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

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

• Friday, October 2, 2009: Wallace & Gromit: The Complete Collection (BD, Region ABC, USA)
• Saturday, October 3, 2009: The New York Ripper (BD, Region ABC, USA)
• Saturday, October 3, 2009: Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs (BD, Region A, USA)
• Tuesday, October 6, 2009: Home Alone 2: Lost in New York (BD, Region A, USA)
• Friday, October 9, 2009: Drag Me to Hell (BD, Region ABC, USA)
• Saturday, October 10, 2009: Belle de jour (BD, Region B, UK)
• Saturday, October 10, 2009: Le mépris (BD, Region AB, UK)
• Saturday, October 10, 2009: Defiance (BD, Region B, UK)
• Saturday, October 10, 2009: The Duchess (BD, Region B, UK)
• Saturday, October 10, 2009: Transsiberian (BD, Region B, UK)
• Thursday, October 22, 2009: The Vice: The Complete Series (DVD, Region 2, UK)
• Tuesday, October 27, 2009: North by Northwest (BD, Region ABC, USA)

Happy Halloween!

9:21 PM / General / No Comments

No horror movie reviews this year, I'm afraid. I've simply been too busy to find the time.

BD impressions: Wrong Turn

1:31 PM / BD Impressions / 10 Comments

Ah, the early 00s - a time when the horror genre hadn't yet gone down the route of remaking every single scary movie from the 70s but, by the same token, had only just shaken off the spectre of the nudge nudge, wink wink brand of self-awareness popularised by Scream and its sequels. I'm watched a number of horror movies of this vintage recently, and very few of them hold up particularly well. There's a certain aimlessness about them - they're competently made but generic, populated by bland, good-looking people, and do nothing that wasn't already achieved decades earlier for less money. Wrong Turn actually hold up rather better than some that I could name, although, let's be honest, if you want to watch a proper "nice middle class white people set upon by backwoods savages" movie, Deliverance or the original Texas Chain Saw Massacre is probably a better bet.

Image quality: My brother has upgraded to a new projector, so this was the last BD we watched on his previous model. I'm still trying to decide whether or not this was a fitting funeral, for the simple reason that this is one of the worst-looking discs we've ever watched. It's so bad it boggles the mind, and in fact I'm so lost for words that I'm just going to let the screen captures speak for themselves. I honestly can't understand how a film from 2003, released by a major studio, could possibly look this bad. 2/10

Wrong Turn
studio: 20th Century Fox; country: USA; region code: A; codec: AVC;
file size: 20.8 GB; average bit rate (including audio): 35.48 Mbit/sec

A belated happy birthday to Asterix...

11:26 AM / Books / 2 Comments

...the most celebrated creation of Albert Uderzo and the late René Goscinny. Asterix turned 50 yesterday, the first page of his first adventure, Asterix the Gaul, having appeared in the first issue of the magazine Pilote on October 29, 1959, and I thought I should say something about this landmark event.

Asterix and I go back a long way. I first discovered him when I was in primary school, when by chance I came across one of his books while perusing the local library. It was the "book of the film" of Asterix and the Big Fight, published under the title of Operation Getafix so as not to confuse the film book with the graphic novel of the same name (the film is an amalgamation of Asterix and the Big Fight and Asterix and the Soothsayer). I suspect what attracted me to it in the first place was the artwork: this was the early 90s, and outside of The Ren & Stimpy Show and a small handful of exceptions that were unknown to me at the time, animation was a stagnant medium in which ugly or even downright inept production values had become the rule rather than the exception. (Yes, even at the tender age of nine or ten I thought this. I still vividly remember the first time I saw clips from The Simpsons, at around the same time or shortly before I discovered Asterix: for someone raised on the Looney Tunes and MGM classics of the 40s and 50s, I couldn't believe that something so cheap-looking could exist, let alone be the recipient of so much praise.) The still frame reproductions in Operation Getafix may not have reached the heights of golden age Disney, but they were slick and polished, and the rich, detailed backgrounds were a far cry from the flat celluloid drawings that had become the norm for the sort of animation I usually saw on TV at the time.

[Continue reading...]

Just arrived...

11:15 AM / Blu-ray / 6 Comments

North by Northwest (BD, Warner, Region ABC, USA)

Quite possibly my most anticipated BD release of 2009...

The joys of hibernation

5:13 PM / Technology / 3 Comments

One of the greatest irritants about Windows as an operating system is what I call "the grind" - i.e. the process by which, once the system has booted, it crunches away for a while, continually accessing the hard drive and generally bogging down system performance until it settles down. This was particularly prevalent on Windows Vista, and Windows 7 seems to suffer from the same sluggishness upon booting. In my case, it's not helped by the fact that the drivers for my video and sound cards (by ATI and Creative, respectively) are pretty bloated, which simply adds to the feeling that, in the first few minutes after booting, you're not getting as much done as you'd like.

The solution is hibernation, whereby rather than completely closing down the operating system when switching off the computer, a "snapshot" of what is in memory at the time of shutdown is saved to the hard drive and then loaded back into memory the next time the computer is switched on. This completely eliminates the grind, meaning that I just need to wait for the machine to post (20 seconds or thereabouts) and then recover the data saved to the hard drive (about another 10 seconds). Oh, and unlike the more traditional sleep mode, which puts the system into a low power state, a bit like a television on standby, the computer does not consume any power while hibernating.

Unfortunately, for some reason, hibernate has a habit of disappearing from the Windows Vista/7 shutdown menu. To re-enable it, follow these steps.

It's a fairly simple thing, but it results in a noticeable improvement in productivity. Now, my system is up to full speed in under a minute after switching it on in the morning, meaning I'm not left twiddling my thumbs while I wait for the thing to stop chewing on my hard drive. Of course, there will invariably be times where you'll have to do a full system restart (when installing new drivers or one of the larger operating system updates, for instance), but on a normal day-to-day basis the gains are significant. I haven't actually shut down Windows fully since Friday.

