Technology

The Warner shopping list

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

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

Titles which feature superior audio on HD DVD:

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

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

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

Titles which are limited to 1080i output on BD:

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

Titles which feature more extras on HD DVD:

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

Titles which are currently only available on HD DVD:

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

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

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

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

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

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

David Lynch tells us what to think

I spotted this over at the Mobius Home Video Forum (posts by Wade Sowers and Jeffrey Allen Rydell respectively), and thought I'd draw your attention to it, as it's good for a laugh. Essentially, it's two short clips on YouTube of David Lynch, bizarremeister extraordinaire, giving his thoughts on two subjects that are very pertinent to today's movie fans. Enjoy.

Lynch on the iPhone
Lynch on product placement

Run Blu-ray run

I'm a bit behind with reporting this, but, as the saying goes, "better late than never". Run Lola Run, one of my favourite films, is to get the high definition treatment courtesy of Sony Pictures' Blu-ray release on February 19th. As High-Def Digest reports, it will come on a single layer BD-25 disc with an AVC encode, German (and English, pfff) Dolby TrueHD 5.1 audio and the main extras from the standard definition DVD, including the excellent commentary by Tom Tykwer and Franka Potente. It also features the hilariously bad tag-line of "Fast cash, crazy fate & true love"... although, given the recent hilarity of the blurb on the Resident Evil: The High Definition Trilogy box set, which Lyris received yesterday, I'm now more convinced than ever that someone at Sony Pictures Home Entertainment's marketing department is taking the piss.

Consider this, one of the few HD discs announced so far this year that I'm actually interested in, pre-ordered.

Setting the record straight: The Psychic

A week ago, I wrote a post on Severin Films' release of Lucio Fulci's DVD of The Psychic, criticising its image quality based on flaws which I believed indicated a PAL to NTSC video standards conversion. The truth is actually more complicated than that, and I would like to apologise for misleading anyone in any way.

However, rather than asking you to take my word for it, I thought it would be better if I let someone else explain it - someone who knows more about this subject matter than me and has had first hand experience with video encoding.

David Mackenzie says:

Michael has given me this disc for my input. It's a very strange one and sadly, I have to say that it is definitely a poor disc. The opening shot of the car driving clearly shows a lot of motion judder and also some interpolated frames (strange for a Progressive disc). The frame rate is 29.970fps, and not the correct (for telecine'd film) 23.976fps.

For those that would like to get into technicalities, this is not a video standards conversion in the typical sense. I can understand why it would be mistaken for one because of the aforementioned doubled frames in the opening shot, but it's different. It is actually worse than a traditional standards conversion. With typical PAL 50i->NTSC 60i conversions, better Deinterlacing hardware (in high-end TVs, projectors, DVD players, video processors etc) can attempt to recover much of the original resolution, albeit with the caveats that standards conversions bring to the table (slight motion blur).

However, this disc is a badly done Progressive one. That means that no matter how good your video processing hardware is, it's never going to look much better than this. The video for this film has not been handled correctly. The entire film has a lot of aliasing (which is probably why it was mistaken for a 50i->60i standards conversion in the first place) which appears to be the result of it being run through a crude Deinterlacing process. This creates jaggies and causes a loss of resolution. On the up-side, there's no motion blur for most of the film.

Mike also showed me the French R2 PAL release. It's MUCH better (despite having some more film damage). It doesn't have the jagged lines, and there's no motion blur on any scene.

I realise that companies releasing "cult" foreign material on DVD have enough problems to worry about - rights issues, tracking down good masters, etc., and I realise that not everyone is a video enthusiast, so smaller labels won't necessarily know what to do in every case. That said, proper conversion between the formats is not at all difficult 99% of the time, so it's a problem everyone could do without.

With that in mind, if anyone at Severin would like to contact me, I'd be more than willing to explain how to convert a PAL master tape into NTSC Film (23.976fps progressive) using the correct method.

