Mainstream Cinema

Let the back-patting commence

The Razzies may be where it's at, but it seems that another awards ceremony has been set up in mockery of the Golden Raspberries! Calling itself the Oscars, the notion behind this two-bit stunt is to celebrate positive achievements in the film industry. What's that all about?

Anyway, all joking aside, you can read the full list of nominees here. Once again, I haven't seen too many of the titles listed (I tend to be a bit slow off the mark in that regard, due to my lack of visits to the cinema), but of the ones I have seen, I think Viggo Mortensen's Best Actor nomination for Eastern Promises is more than deserved, and I'll be rooting for Ratatouille in the Best Animated Film category. (Ratatouille is also up for two other awards, Music [Score] and Writing [Original Screenplay], but as I know next to nothing about the competition in these categories, I can't really comment.) It's nice, too, if slightly predictable, to see Michael Moore's Sicko in the Documentary Feature category, although, given that it's the only documentary released in the last year that I've seen, once again I don't feel qualified to comment on it. I also note that the brilliant Sarah Polley is also up for her first ever Oscar nomination, albeit in the Writing (Adapted Screenplay) category, for her feature length directorial debut, Away From Her, rather than for her better known talent, her acting ability.

Once again, however, I find myself wincing the further down the page I go and the more entrants I read for the more minor categories, like Sound Design and Makeup. While I'm not about to claim that the sound effects in Transformers are unworthy of praise, or that the various guises in which Eddie Murphy appears in Norbit are cack-handedly executed, there's something very wrong with the notion that the latter film can now legitimately be described as an "Academy Award nominee". (At least the fact that it is also up for eight Razzies helps soothe that stinging wound - not that it would be the first time this happened by any stretch.) I've said this before, but I'm convinced that the "smaller" categories should have a different name compared to the more significant ones like Best Picture and Best Director. Mini-Oscar, maybe, or Oscar Jr? Anything to prevent people from thinking that bloody Norbit is worthy of some sort of recognition.

Oh, and another thing that irks me: The Bourne Ultimatum in the Best Editing category. For all that film's strengths, I really don't see its editing as one of them. The trend of ultra fast, confusing cutting is really not one that I'm particularly eager to see celebrated.

Lots of grain and gristled chins

I watched the HD DVD release of Running Scared last week. I can't say I particularly warmed to the film it all, unfortunately. On paper, it sounds like an interesting premise (a minor gangster is charged with disposing of a gun used to kill an undercover cop, but the kid living next door to him steals it, uses it to shoot his abusive father and runs off, prompting the aforementioned gangster to head off on a madcap chase through the city to track the kid down and get rid of the gun), but, as is usually the case with me and gangster movies, it didn't click at all. I found it all a bit boring, to be perfectly honest, with the occasional inspired idea (the climax, set at an ice rink, is pretty unique) not really doing enough to hold it all together. It's a shame, because I really liked writer/director Wayne Kramer's earlier film, The Cooler. Ah well, you win some, you lose some.

At least fans of the film will not be disappointed with the HD transfer. EMS has given this movie a stellar presentation, accurately depicting the film's heavily stylised, contrasty, grain-wrought appearance. Given the often jittery camerawork, and the fact that it is the moving grain particles that gives the film much of its detail, the static screenshots below might not completely do it justice, but take my word for it, this is a very, very nice transfer, and one that would probably have been in my personal Top 10 (or at least Top 15) transfers of 2007 if I'd seen it in time for it to qualify.

Running Scared
(EMS, Germany, VC-1, 20.9 GB)

Not so import proof after all

Remember the post I made last week where I said that Germany HD DVD publisher Senator Home Entertainment was going Blu-ray exclusive? Well, guess what: they're not. That's right, it was all a load of hooey.

Apparently, Cinefacts, who first reported the false story, got the "news" direct from the Blu-ray Disc Association (the BDA), but have now retracted the announcement. So, once again, the BDA have been caught lying. Well I never! Unfortunately, whoever said that cheaters never prosper clearly never bore witness to a format war.

This is hardly going to save HD DVD, but it does mean that we should be able to get region free HD releases of the likes of Death Proof and Planet Terror.

Here come the Razzies

Stop press! Hold everything! The nominations for the 28th Annual Razzie Awards have been revealed. The full list of nominees is at the official web site, but I can tell you already that this year is going to be one to remember. I Know Who Killed Me, I Now Pronounce You Chuck and Larry and Norbit are leading the race, with nine, eight and eight nominations respectively. Eddie Murphy, meanwhile, has set a new achievement with an impressive five nominations in a single year (one of the downsides to playing several characters in the same film, it would seem - not to mention taking a screenwriting credit).

