Mainstream Cinema

Brody goes yellow

Source: ComingSoon.net

Its production has been pushed back and it appears to have lost almost its entire original cast (which included Ray Liotta, Vincent Gallo and Asia Argento), but Dario Argento's latest film, Giallo, looks set to go begin shooting in Turin on May 12th, this time boasting Adrien Brody and Emmanuelle Seigner in the cast. Brody, who will executive produce the film along with Oscar Generale, Claudio Argento, Luis De Val, David Milner, Billy Dietrich, Patricia Eberle, Donald Barton and John Hicks (co-production, anyone?), must be a particularly impressive casting coup for Argento, giving the impression that the maestro may, after several false starts, be about to crack the mainstream, and to tell you the truth I'm not entirely sure how I feel about that.

I must confess that, as happy as I am to hear that Argento is working on another film so soon after Mother of Tears, what I've heard about Giallo doesn't exactly fill me with hope. He's once again working from someone else's pre-written script, again the product of an American duo, Jim Agnew and Sean Keller, and it sounds like this will be very much a nudge-nudge wink-wink "homage" to gialli, albeit hopefully not in the same way that Scream was to the Halloween-inspired slasher movie gravy train. I hope I'm pleasantly surprised, but this sounds a bit ho-hum and fairly pointless for Argento at this stage in his career. I'm yet to be convinced that this will do anything Sleepless didn't already do.

Happenings in Whedonsville

A couple of recent goings-on in tellyland for your attention, both concerning Buffy the Vampire Slayer creator Joss Whedon. The first, and probably least interesting from my perspective, is that Firefly, his short-lived sci-fi western series, looks set to get a Blu-ray release at some point down the line. The release is still a considerable way off, given that it is described as only being in the "early development stages", but it has been confirmed by a 20th Century Fox spokesperson, so this news will surely please its many devoted followers. Myself, I could never get into Firefly, which is odd, given how much I enjoyed its big screen follow-up, Serenity. In its defence, I didn't try particularly hard to watch it, and had a lot of other things on the go when I rented the first disc of the DVD set, so perhaps I didn't give it enough of a chance. I'd certainly be up for revisiting it in high definition to see if my view on it has changed.

Secondly, and in my eyes far more excitingly, is the news that Whedon has a new television series in the pipeline, which will be titled Dollhouse and will reteam him with Eliza Dushku (Faith in Buffy) and, erm, 20th Century Fox. Yes, the same 20th Century Fox whom he vowed never to work with again after they, in his eyes, screwed him over so royally with Firefly. Also, I must admit that, in light of the debacle that was Buffy's sixth and seventh season, and its shark-jumping comic book continuation, my faith in the man to put together a half-decent show has waned somewhat, but there's a little part of me that is nonetheless excited to hear that he's returning to television, paired with the always-watchable Dushku no less. And come on, you've got to admit that the premise has promise:

Echo (Eliza Dushku) [is] a young woman who is literally everybody's fantasy. She is one of a group of men and women who can be imprinted with personality packages, including memories, skills, language - even muscle memory - for different assignments. The assignments can be romantic, adventurous, outlandish, uplifting, sexual and/or very illegal. When not imprinted with a personality package, Echo and the others are basically mind-wiped, living like children in a futuristic dorm/lab dubbed the Dollhouse, with no memory of their assignments - or of much else. The show revolves around the childlike Echo's burgeoning self-awareness, and her desire to know who she was before, a desire that begins to seep into her various imprinted personalities and puts her in danger both in the field and in the closely monitored confines of the Dollhouse.

The word is that former Angel (and Firefly, and Wonderfalls) executive producer Tim Minear will also be involved, so here's hoping he'll help steer this new show in the right direction.

