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Films I saw for the first time in the month of March

10:28 PM / Cinema / 2 Comments

• Thursday, March 4, 2010: TRIANGLE (UK/Australia, 2009) 7/10
• Tuesday, March 9, 2010: THE ARMY OF CRIME (France, 2009) 7/10
• Friday, March 12, 2010: CAPITALISM: A LOVE STORY (USA, 2009) 7/10
• Friday, March 19, 2010: THE DESCENT: PART 2 (UK, 2009) 5/10

A somewhat limited month for viewing, owing to my going through an intensely busy patch as far as my thesis is concerned, and to the sudden and unexpected injury sustained by my brother's AV receiver.

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

10:18 PM / Blu-ray / DVD / No Comments

• Wednesday, March 3, 2010: LUFTSLOTTET SOM SPRENGTES (BD, Region ABC, Norway)
• Wednesday, March 3, 2010: TRIANGLE (BD, Region B, UK)
• Wednesday, March 3, 2010: 36 (BD, Region B, UK)
• Wednesday, March 3, 2010: LADY VENGEANCE (BD, Region B, UK)
• Wednesday, March 3, 2010: A TALE OF TWO SISTERS (BD, Region B, UK)
• Wednesday, March 3, 2010: THIRST (BD, Region B, UK)
• Wednesday, March 3, 2010: SIN CITY (BD, Region ABC, UK)
• Tuesday, March 9, 2010: CAPITALISM: A LOVE STORY (BD, Region A, USA)
• Thursday, March 11, 2010: TOY STORY (BD, Region ABC, USA)
• Thursday, March 11, 2010: TOY STORY (BD, Region ABC, USA)
• Friday, February 12, 2010: THE BAADER MEINHOF COMPLEX (BD, Region A, USA)
• Saturday, February 13, 2010: THE PRINCESS AND THE FROG (BD, Region A, USA) - BD impressions
• Monday, March 15, 2010: TOY STORY 2 (BD, Region ABC, USA)
• Thursday, March 18, 2010: BROKEN EMBRACES (BD, Region A, USA)
• Thursday, March 18, 2010: THE DESCENT: PART 2 (BD, Region B, France)
• Saturday, March 20, 2010: ZOMBIELAND (BD, Region ABC, USA)
• Wednesday, March 24, 2010: DUMBO (BD, Region BC, UK)
• Friday, March 26, 2010: SPOOKS: SEASON SIX (DVD, Region 2, UK)
• Friday, March 26, 2010: THE LORD OF THE RINGS (1978) (BD, Region ABC, USA)

You know, I actually didn't realise how many discs I'd bought this month. Fair enough, this time of the year seems to be a particularly busy one for good releases (FOUR Disney movies - that's practically unheard of!), and the four Tartan releases plus SIN CITY were heavily discounted, but still... I certainly won't be having another month like this any time soon, not when I've got a computer to finance.

Sacre bleu, it's big!

8:38 PM / Technology / 8 Comments

The good news is that it fits in my current case. With about a centimetre to spare. Which is a relief, because I'm still very happy with my Sonata III. It does a great job of cancelling out fan noise, it's an ideal size, and the tool-free drive trays are very convenient.

Rethinking my upgrade

10:42 PM / Technology / No Comments

I've made a few changes to my proposed list of components for my Summer 2010 computer upgrade. Over the last couple of days, I've been reading reviews of the Corsair H50 cooling solution and have come to the conclusion that it may not be all it's cracked up to be. I've read several complaints about the level of noise generated by the radiator, and while I know I won't be able to get a completely silent system (my need for a decent gaming graphics card puts paid to that), every little helps. As such, I've decided to forego the H50 and instead pick up a Noctua NH-D14, widely considered to be one of the (if not THE) quietest and most effective heatsinks out there. The only problem: size. The thing is massive.

If I was still getting a Corsair Obsidian 800D tower, that wouldn't be a problem. However, I'm now shying away from that too, in favour of sticking with my two-year-old Antec Sonata III. The Obsidian 800D is a huge piece of equipment, as large lengthwise as it is tall, and I'm rather limited in terms of space. My desk has a low horizontal beam to support the legs, making it difficult to stash a tower, and the cubby-hole in the corner where my Sonata III currently resides offers nowhere near enough room for anything even slightly larger (the Sonata III only just fits as it is). Therefore, if I were to get a new tower, I would end up having to get a new desk too, which in my mind simply isn't worth it. Provided my Sonata III can take the NH-D14, I can save at least £100 on the overall cost of the upgrade... which is why I've already ordered an NH-D14, so I can check in advance whether it will fit. If not, new tower here we come.

As for the remainder of the package, everything remains more or less as it stands. I think I'll probably go for 6 GB of RAM - 12 just seems like overkill, in terms of both cost and its use to me. I currently have 4 GB in my system and have never exceeded that, and I would have gone for 4 GB again were it not for the operating requirements of DDR3 RAM - modules have to be installed in triplets rather than in pairs, and I suspect 3 GB wouldn't be enough, so 6 it is. For the video card, I've decided to go for a Sapphire HD 5850 Toxic, which has had its core clock and memory speeds overclocked beyond those of the standard model, and also features a custom heatsink which is supposedly quieter and more effective at cooling the board.

Just arrived...

8:35 PM / Blu-ray / DVD / 4 Comments

SPOOKS: SEASON SIX (DVD, Contender, Region 2, UK)

The one season of SPOOKS that I don't own a copy of (I have review copies of 1-5 and recorded 7-8 off Freeview), nicely discounted to under a tenner at Zavvi, who still appear to have a healthy online presence despite having gone into administration over a year ago.

THE LORD OF THE RINGS (1978) (BD, Warner, Region ABC, USA)

Those still smarting from the disappointment that is the BD release of the 2001-2003 Peter Jackson trilogy will no doubt be intrigued to hear that the original 1978 animated version looks very good.

In other news, Warner has just asked Blu-ray.com to pull their damning captures of the trilogy BDs and replace them with low resolution, pre-approved Warner images. I don't know whether to laugh or cry. Either way, it speaks volumes about the company's attitude towards quality standards.

NB: The above two discs actually reached me yesterday.

Computer upgrade

10:07 PM / Technology / 5 Comments

The new system I mentioned in my previous post is still several months from fruition, giving me plenty of time to research and change my mind, but at the moment, I'm looking at going for the following components:

• CASE: Corsair Obsidian 800D
• HEATSINK: Corsair H50 (a very nice-sounding and surprisingly affordable liquid cooling solution)
• POWER SUPPLY: at least 750 watts (probably something from Corsair, modular if possible)
• MOTHERBOARD: ASUS P6T SE (no need for bells and whistles, just a good rock solid ASUS board with an Intel X58 Express chipset)
• CPU: Intel Core i7 (I'm looking at going for a 930 2.8GHz model and overclocking the hell out of it, which served me well with my 3 GHz Core 2 Duo)
• MEMORY: either 6 GB or 12 GB of DDR3 RAM (probably something from Crucial, Corsair or OCZ - DDR3 memory must be installed in sets of three in order to work in triple channel mode, hence the slightly unusual amounts)
• VIDEO CARD: ATI Radeon HD 5850 (the performance to price ratio for moving up to a 5870 isn't really worth it in my opinion)

Add to that my existing SSD, hard drives, optical drives and sound card, and I should have a very nice system that will be the envy of the neighbourhood... that is, if anyone in my neighbourhood cares about computers.

I tend to be fairly conservative when it comes to building systems, going with manufacturers whom I know from experience to be reliable and suited to my tastes and requirements - ASUS motherboards, Intel CPUs and chipsets, ATI video cards - but if anyone has any alternative suggestions, or wants to discuss anything about my proposed build, I'm more than happy to hear your thoughts.

Just arrived...

9:44 PM / Blu-ray / 3 Comments

DUMBO (BD, Buena Vista, Region BC, UK)

No original mono on this UK release - just a 7.1 remix. For shame, Disney.

By the way, I'm afraid there are unlikely to be any further BD impressions pieces in the next couple of weeks. My borther's AV receiver needs to be repaired, and I don't feel particularly inclined to judge AV quality based on a desktop monitor with wonky gamma levels and colour gamut and a set of consumer-level PC speakers that, while at the high end of the range, are... well, consumer-level PC speakers. Once we're back up and running again, you guys will be the first to know.

