Mainstream Cinema

Garbage baby garbage

Yesterday, I received a copy of the US Blu-ray release of Gone Baby Gone from DeepDiscount. I watched it tonight, and was less than impressed.

This film gained some level of notoriety in the UK when distributor Buena Vista cancelled its theatrical release, which was scheduled uncomfortably soon after the disappearance of British child Madeleine McCann, and I must confess that my interest in seeing it, while due primarily from the positive write-ups it received, did to some extent stem from the parallels drawn between the McCann case and the one portrayed in the film. (Perhaps Buena Vista's marketing department should have made a donation to the Maddy fund for the free publicity?) And the parallels are quite striking. Not only does the missing child, Amanda McCready, bear a great deal of physical resemblance to Madeleine McCann, the circumstances surrounding her disappearance are similar: in both cases, a neglectful mother left her child alone in an apartment to get wasted (Kate McCann on alcohol, Helene McCready on cocaine) at a local bar, and later lied about the length of time for which she had abandoned the child. In both cases, a toy belonging to the missing child becomes a vital piece of iconography. And finally, in both, frustrated by the police's lack of progress, the family of the missing child hires private investigators.

Unfortunately, the most significant similarity between the two cases is how annoying they both are. The media furore surrounding the McCann disappearance, and the manner in which her parents shamelessly and (I believe) insincerely manipulated the media, made me gag. The mawkishness and falseness of the front they adopted was irritating in the extreme, and, unfortunately, Gone Baby Gone is every bit as mawkish and false. This is a film which doesn't just tug at the heartstrings - it claws desperately at them, using every cliché in the book in a desperate bid to make the audience care about what is, ultimately, a dull, confused and poorly plotted story.

More annoying than all of that, however, is Casey Affleck, who delivers all his dialogue (most of which seems to be about "respec'") in the same deadpan mumble and is virtually incomprehensible half of the time. This film was co-written and directed by his older brother, Ben Affleck, and I can only assume that this proves that nepotism is alive and well in Hollywood. Similar criticisms are sometimes made of Dario Argento when he casts his daughter in his films, but Asia Argento seems to have a better grasp of English than Casey Affleck and is considerably less annoying to boot. Ed Harris, meanwhile, stumbles over his ridiculous dialogue as best he can, and Michelle Monaghan's role is so pointless that I wouldn't be surprised if it was written in minutes before shooting began because the producers realised, at the last minute, that it would look rather bad if all the women in the film were drug addicts and/or negligent parents. I like both of these actors, I really do, but there's a limit to what they can do without a worthwhile script. The only actor to escape with any sense of self-respect is Morgan Freeman, who I tend to find elevates the perceived quality of just about any material he gets his hands on.

In short, I don't rate Ben Affleck as an actor, and, based on this, he isn't much better as a director or writer (bearing in mind that I haven't seen Good Will Hunting). It's definitely one of the weakest films I've picked up in high definition since its inception, and definitely not worth the $27 I paid for it. Oh, well - you win some, you lose some.

HD DVD review: The Bourne Ultimatum

Jason Bourne's third and no doubt final outing on the HD DVD format is a resounding success in terms of audio-visual quality. While the bonus materials are a bit of a mixed bag, it's the presentation of the film itself that matters, and in that regard, this release is among the best available on either format.

Courtesy of DVD Pacific, I've reviewed the HD DVD release of The Bourne Ultimatum. How does the third and supposedly final instalment in the spy franchise stack up in high definition?

Putting the "tosh" in Toshiba

Well, I got home today from work (and from visiting my granny, who is seriously ill) to find that my Toshiba HD-EP30 had arrived from Amazon.co.uk. After extracting the two free HD DVDs (300 and The Bourne Supremacy), I hooked the thing up and decided to give it a whirl.

Physically speaking at any rate, it's an improvement on my first HD DVD player, the venerable HD-A1. It's about half the height, and weighs significantly less. Also, from a standpoint of pure convenience, because this is a European model, it doesn't require a step-down transformer. (Good old HD DVD and its lack of region coding!) That's about where the differences end, though, as the Windows CE-based interface is virtually identical, and it takes almost as long as its predecessor to power up and load discs. The Xbox 360 add-on, in comparison, was positively sprightly.

Of far greater concern than the speed, however, is the issue of image quality. When I switched the machine on, my first port of call was the picture menu to change the output mode from 1080i to 1080p. As soon as I popped in my first disc (The Bourne Ultimatum, which I hope to finally get reviewed by the beginning of next week), I knew something was up. The Bourne Ultimatum is one of the best-looking discs released on either format - an extremely detailed encode with no sign of artificial sharpening or detail reduction, and yet, on the HD-EP30, there was ringing in abundance, and a distinct lack of fine detail. A couple more high quality HD DVDs later, and I ruled out any possibility of the discs themselves being at fault.

Lyris suggested that the problem might be the 1080p output. Rather predictably, he was right: setting the output to 1080i immediately resolved the ringing problem and returned the detail to its rightful place. All well and good - but I paid for a device with 1080p output, and 1080p24 output at that. Why should I have to limit myself to 1080i60 just because Microsoft and Toshiba couldn't get their acts together? Lyris' projector correctly resolves 1080i film mode, but it means we're still stuck with 60 Hz output rather than pure 24p, resulting in the infamous 3:2 pull-down judder that many viewers raised on a lifetime of PAL material find extremely difficult to ignore when watching NTSC content.

