Monday, July 20, 2009

Just arrived...

10:31 AM / Blu-ray / Comments7 Comments

Blu-ray

Switchblade Romance (BD, Optimum, Region B, UK)

Better known outside the UK by its superior French title, Haute tension (High Tension in the US). This disc uses the latest form of AACS content protection (MKB 14), which is currently unsupported by AnyDVD HD, so I won't be able to do any screen captures until this situation is remedied.

 
7 Comments

1. Peter von Frosta said:

A comment on the picture quality of this title is still very appreciated as this apparently is the only Blu-ray out there at the moment.

(Posted on Monday, July 20, 2009 at 11:43 AM)

2. Author Profile Page Michael said:

I've just taken a peek and it looks fair - not particularly striking, but acceptable enough. There's an inordinate amount of gate weave during the studio logos at the start, but this is minimised once the film itself begins. The film didn't receive a digital intermediate, so it's taken from a print source. The image is a little soft, and the grain seems a tad clumpy, but I've seeen a lot worse. It's hard to say whether it could have looked any better than it does here. At least, unlike Optimum's DVD release, the subtitles aren't burned in.

(Posted on Monday, July 20, 2009 at 1:02 PM)

3. Randy van Rijn said:

Is it the unrated cut?

I'm looking forward to picking this one up. I love this film. Alexandre Aja's remake of 'The Hills Have Eyes' wasn't to shabby either.

(Posted on Tuesday, July 21, 2009 at 2:11 PM)

4. Author Profile Page Michael said:

Randy:

Wait, was this cut in the US? I didn't know that. I thought only the German release was censored.

If so, then yes, I assume this is what would have been marketed the US as the "unrated" version. It's the same version that was released theatrically more or less everywhere else.

(Posted on Tuesday, July 21, 2009 at 2:15 PM)

5. Kentai said:

The US release was available in both R-rated (cut by 2 minutes) and "Unrated" (original). There was supposed to be a Valentines Day theatrical release according to the US trailers, but it never did pan out. A pity.

The R1 DVD includes both the English dub and a strange "hybrid" English/French dub, where Marie and Alexia speak English to one another, but everyone else in the film speaks French. *Shrug* Sadly all of the subtitle options are dubtitles - copies from the English dialog rather than a literal French to English translation. I doubt the difference between the two is very substantial, but it's still annoying.

(Posted on Tuesday, July 21, 2009 at 9:14 PM)

6. Author Profile Page Michael said:

Thanks for the explanation, Kentai. Now that you mention it, some of this does sound vaguely familiar to me. So is there no original French track on the R1 DVD, just the English dub and the English/French hybrid?

By the way, the latest version of AnyDVD successfully circumvents the new AACS protection, so screen captures will be possible.

(Posted on Friday, July 24, 2009 at 12:47 PM)

7. Vincent Pereira said:

The region 1 DVD has a complete French track, the issue is it offers "dubtitles" as opposed to proper subtitles. This is annoying as some dialogue was added to the hybrid English/French dub which attempts to explain why everybody at the house will be speaking French (or something along those lines). Said dialogue is dubbed over an exterior shot of the girl's car driving up to the house, which has no dialogue in the French version, so if you're watching the film in French with the "dubtitles", there are mysterious subtitles over this shot where there is no spoken dialogue.

Vincent

(Posted on Saturday, July 25, 2009 at 12:24 AM)

 
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