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Films I saw for the first time in October 2010

11:59 PM / Cinema / 5 Comments

• Monday, October 4, 2010: THE DISAPPEARANCE OF ALICE CREED (UK, 2009) 7/10
• Wednesday, October 13, 2010: DON'T SAY A WORD (USA/Australia, 2001) 7/10
• Sunday, October 24, 2010: TRICK 'R TREAT (USA, 2007) 5/10

BDs and DVDs I bought or received in October 2010

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

• Friday, October 1, 2010: THE DOWNFALL OF BERLIN: ANONYMA (BD, Region ABC, UK)
• Saturday, October 2, 2010: THE DISAPPEARANCE OF ALICE CREED (BD, Region B, UK)
• Friday, October 8, 2010: BEAUTY AND THE BEAST (BD, Region ABC, USA)
• Friday, October 8, 2010: THE EXORCIST (BD, Region ABC, USA)
• Saturday, October 9, 2010: THE LAST OF THE MOHICANS (BD, Region A, USA)
• Wednesday, October 13, 2010: SZAMANKA (DVD, Region 0, USA) [sample copy]
• Thursday, October 14, 2010: ROMEO + JULIET (BD, Region A, USA)
• Friday, October 15, 2010: SEX AND LUCÍA (BD, Region A, USA)
• Wednesday, October 20, 2010: MOULIN ROUGE! (BD, Region A, USA)
• Friday, October 22, 2010: TOY STORY 3 (BD, Region A, USA)
• Tuesday, October 26, 2010: ALIEN ANTHOLOGY (BD, Region ABC, UK)

Introducing the Movie Matters podcast

8:55 PM / Podcast / 9 Comments

And now for something totally (and I mean totally) different.

A while back, my good friend Lee Howard (who posts on here as Count Fosco) approached me with the idea of us teaming up to do a series of podcasts about our mutual love of all things film-related. Of course, I ran away screaming... and then had a think about it and decided it was a fantastic idea. Obviously I'm not new to the whole film reviewing thing, having done it for years both on this site and at DVD Times, but I've never participated in a podcast before, which makes this all a bit scary.

After the odd false start where we spent a whole lot of time ironing out the various technical issues that were hurled our way, we finally recorded our first episode on Tuesday afternoon, and Movie Matters was born.

And now we're sharing it with you lucky lot. You can download it from one of the following locations:

• http://www.landofwhimsy.com/moviematters/moviematters-episode1-28-10-10.mp3
• http://www.megaupload.com/?d=BAK97X5O

You can subscribe to our feed at http://feeds.rapidfeeds.com/40313/. We've also set up a dedicated blog at http://moviematterspodcast.blogspot.com.

The structure of these podcasts is pretty informal, but the broad idea is to review two films per episode, along with mentioning any new or upcoming BD or DVD releases that take our fancy. In addition, in every episode, I induct a new BD title into the Movie Matters image quality hall of fame. This week, we take a look at the recent UK cinema release of THE GIRL WHO PLAYED WITH FIRE and 90s crime classic SE7EN, and the hall of fame sees its first inductee in the form of... well, you'll have to wait and see, won't you?

Music for this episode comes from SE7EN and the Millennium trilogy. Special thanks to David Mackenzie for audio support.

Anyhoo, give our debut podcast a listen and let us know what you think. We definitely value all feedback, positive and negative. We've also got a special Halloween treat in store for you, so we won't be resting on our laurels.

BD impressions: Moulin Rouge!

4:11 PM / BD Impressions / 1 Comment

The final instalment in Baz Luhrmann's "Red Curtain" trilogy - which are unconnected in terms of narrative and characters but share the same technique of blending old-time song and dance with a more modern sensibility - MOULIN ROUGE! takes this philosophy to its apex, and your enjoyment of it will depend very much on your tolerance for this style of filmmaking. Myself, I love it, while at the same time completely understanding why it leaves so many people cold, if they don't detest it outright. Owing as much to Bollywood as it does to the old MGM musicals of the 1940s and 50s (from which it derives its quasi three-strip Technicolor palette), MOULIN ROUGE! is anarchic, sentimental, and at times downright baffling, but very, very fun.

