Mainstream Cinema

Snow, sand, softness and sharpness

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

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

The best pics in London

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

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

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

DVDs I bought or received in the month of May

• 30 Days of Night (RA USA, Blu-ray)
• Enchanted (RA USA, Blu-ray)
• The Golden Compass (RA USA, Blu-ray)
• Mrs. Doubtfire (RA USA, Blu-ray)
• The Orphanage (RA USA, Blu-ray)
• Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street (R0 UK, Blu-ray)
• Waking the Dead: Series 6 (R2 UK, DVD)

Definitely a very Blu month for me, which I have no complaints about whatsoever. I was going to post a bit about the various titles listed above, but for some reason I only managed to get an hour and a half of sleep last night, and as a result I'm absolutely knackered. Therefore, I'm off to get some serious shut-eye now, if I can. Laters.

30 gigabytes of joy

30 Days of Night is one of four Blu-ray releases I received or otherwise picked up over the course of the week, which I shall be rolling out gradually with the added bonus of a series of delectable images. This is a film with a quite understated visual style - muted colour palette, murky lighting and a fair amount of grain. It also looks very nice indeed in high definition, albeit not always in the way that you would associate with so-called "demo material". Another solid release from Sony.

30 Days of Night
(Sony Pictures, USA, AVC, 30.7 GB)

Ringo Starr was in The Simpsons once...

Now that I have a Blu-ray drive in my main computer, I've been taking the opportunity to look through some of the discs I haven't provided screen captures for yet. The Simpsons Movie is a title that immediately leapt out at me as a prime candidate for the PrintScreen button, mainly because it's one of those discs that many reviewers have praised to the heavens, describing it as "perfect" and "flawless", and other such hyperbolic nonsense. In actual fact, Fox's encode of The Simpsons Movie features quite a lot of unsightly ringing, as a result of having been filtered.

(Lyris and myself, by the way, have all sorts of wacky names for the various artefacts that plague digital video. Ringo Starr, as you can probably imagine, refers to ringing. Stick around and you may get to meet Dusty Springfield, Billy Brickwall, Waxy O'Connor, and our old favourite, Mega Bloks.)

Why would anyone filter high definition content in the first place, especially material as basic-looking as Homer Simpson and his bland family? Well, I can't say for sure, but it looks suspiciously like a technician left his or her software at the default settings and popped out for a leak, leaving the encoding software (or hardware) to wreak havoc. It's not just that there's ringing: for some reason, several shots show a bunch of errant hues showing up in the ringing, especially visible when you zoom in (Shot 3 is particularly affected by this).

The Simpsons Movie
(20th Century Fox, USA, AVC)

The power of Allah compels you!

Well, yesterday was rather interesting. After conversing with him online for several years, I was finally able to put a face to a name as I met Baron Scarpia in person for the first time. And what better way to celebrate such a meeting than with a dreadful movie? Yes, after lunch, we boarded the HMS Whimsy to watch a title from the Baron's own private collection. The film in question was Seytan, a 1974 Turkish production directed by a fellow named Metin Erksan, which bears more than a passing resemblance to William Friedkin's The Exorcist.

Something of a background primer is required on Turkish cinema before we can progress any further. Although responsible for a number of critically lauded films (none of which I could name at present, as my knowledge of the country's output is fairly limited), I suspect that most cult film fanatics will be more familiar with the industry's habit of ripping off Hollywood productions with its own distinctive takes on the likes of ET: The Extra-Terrestrial, Star Wars and even Superman.

Now, lest anyone get the wrong impression, we are not talking "loosely inspired" here. We are talking shot-for-shot remakes, the only significant differences being the minuscule budgets, dreadful production values and complete lack of talent on either side of the camera. Yes, those are the "only" significant differences. Oh, and they all appear to take place in Turkey.

