Reviews

Lost in translation

This morning, I forced myself to sit down and watch Paprika… with an emphasis on forced, because I really did find it a chore to sit through. I have nothing against nonsensical films that operate in the world of dream logic - Mulholland Drive and Inferno being two of my absolute all-time favourites - but, if the director doesn’t know what he or she is doing, or loses his or her sense of perspective, it’s easy to lose track of what counts. With Paprika, I can only assume that, as with Darren Aronofsky’s The Fountain (another dream logic film I saw recently and hated), everything made sense to writer/director Satoshi Kon in his head, but he was unable to translate this on to the screen in a way that resonated… with me at any rate. I never felt as if I was actually experiencing a dream, just viewing one nonsensical scene after another.

“I’m not bland, I’m just not good at expressing my emotions.”

It doesn’t help that, unlike the other Satoshi Kon film I’ve seen, the excellent Tokyo Godfathers, the visual style is that bland, stilted, lifeless look that I (rightly or wrongly) associate with anime. Rather than moving their whole faces when they speak, characters’ mouths just open and close, and the voices (in the original Japanese - the English dub is unsurprisingly cringe-worthy) certainly don’t add any more life to these wooden personalities. There is some nice colour work, and a couple of interesting visual images, but most of the latter are to be found in the opening credits - really not a good sign. The designs are mostly bland and generic, and I find myself wondering how the same director could produce such inventive visuals in Tokyo Godfathers, working with a much more reality-based storyline, and yet give this high fantasy such an uninspired look.

I do intend to seek out Satoshi Kon’s other work - Perfect Blue and Millenium Actress - but I sincerely hope my enjoyment of Tokyo Godfathers wasn’t just a fluke.

4/10.

DVD review: The Secret of NIMH: Family Fun Edition

This new release of The Secret of NIMH comfortably renders its predecessors obsolete, sporting a decent transfer and audio track. The extras are disappointingly sparse, and the whole package has clearly been aimed at a younger age group than the film’s original intended audience, but even so, fans should not hesitate to pick up a copy of this version.

Courtesy of DVD Pacific, I’ve reviewed the new 2-disc “Family Fun Edition” of Don Bluth’s The Secret of NIMH, released to coincide with the film’s 25th anniversary.

The Odessa File

Frederick Forsythe is probably best known, as a novelist, for The Day of the Jackal, which somehow manages to combine a painstaking level of attention to detail with an extremely gripping plot, resulting in the book being compulsive page-turner despite is extremely clinical style. The Odessa File, written a year later, retains The Day of the Jackal’s attention to detail, but for the most part of a more conventionally structured suspense thriller, focusing on an intrepid hero rather than a ruthless killer, and unfortunately suffering from a series of plot contrivances that The Day of the Jackal was able to avoid. Both books were, within the space of a few years, turned into films produced by John Woolf and written by Kenneth Ross, although this is where the crew similarities end.

In 1963, Hamburg journalist Peter Miller (Jon Voight) inherits the diary of a suicide victim who was formerly a prisoner at Riga concentration camp during the Second World War. The diary implicates the camp’s ruthless Commandant, Eduard Roschmann (Maximilian Schell), in a series of barbaric war crimes, and Miller decides to set about tracking the man down himself and bringing him to justice. Unfortunately, he finds himself up against something of a brick wall, given the German public’s apathy towards digging up this shameful past, as well as the high level of infiltration into the civil services by former Nazis, who naturally have a vested interest in preventing their old identities from being uncovered.

The film is largely a faithful adaptation of its source material, but it deviates in a few respects, some of which actually end up weakening it. The part of Miller’s stripper girlfriend Sigi (Mary Tamm), for example, is beefed up, but this only really amounts to more screen time for her rather than her actually affecting the narrative in any way. Likewise, a few plot elements are compressed to save time, while the subplot of a planned Egyptian offensive against Israel, involving the unleashing chemicals over its major cities, is relegated to a brief mention at the beginning and end. In effect, they might as well not have bothered including it at all - surprising, given that it was what gave the novel so much of its urgency. More damagingly, though, the film makes it clear almost from the get-go why Miller is so driven to track down Roschmann. In the novel, his motive is concealed among Forsythe’s trademark screeds of painstakingly detailed descriptions, and as such doesn’t draw attention to itself, but, in the film, this issue is lingered on to the extent that the audience will surely put two and two together immediately. The film’s depiction of the atrocities committed by the Nazis is also greatly toned down from the material in the novel, which probably explains the rather tame PG certificate.

Highlight below to reveal spoiler text:

As with The Day of the Jackal, the film adaptation constitutes a step down from its source. Unfortunately, the film, while engaging enough, is also not of the same standard as Fred Zinnemann’s The Day of the Jackal, which succeeded in adapting the novel’s clinical, detached narrative style to the screen. Ronald Neame’s The Odessa File is, like the book on which it is based, a more conventional affair and thus fails to distinguish itself from the crowd of war and post-war movie thrillers made at around the same time.

Overall, a 7/10 for the film. I don’t tend to give numerical ratings to books, but if I did, The Odessa File would probably be an 8/10.

HD DVD review: The Skeleton Key

Universal’s HD DVD for The Skeleton Key constitutes a definite improvement on the standard definition release in terms of audio-visual quality, although it’s still far from the upper echelons of the format’s capability. Unless you enjoyed the film a great deal, or habitually rebuy all your standard definition titles in standard definition, there’s not a great deal here to justify shelling out for the same film twice, but if you don’t already own the DVD, this HD DVD is a fine place to start.

The Bayou goes high definition in The Skeleton Key, released on HD DVD by Universal with all of the content from the standard definition release intact. Descend into the swamps at DVD Times…

Buffy the Vampire Slayer: Season 8, Episode 4: The Long Way Home, Part Four

Written by Joss Whedon; Illustrated by Georges Jeanty

So the first “arc” of Buffy’s eighth season reaches its conclusion. Given the dramatically different nature of comics as a medium versus television, it’s difficult to say precisely how these issues would relate to an episode of the TV show, but, allowing for how much longer it takes for action to unfold in dramatic form versus on the page, I’d say that this four-part opening arc feels somewhat akin to a 90-minute two-parter like Bargaining (Season 6). By that I mean that a similar amount of ground has been covered: too much for these four issues to constitute a single episode, but not enough for each issue to operate as an episode in its own right.

In some respects, things have moved a lot faster than they ever did in the TV show. Already we’ve been introduced to three potential villains and a vast number of Slayerettes, seen Buffy sent into a deep sleep and then awakened by the kiss of true love Sleeping Beauty style, had Willow engage in a whiz-bang mid-air duel with Amy, be kidnapped and subjected to an array of horrific tortures (which for some reason leave her completely unscarred - thanks to her new post-Chosen powers, perhaps?), and a whole lot more besides. And yet, at the same time, I’m not all that convinced that a great deal has happened. We’ve had snatches of characterisation (I hesitate to call it character development at this stage), true, but it’s mostly been smoke and mirrors. With the change in medium, I get the impression that Whedon is intent in converting Buffy into more of an action superhero, devoting more time than ever before to the fight scenes. It doesn’t help that these fight scenes don’t always read very well on the page, with the staging at times making the action rather incomprehensible. Then again, I had exactly the same problems trying to follow the action in V for Vendetta, so perhaps it’s a problem with me rather than the artwork itself. Either way, I’m impressed by the way that Jeanty manages to capture the essence of Willow/Hannigan, Xander/Brendon and, some of the time, Buffy/Gellar in his artwork. Dawn, Amy and Andrew (who, mercifully, doesn’t appear in this issue) are a lot shakier, but it’s no mean feat to be able to take the likenesses of real people and translate them into fairly flat drawings while ensuring that they remain recognisable. That said, Jo Chen’s cover art is really on another level. (I wonder if the actors get royalties for the use of their images?)

