News|Movies|BD & DVD|Writings|Other

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

11:59 PM / Cinema / No Comments

• Thursday, June 10, 2010: TRANSPORTER 3 (France/UK, 2008) 4/10
• Wednesday, June 23, 2010: THE HURT LOCKER (USA, 2008) 7/10
• Sunday, June 27, 2010: WANTED (USA/Germany, 2008) 2/10

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

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

• Wednesday, June 2, 2010: CITY OF THE LIVING DEAD (BD, Region ABC, USA)
• Wednesday, June 2, 2010: WATCHMEN: DIRECTOR'S CUT (BD, Region ABC, Canada)
• Saturday, June 5, 2010: WHERE EAGLES DARE (BD, Region ABC, UK)
• Monday, June 7, 2010: TERROR AT THE OPERA (DVD, Region 0, UK)
• Tuesday, June 8, 2010: A NIGHTMARE ON ELM STREET (BD, Region ABC, USA)
• Thursday, June 10, 2010: LIZARD IN A WOMAN'S SKIN (DVD, Region 2, UK)
• Tuesday, June 15, 2010: RIVELAZIONI DI UN MANIACO SESSUALE AL CAPO DELLA SQUADRA MOBILE (DVD, Region 2, Germany)
• Tuesday, June 22, 2010: LÉON: THE PROFESSIONAL (BD, Region ABC, USA)

I'm free! I've escaped!

10:22 PM / General / No Comments

I'm now on annual leave for the next two weeks and have set my PhD to one side as well. I'll still be working on my CASUALTY script throughout this period (well, except on my birthday, I would assume), but I should hopefully more time over the next several days to watch movies, play games, read (currently about 200 pages into Stieg Larsson's THE GIRL WHO KICKED THE HORNETS' NEST) and update the site more frequently.

BD impressions: Wanted

9:28 PM / BD Impressions / 13 Comments

Can I have those two hours of my life back, please?

I really don't feel like writing paragraph after paragraph about WANTED. It started off well, but rapidly disintegrated into a sludge of cod-philosophical mumbo-jumbo, incomprehensible action and a narrative so muddled it can only have been the work of a committee. What ends up playing out feels like a more colourful, sillier and vastly less entertaining rip-off of THE MATRIX - the sort of film that it's hard to believe anyone involved in the production actually cared about. The impressive cast is wasted, with Angelina Jolie doing nothing but pout and James McAvoy thoroughly miscast as a would-be action hero, overdoing the goofy facial expressions and making annoying "Waaaahoooooooeeeeee!" noises during the copious slow motion fight/chase scenes. And does Morgan Freeman not get tired of constantly getting the "Yoda" roles? An awful, awful film - loud, clumsy, confused and utterly forgettable.

Image quality: This is a very impressive-looking disc but for one issue that is impossible to overlook: sporadic combing artefacts that affect the film from beginning to end. I'm not aware of anyone else reporting on this, and I wonder whether perhaps only the UK release is affected (although I doubt that's the case, as I can't imagine Universal preparing a separate encode for either side of the Atlantic). Regardless, it's a pretty severe problem and one that I'm a little surprised made it through QC. (See Examples 19, 20 and 21.) Other than that, it looks great, with impressive detail and intact grain. 7/10

Wanted
studio: Universal; country: UK; region code: ABC; codec: AVC;
file size: 24.7 GB; average bit rate (including audio): 32.3 Mbit/sec

BD impressions: A Nightmare on Elm Street

8:59 PM / BD Impressions / 9 Comments

I've said before that I find Wes Craven very inconsistent as a filmmaker, and while A NIGHTMARE ON ELM STREET is regarded by a considerable number of people to be his finest achievement, I must admit I'm less sold on it. It has considerable merit, not least its compelling premise (A dead child killer who stalks people in their sleep? That's COOL!) and the fact that, before he turned into a figure of fun, Freddy Krueger was actually a pretty creepy individual. The dream sequences are imaginative - in fact, throughout the whole film Craven manages to create a dreamlike atmosphere. Nice musical score too, courtesy of Charles Bernstein. On the other hand, the characters don't do a whole lot for me, and the lead, Heather Langenkamp, is, to put it politely, uneven. That's not good when the bulk of the film rests on your shoulders, and while she rises to the occasion when it comes to screaming and running around in a state of terror, she stumbles through the dramatic scenes, some of the dialogue exchanges verging on painful.

It's definitely a landmark film, melding the slasher movie formula with supernatural horror, and delivering a true genre icon in the form of Krueger (though, given the later sequels, whether that's a good thing is somewhat debatable), but not a favourite of mine. Then again, I make no secret of the fact that the 80s US slasher movie craze more or less passed me by. Give me a good black-gloved Italian maniac over Michael, Freddy or Jason any day.

