Tuesday, January 26, 2010

Just arrived...

8:54 PM / Blu-ray / Comments14 Comments

BD

Red Road (BD, Verve, Region B, UK)

BD

Pontypool (BD, Kaleidoscope, Region ABC, UK)

BD

Menn som hater kvinner (BD, Nordisk Film, Region ABC, Norway)

BD

Jenta som lekte med ilden (BD, Nordisk Film, Region ABC, Norway)

The last two are better known as The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo and The Girl Who Played with Fire respectively - movie adaptations of the first two novels in Stieg Larsson's posthumously-published Millennium Trilogy (the third film is to follow on BD in March). Alas, neither of these discs has English subtitles, but since I've already read the books (well, I've read the first and am about a third of my way through the second), I'm going to see how far I can get without the aid of a translation. At any rate, I didn't feel I could resist these after I saw the screen captures for the first one over at Hundland.org.

The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo is released theatrically in the UK on March 12.

 
14 Comments

1. Kram Sacul said:

How many BDs do you have that you haven't watched yet?

(Posted on Wednesday, January 27, 2010 at 10:08 PM)

2. Author Profile Page Michael said:

Too many. :(

(Posted on Wednesday, January 27, 2010 at 10:11 PM)

3. Kram Sacul said:

Aww. Still waiting for detailed reviews of Child's Play, Blade, Se7en, etc. No rush though. Did you pull the trigger on Scream or did the screen captures scare you away?

(Posted on Wednesday, January 27, 2010 at 10:18 PM)

4. Author Profile Page Michael said:

You know, I actually thought I had reviewed Child's Play, but looking back through my entries I see it must have slipped my mind. I watched it back around Halloween. If I get the chance, I'll put together a write-up. I actually have the screen captures sitting on my hard drive.

As for Scream, it's another one I just haven't got round to watching yet, unfortunately. Can't say I'm especially looking forward to it, given the screenshots...

(Posted on Wednesday, January 27, 2010 at 10:44 PM)

5. Bleddyn Williams said:

Very interested in your thoughts on the Pontypool disc. IFC have quietly released it this week over here in the US, on bloody DVD only. DVD Planet lists these specs, so I think they are the same as your UK blu...

U.S. Trailer
International Trailer
Filmmaker Commentary
CBC Original Radio Show
Short Films: "Eve" "Dada Dum" "The Death of Chet Baker"

Would love an rough evaluation of PQ/AQ when you get a chance. I'd much rather buy an HD version when it exists than DVD at this stage in the game.

(Posted on Wednesday, January 27, 2010 at 11:24 PM)

6. Paku said:

If you're using a HTPC you could always download English srt subtitles and load them in MPC-HC while playing the movie m2ts.

(Posted on Thursday, January 28, 2010 at 10:58 AM)

7. David said:

As a Swedish reader of your blog, I'm very interested in what you may think of the two Millennium-movies (especially what kind of impression they will make, not having English subtitles!). I'm not a big fan of either the books or the movies, but I do believe that if the movies were from another country, say Germany or France, I would find them much more cooler and believeable. The acting is IMHO very contrived and the dialouge outright ridiculous in places, but these nuances tend to matter a little bit less when one's watching something foreign (I myself wouldn't even be able to pick up these nuances in, say, Fellini's 8½). But the movies ARE very good-looking, which your link to Hundland reminded me of. Anyway, looking forward to possible reviews.

(Posted on Thursday, January 28, 2010 at 6:59 PM)

8. Author Profile Page Michael said:

David:

I do think familiarity sometimes breeds contempt. For instance, I often find that I'm hyper-aware of what I perceive to be poor acting or delivery when spoken by people of the same nationality as myself (Scottish), but am less bothered by the same things from actors from other English-speaking countries.

I'll keep you posted about the two films, but I definitely won't be watching the second one till I've finished the book.

(Posted on Thursday, January 28, 2010 at 8:12 PM)

9. Toecutter said:

Michael,

Don't get your hopes up re: picture quality on the second part (Flickan som lekte med elden). 'Män som hatar kvinnor' was shoot on 35mm (2.35:1) and looks great on BD, part 2 & 3 was shot on 16mm (1.85:1) with a lower budget and was originally made for TV. Though the success of the first film changed those plans and all three films got theatrical releases. As a result the BD quality of 'Flickan som lekte med elden' doesn't come close to the first one.

(Posted on Friday, January 29, 2010 at 10:22 AM)

10. ChuckZ said:

Michael, what about actors with American accents? Surely you see so many movies made in America that you've been accustomed to it, no?

(Posted on Saturday, January 30, 2010 at 1:17 AM)

11. Author Profile Page Michael said:

Chuck:

The thing, I suspect, is that most of the American accents I hear are from movies. As such, my impression of American speech patterns is to an extent based on performance rather than real life, so I suspect I don't have all that much to go on as regards how a real American would talk. The bottom line is that I tend to notice far fewer dodgy American performances than UK performances, although I suspect that has less to do with American actors being better than British actors on the whole (which I strongly doubt is the case) and more to do with familiarity with accents and speech patterns.

(Posted on Sunday, January 31, 2010 at 4:10 PM)

12. Bleddyn Williams said:

Hey, Michael - did you ever get around to taking a look at PONTYPOOL?

(Posted on Thursday, February 18, 2010 at 11:10 PM)

13. Author Profile Page Michael said:

Bleddyn:

Not yet, but it's in the pile.

(Posted on Thursday, February 18, 2010 at 11:24 PM)

14. Bleddyn Williams said:

Well, look forward to hearing your thoughts. US distribution is really strange - DVD only, and not all retailers have it. NetFlix don't have it available for rental either.

(Posted on Friday, February 19, 2010 at 4:35 AM)

 
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