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

11:59 PM / Blu-ray / DVD / No Comments

• Saturday, August 1, 2009: Footprints (DVD, Region 0, UK) [review copy]
• Wednesday, August 5, 2009: Go (BD, Region ABC, UK)
• Thursday, August 6, 2009: The Ninth Gate (BD, Region ABC, USA)
• Thursday, August 6, 2009: Labyrinth (BD, Region ABC, UK) [review copy]
• Saturday, August 8, 2009: The Last House on the Left (2009) (BD, Region ABC, USA)
• Thursday, August 27, 2009: Sunshine Cleaning (2009) (BD, Region A, USA)
• Friday, August 28, 2009: Adventureland (BD, Region A, USA)
• Monday, August 31, 2009: The Edge of Love (BD, Region B, UK)

Flower power

6:27 PM / Music / No Comments

I just picked up Heather Nova's most recent CD, a 2008 release called The Jasmine Flower, which I wasn't even aware existed until I stumbled across it on Amazon a few days ago. I've got a soft spot for her music, and this should tide me over nicely in the "songs by ladies with lilting voices" department until Sharon Corr releases her solo album later this year.

And the award for proper treatment of the master goes to... Lions Gate

5:02 PM / Blu-ray / No Comments

Oh ho! What's this? It would appear that Image Entertainment have discovered the wonders of the low-pass filter and applied it to their Blu-ray release of John Maybury's Dylan Thomas biopic The Edge of Love. A couple of months back, when screen captures for that disc first materialised, my initial thought was "What a shame - a filtered master." Further down the line, though, it became clear that, in actual fact, no filtering existed on the master itself. Instead, it appears that the image was deliberately softened by Image for their BD: the same elements, it would seem, were also delivered to Lions Gate for their UK release, and, unlike Image, they did the right thing and encoded the image entirely unfiltered.

Blu-ray.com posted numerous captures of the Image release to accompany their review, and while the reviewer failed to pick up on the filtering (he spends most of the "Video" section discussing the director's stylistic choices), the screen captures, as I always say, tell a far more complete story than the written word. Below, I've included a handful of my own captures from the Lions Gate version, which correspond to ones posted at Blu-ray.com. Head over there yourself and match them up to see the gains the Lions Gate version makes as far as detail and overall texture are concerned.

(I was also considering using a couple of the captures posted in DVD Beaver's review, but they've got something wonky going on with their colour decoding and, while this obviously doesn't affect the detail levels, I felt it would be unnecessarily confusing to refer to captures that showed the wrong colour values.)

Here are a few more shots showcasing the wonderful level of detail present in the Lions Gate release. The look of the movie is somewhat inconsistent, due to it having been shot using a combination of 35mm film and Panavision's Genesis HD digital cameras, and I suspect that the 35mm scenes may have been grain reduced in an attempt to create a more consistent look.

Just arrived...

3:06 PM / Blu-ray / No Comments

The Edge of Love (BD, Lions Gate, Region B, UK)

...which makes for a very interesting comparison with the US release from Image Entertainment. More on this soon...

This week's BDs: August 31, 2009 - September 6, 2009

12:00 AM / Blu-ray / No Comments

Upcoming US and UK Blu-ray titles for the next week. Titles I intend to pick up at some point are in bold.

Monday, August 31, 2009:

• The Damned United (Sony Pictures, UK)
• The Dark Crystal (Sony Pictures, UK)
• Dead Snow (E1 Entertainment, UK)
• Encounters at the End of the World (Revolver, UK)
• Labyrinth (Sony Pictures, UK)
• Outlander (Momentum, UK)
• Red Dwarf: Back to Earth (2 Entertain, UK)
• Shiguriu Death Frenzy: The Complete Series (Manga, UK)
• Traitor (Momentum, UK)
• Werner Herzog: Encounters in the Natural World (Revolver, UK)
• Withnail and I (Anchor Bay, UK)

Tuesday, September 1, 2009:

• Big Boss (Indies Asia/Zoom, USA)
• Braveheart (Paramount, USA)
• Bring It On: Fight to the Finish (Universal, USA)
• CSI: Crime Scene Investigation: The Ninth Season (Paramount, USA)
• The Girl Next Door (20th Century Fox, USA)
• Gladiator (Paramount, USA)
• Heroes: Season 3 (Universal, USA)
• High Crimes (20th Century Fox, USA)
• M*A*S*H (20th Century Fox, USA)
• Monster (First Look, USA)
• State of Play (2009) (Universal, USA)
• Supernatural: The Complete Fourth Season (Warner, USA)

BD review: Hannibal

11:56 PM / Reviews / 4 Comments

This UK edition of Hannibal is being released by Universal next week. (Universal supplied me with a review copy, which I've had to return.) Alas, those who already own the earlier German release by UFA will have no reason to replace their copies with the UK edition, which fails to improve on its disappointing image quality. (The same master has been used and the results are virtually identical.) My only hope now (and a slim hope, at that) is that MGM's US release, due out in September, will deliver the goods.

Anyway, at least I was motivated to pen a new review for this unjustly maligned masterpiece...

Whenever I tell people I prefer Hannibal to The Silence of the Lambs, they tend to assume I'm either mad or joking. Either way, they never look at me quite the same way again. Mad though I may be, I'm certainly not joking, and I suspect my preference for this Grand Guignol 2001 follow-up lies in my own individual tastes. Jonathan Demme's offering, fine film though it is, always struck me as being slightly ashamed of its identity as a horror film: whether consciously or otherwise, it seemed to go to great pains to disavow the horror trappings of the material and present itself as something more refined, something less distasteful... a psychological thriller, as it were. With Hannibal, on the other hand, Ridley Scott goes the whole hog, to use a rather fitting phrase, embracing what is ultimately a deliciously twisted fairytale, a Beauty and the Beast for the modern era.

[Continue reading...]