So, what do I do now? Do I attempt to return the player and attempt to explain to Amazon that I don't want it because its 1080p output introduces ringing? (Somehow, I don't think there's an option that quite fits that description on their returns form.) Is there even any point? For all I know, all Toshiba's standalone players could exhibit this problem. I've spent the last half-hour on Google and have yet to come across a single review or report that mentions the bug, so I have no realistic way of knowing whether I'd be any better off with one of the other 1080p-capable models.

Urgh! This just makes me respect Sony's Playstation 3 all the more.

Update, February 25th, 2007 09:01 PM: I updated the firmware to version 2.0 at the recommendation of others. Alas, the image quality is still as rotten as ever. See photographic evidence of the disgrace at Lyris Lite.

Dear Universal, this is what a catalogue release SHOULD look like

With Universal on the way to Blu-ray, they will soon find themselves up against Sony Pictures, whose transfers for catalogue titles, while not always perfect, are generally of a much higher standard than the ones being put out by the other majors - particularly Universal, who are often guilty of the worst Crimes Against Film.

Today, I received the UK Blu-ray release of one of my favourite films, Run Lola Run, and I'm pleased to report that it looks better than I could ever have hoped. Is it perfect? No, it's not, and, unsurprisingly, it doesn't have the detail that you would get from a DI-sourced transfer, but it does look really, really good, and puts Universal's HD DVD release of American Gangster, which I also received today, a film that is nearly a decade younger, to shame. That's just plain wrong.

Run Lola Run
(Sony Pictures, UK, AVC, 23.3 GB)

In memoriam: HD DVD

Well, it's been a fun year and a half, and I hope you'll join me in remembering HD DVD's brief but promising life. I picked up a scant few discs - 68 - in comparison with some people, but it's a nice little collection, with some truly great titles in it, and here they are:

2006

#1: Million Dollar Baby (Warner, USA)
#2: Constantine (Warner, USA)
#3: The Bourne Supremacy (Universal, USA)
#4: Sleepy Hollow (Paramount, USA)
#5: Unleashed (Universal, USA)
#6: Red Dragon (Universal, USA)
#7: Land of the Dead (Universal, USA)
#8: Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas (Universal, USA)
#9: The Machinist (Toshiba, Japan)
#10: Charlie and the Chocolate Factory (Warner, USA)
#11: Corpse Bride (Warner, USA)
#12: V for Vendetta (Warner, USA)
#13: Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire (Warner, UK)
#14: Serenity (Universal, UK)
#15: An American Werewolf in London (Universal, USA)
#16: Wolf Creek (The Weinstein Company, USA)
#17: Miami Vice (Universal, USA)
#18: Casablanca (Warner, USA)
#19: Basic Instinct (Studio Canal, France)
#20: The Adventures of Robin Hood (Warner, USA)
#21: Kiss Kiss Bang Bang (Warner, UK)

2007

#22: Brokeback Mountain (Universal, USA)
#23: Babel (Paramount, USA)
#24: Perfume: The Story of a Murderer (Constantin Film, Germany)
#25: Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow (Paramount, USA)
#26: Children of Men (Universal, USA)
#27: A Scanner Darkly (Warner, USA)
#28: The Game (Universal, USA)
#29: Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind (Universal, USA)
#30: HDScape: Antarctica Dreaming (DVD International, USA)
#31: HDScape: Visions of the Sea (DVD International, USA)
#32: The Fountain (Warner, USA)
#33: The Ultimate Matrix Collection (Warner, USA)
#34: Lost in Translation (Universal, USA)
#35: The Skeleton Key (Universal, USA)
#36: Mulholland Drive (Studio Canal, France)
#37: Brotherhood of the Wolf (Studio Canal, France)
#38: Dawn of the Dead (2004) (Universal, USA)
#39: Black Snake Moan (Paramount, USA)
#40: La Haine (Optimum, UK)
#41: Syriana (Warner, UK)
#42: Being John Malkovich (Universal, USA)
#43: Blood Diamond (Warner, USA)
#44: The Bourne Identity (Universal, USA)
#45: Mr. Bean's Holiday (Universal, UK)
#46: Silent Hill (Concorde, Germany)
#47: Underworld (Concorde, Germany)
#48: 300 (Warner, USA)
#49: Mission Impossible III (Paramount, USA)
#50: Seed of Chucky (Universal, USA)
#51: 2001: A Space Odyssey (Warner, USA)
#52: Les Triplettes de Belleville (France Télévisions Éditions, France)
#53: A Clockwork Orange (Warner, USA)
#54: Eyes Wide Shut (Warner, USA)
#55: The Shining (Warner, USA)
#56: Full Metal Jacket (remastered) (Warner, USA)
#57: Pan's Labyrinth (Optimum, UK)
#58: Wolf Creek (Optimum, UK)
#59: Inside Man (Universal, USA)
#60: Blade Runner: Ultimate Collector's Edition (Warner, USA)
#61: The Bourne Ultimatum (Universal, USA)
#62: Running Scared (EMS, Germany)
#63: Tideland (Concorde, Germany)

2008

#64: Cat People (1982) (Universal, USA)
#65: Eastern Promises (Universal, USA)
#66: Pan's Labyrinth (New Line, USA)
#67: Astérix et les Vikings (M6 Vidéo, France)
#68: American Gangster (Universal, USA)

As they say, it's been a good life.

