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BDs and DVDs I bought or received in the month of June

11:59 PM / Blu-ray / No Comments

• Wednesday, June 3, 2009: Slumdog Millionaire (BD, Region A, USA)
• Tuesday, June 9, 2009: Monsters, Inc. (BD, Region ABC, Japan)
• Friday, June 12, 2009: The Unborn (BD, Region ABC, UK) [review copy]
• Tuesday, June 16, 2009: Gran Torino (BD, Region ABC, USA)
• Thursday, June 18, 2009: Bound (BD, Region ABC, France)
• Thursday, June 18, 2009: Chemical Wedding (BD, Region B, France)
• Saturday, June 20, 2009: True Blood: The Complete First Season (BD, Region ABC, USA)
• Wednesday, June 24, 2009: Franklyn (BD, Region B, UK)

Proprietary... screws?

4:50 PM / Technology / No Comments

Experience has taught me that, with anything computer-related, it's a bad idea to assume that everything will work out just hunky-dory first time. Even if you think you've prepared for every eventuality, there's a strong chance some unpredictable problem will hit you out of left field. That's why, yesterday, I decided to drag my computer out of its cubby-hole and install my new BD-ROM drive and also the one terabyte hard drive I recently picked up, rather than waiting 'til my birthday as I'd originally planned.

Smart move. The BD-ROM drive was fitted without any problems, but when it came to the hard drive, I quickly realised I was in trouble. My PC's case, an Antec Sonata III, comes with a curious solution to the age-old problem of hard disk vibration. (Although I can't say I've ever had a disk die on me due to too much rattling, despite being a computer user most of my life and having owned both more computers and more hard drives than most users!) Instead of screwing the drive directly into the chassis, you instead place the drive on an individual tray with silicone grommets that are designed to absorb vibration. These, however, appear to require proprietary screws. All well and good, I hear you say. Unfortunately for me, each active tray requires four screws, and Antec provide a grand total of eight: fine if you have two hard drives, but what if, like me, you've just picked up a third?

The answer seems to be "tough hooey". I tried virtually every similar-sized screw I could get my hands on, but couldn't get any of them to work. They were either not long enough, too long (so the hard drive would basically just bounce around on top of the grommets, rendering the whole "anti-vibration" thing completely moot) or too thick (in which case they were completely useless). I then went on a less than pleasant jaunt around town, plodding from store to store through the sweltering heat, only to be met with the same blank stare from every salesmen I presented my sample screw to. In the end, I gave up, went home and took a screw from each of my existing hard drives, fastening my new one in place with only two screws rather than the proper four. Hey, it works. Everything's up and running:

Seriously, though - proprietary screws? What were they thinking? It wouldn't be so bad if they offered replacement screws on their web site, but I can't find anything other than traditional thumb screws. I love my Sonata - it's cool, quiet and overall probably the best case I've ever had - but I really wish they would either use standardised screws or at least provide enough screws for all the drive bays.

BD impressions: Bound

11:27 AM / BD Impressions / 4 Comments

It had been a few years since I'd last watched Bound, and I'd forgotten how funny it could be, traipsing playfully through the conventions of film noir and gangster movies, turning them on their heads in this potent cocktail of Sapphic romance and embezzlement. It teeters on the brink of being a little too on the nose for its own good (if you aren't sufficiently familiar with the clichés it's sending up, then they'll just seem a lot like... well, clichés), but it's ultimately a great little film, and it's a crying shame the Wachowski Brothers' subsequent The Matrix and its dreadful sequels so often get all the attention, since this is clearly their best work. (Okay, so I haven't seen Speed Racer, and for all I know it could be a bona fide masterpiece, but frankly I have my doubts.)

In a comment, I stated that M6 Vidéo's BD release "doesn't exactly look terrific", based on my impressions of the first few minutes. However, while it's far from the most stunning-looking disc of the year, I must admit that my initial impressions may have been a little off the mark. While the opening titles and logo, and any subsequent optical shots, suffer in terms of definition, the rest of the film looks reasonably eye-pleasing. Close-ups and medium shots fare pretty well in terms of detail, although wider shots can look a little ill-defined, with some prominent ringing (see Example 6). Grain retention isn't too bad, but it looks pretty smudgy at times, and I strongly suspect some attempt has been made to reduce it. Like the standard definition DVD release, the print used appears a little on the grubby side, with some noticeable flecks and spots, but these aren't overly distracting, and I'm even tempted to suggest that they add to the gritty noir feel of the piece.

