DVDs I bought or received in the month of June
I thought I'd start doing this: a monthly recap of every DVD that enters my grubby little collection. So, to start us of, here, in alphabetical order, are the acquisitions for the month of June - a relatively quiet month for me in DVD-land. Unfortunately, neither of the HD-DVD titles I ordered arrived in time - oh well, looks like July will by the month of high definition.
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The Hills Have Eyes: Unrated (R1 USA, SD-DVD)
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Kingdom of Heaven: Director's Cut (R1 USA, SD-DVD)
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Mr. Bean: 10th Anniversary Collection (R4 Australia, SD-DVD)
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The Omen: Collector's Edition (R1 USA, SD-DVD)
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Underworld: Evolution (R1 Canada, SD-DVD)
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Underworld: Evolution (R0 USA, Blu-Ray)
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Waking the Dead: Series 2 (R2 UK, SD-DVD)
Spooks Season 4 in September
Source:
DVD TimesContender Home Entertainment have announced the UK Region 2 DVD release of Spooks Season 4 for 4th September 2006 priced at £39.99. This five-disc special edition release features all ten episodes of the highly acclaimed fourth series and comes complete with audio commentaries for every episode and extra features including 'An Elusive Peace' behind-the-scenes documentary, an interview with Julian Simpson (Director of episodes 8 & 9) and 'Regnum Defende' – an interview with Andrew Woodhead, the Series Producer.
Excellent - I shall be adding this one to my collection. Season 4 was, if my memory serves me correctly, a major improvement on Season 3, which suffered to much from continual cast changes and some poor writing.
There's also a press release about the upcoming fifth season
here, although in typical BBC fashion it's riddled with spoilers, so I advise against reading it.
Buffy the Vampire Slayer: Season 2, Episode 18: Killed by Death
Written by Rob Des Hotel & Dean Batali; Directed by Deran Sarafian
(a.k.a.
In Which Buffy Learns... Absolutely Nothing)
So Sunnydale has a general hospital too? I would have thought they would dispense with Accident & Emergency and just stick with a morgue.
This is one of the earliest episodes I remember seeing, when I happened to catch it on Sky One a few years before I properly got into the show in 2003. It's not a great episode, and a lot of that is due to the fact that it's a big rip-off of
A Nightmare on Elm Street, right down to the Freddy Krueger-styled demon and snatches of the music score. (Jeez, one of the kids he kills is even called Tina!) Quite apart from that, the backstory involving Buffy and her cousin, whose death she witnessed at a young age, was clearly dreamed up for the purposes of this episode only and, to the best of my knowledge, is never referred to again. (Plus, if Buffy hates hospitals so much, why doesn't it bother her more when she spends so much time in one during Season 5?) It is, however, shot in a very atmospheric way, and it has an atmosphere unlike any other
Buffy episode I can think of. This was the only episode directed by Deran Sarafian (who, incidentally, is the nephew of Robert Altman), and I wish he'd done more, for whatever it lacks in terms of plot and originality, it makes up for with style.
Overall rating:
6/10.
Next time:
I Only Have Eyes For You, an episode that I considered to be pretty overrated when I first saw it. Maybe I'll look on it more favourably now?
Well, that's me made my way through four episodes in one day. Maybe I'll do the same tomorrow, and then I'll be done with Season 2. Right now, I'm off out to dinner
avec ma familie for my birthday (which isn't actually for another four days, but my dad will be away in France by that time).
Buffy the Vampire Slayer: Season 2, Episode 17: Passion
Written by Ty King; Directed by Michael E. Gershman
(a.k.a.
In Which Buffy Learns That Angel Is A Bastard)
Did the same guy responsible for
Some Assembly Required really write this??
It's funny, considering that
Passion immediately follows a similarly strong but completely different episode, the comedy-oriented
Bewitched, Bothered and Bewildered. As much as I like that particular episode, though, on reflection, I think that
Passion is the better of the two, and indeed perhaps the finest of Season 2. True,
Innocence and
Becoming: Part 2 cry out for more attention and are more obviously designed as self-consciously memorable, but
Passion is magnificently handled and, I think, perhaps more potent than either of these two Whedon-penned episodes. What it does so incredibly well is to maintain a brooding sense of tension throughout, in a way that is dark, twisted and at times almost disturbing in the way in which it sadistically plays with the characters and audience. Giles and Buffy both go through hell in this episode, and their scene together outside Angel's hideout showcases some of the finest acting in the whole series. After watching this episode, it's impossible to ever view Giles in quite the same way again, and I think the writers saw this too as they gradually began to shift away from the bumbling comic relief librarian persona in favour of a three-dimensional human being with real emotional issues. The framing structure of Angel's monologue about passion is also brilliantly written, even if Boreanaz's actual execution of it is lacklustre.
Oh yeah, this was also the episode where they started pulling the "kill a major character for shock value" game. This time round, it works, but future retreads - *cough!* Tara *cough!* Fred - came across as gratuitous and insulting. I still haven't worked out what it is that this episode does right that the others did wrong, but in this particular case it was the right decision.
Overall rating:
10/10.
Next time:
Killed by Death.
Buffy the Vampire Slayer: Season 2, Episode 16: Bewitched, Bothered and Bewildered
Written by Marti Noxon; Directed by James A. Contner
(a.k.a.
In Which Buffy Learns That Xander Can Resist Her Feminine Charms)
I didn't really remember much of this episode from the last time I watched it, back in 2003, but watching it again today it struck me how outrageously funny the whole concept, and indeed the execution, was. It's also a great character-driven episode. Despite laying on the saccharine a bit too thick at the end, it works because it changes the character of Cordelia for ever, and paves the way for her more intelligent, caring persona that would emerge on
Angel. Okay, so it may not be the most substantial episode of all time, but it shows how it was that Season 2 managed to handle all the overhanging doom and gloom where Seasons 6 and 7 failed. Maybe I'm rating what is, in the face of it, just a throwaway episode too highly, but, of all the Season 2 episodes I've made my way through thus far, this has been the most purely entertaining.
Overall rating:
9/10.
Next time:
Passion. The best episode of the season? Possibly.
