Technology

And my first HD DVD double-dip is...

Bet you didn't think I'd be double-dipping this early in HD DVD's life, did you? Well, neither did I, but the news that the UK release apparently featured a better transfer than its American counterpart made it difficult to resist. (Well, actually, this is not technically a double-dip for me, since my brother owns the previous version, but it does mean that we now have two copies in the house.) The US release of Serenity was one of the very first HD DVDs to be released, and it was also one of the first to be encoded, using an early and less efficient version of the VC1 codec. For the European release, therefore, the compressionists decided to revisit it and encode it more efficiently, partly to allow for additional language tracks to be included, thus facilitating a Europe-wide release of the same disc.

I know what you're thinking: "But Captain Whiggles, isn't Serenity your number one HD DVD demo disc?" It is, or rather was, because the US disc has just been knocked down a peg by its younger European sibling. No, the differences aren't massive, and I don't expect the majority of people to even notice them, but the new encode takes an already spectacular-looking disc and makes it look just a hair better. The most significant difference, if we can actually call it significant, is that the grain is very slightly more pronounced, further amplifying the film-like nature of the HD presentation. It also seems to be microscopically more detailed. This tends to be most noticeable in the form of improved definition of the skin texture during facial close-ups, although some of the wider shots also look a little crisper. Ultimately, I'm not sure I'd recommend that everyone immediately rushes out and picks up the UK release if they already own the US version, but the difference is there. I rated the US version a 10/10 for image quality, and I don't think I'd drop it to a 9 even having seen the UK version - perhaps more of a 9.8 (although I prefer not to get that specific when it comes to overall ratings). It's too bad I don't have more than one HD DVD player, and it takes upwards of a minute to switch discs, because that makes it pretty much impossible to perform any sort of a scientific comparison. I really hope that affordable PC drives and software capable of displaying titles in their full 1920x1080 resolution become available before too long, because I'm itching to subject some HD DVDs to the same in-depth comparisons as I currently do for standard definition material.

The UK disc also includes an additional bonus feature not found on the US release: the 20-minute A Filmmaker's Journey, which is not particularly substantial - but hey, the more the merrier!

A minor point, true, but the UK release has a much nicer cover. The US version, for some reason, has been designed to look like it houses some sort of intergalactic space porno, while the UK edition, while still a bit cluttered, looks considerably less embarrassing.

Oddly enough, the UK release comes in a different type of case from what I've been used to seeing for HD DVD so far. The spine, this time, is much wider - the same width as a normal amaray DVD case, in fact. The reason for this seems to be to allow UK stores to fit those special plastic security tags that can only be removed by a dedicated machine. Oddly enough, the other UK HD DVD release I own, Warner's Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire, uses the same size of case as its US counterparts, so it may be that only Universal has opted to use this alternate design. Either way, if I end up buying more of them, my HD shelf, already almost full, is going to be filled up a lot more quickly!

Oh, and I also received, in the same order from Amazon UK, the ominous score to V for Vendetta by Dario Marianelli.

Site problems

If you've been having trouble accessing this site in the last few hours, it's because my host, Fuitadnet, are currently upgrading their service, and in doing so are transferring all of the data over to new servers. Depending on your web host, you may or may not be able to see the site.

Unfortunately, the backups Fuitadnet used were decidedly out of date - going back to around November 20th. Luckily, Movable Type managed to maintain an archive of all my news posts, so restoring them was a simple matter of hitting the "Rebuild Site" button. Unfortunately, it does mean that a number of the files uploaded to the site in the last couple of weeks have to be uploaded again, including my Profondo Rosso commentary. As such, the commentary is currently not accessible, but should be back online in the next hour or so (curse my slow upload speed!).

Update, December 4, 2006 09:12 PM: Everything should now be in its proper place once again, although a number of web hosts still seem to be unable to access the site.

Update #2, December 4, 2006 11:42 PM: A couple of comments seem to have been lost in the resulting chaos, including one may in the New Lizard DVD on its way (buy it!!!) thread.

Update #3, December 19, 2006 06:17 PM: Fixed dead link.

New Lizard DVD on its way (buy it!!!)

Over the past few days, I have been in correspondence with Richard York of Media Blasters, who is supervising the company's upcoming re-release of A Lizard in a Woman's Skin. Since I'm apparently "the most vocal critic" of their previous release (which both alarms and thrills me in equal measure), he wanted to give me the opportunity to ask any questions that I might have about the version they were putting together, and, having discussed the matter with him, I am now supremely confident that the upcoming release will not only blow away the existing Media Blasters version, but should finally be the definitive release of the film that fans have been waiting for for years.