Having only seen screen captures of the Japanese BD release from Cinemart, I can't state with 100% confidence how this French version stacks up against it, but my overriding impression is that the Japanese release looks softer. Given that the Japanese version is in a ratio of 1.78:1 whereas the French release preserves the theatrical 1.85:1, I suspect that two different masters may have been used. Either way, the French release is significantly cheaper and includes all of the extras from the standard definition release, so there's no real competition. 7/10

Bound
studio: M6 Vidéo; country: France; region code: ABC; codec: AVC;
file size: 18.4 GB; average bit rate (including audio): 24.39 Mbit/sec

PS. Please note that, like the Australian release of The Descent, this is one of those discs that includes 50 Hz content in the pre-menu stream. As a result, if you own a Region A Playstation 3 with the latest firmware, you'll be out of luck.

Updated Argento rankings

9:05 PM / Cinema / 12 Comments

Having now seen Giallo, I think the time is ripe for me to update my ranking list for Dario Argento's films. In order of favourite to least favourite, they are:

1. Suspiria *****
2. Deep Red *****
3. Opera *****
4. The Bird with the Crystal Plumage ****½
5. Inferno ****½
6. The Stendhal Syndrome ****½
7. Tenebrae ****½
8. Phenomena ****
9. Four Flies on Grey Velvet ****
10. The Card Player ***½
11. The Cat O' Nine Tails ***½
12. Giallo ***½
13. Mother of Tears ***½
14. Two Evil Eyes (segment The Black Cat) ***½
15. Sleepless ***
16. Trauma ***
17. Do You Like Hitchcock? ***
18. The Phantom of the Opera **

This list has remained remarkably static for some time now. His post-Phantom output does tend to shift around a little for me, though. For instance, Sleepless seems to go down in my estimation every time I revisit it, while The Card Player goes up. Conversely, Mother of Tears has remained in much the same position, holding the middle ground. By and large, though, there have been no major changes since the last time I put together one of these lists.

Feel free to reply to this post with your own lists.

Updated Saturday, June 27, 2009 at 06:01 PM: Updated with ratings for each film.

"Gotcha, ya yellow fuck!"

12:30 PM / Reviews / 10 Comments

Note: the following is a review of Dario Argento's latest film, Giallo, from its world premiere at the Edinburgh International Film Festival. This review is also posted at DVD Times.

A sadistic killer is terrorising Turin. Posing as a taxi driver, he abducts, tortures and murders young women - tourists, loners, those who are unlikely to be missed. Fearing that her sister Celine (Elsa Pataky) has been kidnapped by the maniac, flight attendant Linda (Emmanuelle Seigner) enlists the aid of Enzo Avolfi (Adrien Brody), a quirky, haunted cop who has been working on the case alone. Avolfi, by his own admission, is the ideal person to crack the case, because he understands how the killer's mind works. Nick-named "Yellow" as a result of a rare skin condition, the killer has already proven that he means business; but will Linda and Avolfi succeed in tracking him down before he can do to Celine what he has already done to several other women?

If there is a single trait which characterises Dario Argento's 21st century output, it is its self-referentiality. Always a cineliterate filmmaker, in recent years his material has verged almost on self-parody, with 2001's Sleepless serving as a greatest-hits package of his career, Do You Like Hitchcock? paying homage to his Hitchcockian and German expressionist influences, and most recently the long overdue Mother of Tears concluding his "Three Mothers" trilogy in a manner that might charitably be described as a tongue in cheek romp through the iconography of the Italian horror movement.