I also suspect I will end up limiting my BD purchases somewhat in the coming months. I'm planning on building a new computer system this summer, pairing my SSD up with a CPU and video card to match it. This will probably be a fairly expensive undertaking, since while I will of course be hanging on to my current sound card, SSD, hard drives, optical drives, monitor, speakers, etc., I'll otherwise be gutting the inside of my system completely (new motherboard, CPU, RAM, video card and power supply), and will probably also be replacing my case with one of these. No sense in doing this sort of thing by halves, if you ask me.

The Lord of the Rings Trilogy BD - a typical New Line job

5:34 PM / Blu-ray / 18 Comments

Quelle surprise.

To be fair, the look of these transfers appears to be deeply inconsistent. Some shots look pretty damn good, and I get the impression that things improve with each subsequent film (bearing in mind that my memory of these movies is a tad fuzzy and I can't always remember which capture belongs to which film), but others have a serious case of DNR-itis. This shot of Ian McKellen makes me want to puke, and here's Miranda Otto looking spectacularly oily... and this one is pure DARK CITY. The reports and the small number of direct image comparisons that have surfaced suggest that the HDTV broadcasts look at least slightly better (example here).

Sadly, I predict that the usual suspects will praise these discs to the heavens, confusing the films' epic sweeping vistas with good image quality. Exactly the same thing happened with the utterly mediocre-looking DVDs of these films, which many people still seem to believe represent the best the format had to offer.

And now to await the usual barrage of claims that "screen captures aren't representative of actual image quality".

BD impressions: The Descent: Part 2

8:45 PM / BD Impressions / 1 Comment

What do you do when you're sitting on the rights to one of the best horror movies - scratch that, THE best horror movie - of the last decade? Answer: you make a shameless cash-in that lifts the core elements of the original but none of the heart. THE DESCENT: PART 2 has no reason to exist (other than the obvious financial one). The story had already been told and finished at exactly the right point. Still, I approached the sequel prepared to give it every possible chance, only for it to disappoint me at nearly every turn. Oh, don't get me wrong, there's plenty of tomato ketchup and a handful of really exciting set-pieces (my favourite involves one character trapped after a rockfall and a crawler scrabbling around outside trying to get in), but it just feels completely empty and, by the time the climax comes along and lifts the original's denouement shot for shot, so lazy as to be objectionable.

The director, Jon Harris (who edited the first film), and his three writers seem to be under the impression that all that's necessary to recapture the success of the original is to get a bunch of characters together and send them into the caves to face the crawlers as quickly as possible. Unfortunately, they seem to have missed the fact that what made THE DESCENT such a great film was not just that it was tense, claustrophobic and bloody, but that the six women we followed in that movie were all realistic and vividly drawn. Writer/director Neil Marshall gave them each distinctive personalities but avoided turning them into clichés by relying more on their interplay than on stock traits. Yeah, we got that Holly was the reckless one, Beth was the sensible one, etc., but there was a lot more to them than that, which became abundantly clear when the proverbial hit the fan. In addition to the returning heroine, Sarah (Shauna Macdonald) - the writers actually trot out the dreaded "amnesia" plot mechanic in order to justify having her return to the caves she just escaped from - THE DESCENT: PART 2 gives us five new characters, and the best I can say about them is that each one dies well. They're either dull and uninteresting (the cave rescue leader ehose sole defining characteristic is that he's Australian) or constructed out of the most hackneyed clichés (the impulsive, bone-headed county sheriff who seems to be doing his best to get everyone killed) and as a result it's difficult to give a damn about them. At no point could I remember any of their names, and the only way I could keep track of them was to give them each nicknames based on their nationality or general appearance - names like Kylie Minogue and Father Christmas (yes, I'm mature). And if you don't care about the characters, the tension quickly dissipates and you're left with nothing more than a collection of set-pieces involving meat puppets meating grisly demise after grisly demise. Even the claustrophobic feel of the original is in short supply, thanks in no small part to the inclusion of the heavily built sheriff, who for some reason is able to traverse with ease the same tunnels that a bunch of svelte women struggled to squeeze through in the original.

