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

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

• Monday, November 3, 2009: Up (BD, Region A, USA)
• Monday, November 9, 2009: District 13/District 13: Ultimatum (BD, Region B, UK)
• Wednesday, November 11, 2009: Left Bank (DVD, Region 1, USA)
• Wednesday, November 11, 2009: Max Manus: Man of War (BD, Region ABC, UK)
• Monday, November 16, 2009: Star Trek (2009) (BD, Region ABC, UK)
• Thursday, November 19, 2009: Moon (BD, Region ABC, UK)
• Monday, November 23, 2009: Amelie (BD, Region ABC, Australia)

A few thoughts on Dragon Age: Origins

2:54 PM / Games / 2 Comments

In gaming, the phrase "spiritual successor" is tossed around a lot. Developers are always waiting to cash in on biggest greatest hit, whether it's the endless sea of first person shooters getting cranked out (usually populated by gruff-voiced, steroid-abusing muscle men and colour palettes whose values consist solely of grey and brown) or the plethora of MMOs all attempting to grab a slice of the World of Warcraft pie. Let's face it, the games industry is shockingly derivative, plagiarising to a degree that would make even your average Hollywood executive blush.

And yet I'm inclined to think that originality is overrated. Case in point would be the much-hyped control system Nintendo devised for their Wii console. Hyped as something that would revolutionise gaming, in reality the number of games that actually use that curious controller in anything approaching a creative way is small in the extreme... or so I'm told. Whenever I catch sight of the Wiimote, I always find myself wondering what's so wrong with the good old fashioned mouse and keyboard setup... or I suppose a gamepad if you insist on being so uncultured (joke, guys). There's no sense in reinventing the wheel, not when the original design works so well.

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Blu-ray Brit round-up

2:26 PM / Blu-ray / 11 Comments

Don't say I'm not good to you: rental copies of the recent UK releases of Wallace & Gromit: The Complete Collection, The Descent and Sunshine Cleaning landed on my doormat in the last few days, and I'm here to provide the lowdown on how they measure up against the already available US and (in the case of The Descent) Australian releases.

• Wallace & Gromit: The Complete Collection: Coded for all regions. The first three films are, as with their American counterparts, encoded at 24 fps, with roughly comparable (perhaps even identical) image quality, whereas the fourth film, A Matter of Loaf and Death, runs at 25 fps like its standalone UK counterpart. It appears to be the same encode as that earlier release and thus lacks both the horrible aliasing and audio distortion that affect the 24 fps American version. All special features are in standard definition PAL. It's also worth pointing out that the Cracking Contraptions shorts are conspicuously absent. However, given how much better A Matter of Loaf and Death looks and sounds, I'm going to say that this is the one to go for, provided your player can handle 50 Hz content.
   
• The Descent: Coded for Region B only. Colour palette matches the Australian BD and UK standard definition DVD rather than the American BD (see here for a glimpse of the rather pronounced differences). Unlike the Australian release, all of the extras from the standard definition DVD have been ported over. Bit rate and overall file size are slightly lower on this release than on the Australian version, despite the presence of both PCM and DTS-HD Master Audio tracks (both 5.1, and one of course rendering the other redundant). A cursory glance didn't reveal any noticeable differences as far as compression is concerned, but this was far from an in-depth scientific comparison so I wouldn't like to say for sure whether this is the case. In any event, the region-free status of the Australian release is likely to make it the most viable option for American readers who don't want to be lumbered with their native release's incorrect colour palette and/or the inferior MPEG-2 encode that is now in wide circulation over there.
   
• Sunshine Cleaning: Region coding unconfirmed (I forgot to check before I sent the disc back). This appears to use the same encode as the US release, and is therefore also optically censored.

That's all for now, folks. If I get the chance later, I'll post some comparative screen captures.

BD impressions: Amelie

7:03 PM / BD Impressions / 5 Comments

One of my favourite films of all time. I've already written about it here, so if you want to know why I like it so much, click the link.

Image quality: Amelie's first BD release came in September 2008, a broadly disappointing affair from Canadian label TVA Films consisting of a 1080i encode and a lack of English subtitles. (Many seemed convinced that the fact that this disc was 1080i was the reason for its disappointing image quality. I haven't watched the disc myself, but the screen captures I've seen suggest that the problems stem from excessive noise reduction and poor compression.) In an uncharacteristic display of self-restraint, I opted to wait for another label to get it right.

That label turned out to be Australian company Icon Home Entertainment, responsible for some slam-dunk releases including the UK Transsiberian and the Australian The Descent. (Oh, and they were responsible for the recent Braveheart remaster. Need I say more?) There was little doubt in my mind that Icon would deliver a better release than TVA, and I was right: the Australian Amelie BD is a colossal improvement on its Canadian counterpart. Gone is the piss-poor compression and blitzkrieg of NR. Detail is greatly improved and the healthy bit rate gives the film room to breathe. It's also enough of an improvement over the standard definition DVD releases for me to recommend it unhesitatingly to those who already own one of the existing releases. (Duh.) I was, on the whole, pretty satisfied with the presentation.