Image quality: Sterling work on this 1984 title, made all the more impressive when you consider just how much like a wax museum the Canadian release from Alliance Atlantis looked. Warner get something of a bum rap for their abuse of filters, but this one looks extremely film-like and sports an impressive amount of detail - far more than I would ever have expected of a title of this vintage and budget. I did come across one instance of digital clean-up gone wrong, at 00:10:42 when, at the start of a shot, prior to the actors moving into frame, the entire image (grain included) was frozen for around a second. It's a minor complaint, though, and on the whole I think Warner and New Line deserve a round of applause for treating this film properly. 9/10

A Nightmare on Elm Street
studio: New Line/Warner; country: USA; region code: ABC; codec: VC-1;
file size: 23.1 GB; average bit rate (including audio): 36.34 Mbit/sec

Vroom!

10:12 PM / Technology / 4 Comments

Out of the blue, a replacement for my faulty motherboard arrived by courier this afternoon... and, an hour or so later, I was up and running with my new system in my new case. I wonder what was wrong with the previous motherboard. The supplier provided no explanation at all - just a new board in the same box I sent back to them.

It's a very nice case, with more fans than you can shake a stick at and greatly improved ventilation compared to my previous case. The net result is that all my components run significantly cooler than they did before, particularly the hard drives, where I've seen a drop of nearly 20 degrees Celsius, thanks to the whopping big 230 mm fan at the front of the case blowing cool air over them. Because of the increased ventilation and number of fans, more noise does end up escaping, but at the same time, the fact that everything is running much cooler means that the noisy video card fan (always the loudest part of the system) doesn't have to work anything like as hard when playing games, so the overall result is a quieter system... and one that will hopefully enjoy a longer life expectancy too.

So yeah, I'm extremely relieved everything went to plan this time. I was dreading plugging in the new board only to find out that the problem lay elsewhere. I should be getting a replacement for my dying laptop hard drive within the next couple of days too.

Coming soon...

9:47 PM / DVD / 4 Comments

The fourth Mondo Vision DVD release, Andrzej Zulawski's SZAMANKA, should be out soon and available to pre-order from Amazon.com even sooner. No specific dates just yet, but the final master is on the way to the factory, so the gears are definitely in motion. You can find out all the details about the two versions that will be available in this thread at CriterionForum.org (along with a closer look at the artwork).

Please begin disposing of your Russian pirate copies now.

Do you MUBI?

9:11 PM / Cinema / 4 Comments

I've set up a MUBI account. Apparently, I actually created it ages ago, back when the site was known as The Auteurs, but I completely forgot about it until one of this site's regular readers emailed me a link to my profile, asking "Is this you?"

I spent way more time than was healthy this afternoon rating films and putting together a couple of lists - Dario Argento's films (sans DO YOU LIKE HITCHCOCK?, which for some reason isn't in the database) and Pixar's output in order of preference, and I've only scratched the surface of what looks like a very multi-faceted site with a vibrant community and some quality opinion pieces.

If you've got an account, why not add me to your contacts? Please. It's getting lonely.

Just arrived...

9:05 PM / Blu-ray / No Comments

LÉON: THE PROFESSIONAL (BD, Sony Pictures, Region ABC, USA)

Picked this up from Amazon for $10 to replace my German Kinowelt release with its bungled 7.1 remix. Unfortunately, it comes from the same contrast boosted master (used for every BD release so far), but apparently that's how Luc Besson now wants the film to look, so I doubt we'll see a "correct" version in the foreseeable future.

Like London buses

7:26 PM / Technology / 2 Comments

They say that when it rains, it pours. Or, in my case, when one computer component fails, another one won't be far behind it. Last weekend, it was my six-week-old motherboard. This weekend, it was the hard drive in my laptop, barely two months old itself. For some time, it had been making alarming clicking and squeaking noises, and recently had developed an irritating tendency to randomly not appear when the machine was booting, requiring a restart. This morning, I switched it on only to find that the performance was abysmal, with frequent, inexplicable freezes and a general sense of sluggishness. I decided to perform a diagnostic test on it using Seagate's SeaTools software. A couple of minutes later, it failed the short DST (diagnostic self test). At this point I promptly prised it out of the laptop and contacted Ebuyer about an RMA.

So, once again I'm without a laptop. The most annoying part of it is that this drive was itself bought to replace one that had failed, albeit in a more extreme manner. I doubt it could possibly be the case, but I really hope there's not some fault in the laptop itself that is periodically shafting hard disks.

June 2010: the month in which not just one but two computers went tits-up on me.

What's in a giallo?

11:41 PM / Cinema / No Comments

This is almost as funny as the The Do-It-Yourself Giallo Generator:

http://www.kqek.com/dvd_reviews/pop_ups/GialloCliches.htm

The thing is, if this was a real film, I just KNOW I'd watch it.

I WANT this game

4:43 PM / Games / 1 Comment

The facts:

• A new RAYMAN game is coming out.
   
• It's an actual RAYMAN game, not one of those infuriating "Rabbids" activity packs.
   
• It's a 2D sidescroller.

Can someone pinch me to make sure I'm not dreaming?