Buffy the Vampire Slayer: Season 2, Episode 15: Phases
Written by Rob Des Hotel & Dean Batali; Directed by Bruce Seth Green
(a.k.a.
In Which Buffy Learns That... actually, I don't know
what she learns in this episode)
I decided to speed up my
Buffy watching and no longer restrict myself to watching one episode a week. Perhaps it's indicative of the fact that, at this stage in the second season, the show is much better than it was when it started out... or maybe it's just that I want to get on to the later episodes (the more I think about it, the more I'm looking forward to seeing Seasons 4 and 5 again).
Either way,
Phases is a decent but not great episode. The funniest things about it are Oz's various unsurprised reactions to his discovery that he's a werewolf. Otherwise, for such a crucial episode for the characters of Oz and Willow, it feels oddly disconnected from the main arc of the season. Okay, we get a couple of mentions of Angel's soul loss, and he shows up once to prove that he's still bad, but given what a major event that was, and especially given that it happened only last week, it seems to be of bafflingly little consequence in this episode.
Overall rating:
7/10.
Next time:
Bewitched, Bothered and Bewildered.
Waking the Dead: Series 2
For all its faults, I enjoy Waking the Dead a great deal. Indeed, I would consider it to be one of the most engaging detective series made in recent years. I know that a number of people have trouble getting past the character of Boyd, who spends a great deal of time screaming like a petulant child, but I consider Trevor Eve's portrayal of the man to be riveting, and, over the years, I have greatly enjoyed watching him gradually losing his sanity. Criticisms of the show's attempts to be confusing for the sake of it are perfectly valid, but ultimately Waking the Dead, when it gets things right, is about as good as it gets for TV detective fiction.
The irascible Boyd and the rest of his Cold Case squad are back for yet more convoluted investigations in
Waking the Dead: Series 2. I've
reviewed the 4-disc standard definition DVD set from 2 Entertain, which features a serviceable audio-visual presentation but is devoid of extras.
Jenifer DVD specs announced
Fangoria has revealed the details on Anchor Bay's upcoming DVD release of Dario Argento's episode of the
Masters of Horror series,
Jenifer:
Streeting August 15, the disc presents the movie in a 16x9-enhanced 1.77:1 transfer with Dolby Digital 5.1 Surround sound; the extras are:
- Audio commentary by Weber and DVD producer Perry Martin
- So Hideous My Love featurette
- Working With a Master: Dario Argento tribute interview featurette
- Behind the Scenes: The Making of JENIFER featurette
- Howard Berger and the Makeup of JENIFER featurette
- On Set: An Interview With Steven Weber
- On Set: An Interview With Carrie Anne Fleming
- Script to Screen: JENIFER featurette
- Trailers
- Still gallery
- Dario Argento bio
- Original screenplay (DVD-ROM)
- Screensaver (DVD-ROM)
Looks like a decent line-up of features. Too bad about the film.
The Silence of the Lambs
It's time for yet another of my patented DVD image comparisons. Today, I take MGM to task for buggering up
The Silence of the Lambs, and compare it with the now out of print Criterion Collection release.
Full comparison
here.
Back from the optician's
Well, I don't need glasses, for which I'm thankful. (Not that I have anything against glasses or people who wear them, but I've always viewed them as an inconvenience that I'd rather not be lumbered with.) Basically, the optician told me that there was a very slight improvement to the clarity of my vision in one eye when I wore one particular lens, but it was so miniscule that it wasn't worth actually wearing glasses (although I could if I wanted - I declined).
As for the "grain" I've been seeing, my theory was correct: it's something that's there all the time, in everyone's eyes, and I've only just become aware of it. Apparently, this is because our eyes are moving constantly (I guess to prevent the retinal equivalent of burn-in), although to be honest I didn't really follow the entire technical description. Basically, some people are more sensitive to it than others, and it can become more prominent if you're tired or have been doing a lot of reading/computer work (I have, but no more than usual). Either way, it's nothing to worry about and I'm to go back for another test in a couple of years or so, or if it gets any worse.
Oh yeah, and I did my last shift at the library today. I true style, there was absolutely nothing to do. I'm currently assuming that I'll be back there in the autumn, at least until I graduate in November.
Blu-Ray disaster
Want to see why I'm not getting a Blu-Ray player?
Look at this. It's a comparison between the new 1080p Blu-Ray release of
The Fifth Element and the standard definition, 480-line SuperBit DVD. I don't think I need to make any further comment.
Oh, and
here's a screengrab from the version that aired on HBO-HD.
A is for animation
I went into university this morning to pick up my Animation module essay from the department office. I'd always considered this to be the strongest of the four essays I submitted, so I wasn't too surprised that, of the three I've had back so far, it had the best mark: 72% - i.e. an "A", enough for a distinction (70% or more). Perhaps I should have done my dissertation on animation after all!
Eye check-up
Well, that's sorted. On Wednesday afternoon I'll be traipsing down to Optical Express for my free eye test. Hopefully I won't be returning home with a pricey and annoying pair of spectacles.
Buffy the Vampire Slayer: Season 2, Episodes 13 and 14: Surprise/Innocence
SurpriseWritten by Marti Noxon; Directed by Michael Lange
InnocenceWritten and Directed by Joss Whedon
(a.k.a.
In Which Buffy Learns That Sex Is Bad)
This is the two-parter that turned
Buffy the Vampire Slayer from a "monster of the week" show into one that was willing to deal with real human emotions in a surprisingly honest way for a show about supernatural demons aimed primarily at teenagers and twentysomethings. It also sent the show on a much darker path, culminating in the season finale, which would change the character of Buffy from a carefree teenager to, eventually, a mopy bitch. Of course, it would take another three seasons for this transformation to be completed, but by the end of Season 2, it was well on its way, and so, despite
Innocence easily being one of the show's best episodes (it's also Joss Whedon's favourite, the narcissistic weasel), it's arguably also the beginning of the end.
Innocence is considerably better than
Surprise, but as with
What's My Line? Parts 1 and 2, the two have to be taken together as a 90 minute event.
Surprise is saddled with the bulk of the setup, so it's not surprising that more happens in
Innocence, but even so, the setup is pretty engaging. There's a whole lot going on here with each character and their various relationships. Of course, it's not until
Innocence that the action really heats up, when Angel loses his soul (and David Boreanaz discovers some acting ability - actually, the acting in this episode is a tour de force all round), but, like I said, you can't take one without the other.