- David Mackenzie
Hardware Reviewer and DVD author

The fat lady sings

It's all over:

Warner to go Blu-ray exclusive from June 2008

In response to consumer demand, Warner Bros. Entertainment will release its high-definition DVD titles exclusively in the Blu-ray disc format beginning later this year, it was announced today by Barry Meyer, Chairman & CEO, Warner Bros. and Kevin Tsujihara, President, Warner Bros. Home Entertainment Group.

"Warner Bros.' move to exclusively release in the Blu-ray disc format is a strategic decision focused on the long term and the most direct way to give consumers what they want," said Meyer. "The window of opportunity for high-definition DVD could be missed if format confusion continues to linger. We believe that exclusively distributing in Blu-ray will further the potential for mass market success and ultimately benefit retailers, producers, and most importantly, consumers."

Warner Home Video will continue to release its titles in standard DVD format and Blu-ray. After a short window following their standard DVD and Blu-ray releases, all new titles will continue to be released in HD DVD until the end of May 2008.

At this stage, unless HD DVD somehow manages to pull something miraculous out of the bag, the writing is on the wall for the format. On the plus side, it's a positive thing, I suppose, that someone has taken a stance and decided to help steer the "war" towards an end. The only major regrets I have are that we'll now have to endure months of squealing from fanboys on both sides of the fence, and that we'll have to look forward to a future in which the dominating format is the one that supports region coding and more stringent DRM than the competition.

Personally, I'll continue to enjoy my Universal and Paramount (and Studio Canal, Concorde, etc.) HD DVDs, as well as all the Warner HD DVDs I've bought so far. I suppose this means I'll now move to buying Blu-ray versions of future Warner titles, but my existing collection ain't going anywhere, and I think that's what all the HD DVD customers who are feeling burned right now have to remember.

The funny this is that although, as a format neutral customer, this decision doesn't really affect me one way or the other, it's hard not to feel a little disappointed. The whole affair leaves a sour taste in my mouth, particularly given that, as little as a month ago, Warner was still giving customers assurances that it wasn't changing its format neutral stance. This is quite an about-face, and I feel really sorry anyone who got an HD DVD player for Christmas.

Ultimate quality

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

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

Feature: Top 10 HD Transfers of 2007

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

A $75 million turkey

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The Year in Review, 2007

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

 
Life Itself

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

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

 
Zeros and Ones

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

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

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

 
At the Pictures

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

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

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

 
Bibliothèque

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

 
Song and Dance

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

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

Murder to the tune of standards conversion

Update, January 5th, 2008 07:03 PM: Although many of the points expressed in this post remain valid, it has been brought to my attention that I made certain technical errors, and as such would like to clarify my points and apologise for any confusion. I have added a new post which will hopefully set the record straight on the matter.

Aaaargh! Curse you, DVD gods! Why was I not informed of this beforehand? I received my copy of Severin's DVD of Lucio Fulci's Seven Notes in Black (released under the far more mundane title of The Psychic) today, and, within seconds of popping it into my DVD drive, I knew that something was wrong. Where was all the detail? Why were the horizontal lines jumping about? What was with the ghosting?

That's right: The Psychic is a PAL to NTSC standards conversion, and not a very good one at that (if "good" can ever be used to describe a standards conversion). Why did this happen? Why was this not spotted? Many reviewers complained about poor audio quality on the check discs they received - so much so that Severin delayed the title's release and pressed the disc again with the sound corrected. How ironic (although not particularly unsurprising) that nothing was done about the poor image quality.

Popping in my French Collector's Edition release (which unfortunately doesn't include English audio or subtitles), the transfer is so much better it isn't true. This is a real disappointment, and I'm saddened that Severin have opted to take such shortcuts, especially given that their earlier release of Fulci's Perversion Story featured a very strong native NTSC transfer. The sad part is that it makes me considerably less likely to take a chance on picking up future releases from Severin, at least until I have heard reports from trusted sources.

Cripes, has no-one heard of a little thing called standards?

Update, December 29th, 2007 07:19 PM: My mistake - it seems that Fangoria did notice that this was a standards conversion. They appear to be the only ones.