Welcome to the Dollhouse

10:21 PM / Television / 6 Comments

Looks like Tim Minear has joined the staff of Dollhouse full time for its upcoming second season, after holding down a part-time consulting role on Season 1 (for which he wrote two episodes, including the broadcast season finale). This can only be good news: I've long been of the opinion that, of all the writers to be involved with Mutant Enemy's various productions, he was one of the best, perhaps second only to Joss Whedon. (He started on Angel before transferring to the short-lived Firefly as joint showrunner with Whedon, after which he left to lead the ill-fated but oh-so-funny Wonderfalls.) Oh, and actors Summer Glau and Alexis Denisof are coming along for the ride too, joining other former Mutant Enemy alums Eliza Dushku and Amy Acker. It's going to be a great big reunion, and I for one am looking forward to it.

I'm still slowly working my way through Season 1 on BD, by the way, and will hopefully reach the end before Season 2 begins on September 25. (I'm pretty busy at the moment, working on the PhD - next chapter due in about a month's time - and some other things that I'm not currently at liberty to discuss publicly.) I have a few opinions about it, but will refrain from posting them until I've seen it through to the end. Oh, and please keep nagging at me to post my thoughts on Firefly, which I finished a number of weeks ago but haven't had the time to do a write-up for yet.

Oh, okay. One word about Firefly: terrific.

Booby blunder

7:12 PM / Blu-ray / 14 Comments

An eagle-eyed visitor to Land of Whimsy (thanks, Rob) has pointed out to me that Anchor Bay's recent US Blu-ray release of Sunshine Cleaning has been CENSORED!Amy Adams has a brief topless scene at around the seven-minute mark as she scrambles into a bra after some motel room sex... well, at least she does on an unidentified European DVD release. Rob doesn't have the DVD so unfortunately he isn't elaborate on which release this is. He did, however, direct me to a link where a brief clip of the offending scene can be downloaded. Here's what you see should you live in Euro-land:

Scandalous, isn't it? Apparently so. On the US BD, when the shot in question comes along, this is what happens:

Puritanical America strikes again, eh? I don't understand it - the movie is rated "R", and her nipples are visible on screen for a mere six frames (I counted them, such is my dedication). You actually have to go through it frame by frame to even see anything, so fleeting is the exposure. In any event, the scene is so innocuous that I can't see how anyone could possibly complain. (The film opening with a guy blowing his own brains out, though - that's fine.) It's a tiny alteration, to be sure, but this sort of thing rankles me precisely because it is so trivial. Not only that, the altered framing destroys the composition of the shot, making it look completely wonky.

It's the Dawn of the Dead remake situation all over again. It was baffling then and it's baffling now. Why go to so much bother over the sake of a pair of tits in an R-rated movie? I've seen more skin on lunchtime television. Perhaps Anchor Bay thought that the fact that Amy Adams is best known for her appearance in Disney's clean-cut Enchanted precluded her from getting her knockers out? (Ironically, she actually showed more bare flesh in that movie than she does here.) But if that's the case, they clearly didn't consider this a problem for debauched Europeans such as myself.

Just arrived...

6:31 PM / Blu-ray / No Comments

Adventureland (BD, Buena Vista, Region A, USA)

Just arrived...

2:04 PM / Blu-ray / No Comments

Sunshine Cleaning (BD, Anchor Bay, Region A, USA)

I loved Amy Adams' turn in Enchanted. I think Emily Blunt is one of the most gifted actors of her generation. Any movie to feature them both has got to be at least worth a look.

The funniest two pictures I've seen all week

6:34 PM / Blu-ray / 14 Comments

Priceless, just priceless.

As funny as the first picture is, the second is just the icing on the cake.

In case you're not aware, they're a reference to Paramount's upcoming Blu-ray release of Gladiator, which I initially posted about a few days ago. Since then, further information has emerged. Not only is the transfer inundated with edge enhancement and profoundly lacking in detail, it has also been fleeced with the same sort of DVNR (digital video noise reduction) technology that publicly embarrassed Warner when they tried the same thing several years back on their Looney Tunes Golden Collection Volume 2 DVD release. Say "Goodbye, detail! Hellooooo, disappearing projectiles!" In the meantime, the only web site to have reviewed the disc (one that is infamous for its less than rigid technical standards) has hastily retracted its initial glowing appraisal after news of the scandal broke, replacing it with a more tempered (but nonetheless still profoundly ignorant) write-up.

Oh, and it looks as if, despite how poor most of the film looks, scenes that were added back in for the Extended Edition look much better. Ironically, this simply makes the whole situation much more frustrating, as these scenes provide a tantalising glimpse of how good the whole film could have looked had Paramount and/or Universal not simply hauled out a grubby old master (presumably the one used to make the original DVD release) and subjected it to an additional pass of intrusive noise reduction.

Luckily, it looks as if word is spreading fast regarding the lacklustre quality of this major release. Campaigns are under way to contact both Paramount (whose responses so far have been pretty pathetic), and director Ridley Scott's production company, Scott Free. The latter, I feel, could have a significant impact if the influential Mr. Scott, a man well known for his visual eye and who has sung the praises of the Blu-ray format in the past, gets wind of how his film has been treated and decides to weigh in.

Not that this has stopped the usual suspects at Blu-ray.com, morons of the highest order that they are, from having a whine about "screenshot Scientology" (whatever the hell that's supposed to mean) and adopting the predictable "It looks better than the DVD!" and "The sun shines out of Blu-ray's arse!" stances. These are the people who retard the growth of new technology and convince the studios that "okay" is an adequate standard for which to aim. I despair of that forum, I really do.

Artist's impression

Declassified

1:06 PM / Cinema / 4 Comments

Film censors around the UK are waking up to disturbing news today. Apparently, due to an administrative oversight, the 1984 Video Recordings Act, which requires all videos (I'm including DVDs and Blu-ray Discs under that umbrella) sold in the UK to be pre-vetted by the British Board of Film Censors, is no longer valid. Actually, no, I think I should rephrase that:

It was never valid in the first place.