This week's BDs: October 26, 2009 - November 1, 2009

12:42 PM / 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, October 26:

• Book of the Dead (Lions Gate, UK)
• Dances with Wolves (Warner, UK)
• District 13/District 13: Ultimatum (Momentum, UK)
• District 13: Ultimatum (Momentum, UK)
• Drag Me to Hell (Lions Gate, UK)
• Fireball XL5: A Day in the Life of a Space General (Network, UK)
• Flash Point (Showbox, UK)
• Ghost in the Shell 2.0/Ghost in the Shell: Innocence (Manga, UK)
• Ghost in the Shell 2.0 Redux (Manga, UK)
• Hancock (Sony Pictures, UK)
• House of Fury (Showbox, UK)
• I'm Not There (Paramount, UK)
• IP Man (Showbox, UK)
• Lost: The Complete Third Season (Buena Vista, UK)
• Lost: The Complete Fifth Season (Buena Vista, UK)
• Monsters vs. Aliens (Paramount, UK)
• Monty Python: Almost the Truth (Eagle Media, UK)
• Night of the Living Dead (Network, UK)
• Obsessed (Sony Pictures, UK)
• Rocky: The Complete Saga (20th Century Fox, UK)
• Torchwood: Series 1-3 (2 Entertain, UK)
• True Blood: The Complete First Season (Warner, UK)

Tuesday, October 27:

• Battlestar Galactica: The Plan (Universal, USA)
• Beast Stalker (Tai Seng, USA)
• Ice Age III: Dawn of the Dinosaurs (20th Century Fox, USA)
• The Living Dead at Manchester Morgue (Blue Underground, USA)
• Look for a Star (Tai Seng, USA)
• Monty Python: Almost the Truth (Visual Entertainment, USA)
• Night of the Creeps (Sony Pictures, USA)
• Nothing Like the Holidays (Anchor Bay, USA)
• Orphan (Warner, USA)
• The Prisoner: The Complete Series (A&E, USA)
• Stan Helsing (Anchor Bay, USA)
• Stargate (Lions Gate, USA)
• Tinker Bell and the Lost Treasure (Buena Vista, USA)
• Whatever Works (Sony Pictures, USA)

BD impressions: The Edge of Love

11:02 AM / BD Impressions / No Comments

More like the edge of boredom, upon which I tottered for the duration of this biopic of playwright Dylan Thomas, told primarily from the perspectives of the two women in his life. Despite being beautifully shot by John Maybury (The Jacket) and featuring an excellent performance by the ubiquitous Keira Knightley (who seems to come as some sort of package deal with any British period piece), the film feels limp and inconsequential, spending nearly two hours trying to decide what its focus is. Fundamentally, the film doesn't seem to know what it wants to be, and half-heartedly toys with exploring the personalities of Thomas and the two women but never actually commits.

What we're ultimately left with is a lightweight and unfulfilling glimpse at the wartime exploits (or lack thereof) of a bunch of thoroughly self-centred and unlikeable individuals who really should have stopped whingeing about their own infinitesimal problems and realised that there were bigger fish to fry. Cillian Murphy, as Knightley's husband, sent off to fight in Greece while the rest of them stared at their own belly buttons, emerges as the most sympathetic character, to the extent that when he returns from combat, machine gun in hand, you really do hope he'll just open fire on them all. I'm assuming this wasn't the intention of Maybury or writer Sharman Macdonald (who, yes, is indeed Knightley's mother).

Image quality: Terrific. Detail is absolutely stellar, noticeably more so than in the filtered US release from Image Entertainment. If there are any problems with this title, they are down to the decision shoot using a combination of 35mm film and digital photography courtesy of the Panavision Genesis HD camera, the latter being reserved for a handful of night-time scenes. Due to the grain-free nature of the digital material, I suspect that some of the film-originated footage was lightly degrained to create a more consistent look... or perhaps it's the other way round and some light grain was added to digital material in order to create a more film-like appearance? If that's the case, then those responsible deserve to be commended for their efforts, for while the night scenes shot using the Genesis HD cameras are unmistakably digital, there are a number of daylight scenes in which it is much harder to tell the difference. I've thought long and hard about this, but have concluded that there's really no way in which I can legitimately criticise the image. 10/10

The Edge of Love
studio: Lions Gate; country: UK; region code: B; codec: AVC;
file size: 21 GB; average bit rate (including audio): 27.3 Mbit/sec

Hosting your Windows 7 torrenting party

3:52 PM / Technology / 1 Comment

Particularly hilarious if you've seen the original Microsoft-sanctioned advertisement of which this is a parody.

BD impressions: Kiss Kiss Bang Bang

1:58 PM / BD Impressions / No Comments

Although its annoyingly smug narration device does grate at times, Shane Black's Kiss Kiss Bang Bang is a riotously enjoyable and appropriate convoluted twenty-first century take on 40s film noir conventions, with Robert Downey Jr. and Val Kilmer serving well as a miss-matched crime-fighting duo and Michelle Monaghan having a whale of a time in the femme fatale role. It may not reinvent the wheel, but it's a hell of a lot of fun and a film that I was extremely pleased to revisit.

Image quality: My oh my, what once passed for a good transfer. It's still not bad per se, but it does look decidedly underwhelming in the company of some of the great-looking titles that have been released in the interim. Whether or not it's a reasonable epithet, this is what people mean when people refer to a film having been "Warner'd": no hideous problems, but just a generally underwhelming, passable-looking image with a "glass ceiling" effect on fine grain or detail. Blacks appear elevated, although this varies widely on a scene by scene basis, so I'm inclined to think that at least part of the "blame" can be levelled against the original photography. Compression is basically fine on this MPEG-2 BD-25 job, although there's little to tax the encoder anyway. A watchable but hardly awe-inspiring image. 7/10

Kiss Kiss Bang Bang
studio: Warner; country: UK; region code: ABC; codec: MPEG-2;
file size: 15.1 GB; average bit rate (including audio): 21.17 Mbit/sec

Just arrived...

11:37 PM / DVD / No Comments

The Vice: The Complete Series (DVD, Network, Region 2, UK)

A bit of a story behind this: LoveFilm has the first series of The Vice available for rental. I added it to my queue, it arrived the other day, and I started watching the first episode. Alas, the disc was so damaged (not an uncommon occurrence, I must admit) that it refused to play beyond the 50-minute mark on the first episode. I sent the disc back and, using PriceSearching, ascertained that the complete collection, containing all five series, could be had for just under £16 from Tesco.

This is my first post from Windows 7...

5:58 PM / Technology / 4 Comments

...which was released today. I received my download link first thing this morning and was ready to begin the install process within about 20 minutes. Because I was going from Windows Vista Home Premium to Windows 7 Professional (a pox on Microsoft and their completely pointless "editions"), I had to perform a full reinstall rather than simply upgrading my existing installation, which meant that it took me slightly longer to get up and running again. Still, the whole process was incredibly painless, and I've yet to run into a single incompatibility. My biggest fear was that I wouldn't be able to get my USB TV stick to work, since dedicated Windows 7 drivers haven't yet been made available, but in the end it accepted my Vista drivers without a problem.

This in itself is quite telling, and should serve as an indication of how little difference there is between the two operating systems. Indeed, beyond the retooled taskbar and some minimal tweaks to the interface, I haven't noticed a single significant difference. Which is fine: I was happy with Vista on the whole and upgraded simply to stay current, and because the $30/£30 student upgrade offer seemed too good to pass up. Those who already own Vista and have paid full price for Windows 7, however, may feel rather let down by the distinct lack of meaningful change. That said, as the saying goes, don't fix what ain't broke. Vista was a PR disaster for Microsoft mainly thanks to ill-informed word of mouth by those who never actually used the operating system, so Windows 7 can be seen as an opportunity for them to wipe the slate clean and clear up a few existing bugs and annoyances, rather than an attempt to re-invent the wheel. Windows 7 has been heralded as the second coming by many of the same people who poo-pooed Vista, but in reality it feels more like an incremental refinement of the same basic framework than a completely new operating system.

My advice? If you're still using Windows XP, it may be time to consider an upgrade. Likewise, if you're using Vista and can take advantage of the student discount, go for it: it's an absolute steal and the upgrade process is completely painless. However, if you're already on Vista but would have to pay full price for Windows 7, there's little to be gained by upgrading now.

Windows 7: it's like Vista, only just the same.

Nice wallpaper, though.

BD impressions: Transsiberian

12:32 PM / BD Impressions / 9 Comments

Would it be an exaggeration to suggest that Transsiberian is the sort of film Alfred Hitchcock would have made if he had still been alive in 2008? The designers of the UK cover art certainly saw the similarities. Myself, I was thoroughly impressed with this intricately plotted nail-biter from Brad Anderson, who in between gigs such as serving as the supervising director of the JJ Abrams-produced TV Series Fringe somehow finds time to make slick, complex Euro-puddings (to borrow a turn of phrase from the esteemed Daniel Bird) such as this and the earlier The Machinist. Here, he's aided by a truly stellar ensemble cast, including Woody Harrelson, Emily Mortimer, Kate Mara, Eduardo Noriega and Ben Kingsley, with Thomas Krestchmann (he of The Stendhal Syndrome) also cropping up in a virtually dialogue-free role. I'd rather not say any more about the film for fear of spoiling it (it really does help do go in with little to no idea what it's about), but I heartily recommend checking it out - you won't be disappointed. Possibly one of the best films of 2008 that no-one saw.

Image quality: The first thing I should point out is that, in the captures below, you'll probably notice a slight ringing effect around the letterbox bars at the top and bottom of the frame. Initially, I assumed this was an indication that the entire image had been filtered. However, I can see absolutely no evidence of this at all in the actual picture area, not in the opening or closing credits text or the photography itself. (I'm clutching at straws trying to explain this effect, but I suppose it's possible that an unfiltered 16x9 master had 2.39:1 masking that was somehow compromised overlaid on top of it.) This transfer, and the resulting encode, are to my eyes perfect... or as perfect as you can get with a lossy encode. Detail is striking from start to finish, grain reproduction is entirely natural, blacks are deep and inky (none of your elevated crap here)... in short, I have no complaints whatsoever about this excellent presentation. I don't really have anything more to say, because it is as far as I can tell an effectively flawless reproduction of the source material. Demo material. 10/10 9.5/10

Updated Wednesday, August 25, 2010 at 01:24 PM: Dropped to a still extremely impressive 9.5/10 upon closer reflection.

Transsiberian
studio: Icon; country: UK; region code: B; codec: AVC;
file size: 19.9 GB; average bit rate (including audio): 25.79 Mbit/sec

BD impressions: Angel-A

1:57 PM / BD Impressions / No Comments

Angel-A, Luc Besson's return to the director's chair after a seven-year hiatus, is certainly derivative. Highly reminiscent of a Parisian It's a Wonderful Life, it also has obvious parallels with another French film, Patrice Leconte's La fille sur le pont, with its monochromatic photography and story of a man at the end of his tether who is brought back from the brink when a mysterious woman enters his life. Both films also centre around an attempted suicide on a bridge overlooking the River Seine. Still, I'm willing to overlook its derivative nature for the simple reason that it is both very entertaining and genuinely heart-warming. Something about Besson's melding of European art-house and Hollywood mainstream ideas and aesthetics seems to allow him to get away with a grand amount of schmaltz and plain old silliness. Yeah, it's basically a story about an angel (the amazingly leggy Rie Rasmussen) sent down from the sky to teach a petty crook (the eternally scruffy Jamel Debbouze) to tell the truth, and as such is about as daft as it sounds, but it's done with such panache that I can't help loving it.

Image quality: The first thing that struck me about Angel-A's transfer was its noticeable purple tint. This also affected Optimum's 2007 DVD release, and I have a hard time believing that this was deliberate. (Of course, you can always dial your display's colour saturation down to "zero" to cancel it out.) The image is not particularly detailed on the whole, although it's not unpleasant to look at, while the near-absence of grain and the not entirely natural appearance of what little remains does lead me to suspect degraining, probably at the DI stage. I'm assuming this was the look Besson and long-term cinematographer Thierry Arbogast were going for, but it means that, while smooth and fairly easy on the eyes, it tends to look a little artificial and doesn't have that HD "pop" that many are so fond of. Needless to say, it's a worthy upgrade over the DVD, but perhaps not quite the revelation that some might have expected. 7/10

Angel-A
studio: Optimum; country: UK; region code: B; codec: AVC;
file size: 19.3 GB; average bit rate (including audio): 30.63 Mbit/sec

BD impressions: Drag Me to Hell

12:40 PM / BD Impressions / 7 Comments

Let's get the downsides of Drag Me to Hell out of the way right off the bat. Yes, it's true, there is an over-abundance of CGI effects and a lot of them are cringe-inducingly bad. Also, while a number of people have praised Alison Lohman's performance, I wasn't all that impressed by it. She goes a bit overboard with the "wide-eyed innocent" routine, and some of her reactions to the horrors she encounters don't seem particularly authentic. As for Justin Long, I can only think of those infuriating "Mac vs. PC" commercials whenever see him on the screen, and "drip" seems to be the only role he's capable of portraying.

That said, I was pretty impressed by the film on whole - a decided improvement on the previous Sam Raimi film I saw, the dreadful Spider-man 3. I like how the film accepts the inherent ridiculousness of the premise and milks it for all its worth, combining a genuine atmosphere of dread with some outrageously funny sight gags, most of them involving the various indignities to which the aforementioned Ms. Lohman is subjected. The film is bookended by vintage Universal Studios logos, leading me to suspect that it was intended to be a deliberate callback to an earlier generation of horror movies - presumably the horror/comedy hybrids of the 80s like An American Werewolf in London and Raimi's own The Evil Dead. If so, the overall look of the film is a little too slick and glossy to be entirely convincing, to say nothing of the over-abundance of clunky CGI. Still, on the whole, Drag Me to Hell entertained me a great deal.

Image quality: The disc contains both the PG-13 theatrical cut and the unrated director's cut and, as is standard practice with Universal, both are included on the same discs as separate encodes, both occupying somewhere in the region of 20 GB of space. Regardless of which version you choose, you get an extremely satisfying presentation with a pleasing amount of detail and nothing untoward in terms of compression, despite there being two copies of the film on the same disc. The image does appear to have been very slightly filtered, as demonstrated most clearly by the mild ringing around the burned-in subtitles during the pre-credits prologue, but beyond that I had absolutely no complaints whatsoever. 9.5/10

Drag Me to Hell
studio: Universal; country: USA; region code: ABC; codec: VC-1;
file size: 20.6 GB (theatrical cut), 19.6 GB (director's cut);
average bit rate (including audio): 29.83 Mbit/sec (theatrical cut), 28.39 Mbit/sec (director's cut)

This week's BDs: October 19, 2009 - October 25, 2009

10:18 AM / Blu-ray / 1 Comment

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

Monday, October 19:

• 24: Season Seven Blu-ray Collection (20th Century Fox, UK)
• The 39 Steps (ITV, UK)
• All Quiet on the Western Front (ITV, UK)
• Devil May Cry (Manga, UK)
• Dirty Harry Collection (Warner, UK)
• Elektra (20th Century Fox, UK)
• Friday the 13th (1980) (Warner, UK)
• Gavin & Stacey Christmas Special (2 Entertain, UK)
• Gavin & Stacey: Series One (2 Entertain, UK)
• Gavin & Stacey: Series Two (2 Entertain, UK)
• Ghost Ship (Warner, UK)
• Gremlins (Warner, UK)
• Grizzly Man (Revolver, UK)
• Hamlet (ITV, UK)
• Henry V (ITV, UK)
• Horsemen of the Apocalypse (Icon, UK)
• I Sell the Dead (Anchor Bay, UK)
• The Keeper (Optimum, UK)
• The Last House on the Left (2009) (Universal, UK)
• New Town Killers (High Fliers, UK)
• The Uninvited (Paramount, UK)
• The White Diamond (Revolver, UK)
• X-Men Origins: Wolverine (20th Century Fox, UK)
• X-Men Quadrilogy (20th Century Fox, UK)

Tuesday, October 20:

• 100 Feet (Asylum, USA)
• Blood: The Last Vampire (Sony Pictures, USA)
• The Crew (Image, USA)
• Easy Rider (Sony Pictures, USA)
• Escaflowne: The Movie (Bandai, USA)
• Freedomland (Sony Pictures, USA)
• Love 'n Dancing (Screen Media, USA)
• Monsoon Wedding (Criterion, USA)
• The Secret of the Nutcracker (BFS, USA)
• Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen (Paramount, USA)
• Waterworld (Universal, USA)
• Wrong Turn 3: Left for Dead (20th Century Fox, USA)

