly imaginative.

8/10.

Topaz: Hitchcock fumbles

Sometimes, even the great ones misfire: this would be Hitchcock's turn. There are essentially three problems with Topaz: the casting, the script, and the length of the damn thing. The plot revolves around André Devereaux (Frederick Stafford), a French spy who is roped in by the Americans to identify the members of Topaz, a group of top French government officials working for the Soviets. Or, at least, that's the plot as it seems to boil down. In reality, the film is two hours and twenty minutes of meandering, plodding flimflam that gradually makes its way towards a thoroughly anticlimactic conclusion.

It starts out well enough, with a tense and reasonably effective defection by a top KGB official and his family, while on holiday in Denmark. Had the entire film been like this, I would have been rapt. Sadly, this soon gives way to a whole lot of uninvolving nonsense as the bland Stafford travels first to Harlem, then to Havana, and then finally to Paris. The actor is miscast, and the character is uninteresting. Indeed, the most engaging aspect of the material in Havana is that his lover, resistance leader Juanita de Cordoba (Karin Dor), looks quite a lot like giallo scream queen Edwige Fenech. Maurice Jarre's score, meanwhile, is somewhat forgettable and, even worse, at times highly inappropriate - witness, for example, a late scene in which, believing that his son-in-law has fallen to his death, Devereaux and his daughter Michèle (Claude Jade) rush down the stars to music that wouldn't seem out of place in a madcap comedy.

Still, at the end of the day, it's Hitchcock, and as such, even in its worst moments it's technically solid. It also has its brief moments of genius - the aforementioned introductory scenes in Denmark are gripping, as is a lengthy sequence in which Devereaux's associate, Philippe Dubois (an underused Roscoe Lee Browne), distracts Cuban leader Rico Parra (John Vernon) while his secretary makes off with a suitcase. The death of Juanita is also masterfully handled, with, as Mike Sutton points out in his review, her dress spreading out like the petals of a flower as she sinks to the ground. Even at his weakest, Hitchcock always manages to inject a moment or two of delight into his films. Topaz has its fair share, but, for the most part, it's simply too plodding, too overwrought, too downright inconsequential for it to sit in the same company as classics like The Birds and North by Northwest, or even later gems like Frenzy.

5/10 - for completists only.

Cars

Cars once again confirms Pixar's status as the premier creator of theatrical animation in North America, and, while this disc is decidedly lacking in terms of extras, the transfer and audio are of a high standard. No doubt this film will see a more impressive release at a later date, perhaps when Ratatouille arrives in Summer 2007. Until then, however, this release should tide eager viewers over.

Pixar's latest animated feature arrives on DVD courtesy of Disney Home Entertainment. I've reviewed the R1 release of Cars, which smells of double-dip syndrome.

Ready, set... go!

Yesterday, I received a review copy of the Region 1 release of Cars, the latest Pixar Talking Picture. My brother got the limited edition Australian tin box release for his birthday, and a side by side comparison reveals that there isn't a great deal of difference between the two. While neither are as eye-poppingly crisp as the excellent PAL release of The Incredibles, they're definitely both better than the disappointing transfers afforded to Finding Nemo, and stack up reasonably favourably against the transfers of the various other Pixar DVD releases. Expect a full review at DVD Times within the next week.

PS. It seems that I have a fan. A fellow calling himself "Nick Jordan" (presumably not related to the fictional television character of the same name) has left me some of the most delightful feedback. He is, it would appear, a huge fan of both my site and my Suspiria audio commentary, and can hardly hold his bladder at the thought that I am about to undertake another. You can read his charming commendations here and here.

Update, December 19, 2006 06:03 PM: Fixed dead links.

Blood and Bava

Along with Dario Argento and Lucio Fulci, Mario Bava is often considered to be part of the holy trinity of Italian horror cinema. In 1963, he wrote and directed The Girl Who Knew Too Much, which is widely considered to be the first ever giallo film, and his influence can be felt in virtually every American slasher film of the 1980s, with his Bay of Blood (also known as Twitch of the Death Nerve) having been ripped off wholesale by Sean S. Cunningham with Friday the 13th.