Unfortunately, letting it all down for me is the fact that Whedon has, for some inexplicable reason, decided to bring back Warren, one of the worst villains in the history of the show - if not the worst. He’s not as annoying as Andrew, true, but his presence leaves a foul taste in the back of my throat, bringing back unpleasant memories of Seasons 6 and 7. At least, as a leering, skinless cadaver, he has become slightly more interesting, at least on a visual level.

Right now, I find myself at something of a crossroads. I can’t deny that I want to find out where this is all headed, but at the same time I have a sneaking suspicion that Whedon is making this up as he goes along (since the comics began production, the series has ballooned from a 22-episode season into a 50-plus issue epic), and, if this is true, I suspect that the end result will be as dramatically unsatisfying as the final two seasons of the TV show. I hope I’m proved wrong, but, at this stage in the game, I think that the fan-written continuation The Chosen has done a better job of capturing the tone of classic Buffy while taking the characters and their storylines in new and satisfying directions. Some will probably hold this opinion to be absolute heresy - after all, it’s Whedon’s baby and the comics are canon while The Chosen is not - but so sue me, Seasons 6 and 7 have severely diminished my opinion of the creator’s storytelling abilities, and Season 8, for far, has not done a great deal to allay this.

Oh yeah, and Ethan Rayne is dead. This being the Buffyverse, though, who wants to bet how long it will be before he gets resurrected as some sort of ghoulish otherworldly being?

5/10.

HD DVD review: Mulholland Drive

Mulholland Drive arrives on HD DVD in a predictably no-frills package from Studio Canal, who seem to view high definition content and bonus features as an either-or situation. While the transfer is in many respects very strong, it is let down by overzealous noise reduction, and the audio pitch problem is yet another silly error that could easily have been avoided. A US release has been rumoured at some point in the next year, so it may be worth waiting to see if Universal is able to provide a better package.

The UK release may have been delayed indefinitely, but those on the mainland are already enjoying Mulholland Drive in high definition! I’ve reviewed the French HD DVD release of David Lynch’s quintessential fever dream.

DVD review: Pan’s Labyrinth: Platinum Series

New Line have served Pan’s Labyrinth extremely well in terms of audio and bonus content, but as is usually the case the lacklustre image quality lets the side down.

I’ve reviewed the R1 Platinum Series edition of Pan’s Labyrinth, Guillermo Del Toro’s critically acclaimed and award-winning dark fairytale. New Line’s 2-disc set, features excellent audio and an impressive array of extras.

Review copy courtesy of CD-WOW.

HD DVD review: The Fountain

The Fountain gets a decidedly mediocre HD release that doesn’t do its lush visuals justice by any stretch of the imagine. Still, even if it had been graced with the most impressive transfer ever, I would still find it rather difficult to recommend this infuriatingly nonsensical ramble even as demo material. If you like the film, you may find some of the additional bonus materials interesting, but if, like me, you thought it was a pompous load of odd cobblers, there’s really nothing here worth bothering about.

I unsuccessfully try to work out what on earth is going on in my review of Warner’s HD DVD/DVD combo release of The Fountain.

Carrie

Confession time: this is the first time I’ve read a Stephen King novel. No, really. That’s quite an accomplishment, given my interest in horror and the sheer number of horror novels King has written, but I suppose we’ve all got to start somewhere.

