Technology

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

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

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

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

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

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

Here is what the transfer looks like:

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

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

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

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

Light a candle for HD DVD

Source: DVD Times

Japanese broadcaster NHK has just announced Toshiba's intention to withdraw from the HD DVD format. NHK says that Toshiba's factory has already ceased production of HD DVD equipment, although it will still be available on sale for the time being. This is the final blow to the ailing format, which has been on a downward slide since being dropped by Warner Bros earlier this year.

If you didn't believe the fat lady had sung, you'd better believe it now. Read the full suicide note at Reuters.

Speaking of sex and death...

Who would have thought a film with murder and incest as two of its primary themes could be so damn good-natured? I watched Pedro Almodóvar's 2006 film Volver on Blu-ray recently, and am kicking myself for not coming across this gem sooner. Okay, I did spend most of its running time feeling that I was working the twists out a good half hour before the characters themselves, but that's the only real flaw in what is otherwise a whimsical masterpiece.

Sony Pictures' Blu-ray transfer isn't going to win any awards, but it's a solid enough presentation of a film-sourced (i.e. non-DI) master, with even the aged MPEG-2 codec not hampering things too much (though there are certainly artefacts there if you look for them). Detail isn't exactly breathtaking, but I'm pleased that Sony have, as far as I can tell, left the image alone, rather than resorting to artificially sharpening it or trying to stamp out the film grain.

Volver
(Sony Pictures, USA, MPEG-2, 27.2 GB)

The rat that got the cream

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

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

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

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

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

Edith Piaf's waxy face

Some screen captures from TF1's Blu-ray release of La Môme (La Vie en Rose) for your appreciation. This is a very strong transfer in all but one respect: noise reduction. Whoever encoded the disc (or perhaps it was done at the digital intermediate stage?) made the decision to apply a grain-sucking effect on certain shots, which has the effect of making textures, particularly the actors' skin, look waxy and unnatural. This is most pronounced in the first shot below, but crops up throughout to varying degrees, although some shots appear to be completely unaffected. It's just a shame that the studios feel the need to resort to such image manipulation, because interference like this shows up especially badly in high definition.

La Môme
(TF1, France, AVC, 20.2 GB)

The worst HD images I've ever seen

I got home from work today to find a package from Amazon waiting for me, containing BCI's recent double-disc Blu-ray release of Paul Naschy's The Night of the Werewolf and Vengeance of the Zombies. I'd heard varying reports about these discs, with some viewers reporting what sounded like severe playback problems, so I decided to investigate the matter myself. Suffice to say, I'm so shocked by what I saw that I'm uncharacteristically going to say nothing and leave it to my brother, who encodes DVDs for a living, to explain just how appallingly bad these discs are. From his site:

As someone who's authoring SD DVDs on a comparatively miniscule budget, I understand entirely what it's like to be working with limited resources and some old film stock. My job is to make damn well sure that not even a trace of this shows in the end product (I look forward to the day I can show screen grabs, the wait is pretty agonising for me).

So, I can almost sympathise with BCI Entertainment, who have just released their first Blu-ray Disc. My situation, where I'm working with a mature, standard-def format is very different to their one of working with a relatively new HD disc spec.

The difference is video knowledge, and knowing where to stop (I'm sorry, but I'm done with being afraid of looking arrogant - this is quite clearly a release gone wrong). BCI's release, a double-feature of "The Night of the Werewolf" and "Vengeance of the Zombies" - two Spanish horror films the 70s and 80s - contain unforgivable mistakes which are related to authoring mishaps, not a lack of money - which is much less understandable. Both films are presented in 1080i (the packaging claims 1080p) which is unusual, given BD's native support for 1080p/24, but isn't fatal.

Firstly, the black level hasn't been correctly set somewhere along the line, so no matter how good your display is, the best blacks you'll get (without compensating for it, that is) will be very milky grey. As I said, that's a baffling mistake, but because we can lower the "Brightness" setting on our display, it's not entirely unrectifiable (I'm not entirely sure what effects this will have on the image's tonal range, though).