After RAYMAN 3: HOODLUM HAVOC turned the once-adorable platforming hero with no arms and legs into a snarky, 'tude-infested wise-ass and the "Rabbids" spin-off games on the Wii aimed at the so-called casual games market proceeded to urinate all over my once-cherished memories of the first two games, I was pretty much ready to give up on the whole series. Then, quite by chance, I stumbled across this post on Cartoon Brew, and the attached video was enough to cause the game to leap straight to the top of my most anticipated releases of 2010 (well, behind STARCRAFT II, that is...).

This stunning-looking game, developed by new start-up group UbiArt, is apparently the work of a mere five people, and if it plays have as well as the video suggests, then it should more than make up for all the indignities visited upon the Rayman character over the last few years. Billed as a prequel to the original RAYMAN, it looks set to take full advantage of its two-dimensional nature, embracing the fact that it is, ultimately, an interactive cartoon and giving us a taste of what highly polished, high resolution 2D can look like.

Yes, this is an actual in-game screenshot.

As for availability, from what I can gather it will be episodic in nature and released for download rather than on physical media (boo). It has been announced for release on Xbox Live Arcade, PSN and the Maxipad, and while IGN seems to think it will be coming out on the PC too, I haven't been able to find any confirmation of that elsewhere. You know, I might just have to break the habits of a lifetime and buy a console game... and a download-only one at that.

Just arrived...

9:32 PM / DVD / 6 Comments

RIVELAZIONI DI UN MANIACO SESSUALE AL CAPO DELLA SQUADRA MOBILE (DVD, Camera Obscura, Region 2, Germany)

...a.k.a. SO SWEET, SO DEAD. This is the third instalment in the Italian Genre Cinema Collection from German label Camera Obscura, which has been generating quite a bit of positive buzz since its launch (they will also be releasing Dario Argento's INFERNO on BD in Germany later this year). The film itself is by pretty much anyone's standards a lower-tier giallo (despite the presence of Hitchcock stalwart Farley Granger and several giallo mainstays, and some nice Maurice Binder-inspired opening titles) at the more right-wing, reactionary end of the spectrum, but this is a quality package clearly put together by people who understand and love this sort of film. Perhaps best of all, for English speakers, the whole thing is bilingual, with the menus, extras and even the included booklet in both German and English (the film itself includes Italian and German audio, and a choice of German and English subtitles). It features an excellent (subtitled) commentary by critics Christian Kessler and Marcus Stiglegger, which does an impressive job of making a third-rate giallo seem like a fascinating historical document of its time... which to be fair, all gialli are, otherwise I doubt I'd be researching a PhD on them.

The PhD, incidentally, is currently taking up most of my time. I need to get the second draft of my current chapter finished by Monday. After that, it's back to my CASUALTY shadow scheme script. Plus, I've got my faulty motherboard being picked up tomorrow. Here's hoping for a swift conclusion to that little calamity.

Tangled teaser

10:43 PM / Animation / 8 Comments

It's like SHREK crossed with early 90s Disney, and it's not pleasant. Seriously, John Lasseter, what are you THINKING?

(Admittedly, it's slightly less painful with the sound turned off, but still...)

To cleanse your eyes and ears of the monstrosity, here is a video of a Siberian Husky singing to a baby to stop it crying. (Perhaps the baby had just seen the TANGLED trailer?)

BD impressions: Transporter 3

5:03 PM / BD Impressions / 4 Comments

In THE TRANSPORTER, Jason Statham (I'm not going to call the character by his name - he's just Jason Statham being Jason Statham) drove bank robbers to safety and indulged in people trafficking with nary the blink of an eye. In TRANSPORTER 2, he jacked that in in favour of ferrying a rich brat to and from dental appointments. In TRANSPORTER 3, he FALLS IN LOVE, and the series (I'm assuming they aren't planning on making any more) dies with a whimper rather than a bang.

With TRANSPORTER 1 and 2 director Louis Leterrier's star ascendant, Olivier Megaton takes up the reins for this third outing. However, while Megaton certainly deserves his share of the blame for the film's problems (in terms of camerawork and editing sensibility, think Michael Bay on acid - yeah, it's that bad), it wouldn't be fair to claim that everything is down to him. Luc Besson and regular writing partner Robert Kamen's script is a mess, reining in the over-the-top nature of the second film in favour of something that tries desperately to be epic and taken seriously, meaning that the more ridiculous elements (the over-the-top car chases, the blatant homoeroticism that has Statham removing his shirt on the flimsiest of pretences) don't gel at all, resulting in a film that just doesn't know what it wants to be. The plot is overly convoluted, to the extent that, when the credits began to roll, I wasn't sure what had actually happened - not a good state of affairs for the latest instalment in a series of deliriously stupid summer blockbusters.

Besson also throws in the most annoying sidekick this side of Spielberg's wife in INDIANA JONES AND THE TEMPLE OF DOOM. Besson apparently spotted Natalya Rudakova in the street, took a shine for her and paid for her to take acting lessons - a wasted investment if ever there was one, because her performance, to put it bluntly, sucks. Not that a better actress would necessarily have made the role any more palatable, as her character's personality is so loathsome that I spent the bulk of the film hoping she'd get it in the neck. Nice freckles, though.

