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« January 2005
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DVD debacle
[Posted 10:25 PM GMT by Whiggles]
 
Two DVDs arrived today: La Commare Secca (a.k.a. The Grim Reaper, R0 USA Criterion), Bernardo Bertolucci's directorial debut, and Aimee Mann: Live at St. Ann's Warehouse (R0 UK), one of those 2-disc live CD/DVD affairs.
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Two Sergio Martino films get US releases
[Posted 09:26 PM GMT by Whiggles]
Source: 10K Bullets Forum
Two Sergio Martino gialli, The Strange Vice of Mrs. Wardh (a.k.a. Blade of the Ripper) and Case of the Scorpion's Tale, are to be released in May by a new US-based DVD company called NoShame Films, which will specialize in Italian movies. This is great news, as I've wanted to see The Strange Vice of Mrs. Wardh for some time, and I would love a better quality release of Case of the Scorpion's Tale.
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Review round-up
[Posted 12:08 PM GMT by Whiggles]
I've got a bit behind with my film-watching (I set myself the challenge of an average of one per day at the beginning of the year), but even moreso with my mini-reviews. So, without further ado, here are the film's I saw recently and what I thought of them:
A Lizard in a Woman's Skin
****/*****
Italy: Lucio Fulci, 1971
I'm now fully prepared to admit that I may have underestimated Lucio Fulci as a director. Having only previously seen Don't Torture a Duckling and being impressed but hardly ecstatic about it, A Lizard in a Woman's Skin, his first giallo, has allowed me to see him in a whole new light. This delightfully messed-up, trippy, hallucinatory mystery combines wacky visuals, kooky characters and dodgy dealings galore to create an extremely involving and unpredictable mystery. Florinda Bolkan is solid in the role, essentially playing the same character later portrayed by Edwige Fenech in the similar All the Colours of the Dark a year later.
IMDB reference
Who Framed Roger Rabbit
***/*****
USA/UK: Robert Zemeckis/Richard Williams, 1988
"Overrated" with a capital "O" is the best word to describe this brash, over-animated combination of cartoon characters and live action. While impressive on a technical level (at least for its time), and featuring a moderately engaging noir mystery, the style and excessive nature of the portrayal of the cartoon characters quickly wears thin. Roger Rabbit has got to be the most annoying talking bunny in existence, and the fact that he won't-fucking-stay-still-for-one-second is infuriating in the extreme. The dialogue seems to lurch between being very funny (love the jokes about Eddie Valiant's drinking habit) and cringe-worthy (the attempts at puns, usually from the mouths of the 'toons, are just annoying). An important film from a historical standpoint (it arguably ushered in the animation renaissance of the early 90s), but nothing like as good as people make out.
IMDB reference
The Forgotten
**½/*****
USA: Joseph Ruben, 2004
This supernatural thriller vehicle for Julianne Moore is well acted and evocatively photographed, but that's about it. The story is duller than ditchwater for the majority of its running time, and then in the final act becomes so laughably ridiculous as to completely destroy my suspension of disbelief. The DVD features both the theatrical cut and an extended version with an alternate ending, and I'm still trying to describe which has the more rediculous conclusion.
IMDB reference
Space Jam
*/*****
USA: Joe Pytka, 1996
The marketing executive's wet dream, this film would be an amusing satire of the mentality of these people if it wasn't real. Let's see, what do kids like? Aliens - check. Basketball - check. Bugs Bunny - check. All perfectly acceptable subjects for movies on their own, but who in their right mind would try to combine them together? This attrociously bad film sees Bugs Bunny and the other Looney Tunes enlist the aid of Michael Jordan in order to defeat a band of space invaders by playing a game of intergalactic basketball. Excited yet? Apart from being ridiculous in the extreme, this film rapes the personalities of the Looney Tunes and makes a bad joke out of cartoon characters that were once loved by millions but are here reduced to little more than brand names to be marketed. The film barely broke even, and rightly so: those responsible for this attrocity should not be employable.