First of all, this will not simply be a straight copy of the Italian release by Federal Video. Richard is aware of and has viewed this release, but instead Media Blasters have created their own transfer from the same film elements used for that DVD. In doing so, they have been able to identify and avoid a number of the problems affecting that release, including material missing from the opening sex scene and Julia Durer's party, as well as the mangled "rippled/unrippled" dream sequence and the dodgy splice where the same footage of Jean Sorel's character appears in two different places. The running time of the final version will be 103 minutes, making this a proper NTSC presentation rather than a PAL to NTSC standards conversion.

Currently, Richard feels that it is unlikely that the new DVD will be ready in time to hit its announced December 19th release date, expecting a late December/early January release instead, but an official statement should be forthcoming as soon as the entire package is assembled and the final specifications are known.

One thing's for sure, with this and One on Top of the Other (from Severin Films) on their way, early 2007 looks as if it will be an exciting time indeed for Fulci fans.

Blu-ray penetrated

Source: Gizmondo

Betcha all those studios that signed up with Blu-ray rather than HD DVD because of its "superior security measures" are a little worried now. And this just a few days after it was discovered that Playstation 3 games were being artificially bloated (i.e. filled with automatically generated garbage data to increase file sizes) to justify the adoption of Blu-ray as the system's storage format, and to push the "real" data further towards the outer edges of discs in order to improve read times on this "consistent read speeds across the entire disc" (or not) format. I wonder who will be taking home a pink slip from Sony Towers this Christmas?

Sorry America, we got your Potters!

Forgive me this moment of plagiarism, but I still think it's one of the funniest thread titles I've seen relating to this subject. As I laid out in an earlier post, Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire, still lacking an official date for its US released, came out on HD DVD in the UK on November 20th, and word quickly spread that, barring the inclusion on the cover of BBFC logos and the usual UK additionata (to borrow a phrase from Garth Marenghi), such as a quote from the Daily Mirror, this was actually just the as yet unannounced US release rebadged. Well, curiosity got the better of me and, despite only having a lukewarm reaction to the first two Potter films, I ended up ordering a copy from Play.com.

It arrived today, and the rumours are true: when you pop the disc in, you're greeted with an FBI warning screen, followed by the Warner logo and the same annoying and bombastic Warner HD DVD trailer that they've included on every single one of their releases so far, then an MPAA PG-13 logo, followed by the film itself. If the studios continue to follow this model of simply repackaging (and re-labelling) the US discs, this strikes me as being a good thing, for two reasons. First: it cuts down on costs, meaning that a single master can be prepared for both North America and the UK (and any other English-speaking territories, as well as other locations like France and Spain, provided the extras are comprehensively subtitles, given that these discs tend to include French and Spanish dubs). Second: it should help bury the horrible legacy of PAL speed-up in films and dodgy NTSC to PAL standards converted extras. At the moment, Potter is a rare beast indeed: a 24 fps film with 30 fps NTSC extras that you can pick up off a UK store shelf. Hopefully this trend will continue.

Anyway, enough of that - how's the disc? Superb, is the answer. In fact, it comes very close to toppling Serenity from its "best HD DVD transfer" throne. It's amazing that Warner can put out an edge enhanced, slightly filtered and noise reduced release like V for Vendetta one week, and then release something that, to my eyes, looks almost completely untampered the next. This is an amazing looking transfer, with excellent detail and a rich, smooth, film-like look, and the fact that there are no real problems with compression is a phenomenal achievement given the number of difficult moments in this film - crowd scenes, underwater chases, firework displays, not to mention dodgy CGI fire-breathing dragons. This is very much a 10 out of 10 affair, with my only concern being some prominent edge enhancement in a couple of background shots in an early scene, which is so much heavier than anything else in the film (or indeed the shots in question) that I'm pretty sure it was a result of some effects work rather than the encoding.