So, in summary: TRANSPORTER 2 > THE TRANSPORTER > TRANSPORTER 3.

Image quality: This is comfortably the best-looking of the TRANSPORTER films on BD - if you compare the captures below to those from the first film, you can clearly see just how much the technology improved in the space of a few years. Detail is razor-sharp, and I'm convinced that the noticeable haloing in Example 13 and Example 21 is some sort of photographic effect rather than tampering (any idea if that particular scene was shot against green screen?). Alas, the excess of quick Michael Bay-style cutting in this film takes its toll, and despite the generous bit rate there are some really nasty compression artefacts at times (see Example 7). Generally they're not too distracting in motion, because the camera rarely remains still long enough for them to register, but their presence is disappointing nonetheless and well below the standard I've come to expect from Icon as far as encoding goes. 9/10

Transporter 3
studio: Icon; country: UK; region code: ABC; codec: AVC;
file size: 29 GB; average bit rate (including audio): 40.13 Mbit/sec

Dead computer

10:00 PM / Technology / 12 Comments

My lovely new computer, less than six weeks old, died yesterday.

First, to set the stage, I decided I wasn't happy with the temperature inside my old Antec Sonata III case. That case was designed with noise suppression in mind first and foremost, and was extremely limited in terms of cooling, having only a single case fan and no ventilation whatsoever. Heat would just sort of accumulate inside it and have nowhere to go... not good when you're running a Core i7 and a beefy video card. I decided to replace the case with a butt-ugly but feature-rich Coolermaster HAF 932, which is larger than the Sonata III and has an insane number of super-huge fans, blowing cool air over all the components inside it. It arrived yesterday, and I promptly carted everything upstairs, where I would have more light and room to manoeuvre.

The build didn't take particularly long, and I had everything put together and looking rather tidy thanks to the case's cable management system in just over an hour. At this point, I closed the side door, plugged it into the wall, hit the power switch and everything kicked into gear. "Great," I thought and, after setting my boot drive priorities in the BIOS, powered it off and hoiked it back downstairs.

It wouldn't turn on. Or rather, it would turn on and the fans would spin up, but then it would cut out after a second or so, before trying to spin up again, only to fail once again. Rinse and repeat in an endless cycle until I yanked the power cable out.

Over the course of the evening, I tore the whole thing apart and put it back together bit by bit, trying to isolate the problem. At first I thought perhaps it might be short circuiting, or that some component or other had become unseated. Nothing I tried managed to fix the problem, however, with it failing to boot even with the device sitting outside the case (to eliminate the possibility that it was shorting out on something) and only the bare minimum components - CPU and heatsink - plugged in. I've tried removing the CMOS battery, I've tried manually resetting the BIOS using the jumpers on the board, I've even removed and reseated my CPU and heatsink, but to no avail.

Basically, the problem can only be the CPU or the motherboard, and my gut instinct is telling me that the motherboard has somehow been bricked. How that could have happened in the process of carrying it down a couple of flights of stairs, I don't know, but there you have it. The only semi-plausible explanation I can come up with it that something went wrong when the BIOS updated itself after I changed the device boot priorities.

Whatever the reason, I'm basically stuck with a rather expensive doorstop. The CPU and motherboard were both ordered separately, so it's not as if I can return them both to the same place and have them figure out where the problem lies. I THINK it's the motherboard, but I can't be sure. My first course of action is going to be to take the matter up with the motherboard supplier, and see what happens from there. Luckily, I hadn't got around to selling my old system yet, so I'm currently able to use it. I'm not happy at all, though, as I'm sure you can imagine.

Fucking computers.

What I should be using right now.

BD impressions: Scream

8:28 PM / BD Impressions / 7 Comments

Ah, the 90s! Haven't they aged well? No, not really, at least in the case of SCREAM. Wes Craven's 1996 slasher was more or less the first modern horror movie I ever saw - prior to that, I had only ever been acquainted with the likes of THE OMEN and THE MEPHISTO WALTZ, and SCREAM opened up a whole new world of possibilities for me, ultimately leading me, in a very roundabout way, to the gialli of Argento, Fulci et al. SCREAM owes something of an indirect debt to these films, and can essentially be viewed as a Californian, teen-oriented giallo, with the Ghostface costume and raspy Roger Jackson voice a clear descendent of the black-coated, black-gloved killer who so often disguised his (or her) voice when making menacing phone calls to his intended victims. I'm inclined to think, however, that the better gialli were somewhat cleverer and more self-aware than SCREAM.