Unfortunately, however, both episodes feature a big blue-faced demon in a tin suit, which, at least in
Surprise, is a little hard to take seriously. In
Innocence, because the tone is generally darker and more serious, it's not so bad.
Oh yeah - is this the only time it's ever rained in Sunnydale? And holy crap, the town appears to have a cinema! Warner must have been pimping
The Quest for Camelot at the time, judging by the number of posters for it that can be prominently seen.
8/10 for
Surprise,
10/10 for
Innocence.
Next time:
Phases. I think this is the one where Oz discovers he is a werewolf, but to tell the truth I barely remember it.
Underworld: Evolution
The Blu-Ray release of
Underworld: Evolution (R0 USA) popped through the letterbox today. Unfortunately, it was dispatched from
DVD Pacific before we decided to abandon the floundering Blu-Ray vessel, so there's not really much that can be done with it other than flog it on
eBay.
So what can we say about the thing, based on its packaging? Well, for a start, the case is squatter than its DVD counterpart, with a much narrower spine (closer to one of those "thinpack" DVD cases that you get for some TV season box sets). The claim that the transfer is "true to the original source master" is also pretty funny when you consider the reports of mass filtering and compression problems that are said to be plaguing the current line-up of Blu-Ray titles. Oh, and on the inner cover, when you lift up the disc itself, we are told to "Experience more with Blu!" What, more filtering? More macro-blocking? More player delays? Take your pick.
Waking the Dead: The Complete Series One & Pilot Episode
Waking the Dead might have considerably less originality to offer than its intriguing premise would suggest, but it is executed with panache and remains engaging, thanks to its characters, even when the plots suffer a little.
To coincide with the DVD release of Series 2 of
Waking the Dead, I've
reviewed last year's DVD release of Series 1 of the engaging detective series, which also includes the show's two-part pilot episode.
I need my eyes tested
I'm currently back using my old CRT. Why? Not because I'm unhappy with my TFT, but because, over the last few days, I've become convinced that something is wrong with my eyesight. Objects in the distance, especially those with an inherent texture like printed paper, fabric, hair and indeed television screens, have a strange "noise" pattern to them, a bit like a badly tuned TV. This disappears when I get closer to them, but for someone who's always had very good eyesight, this is most worrying. The only thing I can think of that's changed regarding my daily viewing habits is my new monitor, which seems to roughly coincide with the onset of these eyesight problems, so I'm going to use my old screen for a couple of days to see if the problem improves at all. Either way, I'm going to take myself down to the opticians and get my eyes tested as soon as possible. I'm seriously hoping I don't need glasses.
Update, 16:42: I'm back to my TFT now, with my CRT attached as a secondary monitor for DVD watching. In all honesty, I don't think it's the monitor that's the problem. However, I am even beginning to think that this is simply something that has always been part of my vision that I'm only noticing now that, using a TFT, my eyes have adjusted differently and I'm seeing things I never noticed before (if that makes any sense). Certainly, it's by no means a crippling disability, but I'm still going to go and get my eyes checked out all the same.
Prey
A momentous thing happened in the gaming world on Wednesday. A playable demo of
Prey, one of the biggest vaporware titles in recent memory, was finally made available. This title, from 3D Realms (I'd forgotten they still existed), has been in development for god knows how long - at least as long as its also unreleased stablemate,
Duke Nukem Forever.
The plot, according to
Gamespot, is thus:
Prey is a first-person shooter in which players take on the role of a character who must fight against multiple alien races.
Gee whiz, how original! An FPS where you fight aliens!
Come back, though, because
Prey adds a few interesting twists to the story. You play a Native American, and you get to do all sorts of clichéd Native American things, such as talking to the spirits of your dead ancestors, chasing majestic eagles about, and entering the "spirit world" yourself to accomplish tasks that you couldn't carry out in corporeal form.
The ideas are all quite interesting, but ultimately the gameplay and graphics leave a lot to be desired. It has that same unattractive, pseudo-realistic look that virtually every FPS has, and the colours are for the most part limited to greys and browns. The action is standard FPS fare - point and shoot, rinse and repeat.
On top of that, the game shows how long it's been in development in that it doesn't actually have a genuine widescreen mode, just an option to squish the visuals horizontally in a standard 4:3 frame and then stretch them out again to fill a widescreen display (luckily my monitor supports such trickery - not all will). Because I'm having to scale the image rather than fit it to the resolution of the panel, the image quality suffers, yadda yadda yadda. Sorry if I'm sounding picky, but this is the year 2006, and widescreen monitors are going to be the norm before too long.
I wouldn't buy this. The demo was a semi-fun way to kill 45 minutes, but there's nothing about this title to make me go "wow", or indeed to justify its damn-near-eternal development time. Ah, well, back to the classics (like
Diablo II, which, despite the fact that it'll be turning six years old on Tuesday, is still infinitely replayable, and sucked up a good few hours of my time this afternoon).
MFM-HT205 - a week in review
Now that I've had my new TFT monitor for a week, I think it's time I put together my thoughts on it.
First, let me stress, before anyone accuses me of being a perfectionist or anything like that, that I am
very pleased with this monitor, to the extent that I now find it extremely difficult to read text on my old CRT, which is now connected to the computer in my bedroom. (I've put the old 17" TFT that I used to have there up for sale in the university newsletter, because I thought that more people would be interested in that than a tube display. Besides, I want to keep a CRT in the house as a reference point - see later.)
Let's start off by being nice and positive and listing the
good points:
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Widescreen. Until I got this screen I didn't realise quite how much nicer it is to have a widescreen desktop. Partly it's due to the much higher resolution than I've been used to before, but it just feels as if I've got more room to breathe, and the 16:10 ratio makes me feel far less "hemmed in" than the 4:3 ratio of older monitors.
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Resolution. See above. 1,680x1,050 is a very nice resolution. While it doesn't give me substantially more vertical space than my previous preferred resolution of 1,280x960, the extra 400 horizontal pixels count for a lot.