IMDB reference
And thar she blows. The really scary thing is that I actually stayed up last night to watch Space Jam (it was on at 1am, proving that even ITV1, the purveyors of garbage, knew they had a turd on their hands whe they stashed this children's film in such a late-night slot), which I knew was going to be vomit-worthy in the extreme. That's an hour and a half of my life I'll never get back.
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DVD debacle
[Posted 11:46 PM GMT by Whiggles]
Three deliveries today:
A Lizard in a Woman's Skin (R1 USA)
Who Framed Roger Rabbit Vista Series (R1 Canada)
The Forgotten (R1 Canada) (review copy)
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Super-belated mega-update thingy
[Posted 04:11 PM GMT by Whiggles]
Gee wilickers! It feels like I've been gone for a week. Well, three days to be precise, but it feels like a week. See how much I love y'all? Away from my legions of fans for three days and I start suffering withdrawal symptoms.
So where have I been? Well, nowhere, to be precise. I just kinda got a bit sidetracked, and then yesterday I was too exhausted to do anything worthwhile, after only getting two hours' sleep and feeling like a dead kipper all day. But now I'm feeling slightly more rested and feel ready to face the world, so I can tell you what's been going on since my last post.
The most significant news is probably that I've finally seen Four Flies on Grey Velvet. Okay, so it was on a crummy bootleg DVD-R obviously mastered from a beat-up 8th generation VHS tape, the colours were distorted, detail was non-existent, it was virtually impossible to make out what was going on in the night scenes and the audio was warped beyond recognition, but I've seen it. The most elusive of all Dario Argento's films, Four Flies has never seen an official release on DVD, and the prospect of that ever happening continues to look unlikely. Which is a damn shame, because in my opinion this is the best of his early "Animal" trilogy, elipsing The Cat O' Nine Tails and just managing to beat The Bird with the Crystal Plumage. It's certainly the most heavily stylized of the three, with superb camerawork and an off-beat, jaunty jazzy score by Ennio Morricone. Also, even though I already had read a number of analyses of the film and therefore knew not only who died but when and how, as well as the identity of the villain, the storyline was still hugely compelling and seeing it all unravel was a real treat. Please, please, please, someone give this film an official release so I can appreciate it fully.
Whoo-yeah! I don't have to even watch this disc to know I'm in for a great quality presentation.
Who'd have thunk it would look this good?
Well, I have. But you haven't. Suckers.
Two days ago, I received a review copy of The SpongeBob SquarePants Movie (R1) from Paramount. This movie is an absolute blast. SpongeBob may be a second-rate imitation of Ren & Stimpy, with some of the more annoying aspects of Rocko's Modern Life thrown in for good measure (SpongeBob creator Steve Hillenburg worked on that show), but the movie itself is a blast. It's a pleasure to see an actual CARTOON for once, and one that doesn't take itself seriously at that. Viva SpongeBob! Viva Patrick Starfish! Viva David Hasselhoff!
On the same day, I also received the CD of Because I Can, a collection of bizarre song-poems by Katy Rose, who appeared on the soundtrack for Thirteen.
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Wonderful Days -> Sky Blue
[Posted 07:00 PM GMT by Whiggles]
Wonderful Days, it seems, has finally materialized in the English-speaking world, under the title Sky Blue and with a number of plot elements significantly rejigged. I must say I'm quite curious to see how this new version plays, although I'm not convinced that any amount of rewriting trickery can save what was, essentially, a beautiful film with a completely vacuous story. See the official Sky Blue web site for more details.
You can download the threatrical trailer and watch the first 8 minutes of the English cut at IFILM -- it's certainly interesting, with some major reshuffling of the scenes and dialogue. Hopefully this will get a DVD release reasonably soon.
You can read my review of the original Korean cut at DVD Times.
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CD Collection updated
[Posted 04:41 PM GMT by Whiggles]
I've just spent most of this afternoon catching up with all the CDs I've been accruing and added them to the site. I've now split the CD Collection into two separate sections: A-M and N-Z. Film (and game) scores are sorted by the title (e.g. The Butterfly Effect is under "B" for Butterfly), other releases by the surname of the band/singer (e.g. Melanie Doane's Adam's Rib is under "D" for Doane).