For fans of bad cinema, the Razzies are surely the most important awards ceremony of the year, far more so than the Oscars (pfff!), since they allow buffs to plan their DVD rentals and viewings for the year ahead. I mean, just looking through the full list, there are several films that have somehow passed me by.

The case for euthanising Tom Green

I will watch and review Norbit, a film I hoped never to see, if you watch and review Freddy Got Fingered, one of the only two films in the world that I actively hate. 'Tedious, mean-spirited, nasty, unfunny, noxious, loathsome, fucking tragic waste of celluloid'? Oh, Michael, you have no idea...

- Baron Scarpia, December 8th, 2007

It took me long enough, but I eventually got there. I have now watched Freddy Got Fingered. Given the 83 minutes of sheer agony that I have just suffered through, fulfilling the second half of the bargain should, in comparison, be a doddle.

As we sat down to watch the film, my brother said to me: "You know, I bet you anything you like that there will be one joke that absolutely kills us buried somewhere in all this." He was right. Just under twelve minutes into the film, we see an animation executive talking on his cellphone. Here is his dialogue:

Listen, you tell Hanna-Barbera to go fuck themselves, okay? I got twelve Korean teenagers in a tiger cage that can draw a fucking dog wearing a cape.

It's one of those little "it's funny because it's true" moments that should put a smile on the face of anyone who knows the mentality of the average animation executive. Unfortunately, this means that there are still more than 72 minutes of pain to follow. Freddy Got Fingered has three things working in its favour:

1. It's only 83 minutes long.
2. Of which 4½ are the closing credits.
3. I watched a PAL release, which is 4% faster than the NTSC versions. Had I found myself landed with an NTSC copy, it would have lasted 87 minutes. On balance, I consider myself to be extremely lucky.

Isn't this funny?

Unfortunately, from here on in, the positives will have to be restricted to the fact that the experience of sitting through this film did not actually prove to be fatal. Freddy Got Fingered stars Tom Green, not as Freddy (more about him later), but as Gord Brody, an aspiring cartoonist. Stop and think about this for a second. Tom Green. As a cartoonist. Broadly speaking, good cartoons require two things: they have to be funny, and they have to be drawn well. Tom Green is not, by any stretch of the imagination, funny. He isn't funny when he's performing someone else's material. When he's performing his own (he not only stars in, but also directed and co-wrote this film), he's fucking tragic. His cartoons, which I suspect Green himself didn't actually draw, are not particularly well drawn, but on balance are probably as good as or slightly better than 95% of the animated fare you'll see when you turn on your television.

And here's the problem: I'm not sure whether or not we're supposed to take Gord's aspirations seriously. Is he supposed to be a great cartoonist, or is the joke that he's a hopeless one? The quality of his output certainly doesn't give us any clues, since it's not god-awful, but it's not any good either. I'm not even sure whether or not we, the audience, are expected to like Gord, let alone his cartoons. On paper, he is as vile and loathsome an excuse for a human being as you could hope to find, but then again, given that he seems to be a stand-in for Green himself, one can only assume that either Green suffers from a serious case of self-hatred, or, more likely, he thinks he's a comic genius and that masturbating a horse, slitting open a dead deer and wearing its skin Ed Gein-style, and spinning a baby round and round by its umbilical cord are the height of entertainment.

You're supposed to laugh because she's disabled.

This film also stars Rip Torn as Gord's vulgar father. When I first saw him, I thought for one awful minute that it was Jack Nicholson, but thankfully, not even he, who has recently starred in such classics as Anger Management, has delved that low yet. Eddie Kaye Thomas, who appeared in the American Pie comedies, plays Gord's younger brother, Freddy. In an absolutely "hilarious" scene, Gord accuses his father of molesting Freddy, hence the film's title. Freddy ends up in a home for abused children. Isn't that funny? Better yet, Green's wife at the time, Drew Barrymore, also shows up to embarrass herself in the minor role of a secretary at the animation studio. The fact that she divorced him less than a year after the film was released does a lot to redeem her in my eyes. Oh, and Marisa Coughlan, the only element of the film that even approaches pleasantness, plays Gord's girlfriend-to-be, a wheelchair-bound lady who enjoys sucking his cock and having her legs whacked with a bamboo stick. That we are spared seeing her actually putting Tom Green's penis in her mouth and performing fellatio on him can, I suspect, give us one reason to be thankful for the rating criteria of the Motion Picture Association of America and the fact that the mainstream studios generally won't put out anything with an NC-17 certificate.