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Pixel perfect. It goes without saying, but the ability, via DVI, to map each pixel being output by the video card to a corresponding pixel on the screen is a godsend. No more convergence issues, discoloration, blooming, geometry issues or anything like that: literally, a perfect reproduction of what I'm meant to be seeing. By contrast, I now have trouble looking at images on my CRT because all I can see is the loss in definition and the bleed between different pixels.
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No need for calibration. CRTs need to be calibrated in order to get a "perfect" (in a manner of speaking) display that fits the screen properly and doesn't have too many geometry errors. And, you have to do this again for every resolution you intend to use. Worse still, my CRT had a "drift" bug whereby, until it had warmed up, the image would appear off-centre. This simply isn't an issue on a TFT.
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Space. It sounds trivial, but it's very nice to have a display that doesn't take up 90% of my desk. My CRT was so deep that, despite having a pretty large table, it was practically pressed up against my nose. Now, I can spread things out much better.
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Sunny days. The room my computer is in has its window in direct view of the sun when it's at its brightest, and it doesn't help that it shines
on the display area of my monitor rather than the back of it. With my CRT, whenever the sun was shining directly on it, the screen would become a hazy, over-brightened mess. With a TFT, this issue is considerably less of an issue (although it brings about its own problem; see below).
Alas, however, it's not all fun and games. Like just about any new(-ish) technology, in order to make use of the benefits you have to put up with some
drawbacks:
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Scaling. CRTs can display a wide range of resolutions. Because of the way they work, TFTs have one "native" resolution and must instead scale (stretch) lower resolutions to fit the screen. The, understandably, results in a poorer quality image. While this isn't a problem for modern games that support a multitude of resolutions (
Guild Wars,
Unreal Tournament 2004 and
Age of Empires III can all be set to the native 1,680x1,050 resolution, while
Warcraft III can be set to the screen's 4:3 mode of 1,440x1,050, which naturally results in black bars on either side of the image but ensures that all the used pixels are properly mapped, via a registry hack), older games, and those that don't support the native resolution, don't look so hot. 640x480 and 800x600 games like
Starcraft and
Diablo II look decidedly blurry, while higher resolution games like
The Movies look somewhat better but still far from perfect.
-
Blacks. Because of the way CRTs work, firing light only at areas of the screen that need to be lit up, it is possible to get "true" blacks, since the parts of the screen that are meant to be black simply don't get lit. For TFTs, the technology is different (and too complex to properly explain here), meaning that a light is constantly shining on the entire screen, meaning that the best you'll get for an approximation of black is a kind of milky dark grey. Turning the backlight down as low as it will go compensates somewhat, but has the effect of over-dimming the parts of the screen that are meant to be lit up, and in any event never even comes close to matching "real" black.) This, in my opinion, is the format's single biggest failing, and one that I hope can one day be overcome. (I believe development is currently being carried out on a TFT-like display that can "switch off" areas of the backlight similar to a CRT's electron gun.)
-
Reflectiveness. If there's one aspect of TFTs that gets praised time and time again, it's how much less reflective they are compared to CRT screens. My experience here is that the exact opposite is true. This display (and indeed, I believe,
all Sony TFTs in the "X-Black" range) has a shiny coating, which looks a lot like glass but isn't. It causes the light shining on the screen to reflect, especially on dark areas, which, in the worst case scenario, effectively turns the thing into a mirror. As you can imagine, it's pretty infuriating. The only way of eliminating this is to completely starve the room of light, but, as I'm sure you'll agree, that's not particularly feasible, especially during the day... and in any event, doing so only serves to highlight the shortcomings of the display's black level. I hate to say it, but for anyone who wants "pure" blacks - and I myself am one of them - a CRT is still preferable.
Like I said, it's all about trade-offs. Switching to this display has given me a much crisper and more ergonomic display, but has, I'm sad to admit, turned my movie-watching experience, at least for ones that take place in the dark (and as a horror fan, that's rather a lot), into a pale shadow of its former self. The biggest problem here is the reflective surface. Without it, I would have less need to minimise light in the room and would therefore find the black level problems less noticeable. While I'm ultimately very happy with this screen as a web/work/gaming solution, I can't claim to be fully converted to TFT-world by any means. Monitors like this bring in a huge number of benefits, but the end result can only ever really be a compromise.
DVD debacle
I ordered a copy of the giallo
Puzzle, a.k.a.
L'Uomo Senza Memoria (recently released in Denmark as
Dødens Puslespil) from
Absurd-Online. This will be a birthday present - hopefully it'll arrive in time.
I also pre-ordered my copy of Amber Benson's new film,
Lovers, Liars and Lunatics, from its
official web site. It's not due out until September, but I thought I'd put down the money for it now, since the first 500 copies to go out will be signed. You can watch the trailer to the film on its
MySpace page.
Make your computer's desktop as cluttered as the real thing!
Haven't you always wished that files were as difficult to find on your computer as on your
real desktop? Well, thanks to
BumpTop, this dream may finally become a reality!
I jest. In all seriousness, this looks like a very neat concept - you can view a video demonstration, complete with voice-over explanation, at
YouTube. Basically, the aim is to make the storing of files on your computer's desktop feel like you've actually got a whole bunch of physical documents that you can move around, stack, pin on walls, crumple up, etc. A lot of these innovations would certainly be very useful to many people, but to be honest I don't have much of a problem with the unrealistic-but-functional directory system that's been in place for Windows since the dark ages. Based on the look of this prototype, I would imagine that it would be rather difficult to actually find what you're looking for in BumpTop, especially when you have a lot of files (I've probably got over a million).
Still, I'll give the developer credit where it's due: this concept is far more revolutionary than anything Microsoft or Apple have come up with in the last decade. If something along these lines ever took off, it would completely change the way we interact with our computers' file storage.
Essay update
I got my Screen Bodies essay back today when I was seeing my supervisor about my dissertation. I got 63% for the essay (worth 80% of the overall mark for the module) and 69% for my oral presentation (worth 20%) for a total score of 64%. That's pretty good, I guess, although I'd been hoping for better, given that I got 69% for my Core Course essay, which I felt was the one I struggled with the most.