Above: The Night of the Werewolf. Click for full size image.

As usual, my biggest gripes with these discs are how shoddily digitally manipulated they are. There's nothing we can do to undo these effects - these copies of the films are ruined for good. The film grain on both titles has basically been eroded with what looks like a purely Spatial process, which gives things a waxy appearance and cuts off details. In my opinion, film grain reduction should ideally not be done at all, but if you're going to attempt it, it should be done first across the time axis (temporally) rather than at the single-frame level.

Every so often on "Zombies", the picture will freeze up entirely for a few frames. Either this is a weird encoding bug, or it's a botched attempt at hiding areas of damaged film. If it's the latter, I sympathise because I know how tricky film damage is to undo, but as I said, know when to stop. Removing entire frames from the film is much, much more distracting than any film defects and is much more damaging. If you can't undo the film damage - then leave it alone and make the best of a less-than-ideal situation. If it's the former, well, it should have been fixed.

The audio on "Zombies" appears to be very out of sync. I'm not sure if this is down to shoddy dubbing or a disc authoring error, but I suspect the latter. In that case, it's not forgivable. It should have been corrected before the discs were mass-produced.

Above: The Night of the Werewolf. Click for full size image.

Moving on to "Night of the Werewolf", the image is just as eroded - the same shoddy attempt to hide film grain is here. What's the point? The grain is still here, the difference is that now it looks waxy and ugly, rather than like natural film grain. Now you're left with a still grainy image with lowered detail, so you'll please neither camp. Secondly, the film stutters badly throughout. I'm assuming that the 3-2 pulldown hasn't been correctly applied (it shouldn't have been applied at all - BD supports native 24p).

Most bizarrely of all, this one actually has DVNR artefacts. By "DVNR artefacts", I mean instances where an automated system set up to remove dirt and scratches from the film has mistaken parts of the image for dirt and tried to remove them (example at 19 minutes, 20 seconds). So it would appear that the people in charge DO have access to this expensive equipment?

Before anyone says "These are low budget films, they'd never have looked great", I wouldn't be entirely sure. What's there shows more potential, underneath the digital mangling. Again, leaving things alone looks like it would have been the best policy. And yes, I know what these films are. People would be much more upset if, say, "The Godfather" had been bungled in this way, but I don't care whether it's "Night of the Werewolf" or "Revenge of the Valley Girls III", because 1) we can't start judging and 2) good mastering techniques are free.

Oh, one other thing. Both discs have 14.1gb and 12.8gb filled respectively, falling way short of the 25gb maximum capacity of a single layer Blu-ray Disc. I'm not sure what the point of this is.

I think it's great that smaller companies are beginning to release films in HD, but honestly, these discs should never have gone out the door in this state. They are seriously dreadful by anyone's standards. I would hate for poor quality releases like these to add fuel to the already-existing "only Hollywood live action blockbusters should be released in HD" fire - these releases do more harm than good and if I had been calling the shots, I would never allow for these to have gone into mass-production. Small companies have it rough in the HD world, but there's a difference between having limited funds and making a mess.

Oh, the one thing I have to add is that Vengeance of the Zombies is in the wrong aspect ratio. The entire film is presented in open matte 1.33:1.

Choice = good, waxy faces = not

I'd just like to take a minute to commend TF1 Vidéo for the subtitling options they have provided for their Blu-ray (and presumably HD DVD as well, but I bought the Blu-ray version) release of La Môme (released outside France as La Vie en Rose). Not only is it that rare beast, a French disc which caters to English speakers, it also includes two different variants of subtitle for both English and French.

The first is what the menu describes as "pour lecture sur écrans plats" (for reading on flat screens), which positions the subtitles at the bottom of the screen, overlapping on to the letterboxing. Some people like this, but I don't, as it means my eye is drawn to the letterboxing rather than the image itself. It is also a pain in the neck for those with projection displays who routinely mask the letterboxing for 2.35/9:1 ratio discs. Unfortunately, the majority of Blu-ray and HD DVDs that I have seen deliver their subtitles in this fashion.