I'll let our good friends at the Melon Farmers take up the tale:

The discovery of a Whitehall blunder means that the 1984 law regulating the video industry was never enacted.

The disclosure that for 25 years the Video Recordings Act governing the classification and sale of videos, video games and now DVDs was never brought into force is a big embarrassment to both Conservative and Labour governments.

It also leaves the industry in disarray with the classification system no longer officially in operation.

Police and Her Majesty's Revenue and Customs are to be told to stop bringing any prosecutions until the Government brings in emergency legislation to re-enact the 1984 Video Recordings Act. Until then people will be able to sell videos, including violent and pornographic ones, to people without fear of prosecution.

The video industry was stunned by the Government's admission that the Act was not properly enacted 25 years ago. Officials in the Home Office had failed to notify the European Commission of the existence of the Act as they were required to do so under an EU directive.

The mistake was not spotted on two subsequent occasions, in 1993 and 1994. It was finally discovered during plans to update the law and introduce a new video-game classification system.

Barbara Follett, Minister for Culture and Tourism, said last night: Unfortunately, the discovery of this omission means that, a quarter of a century later, the Video Recordings Act is no longer enforceable against individuals in United Kingdom courts. In a letter to representatives of the video industry, Follett said: As the then British Government did not notify the European Commission of the VRA's classification and labelling requirements, they cannot now be enforced against individuals in UK courts.

The Department for Culture, Media and Sport said that it had received legal advice that people who had previously been prosecuted and convicted would be unable to overturn their convictions or seek compensation.

The British Video Association said that it is urging members to continue submitting work to the British Board of Film Classification and to continue labelling them under the system.

(Emphasis mine.)

Ahahahahahahaha!

Sorry. Once more.

Ahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahaha!

This is just too funny for words. Now it's no longer a case of "You have to submit your work to us for an exorbitant fee" but more one of "Please, please, pleeeeeease submit your work to us for an exorbitant fee." Perhaps the BBFC will start offering special offers? "Submit your film and get a free Pez dispenser with every five seconds of cuts!"

I wonder how long it will take to enact this "emergency legislation", particularly given that there are more important things going on in the world at the moment, such as - oh, you know - the War on Terror™ and the recession. Actually, if the government has any sense, it'll see this as a wonderful opportunity to help get the economy back on its feet by leading to a massive boom in video sales. I mean, think about it: right now, you can stick all the filth you want on a DVD and sell it without fear of prosecution. Fun times for all!

BD impressions: Ghostbusters

12:53 PM / BD Impressions / 12 Comments

It's funny how many cult classics fall into the "you had to be there" category. I was born in the early 1980s, but Ghostbusters was never part of my childhood. Well, I did see a couple of episodes of The Real Ghostbusters, that dreadful animated series made by DiC, at a friend's birthday party once, but that's about it. Actually, come to think of it, perhaps seeing those cartoons is precisely the reason why Ghostbusters was never part of my childhood. (And I always thought it was stupid that the animated series was called The Real Ghostbusters when the live action film, featuring real people, wasn't.) While my friends were watching shows like Transformers and He-Man, all things that bored me to tears, I was always much happier watching real cartoons like the Looney Tunes and Tom & Jerry shorts. I always found these stiff '80s shows (little more than glorified toy commercials) dull, depressing and frankly ridiculous, which has persisted into adulthood. It's no secret that, despite growing up in the '80s, I think that that decade would be best served by being confined to the trash heap, in part because of the sorry state of my beloved medium of animation during that period.

Anyway, I watched the original 1984 movie for the first time last night, and... yeah, it's was... fun... kinda. It made me laugh a few times and it more or less held my attention for its duration, but I found it completely and utterly disposable. I think my brother summed it up best when he said "I'm not saying it's bad or anything, but out of all the films that could have remained in people's consciousness, why this one?" or words to that effect. Like I said, you had to be there, I suppose.

Image quality: Ghostbusters looks great on BD, with a pronounced grain structure that appears unmolested (for the most part - see below). I'm aware that there has been some debate surrounding the colour timing of this release, particularly some of the effects shots, but not being familiar with the film in its previous incarnations I feel unqualified to comment on this issue. Watching it, I certainly didn't get the impression that anything was amiss, but again I must stress that I don't know the film well. It has the slgihtly soft focus look that I would expect of a film shot anamorphically during this period, but it's pleasing to the eye rather than the sort of digitally induced softness that just makes it look like you're watching with your eyes crossed. With the release of Braveheart, virtually every other catalogue title now seems to look positively underwhelming in comparison, but it's important to keep things in perspective and remember that not every film had that level of detail in the first place.

As is typical of non-digital intermediate productions, effects shots suffer a bit in terms of definition, which is slightly problematic given just how many of them there are in a film such as this. I suspect that they may have been degrained to some extent, as the level of grain is considerably less pronounced during these shots than during "regular" footage, when realistically it should be the other way round. 8/10

Ghostbusters
studio: Sony Pictures; country: UK; region code: ABC; codec: AVC;
file size: 26.1;average bit rate (including audio): 35.65 Mbit/sec

This week's BDs: August 24, 2009 - August 30, 2009

12:00 AM / Blu-ray / No Comments

Upcoming US and UK Blu-ray titles for the next week. Titles I intend to pick up at some point are in bold.

Note that, from now on, I won't be listing music titles or glorified screensavers like Water Life.

Monday, August 24, 2009:

• All the Right Noises (BFI, UK)
• The Burning Plain (High Fliers, UK)
• Herostratus and Don Levy Shorts (BFI, UK)
• I Love You, Man (Paramount, UK)
• Ichi (Manga Entertainment, UK)
• In the Loop (Optimum, UK)
• Man of Violence (BFI, UK)
• Race to Witch Mountain (Buena Vista, UK)
• Shifty (Metrodome, UK)

Tuesday, August 25, 2009:

• Adventureland (Buena Vista, USA)
• Children of the Corn (Anchor Bay, USA)
• Devil May Cry: The Complete Series (Funimation, USA)
• Duplicity (Universal, USA)
• Fighting (Universal, USA)
• How to Lose a Guy in 10 Days (Paramount, USA)
• The Informers (Sony Pictures, USA)
• Lie to Me: Season One (20th Century Fox, USA)
• Rudo y Cursi (Sony Pictures, USA)
• Smallville: The Complete Eighth Season (Warner, USA)
• Sunshine Cleaning (Anchor Bay, USA)
• Twilight: Ultimate Collector's Gift Set (Summit, USA)

Two days of gaming goodness

4:49 PM / Games / 2 Comments

Over August 21 and 22, Blizzard Entertainment held its fourth annual BlizzCon convention in Anaheim, California, packing all the gaming fun and associated geekery one could wish for into a two day event. The convention, the 200,000 tickets for which apparently sold out in under a minute, allowed fans to play work-in-progress versions of the studio's three announced upcoming games - Starcraft II: Wings of Liberty (yay), Diablo III (even more yay) and the just-unveiled World of Warcraft: Cataclysm expansion set (meh) - as well as ask the developers questions at Q&A panels, empty their wallets in exchange for an assortment of exclusive memorabilia, and embarrass themselves in the name of good fun. Oh, and apparently some up-and-comer called Ozzy Osbourne was singing some songs. I didn't attend myself, clearly, but I did pay my £24.95 to subscribe to the live feed provided by DirectTV, even if it did mean staggering into work on Saturday morning looking, for some unfathomable reason, like I'd only had three and a half hours' sleep.

It looks to have been a terrific event and, while watching a low resolution feed in a browser window can't exactly compete with actually being there in the flesh, a lot of the enthusiasm was certainly communicated to me and I got to hear most of the big announcements in real-time... although I did, for some reason, get it into my head that the event was on Saturday and Sunday, not Friday and Saturday, which meant that I missed the opening ceremony and, turning up late, found myself wondering "What's this Cataclysm thing everyone's talking about?" and "A Monk? Are they re-releasing Hellfire?"

In the past, the developer panels have always been my favourite aspects of BlizzCon, and this year proved to be no exception. Because, on numerous occasions, more than one panel was taking place at any given time, DirectTV had to be selective with their coverage, meaning that I missed out on the likes of the Diablo III lore and art panels and the cinematics department's panel, but I did get to witness all the most important stuff, such as the long-awaited preview of the new Battle.net platform and its rather disturbingly Big Brother-like ramifications, and the panel focusing on the design and gameplay of Diablo III's new playable character class, the Monk, which looks like ridiculously good fun.

I think the word "ownage" was invented for the Monk.

The Starcraft II lore panel brought some gladness and some sadness. It focused on the game's voice cast and brought out many of the key players, as well as its voice director, Andrea Romano, for an on-the-spot Q&A session chaired by Chris Metzen, the man responsible for dreaming up most of Blizzard's game worlds, storylines and character. While it was nice to see the original voices of key characters Jim Raynor and Arcturus Mengsk (Robert Clotworthy and James Harper, respectively) on stage and in person, the stunt casting of Battlestar Galactica star Tricia Helfer as Sarah Kerrigan, in place of original voice actor Glynnis Talken (who repeatedly expressed interest in returning to the role) did grate somewhat. I hate the notion of celebrity voice casting, particularly when said celebrity is brought in to replace an already perfectly good actor. And let's face it, Helfer, whose previous computer game experience consists of her role in the deliriously (and intentionally) bad live action FMV sequences in Command & Conquer 3: Tiberium Wars, doesn't exactly have what I'd call the pedigree for a role like this. The cynic in me is inclined to think that she was cast for one reason and one reason only:

The ubiquitous Tricia Helfer pin-up shot, top, and the character she will be voicing, bottom.

Now, I can see the appeal, personally... until I remember that these, erm, assets won't actually be visible in the game. For Starcraft II, she's a voice, nothing more, and hers is far from distinctive.

Another issue for me is the new Xbox Live-styled Battle.net service, which I alluded to above. While many of the new features sound excellent, such as the tiered ladder system and increased ease of inter-game communication, not to mention the fact that, despite the numerous upgrades and improvements, it will remain free, I couldn't help finding Blizzard's desire to create such an overarching, all-encompassing, "always connected" system rather disturbing on some level. The fact that players must connect to Battle.net to activate the game even if they only intend to play single player mode is problematic enough; worse still is the cheerful admission by Rob Pardo, the company's Vice President of Game Design, that they will have the power to de-activate accounts completely, forcing players to buy new copies of the game in order to continue playing. Sure, the likelihood of them doing such a thing to anyone other than a hacker, pirate or rampant cheater is unlikely. However, the fact that they are able to wield such power is actually pretty scary. Whatever happened to the days when you could just hand over your money for a game and enjoy it with the knowledge that you "own" your personal copy? Yes, I know that technically you license the game rather than actually obtaining ownership of it. The point still stands, though, that my copies of the original Starcraft and countless other titles exist on my shelf and are mine to play for as long as I want without having to concern myself with forced online activations and the worry that the developers could, on a whim, decide that they don't like me playing their game and forbid me from doing so any more, despite having paid for it.

Starcraft II's main menu, with integrated Battle.net 2.0.

Am I being paranoid? Maybe so, but as you probably know by now I distrust DRM in all its forms and view with great suspicion any attempts at forced connectivity. While all these new features sound like a lot of fun, I suspect that a sizeable number of players don't really care about them and just want a way of being able to hook up with their friends and play a quick game, whether that be via a LAN connection or some sort of "open" online play similar to what currently exists for Diablo II. One thing's for sure, this post-World of Warcraft Blizzard is a very different animal.