And yet it's not perfect. Far from it. Broadly speaking it's good, but I'm not one of those people for whom "good" is the same thing as "good enough". Amelie was an early digital intermediate title, and the technology then was not what it is now. Detail is, on the whole, a little disappointing, and edges show the sort of ringing I tend to associate with filtering. What looks like edge enhancement can also be glimpsed at times (see Example 2), although thankfully not too often. I also spotted a handful of instances of a very odd artefact whereby, in certain shots, coloured dots became visible - usually pink or blue-green. (See here and here.) I'm at a loss to explain these.

It's also worth pointing out that the DI team have gone somewhat overboard with the colour timing, resulting in an image that lacks dynamic range and feels a little overbearing at times. On the audio commentary (unfortunately not included on this BD), Jean-Pierre Jeunet expresses some regret at having had the colours pushed so far, and I'm inclined to agree, particularly with regard to the proliferation of yellow. Still, that's ultimately an issue with the film itself rather than the disc. I just thought I should mention it here in case anyone was wondering if my final score took it into account (it doesn't). 7/10

Amelie
studio: Icon; country: Australia; region code: ABC; codec: AVC;
file size: 27.1 GB; average bit rate (including audio): 31.76 Mbit/sec

Just arrived...

7:59 PM / Blu-ray / 2 Comments

Amelie (BD, Icon, Region ABC, Australia)

BD impressions: Moon

10:00 PM / BD Impressions / 6 Comments

There's a big danger in making films about what is essentially something that, in real life, would be very boring, for the obvious reason that you run a high risk of the film itself becoming boring. This is a trap that Duncan Jones can't quite avoid with his 2009 sci-fi piece Moon, about a man who has spent the last three years aboard a mining base on the moon with only GERTY, a computer voiced by the ever-laconic Kevin Spacey, for company. To an extent, it drags because it has to: if it zipped along at a breakneck pace it woulf be disingenuous.

Ironically, though, I found it more engaging than J.J. Abrams' much faster Star Trek reboot, the reason being that, rather than being about explosions and effects, Moon is about an individual and his plight. Unsurprisingly, after three years in complete isolation, Sam Bell is beginning to go mad... or thinks he is. This is compounded by the sudden appearance of another man called Sam Bell who looks identical to him and appears fairly unfazed by all this, and it's here that Jones achieves his masterstroke, effortlessly switching viewpoints between the two Sam Bells to the extent that you don't realise the film has suddenly switched to a different character's perspective until after the fact. Although there are appearances from a variety of bit players, including Dominique McElligott as Sam's wife and Kaya Scodelario (of Skins fame) as his daughter, the whole thing is essentially a one-hander (or should that be two-hander?) delivered by Sam Rockwell, who does an impressive job of portraying two very different incarnations of the same person, one or both of whom may or may not be losing his mind.

In some respects, Moon's elliptical nature can be a tad frustrating, and it's tempting to suggest that many of the arresting images we see are included not because they mean something but simply because they are intriguing and unsettling. Why, for example, does Sam have hallucinations about seeing his daughter as a teenager, despite having seemingly only seen her as a toddler via video link? Why is the second Sam Bell so seemingly unsurprised to encounter his double? (This part actually makes even less sense once we learn what's actually going on.) Why is a human employee even needed on the moon, given that all the real power seems to lie with GERTY? But at the same time I suspect much of the film's power lies in this proliferation of unexplained oddities. It's eerie rather than outright scary, but a feeling of loneliness is palpable throughout, and the understated visual effects (a combination of green screen and miniatures) are largely effective to the extent that you don't notice them. Numerous shots feature two Sams on screen at once, often interacting with one another, but when watching the film I never, even for a moment, found myself pondering how the effect was achieved.

Plus, simply put, there's no way I can dislike a film that includes both Matt Berry (Dr. Lucien Sanchez himself) as a sinister businessman and the voice of Kevin Spacey as a talking computer.