I'm not even going to attempt to critique the film's plot (or lack thereof), cinematic technique (or lack thereof), performances (or lack thereof), or any of the other elements that one might expect to find in a movie. (I do, however, want to point out that, when I first head about this film, I assumed it was something that had been shot on a consumer grade camcorder or, at most, DV. Never in my life did I expect it to be shot on 35mm, which isn't cheap and actually requires some degree of technical know-how to shoot on.) I simply want to conclude by saying that, until now, I have never given anything a rating of "0/10". Previously, no matter how awful a film appeared to be, I always held off slapping it with a score that low because I was sure that there must be something in the world that was worse than it, and that I couldn't make use of this score until I could be sure I had seen something approximating the worst film ever made. That long search is now over. While I can conceive of there being other films that are as bad as Freddy Got Fingered, the notion of there being anything more awful is beyond my reasoning. I have gazed into the abyss, and it gazed back at me. And it wanked an elephant off.

Import proof

Apparently, German distributor Senator Home Entertainment, currently an HD DVD distributor, will be following in Warner's footsteps and dropping support for the format to concentrate exclusively on Blu-ray.

Among the various titles the format owned the rights to and planned to release on HD DVD were the two halves of Grindhouse, Planet Terror and Death Proof, the latter of which was even listed on Amazon.de and which I had pre-ordered. With it now unlikely to see the light of day, I've cancelled my order.

The sad part of this is that, so far, Senator's Blu-ray releases have apparently been region coded, which means that, unless I supplement my Region A Playstation 3 with a Region B model, I probably won't be able to play any eventual Blu-ray releases of these two films. Aren't you just loving this new Blu future?

HD banditry

Although they have been floating cover art, vague specs and a "coming soon" release window for some time now, Universal have, until today, not unveiled many specifics about their upcoming HD DVD release of Ridley Scott's latest film, American Gangster.

Today, however, they issued an official announcement, confirming its release date as February 19th, along with its full specs. This will be an HD DVD/DVD combo release, and, oddly enough, while the HD DVD side contains only the theatrical cut, the DVD side, via seamless branching, also throws in what is being described as an "Unrated Extended Cut", clocking in at 19 minutes longer than its theatrical counterpart.

My first reaction upon reading this announcement was "No!!! You morons! What are you thinking releasing it like this?" The more that I think about it, though, the less this annoys me. Does anyone remember the last Ridley Scott film to be released as an "Unrated Extended Cut" (as opposed to a "Director's Cut")? It was Gladiator, and it opened with a visibly pissed off Scott, scarcely able to hide his contempt, telling us that the version we were about to release was categorically not his director's cut. The fact that he and writer Steven Zaillian have provided an audio commentary for the theatrical version rather rather than the extended cut suggests to me that this is their preferred version. I wouldn't be at all surprised to discover that the extended version was just another Gladiator, with a few scenes that were rightly left on the cutting room floor spliced back in.

Bottom line, it would have been nice to have had both versions in HD, but I'm not losing sleep over this. Unlike some people, I'm not about to cancel my pre-order.

I am, however, disappointed to note that many of the extras from the DVD have been left off this release... although it may turn out that much of the missing material may be replicated in the picture-in-picture feature on the HD DVD.

Now this is more like it

Last night, Lyris and I watched his recently-acquired HD DVD of the Director's Cut of Zodiac. Like Crank (see here), it was shot entirely in the digital realm, but unlike Crank, it didn't have a bunch of chimpanzees fiddling with the image control knobs. Zodiac continues Paramount's winning streak for new releases, with a virtually flawless transfer that makes the standard definition release appear even more embarrassing than it did already. If you look very closely, you can see a teeny tiny bit of sharpening, which I suspect was added during post production (the on-screen text, such as credits and location type, are unaffected), but otherwise this is one of the absolute best presentations of a movie I've ever seen (at least in a technical sense - I'm personally not a fan at all of the completely grain-free look).

Zodiac: Director's Cut
(Paramount, USA, AVC, 24 GB)

What edge enhancement is and why not to use it

They say a picture's worth a thousand words, which is why I'm going to keep this post brief. The screen captures below are taken from Lions Gate's Blu-ray release of Crank, a disc that has been praised by many reviewers but gives me a headache every time I look at it for more than a few minutes. Why? Because it is riddled with edge enhancement, and I suspect that seeing this sort of ringing at a resolution of 1920x1080 will give you some idea of why I am so against this practice.