As Sarah, Macdonald does her best and at times does a very impressive job of portraying someone whose emotions have been ripped out, leaving nothing but an empty shell, but some of the dialogue she has to stumble through is clunky in the extreme, and her performance suffers accordingly on those occasions. The new additions are okay, giving perfectly acceptable performances, but none of them are memorable in any way. Ultimately, though, the biggest problem is that there's simply nothing new here. It's just a cash-in in every possible sense, and whenever Harris repeats footage from the original, or has the new characters encounter the bodies or video footage of the previous cast, you're only reminded all the more of how much better that film was. Perhaps most jarringly, the sequel seems to lift David Julyan's score from the original wholesale, playing the exact same music at the exact same plot points and leaving you with the feeling that what you're watching is nothing more than a soulless carbon copy of a much better film. Which, on the whole, is precisely what THE DESCENT: PART 2 is.

Oh, and it contains a shit gag (and both interpretations of that phrase are equally valid). An actual, honest to God, river of poo. With two of our heroines submerged in it. Played for laughs.

Image quality: The quality of the video presentation doesn't plunge to quite the same degree as that of the film itself, but it's hard to look at THE DESCENT: PART 2 side by side with its predecessor (well, discounting the US MPEG-2 "silent" reissue) and not be disappointed. It's not bad, it's just "meh". The back cover of this French release from Pathé (which, in case you're wondering, features English audio and removable French subtitles) claims an AVC encode on a BD-50, but in reality we get a VC-1 encode on a BD-25. In terms of its overall mediocrity, it reminds me a great deal of many a Warner disc... and guess who owns the US rights? I don't want to point fingers at who might be responsible for the encode, but bearing in mind that I can think of only one major studio still using VC-1 on a regular basis... I think I'll stop right there and let the pictures speaks for themselves. 7/10

The Descent: Part 2
studio: Pathé; country: France; region code: B; codec: VC-1;
file size: 16.6 GB; average bit rate (including audio): 25.42 Mbit/sec

For comparison, Icon's excellent Australian release of the original film (scroll past the US Lions Gate disc, although it too looks much better than THE DESCENT: PART 2).

Just arrived...

6:33 PM / Blu-ray / No Comments

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

Just arrived...

4:02 PM / Blu-ray / No Comments

BROKEN EMBRACES (BD, Sony Pictures, Region A, USA)

Second time's a charm...

THE DESCENT: PART 2 (BD, Pathé, Region B, France)

Just arrived...

10:07 PM / Blu-ray / 3 Comments

TOY STORY 2 (BD, Buena Vista, Region ABC, USA)

Why is all the good stuff coming out at the same time?

BD impressions: The Princess and the Frog

8:58 PM / BD Impressions / 4 Comments

I have mixed feelings about the direction in which John Lasseter has taken Disney animation since taking over leadership a few years back. While the situation now is undoubtedly far better than it was towards the arse-end of the previous regime, there have been some disappointments along the way too, most notably the dumbing down of Chris Sanders' AMERICAN DOG concept into the generic BOLT, and the continual reworking of Glen Keane's RAPUNZEL (most recently retitled TANGLED - eh???). One unquestionable cause for celebration, however, initiated by the man behind the first CG feature, is the return of hand-drawn animation, previously ditched by the bean-counters who headed the previous regime due to a belief that audiences weren't interested in 2D any more.

THE PRINCESS AND THE FROG takes most of its cues from the so-called second golden age of Disney animation (basically, THE LITTLE MERMAID through THE LION KING), which isn't entirely surprising, given that most of its key creative personnel worked on that era. There's a definite sense of predictability to it, and there's a distinct lack of risk-taking throughout, but the production values and overall animation quality represent something that hasn't been seen in years. Scroll through the film's technical credits, and it reads like a veritable "who's who" of Disney artists from the second golden age, from THE LITTLE MERMAID (and, erm, TREASURE PLANET)'s John Musker and Ron Clements sharing writing and directing dues to Eric Goldberg (ALADDIN's Genie) leading the animation of jazz-playing alligator Louis. Even the biggest flaws - the bland, po-faced heroine and the predictable plot - can be found in virtually any previous Disney feature, and the meandering, episodic narrative? Well, that's pure JUNGLE BOOK. So what if Dr. Facilier is just a black Jafar and Tiana spends the bulk of the film poo-pooing the typical Disney princess fairytale only to succumb to it hook, line and sinker? It's colourful, technically amazing, riotously funny in places (particularly as far as the more lewd jokes go), and resurrects an art form that was basically dead as far as mainstream cinema is concerned. Now that it's back, it better not be going anywhere for a long time.