Image quality: Another solid effort from Sony Pictures, whose batting average continues to be higher than that of the other majors when it comes to BD releases. Moon has a somewhat softer focus than something like Star Trek, but the overall effect is not unpleasing, and the appearance of the fine grain that is visible throughout suggests that the image has not been tampered with in any way. Blacks are somewhat elevated, but this seems somewhat appropriate given the film's the gloomy, low contrast look. 9/10

Moon
studio: Sony Pictures; country: UK; region code: ABC; codec: AVC;
file size: 20.7 GB; average bit rate (including audio): 30.62 Mbit/sec

BD impressions: Star Trek (2009)

2:41 PM / BD Impressions / 9 Comments

Anyone remember the infuriating trend in the 1980s of resurrecting classic cartoon characters and creating baby versions of them? This creativity-deprived craze gave rise to The Tom & Jerry Kids Show, Flintstone Kids, Tiny Toon Adventures and other such dreck. Watching J.J. Abrams' 2009 reboot of Star Trek, I felt that something very similar was being done to the Gene Roddenberry's venerable sci-fi saga, albeit with the scenes featuring Kirk and Spock as actual children mercifully kept to a minimum. I'm probably the only person on the planet who has never seen a Star Trek movie or a single episode from any of the various TV series, but given that the new movie was widely publicised as a complete reset I assumed this wouldn't be an issue.

Unfortunately, I found precious little to enjoy in this loud, over-long reel of explosions and lens flares penned by Alex Kurtzman and Roberto Orci, Abrams' go-to script guys and the people responsible for giving us Michael Bay's Transformers movies. I definitely got something of a Transformers vibe from this film since, while thankfully not infested with that film's peurile humour (which I suspect comes from Bay anyway rather than his writers), it felt similarly empty and devoid of any real substance. Kirk comes across as a smug, irritating little attention-seeker and Spock a pompous boob, while no-one else actually has a personality to speak of, and Simon Pegg is squandered as a gurning ninny with a dreadful Scottish accent. Instead, Abrams and his writers rely on having the characters spout nudge-nudge wink-wink catchphrases and gestures that are obvious to even a Star Trek neophyte such as myself. Really, though, it feels somewhat pointless to be even mentioning the characters, since they're really just there to fill in the gaps between one computer-generated explosion and the next.

Okay, so it's a summer blockbuster and people generally go to these things because they want to see a whole lot of explosions and chase sequences, not because they want to ponder the meaning of life, but Star Trek's reputation led me to hope for a little more than just another wall-to-wall CGI effects show with a plot held together by sticking plaster. Serenity this ain't.

Image quality: While the standard of catalogue titles on BD continues to fluctuate wildly, I get the feeling we've reached a stage where we can pretty much guarantee that a new release of a major blockbuster will look excellent, and for the most part Star Trek is no exception. Abrams and cinematographer Dan Mindel have a tendency to go overboard with the lens flares, but the film's photography is sumptuous, and this translates very well to BD. There is a dense veneer of grain throughout and this is encoded with aplomb, while detail is often strikingly crisp in a way that I tend not to associate with anamorphic Panavision productions (which normally lean towards "smooth" rather than "razor sharp").

I really am extremely happy with this presentation, and it would unquestionably be a 10/10 affair were it not for an isolated mishap. For some reason, during the scene in which Spock and the other Vulcans are teleported off their home planet, both the compression and the resolution go all to hell, resulting in a few moments of brief but truly, utterly awful image quality (see Example 10). It looks somewhat reminiscent of a similar problem on the Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest BD, albeit with a far longer duration. This issue is particularly egregious when you consider how good the rest of the encode is, and I can only guess as to what happened to cause such a marked decrease in quality. 9.5/10

Star Trek (2009)
studio: Paramount; country: UK; region code: ABC; codec: AVC;
file size: 39.3 GB; average bit rate (including audio): 44.37 Mbit/sec

Some thoughts on Left Bank

10:57 PM / Cinema / 3 Comments

The blurb on the front cover of the US DVD release of Belgian shocker Left Bank (original title Linkeroever) calls it "as important as Let the Right One In." I'm still not sure I quite follow how the reviewer is quantifying importance, and I do feel that invoking the name of Tomas Alfredson's excellent fim is slightly misleading, given that they have little in common, beyond both being European horror films with a rather melancholic atmosphere. You have to sell your product to the masses somehow, however, and I'm not sure how else I would have marketed Left Bank to an audience that had never heard of it. Then again, the film does wear its influences on its sleeve, combining the sort of apartment block dread that Roman Polanski used to excellent effect in Rosemary's Baby and The Tenant with the otherworldliness of pagan rituals from the likes of The Wicker Man. All of this is nothing new, of course, but Left Bank is well enough executed to be worth a watch in spite of its somewhat derivative nature.

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Just arrived...

2:03 PM / Blu-ray / 1 Comment

Moon (BD, Sony Pictures, Region ABC, UK)

Should make for an interesting double bill with J.J. Abrams' Star Trek reboot: two very different sides of the 2009 sci-fi coin.

Just arrived...

11:09 PM / Blu-ray / 16 Comments

Star Trek (2009) (Play.com exclusive steelbook) (BD, Paramount, Region ABC, UK)

Bought entirely based on the highly positive feedback I've heard from everyone, from my brother to my work colleagues. I've actually never seen a single Star Trek movie or a single episode of any of the various TV series. We all have to start somewhere, I suppose.