The weirdest part is that this video vandalism appears to have been intentional, added during the film's post production phase, presumably as a means of adding "intensity" to the scenes that have been affected. A number of shots and even some entire sequences are unmolested, a good example of which can be found in the sixth screen capture below. In this scene, a split-screen effect has been employed, with the shot of Jason Statham manipulated to buggery but the shot of Amy Smart seemingly unmolested. It really beggars belief.

Crank
(Lions Gate, USA, MPEG-2, 19.8 GB)

There's life in this old Bolshevik yet

Well, the news of Warner's switch to Blu-ray's exclusivity and expected demise of HD DVD may have stolen the headlines, but the format certainly isn't going to vanish overnight. Before Universal and Paramount move over to Blu-ray as well, hammering the final nail into HD DVD's coffin, I will continue to buy new releases that are exclusive to the format.

One of these is Eastern Promises, which arrived this morning. I wasn't too taken by David Cronenberg's previous two films, Spider and A History of Violence, but this one, while very much a companion piece to them, for some reason appealed to me much more. Maybe it's the excellent cast, including Naomi Watts, Viggo Mortensen, Sinéad Cusack and Vincent Cassel, but the other two films had stellar talent in front of the camera as well (including Mortensen, in the case of A History of Violence). Maybe it's the fact that the London location resonates with me more than Violence's small-town America - but then again, Spider was also set in London. It's not even the subject matter, since gangster movies generally irritate me. (Not that this is a typical gangster movie in any sense: for one thing, the gangsters in this film don't say "fuck" in every sentence and call each other "faggots" every five minutes. For another, it's not shot in near-black and white, headache-inducing shakeycam.) I don't know why, but this one really clicked for me, and I'm sorry I didn't get to see it before the end of 2007, because, if I had, it would have garnered a pretty high position in my annual Top 10.

Oh, and the HD DVD transfer is also solid, proving once again that Universal's standard for DI-sourced material is among the best (the less said about their track record for catalogue releases, though, the better). It looks to have been slightly degrained, and it isn't as razor sharp as something like Resident Evil: Extinction or The Bourne Ultimatum, but it is a pleasant, rich, detailed image with no visible compression problems. And Naomi Watts doesn't look half bad occupying 130" of my wall.

Eastern Promises
(Universal, USA, VC-1. 15.7 GB)

New Line in the deep Blu sea

In a move that is sure to have surprised precisely no people, New Line Cinema have announced their plans to follow parent company Warner and support Blu-ray exclusively. Charitably described as a "transition" by High-Def Digest, this move is more of the "jump cut" variety, as the move is effective immediately, making the studio's first HD DVD release, Pan's Labyrinth, also its last. New Line's stance towards HD DVD was always more lukewarm than Warner's, with its non-catalogue releases Hairspray and Rush Hour 3 delayed on HD DVD due to cited concerns over the format's lack of region coding. Therefore, despite announcing that these titles would be arriving on the red format at a later date, this will no longer be the case. Good things, it would seem, don't always come to those who wait. Or bad things, in the case of Rush Hour 3.

In other news, Paramount and Universal are remaining tight-lipped about the situation, with the usually garrulous Universal declining to comment, while Paramount, despite reaffirming its support for HD DVD, has decided to make no new release announcements at the present time, stating that the titles they had planned to unveil at CES are now "up in the air".

Them zombies is bustin' through the screen, ma!

Yesterday evening, Lyris and I ransacked our self-dignity by watching the Blu-ray release of Resident Evil: Extinction. This franchise is probably our joint favourite cinematic guilty pleasure, and, while I can't respond to criticisms that the scripts are guff, the acting often dreadful and direction somewhere between frenetic and incompetent with anything other than a nod of my head, these films have given me hours of pleasure and haven't bored me for a second. This third (and, it would seem, final) outing isn't as good as the first, but is definitely better than the second, and is highly entertaining for its sprightly 95-minute duration. No, Milla Jovovich can't really act and yes, the characters are dumber than dog-do, but if you're critiquing these aspects, I suspect you're not really getting into the spirit of it. The film is unabashedly stupid, loud and bloody, and in all honesty, sometimes there's nothing wrong with that.

I want to leave the film itself by the wayside now and talk about the transfer, which is a thing of beauty. Certain ill-informed (or just plain vision-impaired) reviewers have predictably been underrating it and complaining about non-existent flaws, but rest assured that this is as close to a flawless transfer as you are going to get with lossy compression, and one of the absolute finest presentations I've ever seen of a film. Detail is impeccable, grain is lovingly reproduced and compression is handled expertly. It sticks in my craw that reviewers who don't seem to know what they're talking about criticise marvellous efforts like these while lavishing praise over second rate offerings, but I suppose I should be used to it by now.