I'm not convinced there's a great deal of point in my trying to convey my appreciation of it with words alone - it's one of those films you either "get" or don't. That might sound like a cop-out on my part, but I put it in the same category as the likes of SUSPIRIA - films that are close to being "pure cinema", whatever that means, and almost entirely dependent on their technique than on any elements that can be quantified through verbal description.

Image quality: Proof if proof be needed that bit rate doesn't mean everything. MOULIN ROUGE! has a similar bit rate to its stablemate ROMEO + JULIET, and yet despite this, and despite being an more of a visual extravaganza, it suffers from none of the compression artefacts that afflicted that release. It's an extremely impressive-looking disc all round, once again derived from a new master taken from the original negative and colour times under Baz Luhrmann's supervision (there's a brief featurette on the disc in which he talks about the process and emphasised his desire to be faithful to the film's original look rather than indulging in any sort of revisionism). Detail is exquisite, the grain is reproduced naturally throughout, and there is no overt sign of any digital tampering. The only downside is that the sheer number of effects shots in the film do necessitate some rather frequent switches to a source a couple of generations down from the negative, resulting in the sort of degradation in clarity you can expect (see Example 4). Not that anything could realistically have been done about it, though (short of redoing all the effects and compositing from scratch), and it scarcely detracts from what is overall a sumptuous presentation of one of those films that really demands to be seen in HD. 9.5/10

Moulin Rouge!
studio: 20th Century Fox; country: USA; region code: A; codec: AVC;
file size: 28.1 GB; average bit rate (including audio): 31.53 Mbit/sec

Just arrived...

10:29 AM / Blu-ray / 8 Comments

#1005: ALIEN ANTHOLOGY (BD, 20th Century Fox, Region ABC, UK)

Just arrived...

9:28 PM / Blu-ray / 2 Comments

#1004: TOY STORY 3 (BD, Buena Vista, Region A, USA)

BD impressions: The Exorcist

10:39 PM / BD Impressions / 23 Comments

The first time I saw William Friedkin's THE EXORCIST was in March 2001, when it got its first ever airing on UK TV (two years after the British Board of Film Censors finally saw fit to unban it). To be honest, I wasn't all that impressed. I don't think it could ever have lived up to the hype surrounding it, but I remember feeling incredibly disappointed when it finished. Since then, I've seen it again twice and liked it a little more each time, as well as read the novel on which it is based. I enjoyed the novel, and hoped that revisiting the film for a fourth time, this time on BD, might be enough to tip it over the edge for me.

Regrettably not. I would never claim it to be a bad film, but for me it's simply not the masterpiece others consider it to be. I find it rather cold and empty, consisting of choppy snippets and subplots that don't gel together, as if screenwriter/novelist William Peter Blatty felt he absolutely had to throw in EVERYTHING from the novel. The script has a habit of jumping over large chunks and then TELLING you afterwards what you've missed. The most egregious example is the death of Damien's mother: in one scene, we see her confined to a psychiatric hospital but very much alive; in the next, we're told by another character that she died in her home and wasn't found for two days. The bits I appreciate the most are mainly technical in nature - Regan's transformation (a mixture of make-up and animatronics), the subliminal images, the shot of Max Von Sydow arriving at the house (which graces just about every home video cover, and rightly so)... the use of Mike Oldfield's "Tubular Bells"... the performances, which are solid across the board... It's what I'd call a well-made movie, which basically means I can appreciate the skill that is readily apparent on both sides of the camera, even if the end result leaves me a bit cold.