BD impressions: District 13/District 13: Ultimatum

3:49 PM / BD Impressions / 5 Comments

Nobody makes films quite like Luc Besson. Well, okay, "makes" is a bit of a stretch in the case of these two films, given that he didn't actually direct them but rather, like Danny the Dog, the Transporter movies and countless others, wrote and produced them while leaving the directing duties to various up-and-coming French filmmakers. Still, these films all bear his unmistakable touch, leaving me in little doubt as to who was ultimately calling the shots. 2004's District 13 (Banlieue 13) and its 2009 sequel, District 13: Ultimatum, are light on character development but heavy on the action: as the blurb on the back of the box puts it, "No wires, no special effects, no limits." You're not expected to regard these films as high art, but they're consistently exhilarating, without a single moment of tedium between them, and that impresses me lot more than a "worthy" film with a whole lot of filler stretched out to three hours (The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, I'm looking at you).

They are, of course, completely ridiculous (and can you get much more ridiculous than having Arabs, Chinese, Afro-Caribbeans, Mexicans and neo-Nazis joining forces to take down a corrupt government regime?), but so what? Of the pair of movies, the first is by far the better, given its clarity of purpose. By comparison, District 13: Ultimatum suffers a little from an overly convoluted plot with several disparate strands that take a while to unravel and eventually come together. Come together they do, however, and the result is a terrifically entertaining pair of Gallic popcorn movies with more implausible (but nonetheless completely practical) stunts than you can shake a baguette at.

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Normal transmissions will resume shortly

10:46 PM / Web / 4 Comments

Apologies for the rather scarce nature of my posts recently. I've got a bit of a backlog of BD Impressions pieces to get through and will hopefully make some headway on them before too long, but I've been a bit under the weather lately and the prospect of the laborious process of wading through several discs to take screen captures doesn't really appeal while my head is all clogged up. To tide you over, here is a YouTube video of Amber Benson doing the Macarena.

No, I've no idea what the Macarena is, but I stumbled across the video this evening and it cracked me up. Apparently she made a bet with some fans that, if her recently released book got 85 reviews on Amazon, she'd do this video.

BD impressions: Max Manus: Man of War

12:27 AM / BD Impressions / No Comments

Until I saw Max Manus (I refuse to use the "Man of War" subtitle that the UK distributors added, and which gives the impression of a very different film) tonight, I don't think I'd ever seen a Norwegian film before. Then again, I can think of innumerable other countries whose cinema I haven't sampled; this is one more I can cross off the list. I'm a bit of a sucker for spy movies, particularly those focusing on the Second World War, which is probably the period in history that I find most interesting and the point at which espionage as we know it today really came into being. Flame & Citron shed some light on the relatively unknown (outside its homeland) Danish resistance movement, and Max Manus does much the same for Norway. The protagonist, the eponymous Maximilian Manus, achieved something approaching folk hero status thanks to a combination of the audacity of the sabotage missions he pulled off, his own deviousness and sheer luck.

That said, when the end credits rolled, I was left with a nagging sensation that I hadn't got to know who Max Manus really was. The film is gripping from its first frame to its last, but it crams an awful lot of material into just under two hours, and as a result leaves you with the impression that important stuff has been glossed over. Given that the events of five years are condensed into the film, this was perhaps inevitable, but there's something a little unfocused about directors Espen Sandberg and Joachim Rønning's handling of the material. A subplot involving the local Nazi head honcho and his romance with a Norwegian woman, for example, is introduced but never fully resolved and has no ultimate effect on the plot, and at least one reviewer astutely observed that the hunter/hunted relationship between he and Max essentially amounts to nothing. There is no meaningful interaction between them, no real impact on the narrative at all. It's slightly frustrating because, when they come face to face towards the end of the film, we get the impression that the directors envisaged this as a momumental event: the moment where two bitter rivals come face to face. Instead, it fizzles out because there is essentially no real conflict between them.

But having said that, I certainly enjoyed Max Manus. It's gripping and technically extremely proficient, with a deeply engaging performance by Aksel Hennie, who looks slightly reminiscent of Steve Buscemi, which in many ways helps him to convince as the awkward everyman turned unlikely hero. And hey, now I know a little about the Norwegian resistance movement, about which I was previously completely ignorant, so I got something of an education out of it too.

Image quality: I have a new condundrum: how to I deal with a film that is not running at its intended frame rate? Should this count against the overall score for video? Max Manus was made for theatrical distribution, and as such originally ran at the standard 24 frames per second. On this BD, however, as with most if not all of Revolver's BD releases, it has been sped up to 25 fps (and, as such, will not work on most NTSC territory players). Speed-up was accepted as a necessary evil for PAL discs in the standard definition days, but now that we have Blu-ray and its native 24p playback, there's no excuse. I'd like to hear people's thoughts on this issue.