Oh, and yesterday, three CDs I'd ordered arrived:
La Coda dello Scorpione
La Morte Accarezza a Mezzanotte
Liz Phair
I will try and get down to writing mini-reviews, assigning ratings and selecting favourite tracks for all these CDs at some point, but right now, after spending a good few hours cataloguing them, I'm about fit to be tied.
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Looney Tunes gets screwed
[Posted 07:41 PM GMT by Whiggles]
As reported by Lyris on his web site, it would appear that Warner have set out to completely mangle and further degrade the Looney Tunes franchise with a futuristic series entitled Loonatics. This new creation, no doubt cooked up as the result of some overpaid executive's brain-fart, sees our intrepid heroes transformed into 28th century intergalactic crime fighters. The pictures really have to bee seen to be believed, as do the ideas and names of the characters -- Bugs Bunny, for example, will apparently now be called "Buzz Bunn". At least they had the courtesy to wait till all of the classic Looney Tunes directors were dead before they started on this attrocity, but that's a small comfort. I personally don't want any of this crap on my own site, so I'll send you straight to Lyris' scan of the newspaper article that gives full details of this horrible deed:
http://www.lyris-lite.net/fu_archives/oh%20christ.jpg
Oh christ, indeed.
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Do You Like Hitchcock? at BIFFF
[Posted 07:36 PM GMT by Whiggles]
Dario Argento's Do You Like Hitchcock? will be showing at the Brussels International Festival of Fantastic Film (BIFFF), running from the 11th to the 26th of March. For more information on the screening, see the official web site.
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Spider
[Posted 12:21 AM GMT by Whiggles]
Canada/UK: David Cronenberg, 2002
***/*****
I've just seen Spider, after leaving it on the shelf for months. I must say I wasn't really impressed. The theme was interesting and was dealt with in an intriguing way, but it moves at a snail's pace and in terms of style lacks Cronenberg's usual flair. It just struck me as depressing - which, I guess, was the intention - and it's not a film I see myself revisiting too often.
IMDB reference
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Starcraft 1.12 released
[Posted 05:32 PM GMT by Whiggles]
Proving that there's life in the old dog yet, Blizzard have released a patch for the aging Starcraft. You can read about the changes here: the vast majority of them are geared towards improving the online multiplayer component of the game. They've also made some significant changes to Lost Temple, which I'm sure is going to just thrill the diverse types who've memorized every pixel by heart and don't play on any other maps.
Download it here, ya bastiges!
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Music madness
[Posted 11:59 PM GMT by Whiggles]
I ordered the soundtracks to Death Walks at Midnight and Case of the Scorpion's Tale from MovieGrooves. And yes, I know my CDs page is hopelessly out of date. I'll try to add all my latest purchases over the weekend.
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The Passion Recut
[Posted 11:56 PM GMT by Whiggles]
Looks like Mel Gibson is attempting to ensnare a few kiddies whose parents deemed The Passion of the Christ too violent for them. The Passion Recut promises "a new version for new audiences to discover and everyone to be inspired by". Well, if this new cut includes an actual story, then that's no bad thing. Unfortunately, I somehow doubt that will be the case.
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Girl, Interrupted
[Posted 04:13 PM GMT by Whiggles]
USA: James Mangold, 1999
****½/*****
Moving and deftly observed tale about a young woman (Winona Ryder) who is wrongly committed to a mental asylum in the 60s and finds out stuff about herself that she never realized before. A cliché it may be, but this is a "journey of self-discovery" and it's a great one at that. The performances are exceptional across the board (and, for once, I didn't want to strangle Whoopi Goldberg... well, maybe just a little), and although this is really more a series of events rather than a complete story, it flows well and succeeds in being an incredibly moving piece. A bit mawkish, maybe, but that's not necessarily a problem.
IMDB reference
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Sayonara, iMac!
[Posted 02:08 PM GMT by Whiggles]
If you are a reader of my brother's web site, you may have gathered that his brief dalliance into the world of the Apple Macintosh has been cut somewhat short, with the machine being swiftly packaged away so it can be returned before the 10-day try-out period ends. Go read Lyris' site -- he tells it better than I can, and has even included spiffy screen captures and a video to illustrate the deficiencies of this overrated "alternative" system.