As for the film, I enjoyed it more than the first two Potters, although it is to my mind still heavily flawed, not to mention far too long. As has been something of a trend recently, it's also fairly clear that, rather than being a stand-alone film, it's merely a single part in a much larger story. This wouldn't have been a massive problem were it not for the fact that the film ends on a "to be continued" note in all but name: in the final half-hour, a hideous villain and arch-enemy of Harry's escapes from his prison and comes after him, but nothing is done about this and, as is usually the case, the film ends with the school year ending and the characters heading their separate ways. Harry might have said, "Gee willickers! There's a terrible villain who wants to kill me on the loose, but we'll deal with him next term." I did, however, appreciate the somewhat darker tone when compared to the first two films (I still need to see Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban, the third film), and the child actors seem to be improving as they grow older.

Oh yeah, and I also finally received my long-awaited copy of Amber Benson's new film, Lovers, Liars and Lunatics, which she wrote, produced, edited, directed and starred in. The disc was posted to me by Ms Benson herself, judging by the fact that the signature on the customs declaration matches the signature on the front cover (she signed the first 500 copies). Full thoughts and impressions will follow as soon as I've had a chance to watch it, but, having taken a glance at a couple of minutes, I should probably warn you that the transfer is interlaced and non-anamorphic (although, unlike Amber's previous film, Chance, it's shot on 35mm film rather than video).

Update, December 19, 2006 05:54 PM: Fixed dead link.

New DVD image comparison

See just how bad the previous release of Home Alone was in my latest DVD Image Comparison!

This is my house - I have to defend it!

My copy of the recently released R1 US special edition (sorry, "Family Fun Edition") of Home Alone arrived this morning. If you've been reading this site for an extended period of time, then you've probably read at least one of my rants about the appalling picture quality of the previous bare-bones release of the film. Home Alone is probably my all-time favourite Christmas movie, and I'm not ashamed to say that. Growing up, it was always a huge part of the festive season for me, and, despite knowing every single line by heart, it never gets old. As you can probably imagine, I was absolutely elated to hear that Fox were finally bringing this classic out of the vault and giving it the full-on special edition treatment.

You know how these posts of mine usually go, don't you? Bla bla bla, I was so looking forward to this, bla bla bla. What usually comes next is the "What a phenomenal disappointment" rant... so here it comes.

Just kidding. I'm actually very pleased with this DVD. It's not perfect, by any means: a considerable amount of temporal noise reduction has been applied to the image, and, like most of the Fox DVDs I own, it looks rather soft (some of which may be a result of the original photography, but at least some of which is the result of digital tomfoolery). Still, when all said and done, it could have looked considerably worse, and I don't need to tell you that it's a vast improvement on the yellowy, smeary, artefact-ridden disaster that was its predecessor.

The extras are all of a high standard, and, unusually, myself and Lyris, who generally doesn't rate extras particularly highly, actually made our way through the entire contents of the disc without getting bored. Writer John Hughes, who supposedly banged out the script over the course of a weekend, is nowhere to be found, but director Chris Columbus, actors Macaulay Culkin and Daniel Stern, and a variety of crew members, are all over the bonus features, which include a neat little retrospective documentary as well as some archive materials from the time of the film's original production and release. Also included are a variety of deleted scenes, many of which are a hoot, and the contents of which actually made it into the novelisation I read when I was about eight years old. Finally, there's a great commentary with Columbus and Culkin, who gently take the piss out of the film and themselves, and provide a great deal of informative and fun anecdotes about the production.

I'm very surprised to find myself saying this, but this is actually one of the best DVD releases I've come across this year. Okay, so it's not exactly a multi-disc epic with seamless branching and a DTS-ES audio track, but it does exactly what it says on the tin and provides you with just about everything you could want for this film. With this, the special edition of The Omen and the extended cut of Kingdom of Heaven, Fox have certainly been releasing some decent packages recently. Let's hope we can eventually convince them to jump aboard the HD DVD wagon!

DVD telly fun

My copy of the R2 UK DVD of the fifth and final season of Alias arrived today. Given the excellent image quality of its predecessors, I'm expecting big things in the technical department, although I am a little wary as to the quality of the episodes themselves, given that (a) Jennifer Garner's pregnancy had to be written around, also resulting in a shorter season of only 17 episodes rather than the usual 22, and (b) Season 4 was a huge disappointment, barring the enjoyable but ludicrous two-part finale.