Generally speaking, when I read a book that has been made into a film, in instances where I’ve seen the film first, I tend to come away with the impression that the book is the better version, with too much having been lost in the adaptation process. Not so with Carrie: I genuinely think that Brian De Palma improved the story in his iconic 1976 film. Carrie is a scant 200 pages (plus, in my copy, a new introduction by King in which he talks, at some length, about its origins), and I read it in dribs and drabs over the course of a week (that’s pretty fast by my standards). It definitely gripped me considerably more than the last book I read, The Historian, but I wouldn’t call it a masterpiece by any means. King uses an interesting technique (abandoned by De Palma in his film version) in which he intercuts the narrative with extracts from various publications - academic journals, courtroom transcripts, the written testimony of survivors of the fateful prom night - giving the read insight into the minds of people other than just poor Carrie White. Sometimes it works, sometimes it’s just a distraction that gets in the way of the plot.

Unfortunately, I suspect that my having seen the film beforehand coloured my reading of the book. King refers to Carrie on numerous occasions as large and “bovine”, which Sissy Spacek most assuredly is not. He describes Margaret White in a similar way, which again clashes with the appearance of Piper Laurie in the film. It’s odd that the image of Carrie as a frail, slight girl seems to have been adopted so unanimously, as just about every piece of cover artwork that I’ve seen for the book, whether explicitly based on Spacek’s appearance in the film or not, bears more resemblance to the character from the film than to the one described on the page. That’s not, of course, a problem with the book itself but rather the way its image has been altered by the film’s influence.

As with The Exorcist (and I’ll get back to reading Legion very soon, Lee, I promise!), what struck me most about Carrie was the film’s faithfulness to its source material. Entire scenes and conversations have been lifted from page to celluloid, although, like I mentioned before, the film dispensed with the fictitious “secondary sources” used in the book. Some key changes were also made to the final act, probably due to budgetary constraints, and a plot involving a telepathic link between Carrie and Sue Snell (through whose eyes we see many of the events in the book) was also dropped.

So yeah, my first Stephen King, and probably not my last. I enjoyed it for sure, but it didn’t offer any startling revelations that I would have missed by just watching the film.

“Ya rotten kids, ya should be locked in cages!”

After many years of shoddy treatment at the hands of its distributor, Problem Child, one of my favourite bad movies ever, has finally been released properly!

This film, and its sequel, the imaginatively named Problem Child 2, have, for some time, only been available on DVD in 4x3 full frame format. Obviously, these aren’t the most prestigious titles Universal has ever released, and you won’t see them being added to the studio’s HD DVD line-up any time soon (then again, considering some of the junk they’ve released in high definition, you’d think they might be well at home there), but no movie, not even Voodoo Academy, deserved to be butchered in such a way. Thankfully, Universal’s European distribution wing have come to the rescue, releasing the two original “classics”, and an apparently embarrassing made-for-TV sequel, on April 3rd, in a 3-disc box set, named, like its two-film US counterpart, the Problem Child Tantrum Pack. Recognising the important place that these films hold in the history of cinema, the BBFC have also agreed to waive the cuts they originally demanded to Problem Child 2 (the film was unlucky enough to be released at the height of the board’s nunchuk obsession).

Naturally, I’ve ordered myself a copy, from Play. I also took the opportunity to order a copy of Black Book (Zwartboek in its native Dutch), a film I originally intended to go to see at the cinema (yeah, yeah, how many times have I said that and not gone through with it?). It’s a Paul Verhoeven film, so chances are it’s laughably bad, shamelessly tasteless, or both, but it got some pretty good write-ups at the time of its theatrical release, so I’m going to give it the benefit of the doubt. Oh yeah, and hope to get my reviews of both The Fountain (boo, hiss) and Pan’s Labyrinth (which I still haven’t got round to watching) before the end of the weekend.

Blu-ray review: Casino Royale

Despite the lack of decent bonus material on this release, I suspect that most people will be more than happy with the sumptuous image quality and solid audio. For Bond’s first high definition outing, Sony have certainly come up trumps, and I only hope that future releases in the series will be able to come close to matching this quality. Provided you import an uncut copy, and don’t consider in-depth extras to be an essential part of the viewing process, it’s hard to go wrong with Casino Royale on Blu-ray.