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Onibaba
[Posted 02:22 PM GMT by Whiggles]
I've reviewed the Criterion R1 release of Onibaba, Kaneto Shindo's dark 1964 horror/social study, presented here on a DVD that is of a reasonably high standard but which does not live up to the company's usual quality.
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Angela Bettis interview
[Posted 11:14 PM GMT by Whiggles]
Horrorview.com has a great interview with Angela Bettis, who played the title character in the excellent May, and also stars in the recent remake of The Toolbox Murders (which I am advised is not particularly good, but then again, are we really surprised?).
DFTD - I'm assuming the notoriety has opened up a lot of doors for you.
AB - Most important, it's given me the ability to pick my roles. It's either find my roles, or I'm just not going to play anymore. I've become almost stubborn! Out there (Hollywood), you have to make a choice at some point in your career. Either you're about art, or commerce. To make the commerce choice, it's really difficult to get out of it because you're getting rich! It's like winning the lottery. Your head just wants more, like gambling, like an addiction. If you make the art choice, you probably always going to have money problems, but you do better for you, you know? I guess what I learned, about myself, is that in the end, I'm an art person. It makes me happier that way. I'm happier doing that then going after the mighty dollar.
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Angel Season 5
[Posted 11:37 PM GMT by Whiggles]
My review copy of Angel Season 5 (R1 USA) arrived today: a fully-boxed retail copy, which is great, as I was expecting check discs in paper wallets.
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The Passion of the Christ
[Posted 08:07 PM GMT by Whiggles]
USA: Mel Gibson, 2004
**/*****
Well, I've finally seen Splatterchrist. My parents rented the DVD: a good thing too, since I'll be damned if I want to spend money keeping afloat Mel Gibson's private island. And what a silly film it was! My dad, never one to mince his words, spent most of its duration laughing and talking to the television screen (he wanted to know how he could concentrate on his dinner if forced to read subtitles), while my mum, the semi-devout Christian of the family, watched in a fairly disinterested manner, wandering in and out of the room at regular intervals to fetch more food and drink. Clearly she knew this story already.
Splatterchrist is a veritable mess of an exploitation flick that wallows in its own misguided pretentiousness and proceeds to bludgeon the viewer over the head to the extent that the violence loses all its power very quickly. At times the film is so ridiculous that it becomes funny, from the bullet-time coins thrown to Judas at the beginning to the number of slow motion shots of Jesus falling over to the hilarious Terminator-style resurrection at the end. Providing additional comedy value are the various conniving, hook-nosed Jews and pink-faced, mascara-laden Romans, who would probably be more at home in The Life of Brian. The special effects are excellent and Caleb Deschanel's photography is often inspired (if repetitive), but ultimately, with Gibson's blatant lack of tact and his absolute refusal to provide context of any kind - this feels like Act III of something much bigger - The Passion of the Christ just ain't that good. The film was certainly intriguing, don't get me wrong, but the blatant sadomasochism of the whole piece was a bit of a turn-off for me. Prepare to (snigger) crucify me, guys, but I prefer Braveheart.
IMDB reference
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Lyris unveils brand new iMac G5 - heterosexuals beware!
[Posted 11:37 PM GMT by Whiggles]
Above: Whiggles.tk on OS X. Don't you feel more effeminate already?
Well, as you may have gathered, if you are a reader of Lyris's Dungeon of Erotic Whimsy, that the man himself has recently brought diversity into the house by purchasing the gay man's computer machine of choice, the iMac G5. Aside from an old Mac Classic we fooled around with until we broke it aeons ago, this is the first time one of Steve Jobs' tuti-fruiti boxes of garish colours and soft edges has entered this household.
It's certainly an interesting piece of work, and the operating system looks pretty nice even if (in my oh-so-humble opinion) the mouse and keyboard are most foul. I particularly like the look of the way the various open windows can be controlled, resized, moved etc., and I certainly appreciate the idea of having a widescreen monitor.