Ignoring the issue of the frame rate, this is a very pleasing image. Detail levels are very good and the grain looks natural. However, much of the time, blacks are elevated, which leads to scenes that are supposed to take place in low lighting appear grey and murky rather than truly dark. It's not consistent, though, and some shots do feature pure, deep blacks, leading me to suspect that the fault lies in the digital intermediate rather than the disc itself. Some ringing is visible around the letterboxing, although it looks nothing like the sort of ringing normally associated with filtering, and indeed the way the compression is affected by it almost makes me think the fault lies in the encoding itself. Either way, it's a very minor thing. 8/10

Max Manus: Man of War
studio: Revolver; country: UK; region code: ABC; codec: AVC;
file size: 18.3 GB; average bit rate (including audio): 23.25 Mbit/sec

A few thoughts on Murderland

2:59 PM / Television / No Comments

Murderland is a three-part crime drama starring Robbie Coltrane that aired on ITV1 over three weeks, from October 19 to November 2. Crime dramas are, of course, a dime a dozen on ITV's evening schedules, whether they're long-running series like Taggart and Wire in the Blood or standalones like this, but this one caught my attention because of its use of the "parallel perspectives" method of storytelling, of which I'm rather fond... when it's done well. Basically, each part, it seemed, would tell the story from a different character's point of view, with each revealing information to which the protagonists of the other two parts are not privy. In reality, Murderland essentially drops the ball in that regard, but more on that in a moment.

It's standard murder-mystery fare: in the mid-90s, thirteen-year-old Carrie Walsh returned home from a party to find her prostitute mother murdered. There was no sign of sexual assault, but the attack was so brutal and frenzied as to suggest that this was not some spur of the moment thing: whoever did it bore a serious grudge against the poor woman. Bereft and with no immediate family upon whom to rely, Carrie turned to Douglas Hain (Coltrane), a scruffy detective inspector with an unconventional work ethic. Despite his promises to Carrie, however, the murder was never solved, and Hain's conduct resulted in the case being jeopardised and him being forced into early retirement. Fifteen years later, on the eve of her wedding, Carrie - now calling herself Carol - turns up on Hain's doorstep, adamant that she can't move on with her life until she knows the truth.

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Dollhouse officially cancelled

11:21 AM / Television / 2 Comments

Source: EW.com

Well, I won't claim that I'm hugely surprised, or indeed hugely disappointed. The writing was on the wall more or less from the get-go, and the fact that it got a second season at all is, depending on your point of view, either a miracle or a sick joke. As far as I can tell, the remaining episodes of Season 2 will indeed be aired, but there is unlikely to be any coming back from this, not even if the viewing figures rise drastically (which, let's face it, isn't going to happen).

Broadly speaking, I'm in agreement with the opinion piece posted over at EW.com, which argued that there is a silver lining in this cloud,

because it'll free [series creator Joss] Whedon from a show that, let's be frank, was never going to climb out of the hole it was in. Dollhouse had too much viewer attrition and too little network support. It'll let him chase down the myriad other things he could be doing - writing more comics, making more Web content, and, perhaps (as more than a few people have suggested) getting in bed with a cable network that'll give him the latitude to do what he likes, how he likes.

I've been holding off posting my thoughts on Season 2 so far, given that we're only four episodes in (out of thirteen), but if you've read my review of Season 1, you'll know that I'm not exactly the show's biggest fan. That said, I'll be the first to admit that there have been moments of greatness. The last couple of episodes of Season 1 showed a great deal of promise, and out of the four episodes of Season 2 that have aired, the most recent was excellent... albeit primarily because it eschewed the show's focal point (Echo and Ballard) in favour of one of the secondary characters.

And there's the rub: it seems that, whenever Dollhouse is any good, it has precious little do to with series star Eliza Dushku and her character. The most memorable scenes almost always involve secondary characters rather than her, and the two most interesting episodes we've had so far - Season 1's Epitaph One and Season 2's Belonging - have barely featured her at all.

So there you have it. I'll continue to watch the remainder of the Season 2 episodes - assuming they all get aired, that is - and in the end will no doubt feel a twinge of disappointment over what the show could have become had things been different. I strongly doubt, however, that I'll be losing too much sleep over it.

Just arrived...

10:26 PM / Blu-ray / DVD / 12 Comments

Left Bank (DVD, IFC, Region 1, USA)

Max Manus: Man of War (BD, Revolver, Region ABC, UK)

Left Bank, described on the front cover as "as important as Left the Right One in" (whatever that means), is the first film I've bought on a standard definition DVD this year. (I've bought a handful of TV shows on DVD and received a couple of review copies, but that's it.)