Amid all this self-copying, a generation of filmmakers have grown up with Argento's films and been influenced by them, some more profoundly than others. Some, like Tim Burton, have assimilated the maestro's visual style into their own, to impressive effect. Others have been more flippant in their appropriation of Argentoisms, with Quentin Tarantino lifting the music from The Bird with the Crystal Plumage (as well as the image of a villainous psychopath surreptitiously photographing young women) for use in Death Proof, and screenwriter Diablo Cody including a conversation debating the merits of Argento relative to H.G. Lewis in 2007's breakaway hit Juno. In effect, "Argento" has become something of a buzzword for a certain type of movie brat: a slightly edgy (but not too edgy) name they can mention to show that they're a little off the beaten track (but not too far off). "Wow, this is even better than Suspiria!" breathes an awe-struck Ellen Page while watching a scene from Lewis' shlock-fest The Wizard of Gore with Jason Bateman. Well, maybe, if your idea of "better" is a greater quantity of oozing ketchup and fake-looking intestines.

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Edinburgh, here I come

8:29 PM / Cinema / 5 Comments

Well, I'm off to Edinburgh to catch the premiere of Dario Argento's latest film, Giallo. As with any new project from the maestro, it's difficult to have any idea of how it will turn out in advance, but it should at the very least be an experience. This will be the third Argento film I've seen on the big screen, after The Card Player and Suspiria, both at the Glasgow Film Theatre.

Hopefully, you can expect a full run-down tomorrow. I'm going to be putting together a review for DVD Times, but Argento movies can be notoriously difficult to digest on initial viewing, so if it takes longer for me to collect my thoughts it may end up being delayed.

Trouble in BD-land

1:38 PM / Technology / No Comments

Well, this is a bit of a pain: my PC's Blu-ray/HD DVD combo drive, an LG GGC-H20L, is having problems reading certain BD titles. It simply doesn't recognise them, acting as if there is no disc in the drive.

So far, Waltz with Bashir (UK), Chemical Wedding (France) and the just arrived Franklyn (UK) are all affected, as well as my brother's '09 Panasonic Viera Demonstration Disc Vol. 1. There may be more, but it's interesting to note the common factor: all of them originate from Europe, and all are single-layer discs. They're all also fairly recent releases. Is a factory somewhere in Euro-land pressing dodgy discs? Could be, but that doesn't explain the fact that two of these discs did play at some point in the recent past - Waltz with Bashir and Chemical Wedding. It also doesn't change the fact that all four of these discs play fine in both my brother's and my laptop's drives (an LG GGW-H20L and a Matsushita BD-MLT UK-220S respectively).

Unfortunately, my drive's one-year warranty expired last month, preventing me from getting a replacement. As a result, I've had to seek out an alternative solution, picking up a Sony BDU-X10S for a not unreasonable £50. Obviously, this drive only reads DVDs and BDs, but I'm going to keep my pernickety GGC-H20L around as well and hope it doesn't decide to stop playing HD DVDs any time soon.

Don't you love technology?

Updated, Wednesday, June 24th, 2009 at 05:13 PM: We can add Poltergeist and The Island (UK releases) to the list of problem discs: two more European BD-25 titles.

Updated, Wednesday, June 24th, 2009 at 05:18 PM: And the pattern has been broken: the US release of Final Destination refuses to play. It too is a BD-25, but doesn't originate from Europe. I'm going to keep checking through my collection, but I've yet to find a BD-50 that has problems playing.

Updated Wednesday, June 24, 2009 at 08:16 PM: Well, this is peculiar. I opened the tray and blew into the drive, and most of the problem discs are now playing. The Viera disc is still a no-go, but (touch wood) everything else appears to be working. Not that I'm satisfied, though, as even if only a single disc refuses to play, the drive is still clearly flaky.

Just arrived...

1:22 PM / Blu-ray / 6 Comments

Franklyn (BD, E1 Entertainment, Region B, UK)

Catching some Z's

10:49 PM / General / 2 Comments

I had my last meeting of the academic year with my PhD supervisor today, at which we discussed my goals for the next few months and also completed my yearly progress report. Result: I've got the go-ahead to proceed to my third year of study.

The general consensus seems to be that I've made a great deal of progress in the last twelve months, both in terms of learning new abilities and putting them to practice with the actual writing of my thesis. For instance, I've become far more adept this year at performing close textual analysis, a process that was all but alien to me this time last year. I have drafts of three chapters - introduction, literature review and first analysis chapter - under my belt, and will be submitting the next chapter at the start of the next academic year, i.e. the end of September.