SCREAM, you see, has been called many things. A parody, a satire, an homage... the last of these is probably nearest the mark, although the film's creators have muddied the waters by using all three (I forget precisely who called it what and when, but I don't think it really matters much). The film purports to be self-aware, and this self-awareness manifests itself in the form of its entire cast having an intimate knowledge of the horror genre and repeatedly observing that the situation unfolding around them is very much like... would you believe it... a horror movie. The trouble is that I'm not quite sure what the filmmakers are trying to say. Are they mocking the genre? I don't have a problem with that - slasher movies are ripe for mockery. SCREAM, however, attempts to both have its cake and eat it, essentially pointing out the clichés but doing nothing beyond that. There's little real subversion of slasher movie conventions, and the few that ARE subverted - for example, Sidney commits the cardinal "sin" of having sex but lives to tell the tale - stick out like sore thumbs amid the slough that aren't. I don't know it Craven and writer Kevin Williamson were aware of how conventional they were being in killing off the ditzy, big-titted blonde, but frankly I don't think it really matters whether they knew what they were doing or not - either way, no real point ends up being made.

What we're left with, once you ignore the muddled and now decidedly uncool self-referentiality, is an admittedly well-made slasher movie that looks an awful lot like a whole bunch of other well-made horror movies from the previous decade. Craven is what I would call a very uneven director - for every NIGHTMARE ON ELM STREET there's a SCREAM 3 - but when he's on the ball, he's REALLY on the ball. His most recent film but one, RED EYE, was a gripping exercise in eking every last drop of tension out of a minimalist situation, and on several occasions he manages the same thing with SCREAM. The opening sequence, featuring an extended cameo by Drew Barrymore, is one such example; another is Sidney's first phone conversation with Ghostface and her subsequent flight from him through her otherwise empty house. These sequences owe a certain debt to the segment "The Telephone" in Mario Bava's BLACK SABBATH, and both Barrymore and Neve Campbell make for likeable "scream queens". It also has a genuinely effective whodunit that caught me off-guard the first time I watched it. When the tension lets up and the characters start waxing lyrical about "Wes Carpenter" (haw haw) flicks, however, you remember all too quickly how annoying the rash of self-referential slasher movies that came out in SCREAM's wake were. SCREAM was the first, and probably also the best, but it just doesn't have the impact it did 15 years ago.

Image quality: Ugh. I think perhaps even Universal might have had second thoughts about releasing this disc... but then again, having seen the screen captures of their recent BD of SPARTACUS, I'm not so sure. SCREAM is barely on the right side of watchable - muddy, grubby-looking and lacking in detail, it has the look of a master created some time ago with the assumption that it would be downscaled to a more forgiving resolution. It looks a lot like the various DVD releases that have surfaced over the years (many of them non-anamorphic) and offers a fairly marginal upgrade over them. If you find it cheap in a bargain bin somewhere, it might be worth a look. Otherwise, you're better off waiting for Disney to release it... which will probably happen before too long, given that SCREAM 4 is currently in production over at the Weinstein Company. Hopefully, they'll have the sense to retransfer it. 4/10

Scream
studio: Icon; country: Australia; region code: ABC; codec: AVC;
file size: 18.1 GB; average bit rate (including audio): 23.38 Mbit/sec

Just arrived...

11:48 AM / DVD / 8 Comments

LIZARD IN A WOMAN'S SKIN (DVD, Optimum, Region 2, UK)

This is my fourth copy of Fulci's best giallo, and I've only taken a brief look at it, but it looks to be the best presentation of the film yet, much more consistent than either of the two Shriek Show releases or the Italian version from Federal Video. I've come across a couple of segments that still seem to have been taken from a poorer source (by the looks of it the same one used for certain segments in the Shriek Show re-release), but otherwise the look of this presentation is extremely consistent. The annoying green tint that affected the middle of the film on both Shriek Show versions is completely gone. It looks like a new scan to me, not just the same old stuff recycled.

I know those of us who saw the "work in progress" at the Glasgow Film Festival earlier this year were a bit concerned about how the final disc would look, but take it from me it's well worth the money, even if the only extra is a trailer.

Just arrived...

11:22 AM / Blu-ray / 4 Comments

A NIGHTMARE ON ELM STREET (BD, New Line/Warner, Region ABC, USA)

The original, not the Michael Bay remake, in case you were wondering.

Inferno on BD... uncut!

4:02 PM / Blu-ray / 14 Comments

Great news, people: Dario Argento's INFERNO is coming to BD in the UK on August 2, and will be uncut for the first time in this country.

Originally announced with the usual BBFC-mandated five seconds of cuts to a scene of a cat eating a mouse (I hope that dastardly cat was charged with animal cruelty), the news sparked something of an internet outcry and some decidedly mixed feelings for many about purchasing what would essentially be an incomplete product. Reacting to the outcry, distributor Arrow Films took the matter to the BBFC and managed to do the unthinkable:

Arrow have asked me to pass on their sincere and warmest thanks to everyone on here who took the time to write to the BBFC.