In the course of getting back this essay, the subject of one of the other essays I'm still waiting for, Animation, came up. Apparently, it's been marked for the past two months and, for some reason, I never got the email to tell me this. I assume everyone else did, but it wouldn't surprise me if there are others in the same boat. I'm going to have to go in at some point next week to pick it up from the office (I assumed I'd have to get it from the lecturer, who wasn't in her office at the time I was there today, so I foolishly came home without it). Fiddlesticks!
The dissertation seems to be coming along quite well, by the way. My supervisor was pleased, today, with the direction in which it's headed according to the chapter outlines I wrote up over the course of the last week. I think the various disparate elements are beginning to come together now, and I finally have a road map that should take me right through to the end of the project.
HD-DVD in da howse!
It came.
Won't be winning no beauty pageant, that's for sure.
And here is the stepdown transformer, which prevents it from exploding when we connect it to our British power outlet.
Now we just need to wait for the discs.
Pelts shots
A couple of promotional stills for
Pelts, Dario Argento's episode in the second season of
Masters of Horror, have appeared at
Fangoria. I'm not exactly getting much of a buzz from them, but then I've more or less given up hope on Argento's
Masters of Horror offerings based on how spectacularly awful
Jenifer was. Either way, we all know that pretty much everyone is waiting for
Mother of Tears, not some TV project for which he is contracted as a hired hand to knock something out quick with his eyes closed.
The Hills Have Eyes
Briefly:
- It's more gory than the original.
- It's more glossy than the original.
- It's less effective than the original.
It's not a bad film, but it's pretty much a scene by scene retread of its predecessor, with some additions (a tacky back-story for the cannibals, who are now mutants) and minor changes (the cannibals' hide-out, details of the climax). As such, there's not much here for those who've already seen Wes Craven's nasty little 1977 shocker, beyond prettier faces, smoother photography and goopier blood.
Like the original, the thing takes its time to get up and running, although unfortunately the attempts to build tension in the first half are never particularly successful. The characters are by and large uninteresting (not that this wasn't true of its predecessor), and the cannibals are devoid of personality (which
wasn't true of the original - where's Michael Berryman when you need him?). It's also unintentionally funny in places, and the monster make-up is decidedly hokey, looking more like the cannibals are wearing rubber masks than actually disfigured.
Given the promise director Alexandre Aja showed with
Haute Tension, it's something of a disappointment that his first feature in the US is a remake, and a rather uninspired one at that. It's about the same standard as 2004's
Dawn of the Dead remake, and if you enjoyed that, you might get a kick out of this. Otherwise, there's not a whole lot on offer here. For my money,
Wrong Turn did a slightly better job of taking the "backwoods cannibal exploitation" format and applying it to the 21st century.
6/10By the way, the transfer on this DVD blows serious donkey balls, despite what the "reviewers" at the likes of
IGN and
DVD Talk will tell you. In this day and age, a DVD should
not be this devoid of detail and edge enhancement ridden.
Dreamfall: The Longest Journey
I ordered a copy of the game
Dreamfall: The Longest Journey from
Play for my birthday. This title, the sequel to 2000's
The Longest Journey, has been getting a lot of extremely positive
praise for its excellent storytelling, character development, voice acting and dialogue. These are aspects that are almost always short-changed when it comes to games, and I've been hankering after a new adventure-style game with an engaging plot for some time now, so I've decided to give it ago.
The Hills Have Eyes
A review copy of the Unrated R1 US DVD release of the recent remake of
The Hills Have Eyes arrived this morning - the final title I will be reviewing as part of
DVD Times'
Loaded247 deal. (Of course, we still have our ongoing deal with
DVD Pacific and a new one with
CD WOW!, so the Region 1 reviews won't be going anywhere).
Although this is a remake, I have quite high hopes for this film. The writer and director of the original, Wes Craven, was involved as a producer, and the film was co-written and directed by Alexandre Aja, the man behind the excellent
Haute Tension.
The Omen: Collector's Edition
When I previously reviewed The Omen for DVD Times, back in Halloween of 2003, I said that it was "not a classic [...] by any means". Nearly three years later, I feel obliged to retract that statement. While I would have a hard time arguing in favour of it being considered a more important example of the genre than The Exorcist (I'm not even going to try), I think that this review makes it clear which film I like watching more. A sublime horror film on every level and a rare example of a Hollywood production in the genre that actually gets everything right, The Omen beyond any doubt has a place on my Top 20 list of favourite films. Ave Satani and all that rot - forget the sequels, its remake and its imitators, and just enjoy this, the original and best.
To coincide with the release of the 2006 remake of
The Omen, Fox has brought the original - one of the finest horror films ever created - one of the vault and treated it to a full-on 2-disc Collector's Edition. I've
reviewed the Region 1 US release and investigated how it stacks up against the earlier single-disc Special Edition release.
Camera fun
I took some pictures of my new monitor showing off some nice-looking material this evening - mainly DVDs, but I also threw in a shot of
Guild Wars' wonderfully detailed menu screen. Apologies for the colours and contrast being somewhat off - my camera isn't exactly enamoured to me toying around with the calibration.
Click
here to view the entire set.
HD-DVD update
Million Dollar Baby and the HD-DVD player are on their way, with
Serenity apparently to follow shortly. No ETA on the player's date of arrival, although
MovieTyme request that we allow up to 15 days for delivery. Hopefully it'll be here in time for my birthday (July 4th).
Looking through the list of HD-DVD titles with confirmed release dates, I see quite a few titles that I will potentially be interested in:
Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas,
Land of the Dead (director's cut),
Red Dragon,
Unleashed... Not quite such a barren wasteland after all.
Sayonara, Blu-Ray
Weren't expecting that, now, were you? But it's true. For the time being at least, the HMS Whimsy shall not be flying the Blu-Ray flag. No: about an hour ago,
Lyris and I decided to jump ship and climb aboard the raft of HD-DVD.
The reason for this can be summed up as a growing sense of disillusionment regarding all things Blu-Ray. A few hours ago I
pointed out the less than glowing first impressions, which had already caused my devotion to the format to be swayed. Then, slightly later, Lyris linked me to
this thread at NTSC-UK, and what I read made my blood boil. In a nutshell:
- Sony are barely coping with mastering single layer 25 GB discs with 20 GB used, and the likelihood of stable dual layer replication is a considerable way off.