That said, buying a Mac is not something I can see myself doing, not now, not ever. I'm too used to Windows to uproot myself from it -- hell, it took me until 1997 to move to Windows 95 from Windows 3.11 -- and besides, I have a whole lot of software, mostly games, that I certainly wouldn't want to have to replace. But yeah, this Mac seems pretty good, if that's what floats your boat. Certainly the look on my dad's face when he saw it was surely worth the £1400 the system cost.
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Nathan Barley
[Posted 11:19 PM GMT by Whiggles]
I've just finished watching the first episode of Chris Morris' new show, Nathan Barley. I have to say I thought it was a bit "meh" myself, although I'm not really sure whether that's because I went into it expecting something closer to Brass Eye or whether it was genuinely that bad. I've been told you really need to live in London to "get" it - but even so I'm not really convinced that Morris really has anything worthwhile to say with this piece. Perhaps too limited in terms of the group it's lampooning?
In any event, I'm more than willing to give it a second chance -- after all, I wasn't all that taken by The Day Today when I first saw it a couple of years back. Perhaps the show will grow on me, or perhaps the it'll hit its stride later in the series. Who knows?
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World of Warcraft
[Posted 11:14 PM GMT by Whiggles]
Well, my free 10-day pass for World of Warcraft expired last night. Luckily, the game was activated in Europe this today, so this morning I sat down to register for an account on WOW Europe. Slight problem, though: my US CD-key is incompatible with the European sign-up page. When I enter it, it tells me it's an invalid key. Tits! I mused for a while about the fact that, if I wanted to play any more, I might actually have to go out and buy a European copy, before coming to the conclusion that I might was well just upgrade my 10-day account using my CD-key and the fudged address details I entered for it. Now I get another month of free pay before I have to start handing over money, although it's anyone's guess what will happen when they try to charge my credit card. (It says the card has to have a North American address.) To be honest I can't think why there would be a problem (a credit card's a credit card, right?), but you never know.
In any event, the European launch seems to have got under way in spectacularly bad fashion. Shortly after the servers were launched, they discovered a bug in the account creation form and had to pull it down. Look, this sort of thing is a fairly major launch, guys. Why not try getting it right? Talk about bad organization! Anyhoo, no harm done, as far as I'm aware it's working now. Myself, I'm having a whale of a time on some North American server with absolutely horrible latency, although lag doesn't actually seem to make much of a difference in this game. It seems that all monster encounters are handled on the client side. That said, I'm not sure what it'll be like once I start fighting actual player characters.
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DVD Debacle
[Posted 11:18 PM GMT by Whiggles]
The other day, I ordered The Day Today (R2 UK), an excellent show by Chris Morris and a precursor of his later, greater Brass Eye. It arrived the morning and I've spent the evening watching all six episodes. Hilariously entertaining - not a patch on Brass Eye, though.
In other news, this morning I went to the doctor's to get my MMR vaccine (you know, the one that a bunch of crazed mothers thought was killing their children). Now I have a splitting headache. Coincidence?
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Land of Whimsy board bites the dust
[Posted 01:17 PM GMT by Whiggles]
It's official: the Land of Whimsy forum is dead. No, I personally didn't kill it. Call it an act of the Internet Demon, or sheer unluckiness, or the fact that the server I'm on is run by a bunch of pre-pubescent little retards, but the forum is gone, finished, kaput, and in a way I'm sort of glad.
For those of you old and sad enough to remember, 3Dfx Portal originally started slightly over four years ago, on the day it was announced that 3Dfx had gone bust and sold their assets to rival video card manufacturer nVidia. 3Dfx Portal appeared when Hypermark were still offering free web space, and it was quite a nice little forum, set up to mimic the look and feel of the old 3DfxGamers board as closely as possible. The board did quite well for a short period, attracting around 50 members, some of whom even posted messages. For a while Lyris and myself deluded ourselves into thinking that our little board would become a major hangout for dispossessed 3Dfx gamers.
Sadly, it was not to be. Another board opened up at almost the same time, designed to provide a similar service. It was called Slacker Central. You may have heard of it. It was (and is) run by a former 3Dfx employee, and to date it has some 1,500 members, many of whom post messages. I think it's safe to say that Slacker Central got the upper hand. All was not lost, though, and 3Dfx Portal had a core group of devoted followers, many of whom (i.e. four) stuck with the board through thick and thin as it was treated to various server moves, data loss and other such indignities.