Image quality: This is the first BD release of a 2D Disney animated feature that didn't originate from film, and consequently is the first one not to have been put through the "make film look like digital video" mangling machine. The image is as crisp and pristine as you could reasonably expect, and the level of detail certainly allows you to truly appreciate the quality of the animation and the often deliberately impressionistic backgrounds. Compression definitely suffers in places (see Example 10), but overall this is a very strong disc, if not up to the standards of the recent PONYO. 9.5/10

The Princess and the Frog
studio: Buena Vista; country: USA; region code: A; codec: AVC;
file size: 24.2 GB; average bit rate (including audio): 35.58 Mbit/sec

Just arrived...

11:25 PM / Blu-ray / No Comments

THE PRINCESS AND THE FROG (BD, Buena Vista, Region A, USA)

Just arrived...

4:59 PM / Blu-ray / 1 Comment

THE BAADER MEINHOF COMPLEX (BD, MPI, Region A, USA)

Academy Award Winning Movie Trailer

9:15 PM / Cinema / 1 Comment

I just had to share this with you.

"Catchphrase!"

BD impressions: Taken

8:46 PM / BD Impressions / 3 Comments

TAKEN: in which ex-secret service man Liam Neeson travels to Paris and basically kills everyone. I'd be lying if I said this was a thought-provoking or particularly inventive film, but damn it if it isn't hellishly entertaining. Produced and co-written by Luc Besson, who by my estimation is in a class of his own when it comes to popcorn action cinema, the basic plot involves the kidnap of Neeson's daughter while on holiday by a gang of eastern European people traffickers with connections to a shady ring of Middle Eastern gangsters, and Neeson stopping at nothing to rescue her. It's all absurdly over the top, if not just plain absurd FULL STOP (and you don't get more absurd than Neeson's attempt at an American accent, something he seems to abandon about half-way through in favour of just using his normal voice), but if you've seen the TRANSPORTER or DISTRICT 13 movies, or indeed earlier Besson fare like LÉON (which, while more subdued and more thoughtful on the whole, was not without its loony moments), you'll know exactly what to expect. A rollicking rip-roaring roller-coaster ride, to quote the ebullient Paul Ross.

Incidentally, apparently the US theatrical release was cut to get a PG-13 rating. Given that this is surely the most deliriously violent film Besson has ever produced, I'm struggling to get my head round (a) how, even with the most judicious cutting, this could be achieved, and (b) how anyone could possibly think this was a good idea.

Image quality: Solid release from 20th Century Fox, reminding me a lot of the overall look (in terms of detail, grain and overall texture) of QUANTUM OF SOLACE, also from Fox. There's a bit of ringing around the left and right edges of the frame, which might be indicative of light filtering or a less than ideal downconversion from a higher resolution (does anyone know if this received a 4K digital intermediate?), and detail is perhaps a hair lower than I expected, but really I'm just nitpicking. It's my job to do that, though, and while TAKEN is a fine-looking disc indeed, it falls shy of FOX's best (for instance, JENNIFER'S BODY or I, ROBOT). Still, a very nice disc all round. 9.5/10

Taken
studio: 20th Century Fox; country: UK; region code: B; codec: AVC;
file size: 27.8 GB; average bit rate (including audio): 42.71 Mbit/sec

Just arrived...

4:30 PM / Blu-ray / No Comments

TOY STORY (BD, Buena Vista, Region ABC, USA)

Alice in Wonderland coming to BD in April

10:14 PM / Blu-ray / 6 Comments

A BD release of the Disney classic (not the naff-looking Tim Burton version currently playing in cinemas) appears to be coming out in Italy on May 2010:

Clicky!

Source: Blu-ray.com

Just arrived...