Bandits and bricked hardware

Given today's major news, this seems almost irrelevant to mention, but what it likely to be last ever HD DVD purchase came slinking into the house today in the guise of Ridley Scott's American Gangster. Somewhat fitting, given the format's sorry end, it turned out to be a less than stellar release from Universal (gee, now there's a surprise). I've said before that, when they release a title sourced from a digital intermediate (DI), they generally manage to deliver a flawless or at least very good image. When it comes to film-sourced material, though, the results are rarely so positive, and American Gangster, despite being a recent title, is one of these. Evidence of noise reduction and a general lack of fine detail conspire to make this a deeply underwhelming presentation.

Unfortunately, I couldn't investigate the disc any further because, this afternoon, my brother's Xbox 360, presumably in mourning over the demise of HD DVD, popped its clogs. Given that it will have to be returned to the US to be either repaired or replaced, it's going to be out of action for some time, so this evening I decided to order a stand-alone HD DVD player, a Toshiba HD-EP30.

I know, I know, I'm probably the only person in the world who'd buy a player the very day the format was officially pronounced dead, but I have my reasons. For one thing, we've been yearning for an HD DVD player that could do 24p output for some time (the Xbox 360 is limited to 60 Hz playback). For another, today's incident hammered home just how accident-prone the console is, and, with that in mind, I'd rather have a stand-alone device on which to play my existing HD DVD collection rather than having to rely on there being a fully functioning Xbox 360 to connect to my HD DVD add-on drive. And finally, it was a mere £77.99 from Amazon.co.uk (with two free titles thrown in for good measure). While I have no doubt that the price will drop even lower in the coming weeks, the fact remains that I have a copy of The Bourne Ultimatum sitting on my shelf that I really need to review for DVD Times. And I'm impulsive.

Congratulations, Buena Vista - you've managed to make Universal's catalogue releases look good

Is you probably know by now, my eye is, to put it lightly, rather critical when it comes to image quality, whether it be standard definition or high definition. You'll probably also know that I hold the majority of review sites in contempt - or, at least, the ones which concentrate on reviewing the audio-visual elements of discs rather than the films themselves, and which present themselves as authorities on technology but prove to be nothing of the sort. I'm the sort of person who, when I read a glowing review of a new release, will think "Okay, so what have they missed?" rather than "Great! I can't want to see it for myself!" Broadly speaking, though, I tend to expect that if a disc is really - and I mean really - shoddy, even the most vision-impaired critic will notice.

Well, today, I have been proved wrong once again by Mr. Peter M. Bracke, the lead reviewer over at High-Def Digest, one of the most contemptible of the contemptible web sites. Until recently, my "favourite" (in the same way that a tornado is my "favourite" natural disaster) Bracke review was of Universal's HD DVD release of Traffic, in which he showered praise on a standard definition upconvert. Now, he's done it again, this time with the Blu-ray release of Scary Movie, just one of the many masterpieces from those auteurs of cinema, the Wayans Brothers. Here is Mr. Bracke's assessment:

[T]his transfer is bright and colorful, exceedingly sharp, and bolstered by a crystal clear print. There's not a blemish to be found on the print, and I was particularly taken aback by the almost complete lack of grain and noise, even though the majority of the film takes place at night. Likewise, colors are bold but smooth, and fleshtones are naturalistic. Most astoundingly, detail is strong enough that it rivals most of the new releases I've seen on Blu-ray lately, and the "three-dimensional" effect is well in evidence.

The only irritant I could find is some edge enhancement, resulting in some visible halos. Otherwise, when it comes to picture quality, 'Scary Movie' is a top-drawer catalog release.

He goes on to give the transfer an overall rating of 4.5 out of 5.

Here is what the transfer looks like:

(Picture nabbed from the AV Science Forum, captured by benes.)

Granted, Cindy Campbell may have skin as smooth as a baby's bottom after spending the previous evening shaving her moustache in the bath (I've seen the movie, unfortunately), but this is going a bit too far. This is some of the worst degraining I have ever laid eyes on, and is the sort of thing I'm talking about when I refer to images that look "waxy"... although, having used that word to refer to comparatively excellent transfers like La Vie en Rose, I'm thinking I need a new way of describing the likes of Scary Movie. "Diarrhoea-like" might suffice.

I could also point out the massive halos, but in this particular case, it's almost beside the point.

Seriously, Buena Vista (and every other studio), don't think you can get away with putting out turkeys like this. And reviewers, don't think that your shoddy journalism is doing you any favours. A picture is worth a thousand words, and one press of the Printscreen button can quash oodles of uneducated writing.

Just don't take my wings

An open letter to Michael Bay:

Dear Michael Bay,

I have nothing in particular against you. You may be an arrogant blowhole who has no idea what he's talking about, and your films may be widely derided as everything that's wrong with modern cinema, but I personally don't consider you to be completely without merit. The Rock, for all its inanities, is a pretty entertaining action film with some amusing dialogue, while Transformers and The Island are harmless fun, although each could have used an editor to cut a good 45-60 minutes out of them. I haven't seen either of the Bad Boys films, so I won't comment on them, but the point is that I'd probably actually defend you if someone called you a talentless hack who should be locked up and never allowed within a hundred feet of a movie camera ever again.

Sometimes, however, you seem to insist on making my job difficult for me. I have just watched your bombastic wartime epic, Pearl Harbor, on Blu-ray, your preferred high definition format, no less, but I now find myself in the unfortunate position of having scarcely a kind word to say about you. The script is awful, your direction shambolic, your attention to historical detail non-existent and your capacity to bore with over-wrought dialogue and a turgid love triangle knows no bounds. To say that the best part of the film is the 45-minute long special effects reel that is the attack on Pearl Harbor would be about the kindest thing I could say, although, given your aesthetic sensibilities, you'd probably take that as a compliment.