Paramount's Blu-ray seesaw

10:46 PM / Blu-ray / 4 Comments

Back when Blu-ray and the now defunct HD DVD first appeared on the block, early adopters immediately began to clamour for the release of certain titles. Peter Jackson's The Lord of the Rings adaptation and the original Star Wars trilogy were always pretty near to the top of the list, and not far behind them were Gladiator and Braveheart. The latter two are being released on BD on September 1 by Paramount through their new Sapphire Series line which, according to the marketing spiel, will "capitalize on the pristine picture and sound of the Blu-ray format to present each cinematic gem in the highest quality for the first time in two-disc, high definition sets." A tall order, to say the least, particularly given that most of Paramount's catalogue titles have left a lot to be desired. It seems that review copies were sent out in the last few days, for screen captures have begun to appear online, including at DVD Beaver.

I wish I could say it was all good news, but alas, it was not to be. Let's start with something positive: Braveheart looks terrific, and I mean terrific. The level of detail in many of those captures is truly impressive and, at least in still-frame form, the grain looks natural and unmolested. Alas, the same can't be said for Gladiator, which arrives looking like one of those Universal HD DVD catalogue releases - you know, the ones they churned out back in late 2006 and 2007 with a lack of resolution, smudgy grain, pronounced ringing, and an all round underwhelming appearance. Actually, given that the film was a co-production between Universal and DreamWorks (the latter now under the Paramount umbrella, which explains why they've ended up releasing the BD), that's perhaps not entirely surprising. I'm only guessing here, but if it was later revealed that Universal provided Paramount with the master, I wouldn't be at all surprised. In any event, it's unlikely to bode well for the UK version, being released by Universal a week later.

Too bad. Of the two films, Gladiator is the one I personally was really hoping would be treated well, but I suppose it's nice that at least one of these two heavy hitters looks the part.

Oh, and both titles are locked to Region A - a first for Paramount, and presumably dictated by the less than straightforward rights situation (as previously mentioned, Universal has Gladiator in Europe, while Braveheart is with 20th Century Fox). To quote everyone's favourite crazy drink-driving anti-Semite, "Fr-r-r-r-r-reedoooooooom!" (Or, in this case, the lack thereof.)

Lossy vs. lossless results

12:00 AM / Blu-ray / 4 Comments

On Sunday, I wrote a post about the issues surrounding the use of lossy screen captures of Blu-ray Discs, arguing that there was no real world benefit to using a more space- and bandwidth-heavy lossless format such as .BMP or .PNG rather than lossy JPEGs. I also posted a selection of images and challenged readers to identify which were lossy and which were lossless, promising that I would provide the results on Tuesday.

In case you didn't see the captures last time round, here they are again:

 
#1. Monsters, Inc.

Image 1 / Image 2

 
#2. Franklyn

Image 1 / Image 2

 
#3. The Dark Knight

Image 1 / Image 2

And now for the results:

• For both Example #1 and 2, Monsters, Inc. and Franklyn respectively, the lossy JPG is Image 2.
   
• Example #3, The Dark Knight, was a trick question: the actual picture area is identical, neither of them having been saved lossily. In case anyone decided to look at the file sizes and thereby work out that they were both the same, I played around with the black letterbox area on one image, removing some compression guff that was present in the original image, thereby altering its file size.

A few people posted their responses publicly, and a couple more emailed me theirs. Interestingly, no-one got all of them right. One person, who emailed me his answers, got Examples #1 and 2 correct (albeit with the proviso that he was only guessing), but no-one worked out that the two captures from The Dark Knight were the same. The last one was, you might think, a bit sneaky of me, but I never did say I was going to play fair. In any event, I did it to make a serious point: tell people that two images were saved differently, and many will begin to think they see differences, even where there aren't any.

Well, there you have it. I don't expect this to put the debate to bed any time soon, but hopefully it provides something of an explanation as to why I not only use JPEGs but also see no problem with doing so.

BD review: Labyrinth

3:30 PM / Reviews / No Comments

There's something impressively gung-ho about Labyrinth. It clearly knows it's nonsense, but doesn't seem to care and simply runs with it, resulting in a movie whose irresistible charm makes up for the fact that the story is held together with sticking plaster and the whole thing is really just an excuse to wow the audience with its impressive creature effects and a hefty dose of 80s camp. This was never a childhood favourite for me (I saw it once, when I was around eleven years old, and had more or less forgotten about it until I watched it again recently), so it doesn't hold quite the same degree of nostalgia for me that it will for many other people. Regardless of that, however, it's unquestionably lamentable that films of this sort simply don't get made any more. Perhaps we've become too hung up on things making sense, or perhaps we're so anxious not to frighten children that we forget that all the best fairytales had elements that were truly terrifying. Regardless, for all its daftness and artifice, Labyrinth seems a good deal more genuine than just about any other film aimed at children that I can recall seeing in recent years.

[Continue reading...]

Starcraft II: the good, the bad and the ugly

12:24 PM / Games / No Comments

Hot on the heels of news that the release of Starcraft II: Wings of Liberty has been pushed back to 2010 (come on, is anyone even slightly surprised?) comes a wealth of new information to tide us over, pertaining mainly to the single player component.

IncGamers is hosting a video featuring clips from the solo campaign, and it looks like a hell of a lot of fun. Plus, I must say it's wonderful to once again hear Robert Clotworthy as the voice of central protagonist Jim Raynor. He voiced the character in the original Starcraft, but for a long time it looked as if developer Blizzard Entertainment was dead set on recasting the role for the sequel. A stand-in provided the character's voice in numerous previews, and it even got to the point that Clotworthy personally announced, with considerable regret, that he would not be returning. Fans responded with messages of support for Clotworthy, petitions and a flurry of angry emails to Blizzard. It's unclear whether these steps had any direct impact on the developers, but for one reason or another they changed their minds and Clotworthy was reinstated. While it's a little hard to reconcile his character design in the new game with that of the balding, egg-shaped head in the original, the voice certainly goes a long way towards bridging that gap.