BD impressions: Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs

2:10 PM / BD Impressions / 8 Comments

Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs is, of course, Disney's first and the first North American animated feature (although not, as it happens, the first animated feature, despite more than seventy years of misinformation) - "the one that started it all", as the saying goes. It's incredibly highly regarded, even by those who generally look down their noses at animation, and yet I can't help feeling that its merit is largely statistical. Yes, it's a significant film, but it's far from Disney's best. The 1930s and 40s were a period of extremely rapid development for the medium of animation (no other art form in history grew so much in such a short space of time), and you only have to look at their next film, Pinocchio, to see how much they improved in every respect - from animation to characterisation to the fundamentals of good storytelling - in the space of three years. Snow White has some extremely impressive moments - Snow White's horror-filled dash through the forest and the Queen's transformation being particular highlights - but for the most part it drags, with the characters either bland (Snow White) or obvious (the dwarfs, each of whom has a single personality trait summed up by their name), and the animators spending way too long indulging in sight gags that really aren't all that funny. I wouldn't expect the studio's first attempt at a full length feature to be a masterpiece, so I'm content to appreciate it for what it is: a vital stepping stone on the path to greatness.

Image quality: More or less what I expected. As with all the HD masters they have created since Alice in Wonderland (for the 2004 Masterpiece Edition DVD release), Disney have gone down the "let's pretend this film was never shot on film" route and delivered an image that has been subjected to a heavy amount of digital manipulation and is therefore no longer an accurate representation of what audiences saw in theatres back in 1937. The arguments for and against this sort of revisionism have been heard countless times already, and I'm not going to waste yet more bandwidth regurgitating them, so instead I'll simply say that is what it is, and you'll either like how it looks or you won't.

Detail varies wildly on a shot by shot basis, but I'm inclined to think that this is the result of the photography itself rather than the transfer. Some shots (e.g. Example 5) were clearly out of focus when they were originally shot, and there's nothing that can be done about them. On other occasions, the image looks exceedingly crisp (e.g. Example 3), but most of the time it falls somewhere in between the two extremes. Unfortunately, whether or not you feel that the grain reduction is a betrayal of the film's original look, it can't be denied that the process has, in places, caused noticeable damage: Example 8, for instance, shows that the process has played havoc with the character outlines, resulting in a smudgy, blocky appearance that also affected the BD of Sleeping Beauty to a degree. (On the other hand, I don't recall coming across anything like this in Pinocchio.) For purists like myself, the handful of instances in which the natural grain texture manages to slip through (e.g. Example 2) offer a tantalising and extremely frustrating glimpse at what might have been.

Compression is well-handled for the most part, but the rainstorm at the film's climax is a shitstorm of compression artefacts, which I'm sorry to say includes some of the worst macroblocking I've seen on a BD title. See Example 17 for a particularly noxious instance.

Overall, this release is a bit of a mixed bag. Disney have attempted to make a film from 1937 look like it was shot in 2009, and while what they've actually managed to achieve is impressive, there's a limit to what you can do with material of this vintage before you begin to damage it. Ironically, had the restoration team been less overzealous in their treatment of the film, it would probably have looked more cohesive and impressive as a whole. I find myself wishing, not for the first time, that Disney would take a more cautious approach to their restorations, allowing the material to show its age, so to speak, rather than attempting to make it into something it isn't. If anyone has the BD or HD DVD of The Adventures of Robin Hood, they should take a look at the bonus Looney Tunes cartoons, Rabbit Hood and Katnip Kollege especially, for an example of how to make vintage animation shine in HD while still retaining the characteristics of film. 7/10

PS. Rather irritatingly, the opening titles are windowboxed, a process that really should be done away with in the age of high definition and overscan-free displays.

Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs
studio: Buena Vista; country: USA; region code: A; codec: AVC;
file size: 18.3 GB; average bit rate (including audio): 31.61 Mbit/sec

The Lord of the Rings project

10:59 PM / Books / 10 Comments

At one point, J.R.R. Tolkien's The Lord of the Rings was my favourite book. That may no longer be true, but if so I'm unable to think of another book that would claim the throne in its place. In terms of its impact on the fantasy genre, its importance can't possibly be overstated, and the fact that it has been voted more popular than the Bible in several surveys is a source of considerable amusement and satisfaction for me. (It's a far better novel, too.)

This partial (yes, partial) selection of related books and other assorted odds and ends should indicate just how deeply my obsession ran at one point:

As you can see, I don't do obsessions by half. For me, it doesn't really count unless there's grounds for the state intervening and incarcerating me for my own protection.

I first discovered The Lord of the Rings when I was ten years old and was introduced to it by my primary school teacher at the time, after we had done a class project on its predecessor, the more children-friendly The Hobbit. By Christmas, I had finished the first of its three volumes (it was split into what has been inaccurately referred to a trilogy and published in three stages between 1954 and 1955, against its author's wishes), and by the summer of the next year, the whole novel. I've read it so many times since then that I've lost count, although it's been a while since I last cracked it open.

That's going to change. I've decided to read The Lord of the Rings again, cover to cover, appendices included.

My reasons for this are many. First, I simply want to experience the story of the War of the Ring again - no great mystery there. Secondly, it has, as previously mentioned, been a long time since I last read it, and I want to see whether or not it still holds up. Certainly in the intervening years I've become more attuned to its flaws, real or perceived, thanks mainly to the plethora of online pundits who went gaga over the 2001-2003 film adaptations by Peter Jackson and then discovered that the source material wasn't to their liking.

Thirdly and finally, and perhaps the real point of interest from your perspective, is that I plan to review the three adaptations that I have access to and want to have a clear picture of the original text in my mind before doing so. These are, in chronological order:

• The 1978 animation/live action hybrid film directed by Ralph Bakshi, covering roughly half the book
   
• The 1981 BBC radio dramatisation adapted by Brian Sibley and Michael Bakewell
   
• The 2001-2003 live action film trilogy directed by Peter Jackson

I'm aware that there are other adaptations, including a 1979 American radio dramatisation; a 1980 animated TV movie of the third part, The Return of the King, by Rankin/Bass; and an unabridged reading of the text by Rob Inglis from 1990. I haven't encountered the first two, and as the third of these omits nothing from the text, there's not much to review beyond Inglis' delivery of the material (which I may mention at some stage, but won't be treating to a full-on review).