Anyway, Seytan (pronounced "SHAY-tan", by the way) introduces us to 12-year-old Gül and her mother, Uma Thurman (I'm calling her this because the actress playing her looks like a significantly less talented version of her, and because the character's name is not provided by IMDB). Gül is a precocious child who has an invisible friend called Captain Lersen (eh?). She also has other, slightly more disturbing tendencies, such as an ability to urinate dark green liquid on cue, spew what looks like orange paint from her mouth, bitch-slap members of the medical profession and rotate her head 180 degrees. Rejecting the rational in favour of the supernatural, Uma calls in the appropriately named Tugrul Bilge, author of a book on demons. I'll be calling him Alan Partridge, though, because the actor playing him vaguely resembles Steve Coogan. (Besides, the image of Alan Partridge performing an exorcism is in itself deeply amusing.) In turn, Alan Partridge concludes that the only viable solution is to perform an exorcism on poor possessed Gül. Enter an exorcist, whose name I once again can't remember (IMDB is no help here), and the most sinister-looking moustachioed policeman you'll ever see on screen, who has a habit of blowing cigarette smoke directly in people's faces when they are talking to him. I have christened him Inspector Clouzot. Oh, and is that Mike Oldfield's Tubular Bells that keeps drowning out the dialogue?

Unless you've been living under a rock since some time prior to the end of 1973, all of this might sound vaguely familiar. Remakes such as the recent versions of Halloween (well, the second half at least) and The Omen have been justly criticised for been slavish copies of the original films, but, until you've seen what the Turks got up to in the 70s and 80s, you really have no idea what outright plagiarism looks like. To clarify, The Exorcist is less of a sacred cow for me than say, Suspiria or The Texas Chain Saw Massacre, but I appreciate its importance in cinema history and would argue that no other horror film produced by a major studio achieves anything quite like it. Still, it's hard to be annoyed at Metin Erksan and his cronies for what they have done here because, unlike, say, The Texas Chain Saw Massacre, there is no danger of this remake overshadowing the original (seriously, the number of people that don't realise Marcus Nispel's 2003 hack job is an update of an earlier film of the same name is quite disturbing). Seytan is so hilariously awful on every level that hating it is not an option: you either get it or you don't.

Luckily, I got it. Seytan is such a mess in every imaginable way that it makes Garth Marenghi's Darkplace look like the highly polished work of a cinematic genius. Before anyone asks, yes, I am aware that Darkplace was a spoof. Seytan, however, is not, as hard as that may be to believe at times, particularly when Gül's bed is bouncing about like a bouncy castle and Uma Thurman thinks that the best way to stop it is to get on the bed and join in. More gales of laughter greet every single instance of Tubular Bells starting up and then stopping as abruptly as it began when the sound technician yanks the needle off his record. Come to think of it, this piece of music is repeated so many times that I'm genuinely amazed that, when Erksan tries (and fails) to recreate the iconic image of Father Merrin arriving at the house, surrounded by fog, Mike Oldfield is nowhere to be heard.

(Mr. Erksan, by the way, is nothing if not a varied director. While most filmmakers would be content to simply zoom in or out, Erksan zooms both in and out, often multiple times within the confines of a single shot. And bear in mind that every scene in the film features at least one zoom. Lucio Fulci and Jess Franco would be red-cheeked with embarrassment.)

And I haven't even mentioned the climactic exorcism yet, which goes on for an absolutely absurd length of time and concludes, after Alan Partridge and his exorcist friend have yelled "Allah's grace be upon you!" more times than I care to remember, with poor old Mr. Partridge fulfilling his fate (and ensuring that Seytan doesn't diverge too far from The Exorcist's plot) by leaping out of the window and rolling down the longest flight of steps in Turkey. Actually, I'm fairly sure that this scene is performed by the actor himself rather than a stuntman, so it's actually quite impressive that he was still alive at the end of it all.

I really can't thank the Baron enough for giving me the opportunity to experience Seytan. It's actually somewhat embarrassing to admit that this was my introduction to Turkish cinema, so I suspect I should really follow up the experience by watching one of the country's better films. It's a bit like making Giallo a Venezia your first port of call when embarking on a voyage through Italian cinema, only several stages worse.