Unfortunately, the same can't be said for Glynnis Talken, voice of Kerrigan, the other principle character in the series: it seems that her role has indeed been recast (or is in the process of being recast). This strikes me as being a case of one step forward, one step back. These two characters and their storyline are justly celebrated as one of the strongest and most memorable from a period where storytelling in PC gaming was still in something of a state of infancy. These two characters and their encounters are fondly remembered for a reason, and it surely wasn't their 50x50 pixel talking head animation. Rather, it was the script by Chris Metzen and its delivery by the two voice-over artists. I can only hope that Blizzard see sense as regards Kerrigan's voice before it's too late to do anything about it.

Starcraft II "rising lava" mission - come on, this is just cool.

A further blow, not long after the announcement that there would be no LAN multiplayer component for the game, is the news that online activation will be required in order to play the game, even single player mode. And yet, despite this, Blizzard claims that piracy is not a significant concern. Erm, then why, pray tell, force players to activate their copies? And why leave out LAN play citing piracy as the main reason? This sounds an awful lot like a case of one hand not knowing what the other's doing. At least there's no mention of limited activations and, in any event, most players will admittedly have access to an Internet connection regardless of whether or not they intend to actually play online, so this shouldn't be a big deal for most people. It just seems like an unnecessary step to add, particularly given that, as lead producer Chris Sigaty readily admitted in an interview with Gamespot, a significant portion of their consumer base never plays the multiplayer component of their games, whether online or offline.

Ah, well. With all that said, the game itself looks terrific, and I can't wait to get my hands on it. A number of sites have posted extensive previews, some of which I've catalogued below:

• Interview with Dustin Browder, Chris Metzen and Rob Pardo at IncGamers
• Single player gameplay video at IncGamers
• Video interview with Chris Sigaty and Andy Chambers at Gamespot
• Single player preview at Gamespot
• Single player screenshots at StarcraftWire
• Mission guide preview at StarcraftWire
• Single player preview at IGN

This week's BDs: August 17, 2009 - August 23, 2009

12:00 AM / Blu-ray / 2 Comments

Upcoming US and UK Blu-ray titles for the next week. Titles I intend to pick up at some point are in bold.

Monday, August 17, 2009:

• Angel Heart (UK)
• The Express (UK)
• Feast (UK)
• La Haine (UK)
• Near Dark (UK)
• Outlander (UK)
• The Score (UK)
• Unknown (UK)

Tuesday, August 18, 2009:

• Dexter: Seasons 1-3 (USA)
• Dexter: The Third Season (USA)
• The Fighter (USA)
• Go (USA)
• Hannah Montana: The Movie (USA)
• Julieta Venegas: MTV Unplugged (USA)
• Kagemusha (USA)
• The Last House on the Left (2008) (USA)
• The Last Starfighter (USA)
• Playtime (USA)
• Sons of Anarchy: Season One (USA)
• Surveillance (USA)
• Tyson (USA)
• Visions of Britain and Ireland (USA)
• Visions of Italy (USA)

Wednesday, August 19, 2009:

• Mahler: Symphonie No. 2 in C minor "Resurrection" (UK)

Friday, August 21, 2009:

• Gershwin: Rhapsody in Blue (UK)
• Johann Strauss: The New Years Concert in Vienna (UK)

Lossy vs. lossless

4:39 PM / Blu-ray / 9 Comments

Note: This post was partly inspired by a discussion at the AV Science Forum. To view the original conversation and "test", take a gander here.

One issue that rears its head again and again with regard to the posting of screen captures from Blu-ray Discs is the use of a compressed file format such as JPEG as opposed to an uncompressed format such as .BMP or a compressed but lossless format like PNG. I've been posting full resolution screen captures for some time now, and, like a number of other sites doing the same thing, have always used JPEGs. As a result, the reliability of such captures have been called into question on occasions.

This is not unreasonable. I lean towards scepticism in many aspects of life, so the notion that people would be wary of trusting compressed images to tell the whole story is one I can fully understand. However, I thought I'd take a little time to explain why I use compressed images, and more importantly why I believe the images I post are an accurate reflection of the source material, and are not adversely affected by the aforementioned compression.

Fundamentally, the issue is one of space and bandwidth. A PNG image with a resolution of 1920x1080 can have a size of upwards of 3.5 MB, depending on the complexity of the image. (An uncompressed bitmap image with the same resolution will always occupy 5.93 MB in 24-bit colour.) A JPEG, saved with minimal compression (a value of "12" in Adobe Photoshop), takes up considerably less space, ranging in my experience from around 500 KB to around 1.4 MB. My web host provides me with 10 GB of disk space and a monthly bandwidth limit of 100 GB, which sounds like a lot but in reality is quickly eaten up by having vast numbers of large images stored and repeatedly accessed, particularly when you take into account leeching. Storing all my images as PNGs simply isn't feasible. I can either use compression or post substantially fewer images. (The possibility of hosting my images on free image sharing services like Photobucket has been suggested to me. However, in my experience these are always considerably slower than my host, which would only frustrate those viewing the images.)

Unlike some sites that I could but won't mention, it has always been my policy to use minimal compression. As stated above, this means saving my JPEGs in Photoshop with a "quality" setting of "12". Time and again, my experience has been that this results in no noticeable degradation of even the most complex images. Zoom in to 3,200% or something equally ludicrous, and you may start to see the odd individual pixel being slightly displaced. In real world terms, this is nothing. Such differences aren't visible at 100%, or even 200% or indeed 600% size, and therefore in my opinion have absolutely no bearing on the purpose of these captures, which is to provide as close as possible to an accurate impression of what a transfer looks like without actually viewing it in motion.* It's entirely true to say that they are not a carbon copy of the original frame down to the individual pixel. However, I contend that such differences are, from our point of view, essentially meaningless. We're not looking at these still frames under microscopes... and if we are, we should probably get out more.