Post turkey syndrome

Well, Christmas has come and gone once again. The dust has settled, the unruly guests have left the house and things are beginning to get back to normal. I previously posted about the games, HD DVDs and DVDs I had ordered for Christmas, so I'll simply link you to that rather than repeat myself. To my surprise, I also ended up with a new comfy chair and a pair of headphones from my parents. Oh, and a Terry's Chocolate Orange.

Of the movies I received, the only one I've had a chance to watch yet is Tideland, and I'm still trying to work out how I felt about it. Like virtually every movie released these days (and I know I'm beginning to sound like a broken record here), it's at least half an hour too long. In many ways it feels like a less impressive version of Pan's Labyrinth, infused with the touch of Terry Gilliam rather than Guillermo Del Toro. Rather predictably, it starts out better than it ends, as I felt was also the case with Gilliam's Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, but it's nowhere near the stinker that the critics suggest. Transfer-wise, Concorde's HD DVD is relatively good, but suffers from noticeable filtering and edge enhancement. In fact, it looks decidedly similar to second-tier Warner titles like The Matrix Trilogy and V for Vendetta. Most reviewers will probably rate it highly.

Oh, and continuing in the Gilliam vein, Lyris got the Blu-ray release of Life of Brian. We watched it on Christmas Day itself, which seemed strangely appropriate, but were less than enthused by its transfer. You can read his thoughts at the NTSC-UK forum, and I'm sure he'll do a more in-depth post on his site at a later date.

I've also been dabbling with the two games I got, The Witcher and Unreal Tournament III. The former looks like it could be a very strong game, but I haven't been able to devote sufficient time to it yet in order to really get into it, while I must confess that I'm having a lot more fun with Unreal Tournament III's level editor and the hours of video-based tutorials that come with the Collector's Edition than I am with the game. Don't get me wrong, it seems to be a solid enough package, and I'm happy to report that not every level is as colour-free as the ones included in the demo (although there has been a definite tendency to dull things down across the board in comparison with its predecessors), but the whole thing is too mode-based for my liking. I've never really enjoyed the more mission-based modes like Capture The Flag and Warfare in FPS games, so the fact that there are far fewer Deathmatch maps this time around, and the single player campaign seems to consist almost exclusively of non-Deathmatch missions, means that I don't think I'll be retiring Unreal Tournament 2004 from my hard drive any time soon.

FedEx flies

That's right, it's Four Flies on Grey Velvet. This particular order actually came from Xploited Cinema, not D&T. I ordered a second copy for two reasons. First of all, my impatient side got the better of me and I decided that I wanted to order from a supplier that had a courier shipping option, to ensure that it reached me before Christmas. Secondly, there was at one point a rumour doing the rounds that D&T had already sold their entire allocated stock and wouldn't be getting any more, so I decided to hedge my bets and order from a supplier which had already stated that it would be getting a decent number of copies. As it turns out, my D&T order shipped only slightly after the Xploited one, but all that this means is that I'll have an extra copy to pass on to a lucky duck... for a price, of course.

You're probably looking for my opinion on the quality of this release, and I'll start out by categorically stating what it is not. It is not, by any means, a bells and whistles, zim-zam, whizz-bang, no holds barred restoration of the film. The materials used, an English language print (presumably theatrical), show no small amount of wear and tear, with speckles, scratches and tramlines visible for the duration of its running time. The colours and black level are also inconsistent, with several scenes looking overly pink and the overall saturation level seeming too high most of the time. Additionally, given that the English language print is a few minutes shorter than its Italian counterpart, some material has been spliced in from a VHS source, and at these points the quality is much poorer than the rest of the film (although still, by my estimation, an improvement on the two bootlegs I own). A handful of other minor flaws, including the title card being misplaced (it appears at the very start of the film here, rather than in its proper place after Michael Brandon, Mimsy Farmer and Jean-Pierre Marielle's names have been displayed), and the occasional instance of the entire frame floating slightly too high or low, resulting in the top or bottom of the next frame being visible, show that this is release is very much rough around the edges.