In any event, I won't be watching it until I've finished Season 2 of Veronica Mars. I'm about two-thirds of the way through that now, and my verdict, so far, is that, if you've already seen Season 1, it's very much more of the same, which is both a good thing and a bad thing. On the plus side, the various mysteries are generally well-plotted, and the longer arcs that snake their way through the entire season are enough to keep you tuning in - this is definitely a show that's very "moreish". On the negative side, I still find myself getting irritated by the fact that major plot developments and characters are introduced, only to be unceremoniously dumped and not picked up again till later. (In one episode at around the middle of the season, for example, Veronica and her father have a major falling-out, ending with her saying he won't ever be able to trust her again. Next week, they're bestest buds again.) I also tend to find that the vast majority of the characters are vaguely unpleasant at best, and downright despicable at worst, while the least offensive character, Mac, is hardly ever around.

Still, I shall persevere, and I'm certainly not finding the experience of watching it unpleasant. On the contrary, I always find myself eager to find out what happens next, and end up watching "just one more" episode. Hopefully I'll be able to deliver my final verdict on the season in the next week or so.

New DVD image comparison

Sorry for the lack of updates over the past couple of days. I've been a little busy, mainly with working on my Profondo Rosso commentary (nearly an hour's worth of material in the can now!), as well as seeing my GP about my urination problem (I'm now on pills which are giving me an extremely dry throat, requiring me to drink a great deal, so, as you can probably imagine, it's something of a vicious circle).

Anyway, I have a new DVD image comparison for you today. A while back, my good friend Lee sent me a copy of the German Limited Edition release of Mario Bava's Blood and Black Lace (my review of which earned this site its first ever heckler). As a result, I've compared it with the two US releases I own - the 2001 Special Edition and the 2005 Unslashed Collectors' Edition - both from VCI.

Take a look at the full comparison to learn the outcome of this investigation.

Update, December 19, 2006 05:59 PM: Fixed dead link.

V for Vendetta

My HD DVD of V for Vendetta finally arrived today from Amazon.com. Incidentally, I'm glad I decided to order my copy from them - my regular supplier, DVD Pacific, seem to have only just got copies in stock, and, in any event, Amazon's shipping times and, for HD DVDs, prices, seem to be pretty much the same as DVD Pacific's anyway.

Anyway, the disc. This is a very good but not outstanding presentation. I'd put it in the same category as the likes of Constantine and Million Dollar Baby: essentially, a smooth, rich presentation with a pleasing amount of detail and no visible compression artefacts, but not an out of this world eye-popper like Serenity (to date, still the most incredible home video presentation I've ever seen of a film) or Unleashed. Some edge enhancement is visible, and the image doesn't have the crispness of some of the more stellar titles, but it is all in all a very nice-looking transfer.

As for extras, we get an exclusive In-Movie Experience, which I've briefly sampled and found to be somewhat better than those found on the likes of Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. Also, all of the extras from the 2-disc special edition DVD have been ported over. And yes, that includes the Natalie Portman SNL short so tragically absent from the UK DVD releases.

Expect a full review at DVD Times by the end of the week.

Oh, and it seems that, despite HD DVD players not yet being available in the UK, Play.com are already shipping copies of Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire, a title which is not yet available in the US. The word on the street is that this is actually a US disc, right down to the FBI warning and MPAA ratings screen at the start of the disc. If nothing else, this bodes well for future UK HD DVD releases, at least from Warner.

HD5 - great audio quality, but the usual Sony niggles

My Sony NW-HD5 MP3 player... sorry, "Network Walkman"... arrived this morning. Getting it all set up with my music copied over in something approaching a sensible order and audio settings I was happy with took a little longer than I had anticipated, and that, as usual, is due to the all-too-familiar inconsistencies and silly flaws in Sony's software design.

Sony NW-HD5 (left) vs. Creative Zen Micro (left)

Above, you can see the new player alongside my previous model, the Creative Zen Micro. I don't know about you, but it seems pretty clear to me that the Zen is the more attractive of the two. In terms of shape, screen and button layout, it's more aesthetically pleasing than the HD5, which has a rather thrown-together appearance, not to mention one of the strangest button layouts I've ever come across. What matters, though, is the performance, and it's in that area that the HD5 excels. Not only does it have actual buttons as opposed to the infuriating touchpad system used by the Zen (and most other MP3 players), its audio output (once the whole thing is properly configured) is noticeably superior.