Popcorn strictly optional

Whimsy Cinemas™ is finally ready to open its doors! Yesterday evening, Lyris assembled his projection screen and attached it to the wall, ready for its first gala presentation. What will it be? Inside Man on HD DVD was the first title to be screened on our previous movie-watching solution, the crazy bed sheet of multiple creases, so it only makes sense that we follow it up with something that boasts equally stellar image quality. So far, we've taken a brief look at the Blu-ray releases of Ratatouille, Resident Evil: Extinction and Across the Universe, all of which looked suitably incredible, not to mention the most recent pass of La Femme Publique, which looked better than a standard definition DVD has any right to.

Finally, we have something that vaguely resembles being at the movies, only without the spotty-faced youths heckling (if any heckling's to be done, we'll do it, thank you very much) the movie and playing with their mobile phones. Sometimes, we even get the films before they're released theatrically in this country, and in any event, in many cases, the Blu-ray discs we're watching look somewhat better than the prints being trotted round the local cinemas.

Blu-ray review: Juno

For Juno, Fox have provided stellar audio-visual quality that ranks among the best they have produced for the Blu-ray format. While the bonus content is a little on the lightweight side, and the extra Digital Copy disc serves no discernible purpose, those who enjoyed the film can rest assured that they are getting a presentation of the highest standard and should have no qualms about picking up a copy.

For shizz! I cast my peepers over Juno, that wizard little sleeper hit about getting knocked up, given a totally boss Blu-ray release by 20th Century Fox. Okay, I'll stop now.

Review at DVD Times.

I don't like World of Warcraft (or: how I learned to stop worrying and love Guild Wars)

I've written about Blizzard Entertainment's World of Warcraft in the past. Going from the initial "This is okay" to "Hopefully it gets better than this" phases, through the dreaded "This is actually pretty boring" period before finally reaching my "No way is this worth $15 a month" epiphany, I've come to the conclusion that this is one game I simply don't "get". It epitomises the "donkey/carrot/stick" school of game design (to quote Ray Milland's character in Dial M for Murder): effectively, the designers have created a game where the constant promise of eventual reward (the carrot) encourages the player to keep moving forward, while the threat of falling behind or not getting your value for money (the stick) dissuades him or her from staying put.

Now, I have absolutely no problem with this framework, provided the journey itself is actually fun. If exploring the world, hacking up monsters and collecting loot is a pleasurable activity in its own right, as it is in, say, Blizzard's earlier Diablo, then the continual performance of bigger and better locations, monsters and loot is no bad thing. When this becomes a problem is when the fundamental game mechanics prevent me from getting any enjoyment out of this process, as is the case for World of Warcraft. The other day, nearly two years after I last played the game, I had a sudden urge to give it another whirl. Therefore, I left it on overnight, downloading around 2 GB worth of patches and content updates, whipped out my credit card, laid down $15, logged myself in and sat down to re-enter the world of Azeroth.

First problem: I never did succeed in taking a character beyond Level 19, and, given that the game is now nearly four years old, this understandably set me pretty far behind the curve. In a world where 70 is the current maximum character level, starting out at such a low level feels a bit like being placed in the remedial class. Oh well, I thought, might as well take the opportunity to re-familiarise myself with how the game plays. So off I went to hack up some gnolls for Harry Hardwick and gather a few crimson bandanas for Melissa Silkloins or whatever their names are.

Second problem: none of this is actually any fun. After persevering for a couple of hours, I quickly came to the conclusion that I'd once again wasted my money. Now, at the current exchange rate, blowing $15 isn't the end of the world, but any transaction where the goods delivered are sub-par is annoying. It's particularly annoying when, as is the case with World of Warcraft, it's hard to shake the feeling that the problem is with me rather than the game. Maybe I just don't "get it". After all, the game boasts a record of 10 million subscribers (that's a whopping 62% of the MMORPG market share), and I find it hard to believe that they're all just complete morons staring slack-jawed at the screen and dumbly clicking the mouse in the hope that they finally get to chomp on that delicious-looking carrot. On the contrary, from what I can gather, the game takes some degree of skill to master. There's also the fact that, in piddling around the smaller scale early areas and levels, I'm missing out on the high end epic battles and quests that are supposedly the game's main draw.