Admittedly, I find it hard not to compare the film unfavourably with THE OMEN, a similarly "high-brow" take on the demonic possession subset of the horror genre by a major Hollywood studio, and for me what separates the two of them is their approach to the subject matter. Biblical quotations aside, THE OMEN doesn't try to pretend it's something it isn't. It knows exactly what it is: an extremely glossly, technically accomplished rollercoaster ride with a star-studded cast and one of the best scores ever to grace a horror film. It is, in a sense, classy schlock. It sets out to entertain, and it succeeds in spades. THE EXORCIST, meanwhile, sets out to brow-beat you into submission. It takes itself incredibly seriously and has a keenly developed sense of its own (self-)importance. Now, I don't object to films taking themselves seriously, but THE EXORCIST veers a little too close to hitting the viewer over the head with the "This is serious stuff, dammit!" stick for my liking... and when that serious stuff is something as fanciful as demonic possession, and the poo-pooing of medicine in favour of rituals and chanting, I'm inclined to think a less preachy touch would have gone down better... with me, at any rate. I could name a number of atheists who love this film, but I've also seen many people claim that you can't possibly appreciate the film fully unless you believe in what it portrays. That may be so, but it doesn't compel me to look on it any more favourably (and I think it's a fairly weak defence, in any rate - a lack of belief in hobbits and elves didn't stop millions from flocking to THE LORD OF THE RINGS).

In his video introduction, Friedkin says that you get out of THE EXORCIST exactly what you bring to it, and I'm inclined to agree with him. If you believe in demonic possession, this may well be one of the scariest films ever made. If like me, however, the very idea gives you a fit of the giggles, it becomes very hard to take Blatty and Friedkin's stern tone with the solemnity they so clearly wanted. With that in mind, I'd like to propose a little experiment by asking the following two questions: (1) Do you believe in demonic possession? and (2) Do you think THE EXORCIST is a masterpiece? Obviously, I'm only going to get data from a small subset of people, but I'm genuinely curious as to whether there's any correlation between belief in the supernatural and a love of the film.

Image quality: Oh, Warner, Warner, Warner... Once again what looks like an excellent master is sullied by iffy compression. The look of both encodes (theatrical and extended cuts, housed on separate discs) is inconsistent, with some scenes looking excellent and others suffering from a smorgasbord of artefacting. At its best, the disc holds its own against other catalogue titles from the same period. At its worst... well, the Scandinavian release of THE GIRL WHO PLAYED WITH FIRE springs to mind. I don't know whether to blame the encoder, or the codec itself, or both, but wherever the blame lies, it's clear that the heavy grain was just too much to handle, and I can't help wondering what the film could have looked like if someone other than Warner had been responsible for the disc. 7/10

I watched the original theatrical version rather than the "extended director's cut" (previously known as The Version You've Never Seen, a title that is now somewhat redundant). While both are completely different codes, there is little appreciable difference between the two in terms of overall encoding. However, it is worth pointing out that the extended cut suffers from elevated blacks. This is extremely noticeable during the opening and closing credits, but it affects the entire film and results in some loss of shadow detail (compare Example 16 with this shot from the extended cut). Personally I have no real desire to watch the extended cut again (the majority of the additions, I feel, simply restate what is already obvious and, in some cases, disrupt the tone entirely - particularly the gratuitous "demon face" inserts), but it's a very poor show that the disc was allowed to go out with such an obvious mistake present.

The Exorcist
studio: Warner; country: USA; region code: ABC; codec: VC-1;
file size: 25.5 GB (theatrical cut), 31.7 GB (extended director's cut);
average bit rate (including audio): 30.02 Mbit/sec (theatrical cut), 34.37 Mbit/sec (extended director's cut)

Just arrived...

6:29 PM / Blu-ray / 4 Comments

#1003: MOULIN ROUGE! (BD, 20th Century Fox, Region A, USA)

BD impressions: Romeo + Juliet

8:43 PM / BD Impressions / 6 Comments

There are those who hate Baz Luhrmann's bawdy take on ROMEO AND JULIET. I'm not one of them. I can fully understand why people would react unfavourably to the idea of transposing Shakespeare's dialogue into a relentlessly contemporary setting, but in my opinion it works, and I can't really think of any other filmmaker who could have pulled it off quite so successfully. What can I say? I love Luhrmann's work, even the maligned AUSTRALIA - he's the sort of director who could probably find a visually interesting way of filming a telephone directory. Stylistically, ROMEO + JULIET bridges the gap between the comparatively restrained STRICTLY BALLROOM and the utterly outrageous MOULIN ROUGE, though I find it very hard to pick a favourite between the three. I'm almost inclined to give the nod to MOULIN ROUGE, but something about ROMEO + JULIET keeps bringing me back to it. Who knows? Maybe I've been bewitched by Claire Danes.

Image quality: A very good, almost excellent presentation, derived from a new master from the original negative supervised by Luhrmann. When it's at its best, this transfer holds its own against just about any movie fifteen years younger than it, with excellent clarity and natural, unmolested grain. The disc is packed full of HD extras, and perhaps as a result of this the encoding does suffer. Most of the time, it's not an issue, but on a handful of occasions problems do become apparent, such as the nurse's red outfit in Example 10.

Aside from the compression, my main complaint relates to some weirdness that is going on during the pool scene, where Leonardo DiCaprio and Claire Danes' faces and hair look rather blurry and smeary despite the grain in much of the background remaining pin-sharp (see Example 13). I don't think this is simply a camera focus issue: the fact that the grain appears blockier and more smoothed over on the actors' faces leads me to wonder whether some sort of selective reduction was applied. Something similar appears to be happening during the wedding scene, with only the shots of DiCaprio and Danes affected (see Example 14). These are not insignificant issues, but they appear relatively briefly. 8/10

Romeo + Juliet
studio: 20th Century Fox; country: USA; region code: A; codec: AVC;
file size: 25.1 GB; average bit rate (including audio): 30.01 Mbit/sec

If you have an unbearably slow memory stick...

3:55 PM / Technology / 5 Comments

...try formatting it as FAT32 rather than NTFS.

Sounds like a step backwards, I know, but in my case I saw a very significant improvement in performance. A couple of months back, I bought a 16 GB Corsair Flash Voyager GT for use when working between my two machines (the high-end system downstairs and the laptop I mainly keep in my bedroom). For the sake of expediency, it makes sense for me to simply save to the memory stick all the time rather than copying my files from one machine to the other (although I do of course perform frequent backups).

I bought the Corsair because of the company's reputation for manufacturing fast, reliable hardware, coupled with the impressive read/write speeds they were boasting. In reality, however, I found that I got only a fraction of the advertised write speed, with even small files (such as a basic spreadsheet or single-page Word document) taking upwards of five seconds to save. That might not sound too bad, but if like me you have a habit of hitting "Control + S" at frequent intervals, it soon becomes extremely annoying. (This is particularly true of Final Draft 8, the screenwriting program I use and probably the single most unreliable piece of software I've ever come across. Continually saving your work is an absolute must.)

So today I decided to try a little experiment. I reformatted the stick from NTFS to the older FAT32 file system... and immediately saw a massive increase in performance. Documents now save in a fraction of a second, and even when copying my documents back over from the hard drive, I could see how much the write speed had improved. This may not be the whole story (both times, I formatted the device using Windows' default settings, and the differing default allocation unit sizes for FAT32 and NTFS might also be a potential factor), but for me it was a very painless way of squeezing considerably more performance out of a device I use on a daily basis. Definitely worth trying if you've got the memory stick blues.

Just arrived...

4:36 PM / Blu-ray / 2 Comments

#1002: SEX AND LUCÍA (BD, Palm Pictures, Region A, USA)

I'm slightly curious as to how high definition video circa 2001 holds up today.

BD impressions: The Last of the Mohicans

9:10 PM / BD Impressions / 13 Comments

I don't know how to rate this disc. I honestly don't.

I'm sure just about everyone reading this is already aware of the controversy surrounding this disc. To put it simply, it's dark. REALLY dark. So dark that during night scenes it is at times literally impossible to see what's going on, and even scenes taking place in daylight have a tendency to look murky and indistinct. Compared with the DVD release I bought a few years ago (the Region 1 Director's Expanded Edition), a considerable amount of shadow detail has been lost, and scenes that once took place in bright sunlight now seem to take place in some sort of perpetual dusk. Compositions that used to read now don't, and at times it's actually unpleasant to look at, because you're straining to see anything through the heavy gloom.