James Bond gets his first ever high definition outing with Casino Royale. I’ve reviewed the recent Finnish Blu-ray release from Sony Pictures.

The Historian

In the 21st century, writing a novel set in the present day (or near enough to it) and featuring the character of Dracula is nothing if not a challenge. The figure has become so ingrained in popular culture that the author really only has two options: (a) pretend that the last century or so of Dracula-inspired literature, cinema and all-round pop culture never happened and, in doing so, make the characters of your novel seem incredibly out of touch, or (b) acknowledge that Bram Stoker, Bela Lugosi, Christopher Lee et al did indeed happen, and run the risk of becoming incredibly self-conscious (in the Scream mould) in the process. With The Historian, Elizabeth Kostova does something rather interesting, acknowledging the existence of Stoker’s book, the Lugosi film and so on, but spending a minimum amount of time with them and instead attempting to combine Dracula with an actual historical figure, the 15th century Romanian warlord Vlad the Impaler, from whose surname, Drâculea, comes the name of the fictitious vampire.

This works for two reasons. First of all, the origin of Dracula’s name is already widely known, although the extent to which Stoker based his character on the historical figure has been greatly exaggerated. This gives Kostova’s use of Vlad the Impaler a certain degree of authenticity. Secondly, Kostova has invested considerable effort in establishing a network of fictional historical sources, events, characters and places, portrayed in a manner that makes them seem genuinely credible. (Occasionally, she oversteps the mark: sitting down to read an entire chapter which served as fictional historical paper turned out to be every bit as mind-numbingly tedious as my experiences with the real thing.) The author manages to cross-cut between at least three separate storylines spanning more than half a century without it ever becoming confusing (although I did, at times, become rather aware that I was essentially ready chapter after chapter about people reading about people reading about people). Apparently, the novel took ten years to write; based on the complexity of the narrative and the ordered manner in which it is presented, I can well believe it.

Unfortunately, it would be something of a stretch to claim that I was thoroughly gripped by the book from start to finish. The amount of time it has taken me to finish it since I began it shortly after finishing Casino Royale, back in February (!!), should serve as some indication of the extent to which my interest in it dipped and peaked. Sometimes I found myself genuinely engrossed in the narrative, but on other occasions I actually considered the prospect of sitting down to read another chapter to be an unnecessary chore. The book is 700 pages of fairly tense text, and, despite being unkindly referred to by some pundits as “The Dracula Code”, based on its narrative similarities to The Da Vinci Code, it moves at a snail’s pace for the most part. A page-turner this is not, and I wonder how on earth Sony Pictures are planning to adapt the narrative for their upcoming movie adaptation.

Part of the problem is that none of the characters are all that vividly depicted. The unnamed narrator, a teenage girl who finds herself traversing 1970s Europe searching for her missing father (whose disappearance has something to do with the legend of Dracula), is pretty much a blank slate. This may be partly down to the fact that, for the most part, she is underused, serving as little more than a means of relaying the content of her father’s letters to the reader, but the various individuals whom she meets, or about whom she reads, are either similarly ill-defined or else exaggerated caricatures of stock figures. Kindly but stuffy English professors, excessively polite Turkish academics and wizened Slavic women living in huts are in abundance, and it’s hard to really care about any of them, or visualise them as real people. There are also some serious problems with the pacing as, after moving incredibly slowly for around 650 pages, the final climax (actually, make that a series of climaxes) is crammed into the remaining 50 and wrapped up in the space of a couple of chapters. Considering the complexity of the material that precedes it, the eventual encounter between Dracula and the narrator feels a bit anticlimactic.

In the end, it’s difficult to know where I stand as regards The Historian. Do I regret reading it? No, but at the same time I’m acutely aware that I would probably have been able to read at least two more engaging novels of similar length in the same space of time. With a good book, as with a good film, I tend to sit and think about what I’ve just experienced once I’ve read the final page or watched the final line of the credits scroll to the top of the screen. Last night, when I finished The Historian, I shut the book, switched off the light and promptly fell asleep.