But the problem is that I have absolutely no desire to persevere with the early stuff so as to eventually reach the better material that supposedly comes later. The gameplay mechanics strike me as fundamentally crap, with slow, clunky combat that feels like an unsatisfying trade-off between turn-based and real-time, chunky, unappealing graphics, and seemingly endless hours of trawling on foot from location to location (for a fee, you can purchase a ride from one major city to another using flying mounts, and, once you hit Level 40, you can purchase a horse of your own). This is, in my opinion, definitely the weakest game in the Warcraft franchise, and I struggle to name any other Blizzard game that I've enjoyed less. Honestly, I'd rather play Rock 'n' Roll Racing again than this.

Luckily, there's a solution. It's called Guild Wars, and it's like World of Warcraft, only fun. Straight off the bat, this game, which was designed by several ex-Blizzard staffers, seems to tick all the right boxes. First of all, it's free to play, meaning that you pay a one-off fee to pick up a boxed copy of the game, and then you can play it for as long as you like at no extra charge. As with World of Warcraft, they don't delete your characters due to account inactivity, either, so you can abandon it for months or years at a time and then hop back in where you left off. Secondly, and fairly fundamentally, it's actually fun to play. Right from the word go, everything about it is more polished, more fluid, more appealing and just generally slicker than World of Warcraft. The combat is fast-paced and satisfying, and any location that you've previously visited is just a couple of mouse clicks away, thanks to the fact that you can instantaneously jump to cities and outposts from the world map instead of having to walk, fly or ride to them. Crucially, the "donkey/carrot/stick" problem is nowhere to be found. You can actually max out your character fairly quickly (Level 20 is the highest you can get), which means that, once you're there, the "Just another half-hour and I can hit the next level" incentive is no longer present, so the missions have to be enjoyable in their own right. To Guild Wars' credit, they are, and it doesn't matter that you can hit Level 20 before you're even a quarter of the way through the game. The experience of playing the game itself is enjoyable enough without character building even coming into play.

Guild Wars also makes use of the concept of instancing, meaning that, while towns are communal, whenever you enter a combat area, a separate copy of the location is created for you and your party, meaning that you don't have to worry about someone coming along and stealing your loot or kills. Perhaps this detracts to some extent from the social aspect of games like this, but all that sort of thing is still possible in the town areas: it just means that you have to assemble your team before venturing out into the wilderness. Also, for social pariahs such as myself, the fact that you can hire computer-controlled henchmen to help you take on your opponents, rather than having to hope you can find another player or two whose goals match your own, is a big plus in its favour.

I'm currently playing the original Guild Wars "Prophecies" campaign and am having a blast inching my way towards completing it. Beyond that, I still have the "Factions" and "Nightfall" campaigns to finish (three separate Guild Wars campaigns were released, all of which can be purchased separately and work as stand-alone games, but which interlock to create a much larger world). There's also the Eye of the North expansion set, which requires a copy of one of the three original campaigns and will supposedly help ease the transition into Guild Wars 2, which is apparently going to have its public beta later this year. Warcraft schmorcraft - you can take your monthly fee and stick it in a very private place.

Paramount, Criterion go Blu

I'm sure everyone else has already reported on this by now, but Paramount have, not particularly unexpectedly, relaunched their support for Blu-ray with the announcement that Face/Off, Next and Bee Movie will be coming to the format on May 20th, followed by Cloverfield and There Will Be Blood on June 3rd. No word yet on Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street, which was initially announced for HD DVD at around the same time as There Will Be Blood, but disappeared along with that and several other titles when Toshiba turned off the ailing format's life support machine. Presumably it will materialise before too long - I hope so, because, out of all of these, it's the one I'm most interested in seeing.