There's no place like home

My Windows Vista experience has been temporarily halted, after slightly under 72 hours. I've come to the conclusion that the video playback situation, at least in its current state, is too inconvenient for me to stick with. This morning, when I popped in The Maltese Falcon, I discovered that PAL overlay playback is severely borked: material such as subtitles and menu selection gets drawn for NTSC resolution, which means that everything is displaced and wonky. It's something that can be worked around, but it makes it a pain the neck attempting to select anything on a menu, and means that, when watching a film with subtitles, the text ends up half-way up the screen. Oh, and for some reason, screen capturing in PowerDVD doesn't work for PAL discs in Vista when hardware acceleration is enabled, which means that, when taking screenshots for reviews, I first have to switch the player into software mode. Not the end of the world, of course, but a giant pain in the neck and something I don't see the point of continuing to struggle with.

Beyond the video support, I have no major issues with Vista whatsoever. Then again, I don't exactly have any significant complaints about XP either (other than that it doesn't look quite as pretty), and its video playback works the way it's supposed to. For the time being, though, I'm going to continue to use XP and hope that a solution to my video woes eventually materialises, either in the form of better drivers from ATI, better DVD software from Cyberlink (or anyone else, come to that), or an end to this "no overlay" nonsense from Microsoft.

Thoughts on The Maltese Falcon, and various giallo/film noir observations

I had my first proper film noir experience today in the form of John Huston's celebrated 1941 offering, The Maltese Falcon. I don't mean by that that it was the first film noir I'd ever seen, but rather that it was the first time I sat down to watch a film thinking "Right, this is a film noir. What does that mean and how does it manifest itself?"

The Maltese Falcon is currently ranked as the 69th greatest film of all time on IMDB, and, regardless of how much or how little faith you put in such lists (personally, I think they're generally of little value), it's tough to deny that it's difficult to approach any film with that sort of reputation, particularly one that's over 60 years old. How do you even begin to comprehend how it would have been viewed at the time of its release, and how do you begin to appreciate its various innovations in that context, knowing full well that they have now been assimilated into the everyday language of film? The answer is that you don't, unless you possess both a time machine and a means of erasing all of your existing knowledge and preconceptions regarding the type of film in question. The Maltese Falcon is very much a quintessential film noir, but it wouldn't have been seen as such in 1941, given that the movement didn't enjoy its glory period until some years later, and it would take even longer for people to begin actively referring to these as film noirs.

So anyway, did I enjoy The Maltese Falcon? Yes, I did - considerably so, in fact, although, as I find to be the case with many films that are considered the greatest of their respective genres or movements, my enjoyment didn't develop into out and out awe or adulation. I found it consistently witty dialogue-wise and at many points engaging, but there were also several moments for me where things began to sag a bit and my interest started to wane. Each time that happened, a plot development would generally show up in a few minutes to regain my attention, but my overriding reaction was "Yeah, this is a really good film" rather than "Wow, this is one of the greatest films of all time!" (Oh, and a minor criticism: I must admit that the continual continuity flubs, mainly actors changing position between shots, kept taking me out of the drama.) That said, I'm pretty sure my reaction to Deep Red was somewhat similar the first time I saw it, and we all know how highly I regard it now.

Anyway, as I've continued reading up on film noir, the similarities between it and the giallo movement have become all the more pronounced. I'm not sure that much, if any, of this comes from my viewing of The Maltese Falcon, but I thought I'd note a few of my observations regarding the ties between the two movements:

- The giallo began in the late 60s as an offshoot of 30s pulp literature, whereas film noir kicked off more than two decades earlier, in the early 40s, drawing on the influence of 10s/20s German Expressionism (for the visuals) and hard-boiled detective pulp fiction (for the narratives and themes).

- For both movements, there is a broad agreement on what constitutes the key iconography, but no single universally accepted definition. In addition, broadly speaking, it is agreed that neither the giallo nor the film noir constitutes a genre. To describe film noir, Alain Silver uses the word "cycle", which has obvious connotations of time, indicating that the movement is part of a specific period, an is echoed in writing on gialli which uses the Italian word 'filone', used to refer to trends and cycles.

- Key traits include moral ambiguity and sexual motivation, often involving a contemporary urban setting.

- Although there are a number of high profile exceptions (The Maltese Falcon being a case in point), the majority of gialli and film noirs tended to be B-movies, with modest budgets and a lack of major stars.

