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Thursday, August 13, 2009

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

4 Comments

 
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