By all means make films about aged MI6 officers teaming up with annoying lab rats to take on platoons of marines holed up on Alcatraz. I have no objections to you making more glossy rip-offs of Logan's Run with Ewan McGregor doing an appalling imitation of an American accent and Scarlett Johansson gaping for two and a half hours. I don't even mind you making more movies about robots urinating on John Turturro. Hey, whatever floats your boat. But please, Mr. Bay, for the sanity of all concerned, never consider making a film like Pearl Harbor again.

Yours sincerely,
Captain Whiggles
HMS Whimsy

I fear to watch, yet I can't look away

In recent months, I've been developing a keen interest in bad movies. Since I subscribed to the Amazon UK rental service last September, I've seen such doozies as the remake of The Wicker Man starring Nicolas Cage, the Eddie Murphy shit-a-thon Norbit, Uwe Boll's meisterwerk House of the Dead, the made-for-TV Omen IV: The Awakening and, most recently, Tom Green's Freddy Got Fingered. Most of these titles were "recommended" by my good friend Baron Scarpia, the bad film connoisseur to end all bad film connoisseurs. He has recently enjoyed Andrea Bianchi's The Zombie Dead and Claudio Fagrasso's Troll 2 (the latter being the only film I've ever heard of that is so awful that it had to be reviewed in two parts), and I believe he has Norbit in his rental queue lest he renege on his wager with me.

I, however, believe that I may have found the bad movie that puts all other bad movies to shame. Ladies and gentlemen, I give you...

The Hottie and the Nottie.

Starring Paris Hilton.

Imagine it, people. Not only is Paris Hilton still permitted to appear in movies, someone actually allowed her to take the starring role in one, and then, sealing the deal, decided to release it in cinemas throughout the United States. That, surely, is irresponsible enough to serve as grounds for a lengthy stretch in prison, if not death by hanging. Keith Phipps over at The A.V. Club has written a warning to the faint-hearted not to go and see the film (this sort of thing is known in some circles as a "review"), but I doubt that he will dissuade me. I have survived Nicolas Cage and the killer bees. I escaped unscathed from rampaging zombies and their turn-table effects. Heck, I even made it through Tom Green masturbating an elephant without even throwing up. You think Paris Hilton's going to stand in my way? My only previous encounter with her was her guest appearance in an episode of Veronica Mars, where she proved that not only does she look like a deformed wax sculpture (I know, I know, looks aren't everything, but if you're starring in a film in which you are described as a "Hottie", it might help to be at least passably attractive), but also can't act her way out of a paper bag, so I can only hope that my immune system is high enough not to be struck down by such a prolonged exposure to her.

Some of the comments appended to the A.V. Club review are pretty funny in their own right. On the subject of the infamous Paris Hilton sex tape:

My freshman year of college one of my hallmates got that and had us all watch it. It was so long and slow that Tarkovsky could've directed it.

- KaneLynch

I love movies that tell you that being ugly doesn't matter as long as you turn out to actually be really hot.

- Tooncedale

I'm pretty sure Paris Hilton herself pitched this.

And by "pitched" I mean sucked cock.

And by "sucked cock" I mean let an executive shit on her chest.

And by "let an executive shit on her chest" I mean told Zach Braff that people like him.

- Elitist Trash

By all reasoning this movie is something that should make me absolutely furious but for some reason it doesnt. For one I think it is pretty awesome that even though they clearly tried to make "the nottie" as hideous as possible she still isnt really that much worse than Paris Hilton. And I am not saying that because Paris is a cum dumpster. If I was at a club/bar and saw these two together I would have to think for a few seconds which one was better.

- Fuzzy Cootie

Am I alone in thinking Daniel Day Lewis might actually be able to pull off a convincing portrayal of Paris Hilton?

- Johnny5000

I think Paris Hilton looks like Squidward.

- Middle Man of Time

I think I'd rather fuck Squidward than Paris Hilton.

- Persia

The estimated box office for this weekend is $23,000, opening on 111 screens. It made $76 a screen on Friday.

- Juggernaught_

Pfff! They don't know what they're missing.

PS. A rental copy of the Blu-ray release of Michael Bay's dog turd of a wartime epic, Pearl Harbor, landed on my desk today. I'm sure that, compared to The Hottie and the Nottie, it will seem like a masterpiece.

The rat that got the cream

Ratatouille may have been denied a Best Picture nomination by the Academy, but there can be no doubt it absolutely owned the animation industry's own equivalent of the Oscars, the Annie Awards, on February 8th. Nominated for virtually every category in which it was eligible, and winning most of them, this is a success that seems to have been matched only by Brad Bird and Pixar's previous collaboration, The Incredibles.

Ratatouille's wins were in the following categories: Best Animated Feature, Character Animation in a Feature Production (Michal Makarewicz), Character Design in an Animated Feature Production (Carter Goodrich), Directing in an Animated Feature Production (Brad Bird), Music in an Animated Feature Production (Michael Giacchino), Production Design in an Animated Feature Production (Harley Jessup), Storyboarding in an Animated Feature Production (Ted Mathot), Voice Acting in an Animated Feature Production (Ian Holm), and Writing in an Animated Feature Production (Brad Bird).

The short piece, Your Friend the Rat, included on the Ratatouille Blu-ray and DVD releases, also won Best Short Subject.

In addition, animation historian John Canemaker, Ren & Stimpy creator/director John Kricfalusi and veteran Disney animator Glen Keane were honoured with the Winsor McCay Award (for career contributions to the art of animation), while historian Jerry Beck picked up the June Foray Award (for significant and benevolent or charitable impact on the art and industry of animation). Flash creators Jonathan Gay, Gary Grossman and Robert Tatsumi, meanwhile, received the Ub Iwerks Award for technical achievement, while a Special Achievement Annie Award went to Edwin R. Leonard for "promoting the Linux open system for animation in animation studios and gaming software development".

For a full list of the nominees and winners, see here.

Sickness and parasites

I've just seen The Fly.

The 1986 David Cronenberg version.

In high definition.

Yuck.

PS. Just in case anyone's wondering, I liked it. I wouldn't put it at the top of Cronenberg's filmography, but I enjoyed it more than Shivers, Spider and A History of Violence, about as much as Dead Ringers and Eastern Promises, and not as much as Naked Lunch, Crash and eXistenZ.

Early warnings from Warner

Source: High-Def Digest

Warner has announced some of the high profile titles forthcoming coming to Blu-ray (and DVD) over the course of the next year (covering the rest of 2008 and early 2009). These include, in Q2 2008, a Dirty Harry Ultimate Collection, a Batman Anthology in Q3, and, looking further ahead, Gone with the Wind, North by Northwest and The Wizard of Oz in 2009. You can certainly pencil me in for a copy of North by Northwest, which has been one of my most anticipated titles for high definition treatment since the possibility was initially raised at Warner's Home Theater Forum chat in February 2007.

Obviously, don't expect to see any of these titles on HD DVD, given that Warner is cutting its ties with the format at the end of May... although Batman Begins did see a (decidedly sub-par) HD DVD release back in 2006.

Was Ratatouille robbed?

CNN has posted a very interesting article pertaining to Brad Bird and Pixar's latest feature, Ratatouille, and its lack of a nomination in the Best Picture category at this year's Academy Awards.

As you probably know by now, a new category, Best Animated Feature, made its début during the 2002 Academy Awards, essentially relegating animated fare as somehow separate from live action. In a sense, it's not all that different from the fate that has befallen non-English language films with the Best Foreign Language Film category (introduced in 1947) or short subjects with the Best Short Film category. In a sense, there's nothing to stop a film that corresponds to one of these categories (i.e. animated, foreign, short) from also being entered into the prestigious Best Picture category, but something of a glass ceiling is created. In effect, the impression given seems to be that, because these films have their "own" categories, they have their own sandboxes to play in and don't need to intrude on the live action, English-language feature-length films.

I'm of two minds about this, personally. Unlike some, I personally don't really think that the Oscars count for all that much at the end of the day; I do, however, take an interest in the way animation is treated by the Oscars, mainly because I suspect that it is, in some way, broadly representative of how the mainstream movie world (both the industry itself and filmgoers) views the art form. Animation is often regarded, whether consciously or not, as somehow inferior to live action, perhaps partly because it is so commonly associated with children's entertainment. Therefore, part of me thinks that the Best Animated Feature is probably a good idea, because it allows films that would otherwise probably have been completely ignored the chance to share in some of the glory by having the chance to bag a golden man. (That said, it does have the unfortunate side effect of meaning that a set number of animated features have to be nominated every year, which leads to the likes of the 2005 awards, where the winning The Incredibles was ludicrously put up against Shark Tale and Shrek 2.) And hey, when all said and done, let's not forget that Ratatouille is in the running for four other awards besides Best Animated Feature, among them Screenwriting (a bit bizarre for a film whose plot and dialogue evolved primarily on storyboards). It's not as if it's being completely left out in the cold.

But (and it's a big "but") my main problem with the Best Animated Feature category is that it essentially means that, in the foreseeable future, it's unlikely that an animated film is going to be considered for the Best Picture category (Beauty and the Beast in 1991 being the only time this ever happened). Just as The Lives of Others and Pan's Labyrinth were denied a Best Picture nod last year, the notion seems to be that animated (and foreign, and short) features are already covered elsewhere, so don't have to detract from the attention being given to the "big boys". In effect, "Best Picture" should really read "Best Live Action Feature-Length Picture Shot in English",* which is a bit of a mouthful but probably a more accurate representation of the state of affairs.

* That's not to say that animated or foreign-language films have never been or never will be nominated for Best Picture, but broadly speaking this tends to be the case. To date, only eight non-English language films and one animated film have been nominated in this category.

Writerspeak

I'm not sure whether John Kricfalusi was the first person to coin the term "writerspeak", but his was certainly the first web site on which I read the term. He offers an excellent post pertaining to the writing of dialogue for animation, although I suspect that many live action screenwriters could benefit from reading it as well. In a sense, most of what he says is common sense, but sometimes you need to see things written down to actually understand the logic behind them.

John defines writerspeak as this:

A lot of characters in modern cartoons are simply mouthpieces for the writers. They speak in the writer's voice rather than the character's voice, tell the jokes that the writer and his writer friends think are funny, but are totally out-of-character for the character who is actually saying them. This common writer's flaw is known as "writerspeak".