Paramount also plans to re-issue its entire back catalogue of Blu-ray titles, starting with eight titles on May 20th.

The real news, however, is that, after spending a considerable amount of time umming and erring from the sidelines, the mighty Criterion has finally announced its intention to get with the winning team and begin releasing in high definition. Announced via their most recent email newsletter, Criterion states that it will begin rolling titles out in October, with each released priced the same as its standard definition counterpart and porting over all the bonus content from the legacy release. Currently announced titles include:

- The Third Man
- Bottle Rocket
- Chungking Express
- The Man Who Fell to Earth
- The Last Emperor
- El Norte
- The 400 Blows
- Gimme Shelter
- The Complete Monterey Pop
- Contempt
- Walkabout
- For All Mankind
- The Wages of Fear

Now, here's hoping they have the sense to do away with their nonsensical pictureboxing practice for their Blu-ray titles.

The pain, the pain!

This morning, I was looking through some of the DVDs I haven't blown the dust off in a while, and I came across the Region 1 Deluxe Edition of Luc Besson's Léon, a favourite of mine. This is a film that, to the best of my knowledge, has never been adequately represented on DVD, with every release falling way short of decency standards. Every release I've seen for myself, or have seen screen captures of, has suffered from a crippling lack of detail, not to mention massive amounts of ringing and mosquito noise. The overall look is that of an ancient master that has been trotted out again and again over the years, which makes the Superbit logo and claim that it has been "mastered in high definition" on the back of the Deluxe case completely absurd.

Even so, I wasn't prepared for the utter horror of just how bad this transfer, from a major studio who have done some absolutely stellar work, looks:

Now, bear in mind that this has been blown up to 1920x1080 resolution, but I wanted to do this to give you an example of just how bad the ringing is, and to approximate how this might look on a large display. Even at its default resolution (see here) it looks pretty outrageous, more like what you might expect from a crummy DivX bootleg downloaded from one of the dubious sites that offer such material.

"Deluxe" my left wallnut! This film is crying out for a re-release - a proper one, not just the same old master hauled out and run through the blender again.

Turn that frown upside down

A couple of days ago, if you'd told me I'd enjoy Enchanted so much, I'd probably have laughed. I must admit that the idea of an intentionally saccharine Disney fairytale spilling over into the "real" (i.e. live action) world didn't really sound like a bundle of laughs, but, all the same, reports of stellar image quality and some very nice hand-drawn animation piqued my curiosity, and I picked up the Blu-ray release.

I watched it on Friday night, and I honestly don't think I've got so much pure enjoyment out of a film in a long time. If Disney fairytales aren't your cup of tea, you'll probably hate this, but in that case you, sir, are Scrooge McDuck and have a heart of stone. This film has its head lodged firmly in the clouds, and frankly I'm not complaining. A little bit of escapism now and then is a very good thing, especially when it's executed with this degree of panache. I still haven't decided whether Amy Adams is intensely charming or intensely irritating, but she and the rest of the cast have a level of enthusiasm that is incredibly infectious and lets me overlook the script's shortcomings.

I found the live action material more appealing to look at than either the traditional animation or CGI elements, which is quite a feat indeed. Then again, given the bland (albeit slick) look of the hand-drawn elements and the overall shoddiness of the CGI (including the worst talking dragon this side of Buffy the Vampire Slayer's Graduation Day episode), perhaps that's not entirely surprising. Anyway, I thought I'd do a bunch of screen captures to show just how far Disney managed to hit their Blu-ray release out of the park. Feast your eyes on these:

Enchanted
(Buena Vista, USA, AVC)

Animation:

Live action:

Plumbing the depths?

Source: Fangoria

It is being reported at Fangoria that the sequel to Neil Marshall's excellent subterranean horror flick The Descent, due out next year, has been fully cast and is ready to go. Shauna Macdonald and Natalie Mendoza will be getting covered in karo syrup again, in what appears to be a continuation of the modified US cut of the film (its ending was shortened for American audiences in order to be more "upbeat").