Luckily, TF1 has supplied a second subtitle stream, "pour lecture en vidéoprojection", which places the subtitles (smaller than the "flat screen" ones) within the picture frame itself. This looks much more natural and avoids any masking problems, and I really wish more studios would provide this sort of choice for the consumer.

As for the transfer itself, it's largely pleasing (an AVC encode from a digital intermediate source), but unfortunately seems to be have been subjected to the same sort of noise reduction that also affected the UK release of Pan's Labyrinth to some degree (and the US release to a much greater degree). While the detail remains largely intact, textures, particularly the actors' skin, tend to take on a rather waxy appearance, and sequences shot in low lighting conditions (i.e. ones that would normally appear grainier) suffer more noticeably than those taking place in broad daylight. It's not horrible, but it's really not the sort of thing I like to see on my HD discs (although I'm coming more and more to expect this sort of digital manipulation, sadly).

The disc, by the way, arrived last Saturday, but, in my lazy fatigue, I forgot to post about it. (I ended up sleeping for thirteen straight hours that night, so you can perhaps forgive the oversight!)

Lara Croft rides again

Gamespot has the inside scoop on the next game in the Tomb Raider series, to be entitled Tomb Raider: Underworld. Just over a year ago, I'd probably have said "So what?" However, after playing the excellent Tomb Raider: Legend (see my full review for my thoughts on it), and the solid update of the original that was Tomb Raider: Anniversary (which I regret to inform you I still haven't finished), I would say that this once-ailing franchise is in safe hands with its new developer, Crystal Dynamics.

Anyway, the Gamespot preview sounds decidedly promising. As if usually the case with the Tomb Raider games, it's probably best to temper your expectations slightly, as they rarely deliver as much innovative content as they promise in their pre-release interviews, but the screenshots look mighty tasty, and even if it turned out to just be a direct continuation of Legend, I would still be more than satisfied. It's due for release at some point in the fourth quarter of 2008, so I think I can safely say I already have a Christmas present lined up.

The Criterion mind game

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

They are practically the same transfer, folks.

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

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

We are as gods... oh, wait, those halos aren't meant to be there

As you can probably tell by the title of this post, the HD DVD release of Asterix and the Vikings isn't perfect. It is, however, somewhat better than The Simpsons Movie, which is comparable in that it is one of only a very small number of digitally sourced, 2D animated titles released in high definition (the others I've seen being the very good-looking Les Triplettes of Belleville on HD DVD and the deeply underwhelming Paprika on Blu-ray).

The Simpsons movie was filtered, resulting in noticeable ringing around outlines, and so is Asterix, only less so. In many of the captures posted below, the ringing is difficult to miss, but it could have been a lot worse, and only results in a small reduction in the overall detail levels (I have some unfiltered 1920x1080 publicity stills to compare with the DVD captures). Compression is generally very good, despite the low bit rate, although, on a related note, there is some of the banding commonly associated with gradients in digitally-sourced animated features (see Shot 1), as well as a strange horizontal line artefact in a handful of shots (look closely at Asterix's hair in Shot 11). I previously saw this on the Platinum Edition DVD of The Jungle Book, so I'm wondering if it's another issue common to digitally sourced animation.

Unfortunately, both audio tracks (English and French) are out of sync, lagging slightly behind the video. It's incredibly distracting, since, given the nature of animation timing, even knocking the sound out by three or four frames can be very noticeable.

Astérix et les Vikings
(M6 Vidéo, France, VC-1, 12.9 GB)

What's so bad about a little ADHD?

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

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

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

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

It's called having standards

My respect for the majority of DVD production houses has just plummeted to a record low. Why? Well, my brother is currently involved in the production of an upcoming DVD release. Because it hasn't officially been announced yet, I can't tell you what the title is, but while the DVD is certainly not a cut-price endeavour by any means, it has not had the amount of money thrown at it that the majors (and even the more prominent independents) have access to.