All of this, as far as can be ascertained, is an accurate reflection of how director Michael Mann's vision for the films visuals. There's been a bit of talk on the various AV forums about the release being defective, but personally I'm not convinced. I never saw the film theatrically, so I can't possibly comment on how it looked at the time of its original release, but suffice it to say that those used to the appearance of the previous DVDs or HDTV broadcasts will be in for a bit of a rude awakening. Whether it looked anything like this back in 1992 or not, however, I see no reason to doubt that this is how Mann now wants his film to look... which is his prerogative. It's not a look that I find remotely aesthetically pleasing, though, which is a shame from my perspective because, based on the various DVD and TV broadcasts I'd previously seen, I'd always considered it to be a pretty stunning-looking film.

So... let's see. They clearly went back to the original negative for this new master, which yields the sort of results you can expect when the studios go the extra mile like that: detail is top-notch, when you can see anything... the grain looks completely natural... the encoding is solid across the board. And to be fair, the second half of the film, which takes place largely in daylight, fares considerably better than the first half, and that shot of Jodhi May is every bit as wow-inducing as it always was. On the whole, though, I found this presentation very frustrating.

I'm not going to give a rating to this title. I don't want my own prejudices (i.e. a bizarre desire to see what the heck is going on when I watch a movie rather than constantly feeling like I'm squinting through a dirty window) to lead to me marking down what may very well be a completely accurate representation of how the film was always intended to look. But in that case, it's (in my opinion) a less attractive film than I previously believed it to be.

The Last of the Mohicans
studio: 20th Century Fox; country: USA; region code: A; codec: AVC;
file size: 35.3 GB; average bit rate (including audio): 44.12 Mbit/sec

Just arrived...

7:03 PM / Blu-ray / 4 Comments

#1001: ROMEO + JULIET (BD, 20th Century Fox, Region A, USA)

BD impressions: Beauty and the Beast

4:49 PM / BD Impressions / 3 Comments

It's interesting but not altogether surprising that, whenever people discuss Disney's animation renaissance, the impression is often given that BEAUTY AND THE BEAST immediately followed THE LITTLE MERMAID, credited with having launched the studio's "second golden age". THE RESCUERS DOWN UNDER lies sandwiched in between them - a bizarre anomaly in the studio's "classics" roster and the sort of title that, a decade later, would have been cranked out by the TV animation division and relegated to the direct to video market. I mention this because there's such a huge gulf between MERMAID and BEAST in terms of the crew's self-assurance (good as MERMAID is, it feels a lot more tentative and less consistent, both in terms of tone and production values) that it does well to remember that they didn't go straight from one to the other.

In terms of this particularly lauded period in Disney's history, ALADDIN gets my vote for the best all-round offering (I think THE LION KING is a tad overrated and find POCAHONTAS too po-faced and self-important to get much enjoyment out of it), but BEAST comes a close second. It manages to offer a bit of everything without the uncomfortable lurches in tone that would plague POCAHONTAS (which I've always suspected was commissioned in an unsuccessful attempt to bag the Oscar BEAST failed to win), and while the quality of the animation is a bit inconsistent (it would take until ALADDIN for this still somewhat inexperienced second generation of artists to deliver a REALLY polished product), it's very easy to overlook the odd bit of clumsiness in a film this entertaining. I still don't think the second golden age ever hit the heights of Disney animation in Walt's time, but as far as the studio's 90s takes on the "princess" formula are concerned, this is definitely as good as it gets.

Image quality: BEAUTY AND THE BEAST was the second feature film to be composited digitally using Disney's now-defunct CAPS system (the first was THE RESCUERS DOWN UNDER, which I suspect was created primarily to road-test the technology). As such, none if it ever touched film (barring, oddly enough, the closing credits for the theatrical cut, which for this release are taken from a print source), so the overzealous grain-scrubbing that went on with previous Disney "Diamond Edition" releases is not an issue here. There's no grain because there never was any to begin with.