- Both movements seem to have emerged in times of social and/or political unrest:

-- Literary gialli arrived in the 1930s during the rise of fascism.

-- Filmic gialli emerged during a period of intense violence and terrorism in the early 1970s, and following considerable progress in the women’s emancipation movement.

-- The hard-boiled detective novels which influenced film noir emerged in the US during the Depression of the 1930s.

-- Film noir as a movement took off during the aftermath of the Second World War, and its portrayal of powerful, independent women as dangerous (i.e. the femme fatale) can be seen as representative of the fears of a generation of men who returned from war to find that women had entered the public sector in their absence. The vilification and ultimate destruction of the femme fatale can be argued to constitute an attempt to restore 'order' and return women to what was perceived as their rightful place.

- Shared (partial) roots in German Expressionism: Dario Argento, whose The Bird with the Crystal Plumage (1970) is considered to have sparked the main thrust of the giallo boom, has professed to having been influenced by German Expressionism, particularly the films of F.W. Murnau and Fritz Lang.

- In both cases, the 'colour' terminology appears to have been applied retrospectively. 'Film noir', or so says Wikipedia (remind me not to quote that in my bibliography!), was first coined by French critic Nino Frank in 1946, and likewise the term 'giallo' does not appear to have been actively used when the films in question were initially released (trailers which do attempt to classify them tend to use the word 'thrilling', e.g. Deep Red). It may be that the giallo movement's literary origins were only noticed and acknowledged later. (Does anyone know? An investigation of contemporary Italian press publications would probably be needed here.)

- Oh, and Luchino Visconti's Ossessione (1943), referred to by some (e.g. Gary Needham) as the first cinematic giallo, was adapted from James M. Cain's novel The Postman Always Rings Twice, itself adapted in the US in 1946 and considered a major film noir.

DVD debacle

Tomorrow, my film noir crash course will begin in earnest, starting with a morning viewing of The Maltese Falcon, which I picked up today during my lunch break. I also snagged The Lady from Shanghai and The Postman Always Rings Twice, so a sincere word of thanks to everyone who suggested titles for me to look into.

I also decided to nab The Black Dahlia to give me a flavour for a more recent take on the noir framework. I've heard mixed reports about it, but I figure I might as well give it a whirl.

I got home to find a package from DVD Pacific waiting for me, containing the Blu-ray release of Bonnie and Clyde and the recent Platinum Edition DVD release of Disney's 101 Dalmatians. I've always had a strange relationship with the latter, since it's one of the few Disney features where I actually read the source material before reading the film, and, perhaps for that reason, the adaptation never really stood up for me. It's a very enjoyable film, don't get me wrong, and Cruella De Vil is one of the greatest screen villains ever created, but the book, for me, just paints a much richer and more appealing image in my head.

An interesting point about this release is that, whereas the recent re-releases of The Jungle Book, The Aristocats and Robin Hood (and the upcoming The Sword in the Stone) were all matted to an aspect ratio of 1.75:1, 101 Dalmatians retains the open matte 1.33:1 format favoured by every prior home video release, something which pleases me greatly considering how borked The Jungle Book looked when matted. The behind the scenes documentary for 101 Dalmatians, contained on the second disc, mattes the image to a widescreen ratio, with disastrous results, and watching it made me thankful that Disney have opted for a full-frame presentation for this release. I mean, take a look at the image below and try to imagine how you might matte it without completely destroying the composition:

Hopefully there will be a full review at DVD Times in the near future.

DVDs I bought or received in the month of March

• Across the Universe (R0 USA, Blu-ray)
• Atonement (R0 UK, HD DVD)
• Danny the Dog (R0 Japan, Blu-ray)
• Hidden (R2 UK, DVD)
• Lewis: Series One (R2 UK, DVD)
• The New York Ripper: Special Restored Edition (R2 Denmark, DVD)
• Sugar Rush: Series One & Two (R2 UK, DVD)
• Tragic Ceremony (R1 USA, DVD)
   

How Blu are you?