Don't take my word for it, though: take a look at the screen captures below.

Resident Evil: Apocalypse
(Sony Pictures, USA, AVC)

The Warner shopping list

With Warner's HD DVD support on the way out, it no doubt stands to reason that the titles they have already released on at format will now only be on store shelves for a limited time. With that in mind, I thought it would be useful to put together this little post together, cataloguing Warner titles that are either not (yet) available on Blu-ray, or are available on Blu-ray in inferior versions, therefore giving people the opportunity to pick up any titles they want before it's too late.

Please note that this list is not complete by any means, so if you spot any missing titles, or title that are there but shouldn't be, then please leave me a comment and I'll make the necessary changes.

Titles which feature superior audio on HD DVD:

- The Ant Bully (TrueHD)
- Happy Feet (TrueHD)
- Lady in the Water (TrueHD)
- Nip/Tuck: The Complete Fourth Season (1.5 Mbps on HD DVD, 640 Kbps on BD)
- The Phantom of the Opera (TrueHD)
- Superman Returns (TrueHD)
- Training Day (TrueHD)
- The Wicker Man [remake] (TrueHD)

Titles which feature VC-1 encodes on HD DVD but MPEG-2 on BD:

- The Fugitive
- Good Night, and Good Luck
- Kiss Kiss Bang Bang
- Rumor Has It
- Space Cowboys
- Training Day

Titles which are limited to 1080i output on BD:

- Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines (replacement programme expected)

Titles which feature more extras on HD DVD:

- 300
- Blood Diamond
- Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire
- Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix
- Pan's Labyrinth (New Line)
- Troy: Director's Cut

Titles which are currently only available on HD DVD:

- The Adventures of Robin Hood
- Batman Begins
- Caddyshack
- Casablanca
- Charlie and the Chocolate Factory
- Constantine
- The Dukes of Hazzard
- Excalibur
- Forbidden Planet
- Grand Prix
- The Matrix Trilogy
- Mutiny on the Bounty
- The Perfect Storm
- Poseidon
- Troy (theatrical cut)
- V for Vendetta
- Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory

It stands to reason that, with PiP now working on Profile 1.1 Blu-ray players, Warner will begin to release titles originally delayed on Blu-ray because the functionality wasn't there, including Batman Begins and The Matrix Trilogy. Older catalogue titles such as Casablanca and Mutiny on the Bounty reportedly sold poorly on HD DVD, and have no technological reason not to have been released on Blu-ray, so it may be that Warner will simply write them off as expensive mistakes until high definition media has a larger market hold.

Update, January 7th, 2007 02:25 PM: Added Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines, which on BD is limited to 1080i output rather than full 1080p (thanks to Jayson for pointing this one out).

Update, January 7th, 2007 08:01 PM: Added Training Day to the audio section and Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory to the "not available on BD" section. Thanks again, Jayson.

Update, January 10th, 2007 06:51 PM: Removed Million Dollar Baby from the "Titles which feature VC-1 encodes on HD DVD but MPEG-2 on BD" section, as it is in fact a VC-1 encode on both formats (thanks, Anthony).

Update, January 11th, 2007 08:59 AM: Added various titles to the audio section (thanks, Anthony).

DVD debacle

It's funny, all this hoo-ha over the Warner Blu-ray announcement, and what did I end up doing yesterday? I went out during my lunch break and bought some standard definition DVDs. In my defence, they were practically giving them away, with the bulk of them £3.99 and several included in a "Buy two, get a third free" deal. I ended up with Y Tu Mamá También, Little Children, Munich and Factory Girl, with these titles chosen for a combination of reasons, ranging from "I've wanted to see this but never had the opportunity" to "People said this one was good" to "I can't think of another title to get, so I'll pick one at random." Care to guess which was which?

Ultimate quality

Tomorrow, I will be sending my review disc of The Bourne Ultimatum back for a replacement. The reason? It's the first high definition disc I've received, on either format, that suffers from severe playback issues. By "severe", I mean "half the time, the disc won't even start". HD DVD/DVD combo discs like this do, apparently, have a higher fail rate than single-sided discs, so I'm pretty surprised that it's taken till now for me to end up with one. Before packaging up the disc, however, I did manage to take some screen captures - mostly from the first half of the film, as I got a whole bunch of read errors during the second. Enjoy.