With all that on board, let's move on to the positives, and luckily, there are many. Although the detail is far from spectacular, I'll be absolutely honest and say that it compares favourably to many giallo releases I've seen from Blue Underground and NoShame in terms of overall sharpness, and it exhibits none of the obvious edge enhancement that the former go in for. Provided you lower your explanations slightly and don't expect a flawless, crystal clear image, I can't imagine you being disappointed by this release, which is by far the best the film has ever looked outside of an actual cinema. The sound is not bad either - noticeably strained, but once again a lot better than my previous copies. You can actually see and hear what is going on throughout, particularly in the second half of the film, which, in many copies, was virtually incomprehensible due to it being so dark and fuzzy.

I'll be doing an in-depth comparison between this and the two other releases I own before too long, in addition to a fully-fledged review (this, The Five Days of Milan, Jenifer and Mother of Tears are the only Argento films about which I have yet to write in depth), but for the time being, feast your eyes on these screen captures:

Tinkering till perfection

Yesterday, my order of the HD DVD release of Blade Runner (5-disc Complete Collector's Edition - whew!) arrived from DVD Pacific. Considering the plethora of material contained in this release, including five different cuts of the film and a wealth of bonus features, the asking price of £15.90 seemed like a steal.

Anyway, last night, we watched the Final Cut on the wall. I was very impressed by the presentation - I think this is one of the few film-sourced (as opposed to digital intermediate) high definition transfers I've seen without edge enhancement. A handful of shots do appear to have been over-sharpened, but by and large the image looks very film-like and untreated. There are some astoundingly detailed shots, and the colours are eye-popping. Okay, so it's not as consistently amazing as something like Casino Royale or Ratatouille, but, given the film's age and the number of effects shots done the old fashioned way, it seems churlish to complain about what are more than likely faults inherent in the source material.

Some direct screen captures are provided below.

Blade Runner: Final Cut
(Warner, USA, VC-1)

I've also thrown in a few comparative shots to demonstrate the visual differences between the various different cuts included in this release. The Final Cut and Workprint both come on their own discs, while the three "Archival Versions", on a single disc, are essentially a stand-alone version of the film with the differences between the US, international and 1992's Director's Cut editions achieved through seamless branching (which the Blu-ray camp at one point claimed wasn't possible on HD DVD). As you can probably tell, some colour work has been done on the Final Cut, subtly changing the overall look. Oddly enough, though, in some cases, there appears to have been a reduction in detail at the same time (look at Example 2, and see how much crisper the Archival version looks than the Final Cut). Of course, the Workprint is not in the best of shape and, oddly enough, has been cropped to a ratio of 2.20:1, but it does appear that Ridley Scott and his production team went out of their way to find the best possible elements for this presentation. I look forward to further investigating the differences at a later date.

Example 1
(Left: Final Cut; Right: Archival Version; shot not contained in Workprint)

Example 2
(Left: Final Cut; Middle: Archival Version; Right: Workprint)

Example 3
(Left: Final Cut; Middle: Archival Version; Right: Workprint)

All I want for Christmas is you

Perhaps you haven't noticed, but it will soon be Christmas - a mere eight days to go. While virtually everyone I know is running around in a flap, braving the cold winds of Glasgow in December, not to mention the bustling crowds of like-minded last minute shoppers, I find myself sitting back with a look of rather smug self-satisfaction on my face. I, you see, have discovered the wonders of Internet shopping, and the savings in time, money and worry that come with it. With more or less everyone else's gifts accounted for, I decided it was time to give some thought to myself and what I would like to receive for Mithras' birthday.

First up, a couple of games: the Collector's Edition of Unreal Tournament III and The Witcher. Unreal Tournament III you already know about, from my previous complaint about the desaturated visuals in its pre-release demo. It's undeniably a fun game, though, and the saturation control can, to some extent, be used to compensate for the predominance of grey and brown. The Collector's Edition, in any event, looks somewhat interesting, given that it comes with an art book and a DVD exploring the history of the franchise and the making of this instalment, not to mention ten hours' worth of tutorials for the Unreal Editor.