Against expectations we now have the following ruling:

"we've now waived the proposed cut and passed INFERNO '18' uncut with all previous cuts waived"

Is that not the most unbelievable thing ever? I'm so used to railing against the actions of censorship bodies that when one of them make a decision I actually APPROVE of, I'm at something of a loss for words. I would suggest that everyone who is happy about this decision emails the BBFC at contact_the_bbfc@bbfc.co.uk to thank them for making the right choice. It's also worth emailing Arrow Films at info@arrowfilms.co.uk to thank them for standing up to the BBFC's initial decision in the first place instead of simply accepting it, as many other labels would no doubt have done. I will be contacting both myself to let them know my appreciation.

The image above shows the cover art and contents (of the DVD release - I couldn't find any for the BD version). As with the Arrow releases of DAWN OF THE DEAD and DAY OF THE DEAD, this release of INFERNO contains multiple reversible covers, postcards, a booklet and a poster.

The official run-down of the bonus features is as follows:

THIS AMAZING 30th ANNIVERSARY EDITION CONTAINS:

- Reversible sleeve with original and newly commissioned art work

- Double-sided fold out Poster

- Collector's Booklet featuring brand new writing on Inferno by Alan Jones, author of Profondo Argento

- High Definition Presentation of the film (1080p)

- Optional 7.1 DTS-HD/2.0 Stereo Audio

SPECIAL FEATURES:

- Introduction to Inferno by star Daria Nicolodi

- Dario's Inferno (16 mins interview with Dario Argento)

- Acting in Hot Water: An Interview with Daria Nicolodi (18 mins interview)

- The Other Mother: Making the Black Cat (16 mins) In 1989 director Luigi Cozzi (a long time friend and collaborator of Dario Argento) decided to make the unofficial follow-up to Inferno and 'complete' the Three Mothers legacy. This feature looks at the torrid history of The Black Cat, with plenty of clips too!

- Dario Argento: An Eye for Horror (57 mins) Mark Kermode narrates this documentary on Argento's career including interviews with George A. Romero and John Carpenter

- The Complete Dario Argento Trailer Gallery [18 films]

- Easter Egg (5 mins of Dario Argento in English, with random memories of Inferno)

It's worth pointing out that German label Camera Obscura is also releasing INFERNO on BD later this year, with a completely different set of extras, among them a commentary by critics Christian Kessler and Marcus Stiglegger. These specs as per frequent Land of Whimsy reader Bobafett:

It will be a special edition consisting of a Blu-ray disc and a DVD holding the bonus features.

Audio options will consist of German, English and Italian with optional German and English subtitles.

The bonus will consist of:

- Audio commentary by German film critics Christian Keßler and Marcus Stiglegger (probably subtitled in English as well, at least that was the case with their last Italian genre release on DVD)

- 80-minute documentary about Inferno, containing new, exclusive interviews with Daria Nicolodi, cinematographer Romano Albani, Luigi Cozzi and film critics Antonio Bruschini and Antonio Tentori. They are planning to film further interviews for it this week, maybe even with Argento himself (personally I wouldn't count on it though).

- A tour through the locations used in the film

- German, Italian, English trailers

- Gallery

- Booklet

Their transfer will be based on the current Italian HD master. It is unclear if the color palette will look exactly identical to the Italian DVD or not.

Prior to the BBFC's decision to waive the cuts, I was only going to buy the German release, but now, INFERNO fan that I am, I'm tempted to actually pick up both.

Just arrived...

11:18 AM / DVD / No Comments

TERROR AT THE OPERA (DVD, Arrow Video, Region 2, UK)

I picked up this recent DVD re-release of OPERA (to use its proper name - I refuse to refer to it by its ridiculous retitling) not because it offers any improvement over the earlier releases in terms of image or sound quality (and in fact the 5.1 remix it includes is one of the worst botch-jobs I've ever heard, with some sort of reverb effect added to the entire thing), but because it includes the shorter American re-edit by Orion Pictures (the one entitled TERROR AT THE OPERA), which I've always wanted to see, out of morbid curiosity.

Just arrived...

11:11 PM / Blu-ray / 4 Comments

WHERE EAGLES DARE (BD, Warner, Region ABC, UK)

Blue Underground, Blu-ray and grain

8:10 PM / Blu-ray / 35 Comments

There has been something of a debate raging in the internet pipes of late surrounding Blue Underground's BD versions of a number of cult Italian movies, notably the recent releases of Sergio Corbucci's western DJANGO and Lucio Fulci's zombie horror movie CITY OF THE LIVING DEAD. The point of contention is grain... or rather, what at first glance APPEARS TO BE grain.

You may remember, back when I received my first Blue Underground BD, THE STENDHAL SYNDROME, I was slightly perplexed by the grain present in the image, chiefly its harshness. At times, it looked less like film grain and more like video noise. My initial inclination was that it had been artificially sharpened, but on the whole I was fairly impressed by the image quality. Subsequent Blue Underground BDs, while generally still featuring fairly pronounced grain, looked much less suspect, and I was generally extremely pleased with the look of THE BIRD WITH THE CRYSTAL PLUMAGE, THE NEW YORK RIPPER and (especially) TWO EVIL EYES. One of this site's regular readers, Christopher D. Jacobson, even contacted Blue Underground to inquire directly as to the seemingly artificial grain in THE STENDHAL SYNDROME and was told unequivocally by them that

The extra grain you are seeing is normal for a High Definition transfer of an older film, [...] present in the original photography of the film, as well as the High Definition transfer which was made in 2007 from the original Italian 35mm Interpositive.