Concluding my Blu-ray Trilogy of Terror™ for today, I thought I'd take a look at upcoming releases that have been announced for the format and put together a list of titles I intend to pick up:

Out now:
- Enchanted (Buena Vista)

March 25th, 2008
- Bonnie and Clyde (Warner) (ORDERED)

April 8th, 2008
- The Adventures of Baron Munchausen (Sony Pictures)

April 14th, 2008
- A Tale of Two Sisters (Tartan)

April 15th, 2008
- Juno (Fox) (REVIEW COPY REQUESTED)

April 22nd, 2008
- The Orphanage (New Line)

April 29th, 2008
- The Golden Compass (New Line)

May 26th, 2008
- Lady Vengeance (Tartan)

July 1st, 2008
- Gangs of New York (Buena Vista)

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

Gangs of Blu York

Source: High-Def Digest

For some reason, I seem to have been waiting for a high definition release of Martin Scorsese's Gangs of New York for longer than virtually every other title. Back in 2006, it was erroneously listed for a release in the UK on HD DVD at Play.com... until, that is, it was discovered that UK distribution Entertainment In Video weren't actually going to be supporting HD DVD at all. A Blu-ray release eventually showed up after several delays, and looked like crap. In any event, it was coded for Region B only, which made it a no sale for me. Congratulations, EIV! A double strike!

However, Buena Vista have now announced their plan to bring it out on Blu-ray in the US on July 1st. No disc specifications have been revealed yet, but I do have slightly more faith in Buena Vista than in EIV, so here's hoping this film will actually get its first passable-looking home video release.

And thus the cycle of grief continues

Baron Scarpia has reviewed Norbit. As you may remember, this was part of a wager into which we entered: he would watch and review Norbit, but only on the condition that I watch and review Freddy Got Fingered.

As the good Baron himself acknowledges, I probably got the worse end of the deal, but only just. Read his review to see what he thinks of this fascinating indictment of the fact that Eddie Murphy is for some inexplicable reason still allowed to make films.

We changed our minds

Source: Mobius Home Video Forum

The British Board of Film Censors are on quite a roll lately. Back in January, Aldo Lado's exploitation shocker Night Train Murders was finally passed for release in the UK with all previous cuts waived, and now, it's the turn of the film which spawned it, Wes Craven's The Last House on the Left. Craven's film has long been something of a Video Nasty poster child, a prominent item on the DPP list, not granted a UK release until May 2003, and only then with 31 seconds of cuts.

Well, gee whiz, it's great and all that the BBFC have now decided that the film has suddenly stopped being likely to "deprave and corrupt", but wouldn't it have been nice if they'd reached this conclusion in the first place? For example, they could have made up their minds that it wasn't a "threat" before more or less anyone with any interest in seeing the film already did so via the black market or by importing a copy from a less suppressed country. They might also have decided this before the previous UK rights holder, Blue Underground, frittered away a considerable amount of money in their appeal against the BBFC's ruling of 16 seconds of cuts. (When their case was thrown out, the BBFC enacted gleeful revenge by demanding a further 15 seconds of cuts.)

It's nice to know that these people have such a vested interest in our safety, isn't it? Why, if it wasn't for them, I might have seen The Last House on the Left uncut before the date of March 17th 2008, when it would no doubt have scarred me permanently. Luckily, though, I now feel safe in the knowledge that, watching it after March 17th, it will no longer hold any power to deprave and corrupt.

Now that it has been granted an 18 "certificate" (note that I put "certificate" in quotation marks because I believe the term is a misnomer, falsely conveying the notion that the big red logo on the DVD cover is some sort of award), you can expect to see it in your local HMV or Zammo (or whatever the fuck Virgin is called now) among copies of other former training videos for rapists and murderers such as The Evil Dead, Tenebrae and The Exorcist.

For those who are interested in this sticky subject, I suggest reading this article from Mark Kermode (who gave evidence at the appeal in defence of the argument that the film should be granted an uncut release).