First things first: this is a European model, and, like all European portable audio devices, has had its volume artificially limited in order to make it comply with EU regulations. For your average rock-oriented CD, which will probably be mixed at an inexplicably high level, this isn't too much of a problem, but, when you start getting into the domain of film scores, many of which are, for lengthy stretches, fairly low in volume due to the movies' own requirements of making dialogue audible, you end up with problems. Some scores - such as Treasure Planet (James Newton Howard) and Braveheart (James Horner) - are, in places, so quiet that, even at the maximum volume, you wouldn't be able to hear anything if you had the misfortune of being on a crowded bus when trying to listen to them. Luckily, a fairly straightforward guide is available for getting into the device's service menu and disabling this annoying limitation. With this nifty little trick carried out, the maximum volume should be loud enough for even the quietest tracks (and loud enough to deafen you, at least temporarily, if you make the mistake of leaving the volume at its highest setting when you play something from the latest screaming metal band).

Another alteration that I highly recommend making is to go into the sound options menu and create a new custom setting, with the bass and treble settings both boosted to +3. Lyris did this for me, and the difference it makes to the clarity and depth of the output is quite palpable. In fact, it makes it sound virtually indistinguishable from the headphone output of my dedicated sound card - most impressive for a small, portable music player.

SonicStage: pretty, but stupid

With the audio options properly configured, it's now time to copy your music library from your PC over to the machine. This is where the problems start to emerge, owing to the inanity of Sony's proprietary SonicStage software (the only way of transferring music to one of their MP3 players). SonicStage is like a stereotypical blonde bimbo: pretty, but stupid. It all looks very nice, and it has a major advantage over Creative's MediaSource Organizer, in that it is integrated with the Gracenote music database, meaning that it can automatically search for details on any CD, including track titles. So far, it failed to find data for only one of my CDs, The Case of the Scorpion's Tail (Bruno Nicolai). However, when you actually try to do anything with it, it starts behaving like an idiot. For example: because SonicStage is designed to work with a whole range of devices, it is possible to encode audio files that won't be compatible with your own player. In my case, the HD5 can't handle 160 Kbps ATRAC files. Rather than ask me what to do with these problematic files, however, the program, by default, re-encodes them to a decidedly unpleasant-sounding 64 Kbps. This can easily be fixed if you go into the options menu and change the default behaviour (in my case, to automatically upconvert to 192 Kbps; you can also make it ask you what to do each time), but it's not exactly obvious.

Ditto when it comes to transferring an audio file that is already present on the player (as I had to do with a whole bunch of tracks that it had overcompressed). Virtually any other program, when you try to copy a file to a location where a file with the same name already exists, will ask you what you want to do. Some common choices would be: overwrite, create duplicate, or cancel. SonicStage does nothing, and I mean that literally. It doesn't give you an error message or ask you what you want to do: it simply sits there. In order to put a new copy of a track on the player, you actually have to delete it from the player first (and, every time you delete a track, it will ask you, twice, if you're sure you want to do this).

Bottom line: it's good, but it's stupid. You get superior sound quality, a decent capacity, and nice buttons, but you also have to put up with it don't what it wants rather than what you want. Given Sony's résumé, this is hardly surprising, but some of the niggles present in both the HD5 and SonicStage are jaw-droppingly daft even by their already low standards. You're unlikely to find a better-sounding MP3 player on the market, but be prepared for some tough love if you decide you want to adopt one.

All shiny and new

This afternoon, faced with an ever-increasing barrage of spam, all originating from different sources but conforming to the same basic pattern, I decided to bite the bullet and upgrade to the latest version of Movable Type, v3.32 (I'd previously been using v2.661, from around February 2003). I looked into various plug-ins and hacks for adding comment verification and blacklisting, but quickly discovered that those that worked with older versions of Movable Type were either (a) no longer available or (b) more difficult to set up than they were worth. More recent versions of Movable Type include anti-spam measures by default, many of which are highly customisable.

As you can see above, there is now a Junk filter, with a tweakable "threshold" - in other words, you can set just how aggressively it treats incoming comments. Since I upgraded, the level of spam I have received has shrunk to nothing.

As an added bonus, the new version has a much sleeker user interface. You won't, of course, see any cosmetic changes on the site itself, but, on the plus side, I have some eye candy to look at as I'm typing, so perhaps my posts will be more cheerful than they were before!

There have been a couple of downsides. Due to Movable Type's notoriously vague documentation, it took me a long time to get everything shipshape - in fact, on a couple of occasions, I became convinced that I'd broken the thing entirely - but trial and error eventually paid off. Still, if you find something that's not working as it's supposed to, please let me know.