This is, on the whole, a striking-looking image, with plenty of detail and excellent compression throughout. Colours are somewhat more saturated than the earlier DVD releases, and I suspect that some artificial boosting may have been applied: on a handful of occasions, certain hues look perfectly natural during fades between scenes but suddenly "pop" to a more vibrant shade as soon as the fade ends (watch the orange leaves at the bottom of the screen at 00:11:15). I'm not going to say that it looks WRONG per se, but it definitely looks different from previous incarnations of the film, and anomalies like the one noted do make me suspect that some naughtiness is going on. (Xylon's comparison at the AVS Forum gives a good demonstration of the saturation difference between this and the previous DVD.)

A number of shots also appear to suffer from slight over-sharpening (see Example 12), while a couple of others appear to have precisely the opposite problem: filtering (see Example 7). Additionally, a couple of shots also suffer from a strange stippling effect on the characters' outlines (see Example 19). I suspect that these are not problems with the BD as such but rather issues with how the art was manipulated in the CAPS system. As such, it means that the image isn't quite as striking as the more recent THE PRINCESS AND THE FROG (the only other digitally composited 2D Disney feature released on BD thus far)... but it's still a mighty fine-looking disc. 9/10

Beauty and the Beast
studio: Buena Vista; country: USA; region code: ABC; codec: AVC;
file size: 21.4 GB (theatrical cut), 22.9 GB (special edition);
average bit rate (including audio): 36.18 Mbit/sec (theatrical cut), 35.75 Mbit/sec (special edition)

Just arrived...

6:25 PM / DVD / 2 Comments

SZAMANKA: Premium Collector's Edition (DVD, Mondo Vision, Region 0, USA)

Thanks, Mazi!

As a side note, this is...

...the 1,000th title to enter my collection!!!

(Counting DVDs, HD DVDs and BDs.) I probably still own about half of that figure given my tendency to sell titles I'm no longer interested in or have upgraded (either to a superior edition on the same format or from DVD to BD). Still, I thought this rather momentous occasion deserved to be recognised in some way, and there's something rather fitting about the fact that the title in question is an extremely lavish package... and one on which I receive a credit no less (in the "Special Thanks" section).

So here's to one thousand optical discs... and here's to the next thousand!

Disney fail

9:53 PM / Blu-ray / 11 Comments

So I'm watching BEAUTY AND THE BEAST on BD, having a great time... I get to the end of the film, the final scene fades out... and then THIS appears on the screen:

Um... no. Disney, you don't DO that! It's not cute, it's not clever, it's a completely obnoxious interruption to my viewing, and the worst part is there's no way of turning this "feature" off. I'm guessing not many casual viewers stick around to watch them, but the credits are part of the movie, and overlaying them with a pop-up menu telling you to watch a featurette (which isn't even on the BD - you have to swap discs before watching it) takes you straight out of the experience.

I fear this is a slippery slope down the path to shrinking the credits into a tiny window, TV style, so they can hawk their next product to you. It reminds me a lot of seeing TREASURE PLANET at the Glasgow Science Centre's IMAX cinema, where as soon as the first credit appeared on the screen, the lights immediately went up, the sound dipped and a nasally Scottish twang informed us that we'd just seen TREASURE PLANET. No shit, Sherlock.

Top 10 films of the year so far...

3:38 PM / Cinema / 3 Comments

...going purely by UK general theatrical release. If I was going by release in country of origin, this list would look quite different (and much shorter too):

1. Toy Story 3 (USA: Lee Unkrich)
2. The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo (Sweden/Denmark/Germany/Norway: Niels Arden Oplev)
3. Ponyo (Japan: Hayao Miyazaki)
4. The Princess and the Frog (USA: John Musker, Ron Clements)
5. The Ghost (France/Germany/UK: Roman Polanski)
6. Amer (France/Belgium: Hélène Cattet, Bruno Forzani)
7. Four Lions (UK: Chris Morris)
8. The Secret of Kells (France/Belgium/Ireland: Tomm Moore)
9. Centurion (UK: Neil Marshall)
10. The Disappearance of Alice Creed (UK: J. Blakeson)

Expect the list to have changed quite a bit by the end of the year. Off the top of my head, I still want to see: INCEPTION, MACHETE, RESIDENT EVIL: AFTERLIFE, SCOTT PILGRIM VS. THE WORLD, SHUTTER ISLAND, THE SOCIAL NETWORK, SPLICE...