HD DVD review: HDScape: Antarctica Dreaming/Visions of the Sea

Of the two titles, Antarctica Dreaming is the most substantial, operating as a fully-fledged 83-minute documentary, whereas Visions of the Sea is essentially a series of undeniably visually arresting but ultimately unconnected images, which rapidly outstays its welcome if you attempt to engage with it for its full 60-minute duration. For those who find the subject matter interesting, these discs are likely to hold some appeal, but those considering buying them simply to act as demo material are advised that there are many better-looking titles on offer.

It’s a dirty job, but someone’s got to do it. I’ve taken a look at two nature documentary titles in the HDScape line, Antarctica Dreaming and Visions of the Sea, presented on two HD DVD/DVD combo discs.

Interesting promotional tactics

http://www.dvdtimes.co.uk/content.php?contentid=64873

Given the number of negative reviews this film has received, I’m surprised they picked a quote that could so easily be misinterpreted.

Buffy the Vampire Slayer: Season 8, Episode 3: The Long Way Home, Part Three

Written by Joss Whedon; Illustrated by Georges Jeanty

As I suspected as soon as I saw the cover, much of this episode is a pyrotechnics extravaganza, a showdown between Willow and Amy, whose sudden hatred of Buffy and co is something I sincerely hope is going to be explained before too long, because it seems to have come out of nowhere and makes no sense at all (like so many ideas that materialised during Season 7). The amount of power with which Whedon has infused Willow is also giving me cause for concern. Unless he can find a convincing way of curbing her obviously impressive magical prowess, people are going to start wondering why, if she can turn all the Potentials in the world into full-blown Slayers, she can’t, oh, say, end world hunger, go back in time and prevent World War 2, resurrect her dead girlfriend (or anyone else who happens to be dead, come to that)… I’m getting shades of vengeance demon Anya from early Season 7 all over again, where the writers suddenly realised that having a character who can teleport anywhere at will created a few plot problems.

Elsewhere, Buffy’s atmospheric dream continues, although personally I found its resolution slightly anticlimactic. Some definite issues to be worked out between herself and Xander, methinks - although romantic angst, in my opinion, certainly beats the manic-depressive angst of Season 6 (and, to some extent, Season 7). Some nice dialogue as well, and, shockingly, the best line of the episode goes to Dawn: “Fe fi fo fucking fum!”

6/10.

Blu-ray review: Dragon’s Lair

How much you get out of Dragon’s Lair on Blu-ray will unsurprisingly depend on how fond your memories are of the arcade original. This is undeniably the best it has ever looked (although pointless “restoration” techniques incompetently applied prevent it from reaching its full potential), and the bonus features are uniformly excellent. However, I personally struggle to find a single kind word to say about the game itself, while there is no guarantee that the disc will work correctly or at all if you do not own one of the small number of players on which it was tested prior to release, thanks to the blasé attitude of the Blu-ray Disc Association regarding the format’s interactive functionality. Caveat emptor, as the saying goes.

For DVD Times’ first ever review of interactive HD content, I dig up some 80s nostalgia for a review of the Blu-ray adaptation of the popular arcade hit Dragon’s Lair.

Chasing the dragon

I’m well aware that a deliciously derisive review of the monumental suckfest that is Dragon’s Lair on Blu-ray should have been forthcoming by now, and I really hope to get it done before the weekend, but the fact is that I’ve been feeling a little down in the dumps since Friday with a rather bad cold. The thing laid me low to the extent that I actually called in sick on Monday and Tuesday (not that I minded not having to go into that sweltering office and sit in front of a flickery monitor), and I’m still feeling a bit zapped of energy and motivation. I’ll give the thing one more try before putting pen to paper, but I have to honestly say that this is going to be one of those rare 1/10 reviews. It’s a failure as a game and an even bigger failure if you try to class it as a movie, so I’m not sure there’s anything nice I can say about it at all. Sometimes genuinely scathing reviews can be fun to write, but in this case, I suspect that it’s going to be little more than a chore.