About 18 months ago, Hypermart finally noticed that we were running a forum on free web space that by now was no longer free, and without warning we were uncerimoniously dumped. The whole operation was shifted over to the newly functional Land of Whimsy, where the board was started from scratch. Three of the four loyal members showed up, although some took a while to find the new board, since Hypermart, in their infinite wisdom, decided to boot us from their service before I could archive the members' email addresses. More recently, the forum suffered yet another move when Land of Whimsy changed servers, resulting again in complete data loss and the need to start over. Two members showed up this time.
Then, the other day, I woke up to find this delightful message staring me in the face when I tried to access the board:
There you have it. The board has died yet again, and I'm sorry to say that I see little point in reviving it yet again. Sometimes you just have to let go, y'know. It's been a fun and rewarding four years, mostly, but I don't personally see much point in trying to do anything more about it, as the forum really hasn't been used much recently, and doesn't have enough members to justify its existence. In all seriousness I've been getting less and less motivated to maintain it, and this seems like a convenient point at which to close the book once and for all. So, thank you very much to Hans (VoodooJack) and Jon (jkakaley) for sticking with the board for so long, and I'm sorry to see it end like this, but in all honesty, enough is enough.
Peace out.
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Resident Evil: Apocalypse
[Posted 06:39 PM GMT by Whiggles]
I've reviewed the R1 Canadian release of Resident Evil: Apocalypse. Alliance Atlantis' 2-disc DVD features plenty of interesting bonus materials but suffers from having crammed separate widescreen and fullscreen version on to the same disc... and oh yeah, there's the small problem of the film itself.
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Léon: The Professional
[Posted 12:12 PM GMT by Whiggles]
I've reviewed the recent R1 US Deluxe Edition release of Léon: The Professional, which presents this quintessential action movie with a frankly embarrassing transfer and a rather paltry array of extras.
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Creep
[Posted 03:48 PM GMT by Whiggles]
Today I went to see Creep, a British horror movie starring Franka Potente (Run Lola Run) and set in an empty London Underground station. Unfortunately, the film was nads. See my review here rather than the film.
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Essays
[Posted 10:56 PM GMT by Whiggles]
Ah, the trials and tribulations of university life! I finally got my Phonetics and Sociolinguistics essays back on Monday, and was reasonably pleased to discover that I had got a B1 in each of them. Then, on Thurday, I got back my Computing essay: another B1, which came as something of a surprise to me, because I'd thought for sure that I'd fucked it up.
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World of Warcraft, Day 5
[Posted 10:52 PM GMT by Whiggles]
This game is growing on me, I must admit, but it is fundamentally flawed. That, or I just don't "get" MMORPGs.
Playing on-off over the last few days, I've taken my Tauren warrior, Thundercrest, up to level 11 and wandered from the starting village out into the wilderness, and come across another settlement, where I've been busy completing (mostly mundane) tasks for the various locals. It's okay, when all said and done, and it does have a certain "moreish" quality to it, but the pace is slower than that of a snail. It takes ages to go anywhere. Often I'm off adventuring, completing multiple quests, and I have to continually return to the town to receive my reward or next task, and every time I need to do this, I have to watch young Thundercrest ... walking .... ve-r-r-r-r-r-r-ry ... ve-r-r-r-r-r-r-ry ... slowly ... back ... across ... miles ... and ... miles ... of ... grassland ... that ... all ... looks ... exactly ... the ... same. Also, I'm convinced the user interface was drawn up on a napkin in five minutes and never improved. Many of the icons are ugly (and most annoyingly, a number of spells have icons that correspond to other abilities in Warcraft III), it handles more clunky than Mac OS 6.
So yeah, it's, well, it's okay. Certainly nothing worth getting all excited over. Every past Blizzard game has been better than it, even the original Warcraft.
 
 
 
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FAQ updates
[Posted 10:28 PM GMT by Whiggles]
I've added three new questions to the FAQ:
What is your stance on immigration?