Obviously, therefore, the coming months will be as busy for me as ever. However, I'm taking the opportunity to put it all to one side for the next couple of weeks and just relax - something I don't feel I've really had an opportunity to do since Christmas. I've also taken some time off work to coincide with this welcome break. Hopefully, I'll be able to devote some of my free time to more reviews and perhaps some more in-depth posts on this site. I am, after all, rarely content to just sit and do nothing, although it's nice to have no pressing commitments for a little while.

BD review: The Unborn

7:30 PM / Reviews / No Comments

Despite half-heartedly attempting to be something more than just another generic possession movie by substituting the usual Catholic mumbo-jumbo with mumbo-jumbo of a different denomination, The Unborn is as unimaginative and forgettable as they come. The AV presentation is top-notch, but unfortunately a nice transfer and a pleasing sound mix do not a good film make. Unless you've made it your mission to collect every last movie about demonic possession in high definition, you'd be as well to simply pick up the likes of The Omen, Poltergeist or The Orphanage, all of which are available in very serviceable Blu-ray editions.

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More than just a list of names

8:50 PM / Animation / 11 Comments

The Art of the Title Sequence, a web site dedicated to celebrating - did you guess right? - title sequences in movies and television series, has put together a very interesting piece on the imaginative and rather artsy end credits that accompanied Pixar's 2008 hit Wall-E. Consisting of an interview with director Jim Capobianca and animator Alexander Woo, it covers the inspiration and meaning behind the sequence, as well as the technical and logistical issues the team faced in putting it together.

Title sequences are an under-appreciated aspect of movies, and those that are anything more than merely functional are sadly becoming increasingly rare. The great Saul Bass designs for the likes of Vertigo and North by Northwest are now very much the artefacts of a bygone age, with present-day credits all too often being nothing more than white text flashing on and off or scrolling up a black background. There are, of course, exceptions - the James Bond series, for instance, has maintained its tradition of displaying the principal credits at the start of each movie, accompanied by imaginative graphics. Pixar are another fine example of a company that does credits differently. Having come up with the idea of "animated outtakes" (a tradition that quickly became intensely irritating as every other CGI animation house latched on to the idea), the studio has repeatedly sought to make their credits interesting, so viewers have a reason not to leave the movie theatre as soon as the film proper comes to an end. The Incredibles and Ratatouille both did amazing stuff with stylised 2D animation, and Wall-E continued the tradition in very much the same vein.

Can anyone who saw Up theatrically tell me what they did for the credits of that particular film?

Source: Cartoon Brew

Just arrived...

10:21 PM / Blu-ray / 7 Comments

True Blood: The Complete First Season (BD, HBO, Region ABC, USA)

I've heard mucho great things about this vampiric drama series from Alan Ball, the brains behind American Beauty, Six Feet Under and Revolutionary Road.

Updated Sunday, June 21, 2009 at 11:26 PM: Well, slap my face! It turns out Alan Ball had nothing to do with Revolutionary Road after all. Cheers, Erik.

BD impressions: Gran Torino

9:56 PM / BD Impressions / 8 Comments

I must admit that Gran Torino slightly disappointed me, particularly given the strengths of Clint Eastwood's previous film, Changeling, which I personally thought was terrific. The jury seems to be out on which of the two 2008 offerings from the grisled one is the superior movie, but there's no question about it in my mind. That's not to say that I didn't enjoy Gran Torino: I did think it was a decent film on the whole, but it suffers from some critical problems, by far the biggest of which is actually not the uneven acting from the supporting cast (consisting largely of Hmong non-actors) but rather the script, which is pretty clunky in places. Writer Nick Schenk comes out with some shockingly clumsy dialogue that I'm surprised wasn't nixed prior to the project going into production, and the characterisation is, for the most part, completely two-dimensional. Eastwood once again puts in an acting tour de force, even if for the most part he is required to do little more than glower and make bigoted comments.