Of the three versions that I will be covering, my existing opinions of them (based on my most recent viewing or listening of them) is as follows: I think the BBC radio dramatisation is the definitive adaptation, with Ralph Bakshi's interpretation serving as a fascinating but flawed curiosity piece that manages to be both superb and dreadful in equal measure, and Peter Jackson's trilogy offering up a polished but by-the-numbers telling of the tale which takes some liberties so extreme as to completely bastardise aspects of the story's very heart and soul.

This is going to be a lengthy project and one that I don't expect to be posting any more about for some time. However, I'm alerting you to it now so I don't have any excuse to chicken out midway through - my logic being that, if I've announced it, I'll have a harder time backing out. I'll be covering each "version" chronologically: Tolkien first, then Bakshi, then Sibley, then finally Jackson. By the way, as far as versions go, I'll be watching the extended editions of the Jackson films and listening to the original thirteen-part versions of the radio adaptation (rather than the re-edited CD versions). For the book itself, I'll probably be reading from my tatty old three-volume HarperCollins copies from 1991. These contain a smattering of misprints (mostly minor), but are considerably more portable than my copy of the more definitive 50th Anniversary Edition from 2005, and in any event are now so battered and dog-eared that I won't need to worry too much about keeping them in good condition.

Wish me luck!

Beware of inaccurate BD captures

5:50 PM / Blu-ray / 25 Comments

The other day, I came across captures of the recent BD release of Drag Me to Hell on a DVD and BD review and image comparison site. (There are only a few sites that actually post direct full resolution captures, and fewer still have actually covered this disc, so you probably won't need to work too hard to figure out which one it is.) My first reaction was "That doesn't look right at all," followed almost immediately by "Oh good grief, who would put out such a crummy-looking disc?" The whole thing looked blocky in the extreme, as if it had been upconverted from a lower resolution using a crude pixel resize technique.

That in itself is not entirely unheard of. Recently, Paramount released Braveheart on BD with what was generally a stunning and revelatory image. However, the first twenty-two minutes suffered from some semi-noticeable stair-stepping on vertical edges, seemingly stemming from the image source having a vertical resolution of less than 1080 pixels. (The rest of the film was unaffected.) Similarly, Sunshine Cleaning from Anchor Bay and The Orphanage from New Line suffer from a milder form of this issue, only in the horizontal domain. All well and good, but these are small fry compared to the problems I was seeing in the screen captures of Drag Me to Hell.

Then I remembered: my own copy of Drag Me to Hell arrived last Friday. (My "to watch" pile is so big at the moment that I somewhat shamefacedly admit to occasionally forgetting what films it contains.) I popped it in...

And was rewarded by an image that is pretty close to flawless in my eyes. No blockiness in sight, no sirree Bob.

My capture (click to enlarge):

Other site's capture (click to enlarge):

Side by side comparison (cropped):

Well, that's that, then. I guess it rules the site in question out as a reliable source for BD screen captures in the future, particularly given that it has already been embroiled in no small amount of controversy regarding the reliability of its standard definition DVD captures. It's a shame, because like I said before there are only a few sites out there posting full resolution BD captures. However, far more troubling than writing off one of these few sites is the knowledge that one of them is posting misleading and inaccurate images. (I particularly take exception to the fact that the site describes these images as "full 1920x1080 resolution".) If I was responsible for the the creation of their the BD encode of Drag Me to Hell or the master from which it is derived, I'd be incredibly pissed off.

Updated Thursday, October 15, 2009 at 03:21 PM: The site in question has now admitted its error and replaced the earlier captures with accurate ones. However, I note that other similarly affected reviews have not been revised accordingly.

Some thoughts on Up...

9:20 PM / Cinema / 8 Comments

...or "Why I Can't Stand Children"

History repeats itself. A few posts back, I told you about my foolish decision to go and see Pixar's Finding Nemo during the school October week holidays of 2003. Well, today, I went to see the latest Pixar movie, Up, only released in the UK last Friday (yeah, I know). Guess what week this is? That's right: the school October week.

Yeah, I'm guessing you can imagine how that turned out.

Noxious, screaming brats as far as the eye could see, including one infant who started bawling the moment Carl Fredericksen's wife died during the opening five minutes and didn't let up until carried bodily from the auditorium by one of its parents. At least that parent actually did something proactive, though, which is more than can be said for the rest, who seemed content to let their spawn run riot... when they weren't trotting back and forth to the lobby to fetch armloads of feed for their mewling young. The dominating line of thinking seemed to be that, with a so-called "kids' movie", basic rules of etiquette did not apply and it was perfectly reasonable to disrupt the screening for the rest of the audience. That, or the parents in question genuinely can't control their offspring... which, when you consider that they are responsible for actually bringing them into the world in the first place, is a pretty sorry state of affairs.

This image more or less sums up what I had to contend with.

That's not to say that all of the children in the audience behaved like this. Indeed, I suspect that a fair number of them were thoroughly innocuous. However, the actions of a minority meant that my strongest memory of the screening is not so much the film itself but rather the extent to which it was disrupted. It's too bad, because it really is a very good film indeed. I went to a traditional 2D screening because I knew it would be my only change to see it on film (the 3D screenings, and the forthcoming DVD and BD releases, are digital), and because I mistakenly believed that parents would shun the 2D version in favour of the spectacle of stereoscopic razzmatazz. More fool me, eh?