A few thoughts on Torchlight

1:25 PM / Games / 1 Comment

For many people, the greatest casualty of the demise of Flagship Studios in 2008 was not its A-title, Hellgate: London, but rather Mythos, a side project headed by Fate designer Travis Baldree. Originally intended to test the servers that were later to be used for Hellgate, Mythos' following grew steadily, with many who felt disillusioned by the flagship (sorry) title's shortcomings turning to this colourful, charming, free-to-play MMO to satisfy their action-RPG cravings. The shuttering of Flagship was a bitter blow to those who had enjoyed seeing Mythos take shape and participating in the game's open beta test, for the title became lost in a squabble over copyright ownership. The result: all the hard work of the Mythos was essentially for nothing. The game will never see the light of day.

Well, not quite. After the shuttering of Flagship, the team behind Mythos hastily rebranded under the banner of a newly formed studio, Runic Games, and set about building a new game from scratch - one that followed the same basic philosophies of Mythos. Released on October 27, Torchlight, built from the ground up in under a year, looks set to satisfy the ARPG itch that many are feeling, particularly now that it has been confirmed that Blizzard Entertainment's juggernaut, Diablo III, will not be released until after 2010.

Costing a mere $20, Torchlight is a download-only, single player affair (a free-to-play, microtransaction-funded MMO version will follow at a later date), but if like me you normally play solo anyway, that won't matter. True, it may not have an original bone in its body, and there's no mistaking its pedigree - Max and Erich Schaefer, designers of Diablo and Diablo II, and Matt Uelmen, composer of those two games, are part of the team responsible - but the whole thing is polished to such perfection that its derivative nature is easy to overlook. Light on plot and heavy on action, Torchlight is a time sink in the best possible sense: it's incredibly easy to tell yourself that you'll only play five minutes, and next thing you know you're still clicking away hours later and promising you'll stop once you've cleared out the next dungeon/gained another level/completed the current quest.

You'd never mistake it for an "A" title (polished though it is, certain aspects, such as the presentation of the wafer-thin story, have an almost fan-made feel to them), but in much the same way that not every movie you watch is a billion dollar blockbuster, not every game needs to be a cinematic epic that features photo-realistic graphics that would choke a supercomputer and takes 100+ hours to complete. It's true that many people will simply use Torchlight to kill time until Diablo III comes along, but its makers seem to be fairly comfortable with their game filling this niche. It has superb replay value, thanks to the multiple potential character builds and randomly generated level layouts (a Diablo staple), not to mention an endless dungeon in which to lose yourself once you've completed the core game. Most importantly, it's relentlessly fun and deeply satisfying (it's hard to put my finger on why, but whumping half a dozen zombies with a single click has that inherently pleasing feeling that so many other action games lack), and gets a hearty recommendation from me. Now, please excuse me while I go off and wear out another mouse.

Just arrived...

9:55 PM / Blu-ray / 2 Comments

District 13/District 13: Ultimatum (BD, Momentum, Region B,* UK)

* District 13 is Region ABC; District 13: Ultimatum is Region B.

BD impressions: Up

10:45 PM / BD Impressions / 3 Comments

For my overall impressions of Up, please see my review of the theatrical screening. It was very nice to watch the film again in the comfort of my home, not surrounded by rowdy children. The experience was vastly superior overall, partly because of the absence of said child and partly because, believe it or not, the audio was much better. At the cinema, there was a complete absence of rear channel activity, leading me to suspect that the system was set up for bog-standard stereo audio (I experienced something similar with Disney's Treasure Planet back in 2002), which is pretty outrageous if you ask me. Deliberate crippling of the 2D version in order to artificially make the 3D version seem better by comparison?

Image quality: I don't expect this to come as a surprise to anyone, but Up looks superlative on BD. As with Ratatouille and Wall-E, Pixar have opted for a slightly softer focus look as opposed to something razor-sharp and artificial-looking. I did momentarily wonder if some sort of filtering had been applied, but I couldn't spot any ringing around high contrast edges, which is usually a good indicator. (Compare this with DreamWorks releases such as Kung Fu Panda and Monsters vs. Aliens, which are definitely filtered and accordingly have noticeable ringing.) Likewise, the on-screen credits text is razor-sharp, indicating that, if any softening was done, it was applied before the final compositing was done, and therefore can be assumed to be in line with the filmmakers' intentions. In any event, it's a beautiful-looking image and one that I can't nitpick on any level. A top drawer release in every way. 10/10

Up
studio: Buena Vista; country: USA; region code: A; codec: AVC;
file size: 23.7 GB; average bit rate (including audio): 35.42 Mbit/sec

Some thoughts on Spooks episode 8.1

4:46 PM / Television / 4 Comments

* Warning! * This post contains major spoilers for the episode.