I say the more immigrants the better. The population of the UK is shrinking at an alarming rate and yet many people still want immigration to be limited. I find it quite pathetic that, despite the fact that this country is on the road to a severe pensions crisis due to an abundance of old people and not enough young people, many consider it more important to pointlessly cling to some idiotic notion of "Britishness" (Which part would that be? The Roman, Norman or Viking part?) that is supposedly being "eroded" away by "foreigners". To put this into perspective, in Scotland, less than 2% of the population is non-white, yet certain individuals genuinely believe that they are being "occupied" by foreigners. Get a grip! We need more immigrants: it's as simple as that, and if having to interact with someone whose skin colour or mother tongue happens to be different from yours is the biggest inconvenience you can imagine, then you should consider yourself lucky.
What are some of the DVDs in your collection not rated?
I make a point of only assigning ratings to titles that I have seen from beginning to end, including all of the bonus features on each disc. Originally I made it my mission to watch every single extra on every single DVD in my collection, but with 330+ titles, that just isn't possible, due in part to time constraints, but also because I sometimes have no interest in listening to every single commentary, or thumbing through every single image gallery. Additionally, certain titles have been disqualified, for various reasons - usually for being cropped or not including the original language audio - and therefore receive no rating. I have also made a point of generally not rating titles that will be of little interest to most people: music videos or concerts of a particular singer, for instance, or DVDs that only contain a documentary rating to a specific subject. These titles are hard to rate because their enjoyment depends solely on how much you like the subject matter being covered, and since music and factual documentaries are difficult to rate in the same terms as movies and TV shows, I've decided not to bother trying.
Have you really watched every single DVD in your collection?
Yes, give or take a few titles at any one time. I am in the habit of ordering new titles even if I already have ones in my collection that I haven't yet watched - this is often true of TV show box sets - but I'm not one of those people that just buys DVDs so that they look nice on my wall. If I buy something, it's because I want to watch it.
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Chris Morris is back next Friday
[Posted 06:22 PM GMT by Whiggles]
Just a heads-up for everyone in the UK: Chris Morris, the genius behind Brass Eye and The Day Today, is back on TV next Friday night at 10pm on Channel 4, with a new show called Nathan Barley, "which mercilessly parodies the lifestyles of young London media types". Readers of TV Go Home, of which Mr. Barley is a regular fixture, will get the point.
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Profondo Rosso and Suspiria - new Italian DVDs - the rundown
[Posted 06:17 PM GMT by Whiggles]
Okay, this morning the new Italian releases of Profondo Rosso and Suspiria arrived and, as promised, here are my thoughts and feelings.
Profondo Rosso
Medusa Home Entertainment
The source used for this presentation looks like the Anchor Bay DVD to me, which means that this is a standards conversion and as a result looks much worse than the source material. New Italian credits have been placed at the start - they clearly aren't the original titles, as they have a very static digital look and the font looks quite modern - still, they're much nicer than the English ones on AB's DVD. More significantly, the original Italian closing credits have been inserted at the end, and they really are a must-see. Hemmings' performance as they role in front of him is great - the story really does continue during the credits as we see the mess the whole ordeal has left him in.
Extras are limited to the same brief documentary that was included on the AB DVD (this time without subtitles), the international trailer, and cast and crew list. Overall, not worth buying.
Suspiria
CDE Home Video
First things first: this release is essentially a mixture of the two previous releases I have owned, the Anchor Bay Limited Edition and the standard Italian edition. The good news is that it comes in a nice digipack that includes three cards: the US poster and two stills from the film. Furthermore, the film includes English subtitles and has three audio mixes: a very nice Italian Dolby Digital 5.1 EX remix (much better than the cock-up Anchor Bay came up with), and Italian and English 2.0 tracks (not in very good shape).
Now for the bad news: the transfer is quite a bit worse than the previous two releases. The source looks to be the earlier Italian release, but they had added a whole lot of edge enhancement to it and it also looks softer. Some scenes look absolutely fine, but in others big ugly haloes are visible. Still, the audio is great and if you have a smaller display this might be a very good way to watch the film.