The Witcher, meanwhile, is not a game that I've had an opportunity to experience for myself, but it sounds like an interesting attempt to do a complex, non-linear single player RPG that eschews traditional notions of good vs. evil and allows the player's choices to impact the story and world in a very noticeable sense. Ironically, the game's qualities seem to have been overshadowed by the controversy surrounding the publisher's decision to censor female nudity from its American release (the European versions are intact), calling into question all sorts of debates regarding the games industry's bizarre relationship within the human body (you can dismember it as much as you like, but God help you if you happen to spot a nipple).

I also picked up a couple of German HD DVD releases from Amazon.de: Wayne Kramer's Running Scared and Terry Gilliam's Tideland. The former is a film I know next to nothing about, but the transfer appears to be extremely good, and I do like to take the odd risk now and then with my movie watching (Inside Man certainly paid dividends, and I liked Kramer's previous film, The Cooler). Tideland, meanwhile, I've wanted to see for a while, even if the word of mouth has been largely negative so far. Interestingly, it is also, as far as I can tell, the only release of the film to present it in its original theatrical ratio of 2.35:1: most DVD releases are open matte at 1.78:1, while the UK release is in a ratio of 2.25:1, which is supposedly Gilliam's preferred ratio. (It may turn out that the HD DVD is also 2.25:1, despite what the packaging claims, but I figure that either is preferable to having an open matte 1.78:1 presentation, so I won't be too fussed either way.)

Oh, and, surprising as it might seem, I haven't yet completely given up on the world of standard definition. I ordered the Region 1 US releases of Michael Moore's Sicko and, carrying on a tradition that was started back at Christmas 2003, the latest release in the Looney Tunes Golden Collection series, Volume 5. I actually have no idea which cartoons are included in this line-up - I like to be pleasantly surprised, although I'm not holding out too much hope for Coal Black and de Sebben Dwarfs making an appearance any time soon.

You're a magnificent c...odec

This is a superlative transfer with a magnificent amount of detail and superb encoding across the board. The contents of the disc, including the film, a TrueHD track, several Dolby Digital-Plus tracks and a handful of extras, uses a mere 22 GB. I was told that a new version of the VC-1 encoder made its debut with the HD DVD release of Shrek the Third, and I wonder if it was also used for this film, because, given its running time of more than two hours and emphasis on tight, fast, hand-held photography, I would have expected to see at least some mild blocking in still frames. When Universal are at their best, they are almost unparalleled in the field of high definition. If only all their transfers were this good.

Shot 6 is included as a prime example of the rampant product placement that can be found in this film. I just love how the monitor, and more importantly, the manufacturer's logo, gets as much prominence in the frame as Jodie Foster.

Inside Man
(Universal, USA, VC-1)

HD heist hyjinks

As you'll know if you've been reading my brother's site, his 1080p projector arrived yesterday. Currently, the screen on which it is intended to project its images is noticeably absent, so for the time being we are making do with a crumpled sheet that has been attached to the wall with drawing pins. It really isn't anything like as bad as it sounds, although the fact that the image is split up by three long horizontal folds, and the image has a tendency to ripple and distort against the less than perfectly flat surface, is slightly distracting.

Anyway, tonight we had our first feature-length screening on the projector, and I'm happy to report that it was something better than Norbit. It was the HD DVD of Spike Lee's Inside Man, which arrived the other day and which I was originally planning on keeping for a Christmas present. I slightly overspent, however, and decided to pay for this one myself (I'll do a post on the other titles I ordered, which I will be saving for Christmas Day, at a later point).

I'm not much of a Lee scholar (actually, I know next to nothing about him), but I understand that this is one of his more conventional and easily accessible outings. It's a solid, engaging and at times decidedly inventive heist movie that, like so many films these days, is a good 45 minutes longer than it needs to be, but, although I did find myself shifting uncomfortably in my seat towards the end, I had a blast for the most part, and found myself being reminded on several occasions of The Taking of Pelham One Two Three, another New York-based thriller dealing with a gang of crooks holding a group of hostages to ransom. It must be admitted that Denzel Washington is not a patch on Walter Mathau,* nor is Clive Owen on Robert Shaw, but I enjoyed their performances thought that the film's only major failings, apart from its length, were a handful of ham-fisted attempts at social commentary, focusing on racial prejudice and, in one laughable scene, violence and "gangsta" culture in video games.