Unfortunately, while Neil Marshall is on board as a producer, both the writer - James Watkins (of My Little Eye, er, infamy) - and director - Jon Harris (editor of the original The Descent) - are new. Given the way in which the original UK cut of the first film, in both my and its director's eyes the definitive version, ended, it'll be very hard for me to view this as a direct continuation. I'll be happy to be proved wrong, but this screams "cash-in" to me. Some films, frankly, don't require sequels, and as far as I'm concerned this is one of them, particularly when said sequel looks set to be a continuation of an errant version of the film rather than the original cut.

Greetings from Vista

I'm back inside Windows Vista again, this time permanently, I hope.

Why? Well, it all started when my brother put together a new computer, a quad core system with 4 GB of RAM to enable more efficiency in his DVD projects (the first of which I hope will be announced before very much longer). Among the components he picked up for it was a new video card, an ATI Radeon HD 2600 Pro, which gave him access to the advanced deinterlacing and other hardware video acceleration technologies that weren't available on his previous Radeon X800. As I previously explained, problems in the hardware video acceleration department were responsible for me crawling back to Windows XP with my tail between my legs. Imagine my surprise, therefore, when I discovered that he was getting perfectly good deinterlacing, with subtitles, in Vista using Windows Media Player.

A reinstall of Vista later and I discovered the reason for my video problems. It seems that installing the ArcSoft TotalMedia TV recording software that came with my TV stick buggered up Vista's EVR video decoding, to the extent that, even when I uninstalled TotalMedia and removed all references to it in the registry, it still continued to be borked. Completely reinstalling Vista was the only way to solve the problem, and solve it it did. (I don't need TotalMedia anyway because Vista Home Premium comes with the very slick Windows Media Center, which has its own TV viewing and recording capabilities.)

So, here I am, just about as happy as I can possibly be with Vista. There are still some niggles to be worked out - it looks as if EVR video playback, at least on this video card with these drivers, suffers from blocky chroma upsampling (see the image above, from Pocahontas) - but the situation is much better than it was before.

Update, May 2nd, 2008 02:42 PM: Well, slap my face! It turns out XP's handling of chroma upsampling (in PowerDVD, Media Player or Media Player Classic - take your pick) is identical to that of Vista, and I can't say it's bothered me unduly before. It just goes to show the things you spot when you're in nitpick mode. Ah well, at this point I can't claim that XP offers anything that Vista doesn't give me, so I suppose you can officially call the earlier operating system dead and buried as far as my system is concerned.

DVDs I bought or received in the month of April

• 101 Dalmatians: Platinum Edition (R1 USA, DVD)
• The Adventures of Baron Munchausen (R0 UK, Blu-ray)
• The Aristocats: Special Edition (R1 USA, DVD)
• The Black Dahlia (R2 UK, DVD)
• Bonnie and Clyde (R0 USA, Blu-ray)
• The Frightened Woman (R0 UK, DVD)
• Holby Blue: Series 1 (R2 UK, DVD)
• Juno (RA USA, Blu-ray)
• The Lady from Shanghai (R2 UK, DVD)
• The Maltese Falcon (R2 UK, DVD)
• Mother of Tears (R2 UK, DVD)
• The Postman Always Rings Twice (R2 UK, DVD)
• An Unsuitable Job for a Woman: Series 1 & 2 (R1 USA, DVD)
   

Clash of the tits

Source: Dread Central

Dr. Uwe Boll is at it again! Not content with making some of the worst movies known to humankind, the man behind House of the Dead and Alone in the Dark has issued a personal challenge to Michael Bay, calling on him to meet him in the ring to battle it out, mano a mano, and determine once and for all who is the better director.

You may remember a previous escapade involving Uwe Boll and a boxing ring. Two years ago, he famously challenged his harshest critics to a punch-up in the ring. In something of a perverse twist of fate, Boll resoundingly thrashed all five opponents, proving that it doesn't matter how bad a filmmaker you are, provided you can pack a mean punch. Frankly, I don't fancy Bay's chances if he chooses to accept the challenge.