- The transfers for released and pending Blu-Ray titles are filtered to fuck. Like Lyris said in that thread, we're getting into high definition precisely because we want
detail. DVD was, by and large, buggered by incompetent mastering, and it looks as if Blu-Ray may be headed the same way.
In contrast, HD-DVD has the support of people like Stacey Spears and Ben Waggoner, knowledgeable people who were key in the online campaign against crummy DVD transfers. These individuals are actually being employed by Microsoft to advise on encoding and compression, and - get this -
so far, no HD-DVD that has been released is filtered or edge enhanced AT ALL. For a lover of film and image quality, that is a dream come true. It sealed the deal. This house votes for HD-DVD.
The player is ordered - a Toshiba HD-A1. Lyris and I are paying for half of it each, so that will cost us just under £215 each. And titles have been ordered: I put in an order to
DVD Pacific for
Million Dollar Baby, and Lyris has ordered
Serenity from
MovieTyme along with the player.
To be honest, I'm feeling incredibly relieved now. After much dithering, I feel that I've finally committed to a format that I feel reasonably sure will deliver the image quality I want, no,
expect. What a right old turncoat I am!
You know, it's funny - I originally backed Blu-Ray (partly) because I expected it to be the technologically superior format. How wrong I was.
Blu-Ray hits a snag
My Blu-Ray drive was finally uplifted today, despite me requesting that the courier come on Monday. It's a good thing someone was in all day, and that I didn't have to go out of my way to stay in yesterday. Not wanting to sound like a complete and utter bitch, but do these couriers actually realise that some people have lives to lead that don't revolve around waiting for them to get off their duffers and do what they've been paid to do?
Anyway, all this comes hot on the heels of the release of the first stand-alone Blu-Ray player,
Samsung's BDP1000. The news, I'm afraid, isn't good. First impressions, some of which have been collected in this
thread at The DVD Forums (login possibly required, I'm not sure), are lukewarm at best. Image quality is apparently inferior to that of HD-DVD, a combination of the first Blu-Ray releases being single layer only and using the outdated and bloated MPEG2 compression system (the same that is used for standard definition DVD). Numerous problems have also been reported with Samsung's player, from it not pillarboxing 4x3 material correctly to arbitrarily switching between video output modes. Even bearing in mind that this is a Samsung player, and Samsung are renowned for being rubbish, this doesn't sound promising at all. Indeed, it's made me give serious thought to switching camps and siding with HD-DVD.
Ah well - we'll see how the land lies in August when Sony release
their player. Hopefully, by then, dual-layer discs and the new video/audio codecs will have started appearing. If not, then perhaps the format war will be over before it's begun. As one early adopter
puts it, "the bottom line is that HD-DVD delivered the big jump up in picture quality and interactivity that many of us were anticipating and has set the bar in terms of HD. Blu-ray, unfortunately, has failed to go 'Beyond High Definition'."
A treatise on why DRM must be stopped
Last night, I fired up
Guild Wars, a game I
played quite rigorously for a short time last summer. Primarily, I was interested in seeing how it looked running at my monitor's native resolution. ("Very good" is the answer, although I always find that these 3D games never look as impressive as their
concept art.) Anyway, after waiting for it to download a zillion updates (since I hadn't logged in for so long), I was surprised to find that the expansion set,
Guild Wars: Factions, had been integrated into the game's front end. You can't, of course, access the new areas and character classes unless you buy the expansion, but the somewhat improved interface and the title music have both been implemented.
It was that title music that persuaded me to do something I've never done before and purchase the official soundtrack to the expansion, by Jeremy and Julian Soule, from
DirectSong. DirectSong, for those who are not aware, is an online service where you pay to download computer game music to your hard drive. All well and good, and for $9.99 (about £5.40 at the current exchange rate) it sounds like a pretty generous offer, until, that is, you start wrangling with the system's DRM (digital rights management).
This is an issue that most computer-literate people are sure to have heard of. Basically, in an attempt to combat piracy, Microsoft came up with a proprietary system which allows the distributor of a file to control how it is used. So, for example, if the distributor decides it, a file downloaded to one computer can never be played back on another. DirectPlay, in their FAQ section, claim that they "grant generous personal usage rights", such as the ability to download the music to four different computers, and to burn copies on to audio CDs. (Gee, how
generous that I am allowed to do all these things with a product I
paid for. Give me a break.)
The FAQ also says that you can transfer the music to an iPod. As you probably know, I wouldn't touch an iPod (or any other Apple Computer product, come to that) with a barge pole, but I assumed that my Creative Zen Micro would work in a similar way. So, after waiting for the music to download and Windows Media Player to authenticate it, I transferred it to my Zen, pressed play, and was greeted with a message telling me that the music was not licensed for playback on that device. Bugger. I try to do the same thing via Media Player, but no go - despite the files' license information telling me that the music can be "synchronized an unlimited number of times". Back to the FAQ, where I discover that I can burn unlimited audio CD copies of the music, provided I do so via Windows Media Player. "Aha!" I think. "A loophole!"
20 minutes later, having waited for Media Player to convert the files to Redbook audio and burn them to a blank CD, I then load that CD into Creative's MediaSource Organizer (the equivalent to iTunes), rip the contents to my hard drive and then transfer it to my Zen. Unsurprisingly, the music plays flawlessly.
The lesson? DRM is a pain in the ass, but not unbreakable. If the distributor allows you to make CD copies of your download, and you have access to a burner, then you can essentially thwart any music-based copy protection. And if you're not allowed to do that, then you can always turn on "What U Hear" in your sound card's recording control, crank out
GoldWave and hit record, hit play in Media Player and wait as it records the music to a new file the old fashioned way.
Don't say you never learn anything when visiting Whiggles.com.
The big one
Whiggles.com Compact is one year old today! That's right - I switched to a
Blogger-based site
this time last year on a whim, partly as a (failed) attempt to make the site leaner and less time-consuming to maintain. I've had some ups and downs (the sheer lack of stability as far as Blogger's servers are concerned means that, while it shouldn't affect any viewers of the site since everything is stored on my own web space, it's a pain in the neck to want to post some major scoop only to find that you have to wait four hours), but largely it's proven to be a successful experiment.
