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Thursday, September 17, 2009

BD impressions: The Ninth Gate

4:19 PM / BD Impressions / 1 Comment

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 that he can slather on the atmosphere, proving himself capable of delivering an enjoyable and slightly unnerving tale even when it's pretty clear he isn't taking it particularly seriously. In that regard, it's a different beast (geddit?) from Rosemary's Baby, which very much did take itself seriously, and I suspect a lot of viewers will be slightly irritated by the fact that Polanski undercuts most of what would, in a "straight" horror film, be the frightening parts with a cheeky sense of humour. Personally, I like the film, although it does take its sweet time to get going, and I'm still undecided as to whether the final frame is a cinematic triumph or Polanski's ultimate "FU" to the audience.

Image quality: Grain? Where are you? Lions Gate have done it again: yet another film has been more or less denuded of its natural, film-like look for release on BD, resulting in a whole lot of synthetic mush that suffers from near-constant smearing and leaves you wondering who rubbed vaseline on your lens or television. The whole thing is murky, soft and flat-looking, and to add insult to injury appears to have been taken from a source with a horizontal resolution of less than 1920 pixels and then rescaled, although most of the time the image is so soft that you won't be able to tell either way. And yet... in some respects it still looks better than Gladiator. For one thing, it doesn't have anything like as much ringing.

Is it an upgrade over the DVD? Yes, but the very fact that I'm even comparing a Blu-ray Disc with a version that has a fifth of the theoretical resolution should provide some measure of how phenomenally disappointing this disc looks. 4/10

The Ninth Gate
studio: Lions Gate; country: USA; region code: ABC; codec: AVC;
file size: 39 GB ; average bit rate (including audio): 41.93 Mbit/sec

1 Comment

 
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