The Bourne Ultimatum
(Universal, USA, VC-1)

Feature: Top 10 HD Transfers of 2007

In years gone by, I've done articles, either for DVD Times or for this site, to celebrate the best (and sometimes worst) DVD releases of the year. For reasons too complex to get into (translation: I can't remember them), I didn't do one last year, but I decided that I couldn't repeat this oversight again. So, with that in mind, I've taken a break from complaining about edge enhancement, filtering and dodgy standards conversions to say nothing but nice things. Be amazed at my coverage of the Top 10 HD Transfers of 2007.

A $75 million turkey

My first two optical discs of 2008 arrived this morning, and I'm sorry to say that neither one turned out to be particularly impressive, albeit for different reasons. The first, The Simpsons Movie on Blu-ray, I'll discuss in a minute, but for the moment, I want to take a moment to discuss Cat People on HD DVD (the Paul Schrader remake, not the Val Lewton original), which features, hands down, the worst high definition transfer I've ever paid money to see. Okay, so Traffic and Spartacus (both also from Universal, as it happens) both look worse, but I didn't pay to see these.

From start to finish Cat People has been attacked, and I mean attacked, with the edge enhancement and noise reduction filters, to the extent that every high contrast edge is surrounded by a large white outline, and every time the camera moves the screen turns to mush, while every texture, from skin to fabric to hair, looks like wax. Even more infuriatingly, the clips that play behind the main menu look nothing like this. They are alive with unmolested film grain and, beyond the still-visible edge enhancement, generally look pretty tolerable. Now don't get me wrong: I suspect that the master used was less than stellar to start with, as is true of many catalogue titles from Universal and other studios. However, I also suspect that, had the image simply been left alone, it would have looked no worse than the likes of Enternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind and Lost in Translation, which fall way below my standards of acceptability but are at least watchable. Cat People is just... ugh.

Now, on to the main point of this post (no, I'm not done ranting): The Simpsons Movie. I'll probably be doing a full review for this at some point, so I'll withhold my comments about the transfer until then, save to say that the ringing that some people have pointed out is indeed present from beginning to end, and you'll no doubt be able to see the evidence on my brother's site when he does his own post on the subject very soon. (Incidentally, it really sticks in my craw when people don't themselves see problems that have been identified with transfers, and illustrated through solid evidence, and have the audacity to claim that those who do see them either have faulty equipment or have somehow got "a bad copy" of the disc in question. If you have even the slightest comprehension of how digital replication works, then you'll know how ridiculous the latter is.)

No, my blithering will primarily be restricted to the film itself and what a tragic waste of time it is.

I like The Simpsons, I really do. The first five seasons are almost consistently hilarious, and, for all their bland animation and shoddy timing, they are pretty hard to fault. However, I think it's fair to say that the show has not been at its prime for some time now, and the only thing worse than a has-been show is one that is unceremoniously hauled on to the big screen, where the flaws become even more readily apparent.

I saw The Simpsons Movie late last summer and was thoroughly underwhelmed by it. Foolishly, I thought that a second viewing might improve my appreciation of it, so I decided to pick up a copy of the Blu-ray release. Besides, we're somewhat starved for high definition traditional animation, so, as the saying goes, beggars can't be choosers. Unfortunately, I now find myself wishing I hadn't bothered. The simple reason for this is that, second time round, I already knew the story, so there was nothing, and I mean nothing, left to engage me. Had this, the result of the toiling of fifteen writers, god knows how many animators and a gaggle of overpaid actors who sound like they've never taken voice direction in their lives (that's $75 million to you and me), been broadcast as part of the regular series, it would have been the worst episode of The Simpsons I've ever seen (bearing in mind that I stopped watching regularly at around Season 11). As it stands, it's three times longer than the worst episode of The Simpsons I've ever seen, which means that it's actually three times worse than the worst episode of The Simpsons I've ever seen. And I've seen the one where Homer gets raped by a panda.

I don't often say "Can I have an hour and a half of my life back?" after watching a film, no matter how bad, but I'm going to say it this time. I honestly can't understand how anyone could have a positive word to say about it. The sad part is that it isn't even awful. It's just empty, bland, insincere and ultimately pointless. It's not even funny - I laughed at it perhaps three times: once at Bart's "doodle", once at the gag where Bart defaces the Wanted picture of his family (itself a retread of a gag used at least twice before in the show), and then at the one genuinely funny line in the entire film: "You just bought another load of crap from the world's fattest fertiliser salesman!" Which, oddly enough, is exactly how I felt when I remembered I'd given 20th Century Fox my money for this film.

So can I have an hour and a half of my life back, please?