I'd like to go one step further. I think there are basically three different categories of bad dialogue writing that can be claimed to be writerspeak:

1. A character suddenly says something that completely contradicts their personality because a writer thought of a funny line of dialogue and wants to show everyone how clever he/she is... even if the character is normally supposed to be a complete dolt. See just about every prime-time sitcom, animated or otherwise. In some shows, such as Family Guy, none of the characters have defined personalities anyway, so whenever someone speaks, it sounds like they're suffering from schizophrenia.

It works both ways, though. Sometimes, a writer will make a character appear more stupid than they normally are for the sake of a joke. Here's an exchange from the Season 2 episode of Buffy the Vampire Slayer, When She Was Bad:

Willow: I mean, why else would she be acting like such a B-I-T-C-H?

Giles: Willow, I think we're a little too old to be spelling things out.

Xander: A bitka?

Not only is Xander's contribution eye-rollingly unfunny, it demeans the character something rotten. He may not be the sharpest tool in the box at times, but are we seriously expected to believe that he can't spell the word "bitch"? It's an excruciatingly bad bit of dialogue, even by the already low standards of writerspeak, because the very joke that the character is sacrificed for doesn't even work.

2. A character tells us how they're feeling or what they're doing, despite it being blatantly obvious what's happening if you just open your eyes and look at the visuals. Again, the sitcoms, whether animated or live action, are particularly strong offenders. This often manifests itself in the over-explanation of jokes. To quote the recent Simpsons movie, we see Fat Tony and his thugs hauling a bag which obviously contains a body towards the newly walled-off lake:

Chief Wiggum: Uh sorry, sorry, no dumping in the lake.

Fat Tony: Fine, I will put my "yard trimmings" in a car compactor.

Fat Tony and his men now walk off with the body. See, that on its own is quite funny. It's an amusing sight gag that relies half on the presence of the body (shown visually) and half on the stupidity of Chief Wiggum (conveyed through dialogue). However, not content to simply leave it at that, the writer (one of the dozen or so credited as having worked on the script) has to spell it out for us in case we didn't get it:

Lou: Uh, Chief, I think there was a dead body in there.

A lot of writers struggle to think visually. They feel that, unless an idea is expressed in dialogue, it won't register. That's probably because they spend most of the day staring at text typed up on a screen or on paper. Furthermore, if you've ever read a script, you'll know that it's much easier to read dialogue than to read descriptive text. For a start, it takes up less space. For another thing, it tends to flow better. Long, descriptive passages of action or non-action can be extremely tedious both to write and to read - it stands to reason, because the written word is simply not suited to describing visuals in a coherent, efficient manner. Scripts aren't like novels - you don't have the luxury of spending pages and pages describing a situation in minute detail. (Given that animation is traditionally highly visual, is it any wonder that cartoons written on scripts rather than conceptualised on storyboards are loaded to the gills with writerspeak?)

3. A character tells another something they already know for the benefit of the audience. The Rock contains an absolute doozy:

Chief Justice: This is for the sake of national security.

Womack: No, it's the sake of national security that got us here in the first place thirty-three years ago. I knew some day this would come back to bite us. Forget it. He does not exist!

Chief Justice: He does exist! We just chose to forget about him for thirty years. We locked him up and threw away the key.

Womack: Oh, and a lot of goddamn good it did us. He broke out of two maximum security prisons, and if he hits the streets...

Chief Justice: He's not going to hit the streets, Jim! Thirty years ago he was a highly-trained SAS operative. He is my age now, for Christ's sake. I have to get up three times a night to take a piss!

Womack: We can't risk letting him out. He's a professional escape artist.

Before you ask what's wrong with this exchange, bear in mind that both characters were already privy to all this information before they opened their mouths. It's only one step removed from those phone calls where you only see one side of the conversation so Character A repeats back everything Character B said. ("Why, I'd love to come to a party at your place at six o'clock tonight. What's that? You want me to bring a bottle of wine? But of course I will!") I'm not sure who penned this Shakespearian exchange (Weisberg/Cook? Mark Rosner? Jonathan Hensleigh? Quentin Tarantino? Aaron Sorkin? Clement/La Frenais? They, among many others, contributed to the script, many of them uncredited), but it's absolutely magical, one of the finest examples of writerspeak and makes me laugh every time I hear it.

I'm not claiming to be some sort of dialogue writing expert. Writing convincing dialogue is hard - I know this from experience. But really, there's no excuse for some of the travesties I've mentioned above... unless they were meant to be intentionally funny, which I somehow doubt.

The Criterion mind game

Today, I received my copy of Criterion's recent re-release of Alfred Hitchcock's The Lady Vanishes. This new 2-disc edition, released in November 2007, replaces the old single-disc version from May 1998. As one of the first DVDs Criterion put out (both the original release and the new one are number 3 in the collection), it left rather a lot to be desired in the transfer department, taken from a composite source and filled with dot crawl.

I'm happy to report that the new transfer is a massive improvement, although it does suffer from an extremely irritating practice known as windowboxing, which Criterion have been applying to all their transfers for Academy ratio films for at least a couple of years. Essentially, the entire image is shrunk slightly and surrounded by a black border on all four edges. According to the booklet included inside the DVD case, this is done "to ensure that the maximum image is visible on all monitors". What they should have said is "to ensure that the maximum image is visible on improperly calibrated televisions". Overscan is an issue with most television displays, cropping off as much as 10% of the signal image. However, I don't think it would be unreasonable to suggest that those who are serious about film will do everything they can to minimise, if not eliminate, overscan, or buy a display that does not suffer from it in the first place (such as most projectors, as well as the majority of modern 1080p LCD or plasma displays).