So, Ruth is back. And poor old Malcolm crept out the back door after eight years on our screens. Thankfully, he was still breathing when he departed, breaking with a tradition that has, for the last three seasons, seen a regular character killed off in Episode 1.

Season 7 ended with one of the classic cliffhangers that have been Spooks' trademark ever since it first began in 2002, this time with section chief Harry Pearce - of course, that's Sir Harry now - being bundled, bound and gagged, into the back of a helicopter by a turncoat Russian agent. I've always contended that Harry is the cornerstone of Spooks, now the only character to have been there right from the beginning and, as someone else described him, "the still point of the turning world". Lose Harry and, in my opinion, you lose Spooks. Of course, ever since Lisa Faulkner made acquaintances with a deep fat fryer in the second episode of Season 1, it has been made abundantly clear that no-one in this show is safe, and of the regular characters who have departed during the show's eight-year history, more than half have done so in a pine box. By being so cavalier with regard to killing off their characters, the writers have hammered home, right from the start, that regardless of a character's status or popularity, they will, if need be, be dispatched ruthlessly. As a result, after surviving countless previous brushes with death, I genuinely believed that my favourite character's time was up...

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Upcoming BDs from exotic lands

1:11 PM / Blu-ray / 11 Comments

Broadly speaking, Blu-ray Disc releases from outside the US have a tendency to slip under the radar... which is rather unfortunate, as it means that a number of gems end up being unfairly overlooked by the masses. I do my best to keep up with news relating to international BD releases, and living in the UK it's not too difficult to keep an eye on what's happening under my very nose, since it's easy enough to browse through HMV or Borders and see what's on the shelf. Even then, though, I often end up missing out on some of the slightly more obscure goodies, to say nothing of titles released in mainland Europe or further afield.

Here's some advance warning, therefore, of titles coming out in the UK early in the new year from Optimum (titles I'll be picking up myself are in bold):

January 11:

• Feast II: Sloppy Seconds (John Gulager, 2008)

January 18:

• Dungeons & Dragons: Wrath of the Dragon God (Gerry Lively, 2005)

January 25:

• The Army of Crime [L'armée du crime] (Robert Guédiguian, 2009)
• Whiteout (Dominic Sena, 2009)

February 1:

• Tekken (Dwight H. Little, 2009)

February 8:

• Interceptor (Michael Cohn, 1992)

February 15:

• Breathless [Á bout de souffle] (Jean-Luc Godard, 1960)
• The Ladykillers (Alexander Mackendrick, 1955)
• Pierrot le fou (Jean-Luc Godard, 1960)

February 22:

• Stargate (Roland Emmerich, 1994)
• Survival of the Dead (George A. Romero, 2009)

March 1:

• The Wicker Man (Robin Hardy, 1973)
• Jacob's Ladder (Adrian Lyne, 1990)
• Emmanuelle (Just Jaeckin, 1974)
• Brotherhood of the Wolf [Le Pacte des loups] (Christophe Gans, 2001)

March 29:

• Cracks (Jordan Scott, 2009)

(Source: Blu-ray.com)

Meanwhile, over at the AV Science Forum, user DigitalfreakNYC has put together a helpful list of all titles known to be scheduled for release by Warner during 2010 outside the US. In most cases, specific countries aren't listed, but given that this is Warner, who hold the rights to the films in question throughout Europe, it seems pretty reasonable to assume that they will be available in most territories. The list is too long to regurgitate here, but I'm interested in picking up the following:

• Mystic River (April 2010)
• Where Eagles Dare (April 2010)
• Dial M for Murder (July 2010)
• The Exorcist (October 2010)
• The Maltese Falcon (November 2010)
• The Last of the Mohicans (December 2010)
• Frantic (no release date yet)
• The Lord of the Rings (Ralph Bakshi version) (no release date yet)

Oh, and the good people at Icon Home Entertainment have just released Scream in Australia, with Amelie to follow on November 10. Of course, I've ordered copies of both.

BD impressions: North by Northwest

3:48 PM / BD Impressions / 17 Comments

I first came across North by Northwest many years ago, when staying up past 9 PM was a novelty. I happened to dip into an already underway TV broadcast of it, and my first introduction to Roger Thornhill was of him attempting to snag a railway ticket to Chicago while simultaneously evading the police. I had to go to bed shortly after this (it was a school night), and this being in the days before on-screen programme guides I never did find out which film this way. The sequence stuck in my mind, though, and years later, while taking a Media Studies class in my final year of school, I was glad to finally put a name to it when my teacher decided to give us a crash course in the cinema of Alfred Hitchcock.