It's slightly difficult to say how good Warner's BD transfer is, given that the film is, for the most part, somewhat grubby and unappealing. Eastwood's preference for anamorphic Panavision continues, and it shares the rather murky look of Million Dollar Baby and Changeling. The former is the weakest looking of the trio in high definition and the latter is the strongest, with Gran Torino falling slap-bang in the middle. Detail is reasonable but not great, although I can't be sure how much this has to do with the lenses rather than the transfer. Compression is well-handled, and there's no blatant evidence of overt digital manipulation, but... eh, it just looks a tad underwhelming to me. 7/10

Gran Torino
studio: Warner; country: USA; region code: ABC; codec: VC-1;
file size: 27.6 GB; average bit rate (including audio): 33.98 Mbit/sec

By the way, is it just me or does the film's plot have rather a lot in common with that of Pixar's Up? Both are about a bitter old man whose wife has died and has isolated himself within the old family home, despite attempts to pack him off to a retirement home, and both rediscover a certain sense of joie de vivre thanks to the wacky exploits of a goofy Asian boy. Just a little left field thought I'm throwing out there.

Just arrived...

2:06 PM / Blu-ray / 4 Comments

Bound (BD, M6 Vidéo, Region ABC, France)

The Wachowskis' first and still their best film, in my opinion. This French release is much cheaper than the Japanese version that has been available for several months now. It's coded for all regions, and you can disable the French subtitles via the menu with no problems.

Chemical Wedding (BD, Universal, Region B, France)

A bit of a guilty pleasure, this, and not really a purchase I can truly justify, as the film itself is pretty poor. It's enjoyably poor, however - probably the sort of film Hammer would be churning out to this day if they'd never stopped making horror movies.

By the way, this is the first region-coded disc I've ever seen from Universal, although it's not labelled as such anywhere on the packaging. I hope this isn't the start of a trend.

Some thoughts on Fallout 3 and the immersion factor

12:39 PM / Games / No Comments

The other day, I completed my first playthrough of Bethesda Softworks' Fallout 3, which I previously discussed just under a month ago when I first picked it up. Because of a myriad of other commitments, including my university work and the redesigning and relaunching of this site, I played it in fits and starts, but my overall impression is that, in spite of the sprawling, somewhat open-ended nature of the game world, it didn't take me very long to complete. Certainly, I sank far more time into the likes of Planescape: Torment and the Baldur's Gate saga which, along with the first two entries in the Fallout series and Bethesda's earlier Oblivion, make up this game's rather tangled DNA. Even Bioware's Mass Effect, which actually shares a great many similarities with Fallout 3, and which some have criticised for its brevity, took me longer to complete, and it was rather less free-form in terms of the progression of its storyline.

Then again, maybe that has something to do with the speed at which I barrelled through Fallout 3. Games such as these are, I've found, best experienced if you really immerse yourself in the world and storyline, soaking up all the seemingly unimportant details in order to fully bring it to life in your head. In Planescape: Torment, a player who poured over every screed of text would have a vastly richer experience than one who just waded in, fists a-flaying, skipping through the numerous (and let's face it, at times unnecessarily long-winded) dialogue encounters. Planescape: Torment, however, was a top-down 2D game, and had to rely on its descriptions and dialogue in order to convey everything beyond the bare essentials. In the highly detailed three-dimensional worlds of Fallout 3, Mass Effect et al, you don't need to make your way through multiple screens of text in order to get a feel for your surroundings or the character standing in front of you. You can take in, in an instant, the visual information that would previously have had to be conveyed via multiple paragraphs of written description. Put simply, I didn't feel compelled to explore each and every dialogue option with each and every character, because most of what I needed to know about the world was readily apparent.

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Bitch-slapped Board of Film Censors

10:23 AM / Games / 4 Comments

Yesterday, the British Board of Film Censors lost out in a bid to become the state censor for all computer and video games. All ratings duties will instead be carried out by pan-European body PEGI, which already rates the majority of games appearing on UK shelves. The PEGI ratings will now be made legally binding, prohibiting the sale of games to those younger than the stated age rating - which I believe should have been the case right from the start. (Otherwise what's the point of them?)