(Oh, and they banned Murder Set Pieces at roughly the same time that they passed The Last House on the Left. Good to know that these bobbies are still patrolling their turf.)

Je ne regrette rien

This evening, I watched Olivier Dahan's biopic of Édith Piaf, La Môme (La Vie en Rose outside its native France), and I have to confess I found the experience to be a bit like eating at one of those nouveau cuisine restaurants: the meal was impeccably designed and very artistically arranged on the plate, but it left me unsatisfied.

I know more or less who Édith Piaf was, but none of the specifics. After watching the film, I can't say I know any more about her than I did before. Oh, I know she grew up in a brothel, that she was a heavy drinker, that she had an affair with boxer Marcel Cerdan... I can recite all manner of factoids about her life, but I can't tell you anything about Édith Piaf the person, or what made her tick. Part of the problem, I think, is that this is less a sustained narrative and more a series of unconnected vignettes from various stages in her life. I suppose that is, to some extent, unavoidable when you're making a biopic, particularly one which attempts to span the duration of the subject's life, but I suspect more could have been done to give the various events depicted greater meaning. Why does it matter, for instance, that she spent her formative years in a brothel, or that she was briefly her father's assistant at the circus, or that her first manager was murdered by mobsters and she herself was initially suspected of involvement? None of it gives the impression of adding to our understanding of the character, and, when the credits began to roll, I ultimately found myself wondering "So what?"

Would it all have made more sense if I had had a stronger knowledge of Édith Piaf before going into the film? Perhaps, but, in that case, I would still feel that the film had failed to convey the essence of the character. I'm a big believer in films having to hold up on their own merits rather than requiring any external baggage to be brought to the table. If having additional external knowledge about a person or an event enhances your appreciation for a film, so much the better, but if a lack of prior insight prevents the film from coming together as a cohesive whole, as I suspect is the case here, then I believe the filmmakers haven't done their jobs properly. Olivier Dahan is undeniably skilled behind the camera, as the film is absolutely gorgeous from start to finish, and I feel that he and cinematographer Tetsuo Nagata were overlooked at the BAFTAs and Oscars (Nagata, did, however, bag himself a César), failing to garner even a nomination in that category. He also extorts fine performances from his cast, in particularly (and most obviously) Marion Cotillard in the role of Piaf, but I get the sense that, at a basic level, the script itself is the loose thread in this tapestry.

As a point of comparison, another film released in 2007 that I recently watched was Across the Universe. For those who don't know, Across the Universe is a musical set at the time of the Vietnam war, its soundtrack comprised entirely of Beatles songs. Now, the thing is - and this is going to reveal just how pop culture unaware I am - I assumed they were original compositions for the film. I didn't realise they were Beatles songs until they started singing All You Need is Love... and the only reason I knew that wasn't an original composition was because I'd previously heard elements of it in Moulin Rouge! The point I'm trying to make with this little detour is that I completely missed the point of the film, and yet was still hugely entertained by it. It doesn't matter whether you understand the context of the songs in Across the Universe or not: they're enjoyable in their own right, and the plot and characters are engaging enough to captivate you from start to finish.

You don't get that with La Môme. Instead, the impression I get is that we, the audience, are being fed a whole lot of moments from a person's life and left to work out their significance (if indeed there is any significance to them - it is a biopic, after all, and as such is largely limited to portraying what really happened, and what really happened doesn't necessarily mean anything) without any attention being paid to whether or not a layman will be able to make anything of them. Maybe I'm not the target audience, but I do tend to think you should be able to enjoy a film without having any prior knowledge of the subject matter.

So, in the end, what we have is a very nicely shot film, coupled with an extremely impressive (and deservedly award-winning) performance from Cotillard, who transforms herself in the truest sense of the word. (One of my co-workers told me he couldn't believe it when he saw her arriving on stage to collect her Oscar, as, until that point, he had no idea of what she actually looked like.) It's not just hair and make-up, though: it's a truly brilliant piece of acting that doesn't even feel like a performance. (I do think it's a shame, though, that her singing was dubbed over with Piaf's. It detracts from the realism, and apparently her own singing, briefly heard in various behind the scenes pieces, was pretty impressive in its own right.) La Môme is worth seeing for that reason alone, but as a whole, it's an uneven and often frustrating piece of work.