Despite this, however, I've never really been able to get into Bava's films in the way that I have with Argento, Fulci and other less immediately memorable giallo directors like Massimo Dallamano, Aldo Lado, Luciano Ercoli and Paolo Cavara. Bava is one of the finest visual craftsmen ever to have lived - that much, I think, is undeniable - and the minuscule budgets he had to work with only serves to make his achievements all the more remarkable. I think that he is often let down by his scripts, though. Bava was very much a "director for hire" in the traditional sense: he would turn his hand to anything in order to put food on the table, and, as such, he never claimed a genre as his own in the way that Argento did with giallo and Sergio Leone did with the Western. A lot of Bava's films, therefore, fail to engage me, because I often get the feeling that he wasn't truly invested in what he was doing. As visually awe-inspiring as his work is, he often seems to have found himself working with rather generic scripts, and while I don't think that an amazing screenplay is by any means the be-all and end-all of a film, most of the time I struggle to understand the big deal with his films.

If The Girl Who Knew Too Much was the film that started the giallo phenomenon, it was Blood and Black Lace, made a year later, that solidified many of the archetypes that would be adopted wholesale during the boom of the early 1970s: the masked, black-attired killer; the cast of nubile women being offed; the psychosexual nature of the murders; the parade of shifty suspects, all with something to hide. The narrative, as such, seems a bit derivative, although it must be remembered that this is the one that set the stage for what was to come. It's not a particularly remarkable plot, though, even taking into account its position as a forerunner to the genre: a series of murders are taking place, the victims all models from a prestigious agency. The usual shifty-looking characters are on the prowl, and, despite dropping like flies, none of the women are particularly eager to divulge what they know. I doubt that this would have been considered original stuff even at the time of its release. Rightly or wrongly, however, it has been retroactively identified as the first ever "body count movie".

What does stand out as remarkable, though, is the photography. Even by Bava's already high standards, this is one incredible-looking piece of work. He originally trained as a painter, and it shows: every frame is expertly composed, with a level of three-dimensionality that sucks you into the world, despite its obviously artificial appearance. It's obvious that Argento was heavily influenced by this when he did Suspiria 13 years later, and yet the comparisons are somewhat unjust. Whereas Suspiria's setting could never be mistaken for that of the real world, Blood and Black Lace's feels authentic despite its deliberate artifice.

In the final analysis, therefore, I can't claim to be as enamoured by Blood and Black Lace as some, but I appreciate it as a key film partially responsible for spawning one of the Italian film industry's most lucrative filoni, and as an outstanding achievement in a technical sense. This is definitely a film that deserves to be seen by a wider audience, so that people can appreciate not only where the giallo genre came from, but also the American slasher movement of the 1970s and 80s. Bava definitely doesn't get the recognition he deserves as a trendsetter.

PS. I'm incredibly grateful to Lee for his copy of the German DVD release of the film, which is vastly preferable to either of the two releases put out by VCI in the US.

Peep peep!

Series 3 of Peep Show arrived this morning. With a new series apparently now not showing up until some point in 2007, rewatching older episodes of this extremely funny comedy is going to have to tide me over.

In an earlier post, I mentioned that I thought Series 3 was a step down from its two predecessors, and that feeling was maintained when watching it again today. It just don't think it consistently hits the high notes as well as the likes of Series 2, although admittedly, when it's funny, it's really funny - the third episode, Shrooming, being a particular highlight. Still, I'd say that, on reflection, it was better than I'd remembered it - 7/10 material rather than 6/10, if you will.

Oh yeah, and I cancelled my order for V for Vendetta on HD DVD from DVD Pacific and re-ordered it from Amazon, who actually have it in stock.

Update, December 19, 2006 06:12 PM: Fixed dead link.