Additionally, stricter control over tags has meant that I've had to make a couple of minor changes to certain aspects of the site. Namely, because of the way the coding works (too complex to get into here), the Monthly Archive pages (e.g. November 2006) can no longer have the month and year on the page title - they now all simply read "Monthly Archive". It's annoying, and, bizarrely, categories don't appear to be affected in this way (e.g. Web), but I'm willing to put up with this in exchange for added security. I'll keep looking for a fix, though, and if I can find a way of reinstating this (admittedly minor) feature, I'll do so.

Update, November 17, 2006 10:00 PM: I managed to fix the archive header problem more quickly than I expected. Apparently, the "MTEntryDate" tag can't be used outside the "MTEntries" container, but the "MTArchiveDate" tag can. You can read more at Daggle.com, whose webmaster discovered a similar problem with the tag (although he was using it for a different purpose).

Blue Underground re-releasing select Italian horror titles in 2007

Source: Fangoria

Blue Underground has announced that it will reissue a slew of Italian horror titles previously released by Anchor Bay on February 27. Dario Argento's DEEP RED and INFERNO, Mario Bava's SHOCK, Lucio Fulci's CITY OF THE LIVING DEAD and DON'T TORTURE A DUCKLING and Armando Crispino's AUTOPSY will come with the previous disc extras and be available for a limited time only, each priced at $14.95.

Hmm, could be good, could be not. The optimist in me would like to think that these releases will feature brand new transfers and rectify some of the problems with the earlier releases - e.g. the frozen end credits for Deep Red, the lack of original mono audio on Deep Red and Inferno, the lack of subtitles on all of them - but the pessimist suspects that these are just the same discs repackaged. The almost identical cover art, and the very low recommended retail price, certainly don't bode well.

Still, this might be a good opportunity for me to pick up a copy of the currently out of print Don't Torture a Duckling to replace my copy which disappeared in the post this summer. And, if it gets more people to watch these films, so much the better. You know, if Blue Underground (or does Anchor Bay still have the rights?) has any sense, they'll release a full blown 30th Anniversary Special Edition of Suspiria in 2007, to coincide with the release of Mother of Tears. And, while they're at it, they can include the original 4-channel audio mix instead of the bungled monstrosity on the current DVD.

Whiggles gets a new music machine

A few days ago, I mentioned that I was considering retiring my Creative Zen Micro MP3 player in favour of something with a higher capacity. I didn't expect to act on my intentions quite so soon, but a sealed, unused Sony NW-HD5 (the same player my brother uses) was up for auction on eBay, so I figured that this was too good an opportunity to pass up.

The HD5 was only available for a few months, but it has a number of benefits over your average MP3 player. First of all, it has actual buttons rather than a finicky iPod-style touch-pad. Second, for such a small and reasonably-priced machine, it has an impressive capacity of 20 GB and a battery life of around 40 hours (using the proprietary ATRAC format for audio encoding - yes, Sony once again has to do things differently from everyone else). Most importantly, however, it is considered to have the best audio quality of all the MP3 players tested in a round-up by CNET, whereby the participants were blindfolded and made to try each player without being told which model it was (the gimmicky and over-priced iPod predictably ranked last).

Personally, I'm looking forward to being able to have my entire music library stored on one device again. It's quite annoying to have to keep swapping material on and off my Zen due to its meagre 5 GB capacity. Hopefully it'll arrive before too long.

Update, December 19, 2006 06:02 PM: Fixed dead link.

Xbox 360 HD DVD add-on usable as PC drive

Source: Xbox-Scene

Apparently, Microsoft's upcoming HD DVD add-on for their Xbox 360 console will also be usable as an external PC drive, provided you can get a hold of the requisite driver. It's probably all a bit dodgy, and I'm sure Microsoft, Toshiba et al won't be thrilled by this development, but it's certainly a very tempting proposition, given that the £130/$200 add-on is likely to be considerably cheaper than dedicated PC HD DVD drives for some time.

Update, November 12, 2006 12:11 PM: Unfortunately, it looks as if playback from the drive is extremely unlikely. Apparently, it was hard enough just to make the file structure readable.

No back-door region coding for Toshiba

Source: Lyris Lite

It's official: Toshiba does not intend to patch the region-free HD DVD playback capabilities of its players now or at any point in the future. Simply put: if you buy one that can play HD DVDs from any territory, it will continue to be able to do so until the day it dies, with no "fixes" being sneaked in via firmware updates. Many people in the AV community expected this to be the case already, although the news that Samsung had surreptitiously disabled the multi-region DVD capabilities of its Blu-ray player via a firmware update disguised as a bug fix had given some people cause for concern.