Over the years, North by Northwest has emerged as one of my all-time favourite films. I'm not sure that it's Hitchcock's best work per se, but it's certainly one of his most gripping. It's one of those films that has a little of everything - humour, melodrama, action, suspense, intrigue, you name it - and as a result somehow feels like a remarkably complete package. Hitchcock supposedly told screenwriter Ernest Lehman to write "the Hitchcock film to end all Hitchcock films", and in my opinion he succeeded. While "Hitchcock" will conjure up different images for different people (correct me if I'm wrong, but I suspect most will probably think of the shower scene in Psycho or the bell-tower sequence in Vertigo), North by Northwest is always the first thing that comes to mind whenever I hear the Mster of Suspense's name mentioned. And no, it isn't the cornfield sequence or the climax atop Mount Rushmore. It's Cary Grant trying to buy a ticket to Chicago. Funny how memory works, isn't it?

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Happy 20th birthday to Wallace & Gromit

10:06 PM / Cinema / 2 Comments

It's hard to believe it, but our favourite plasticine duo have already been around for two decades. They haven't exactly been prolific - just four 30-minute shorts, one feature film and a collection of Cracking Contraptions bumpers - but they are the living proof that quality beats quantity any day.

And of course, now is the perfect opportunity to celebrate the happy event in style by picking up their films on BD!

US edition
UK edition

Windows 7 tip

1:07 PM / Technology / No Comments

Probably the most significant change Microsoft made with Windows 7, at least from the perspective of day-to-day interaction with the operating system, is the newfangled taskbar, which acts like an odd hybrid of the old Windows taskbar (used from Windows 95 to Windows Vista) and Mac OSX's dock. If, like me, you don't like change for the sake of change and thought the old taskbar was perfectly fine, this can be a bit of an irritation. Luckily, it's fairly easy to rejig the taskbar to look like and work in much the same manner as the old one...

With one exception: context menus. How many of you, when you wanted to close a window, were used to simply right-clicking on the corresponding taskbar icon, moving the mouse a few pixels to the right and clicking "Close"? I certainly was, and years of using this method mean that I no longer give it any thought when I do it. It comes to me as naturally as putting one foot in front of the other. (I know the Alt-F4 shortcut is even quicker, but that only applies if the window you want to close is the active one. If you have a bunch of windows you want to close quickly, the mouse is still your best friend.) In Windows 7, however, right-click the taskbar icon and you'll see something like this:

Looks reasonably familiar, right? The "Close" button is still there, only it has been moved slightly. Now, instead of appearing where the cursor is position when you right-click, the context menu always appears centred directly above the taskbar icon. This is more of an irritation than you might think. It means that, because the "Close" button is no longer always the same distance from wherever the cursor is positioned, you actually have to look at where it is and then move the cursor over to it accordingly. Sounds simple, but it requires more active thought than before and slows down what should be a near-instantaneous process. I'm not saying the new context menu doesn't have its uses - the ability to pin the corresponding program to the taskbar or see a list of files recently opened in that program is great, and I also love that you can now reorder the open programs on the taskbar by clicking and dragging - but these uses are overshadowed considerably by the sheer irritation of the menu's placement.

I trawled the web, searching high and low for a way to replace the Windows 7 context menu with the old Windows 95-Vista version, but to no avail. Then, today, quite by chance, I came across the solution myself: hold down the Shift button when you right-click and you get the old context menu:

A handy tip if, like me, you're using Windows 7 and have been finding the new context menu an irritation.

Amer

12:31 PM / Cinema / 2 Comments

A couple of weeks back, Daniel Bird mentioned to me a film called Amer, described in some circles as a "neo-giallo", in reference to the Italian thrillers that I so diligently collect and which are the subject of my ongoing PhD thesis. Now, I liked Dario Argento's most recent film, Giallo, more than most (Argento himself included, seemingly), but it would be fair to say that the title was incredibly misleading. Not only did it lack one of the (in my mind) most important traits of the giallo - the whodunit - it also had little in common stylistically with the baroque slashers of the 70s from which it took its name.

Amer, by Belgian filmmakers Hélène Cattet and Bruno Forzani, would appear to correct one of these oversights. While seemingly not a giallo in a narrative sense, at least judging by the reviews I've read, by all accounts it captures with surprising accuracy the look and feel of these films. This extends to the poster, a beautiful and striking piece of work by Gille Vranckx:

A teaser trailer has been made available on YouTube, and although it only runs for twenty-six seconds and consists of a solitary shot, it is already firmly burned into my mind. Writers/directors Cattet and Forzani appear to have perfectly captured that uneasy balance between "disturbing" and "seductive" that imbued many of the best gialli.

It's not often that I get so hyped up over a film I haven't actually seen yet - and over little more than a poster and a single shot - but I'm now awaiting Amer with great anticipation. I hope it's not long before a DVD (or better still, a BD) release surfaces.

More information can be found at Twitch and Dark Discussion.

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