It’s a royal flush!

Wrong game, I know, but I don’t know anything about cards. The point is, my copy of the Finnish release of Casino Royale on Blu-ray arrived today.

(Coincidentally, Lyris also received the free copy of the UK release which, as Playstation 3 owners, we were able to sign up for. I had a look at the torture scene on this copy, and found the manner in which it was edited quite curious. Gone is Le Chiffre placing the rope on Bond’s shoulder, and his line, “Such a waste.” Some of the sound effects and Bond’s screams also seemed to have been toned down slightly, although, without doing a side by side comparison, it was impossible to be sure, so don’t quote me on this. Either way, Bond’s balls still get a bloody good walloping, and I remain incredibly disturbed by the notion that the BBFC found elements of this scene to be sexualised.)

Anyway, on to the matter at hand - the Finnish disc. I can confirm that it is indeed region free, and that it is indeed completely uncut… although I had a rather hare-raising moment at first, because, in my eagerness to take a look-see at my new disc, I accidentally put the American disc in by mistake! Put that down to having four copies of the same film, each with almost identical covers, in the same room. Thankfully, I had enough sense to rectify this mistake before I went blustering on to the Internet to verbally abuse those who had told me the Finnish release was uncut. The disc label, incidentally, also has an Australian OLFC certificate on it, lending credence to the theory that the exact same disc was released down under, which should please those who prefer enormous ratings stickers on their front covers to non-English text. Furthermore, although I will be doing some careful inspections of the various releases before offering my final judgement, an initial glance at this disc suggests that it has identical image quality to the US/Korean version.

Now that I have a copy of Casino Royale that I’m happy with, I can finally get on with my long-delayed review.

Third time’s a charm

In what is becoming something of an obsession for me, I’ve just ordered my third copy of Casino Royale on Blu-ray, and am hoping that this will finally be one that I am satisfied with. After discovering that the supposedly uncut Korean release did in fact feature the same censored PG-13 version of the film as its US counterpart (actually, an identical disc was released in both territories, right down to the “Made in the USA” text on the disc label), I vowed to be more careful about my double-dips in future. However, several independent sources have now confirmed that the film has been released uncut on Blu-ray in both Australia and Scandinavian territories, and that, contrary to previous suspicions, it is in fact a multi-region (ABC) rather than Region B release. This makes the US/Chinese/Korean/Thai Region A release the only one to be region coded - ironic, considering that it features the most butchered of all the cuts of the film.

I was going to pick up the Australian version, simply for the convenience of having English text on the cover (silly, I know), but unfortunately it has sold out at EzyDVD, my regular port of call for Aussie discs. Instead, I headed over to Finnish site Filmifriikki and placed an order for the local disc from that country.

Once I have my hands on a copy of the film that I’m happy with, you can probably expect me to finally get round to that review I’ve been intending to provide for so long.

David Manning rides again

Source: AV Science Forum

Never ones to shy away from blowing their own trumpet (see the David Manning and PSP lie blog fiascos), Sony has launched yet another round of shameless self-promotions, this time in the guise of the obscurely-titled Phase Hydra. The aim of the game is to

seed “high profile” forums with Blu-ray advocates and target bloggers to promote Blu-ray to get the word out to the world.

This is hilarious, it really is. Many people, myself included, have long suspected that Sony was ordering employees to infiltrate forums related to the high definition video formats in order to promote Blu-ray under the guise of consumers, and it seems that we now have the closest we’re going to get to proof of this. Stories like this only serve to remind me why Sony is so hated by such a large number of people.

Of course, the question now is why they are so desperate as to resort to these cheap tactics. Could it have something to do with yesterday’s surge in HD DVD sales during the AVS “buy an HD DVD” celebration?

Oops!