9:10 PM / Blu-ray / No Comments

CAPITALISM: A LOVE STORY (BD, Anchor Bay, Region A, USA)

UbiSoft's DRM faux-pas

11:17 PM / Games / 8 Comments

If you're a PC gamer, chances are you've heard about the fiasco surrounding the latest insidious digital rights management (DRM) system designed to screw legitimate customers... sorry, I mean't to say "designed to combat piracy". Funny now the two always seem to go hand in hand, isn't it?

Anyway, faced with the knowledge that, no matter what sort of copy protection or forced activation system they put on the game disc, the crackers will find a way of bypassing it, letting players get straight to the good stuff (often before the game is actually available on store shelves - SPORE, I'm looking at you), UbiSoft hit on an ingenious scheme: to force the player to authenticate and remain online at all times, connected to UbiSoft's servers and streaming a significant portion of the game data NOT stored on the physical disc. Sounds like a good idea, right?

Well, yes, until you break it down and figure out what it actually means. You have to remain connected to the internet the whole time. If your connection dies, for whatever reason, the game quits. Depending on which game it is, it might save your progress, but that's not a given. ASSASSIN'S CREED 2, for example, uses a checkpoint system, so if your connection dies, the game will only restore you back to the last checkpoint. As per Rock, Paper, Shotgun:

No matter what you're doing, no matter what the reason, the game will refuse to let you continue playing if it decides you're not online. You're dumped right back to a menu, losing any progress made since the last checkpoint. If you don't have a constant, uninterrupted internet connection, you can't play. Let's list some of the reasons you might drop your net connection, shall we? Router crash, ISP problems, cat playing with the cable, microwave muddling your wi-fi connection, train going into a tunnel when you're on 3G, Windows having a networking befuddlement, someone else in the house torrenting the bandwidth dry...

And let's get something straight here: we're talking about SINGLE PLAYER GAMES that require you to remain connected. That's a load of horse-hooey. A player's ability to run a single player game should not be dependent either on his/her web connection or the stability of UbiSoft's servers. It's ludicrous. It benefits no-one but the publisher. As Phill Cameron put it in his article at Gamasutra:

It's not there for our protection, it's there to stop people who aren't us (the paying customers), from getting their hands on the game.

[...]

Recently, PC Gamer managed to have a talk with Ubisoft about the technology. They claim that 'The real idea is that if you offer a game that is better when you buy it, then people will actually buy it. We wouldn't have built it if we thought that it was really going to piss off our customers.'

While it might be tempting to call them naive or blindly optimistic, the base theory there is sound; if you offer a better service than the pirates, you'll have more people buying the game. The problem is that here, with Assassin's Creed 2, we're not getting a better game when we buy.

The last point, which I emboldened, is in my opinion the most pertinent. From a shareholder's point of view, this new DRM system sounds wonderful in theory. After all, the bottom line is what counts, and what bigger bottom line is there than preventing the loss of sales due to piracy? (Let's, for a moment, run with the fallacy that every pirated copy directly equates to a lost sale.) Unfortunately, for the end user, it's meaningless. There's nothing to be gained by the gamer from this sort of content protection. The gamer is being asked to accept more stringent limitations being placed on their usage of the product in return for... nothing. Zilch. Nada.

The stupidity of this new system was laid bare for all to see when the aforementioned ASSASSIN'S CREED 2 was released on March 5th, and the servers were promptly brought to their knees due to the sheer demand placed on them, preventing legitimate customers from playing the game they'd just bought. That's right: people were unable to play a single player game because the servers couldn't cope with the number of connections. I hate to say "I told you so", but the sadist in me derives a considerable amount of schadenfreude from this whole affair. Rock, Paper, Shotgun again:

The DRM was clearly ludicrous from its first announcement, and Ubisoft could not have been sent a more clear message by a worldwide reaction of outrage. They persisted with it anyway (quashing some people's suspicions that this was a deliberately OTT announcement so they could appear to back down on it later), and despite repeated warnings that it was untenable continued to boast the "feature" as a bonus for gamers. This weekend people have not been gamers, because their game wouldn't run.

And don't forget that the game has currently only been released in Europe. Just imagine what's going to happen when it comes out in North America on the 9th...