At the suggestion of FoxyMulder (who posts on both AVS and Land of Whimsy), I devised a little test, posting two copies of the same capture of the same frame from the same film. Both are PNGs. However, one was first saved as a compressed JPG (quality of "12" in Photoshop), then saved again as a PNG. I've provided three examples below. In each case, one was saved lossily and the other wasn't. Can anyone tell me, without cheating (if you don't know how I'm not going to tell you), which is which?

 
#1. Monsters, Inc.

Image 1 / Image 2

 
#2. Franklyn

Image 1 / Image 2

 
#3. The Dark Knight

Image 1 / Image 2

Post your answers by Tuesday and I'll post the correct answers, along with how many people were right.

* I've said it before and I'll say it again: there's no substitute for actually viewing a disc for yourself. You can tell a lot from screen captures, but unfortunately they don't and never will be conclusive. For one thing, while they display the grain structure of an individual frame, they don't show its cumulative effect in motion, which can create quite a different look.

Hitchens vs. Hitchens

2:37 PM / General / No Comments

It's funny - I was aware of both Christopher and Peter Hitchens, but for some reason I'd never made the connection between the two. They are in fact brothers, Christopher Hitchens being the more famous (or should that be notorious?) of the two on an international level, thanks to his bullish persona and works such as God is Not Great. I frequently find myself opposed to the opinions he espouses, particularly with regard to issues such as his support of George W. Bush in the 2004 election and his continued defence of the US-led invasion of Iraq, but I always find him entertaining to read, watch or listen to... particularly, I must admit, when he gets on to the topic of religion, about which he and I would appear to be in complete agreement. I may not see eye to eye with him on every single matter, but his points are always well-made, and he takes great pains to justify his stances rather falling back on the wishy-washy "Well, that's just what I believe" defence espoused by a number of supposed intellectuals I could mention. Actually, I'd go as far as to say that the very fact that he so often disagrees with his left-leaning, liberal, secularist cohorts singles him out as an original thinker rather than just another bandwagon-jumper.

Peter Hitchens, on the other hand, is unlikely to have made much of an impression outside the UK, where he writes for the conservative-leaning Mail on Sunday (the Sunday offshoot of the infamous Daily Mail) and espouses good old-fashioned Christian values such as banning abortion, dismissing evolution as unproven, opposing sex education in schools and claiming that the rise of atheism is directly responsible for the supposed decline of moral decency. Given that mouthpieces espousing similar (and indeed more extreme) viewpoints to his own are in abundance in the US, those on the other side of the Atlantic can reasonably be excused for never having heard of him: Americans have enough right-wing crackpots of their own to contend with without importing one of ours. Over here, however, he's a frequent subject of ridicule, dismissed as "bonkers" by many of his fellow journalists... and with good reason: with regard to a number of the beliefs he holds, the man appears to be a few sandwiches short of a picnic. In short, it's difficult to imagine two siblings with more diametrically opposing world views. Oh, and just to prove that contrariness runs in the family, Peter Hitchens opposed the Iraq war, unlike most of his right-wing buddies.

Someone, somewhere, had the bright idea of getting both Hitchenses on the stage together to engage in a public debate with one another. Given the infamous rivalry between the two and their long-standing estrangement, such a proposition seemed unlikely to say the least. Last year, however, it finally happened, the venue being none other than a church. The whole thing has been uploaded to YouTube and is available via the Grand Valley State University web site. It's quite long and well worth watching, as the brothers debate first the Iraq war and then religion, followed by taking questions from the audience. Both make valid points with regard to their opposing stances on the Iraq war, but once the topic turns to religion, Peter Hitchens is hopelessly outmatched and is reduced to huffing, puffing and blustering as his elder brother tears his position to shreds, all with a sly smile and continual good humour. ("I don't think it's going to take ten minutes," he laughs when told by the moderator how long he has to respond to the proposition "God does not exist and he is not great".)

Let the battle commence!

Image comparison: Go

1:27 PM / Blu-ray / DVD / 6 Comments

I generally don't do direct comparisons between DVD and Blu-ray releases, because I tend to feel that there isn't much point. Even the weakest BDs tend to improve exponentially on their DVD counterparts (unless we're talking about a standard definition upconvert like Universal's shameful HD DVD release of Traffic or Optimum's disgraceful Escape From New York). Every now and then, though, a BD comes along that looks so drastically different from its standard definition predecessor that a closer look is warranted. The recent BD release of Go, derived from a completely different master than the old 1999 DVD, is one such title:

[Continue reading...]

BD impressions: Go

1:05 PM / BD Impressions / 4 Comments

I'm an unabashed fan of the concept of parallel narrative storytelling. It's not always completely successful, of course (see Vantage Point for an example of the gimmick being repeated to the point of tediousness, or Barbara Machin's recent Kiss of Death to see how it can potentially get in the way of developing an attachment to the characters if overdone), but it's a neat technique and one that has been used to great excess in projects as diverse as Akira Kurosawa's Rashômon and the two episodes Barbara Machin wrote for Casualty back at Christmas 2006. Go was seen by some as an attempt to cash in on the success of Quentin Tarantino's Pulp Fiction, a sort of teenage-oriented version of the same type of multi-strand, drug-fuelled romp, but I always felt that this was unfairly dismissive. It's very much a product of the late 90s, from the fashion to the on-the-nose lingo the presence of actors who at one point seemed to be the next big thing but then just seemed to fade away - people like Breckin Meyer, James Duval and Katie Holmes (look what happened to her). That said, a decade after it was originally released, it still holds up, thanks to John August's snappy, off-beat script, a pre-Bourne Doug Liman's fluid and often inventive direction, and some great performances from an eclectic cast, including the likes of Sarah Polley, William Fichtner and that kid from Grange Hill.

Watched it last night, had a blast. It's as good today as it was in 1999.