Update, January 3rd, 2008 09:52 PM: Lyris' post, with pictures, can now be found here.

Unleashed unleashed

Courtesy of the goons at Blu-ray.com comes the news that the HD DVD exclusive (in the US) Unleashed is being released on Blu-ray in Japan on February 22nd, under its original title of Danny the Dog. I already have the US HD DVD, but the fact that it is being released under the title that seems to be reserved for the slightly longer, more character-oriented French cut of the film, has sparked my interest in this version. I've no idea which cut of the film was released in Japan, but the title, along with the fact that both China and Hong Kong got the French cut, means that, by my estimation, chances are pretty high that this Blu-ray release will be the same.

Given the extortionate prices of Japanese optical disc media, I'm going to wait till I know for sure which version will appear on this disc, but it would be nice to replace (or supplement) the in my opinion inferior American version. Additionally, given that the HD DVD transfer was somewhat filtered, it would please me greatly if this version looked better.

It's sweepstakes time!

Top 10 films of 2007:

1. Black Book (Netherlands/Germany/Belgium: Paul Verhoeven)
2. Zodiac (USA: David Fincher)
3. The Lives of Others (Germany, Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck)
4. Planet Terror (USA: Robert Rodriguez)
5. Sicko (USA: Michael Moore)
6. Hot Fuzz (UK/France: Edgar Wright)
7. Ratatouille (USA: Brad Bird)
8. Death Proof (USA: Quentin Tarantino)
9. Black Snake Moan (USA: Craig Brewer)
10. Mother of Tears (Italy/USA: Dario Argento)

(Also posted at DVD Times)
 

Top 10 optical disc releases of 2007:

Black Book (Blu-ray, Sony Pictures, USA)
Blade Runner: 5-disc Complete Collector's Edition (HD DVD, Warner, USA)
Cars (Blu-ray, Disney, USA)
Casino Royale (Blu-ray, Sony Pictures, Finland)
Children of Men (HD DVD, Universal, USA)
Hot Fuzz (HD DVD, Universal, UK)
Mulholland Drive (HD DVD, Studio Canal, France)
Ratatouille (Blu-ray, Disney, USA)
Silent Hill (HD DVD, Concorde, Germany)
Les Triplettes de Belleville (HD DVD, France Télévisions Éditions, France)

(Also posted at DVD Times)

 
Notes: These lists are based solely on what I myself have seen of the films and discs released in 2007. I make no claims as to them being all-inclusive. Some of the films listed were still playing in UK cinemas in 2007 despite being released in 2006. The top optical disc releases were chosen from a combination of the quality of the films themselves, the audio/visual presentation and the extras.

The Year in Review, 2007

Well, another year has been and gone. We're all a year older, but probably not much wiser. As usual, I'm going to do a brief run-down of various events and issues that I've touched on in my news posts over the year. It's generally not my style to comment on current affairs, so I won't be saying anything about the murder of Benazir Bhutto, Tony Blair's departure from office or anything like that. This year, I've decided to split things into several sections.

 
Life Itself

Life™ was somewhat different for me this year. The biggest change was, fairly obviously, that, at the end of March, I landed myself a full-time job, working for the NHS on their Smoking Cessation programme. I spent four and a half months working thirty-seven and a half hours a week in an office, entering data and phoning people to ask them whether they had managed to successfully stop smoking, and, while I'm not about to claim that this was the most unpleasant way anyone could ever spend four and a half months, I won't deny that I was extremely relieved to see the back of the place in August, at which point I went into a part-time Library Assistant position at the Gallery of Modern Art. To say that I find this job vastly preferable to my previous one would be the understatement of the year, and that's not just because I work fewer hours.

On a not entirely unrelated note, my application for funding for my PhD was unsuccessful, but my four and a half months of back-breaking (I kid) labour with the NHS was enough to pay for my first year of part-time study, and more besides. I started the PhD, on portrayals of gender in the giallo (following on from my MLitt dissertation on the same area), at the end of September and, while illness in November prevented me from making as much headway as I would have liked, the work that I've done so far has certainly gone a long way towards getting me back into the swing of things, academically speaking, and I look forward to properly delving into my subject of choice over the next twelve months.

 
Zeros and Ones

The big technological issue of 2007 was the ongoing battle between the two rival high definition home video formats, HD DVD and Blu-ray, and the perpetual game of teeter-totter in which each format continued to vie for supremacy, engaging in a conflict of words as much as sales. A war in which what your opposition doesn't have is every bit as important as what you do have, the biggest surprise was undoubtedly Paramount's shock decision, in August, to ditch Blu-ray entirely and concentrate on HD DVD. With no end to the format war in sight any time soon, 2008 looks set to be another interesting year.