Anyway, the basic storyline has already been recounted more than adequately elsewhere, so I won't bother sounding like a broken record. (Yeah, like that would ever happen.) Suffice it to say, Pixar have once again delivered a highly entertaining, visually stunning and genuinely touching film that is up their with the best films I've seen this year, even if it's not in the upper echelons of the studio's dizzyingly impressive output. Last night, ITV broadcast an episode of The South Bank Show focusing on Disney and Pixar, in which the creative chief of both studios, John Lasseter, described Up as Pixar's most cartoony movie to date. Watching it today, it was clear what he meant. The contrast with the studio's previous movie, Wall-E is huge: while that film took on an almost photorealistic appearance at times and was specifically designed to evoke live action cinematography with its lens flares, depth of field and other deliberate imperfections, Up seems far less concerned about appearing "real". On the one hand, it looks a good deal more precise and "perfect" than Wall-E; on the other, it's almost tempting to see it as a step back technologically-speaking. From a conventional (live action) perspective, Wall-E was by far the studio's most technically impressive output to date, with all the supposed flaws very deliberately created. In contrast, Up's visuals have more in common with those of the likes of Cars and Monsters, Inc.

The latter should come as no surprise, as they share a director, Pete Docter, whose sensibility has always leant more towards bright colours, broad physical humour and conventional cartoony cuteness than his more serious-minded, brooding counterpart, Andrew Stanton (Wall-E and Finding Nemo), or indeed Brad Bird, whose The Incredibles remains Pixar's more adult-oriented venture to date. I haven't done any serious research into the differing reactions to their output, but it wouldn't surprise me to learn that Bird and Stanton's films do better with the critics while Doctor's are a bigger hit with the audiences. Monsters, Inc. and Up are more conventional crowd-pleasers, and I suspect it's no accident that Pixar followed Wall-E (which is actually a rather depressing film if you take the time to think about it) with something more light-hearted and fanciful.

That's not to say that Up is nothing but a cavalcade of pratfalls and other assorted sight gags. Indeed, the opening scenes, in which we see the film's protagonist, Carl Fredericksen, meet the love of his life, Ellie, and then lose her to a long and debilitating illness, are tragically heartbreaking. This sequence, which recounts everything from their marriage to her death entirely through visuals, is masterfully achieved and the sort of thing that Pixar's more obvious competitors at DreamWorks could do with learning a thing or two from. Despite snuffing it in the opening minutes, Ellie is a constant presence throughout the film, and prevents the curmudgeonly Mr. Fredericksen from coming across as merely a nasty old man.

First and foremost, though, Up is feel-good escapism - the sort of movie in which dogs are fitted with collars which vocalise their inner thoughts (to hilarious effect) and a house can float thanks to a thousand brightly coloured helium balloons. In every respect - from character design to basic concept - this is not a film that pretends to exist in the real world, and yet the realness of the human emotions are what make it resonate so successfully with the viewer. In terms of Pixar's filmography, I'd put it behind Wall-E, The Incredibles and original Toy Story, but its a marvellous cinematic achievement nonetheless, and as myself and others never tire of repeating, most other studios can't hope to match even Pixar's worst, let alone their best. 9/10

This week's BDs: October 12, 2009 - October 18, 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, October 12:

• 12 Rounds (20th Century Fox, UK)
• B-Girl (Anchor Bay, UK)
• Bridget Jones's Diary (Universal, UK)
• Contact (Warner, UK)
• Coraline (Universal, UK)
• Doghouse (Sony Pictures, UK)
• Hell Ride (Warner, UK)
• Heroes: Complete Seasons 1 to 3 (Universal, UK)
• Heroes: Season 3 (Universal, UK)
• Hot Fuzz (Universal, UK)
• Looking for Eric (Icon, UK)
• Love Actually (Universal, UK)
• The Number 23 (Entertainment In Video, UK)
• Shaun of the Dead (Universal, UK)
• Smallville: The Complete Eighth Season (Warner, UK)
• Snatch (Sony Pictures, UK)
• Synecdoche, New York (Revolver, UK)
• The Texas Chainsaw Massacre (2003) (Entertainment In Video, UK)

Tuesday, October 13:

• Adoration (Sony Pictures, USA)
• American Violet (Image, USA)
• The Craft (Sony Pictures, USA)
• Drag Me to Hell (Universal, USA)
• Eagles Over London (Severin, USA)
• Hardware (Severin, USA)
• How the Grinch Stole Christmas (2000) (Universal, USA)
• Killer Movie (Phase 4, USA)
• Kong: Return to the Jungle (Image, USA)
• Land of the Lost (Universal, USA)
• Lovecraft: Fear of the Unknown (Cinevolve, USA)
• Midnight Movie (Phase 4, USA)
• Natural Born Killers: The Director's Cut (Warner, USA)
• The Proposal (Buena Vista, USA)
• Screwballs (Severin, USA)
• South Park: Bigger, Longer & Uncut (Paramount, USA)

Some thoughts on Criminal Justice Series 2

3:04 PM / Television / No Comments

The television miniseries (or serial) is something of a lost art. British television dramas tend to take one of two forms: (1) one-off or two-part standalones, or (2) longer-running, multi-season productions of varying length. Wikipedia defines a miniseries as "a single finite story told in separately broadcast episodes."

Last year, BBC1 brought the concept of the miniseries back with Criminal Justice, a five-hour piece broadcast in one-hour blocks over the course of a single week. Scripted by a former barrister, Peter Moffat (who also created Kavanagh QC and North Square), it offered a gripping and frankly terrifying look at the British justice system, focusing on a young man (Perfume: The Story of a Murderer's Ben Whishaw) accused of murdering a woman and his desperate battle to clear his name, hampered at every turn by an unjust and corrupt system. The series attracted no small amount of criticism from members of the legal profession for the negative light in which it was depicted but, as the saying goes, the truth hurts sometimes... even if, as per one of the most iconic lines of the serial, "the truth can go to hell."