Aw, gimme a break

Back in January 2004, I wrote a review for DVD Times of Freddy vs. Jason, that monumental melding of the Nightmare on Elm Street and Friday the 13th franchises, culminating in a grand showdown between Freddy Krueger and Jason Voorhees. Back then, I gave it a 7/10 rating, which on my scale equates to "good".

The problem, unfortunately, is that the film is not good by any stretch of the imagination. I knew this back then, but was prepared to give it the benefit of the doubt for two reasons: (a) it's of the "so bad it's good" variety, and (b) there's something undeniably entertaining about watching these two icons of the horror genre whomping on each other during the climactic fight.

Unfortunately, this is the moment when, tail between my legs, I come crawling back, wishing to retract my previous review and beg for forgiveness. You see, I rewatched Freddy vs. Jason the other night for the first time in four years, and it's not so bad it's good - it's just bad...

From start to finish, this film is staggeringly ineptly written, shot and acted. I understand that writers Damian Shannon and Mark Swift have been handed the keys to the kingdom and are penning Michael Bay's Friday the 13th remake - which, if true, may do the impossible and make the original look good in comparison. Their script for Freddy vs. Jason is absolutely cringe-inducing, essentially consisting of 85 minutes of painfully contrived filler serving as nothing more than an excuse for the 10-minute fight around which the film has been marketed, and along the way we have to endure a pitifully unconvincing explanation as to why these two villains from separate franchises come into contact, not to mention a gaggle of annoying twentysomethings pretending to be sixteen-year-olds spouting lame exposition and just generally disgracing themselves. Here are some choice examples of the dialogue they spout (handily cribbed from IMDB so I didn't have to actually make my way through the film again):

Freddy: The only thing to fear, is fear himself!

Kia: Oh, God, y'all, two killers? We're not safe awake or asleep.

Mark: "One, two, Freddy's coming for you..." Do you know why they sing that? Because that's when he comes for you.

Freddy: You're slow... you're stupid... and you got no style!

And last but not least:

Kia (to Freddy): So you're the one everyone's afraid of? Tell me something. What kind of faggot runs around in a Christmas sweater? I mean, come on. Get real. You're not even scary. [adopts sing-song voice] Ya not even scaaaary! [resumes normal voice] And let's talk about the butter knives. What is with the butter knives? You trying to compensate for something? Maybe coming up a little short there between the legs, Mr. Krueger? I mean, you got these teensy-weensy little things, and Jason got this big ol' thing...

Simply for writing and performing this garbage, I believe that the writers and actors should each have their respective Writers' Guild and Screen Actors' Guild cards confiscated permanently. Please note, though, that I use the words "writers" and "actors" loosely. When your cast consists of John Ritter's son, a Destiny's Child singer and a former Dawson's Creek actress, it's not exactly surprising that Robert Englund, doing the comedy Krueger of Freddy's Dead: The Final Nightmare rather than the more menacing figure of the original A Nightmare on Elm Street or Wes Craven's New Nightmare, is the least clown-like of the bunch.

So, seriously, guys, I apologise for the earlier review. I don't know what I was thinking. All I can say is that we all get it wrong sometimes, but honestly, I can't remember the last time I got it that wrong.

Bay curls out another

Michael Bay preps Rosemary's Baby remake

Seriously, Bay, fuck you. Just fuck you. Fuck your desecration of the classics. Fuck your Platinum Dunes "re-imaginings". Fuck your shit-eating grin. But, most of all, fuck you.

Let's celebrate gun crime

Aboard the HMS Whimsy, we often use the phrase "the Warner look". Basically, what this means is an HD transfer that has a smooth appearance, but which has clearly had the top "layer" of fine detail removed through high frequency filtering. Such discs generally look pretty good, and tend to get high marks from most reviewers, but are not representative of the level of detail that high definition is truly capable of. The Brave One is one of the better Warner titles, lacking the unsightly ringing of the likes of V for Vendetta, but obviously coming up short if you compare it with the likes of Across the Universe from Sony.