The 25th Anniversary documentary (from the AB LE DVD) is also included, but there aren't any English subtitles for the Italian speech. Also included are most of the other extras from the AB DVD (except, of course, the soundtrack), as well as the Dario Argento interview from the previous Italian DVD, again with no subs.
Overall, my recommendation is that neither of these releases are worth buying, especially if you already own the two Anchor Bay releases. The Profondo Rosso DVD is useless unless you desperately want to see the unmangled end credits (they are neat, though), and Suspiria has been represented better on other releases.
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Bambi
[Posted 05:48 PM GMT by Whiggles]
The sappiest of all the Disney features? I've reviewed the upcoming R2 UK Platinum Edition release of Bambi, one of Walt's more celebrated tales, presented for the first time ever on DVD.
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Films
[Posted 11:27 AM GMT by Whiggles]
Yesterday was the 31st of January, and within that month I saw a grand total of 31 films. That's pretty good going if you ask me. At the beginning of the month I decided to see if I could see at least one film to correspond with each day (ergo, working towards a total of 365 films in the whole year). So far, this seems to have been attainable, although it's anyone's guess how this will pan out once I get into exam crunch mode. I should hopefully be able to make up for lost time during the summer holidays.
In other film-related news, I went to the Film and TV department yesterday to see the convenor for the post-graduate MPhil Film Studies course. I didn't get all that much information from him, but I've now resolved to apply for the course.
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Delivery debacle
[Posted 11:22 AM GMT by Whiggles]
Yesterday's deliveries kicked off with two review copies for DVD Times: Leon: The Professional Deluxe Edition (R1 Canada) and Resident Evil: Apocalypse (R1 Canada). I've briefly glanced at the former and watched the latter. In the case of Leon, I must say that I am pretty shocked by the poor image quality. Edge enhanced, noise reduced, shimmering, practically no fine detail whatsoever... This is without a doubt the worst transfer I've seen on a major release for some time, and the fact that this is labeled as a "Deluxe Edition" supposedly "mastered in high definition" makes this something of a joke. Additionally, around half an hour's worth of the film, falling squarely in the middle, in encoded interlaced, making it look even worse. Sorry, Columbia Tristar, I am not impressed.
With Resident Evil: Apocalypse, Columbia Tristar have done markedly better, although this transfer has been short-changed by the fact that a 4x3 foolscreen version has also been crammed on to the same disc, starving the available space. The level of detail is pretty good and there is mercifully little edge enhancement, but there are some very noticeable compression artefacts and the grain is not handled at all well by the encoder. When are US distributors going to realize that pan and scam transfers are not needed and that their proper place is on the dead VHS format? Sigh. It wouldn't surprise me if this wasn't a ploy to make people buy the inevitable "SuperBit" (a.k.a. SuperCon") release. Not me, though, as the film is as silly and badly made as I remembered it from the cinema. As a Shitty Movie (™ and © 2004 by Whiggles.tk) it's a fairly entertaining piece of nonsense, but not the sort of thing worth spending any real money on.
While I was out at university, my World of Warcraft Collector's Edition arrived. After prising open the lavish packaging, flicking through the large hardback art book and spending something like half an hour waiting for the game to install (how can it take this long to copy over 4 GB of data?), I realized that I wasn't going to be able to play it, since the country drop-down list on the registration page (there is a monthly fee, after all, and although I supposedly get a month's free gameplay, you still have to provide your address and credit card details when you set up an account) only included Canada, the USA, Australia and South Korea. (European countries are being added at some point during Q1 2005.) It did, however, eventually occur to me that the Collector's Edition came with a 10-day free pass for you to give to a friend, so I started the registration process anew, fudged an address in Canada and, eventually, after downloading a large update, got down to playing.
First impressions have been lukewarm at best. The game is fun to an extent, but the pace is extremely slow, and a lot of the quests so far have been very mundane, involving wandering across large stretches of land to find items or kill a set number of creatures, then wandering all the way back again. The graphics are also pretty ugly and parts of the interface look fairly unprofessional - the overall feel of the game is that of an unfinished product. Hopefully it'll pick up as I continue playing, since although I've only had a short amount of experience with it, so far this is Blizzard's weakest game to date.
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