BD impressions: The Disappearance of Alice Creed

3:32 PM / BD Impressions / 3 Comments

Two men soundproof a room, head out, grab a young woman off the street, strip her and tie her to a bed. Oh, and they want a cool two million for her release.

That's about all I'm prepared to say about THE DISAPPEARANCE OF ALICE CREED, a minimalist thriller by first-time feature director J. Blakeson, shot on the Isle of Mann for under £1 million. Blakeson, whose previous credits include contributions to the script for the underwhelming THE DESCENT: PART 2, clearly know's how to rack up the tension and throws enough twists at the audience to ensure that the situation is constantly changing, neatly sidestepping the potential for monotony - a major concern in a film that is basically limited to a cast of three in a single location. It asks for a lot and more importantly GETS a lot from its three actors, with Martin Compston getting the toughest, most complicated role of the three.

The film has been promoted heavily around Alice Creed herself, played by up-and-comer du jour Gemma Arterton, but while she's very good in the role, she may actually be the least impressive of the trio. In what is a very naturalistic film in every sense of the word, her performance comes off a little too much like acting, if that makes any sense. Still, it's a brave performance and a brave film all round, milking every drop out of its limited budget, cast and array of locations, resulting in a film that probably won't set the world on fire but is one of the better British-originated genre offerings I've seen recently.

Image quality: A very impressive-looking disc from CinemaNX, distributed through Icon Home Entertainment (so it's anyone's guess who, if either, deserves the credit here). THE DISAPPEARANCE OF ALICE CREED was shot using Arri's D-21 digital cameras and the image is very detailed with some nice film-like depth of field. There's a bit of video noise in the shadows, and the compression of this is handled very well, avoiding any unpleasant artefacts. I suspect that the image may have been artificially sharpened ever so slightly (there is some very mild haloing around the closing credits text, as well as a bit in Example 15), but this could also be the result of downconversion from a 2K or 4K master, so I'm not going to start pointing any fingers. Suffice it to say that I was very satisfied with the presentation. 9.5/10

This is one of those films where just about any image I choose could potentially constitute a spoiler. Obviously I've done my best to avoid showing anything that REALLY gives the game away, but just in case you'd prefer not to take the risk, I've included the screen captures after the jump below:

[Continue reading...]

Just arrived...

10:56 PM / Blu-ray / 4 Comments

THE LAST OF THE MOHICANS (BD, 20th Century Fox, Region A, USA)

Just arrived...

8:36 PM / Blu-ray / 11 Comments

BEAUTY AND THE BEAST (BD, Buena Vista, Region ABC, USA)

THE EXORCIST (BD, Warner, Region ABC, USA)

BD impressions: American Beauty

11:08 PM / BD Impressions / 5 Comments

Not as good as I remembered it - which oddly enough is a sentiment I've seen echoed in a number of more recent reviews of the film. It now feels a touch too arch and smug for my tastes, and some of the dialogue is painfully on the nose, but it remains an exceptionally well made piece of filmmaking with truly great performances from its cast and some of the most bitingly funny moments I can remember seeing in a film of this type - "You'd better watch yourself, Jane, or you're going to turn into a real bitch just like your mother!" And, flaws aside, I think it works considerably better than director Sam Mendes' more recent foray into dysfunctional suburbia, REVOLUTIONARY ROAD.