The Brave One
(Warner, USA, VC-1, 19.6 GB)

Swansong

Well, my last (and I mean it this time) HD DVD arrived this morning: the UK release of Atonement, which I'd had on order since January and more or less forgotten about. Thankfully, it's a more pleasant way to bow out of the format than American Gangster, as the image, while imperfect, is streets ahead of that blurry, smeared mess. The source is a digital intermediate, and Universal always fare far better with these than their print sources - for one thing, they haven't attempted to noise reduce it into oblivion. (Don't be fooled by the Universal logo at the start which appears to have been taken from a dupe print - the film itself is definitely from a DI source.) Like Mulholland Drive (HD captures here), this film appears to have been shot with a lot of filters (I hope I'm getting the terminology right here), and as a result has that same glowy, "soft but detailed" appearance, which doesn't necessarily result in the best screen captures but is rather pleasing to the eye when viewed in motion.

Atonement
(Universal, UK, VC-1, 21 GB)

All the colours of the rainbow

Discs like these are the reason why I'm pretty convinced that Sony Pictures, despite the rough shape of many of their early releases, are putting out the best high definition transfers available. Behold Across the Universe, an absolutely batty looking musical drama which arrived last Wednesday but which I still haven't had a chance to sit down and watch yet. From start to finish it's an absolute delight to behold, with crystal clear images and beautiful grain. I did spot some light compression artefacts in one scene (see Shot 11), and if I spot any more when I actually watch the disc all the way through, I'll let you know, but I am very, very happy with this release.

Across the Universe
(Sony Pictures, USA, AVC, 28.2 GB)

Blue obscurities

So far, the line-up for Blu-ray titles this year has been fairly underwhelming. Things do seem to be changing, though, with the format being bolstered by the support of independent studios specialising in niche fare. Today, Tartan announced their plans for Spring 2008 with a total of six releases in both the US and UK, beginning with Ji-woon Kim's A Tale of Two Sisters and Gus Van Sant's Paranoid Park on April 14th, followed by Park Chan-Wook's I'm a Cyborg and [Sympathy for] Lady Vengeance on May 26th, and finally Nick Cave's The Proposition and Moon-saeng Kim's Sky Blue (known in its native South Korea as Wonderful Days) on June 23rd.

You can certainly sign me up for A Tale of Two Sisters, which I already own on DVD, and Lady Vengeance, which I'm now glad I held off picking up. I might also be tempted by a copy of Sky Blue, particularly if it's a review sample: the film itself is, to be honest, about as limp as a dead kipper, but the prospect of seeing the admittedly impressive live action miniature photography is rather promising.

Oh, and New Line is releasing the Guillermo Del Toro-produced The Orphanage (El Orfanato in its native Spanish) on April 22nd, day and date with the standard definition DVD release. This is another title that has caught my eye and is clawing its way towards my wallet.

It's funny if it's not you

For some reason, it seemed as if everybody had seen Juno except me. This offbeat, heart-warming tale about unwanted pregnancy and surrogate parenting appeared out of nowhere, catapulting its star, Ellen Page, and its first-time screenwriter, the intriguingly named Diablo Cody, to centre stage. Of course, it didn't hurt that it bagged itself an Oscar for Best Original Screenplay. So, today, I had the opportunity to see it for myself and find out whether the hype was justified.

The answer, in reality, is probably "no". I wouldn't call it the greatest film of the last year by any stretch of the imagination, but, at the same time, it's hard to deny that I enjoyed it considerably. What I liked about this film is that, although superficially the plot is straight out of Movie of the Week territory, it does an admirable job of avoiding sentimentality or mawkishness.