Music mania

Two CDs I ordered from Nettwerk a couple of weeks back arrived yesterday: Silence and Passenger, both by Canadian singer/songwriter Tara MacLean, from 1996 and 1999 respectively.

I don't remember where I first heard about Tara, but I vaguely remember seeing her name bandied around in the same sentence as Sarah McLachlan, which, as it turns out, is quite appropriate. Apart from originating from the same country and being published under the same label, their sound and subject matter are very similar - so much so that, if you like one, I'd say it's pretty much a given that you'll like the other. These two CDs seem to be quite difficult to track down - they've presumably gone out of print, or were never released in the UK in the first place, so I had to go straight to the source at Nettwerk to get my copies. Amazon.com seems to have both in stock, though, so your mileage may vary.

Oh, and I seriously need an MP3 player with a larger capacity. My Creative Zen Micro has served me well for the past two years (almost), but I think it's time I looked at the alternatives. The 20 GB (that's four times the space I have on my Zen) Sony NW-HD5 seems to constitute the best combination of audio quality and functionality, but unfortunately it has long since been discontinued and seems to fetch extortionate prices even second-hand. We'll see.

Blood and Bava

Along with Dario Argento and Lucio Fulci, Mario Bava is often considered to be part of the holy trinity of Italian horror cinema. In 1963, he wrote and directed The Girl Who Knew Too Much, which is widely considered to be the first ever giallo film, and his influence can be felt in virtually every American slasher film of the 1980s, with his Bay of Blood (also known as Twitch of the Death Nerve) having been ripped off wholesale by Sean S. Cunningham with Friday the 13th.

Despite this, however, I've never really been able to get into Bava's films in the way that I have with Argento, Fulci and other less immediately memorable giallo directors like Massimo Dallamano, Aldo Lado, Luciano Ercoli and Paolo Cavara. Bava is one of the finest visual craftsmen ever to have lived - that much, I think, is undeniable - and the minuscule budgets he had to work with only serves to make his achievements all the more remarkable. I think that he is often let down by his scripts, though. Bava was very much a "director for hire" in the traditional sense: he would turn his hand to anything in order to put food on the table, and, as such, he never claimed a genre as his own in the way that Argento did with giallo and Sergio Leone did with the Western. A lot of Bava's films, therefore, fail to engage me, because I often get the feeling that he wasn't truly invested in what he was doing. As visually awe-inspiring as his work is, he often seems to have found himself working with rather generic scripts, and while I don't think that an amazing screenplay is by any means the be-all and end-all of a film, most of the time I struggle to understand the big deal with his films.

If The Girl Who Knew Too Much was the film that started the giallo phenomenon, it was Blood and Black Lace, made a year later, that solidified many of the archetypes that would be adopted wholesale during the boom of the early 1970s: the masked, black-attired killer; the cast of nubile women being offed; the psychosexual nature of the murders; the parade of shifty suspects, all with something to hide. The narrative, as such, seems a bit derivative, although it must be remembered that this is the one that set the stage for what was to come. It's not a particularly remarkable plot, though, even taking into account its position as a forerunner to the genre: a series of murders are taking place, the victims all models from a prestigious agency. The usual shifty-looking characters are on the prowl, and, despite dropping like flies, none of the women are particularly eager to divulge what they know. I doubt that this would have been considered original stuff even at the time of its release. Rightly or wrongly, however, it has been retroactively identified as the first ever "body count movie".

What does stand out as remarkable, though, is the photography. Even by Bava's already high standards, this is one incredible-looking piece of work. He originally trained as a painter, and it shows: every frame is expertly composed, with a level of three-dimensionality that sucks you into the world, despite its obviously artificial appearance. It's obvious that Argento was heavily influenced by this when he did Suspiria 13 years later, and yet the comparisons are somewhat unjust. Whereas Suspiria's setting could never be mistaken for that of the real world, Blood and Black Lace's feels authentic despite its deliberate artifice.

In the final analysis, therefore, I can't claim to be as enamoured by Blood and Black Lace as some, but I appreciate it as a key film partially responsible for spawning one of the Italian film industry's most lucrative filoni, and as an outstanding achievement in a technical sense. This is definitely a film that deserves to be seen by a wider audience, so that people can appreciate not only where the giallo genre came from, but also the American slasher movement of the 1970s and 80s. Bava definitely doesn't get the recognition he deserves as a trendsetter.