Oh, and it looks as if this is yet another stellar HD release from Universal, who can really do great work when they put their minds to it (they've also churned out some absolute garbage, though, and are to date, to the best of my knowledge, the only studio who have had the audacity to put out a 480i upconvert and sell it as a full 1080p HD release). Of course, moving from a 40" LCD screen to a projected image of over 100" takes some getting used to (everything immediately looks considerably less detailed, unsurprisingly enough), and at the moment I don't have much of a frame of reference for what a superb transfer looks like at this size compared with one that is merely very good, but I found the whole experience surprisingly cinematic and was never distracted by any unpleasant artefacts. I hope to do some screen captures before too long.

And I'm sorry, but I can't not like a film that includes the line "You're a magnificent cunt."

* As I was typing this, I happened to take a look at IMDB, and was somewhat surprised to discover that Tony Scott is directing a remake of The Taking of Pelham One Two Three, due for release in 2009. Guess who's filling Walter Mathau's shoes? That's right: Denzel Washington.

Tight, emphatic close ups, framed under the hairline and above the chin

This is some of the best detail I've seen in an HD release taken from a print source rather than a digital intermediate. The best-looking discs invariably tend to be the ones that have come from the digital domain, but Buena Vista shows with The Rock that you can still get very good results indeed from an interpositive. There's a bit of what looks like edge enhancement (see especially Shot 15, below), but I'm not sure whether this is a result of deliberate sharpening or a side effect of using a film-sourced master. Detail is exemplary, barring a few shots featuring location type, which have been taken from a poorer quality source, and the compression is extremely well handled, as it was on the Criterion standard definition DVD.

The Rock
(Buena Vista, France, AVC)

Cruisin'

I love the colour palette of this film. Given that so many action movies tend to go with dingy, desaturated visuals, I'm glad J.J. Abrams went down the opposite route and pumped the saturation to an almost ridiculous level. Somehow it seems more befitting of a big, dumb blockbuster than the near black and white moroseness we usually get. Paramount have done a really nice job of the HD DVD release, too. It was quite difficult to get decent captures due to the fact that the camera shakes around almost as much as it does in a Michael Bay film, but the images below should at least give some idea of the disc's look. There are some visible compression artefacts here and there - the only flaw preventing this disc from being a 10/10 affair.

Mission Impossible III
(Paramount, USA, VC-1)

Glamourama

This is such a sumptuously photographed film that I couldn't whittle it down to a mere nine images, as is my standard (I took over 60 captures), so I decided to throw in a whole bunch more than usual and select 15. Mulholland Drive is a naturally soft-looking film, shot with a lot of filters and with a definite glow in its daylight scenes, and as such, on HD DVD it doesn't have the pop of something like King Kong or The Bourne Ultimatum, but the look is totally in keeping with its source materials. There is a lot of very fine grain present in the image (this is one of these films that gains most of its detail from the densely moving particles, and as such can sometimes look quite a bit softer in still frame form), which is rendered very well during the brighter scenes, although those shot in low light tend to lead to some artefacting on this release. Still, it's a solid 8 out of 10 title and one that will no doubt be unfairly ignored by many viewers simply because it doesn't have any explosions or car chases in it.

Mulholland Drive
(Studio Canal, France, VC-1)

A tortuous web

Where to start? I haven't seen the first two Spider-man films, but I'm told this third instalment in the franchise is the weakest of the bunch. Myself, I thought it was fairly mediocre, but too long (as most films are these days), shambolic and utterly cringe-inducing throughout much of its second half.

Anyway, in terms of transfer quality, the detail in the Blu-ray release may well be the best I've ever seen. Encoding is also superlative, and indeed, were it not for one small niggle, this would probably have been my top-rated disc of all time, at least in terms of film-sourced material. Unfortunately, it is let down by a handful of shots that have been artificially sharpened (see the first and fourth images below). The rest of the film looks stellar, but this small number of problematic shots lets the side down, meaning that Spider-man 3 falls shy of the coveted 10/10 position, instead earning a respectable 9.5.

Spider-man 3
(Sony Pictures, UK, AVC, 41 GB)