The BBFC, having lost out on one of their many ways of raking in ridiculous amount of cash, are predictably throwing their toys out of the pram and having a right royal whinge about how much better suited they are to deciding who can play a game than PEGI. Make no mistake: this is a great victory against the extortionists from Soho Square, who charge obscene amounts of money on a mandatory rating system, the fees for which are such that many smaller DVD labels deliberately omit content from their releases so that they can stand a chance of breaking even in sales. With the BBFC also clamouring to rate online content, it seems fairly evident that their ultimate goal is to monopolise the entertainment industry, establishing themselves as the judges of acceptability for all media in the UK. Yesterday, the goalposts were moved several paces back.

Source: Gamespot

BD impressions: The Unborn

11:51 PM / BD Impressions / 4 Comments

Oof! Well, that was pretty underwhelming. This evening, we watched The Unborn, the latest offering from Platinum Dunes, Michael Bay's PG-13 horror-lite factory. Written and directed by David S. Goyer, the screenwriter behind the Blade franchise and Batman Begins, to name but a couple, this limp and vaguely ridiculous little number melds the "scary child" and "demonic possession" subsections of the horror genre but offers nothing new to either, beyond replacing the usual Catholic mumbo-jumbo with Jewish mumbo-jumbo and having poor old Gary Oldman embarrass himself in a role that is well beneath him. Oh, and some photogenic girl standing around in her pants a lot. (Judging by the poster, the studio considered this to be the film's strongest asset. I'm not even convinced I'd disagree.) Seriously, just watch The Orphanage and don't bother with this nonentity.

But now, the good (?) news: Universal's BD looks terrific. The film was shot in anamorphic Panavision, and has that wonderful "smooth but detailed" look so often associated with that cinematographic process. The blacks look slightly elevated, particularly towards the beginning of the film, but there's really nothing else to criticise in this excellent transfer, which showcases a solid, film-like texture, with no evidence of digital tampering and nothing in the way of compression artefacts. 9.5/10

The Unborn
studio: Universal; country: UK; region code: ABC; codec: VC-1;
file size: 21.3 GB; average bit rate (including audio): 34.52 Mbit/sec

Just arrived...

10:24 AM / Blu-ray / 6 Comments

Gran Torino (BD, Warner, Region ABC, USA)

Clint Eastwood's last ever acting role, apparently. After the terrific Changeling, I can't wait to see the man's return to quasi-Dirty Harry territory.

Image comparison: L'important c'est d'aimer

12:39 AM / DVD / 5 Comments

I've taken an in-depth look at Mondo Vision's North American DVD release of Andrzej Zulawski's L'important c'est d'aimer, released in two days' time at Amazon.com, stacking it up against the three previous editions most readily available: the French version from Studio Canal, the German version from New Entertainment World, and the Spanish version from Studio Canal/Universal. Who will triumph?

(Come on, who do you think?)

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BD review: Vicky Cristina Barcelona

12:30 AM / Reviews / No Comments

"Pleasant" is a fitting adjective to describe Vicky Cristina Barcelona. "Insubstantial" is another. When the lights came up at the end of Woody Allen's latest romantic drama - or should that be dramatic romance? - I was very much left with the impression that not a lot had actually transpired in the space of its 96-minute duration. Then again, perhaps this shouldn't come as a surprise: the director's work of late has been patchy at best, with each new offering being tenuously heralded by one camp as a return to form and decried by another as conclusive proof that he is a has-been...

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BD impressions: Monsters, Inc.

12:41 PM / BD Impressions / 2 Comments

Rewatching Monsters, Inc. last night for the first time in a few years, my brother commented about how "overbearing" the film felt at times. I'm inclined to agree: this is the most frenetic of Pixar's films in terms of its pacing and wall-to-wall dialogue. There really isn't a single moment of calmness or silence until just before the closing credits roll, and there's something a little exhausting about it. I tend to view this as Pixar's most DreamWorks-like film, in that it's heavily reliant on dialogue, with the story almost seeming to take a back seat. It's still an infinitely superior film to anything DreamWorks has made so far, though - the similarities are in tone rather than quality.