As a result, I gave it no further thought...

...until I began hearing decidedly mixed reports about the recent releases of DJANGO and CITY OF THE LIVING DEAD, particularly the latter. Film restoration expert Robert A. Harris described it in positively glowing terms. It looked, he said, "like film." Soon afterwords, he has similarly kind words to say about DJANGO. It "now has a new life on Blu-ray," he declared.

Others had less positive things to say, however. In the same thread, Torsten Kaiser of Berlin-based film restoration house TLEFilms, and a man whose opinions have a great deal of respect for, asked Mr. Harris to confirm the presence of "maze patterns and the artificial sharpening / coring" on DJANGO. At around the same time, AV Science Forum member BsRoz raised objections about the look of both films on BD, stating that there was "clearly something very wrong with the image quality" and going on to posit that

It looks to be a combination of DNR gone wrong, combined with incredible amounts of sharpening and colour boosting. Blacks are riddled with noise and grain freezes from time to time, almost shaping a honeycomb pattern. There's quite a bit of smearing and artifacting going on in CotLD. Detail in Django is preserved, but waxy faces tend to show up.

A little later, another AVS Forum member, Matt Stevens, had this to say:

OK, I just talked to some people here in NYC who do this for a living and their opinion is that Django was DNR'd of grain, then given fake grain, added via computer. They even showed me the algorithm for grain that looked exactly the same.

I was planning on picking up both these discs anyway (despite not being a huge fan of CITY OF THE LIVING DEAD - I prefer Fulci's gialli to his zombie movies any day), but news of this controversy caused me to go ahead and order them a little sooner than I otherwise would have. I've now taken a good look at both of them and, while I haven't watched them from beginning to end yet and am therefore not willing to do a full-on BD Impressions piece just yet, I thought I'd share my thoughts with you.

Click image above to enlarge to full size.

DJANGO

This one looks harsh, no doubt about it. It features what is probably the heaviest grain I've ever seen on a BD (DJANGO was shot on 35mm, but I can think of very few 16mm productions that come close to matching it in terms of grain intensity), and I'd be lying if I say it looked entirely convincing. The biggest issue for me is how sharp it looks. The film as a whole has a decent amount of detail, but the grain is crisper than the underlying image, creating a very odd look whereby the grain appears to "float" in front of the image rather than actually BEING the image... if that makes any sense. It's not an unpleasant-looking image on the whole, but there's something very artificial about it, and I would be prepared to buy into the theory that the image was scrubbed of grain and then regrained.

Click image above to enlarge to full size.

CITY OF THE LIVING DEAD

Ugh. This one looks pretty nasty. I showed it to my brother, an independent DVD/BD author and compressionist, and he very quickly concluded that it looked very much like the whole thing had been completely blasted with NR, scrubbing the grain entirely, and with some sort of electronically generated noise being added on top of it. There's just no detail or texture whatsoever: all that's left is a soft, waxy image with incredibly harsh digital noise dancing around on top of it. It doesn't look remotely film-like, whatever Robert Harris may say. And in case anyone thinks the UK release by Arrow Films looks any better, it doesn't: it's just the same synthetic image with the added drawback of featuring significantly worse compression of the heavy grain/noise.

FINAL THOUGHTS

I don't wish to state with any degree of certainty what happened here. I wasn't there, I didn't have any part in it, and while I like to think that I have a keen visual eye, I'm not an expert on film restoration. I can only state WHAT IT LOOKS LIKE TO ME, and what it looks like is something very suspect. It's worth pointing out, though, that - assuming the grain Is synthetic (and that's still a big assumption) - these image quality issues are not necessarily Blue Underground's fault. Any independent label licensing films owned by other parties is going to be obliged to work with the materials they're given, and these are not always of the best quality. In the case of CITY OF THE LIVING DEAD, it could well be that Blue Underground were simply handed a heavily DNR'd master of CITY OF THE LIVING DEAD and chose to attempt to reconstruct the grain rather than simply releasing it as a waxy, digital-looking mess. (There's a truly horrendous-looking Italian DVD doing the rounds, taken from a "new digital transfer from the original Italian negative", and the same master could potentially have been the original source for the BU release.) It does happen.

When my brother worked on the highly praised US DVD release of Andrzej Zulawski's L'IMPORTANT C'EST D'AIMER from Mondo Vision, the opening credits were in a dreadful state and he ultimately decided to blast them with DNR and then recreate the grain digitally (sampling it from elsewhere in the movie). To the best of my knowledge, no-one has noticed. The point is, it can be done, and it can be done well. It just wasn't done at all well for CITY OF THE LIVING DEAD. DJANGO looks considerably better in my estimation, but I would still very much like to know the story behind these transfers. If it turns out that this is simply how these films look and have always look, then I will happily retract any criticisms. For now, though, I'm just not convinced that what I'm seeing is natural.