Oh, and don't forget that the site as a whole celebrates its fifth birthday on August 9th.
Buffy the Vampire Slayer: Season 2, Episode 12: Bad Eggs
Written by Marti Noxon; Directed by David Greenwalt
(a.k.a.
In Which Buffy Learns The Joys Of Responsibility)
For such a small town, Sunnydale has a pretty large shopping mall! Sorry, that was my primary observation about this throwaway episode. (Of course, this was before the town was expanded to include its own university and international airport.) To be honest, I had virtually no memory of this episode, which isn't surprising given that it (along with last week's
Ted) is sandwiched between the considerably more important two-parters
What's My Line? and
Surprise/
Innocence. This is, for all intents and purposes, very much a Season 1-styled episode, and as such is not deserving of a particularly high rating, even if there's nothing seriously wrong with it (although I can't say the redneck vampires did much for me). By this stage, the show was consistently more or less competent, even when the plots themselves turned out th be underwhelming.
6/10Next time: the double bill of
Surprise and
Innocence, the two episodes that changed the direction of the series forever.
Waking the Dead: Series 2
A review copy of
Waking the Dead: Series 2 arrived today. It seems that BBC are offloading some of their DVD releases to other distributors - this one comes from 2 Entertain (who are also resonsible for a number of other series, such as
Casualty), whereas the first set, released last year, came from the moneygrubbers at the Beeb themselves.
I hope to have reviews of both sets up for (or as close as possible to) Series 2's release day of June 26th.
The Movies: Stunts & Effects
My copy of the
Stunts & Effects expansion set to
The Movies arrived on Friday, but for various reasons - working my way through the new DVD of
The Omen, picking up and footering around with my new TFT - I haven't had much chance to play it or put together any comments on it until now.
So, what do you get for your hard-earned cash (I paid £14.99 from
Play)? To be brutally honest, not a huge amount. The most obvious addition is the stunts aspect of the equation, which allows you to use doubles (or your actors themselves) to perform an array of dangerous new manoeuvres, such as falling out of buildings, rushing through flames and crashing cars. These aspects are definitely fun, but are very much one-offs, to the extent that you're not really going to want to use the same stunt again and again in every movie you make. I do really enjoy throwing giant chickens out of top floor windows, though.
The second major addition is the ability to place the camera anywhere in your sets. Previously, each given scene was restricted to the camera angles specified by the game, usually with either two or three different possibilities or no choice at all. This new feature greatly improves the replay value of the game and means that the various movies you can download at
The Movies Online no longer all look exactly the same. You can also move the camera by setting a start and end position, and specify within the scene when you want it to start and stop moving - yes, it's all good.
Major new feature number 3 is the inclusion of a handful of new sets, including some nifty little ideas like a miniature city (great for overhead establishing shots or giant monster movies), and blue and green screen options which let you place actors against a variety of flat backdrops, theoretically allowing you infinite possibilities if you import your own background art. A whole bunch of new vehicle options have been added, including various vans and helicopters, and a variety of appropriate animation sequences for them.
The fundamental problem, once again, however, is that the two game modes - movie-making and business sim - don't really interact in a meaningful way. To access all the new stunts, effects, costumes and sets, you need to play through the game from the start and unlock them, with certain elements being reserved for those who get the absolute highest scores (e.g. a 5-star studio, a platinum award). Personally, I don't want to have to do that sort of thing, so I edited a few .ini files to unlock the new goodies. It should also be pointed out that a number of the newly added sets and props were in fact previously offered online as part of Lionhead's
Prop Shop utility, which allows users to download new material in exchange for virtual credits, which are earned whenever someone views your movie or comments on it. As someone who spent quite a few credits on a new set and various hairstyles, it comes as a bit of a kick in the teeth that something I already "paid" for is included in an expansion which cost "real" money.
Still, I'm not going to complain too much.
The Movies was apparently not a success for Lionhead, so the mere existence of this expansion set is something to be grateful for. And, you know, I suspect that the reproduction of so many Prop Shop items is simply down to an attempt to get the damn thing out the door before focusing on other projects that are likely to actually make the studio a profit. As such,
Stunts & Effects is something of a gift to the fan community (a gift that costs money, but a gift nonetheless), and I'm glad it came out. Hopefully, before too long I'll have some neat new movies to upload and show you - preferably ones involving giant yellow chickens flying about in helicopters.
PS. A quick word of warning - if you have any mods active in your copy of
The Movies, it might be worth doing a clean reinstall prior to installing
Stunts & Effects. I found that trying to load any save game would crash back to the desktop, but when I did a clean reinstall, then re-added all my various mods, everything worked fine.
O checklist, where art thou?
I've decided to remove the TV Checklist from the site. It was simply too much of a hassle to keep updating, given that the TV is often on when I personally am not paying much attention to it and therefore have no reason to keep track of what is on or what sort of overall rating I would assign to it.
The Omen
In preparation for my upcoming review of the newly released 2-disc collector's edition of
The Omen, I've put together a
DVD Image Comparison pitting it against its immediate predecessor, the single-disc special edition release. Is it worth the upgrade? Find out more
here.
Finally, a TFT I can live with
Sorry for the lack of updates today, but I've been busy playing with my new toy here. That's right, I bit the bullet and bought that Sony MFM-HT205 I'd been eyeing up. And do you know what? I'm not sending it back. This is definitely the best desktop TFT screen I've seen, and it makes the previous ones I've bought and returned look like faeces (which, to be honest, wasn't very far off the mark, given the smears fast motion would cause on them).
This afternoon, I went into town and paid a trip to
John Lewis, the swanky department store where the employees actually seem to have a clue what they're talking about. It's a good thing I went in when I did, because I snagged the last one in the store. (I was determined to buy it from them, since they have an excellent returns policy that I couldn't have hoped to match with any of the cheaper but scuzzier online stores. In any event, I'm not going to have to make use of that policy, but it makes me feel more secure nonetheless.) Got the thing home, cleared away my old CRT, plugged it in and smiled a satisfied smile.