For me, my most significant purchase was that of a Japanese Playstation 3, reneging on my single format stance and embracing neutrality. Personally speaking, the balance continues to lie firmly in favour of HD DVD in terms of exclusive titles (a fact only compounded by the aforementioned Paramount decision), but I can't deny that it's nice to be able to own and watch high definition copies of Casino Royale, The Descent and Ratatouille.

I also bought three additional pieces of hardware: a new desktop PC in May, an Xbox 360 HD DVD add-on drive in July (to replace my clunky and oversized stand-alone HD-A1 player), and a Blu-ray enabled laptop in October. In the case of the latter, my original intention was to use it primarily for PhD work, although, in reality, I've got just as much, if not more, use out of it as a convenient means of taking screen captures from Blu-ray discs.

 
At the Pictures

Perhaps largely due to my period of full-time employment, I watched somewhat fewer films this year than in the previous two years. By my calculation, I watched a total of 164 films, 77 of which were ones that I hadn't seen before, down from 216 (99 new) in 2006. Still, I did manage to see several significant films, including the great - 2001: A Space Odyssey, Babel, Black Book, Black Sabbath, the Final Cut of Blade Runner, Blood Diamond, Children of Men, Full Metal Jacket, Grindhouse, Hot Fuzz, Inside Man, Life of Brian, The Lives of Others, Pan's Labyrinth, Ratatouille, Sicko, This Film is Not Yet Rated, Zodiac - the reasonably good - 1408, Anchorman: The Legend of Ron Burgundy, Borat: Cultural Learnings of America for Make Benefit Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan, Brokeback Mountain, Brotherhood of the Wolf, The Bourne Ultimatum, Chicago, Crank, The Game, Hard Candy, Idiocracy, Mission Impossible, Mission Impossible III, Mother of Tears, Perfume: The Story of a Murderer, Red Road, Syriana, Tideland, Transformers - and the guff - Aeon Flux, Fantastic Four, The Fountain, Futurama: Bender's Big Score!, Hostel, House of the Dead, The Matrix Revolutions, Mission Impossible II, Norbit, Paprika, A Scanner Darkly, The Simpsons Movie and the remakes of Poseidon and The Wicker Man.

Best new film I saw in the year? Either Black Book or Children of Men. Worst? Without a shadow of a doubt, Norbit.

I bought or otherwise received 118 films on disc, 42 of which were HD DVDs, 31 Blu-ray discs and 45 standard definition DVDs. I wrote 44 reviews for DVD Times, down from last year's 66. Of these, 16 were for HD DVDs, 12 for Blu-ray discs and 16 for standard definition DVDs.

 
Bibliothèque

I read the following books: Legion by William Peter Blatty, The Naked Drinking Club by Rhona Cameron, Casino Royale by Ian Fleming, The Day of the Jackal and The Odessa File by Frederick Forsythe, Carrie by Stephen King, The Historian by Elizabeth Kostova, The Red Dahlia by Lynda La Plante, Rosemary's Baby by Ira Levin, Almost Blue by Carlo Lucarelli, The Dead Hour by Denise Mina, The Mephisto Waltz by Fred Mustard Stewart, Odette by Jerrard Tickell, Mercy Alexander by George Tiffin, and The Devil Rides Out, Gateway to Hell, Strange Conflict and To the Devil - a Daughter by Dennis Wheatley. Which, now that I think about it, is a heck of a lot more than I'd expected.

 
Song and Dance

I snagged the following CDs: The Bird with the Crystal Plumage (Ennio Morricone), Blood Diamond (James Newton Howard), Cars (Randy Newman), The Descent (David Julyan), Grindhouse: Planet Terror (Robert Rodriguez/John Debney/Graeme Revell), The Iron Giant (Michael Kamen), Kingdom of Heaven (Harry Gregson-Williams), Mother of Tears (Claudio Simonetti), The Professional (Eric Serra), The Secret of NIMH (Jerry Goldsmith), Serenity (David Newman), This is the Life (Amy MacDonald), V for Vendetta (Dario Marianelli), Veronica Guerin (Harry Gregson-Williams), Why Bother? (Peter Cook and Chris Morris).

 
Well, all in all, I think that's it for another year. Look back on it, it reads a bit like a shopping list with the occasional personal titbit, but I suppose that's the way of things in our evil capitalist society. Anyway, here's to a great 2008 and yet more wanton spending.