Image quality: I was struck by just how different it looked from the old UK DVD. I don't just mean that it looked better - that goes without saying - but that, in terms of overall colour timing and contrast values, it's dramatically different. The DVD, which came out when the format was just taking off, was pretty poor, suffering from heavy aliasing and contrast boosting, neither of which are apparent on the BD. A completely new master seems to have been used, one which leans towards pastel hues where the DVD had something of a grubby brownish look. It's hard to state which (if either) is "correct" with any certainty, but for my money the slightly anaemic look of the BD is preferable to the drabness of the DVD. Detail is reasonably good as far as non-DI catalogue releases tend to go, although I suspect that some attempt may have been made to reduce the grain, which tends to look somewhat blurred. (A strange waxiness also kicks in occasionally, for example in Example 17, but I must stress "occasionally".) The image is a little murky on the whole, hampering clarity slightly, but it's unclear whether this is simply because I'm so used to the overly contrasty DVD. In any event, only the first storyline ("Ronna") is affected to any great degree. Overall, it's a handsome improvement on its standard definition counterpart and pretty good by catalogue title standards, but don't expect to be wowed. 7/10

By the way, I'll be putting up an image comparison between the DVD and BD releases later today.

Go
studio: Sony Pictures; country: UK; region code: ABC; codec: AVC;
file size: 30 GB ; average bit rate (including audio): 42.26 Mbit/sec

BD impressions: The Last House on the Left (2009)

2:05 PM / BD Impressions / 6 Comments

As I mentioned in a previous post, it's somewhat unusual for me to show any real interest in a horror remake. Ordinarily, you'd be more likely to find me railing against them and decrying the lack of originality in Hollywood today. That said, I'll be the first to admit that originality is overrated. Yes, it's nice if a director can come up with something new, but it's not the most important aspect of a film. If a film is derivative but well-made, I'm generally inclined to look favourably on it, and in any event, I've said in the past that, instead of remaking the classics, the film industry should put its collective talents to far better use by revisiting its disappointments: good ideas that were poorly executed.

I'd class Wes Craven's original 1972 The Last House on the Left as an example of this. It's a straightforward enough tale: two girls are abducted by a group of sadists and are humiliated, tortured, raped and ultimately killed. The parents of one girl get wind of what happened and exact their own brand of personal revenge against their daughter's attackers. This rape/revenge framework has been used to considerable success elsewhere, including in Aldo Lado's Night Train Murders, perhaps the best of an array of Last House rip-offs. (Of course, as has been pointed out, Craven's original in fact takes its cues from Ingmar Bergman's The Virgin Spring. But then again, The Virgin Spring is a retelling of a thirteenth century Swedish poem. Like I said, originality is overrated.) Craven's film is an exceedingly nasty piece of work - grubby, sordid and deeply unpleasant in just about every way imaginable. Unfortunately, it's also extremely clumsy, clearly the work of an inexperienced filmmaker, and the decision to continually cut away from the torture of the two girls to comic relief sequences featuring the idiotic local police simply boggles the mind. (Compare this with Meir Zarchi's notorious I Spit on Your Grave,* an even nastier and similarly flawed film that at least maintains a consistent atmosphere.)

So yes, I'm less inclined to automatically dismiss a remake of Last House than I am, say, Suspiria or Poltergeist (both of which are in development, by the way). I'd read mixed things about Dennis Iliadis' 2009 offering, ranging from utter condemnation to more considered appraisals. For instance, Mark Kermode, a critic whose opinions I always enjoy even when I disagree with them, argued that, while the new version solved a lot of the original's plot holes and problems with tone, by cleaning it up and ironing out the flaws it somehow ceased to have any purpose. I mention this because that's very much the opinion I came away with when watching it for myself. Yes, removing the goofy comic relief elements works wonders, and there is in fact a scene in this version that is more horrible than anything in the original,** but somehow the whole is less than the sum of its parts. It's well-made and genuinely artful in places (there are some fantastic-looking moments involving a lake during a rainstorm), and has some good performances, particularly from Sarah Paxton as one of the victims, but it all seems a bit too slick, too efficient for the subject matter. Looked at objectively, it's a better film than the original, and it does change enough of the narrative for there to be a couple of genuine surprises along the way, but as Kermode said, the original was so much about the period in which it was made that, detached from it, it begins to lose a lot of whatever meaning it might have had.

By the way, whoever thought that microwave incident would be a good idea needs to have their head examined.

Image quality: Terrific. Stunning. Mesmerising. Spellbinding. In all but one area, these superlatives are an accurate description of this disc. The image is detailed throughout, and the natural film grain, which alternates between light to moderate during brightly lit scenes and becomes somewhat heavier once the lights go out, appears unmolested. Rather than using seamless branching, Universal have opted to place two separate encodes - R-rated and unrated - on the same disc, and here is where the problems begin to creep in. I strongly suspect that the bit rate has suffered because of this decision, and as a result compression artefacts do become visible, particularly when the grain is heavier, causing the encoder to choke. It looks pretty pronounced in one or two of the shots below (see Example 4 and Example 6), and to be fair it looks considerably better in motion, but ultimately it's a shame Universal didn't either use seamless branching or omit the R-rated version entirely. (The captures below are from the unrated version.) 9/10

The Last House on the Left (2009)
studio: Universal; country: USA; region code: ABC; codec: VC-1;
file size: 21.4 GB (unrated), 20.8 GB (R-rated);
average bit rate (including audio): 26.99 Mbit/sec (unrated), 27.14 Mbit/sec (R-rated)

* I note that a remake of I Spit on Your Grave is currently also in production. Given that the cornerstone of the original version was a brutal half-hour rape scene, I wonder just what Hollywood is going to have to do to make it palatable to a mainstream audience.

** I'm referring, of course, to the rape of Mari, which apparently resulted in walk-outs during theatrical screenings, even in its toned-down R-rated state. Incidentally, the notion of "toning down" a rape scene strikes me as an incredibly reprehensible act, suggesting as it does that, by softening the horror, the rape somehow becomes more "acceptable".

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