Highlight below to reveal spoiler text:

I can't say I was particularly enamoured by many of the characters, though. I found the script to be incredibly smug and, occasionally, verging on obnoxious, with the dialogue often sounding like an imitation of the sort of speech patterns that were to be found in Buffy the Vampire Slayer (and yes, it's true, everyone in this film more or less does speak with the same "voice"). The whole thing is a massive overdose of pop culture references and calculatedly "quirky" dialogue... oh, and I can only put Juno's summation that Herschell Gordon Lewis' The Wizard of Gore is a better film than Suspiria down to the assumption that being pregnant does strange things to your system. I'm still slightly amazed to hear the name of Dario Argento actually being spoken in a mainstream film, though.

I did enjoy it overall. I wouldn't class it as a masterpiece, but it's fun and at times quite amusing - one of the few feel-good films I can think of that doesn't make me want to go and throw up afterwards.

Oh yeah, and has anyone seen this video? I must confess it made me laugh more than the film itself. ("Oscar, I smell ya later!")

Universal vs. Sony Pictures: Round 2

This morning, my copy of the Japanese Blu-ray release of Danny the Dog sailed through my letterbox and flopped gracefully on to my door mat. I'd been waiting for this release with some anticipation for a few reasons.

Firstly, while this title is (well, was) an HD DVD exclusive in the US, put out by Universal, in Japan the results are held by Sony Pictures, making it a Blu-ray exclusive. Whenever the rights are held by different companies in different territories, the possibility arises for rather interesting results as the two studios each handle their separate encodes (and, as the case may be, masters) differently. Additionally, two different cuts exist for this film: the American/British version, entitled Unleashed, is about a minute shorter than the international cut (Danny the Dog), lacking some character-building scenes and slightly extending an early montage, in addition to substituting the film's final shot. Personally, I was disappointed when Universal failed to include the international cut on their HD DVD release, so, since 2006, I have been eagerly anticipating another distribution getting a crack at it.

Good news, then: Sony Pictures' Japanese release is the international cut, complete with Morgan Freeman and Jet Li bonding over groceries (that's not as weird as it sounds). Even better news: it includes subtitles in Japanese and English, both of which are optional. Beyond that, though, things become a bit confusing, particularly when it comes to the transfer.

In my DVD image comparison between the US, UK and French standard definition releases, I remarked that the French release (the international cut) had a markedly different colour palette in comparison with the other two (both the shorter cut). The short version, by and large, looked to have its colour values more heavily manipulated, resulting in "the warm-tinted scenes looking warmer [...] and the desaturated ones looking more monochromatic" (to reiterate what I said in the Comments section of my comparison).

Well, the Japanese release features different grading again, less contrasty than either the French DVD or the UK/US DVD and HD DVD releases, which were quite heavily "pumped", crushing some of the shadow detail and blowing out the highlights. In addition, while the US HD DVD was clearly taken from a digital intermediate, the Japanese version comes from a film source. It exhibits more grain (I strongly suspect that some noise reduction was performed on Universal's HD DVD), but, while it seems to superficially show more detail, this is in fact due to edge enhancement, resulting in some unsightly halos around highly contrasted edges.

So, a toughie. I definitely prefer the look of Universal's release, which appears smoother and more natural, and has (to me) a more aesthetically pleasing colour scheme, but have a look at the images below and see which you think is the more eye-pleasing of the two.

Unleashed
(Universal, USA, VC-1, 12.8 GB)

Danny the Dog
(Sony Pictures, Japan, AVC, 26.1 GB)

DVDs I bought or received in the month of February

• Almost Famous (R0 UK, Blu-ray)
• American Gangster (R0 USA, HD DVD)
• Astérix et les Vikings (R0 France, HD DVD)
• The Brave One (R0 USA, Blu-ray)
• Gone Baby Gone (RA USA, Blu-ray)
• The Lady Vanishes: The Criterion Collection [2007 re-release] (R1 USA, DVD)
• La Môme (R0 France, Blu-ray)
• The Night of the Werewolf/Vengeance of the Zombies (RA USA, Blu-ray)
• Run Lola Run (R0 UK, Blu-ray)
• Volver (RA USA, Blu-ray)