I'd previously pegged this as middle-tier Pixar - above Cars and A Bug's Life, about the same as Toy Story 2 and below Toy Story, The Incredibles, Wall-E, Finding Nemo and Ratatouille - and while I'd still place it in more or less the same position in the Pixar canon, my appreciation of it did raise itself just a little overall. Pete Docter's sensibility is a little more cartoony than that of his fellow Pixar directors Brad Bird and Andrew Stanton, and most of this film's success stems from the fact that it's just plain good fun. To a certain extent it lacks the complexity of the studio's "A" material, as well as some of the emotional punch (it's telling, I think, that Docter frames Sully's fear that Boo has been mangled in the garbage compactor as a joke rather than playing it straight), but when a film is this fun I'm tempted to say it doesn't matter.

Visually, the disc is terrific. (And aurally too - the DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1 track is a delight.) The sheer amount of detail packed into each frame is probably the highest I've ever seen on a BD. Just look at Sully: even in wide shots you can see practically every individual blade of hair! This was before Pixar had perfected camera focus and depth of field (although they do play with it a little here and there), and while this may case the film to look slightly more artificial than something like Ratatouille or Wall-E, at the same time it makes it easier for the viewer to appreciate just how much detail you can actually pack into the disc's 1920x1080 resolution. It also makes some of the shortcomings of the technology back in 2001 more apparent: for instance, what appears to be a lack of anti-aliasing on some diagonal edges in Example 4, and the flatness of the texturing on Roz's face in Example 10. Compression is handled extremely well for the most part, with the Himalayas blizzard sequence actually holding up better than I expected (see Example 14). Unfortunately, the complexity of the "doors chase" prior to the climax proves to be a little too much for the encoder to cope with, with some mild but visible compression artefacts detectable in a number of shots (see Example 17, paying particular attention to the upper right hand corner). Were it not for these, I feel confident that Monsters, Inc. would have risen to the very top of the "Shot Digitally" list on the HD Image Quality Rankings page. As it is, it's a stellar disc 99% of the time, falling just shy of perfection. 9.5/10

Monsters, Inc.
studio: Buena Vista; country: Japan; region code: ABC; codec: AVC;
file size: 20.4 GB; average bit rate (including audio): 31.76 Mbit/sec

Monsters, Inc. BD notes

7:56 PM / Blu-ray / 2 Comments

A few miscellaneous observations about the recently released Japanese Monsters, Inc. Blu-ray Disc:

• Bear in mind that I haven't watched the entire disc yet, but from what I sampled, the image quality looked impeccable - possibly the best-looking digitally-sourced material I've seen on BD. It's hard to say whether or not it's actually technically superior to Ratatouille, which until recently was definitely the best-looking digital title in my collection. It's certainly subjectively sharper, but that's because, in recent years, the Pixar team have discovered the benefits of using artificial focus to add to the perceived depth of the image and make things look more natural. A full, in-depth viewing will hopefully take place at some point in the near future.
   
• As with the non-North American DVD releases of this film, a number of shots have been modified to replace English-language signs and on-screen text with internationally-friendly equivalents. (Some examples are provided at the AV Science Forum.) This isn't a major deal-dreaker for me, but it is annoying, because it constitutes revisionism. Presumably, the US release, whenever it deigns to put in an appearance, will retain the original signs and captions.
   
• While the film itself includes optional English (and Japanese) subtitles, not all of the extras are English-friendly. There's a new featurette about a Monsters, Inc. attraction at the Tokyo Disney Resort that includes a couple of snippets with a fellow speaking Japanese, which isn't subtitled. Likewise, short film Mike's New Car is missing its original English audio.
   
• Disc 1 appears to be specifically designed to cater to the Japanese market, with its menus in Japanese only. Disc 2, however, is clearly intended for distribution in multiple territories, and includes English-language menus (and copyright warning screens, etc.).

The PS3 PAL lockout saga continues

7:21 PM / Blu-ray / 9 Comments

An addendum to yesterday's post about the recent Playstation 3 firmware update that locks out discs with 50 Hz content: it appears that the situation may be slightly less clear-cut. Land of Whimsy reader FoxyMulder reports that some discs that contain 50 Hz content (such as the French release of Mr. & Mrs. Smith) still start up in his PS3 despite the system having been updated to the latest firmware. Trying to access the 50 Hz content on the disc spits out the same "Error code 80029946" message as The Descent, but at least the disc actually starts and can play the film.