PS. I'm incredibly grateful to Lee for his copy of the German DVD release of the film, which is vastly preferable to either of the two releases put out by VCI in the US.

Veronica Mars and chums

My copy of the second season of Veronica Mars arrived this morning. I've watched the first two episodes, and three things strike me:

(1) The Previously on Veronica Mars... recaps that are meant to occur at the start of each episode have been unceremoniously shaved off, a la the US releases of Buffy and Angel. This strikes me as annoying for several reasons: first, the Season 1 set had them intact; second, just because we have access to all 22 episodes in one box doesn't mean we haven't forgotten what happened several episodes earlier; third, it disrupts the timing and momentum, and, in the first episode, results in a noticeable jump in the audio (I've no idea whether any other episodes are effective.

(2) The transfers have been improved somewhat since the previous season. Season 1 looked abnormally soft, and the grain pattern caused some noticeable artefacting. Season 2 isn't perfect - it's certainly not in the same league as the PAL transfers for Alias - but it's a lot easier on the eyes than its predecessor.

(3) There are no English subtitles - only French and Spanish. What is this, the dark ages?

All in all, though, I've enjoyed the first couple of episodes. It looks like it's going to be pretty engaging stuff. Does Veronica have to be quite so smug, though? A superiority complex is really not an attractive trait in a protagonist. Look where it got Buffy in her final season...

Asterix and the Vikings

My copy of the recently released R2 French release of Asterix and the Vikings arrived this morning from Amazon.fr. As I mentioned in an earlier post, the French release is unusual in that it caters to English speakers by including not only English audio but also subtitles. Like Asterix Conquers America, the film was animated to an English dialogue track. As is usually the case with the Asterix films in English, all the roles were once again recast, with a selection of A- and B-list actors providing the voices. Asterix is played by Paul Giamatti, Obelix by Brad Garrett, Justforkix by Sean Astin, Abba by Evan Rachel Wood, and Timandahaf by John Di Maggio.

Of these, only Garrett and Di Maggio have had any particular experience providing voice-overs for animation, and to be honest it shows. As I said in my review of Corpse Bride yesterday, live action stars generally do not make good voice actors, because providing voice-overs requires a completely different set of abilities (since, naturally, they have to rely on their vocal performance alone instead of also drawing on things like body language and appearance). The voices are generally competent, but none of them really feel like they're coming organically from the characters, and a number of the actors are guilty of overacting. This is especially true of the individuals playing Vitalstatistix and his brother Doublehelix (the guilty parties aren't listed on IMDB, and the DVD includes only the French credits, so I'm not sure who's responsible). It's bizarre, but the French track, which is dubbed, feels a lot more natural than its English counterpart.

As far as the Asterix films go, this is one of the better ones. This is a series that really hasn't had a particularly rosy history in the cinematic form, mainly because the mood and humour of the comics is so precise that it must be very difficult to convey it adequately in animation (and the less said about the two live action adaptations the better). As such, Asterix and the Vikings may not be perfect, but it's certainly not a travesty by any means - and it's definitely better than Asterix Conquers America, which, produced in 1994, was the most recent animated effort before this one. In terms of animation and technical prowess, this is definitely the most attractive of the bunch, although the garish colour palette is a little overdone. Plot-wise, it varies between being extremely faithful to the source material (so close, in fact, that entire pages are literally lifted from the book Asterix and the Normans with only minimal changes), and coming up with completely unique material, including a bunch of new characters and situations. Unfortunately, like Asterix and the Big Fight, the jokes are fairly infrequent, and those that are included aren't hugely funny. It's nice to see Asterix back on the screen in an animated form, however, and it blows the live action iterations out of the water.

Transfer-wise, this release is a bit of a disappointment. The digitally sourced transfer certainly looks vibrant (too vibrant, in fact, although this is most likely the result of the colour palette itself rather than any additional goosing for the DVD release), but the image has a very harsh look. Noticeably filtered and edge enhanced, lines are rough and jagged rather than smooth, with massive amounts of stair-stepping on display. This gives the image an oddly low resolution appearance, looking a little too much like a poor scaling job for comfort. At least the compression is reasonably competent, though, and the banded gradients that show up so often in digital animation are thankfully kept to a minimum.

Update, December 19, 2006 06:15 PM: Fixed dead link.