In spite of the controversy (or perhaps because of it), it was a big success in terms of both critical reaction and viewing figures, so it's not entirely surprising that it was brought back this year for a second series, which finished airing on Friday. Does that mean it's no longer a miniseries? I'm not sure, but there seems little point in getting caught up in semantics, given that the end result was once again excellent. Taking the same basic concept, Moffat weaved a dramatically different story around a completely different cast of characters, the protagonist this time being Juliet (played by Maxine Peake), a shrew-like housewife who stabbed her husband, a well-liked, successful barrister in the public eye but a manipulative, abusive control freak behind closed doors.

Whereas, in the first series, it was unclear until near the very end whether Whishaw's character actually did commit murder (he had no memory of having done it but, as the prosecution pointed out, that doesn't automatically mean he didn't), the questions posed in Series 2 were considerably different. This time, there was no doubt that Juliet stabbed her husband: we saw her pick up the kitchen knife, take it into the bedroom and plunge it into his chest. It wasn't even so much a question of "why": we, the audience, could see that she was a virtual prisoner in her own home and that her husband effectively subjected her two a 24-hour cycle of systematic mental (and occasionally sexual) abuse. The mystery element, if you can call it that, emerged in the form of whether or not Juliet would admit to herself and others what her husband had done to her, and whether she would ultimately be convicted of murder or manslaughter.

Series 2 ultimately proved to be more domestically oriented than its predecessor, spending nearly as much time with family members and acquaintances as with Juliet herself. I was impressed by the almost languid pace at which the events unfolded - a rare treat given modern television's tendency towards action, action action and not "wasting" a second lest the audience lose interest and change channels. Personally, I have nothing against fast-paced storytelling and will happily watch frenetic nail-biters like Spooks, which crams a massive amount of material into each hour-long episode, but Criminal Justice's slower, more deliberate pace ultimately proved to be more rewarding. As much as it was an exposé into the shady goings-on in the legal profession and the police force, it served first and foremost as a character study, with Moffat and Maxine Peake painting a frighteningly convincing portrait of a victim of domestic abuse - someone who, regardless of the outcome, was going down, and in a sense was doomed even before the opening credits began.

Can we have a Series 3, please? And, while we're at it, how about releasing Series 1 and 2 on BD? Both were shot and broadcast in high definition, but only DVDs seem to be available (for Series 1) or announced (for Series 2).

The revolution begins...

1:10 PM / Blu-ray / 8 Comments

....with removable BBFC and IFCO logos on Optimum's new range of Studio Canal Collection Blu-ray Discs. I'd really like to see this become the standard. Particularly when you have cover art as tastefully designed as that of the titles in this collection, the last thing you want is a crude, ugly emblem of censorship to destroy the illusion of class and distract from the overall effect.

Just arrived...

8:49 PM / Blu-ray / 2 Comments

Belle de jour (BD, Optimum, Region B, UK)

Le mépris (BD, Optimum, Region AB, UK)

Defiance (BD, Momentum, Region B, UK)

The Duchess (BD, Pathé, Region B, UK)

Transsiberian (BD, Icon, Region B, UK)

Borders - well, the Glasgow Buchanan Street branch, at any rate - is selling all of its BD titles for £9.99. That's right, all of them. Even brand new releases. Coupled with a "20% off your purchase" discount that I got for filling out an online customer feedback questionnaire, I went on a little spree today during my lunch break and picked up a bunch of interesting-looking titles while the offer lasted.

By the way, the UK release of The Duchess, unlike its American counterpart, has not been scissored by the MPAA.

When computers malfunction

11:11 PM / Technology / 2 Comments

I've only myself to blame, really. For some time now, I've run a dual boot Windows XP/Windows Vista system, keeping XP around mainly for compatibility purposes, should the need ever arise. In the last year or so, though, I don't think I've loaded it up even once, so this afternoon I had the bright idea of ditching it in order to free up some disk space. Should be easy, I thought: just delete the XP partition and reclaim the extra space by adding it to my Vista partition in the Disk Management application.

You must be joking. Like most people dual booting between these two operating systems, I installed XP first and then Vista. XP, as a result, exists on a primary partition, while Vista is on a logical partition. I could go into what these terms mean but I'd probably just bore you, and in any event I'm not 100% clear about them myself. To cut a long story short, I booted the system using my Vista DVD, deleted the XP partition and rebooted.

Reboot and select proper boot device or put media in the boot device and press any key.

Oh. Fuck.

After Googling the error message, I discovered that, by the looks of it, if you previously installed an operating system as a dual boot on a logical partition and then delete the primary partition containing your other operating system, the operating system on the logical partition will no longer boot. No problem, I thought, I'll just set the logical partition on which my Vista installation is stored to a primary partition. "Oh-ho," chortled the computer, "and how do you plan on doing that?"

Erm, yeah. It seems that there's no way of actually doing that, at least not with the tools at my disposal. After a good couple of hours dicking around with it, even going so far as to install Ubuntu on my freshly formatted primary partition in the hope of getting somewhere (no dice - Ubuntu wouldn't even boot), I bit the bullet, scrubbed the whole thing and started from scratch. Luckily I don't keep anything important on my C: drive - just my email and Firefox bookmarks, both of which I'd backed up anyway - but still, it was incredibly frustrating to have a perfectly good install of Vista that was completely inaccessible simply because, for whatever reason, the boot manager decided it couldn't access it.

I'm back up and running now with a fresh install of Vista, and in the long run I managed to reclaim the disk space being hogged by XP, but still, I lost a good afternoon and evening's worth of work time, which I'm not happy about. I'm on a deadline, y'know! I suppose it's my own stupid fault for tinkering under the hood during a hectic period rather than waiting 'til I wasn't so busy, but honestly, I thought this would be something that would take me five minutes while I ate my lunch. You live and learn.

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