You can view the Herr Doktor's video message to Bay at MovieSet.

Blu-ray brattiness

Unfortunately, high definition doesn't make Juno MacGuff any less moody and obnoxious than her standard definition counterpart, but she, her posse and their surroundings certainly look considerably more detailed and lifelike, courtesy of one of 20th Century Fox's best transfers to date. "Grain!" I hear you say. "Good!" I say. Juno has a look not unlike that of Atonement (HD DVD screen captures here), but is considerably less eroded, resulting in a far more satisfying experience overall. The clots at DVD Town, IGN ("Only marginally better than the standard [definition DVD]" - pffffft!) and the like may have been pretty lukewarm in their reactions to this transfer, but rest assured that Captain Whiggles will be giving it a glowing appraisal come review-time.

Juno
(20th Century Fox, USA, AVC, 26.9 GB)

Naturellement la version panoramique

Yesterday, I received a copy of the new R1 USA Special Edition DVD of Disney's The Aristocats via DVD Pacific. Unfortunately, I'm sorry to have to report that this is yet another "cropped to 1.75:1" atrocity:

I'm sorry, but would someone like to explain to me why this is being done? I don't care that this was how they would have been projected theatrically (the chances of finding a cinema equipped to display 1.33:1 material in 1970, when this film was released, would be small in the extreme) - anyone can take one look at the image above and instantly tell that something is not right about the framing. It was nice to see this trend reversed for 101 Dalmatians, but that doesn't change the issue of several other titles having been bungled and continuing to be bungled.

This release, incidentally, seems to have been done on the cheap. For a so-called Special Edition, you really don't get much that's all that special, barring a pointless Virtual Kitten game, a brief piece on the Sherman brothers, some image galleries and a deleted song. Additionally, a sure sign of a rush job, the film's original mono mix is no included, instead porting over the 5.1 remix from the older European release (the previous US disc featured a 2.0 surround remix). On the plus side, the image hasn't been subjected to the same level of excessive grain reduction that has resulted in most Disney re-releases since Alice in Wonderland looking as if they were shot digitally, but at the same time the compression is pretty damning.

I know The Aristocats is far from a shining example of what Walt Disney Feature Animation was capable of (it and Robin Hood are, in my opinion, the studio's weakest animated features this side of Pocahontas), but that's no excuse for a second-rate DVD release.

R.I.P. Ollie Johnston

Cartoon Brew reports that Ollie Johnston, the last survivor of Disney's Nine Old Men, died today at the ripe old age of 95. This definitely marks the end of an era in the history of filmmaking, and he leaves behind a truly impressive legacy in terms of character animation.

So many discs, so little time

The last few days have heralded a shed-load of DVD and Blu-ray releases pouring through my letterbox, most of which I've scarcely had time to give more than a cursory glance. Most of them were free review copies, and a good thing too as I recently had to pay off my Graduate Endowment, so my coffers are looking a little empty at the moment.

First up, and one that I did pay for, was Sony Pictures' UK Blu-ray release of Terry Gilliam's The Adventures of Baron Munchausen. It looks to feature a decent transfer for a catalogue title: detail is, on the whole, very good, but the tell-tale signs of grain reduction are consistently evident. At the moment, I'd peg it as being slightly better than the re-release of The Fifth Element, also from Sony, but more investigation will be needed.

Next up, on Saturday, Shameless Screen Entertainment's UK DVD release of Piero Schivazappa's trippy 60s shocker The Frightened Woman (a.k.a. Femina Ridens). As a nice surprise, they sent me a fully boxed copy rather than the "DVD in a paper wallet" affair that most of the UK studios favour, so I can savour the tacky artwork in all its, erm, glory.