This new DRM scheme is supposedly going to be employed for every subsequent UbiSoft PC game, including THE SETTLERS VII: PATHS TO A KINGDOM, which I was previously looking forward to playing but now won't be bothering with. Well, it'll be used until UbiSoft's managers cotton on to the fact that this is a major faux-pas and backtrack. That may take some time, given that all the evidence suggests that UbiSoft's managers are SPECTACULARLY stupid, but I'm confident that it will happen eventually. Electronic Arts, for example, eventually backed down on the ridiculous "three/five installs and you're out" scheme that they imposed on SPORE and RED ALERT 3, among others. It's a shame wary customers are going to have to miss out on the likes of ASSASSIN'S CREED 2 and THE SETTLERS 7, but them's the breaks, and I feel reasonably confident that the inevitable ASSASSIN'S CREED 3 and THE SETTLERS 8 will not be crippled to this extent. (That, or UbiSoft will devise something even worse, which I suppose is always a possibility...)

If nothing else, the ASSASSIN'S CREED 2 fiasco is a cause for celebration because it serves as a clear demonstration of just how dangerous this sort of DRM potentially is. If you bought the game, fully aware of the included restrictions, and found yourself unable to play it, then I sympathise, but maybe it will teach you not to be so trusting in future.

BD impressions: Triangle

11:07 PM / BD Impressions / 2 Comments

I wasn't really a fan of Christopher Smith's first feature, CREEP. Actually, that's putting it mildly: I thought it was, on the whole, dull and not particularly well-made or acted. I haven't seen his middle child, SEVERANCE, yet, but TRIANGLE is a quantum leap forward for him from CREEP. To be honest, saying anything about the plot whatsoever would ruin it completely, as it's one of those films that you really are better off knowing nothing about before watching it. However, I WILL say that he takes a potentially very tricky concept and pulls it off extremely well, aided in no small part by an excellent turn from Melissa George, who has a rather challenging role on her hands. Although the style couldn't be more different, I was reminded on numerous occasions of Kubrick's THE SHINING, if not in terms of quality then certainly in concept. While I found the characterisation and dialogue to be pretty thin (as was also the case with CREEP), and I can see some people finding the premise itself a bit frustrating, this was a pleasant surprise for me, and I definitely recommend giving it a look. Just try to ignore the dodgy CGI and green-screen...

Image quality: TRIANGLE was shot in high definition (Panavision Genesis HD) by Robert Humphreys (who also shot the sublime-looking SOMERSAULT), and it looks very good indeed on this BD from Icon. The level of detail on display is frequently jaw-dropping, and the compression is handled well for the most part, barring a bit of mosquito noise in the ocean and a single major encoding screw-up at 00:39:26. At times, the blacks look rather too grey, but this is by no means a constant issue, so I'm inclined to blame the photography or the colour timing rather than the transfer itself. A very fine-looking disc. 9/10

By the way, the UK release definitely seems to be the one to go for. From these screen captures, it's pretty clear that some scenes in the US version from First Look Studios have been filtered (though oddly enough, others appear unaffected).

Triangle
studio: Icon; country: UK; region code: B; codec: AVC;
file size: 19.8 GB; average bit rate (including audio): 28.74 Mbit/sec

Just arrived...

11:31 PM / Blu-ray / 6 Comments

An unexpected mega haul today. First, the two discs that I'd ordered online:

LUFTSLOTTET SOM PRENGTES (BD, Nordisk Film, Region ABC, Norway)

Known in its native Sweden as LUFTSLOTTET SOM SPRÄNGDES and in English-speaking territories as THE GIRL WHO KICKED THE HORNET'S NEST. I won't be watching it until I've read the novel (which I haven't started yet), but I took a look at the BD this evening and I'm sorry to report that it doesn't look pretty. See Lyris Lite for more information.

TRIANGLE (BD, Icon, Region B, UK)

Now, the discs I picked up at HMV today in a sale:

36 (BD, Palisades Tartan, Region B, UK)

LADY VENGEANCE (BD, Palisades Tartan, Region B, UK)

A TALE OF TWO SISTERS (BD, Palisades Tartan, Region B, UK)

THIRST (BD, Palisades Tartan, Region B, UK)

SIN CITY (BD, Buena Vista, Region ABC, UK)

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