It appears, therefore, that the issue is not discs that contain 50 Hz content full stop but rather discs that have 50 Hz in the pre-menu screen. In the past, if the PlayStation 3 came across 50 Hz content, such as a copyright warning screen or company logo, it would simply skip past it. Likewise, when previously attempting to play a PAL bonus feature, the screen would just go black for a couple of seconds and then jump back to the menu. Now, however, rather than just ignoring the incompatible material, the PS3 stops stone dead and throws a hissy-fit. According to PowerDVD, the warning screen at the beginning of The Descent's start-up routine is 50 Hz, so it looks as if it's the culprit.

I don't expect anyone at Sony is reading this blog, but if they are, here's a message for them: PUT IT BACK. In an ideal world, a US (or Canadian, or Japanese, or...) PS3 would be able to play both NTSC and PAL content (and, if we're pipe-dreaming, would accept discs coded for Region B and C as well), but here in grim, inconvenient reality, just skipping the unplayable material was vastly preferable to the situation we have now. Even though the situation doesn't really affect me, I'm still angry on behalf of those who don't have a dedicated 50 Hz-compatible player. Likewise, I'm angry about having functionality from the player I bought removed behind my back. Come on, guys, do the decent thing and give us back the what we used to have.

Upgrade at your own peril

6:52 PM / Blu-ray / 15 Comments

Whoever heard of an upgrade that actually removes features rather than adding them? That's exactly what has happened with the latest firmware for the PlayStation 3, that ugly-looking console that a large number of people happen to use as a Blu-ray player. It seems that the latest firmware, whether inadvertently or otherwise, breaks the playback of discs that contain PAL content on NTSC-territory players. As you may or may not know, PlayStation 3s sold in NTSC areas (such as North America and Japan) are only capable of playing content that is natively 60 Hz or 24p, which is fine in 99% of cases, but means that 50 Hz material simply won't play. While a handful of discs with 50 Hz HD material do exist (such as the UK release of the Wallace & Gromit film A Matter of Loaf and Death), the bulk of 50 Hz content available on BD is limited to standard definition bonus features.

In the past, on such a disc, the PlayStation 3 would play the movie itself absolutely fine. Not any more, though. AV Science Forum member Shadowrage reported the following message when attempting to play his copy of the Australian BD of The Descent:

Error code 80029946

It's not just him. Several other users are reporting the same problem, and a few minutes ago I checked my own copy of The Descent. It's a dud.

What a crock. Generally speaking, people tend to assume that, when they buy a piece of hardware, it will retain the same functionality that it had on the day of purchase, short of it failing. I recently bought a second-hand Region B Panasonic DMP-BD35 player in order to play region-locked titles from Europe and other "B" territories, so I can continue to watch The Descent (and Hannibal, and other titles that contain PAL content). If I only had my PlayStation 3, however, I'd be pissed. Actually, screw that - I am pissed. I just hope this is a temporary glitch that is corrected with the next firmware update, rather than a deliberate attempt on Sony's part to punish those who have the audacity to - gasp! - purchase films from other territories.

Updated Saturday, June 13, 2009 at 07:32 PM: It appears that the situation may be less clear-cut than we first thought. Please see this post for further details.

Google Chrome

5:28 PM / Web / 3 Comments

Does anyone use Google's Chrome browser? I've just downloaded it for the first time and I must say I'm very impressed. It has a slick, minimalist interface, very similar to Apple's latest iteration of Safari. More importantly, while I haven't done any actual number-crunching on it, subjectively it does feel very fast. (This may have something to do with the DNS pre-fetching option, which it claims improves page load performance.)

I'm not sure if I'm ready to give up my trusty Firefox quite yet (just as it took me forever and a day to trade in Internet Explorer for Firefox back in the day), but if you're looking for a sleek, efficient alternative browser, I heartily recommend giving Chrome a look. You can read more about the features on offer here.

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