Unfortunately, I can't say anything particularly positive about the transfer. Yes, it looks considerably better than my old VHS dupe, but that's not a fair or particularly realistic comparison. A more valid counterpoint would be Severin Films' release of The Psychic, which had similarly poor image quality, with a lack of detail and what looked like a dodgy scaling job, manifesting itself in the form of jagged diagonal lines. I wonder what caused this. Perhaps both films were acquired from the same licensor, or perhaps both companies used the same (incorrectly set up) encoder? Either way, if I'd paid for a company to encode my film and it came back looking like this, I would have rejected it outright. In case anyone gets the wrong idea, this is nothing to do with the quality of the source materials, which, barring some tape-based inserts for scenes which wouldn't be sourced from a print, appears to be in great shape. This issue here has nothing to do with that and everything to do with the way it has been treated at the authoring stage. Not impressed.

Also in the package was the 2-disc release of the first series of Holby Blue, from 2 Entertain (the BBC's front for commercial exploitation via optical disc). This is interesting, because I recorded the entire series directly to my computer via my USB TV stick back when it first aired, so I had a point of comparison to refer to when examining the image quality. The results, which you can see by clicking the smaller images below, are quite surprising:

Example 1
(Left: Commercial DVD; Right: My recording from DTV)

Example 2
(Left: Commercial DVD; Right: My recording from DTV)

Example 3
(Left: Commercial DVD; Right: My recording from DTV)

That's right: the DVD release is considerably more filtered than what was broadcast on BBC1. Obviously, there are considerably more compression artefacts in the captures taken from my off-air recordings - that's not surprising, given the notoriously shoddy standard of BBC's encoding (BBC1 has a fixed 6 Mbps bit rate to play around with, so there's really no excuse). I am, however, surprised, by how much more detailed my recordings are. A further black mark against the DVD release is that 2 Entertain have unceremoniously lopped off the "Previously" and "Next week" segments at the start and end of each episode, sometimes incredibly badly: the music has noticeable jump cuts and generally reeks of shoddiness. Is it so unreasonable to expect a complete package when you shell out your hard-earned cash for a TV series that you already helped pay for with your robber baron tax? (Ignoring the fact that I got the DVD for free, and, not being a home-owner, don't pay the robber baron tax.)

The final disc in this package of joy was Optimum's UK release of Dario Argento's Mother of Tears. Audio options are Dolby Digital 5.1 and 2.0 English, with no subtitles, while the only extra is the trailer. Image quality (and I'm aware of sounding increasingly like a broken record here) is not too bad, but not too great either. There's plenty of evidence of ringing as a result of brick wall filtering, and also a massive amount of noise reduction which robs the image of its natural grain. A couple of people who got advance copies of this disc mentioned that the film looked as if it had been shot on digital video, and I see what they mean. I wonder if Medusa's Italian release (which doesn't have any English audio options) looks any better?

This morning, I received an order from DVD Pacific containing the US release of An Unsuitable Job for a Woman. This was an ITV adaptation of P.D. James' novel of the same name (which I'm reading at the moment), starring Helen Baxendale and Annette Crosbie, and the DVD contains all four three-part episodes. My interest was piqued when I discovered that one of the three-parters was written by Barbara Machin, creator of Waking the Dead (the seventh series of which incidentally started tonight), so I decided to pick up this DVD set, fully aware that all four episodes feature standards converted transfers. This is, unfortunately, as far as I'm aware the only release of this programme on DVD, and beggars can't be choosers. I won't start watching till I've finished reading the book, though.

Finally - and this is where my luck with image quality finally changes - I also received a review copy of the US Blu-ray release of Juno. My good friend Peter M. Bracke opines that this is "a fairly good-looking presentation", but as usual I beg to differ. This is definitely the best high definition transfer I've seen from 20th Century Fox so far, bearing in mind that I own fewer of their films than any of the other major studios. The source material is such that it won't make you leap out of your seat, marvelling at all the detail on display, but even so it's an excellent presentation of a fairly low-key, muted-looking film.

Expect full reviews of The Frightened Woman, Holby Blue, Mother of Tears and Juno at DVD Times before very much longer.