Why, then, is Criterion, a company that caters specifically to cinephiles and prides itself on the highest possible quality standards (more on this later) effectively authoring discs, as one of my fellow netizens put it, "to look best on the worst equipment"? I can think of no other studio who routinely shrinks the image and therefore throws away valuable resolution. This is standard definition NTSC we're talking about, with a resolution of 720x480. Every line of resolution should be valued, not thrown away in order to prevent a small amount of the image being cropped on Joe Sixpack and Mary-Jane Rottencrotch's tube display. The windowboxing on this release is certainly not excessive, but it does mean that the image is approximately 12-13% smaller than it could have been, and as a result has 12-13% less detail than would overwise have been possible.

(Left: old version; Right: new version; click for full size images)

The long and short of it is that I am of the opinion that Criterion's reputation as being the absolute best of the best in the DVD field is largely a mind game propagated by a number of factors, ranging from their pioneering work in the LaserDisc days (it's unlikely that you would have audio commentaries or be able to expect an original aspect ratio presentation of a film as the rule rather than the exception if not for them) to their extremely high standard of publicity and design. Their packaging is always eye-catching and, even if they occasionally confuse plainness with minimalism (The Rock is a cover that only Criterion could get away with!), broadly speaking the sort of artwork they put out is clever, tasteful and light years ahead of anything the mainstream studios (or indeed the indie studios, most of whom seem to delight in making their wares look as schlocky as possible, as if it's some sort of badge of honour) are doing. Essentially, pick a Criterion DVD off the shelf and it looks like you're really getting something special. The old adage is "never judge a book by its cover", but all too many people do.

There's also the niche factor: broadly speaking, I doubt that your average moviegoer will have heard of, let alone seen, the bulk of the films Criterion have released. Intriguingly, this often seems to lead to a sense of reverence: "They've put out a film in a foreign language with a title that's hard to pronounce about nuns in S&M gear painting each other pink - they must be really dedicated!" I am of no doubt that the people at Criterion are absolutely devoted to their craft and truly love what they are doing. However, what I am trying to say it that I'm not convinced that their grand reputation is entirely justified. While their choice of films (barring the odd Armageddon), bonus materials and packaging are all very high-brow, their transfers are often not that much better, if indeed better at all, than the competition.

Surf to various review sites, and you'll find that Criterion's transfers are often held up as the benchmark to which all other companies should aspire. In reality, though, the majority of the Criterion transfers that I've seen are fairly average. The Rock and Naked Lunch are at the upper end of the spectrum and are truly great (if imperfect) pieces of work, but at the lower end you have the likes of Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, which in terms of its lack of detail is one of the worst DVD transfers I've ever seen that wasn't pulled off a VHS tape or LaserDisc master. Oddly enough, many people praised it as a welcome improvement on the earlier Universal DVD.

They are practically the same transfer, folks.

Don't believe me? The pictures speak for themselves. The same master has clearly been used, the level of detail is almost exactly the same, and the only significant (and I use the word loosely) difference between the two is minutely looser framing on the Universal disc. Hardly the stunning improvement that most would have you believe, and, given that the Universal disc was rightly criticised by a number of people at its time of release all these "5/5" and "10/10" reviews for the Criterion version look mightily suspect.

All this is not part of some deliberate attempt on my part to pour scorn on Criterion or turn people away from their products. They deserve a great deal of praise for putting out films that no other company would touch (even if most of them aren't to my tastes), their packaging is top notch, and I love the fact that they routinely include chunky booklets filled with reviews, analyses, interviews and artwork - something I've really come to appreciate since many of the majors have given up even including a chapter insert. However, I don't think Criterion's releases should be celebrated as the absolute best that the DVD format can look. Like just about every other company, they've put out a handful of great-looking titles, some absolute turds and a vast number that merely look quite good. "Quite good", it must be said, is an awful lot better than what an awful lot of the independents are putting out, but, when you routinely charge $40 for a single film and lay claim to "gathering the greatest films from around the world and publishing them in editions that offer the highest technical quality", "quite good" isn't really enough.

DVD review: Halloween (remake)

Essentially a film of two halves, neither of which works on its own and which fail to gel together as a single cohesive whole, Zombie's version of Halloween falls somewhere between a crass, ass-backwards attempt to shoehorn the more superficial elements of his style into an origin story, and a soulless, slavish copy of the original.

I review Rob Zombie's remake of Halloween, presented here in its unrated form in a 2-disc set, and wonder how to get two hours of my life back.

Hello, it's me, I'm back from the sea

Well, not literally, because I wasn't anywhere near the sea. But it is indeed me, and I am indeed back. As I mentioned previously, I was away at my gran's funeral, which was held down in Warwick, meaning that we had to head down a day early and come back a day late. I'm not sure what I can really say about it ("I'd give this funeral a 6/10" doesn't sound quite right), except that the cremation was set to a piece of music by Ennio Morricone, chosen by my aunt. Unfortunately, it wasn't anything daring like the opening title theme to Four Flies on Grey Velvet, which would have been an eye-opener indeed (although I do think Come un Madrigale could have worked), but rather a piece from one of his Hollywood projects, The Mission.

Anyway, over the last three days, I've spent about twenty hours sitting in the back of a car, so I'm understandably not feeling entirely loquacious at the moment. Just a quick note to say that the French HD DVD release of Asterix and the Vikings and the US Blu-ray release of Volver were waiting for me when I got back this evening, so I'll be discussing them in due course. Hopefully tomorrow, but I've had very little sleep over the last couple of nights, due to a variety of factors, so I'll be hitting the hay before too long. I need to be up at 6:30 for work anyway.