Image quality: Very much a mixed bag, this, and I suspect that underneath the coating of edge enhancement was a pretty acceptable-looking master... or at least as acceptable as you can get without going back to the original negative, which I'm assuming they didn't do giving the noticeable quantity of black flecks that appear throughout the film. As far as Paramount's Sapphire Series titles go, it's certainly nothing like as bad as the original release of GLADIATOR, but all the same it's a lot closer to that than BRAVEHEART. It's a shame this didn't get the same sort of treatment as that title or SAVING PRIVATE RYAN. Instead, we basically end up with a fairly mediocre-looking catalogue title sold at full price in a range that claims to " present each cinematic gem in the highest quality." 6/10

American Beauty
studio: Paramount; country: USA; region code: A; codec: AVC;
file size: 29.5 GB; average bit rate (including audio): 34.72 Mbit/sec

BD impressions: The Secret of Kells

9:54 PM / BD Impressions / 8 Comments

I don't think it would be unreasonable to suggest that THE SECRET OF KELLS would have been a lot less interesting if not for its visuals. This is in no way meant as a damning criticism - I've always said that animation, rather than slavishly trying to mimic live action, should concentrate on doing stuff you couldn't possibly do in any other medium, and THE SECRET OF KELLS is basically a manifesto to that ideology. With its perspective-defying Celtic art-inspired backgrounds and angular character designs that look like a cross between KIM POSSIBLE and SAMURAI JACK, this is easily the most visually creative animated film I've seen in ages, and on that basis alone it held my attention for the duration of its 75-minute running time. The voice acting is also impeccable for the most part (barring Brendan Gleeson as the abbot, whom I suspect was going for stern but instead comes across as bland), and special mention going to Christen Mooney as Aisling, the mysterious wood spirit who appears in all the promotional material, and the late Mick Lally as the elderly Brother Aidan.

Story-wise, I suspect it will resonate a good deal more with those familiar with the folklore that inspired it. For someone such as myself, completely ignorant about that side of things, I was a little confused at times and felt that more should have been done to explain just what was so special about the book after which the film is named and which serves as the primary motivating factor in just about everything the protagonist does. Speaking of which, the film does suffer from a problem common with animated features, in that it basically surrounds a rather bland, uninteresting protagonist with a bunch of colourful characters all of whom are considerably more interesting than him - I call this Charlie Bucket syndrome.

I'd encourage everyone to give THE SECRET OF KELLS a look. I'd be more inclined to describe it as interesting than entertaining or particularly engaging, but it's nice to see an animated film that doesn't follow the cookie cutter formula. It has an individual point of view and you can tell the artists poured themselves into every frame. It's not going to unsettle TOY STORY 3 from its position of best animated film of the year, but to be honest those two films aren't even competing on the same terms.

Image quality: A very nice-looking disc for the previously unheard of (by me) New Video Group, marred only by some slight banding in a few shots (see Example 20) and some blocking in the more complicated scenes (see Example 4). 9/10

The Secret of Kells
studio: New Video Group; country: USA; region code: ABC; codec: AVC;
file size: 19.8 GB; average bit rate (including audio): 36.17 Mbit/sec

Hello, world

5:04 PM / General / 3 Comments

Sorry about the lack of updates. I wish I could say I've been super-busy, but in actual fact for the last few days I've been laid low with the flu. If you sent me an email in the last few days but didn't get a reply, that's why. I'm recovering now, though, and while I still need to complete my current PhD assignment (delayed slightly because of my illness), I should hopefully get a chance to catch up on other matters that need attending to.

While I was laid up, I did take the opportunity to watch a few films. BD impressions to follow - hopefully - of AMERICAN BEAUTY, THE SECRET OF KELLS and THE DISAPPEARANCE OF ALICE CREED.

Just arrived...

10:02 PM / Blu-ray / No Comments

THE DISAPPEARANCE OF ALICE CREED (BD, CinemaNX, Region B, UK)

Just arrived...

10:03 PM / Blu-ray / No Comments

THE DOWNFALL OF BERLIN: ANONYMA (BD, Metrodome, Region ABC, UK)

The original German title is ANONYMA: EINE FRAU IN BERLIN. It was released internationally as A WOMAN IN BERLIN. I'm not sure why the title was changed for the UK home video releases (or why Metrodome chose to go with such thoroughly unrepresentative cover art).

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