Anyway, my brother's main capacity in this operation (in addition to performing editing work on the exclusive director's commentary, typing up the first ever English subtitle translation, designing the menus and a host of other tasks) is to handle the video transfer. He received the DigiBeta master tape and personally transferred it, and recently did his first pass on the DVD encode.

To say that the end result blows away every single commercially released DVD I have ever seen would be the understatement of the century.

I only wish I could show you direct screen captures at this time, because they really make a mockery of what pass for prestige releases from other studios. The level of detail is sublime (there are moments where, if you'd told me it was an HD DVD or Blu-ray release, I'd have believed you), the grain is accurately reproduced, and compression artefacts are basically a non-issue. It's not even as if my brother had a brand new element to work with: on the contrary, the DigiBeta master he was sent was previously used by an other company who put out a release which, while not exactly awful by regular DVD standards, really left me scratching my head when I saw the quality of the master itself. A perfect example of how a company can take a decent master and then proceed to screw it up by applying a whole load of pointless "enhancement" algorithms.

So, what we will have here is a DVD for a low budget film that is more than 20 years old and was converted from DigiBeta to DVD-friendly MPEG-2 without anything being done to it beyond painting out a handful of cue marks and instances of print damage, and looks ten times better than what the big-shot studios are putting out for films that are only a few months old. For god's sake, the damned trailer, taken from a dupe print that has presumably been lying around someone's garage for the past two decades, shows more detail than any commercial DVD I've seen released in the last year.

Do you think this is fair?

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)

The DVNR bandits strike again

The other day, I ordered a copy of the soon-to-be-OOP US HD DVD release of Pan's Labyrinth from New Line. I did this fully aware of the controversy surrounding the noise reduction that had been applied to the transfer, sucking out much of the grain and fine detail. My reasoning behind this was that the UK release, which I reviewed late last year, also showed signs of noise reduction, so I figured that both would feature the same decent but flawed transfer, with the US release having the added benefits of lossless 7.1 audio, picture-in-picture and other additional extras.

Unfortunately, it looks as if I was wrong. Screen captures have surfaced at the AV Science Forum showing, in their full 1920x1080 resolution, the same frame from both releases (as well as the French HD DVD and EU H.264 broadcast versions), and to say that the US release makes the UK version look stellar would be an understatement. This is probably the worst example of grain-sucking I've seen on an HD release this side of Cat People or American Psycho, and while many people are predictably praising the US release for looking "smooth" and "clean" (words which always put the fear of Pazuzu in me when used in reference to material shot on film), the more informed among us are justifiably outraged.

I'm now really sorry I ordered this release, and at this rate I won't even be bothering to unwrap the cellophane. It also makes me slightly suspicious of the rave reviews that New Line's other HD releases have been receiving, and I have a feeling I'll need to pick up one or two of them to get to the truth of the matter. The problem is that none of the titles they've put out so far appeal to me, least of all Rush Hour 3.

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)

Universal still loves you

Source: High-Def Digest

After almost a week of ominous silence, Universal has finally made a public statement regarding its HD DVD support. As some of you will know, the studio's exclusivity deal with the format expired recently and has, as yet, not been renewed, prompting rumours ranging from it going format neutral to going Blu-ray exclusive and abandoning HD DVD completely à la Warner. While I don't think anyone in their right mind would doubt that we'll be seeing Universal titles on Blu-ray be the end of the year (if not the end of the month), those who are currently HD DVD-only will probably be quite relieved to hear that

"Contrary to unsubstantiated rumors from unnamed sources, Universal's current plan is to continue to support the HD DVD format," said Ken Graffeo, executive vice president of HD strategic marketing for Universal Studios Home Entertainment and co-president of the HD DVD Promotional Group.

In addition,

A Universal spokesperson told us this afternoon that the studio plans to issue new upcoming HD DVD title announcements in the near future.

We shall see...

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)