PS. Thanks for all the well-wishing, people. For those who asked, no, this was not exactly an unexpected death. My gran had Dementia and had been going south for a long time. She more or less spent the last month of her life unconscious, and I think most of us would have agreed that it was better for her to go now than to hang on in there without any real quality of life.

DVDs I bought or received in the month of January

• 28 Weeks Later (RA USA, Blu-ray)
• Cat People (R0 USA, HD DVD)
• Eastern Promises (R0 USA, HD DVD)
• Factory Girl (R2 UK, DVD)
• Little Children (R2 UK, DVD)
• Munich (R2 UK, DVD)
• Pan's Labyrinth (R0 USA, HD DVD)
• The Plague Dogs (R2 UK, DVD)
• The Simpsons Movie (RA USA, Blu-ray)
• Y Tu Mamá También (R2 UK, DVD)
   

What's so bad about a little ADHD?

Perhaps I've been a bit hard on Michael Bay. Armageddon and Pearl Harbor may be awful excuses for films, and my brother doesn't have a single kind word to say about Bad Boys 2, but everything else that I've seen from him has entertained me to some degree. The Rock is undoubtedly his best work, and Transformers, while far too long and filled with bad attempts at humour and tedious robot fights, is actually quite fun at times.

I've now seen the UK HD DVD release The Island, his solitary box office flop, and I have to say that I did like it, despite it being little more than a poorly disguised knock-off of Logan's Run (hardly the best film to use as your source material in the first place). Like all of his films, it demonstrates the aesthetic sensibilities and world view of a teenager, but I'm going to buck the trend and say that I don't think Bay is a completely incompetent filmmaker. True, he may overuse fast cutting and shakycam to an obnoxious degree, but he certainly knows how to shoot and stage a chase scene, which The Island has in abundance, and he seems to have a knack for getting nicely lit tight close-ups of the Beautiful People™ (and the not so beautiful). I can't defend it as a great work of art or even anything particularly thought-provoking (although I'm sure you could make a case for it being Bay's anti-stem cell research film if you put your mind to it - hey, he is a Bush supporter, after all), but I had fun, which, when all said and done, about all you can really ask from a summer blockbuster.

The HD DVD transfer (not doubt the same as what is to be found on the Blu-ray release), by the way, is pretty nice, albeit with some caveats. The look of the film is very similar to that of Transformers, but, unlike that particular HD DVD, someone was let loose with the filters of nastiness. There is a light sheen of edge enhancement at all times, particularly noticeable in wide shots and in Bay's trademark "posing in front of the sun" money shots, not to mention some light compression artefacts in some of the more action-intensive shots - a by-product, I suspect, of capping the bit rate to ensure that it would fit on a single layer BD-25. Still, a good presentation all in all, with a solid audio mix. I'd consider picking up a copy if I found it in a sale somewhere.

The Island
(Warner, UK, VC-1, 20.6 GB)

Proving that good taste is a rare commodity

Demonstrating themselves once again to be a pillar of taste and decency, the notorious Westboro Baptist Church have made it known that they plan to picket the funeral of actor Heath Ledger, who, as I'm sure you know, died on January 22nd.

Apparently, the reason for this "protest" is that Ledger played a gay character in the film Brokeback Mountain, an action that, in the eyes of the criminally insane Fred Phelps and his small band of brainwashed followers, is about the worst thing anyone could ever do:

"You cannot live in defiance of God. He (Ledger) got on that big screen with a big, fat message: God is a liar and it's OK to be gay," said Shirley Phelps in a statement sent out by the Topeka, Kan.-based Westboro Baptist Church.

The only thing that amazes me more than the complete and utter stupidity of these people is that Mrs. Phelps actually managed to get through that entire sentence without making a single reference to homosexuals eating excrement, an act which she appears to be convinced is an integral element of the gay "lifestyle", and one which, according to her, all homosexuals practice (see the Louis Theroux documentary The Most Hated Family in America for more details). Ledger himself may not have been, to use the Westboro Baptist lingo, a "fag", but he was, in their eyes, the next worst thing, a "fag enabler", and therefore, as far as they are concerned, deserving of their own particular brand of special treatment (again, see the Louis Theroux documentary for an explanation of how this apparently works).

This is one of these instances where there is absolutely no point in attempting to pick apart what she says or trying to demonstrate why she's wrong because (a) if you have even a shred of common sense, you'll know she's off her nut, and (b) everything that comes out of this woman's mouth is so whacked-out that it actually defies conventional criticism. To dignify her arguments by attempting to refute them requires you to actually come down to her level, and I'm sorry, but I can't stoop that low. I've got a bad back.

I really shouldn't be so surprised - that the Phelps clan would leap on this bandwagon was as set in stone as the fact that the sun always rises in the east and sets in the west. What I wasn't expecting, however (although perhaps that just shows my naivety), was the reaction from Fox News to Ledger's death:

Fox News' John Gibson on Jan. 22 opened his radio show with funeral music and mocked a signature line from "Brokeback," saying, "Well, he found out how to quit you." (When Gibson was contacted to explain his comments, he declined.)

Again, perhaps this shouldn't have come as a surprise to me. I'm all too aware of Fox News' world view and agenda, but even by their standards this is pretty incredible.