This display is everything I could have hoped for. Nice size, no dead pixels, minimal ghosting (even
Treasure Planet, the DVD that sunk both last summer's
Sony TFT purchase and 2004's Iiyama nightmare like the Titanic), vibrant colours, and a remote control that I'm finding considerably more useful than I would have expected. Since this display also functions as a TV, I'm considering picking up some sort of external "Free"-view device at some point so I can watch digital TV. Oh, and I was relieved to discover, when testing the screen in the store, that it correctly pillarboxed 4x3 material rather than stretching it to fill the entire screen. Its scaler also seems to be of a very high standard, with only the faintest of smudging when it resizes lower resolutions to fit - I didn't realise, for instance, that I was initially playing
Warcraft III at 1280x960 rather than its native 4x3 resolution of 1440x1050 (
Warcraft III doesn't support widescreen resolutions unless you're content to simply stretch the artwork that was created with 4x3 resolutions in mind). Of course, pixel pizza resolutions like 800x600 don't look great, but I wasn't expecting them to.
All in all, I am a very happy individual today. I've ended up with a new monitor that actually doesn't suck, and for once I haven't found myself immediately yearning after my CRT (which I'll probably now attach to the computer in my bedroom, since most people these days don't seem to want a tube screen).
Lyris will probably be reviewing this screen in full at some point in his new capacity as
DVD Times' resident hardware specialist, but for now I hope that this little mini-article will entice those who are looking to pick up a high quality and semi-affordable widescreen, HDCP-ready, PC/TV combo display to seek this model out. It's well worth the investment.
(Of course, the downside to having this snazzy new screen is that every standard definition DVD apart from
The Incredibles,
Thirteen and a select few others now looks like cat poo. Come on, HD!)
The Omen SE
A review copy of the new 2-disc special edition release of
The Omen (R1 USA) arrived today from
DVD Times' new affiliates at
CD WOW!.
The Omen is one of my favourite films of all time, and as such I am very wary of the recently released remake, despite
Lyris' generally positive account of it from when he saw it at the cinema. Still, the release of the remake precipitated this new special edition DVD of the original, so it's hard not to feel too bitter about the Hollywood machine's raping and pillaging of one of my fondest childhood memories.
I'll be doing a full review (and a DVD Image Comparison between this and the previous release) at a later date, but for now let me just say that this is a most welcome upgrade and one that is well worth paying for if you're not in the fortunate position I am in of getting free copies in return for writing a few hundred words about them. The most immediately apparent difference is the transfer. Simply put, it blows the old one clean away, with more accurate colours, superior detail and a much more film-like appearance. The black level doesn't exactly look spot-on, but then again neither did the earlier DVD, and in any event this may be age-related rather than a defect in the transfer itself. I know that some people have expressed concern about this version possibly being overly brightened, based on DVD Beaver's
image comparison of the old and new transfers, but to my eyes this version looks about right. And, for what it's worth, director Richard Donner appears for an introduction to the second disc, in which be praises the new transfer, saying that it looks "as it did originally". Take from that what you will.
The sound also gets a major boost. In addition to the original mono track, there is a new 5.1 remix. Normally I am against remixing, but in this case I consider it to be a most welcome bonus, as Jerry Goldsmith's wonderful music score has been resourced from the original stereo recordings rather than using the mono version that was featured in the 2.0 surround remix on the previous release. (Interestingly, the LaserDisc release featured the stereo score, giving it a one-up over the earlier DVD.) The dialogue in both this new mix and the original mono mix sounds considerably cleaner than it did on the earlier DVD.
Those who like extras are in for a regular feast. All of the bonus materials from the previous release have been ported over apart from the trailers for the two dubious sequels, and several new ones have been added. In addition to a new commentary featuring Richard Donner (as humorously curmudgeonly as ever) and Brian Helgeland, who wrote several films for him back in the 90s, there are new interviews with writer David Seltzer, as well as a 20-minute appraisal of the film from
Scream director Wes Craven. Also included is
The Omen Legacy, a rather pompous but fairly comprehensive and entertaining documentary made for US television charting the development and reception of the original
Omen, its two theatrical sequels, and two truly dire-looking television projects which I have no desire to ever see.
Jackass: Number Two
TrailerI didn't realise they were making a second
Jackass movie, but I would certainly watch this. Whatever the naysayers might claim, the first was good, solid, immature fun.
Italian Masters of Horror info
Following on from the news I
posted back in May about an Italian equivalent to Showtime's
Masters of Horror series, some official information has now materialised regarding the directors involved and the plots for their films, courtesy of
Variety (and their usual bizarre, grammatically incorrect lingo):
Unveiled to journos in Rome's skull-filled wax museum, the four-pic Masters of Italian Horror package is co-produced by Luce with Luciano Martino's Dania Film and the Turin Film Commission. Luce is seeking an international sales company for the slashers, which are to be completed by June 2007...
Low-budget pics will be shot digitally in Piedmont, at the foot of the Italo Alps...
Package will include the following:
- [Umberto] Lenzi's "Horror Baby," about a 15-year-old paraplegic girl who becomes a serial killer after viewing sex from her window.
- Lamberto Bava's "Murder House," set in a musician's villa where multiple murders occur...
- Sergio Martino's "The Corners of the Night," tale of a young woman who moves into her deceased grandmother's house where nocturnal mayhem ensues...
- Young Italo helmer Nicola Rondolino will helmhelm "Brotherhood," in which three Romanian boys abducted by a child sex ring take revenge as ghosts.
To be perfectly honest, none of these are exactly making me jump up and down with joy. I had, perhaps naively, expected something in the giallo vein and certainly shot on film, rather than low-grade DV exploitation projects. Obviously, I'm not going to pass judgement until I've seen the finished product, but this sounds, to me, even less impressive than the American
Masters of Horror.
Game sex redux
Gamasutra have provided a write-up on the recent "sex in videogames" conference I
mentioned last week. The article is well worth a read, as it quite effectively debunks several myths relating to this issue, such as the old "no-one actually wants
that in a game" spiel that invariably gets spewed out whenever the subject is raised. (Note: you may have to log in to view it.)
Personally, I can't say I have a burning desire to view a sex scene in a video game environment, but nor would I run away screaming and threatening to sue the publisher if such a scene cropped up in one. After all, we get sex in films and on television, so why are games so different?