Some thoughts on Kamera Books' new Argento book

11:09 AM / Books / 3 Comments

James Gracey's recently published guide to Dario Argento, appropriately enough titled DARIO ARGENTO, is by the author's own admission introductory in nature, and as such seems to be aimed primarily at readers who are unfamiliar with or new to the work of the director of such classics as SUSPIRIA, DEEP RED and TENEBRAE. I'm therefore inclined to feel that Argento neophytes will be the ones who'll get the most out of it. However, that's not to say there's nothing on offer for the stalwarts...

The book follows a fairly conventional structure. It briefly introduces the director and his work, and then goes on to cover each of his films in chronological order, dividing them into a handful of broadly defined eras (the "animal trilogy", the supernatural horror period of SUSPIRIA and INFERNO, etc.) and highlighting recurrent themes and motifs. Gracey also offers his own judgement on each of the maestro's eighteen feature films and various TV projects, although perhaps wisely he avoids fixating too much on on critiquing their merits (or, in some cases, lack thereof), thereby preventing the book from simply becoming an opinion piece. As a result, even films that he is not personally overly fond of, such as PHENOMENA and THE PHANTOM OF THE OPERA, receive the same depth of analysis as a SUSPIRIA or a DEEP RED, resulting in a study that is commendably even-handed in its approach.

This is particularly appreciated with regard to Argento's most recent film, the much-maligned GIALLO, which regardless of its flaws is surely as deserving of careful consideration as any of his other work... if not more so, given the torrent of vitriolic condemnation which has, to an extent, smothered the more moderate reactions. Gracey scores some major kudos by writing what is, to the best of my knowledge, the first serious printed analysis of GIALLO, and also takes the time to consider Argento projects that are often given short shrift or indeed ignored completely, such as his historical comedy THE FIVE DAYS OF MILAN and his various forays into the world of television. True, the auteurist approach that runs through the book becomes rather tenuous when applied to director-for-hire projects like the two MASTERS OF HORROR TV episodes or the aforementioned GIALLO, but Gracey at least admits upfront that these are strictly speaking less Dario Argento films than films devised by others with Argento in mind.

When it comes to Argento's earlier films, Gracey is on ground that has already been tread countless times, and as a result those who have read Alan Jones' PROFONDO ARGENTO, Chris Gallant's ART OF DARKNESS or indeed Maitland McDonagh's recently republished BROKEN MIRRORS/BROKEN MINDS (the first serious study of Argento's films), among others, are unlikely to find much information that they haven't come across before. That said, Gracey deserves credit for collating all this information and condensing it into an approachable and comprehensible form: a lot of the same information is present in the various essays included in ART OF DARKNESS, but I personally know several people who found that tome, with its decidedly academic slant, somewhat inaccessible. Lest I give the wrong impression, though, that's not to say that everything in this new book is simply recycled from earlier sources. Among other observations, Gracey makes some salient points about the recurring presence of blinds, drapes and curtains in Argento's work, and also points out the parallels between the characters played by Karl Malden and James Franciscus in THE CAT O' NINE TAILS and those played by Max von Sydow and Stefano Dionisi in SLEEPLESS, which seem obvious in retrospect but which had never occurred to me.

The text has a tendency to feel slightly disjointed at times, with random observations occasionally creeping in that have no apparent relation to the text surrounding them. There are also some fairly glaring typos (such as using "omit" rather than "emit") that the proofreader really ought to have caught. It's also unlikely to ultimately replace ART OF DARKNESS, PROFONDO ARGENTO or BROKEN MIRRORS/BROKEN MINDS as the "go to" books on Argento any time soon. That's not simply because they have higher page counts and therefore contain more material - it's because they have a clarity of purpose that Gracey's book, to a certain extent, lacks. McDonagh and Gallant's books both focus on in-depth academic analysis, while Jones' tome is more of an exhaustive historical behind-the-scenes document. Gracey tries to do a little of both, and the final result, while assuredly an excellent introduction to Argento for those new to his films, might strike old hands as being a bit watered down. Still, it's immensely readable: at a hair under 230 pages, it's not a long book, and most readers will probably devour it in the space of a couple of sittings, but it's enjoyable from cover to cover. Gracey clearly knows his stuff, and a love of all things Argento shines through on each page.

Just arrived...

11:22 PM / Blu-ray / 3 Comments

CITY OF THE LIVING DEAD (BD, Blue Underground, Region ABC, USA)

WATCHMEN: DIRECTOR'S CUT (BD, Warner, Region ABC, Canada)

I actually got WATCHMEN for free, thanks to AxelMusic's rewards programme. Basically, you accrue points with every purchase you make from them, and once you have the appropriate amount, you can choose to "spend" them on one of the various products they offer - a pretty neat system, in my opinion.

More posts