Technology

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)

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: