Wednesday, September 2, 2009: Braveheart (BD, Region A, USA) Wednesday, September 2, 2009: Gladiator (BD, Region A, USA) Thursday, September 3, 2009: The Informers (BD, Region ABC, USA) Friday, September 4, 2009: Rachel Getting Married (BD, Region ABC, UK)...

Posted at 11:59 PM in Blu-ray / DVD

Written by Daniel Percival and Andrew Holden; Directed by Daniel Percival * WARNING * Spoilers ahead! * WARNING * The overused phrase "rollercoaster ride" is not one I'd normally use for Waking the Dead, but it certainly applies to the...

Posted at 9:25 PM in Television / Waking the Dead

CNET is reporting that, for a limited period of time, students will be able to purchase copies of the upcoming Windows 7 operating system at a greatly reduced price. For a measly $30 US (or a less measly but still...

Posted at 3:52 PM in Technology

Wrong Turn (BD, 20th Century Fox, Region A, USA)...

Posted at 3:49 PM in Blu-ray

Upcoming US and UK Blu-ray titles for the next week. Titles I intend to pick up at some point are in bold. Monday, September 28: An American Werewolf in London (Universal, UK) Awaydays (Optimum, UK) Belle de jour (Optimum, UK)...

Posted at 12:00 AM in Blu-ray

...a discussion of the merits of I Spit on Your Grave on last night's Casualty. It was brief, and the episode as a whole didn't do much for me, but for a moment I thought I'd entered some sort of...

Posted at 11:30 AM in Television

The Likeness by Tana French; Hodder, 2008; 698 pages About ten pages into The Likeness, I realised it was actually a sequel of sorts to a book I hadn't read, In the Woods. I have an unfortunate tendency to start...

Posted at 10:30 AM in Reviews

Written by Edward Bennett and Ed Whitmore; Directed by Edward Bennett This has got to rank as hands down the silliest episode of Waking the Dead ever screened - a crushing disappointment when you consider how good last week's instalment...

Posted at 1:35 PM in Television / Waking the Dead

...that a twenty-year-old student film can basically look perfect on Blu-ray while a nine-year-old multi million dollar co-production between two Hollywood majors and winner of five Academy Awards looks like trash? The latter is, of course, Gladiator, while the former...

Posted at 11:01 PM in Blu-ray

Okay, confession time: of the two adaptations of Thomas Harris Red Dragon, I like Brett Ratner's 2002 film of the same name far more than Michael Mann's 1986 Manhunter. Admittedly, using the words "like" and "Brett Ratner" in the same...

Posted at 7:46 PM in BD Impressions

I have a new MP3 player. My old Sony NW-HD5 was still going strong, but it had been subjected to so much abuse, including a disastrous incident in which it plunged down an entire flight of concrete steps, that it...

Posted at 7:58 PM in Music

Child's Play (BD, 20th Century Fox/MGM, Region ABC, Canada)...

Posted at 7:03 PM in Blu-ray

Upcoming US and UK Blu-ray titles for the next week. Titles I intend to pick up at some point are in bold. Monday, September 21: The Black Shield of Falworth (Eureka, UK) Bring It On: Fight to the Finish (Universal,...

Posted at 12:00 AM in Blu-ray

Szamanka ...also known as "Shaman" and "She Shaman". This is Andrzej Zulawski's latest film but one, a nutty cocktail of sex, screaming and insanity from 1996. No release date or specifications are available just yet, but as with the...

Posted at 10:36 PM in DVD

In terms of sheer what-the-fuckery, Luc Besson's Subway, the film that allowed him to break into the mainstream, can't be beat. Working less as a conventional narrative than as an allegory for the feelings of France's disaffected youth in the...

Posted at 8:13 PM in BD Impressions

Well, this is just frustrating. I've taken a look at yesterday's acquisition, the North American release of Hannibal from 20th Century Fox/MGM (only available as part of the three-disc The Hannibal Lecter Collection), and while it does fix one of...

Posted at 5:04 PM in Blu-ray

The Hannibal Lecter Collection (BD, 20th Century Fox/MGM, Region A*, USA) * The Silence of the Lambs is Region A; Manhunter and Hannibal are Region ABC....

Posted at 8:38 PM in Blu-ray

Because some people have been asking for them, I've decided to go ahead and post some screen captures from Dutch label RCV's recent Blu-ray release of David Fincher's Se7en. Because I haven't watched the disc all the way through yet,...

Posted at 2:02 PM in Blu-ray

Written by Ed Whitmore; Directed by Dan Reed Apologies for skipping over an entire series and a two-parter, but I wanted to write about this one while it was still fresh in my mind. (I'll come back to Series 7...

Posted at 12:49 PM in Television / Waking the Dead

The Ninth Gate is best described as a very weird experience. A film about the Devil as written and directed by an atheist, it's basically Polanski's chance to poke fun at the conventions of occult horror movies while also showing...

Posted at 4:19 PM in BD Impressions

I gave up on Joss Whedon's Season 8 comic book continuation of Buffy the Vampire Slayer after Issue 14, having been thoroughly disappointed by this official follow-up to the television series. I genuinely didn't think it would be possible to...

Posted at 9:52 PM in Books

L'amour braque (DVD, Mondo Vision, Region 0, USA) [sample copy] In terms of image quality, I think this is the best Mondo Vision disc yet....

Posted at 9:50 PM in DVD

The third DVD release from Mondo Vision is Andrzej Zulawski's L'amour braque ("Limpet Love", 1985), a film blessed with perhaps the greatest opening scene any film has ever had, ever, in the history of cinema. Okay, maybe that's open...

Posted at 7:21 PM in DVD

Angel-A (BD, Optimum, Region B, UK) Subway (BD, Optimum, Region B, UK) And some fun from our friends in the Netherlands: Blade (BD, RCV, Region ABC, Netherlands) Se7en (BD, RCV, Region ABC, Netherlands) Unlike the thoroughly shoddy releases of...

Posted at 2:33 PM in Blu-ray

I don't really have much to say about the weekend's opening two-parter for Casualty's twenty-fourth series, which in comparison to the last couple of season premieres really wasn't all that impressive. I will, however, point out that I grudgingly respect...

Posted at 9:27 AM in Television