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Films I saw for the first time in January 2011

10:47 PM / Cinema / 11 Comments

• Saturday, January 1, 2011: BLACK SWAN (USA, 2010) 8/10
• Sunday, January 2, 2011: INCEPTION (USA/UK, 2010) 4/10
• Saturday, January 8, 2011: SALT (USA, 2010) 5/10
• Sunday, January 9, 2011: RESIDENT EVIL: AFTERLIFE (Germany/France/UK, 2010) 6/10
• Tuesday, January 11, 2011: THE SOCIAL NETWORK (USA, 2010) 10/10
• Monday, January 24, 2011: THE KILLER INSIDE ME (USA/Sweden/UK/Canada, 2010) 4/10
• Sunday, January 30, 2011: I SPIT ON YOUR GRAVE (USA, 2010) 5/10
• Monday, January 31, 2011: WINTER'S BONE (USA, 2010) 5/10

BDs and DVDs I bought or received in January 2011

10:42 PM / Blu-ray / No Comments

• Thursday, January 6, 2011: DEEP RED (BD, Region ABC, UK)
• Saturday, January 8, 2011: RESIDENT EVIL: AFTERLIFE (BD, Region ABC, UK)
• Tuesday, January 11, 2011: ARMY OF SHADOWS (BD, Region A, USA)
• Tuesday, January 11, 2011: THE SOCIAL NETWORK (BD, Region A, USA)
• Tuesday, January 18, 2011: DOLLHOUSE: THE COMPLETE SEASON 2 (BD, Region A, USA)
• Wednesday, January 26, 2011: ALICE IN WONDERLAND (BD, Region ABC, USA)
• Wednesday, January 26, 2011: I SPIT ON YOUR GRAVE (BD, Region A, USA)
• Wednesday, January 26, 2011: I SPIT ON YOUR GRAVE (remake) (BD, Region A, USA)
• Friday, January 28, 2011: AMER (BD, Region B, UK)
• Monday, January 31, 2011: WINTER'S BONE (BD, Region B, UK)

#1036: Winter's Bone

10:37 PM / Blu-ray / 4 Comments

(BD, Artificial Eye, Region B, UK)

My last blind buy for a while, given my latest credit card statement. I watched it this evening and must admit I wasn't particularly taken by it. I found it to be well-acted and highly proficient in a technical sense but ultimately completely unfulfilling. I just didn't feel it had achieved anything at the end of its 95-minute running time except getting from A to B.

BD impressions: Amer

1:21 PM / BD Impressions / 9 Comments

The film: How do you describe AMER? You might as well ask "how do you describe the indescribable?" AMER is a loving tribute to the Italian "gialli" of the 1970s, but at the same time it is not a giallo. It's a mesmerising, beguiling and at times downright frustrating exercise in experimental filmmaking, eschewing narrative coherence in favour of a string of striking set-pieces that play upon the senses - sight, sound and, to a certain extent, touch.

Superficially, it's a film of three separate "episodes", telling the story of Ana at key stages in her life - child, adolescent and adult - and appears to chart her sexual awakening (most overtly in the first and second segments). It's best not to spend too long trying to work out what it all means, though, and simply go with the flow, allowing the rich imagery and sounds to wash over you.

It has to be said that, taken as a whole, AMER is decidedly uneven. The first episode, an homage to the traditions of gothic horror films from Mario Bava's BLACK SABBATH (specifically the segment "The Drop of Water") to Dario Argento's SUSPIRIA (the rich primary colour hues provide a tantalising glimpse of what many of us wish Argento's MOTHER OF TEARS had looked like), is by far the most effective, with the lack of a plot that makes any sense playing right into the dreamlike ambience of the photography. The second segment, which takes places under the fearsome glare of the Mediterranean sun, is the most coherent segment but the one in which the least happens. Still, it's an overpowering assault on the senses: you can practically feel the intense heat and smell the sweat. (Incidentally, as Alan Jones pointed out at the Glasgow FrightFest screening of the film back in February of last year, while this segment may superficially have the least to do with the giallo, it is in fact visually the most giallo-like of the bunch, given how many of them take place in intensely bright daylight.) The third segment, which returns the action to the same crumbling mansion in which the first was set, albeit under very different circumstances, is arguably the least effective of the lot. It's the only one of the three that dragged for me, and the heavily blue-tinted night (day for night?) photography lacks the visual elegance of the rest of the film, even if it's a look that is in keeping with that of many gialli. This segment appears to take most of its inspiration from David Hemmings' exploration of a remarkably similar house in Argento's DEEP RED, while the hooded killer that shows up in the final moments appears to have stepped straight out of Sergio Martino's TORSO.

I wouldn't recommend AMER to those who have little to no interest in the very specific subset of Italian genre movies from which it draws is visual and aural cues. Even for me, a long-term fan of these films, it has its moments of frustration, where the experimental narrative techniques simply become too oblique to function in a 90-minute film. Directors Hélène Cattet and Bruno Forzani are clearly exceptionally talented and I hope we don't have to wait too long to see something more from them, but I'd be interested to see them tackle something that marries their striking visuals with a more coherent plot (which, I'm led to believe, may well be in the pipeline - I'm told their next project is another giallo homage, albeit this one exploring the narrative conventions of the genre). Ultimately, AMER deserves its place in my "Top 10 of 2010", but it's probably the title from that list that I'd be least likely to recommend to the "average" filmgoer. 8/10

Image quality: AMER arrives on BD looking more or less the same as I remember it from the Glasgow FrightFest screening (which, incidentally, was an actual print). The results are, I suspect, for the most part as good as could be expected given the film's budget and certain stylistic decisions. It was shot on 16mm film and appears to have been photochemically colour timed (a handful of black flecks are present, indicative of a positive source). Detail is acceptable if not outstanding, with the grain is fairly pronounced throughout. Unfortunately all that grain appears to be choking the encoder, resulting in it looking a little on the clumpy side... although this is admittedly only intermittently noticeable in motion. There's also a rather odd effect whereby areas of the screen that are blank are at times affected by an odd horizontal "streaking" effect. This appears to be directly related to how much light is on the screen - shots that are completely or almost completely black are unaffected, and on a couple of occasions I noticed the streaking becoming more pronounced as more light entered the frame (e.g. Example 3, in which the shot begins in complete darkness before the door is gradually opened). 7/10

Amer
studio: Anchor Bay; country: UK; region code: B; codec: AVC;
file size: 17.8 GB; average bit rate (including audio): 28.27 Mbit/sec

RIP John Barry

10:45 AM / General / 7 Comments

The composer best known for his Bond scores died this morning at the age of 77.

The BBC Archive has republished a nice tribute to his Bond themes from 1995, hosted by Lois Maxwell (Moneypenny).

I Spit on Your Remake

12:38 AM / Reviews / 7 Comments

Note: in the interests of coherence, this review refers to the original 1978 film by its original title, DAY OF THE WOMAN, and the 2010 remake as I SPIT ON YOUR GRAVE (the title by which its predecessor is also best known).

No two ways about it, Meir Zarchi's DAY OF THE WOMAN is as far from a perfect film as you can get. It's grubby, ugly, clunky and in places downright silly, and everything about it shows a lack of experience on both sides of the camera. There's also a certain sense of honesty to it, though - an emotional rawness that shines through the clunky dialogue, dodgy acting and general lack of spit and polish. So while I would in no way describe it as the best exploitation movie ever made (or even the best rape revenge movie), everyone with at least a passing interest in the seedier side of cinema owes it to themselves to see it.

Enter the remake, which in the grand tradition of modern re-imaginings of classic (or at least reasonably notorious) horror movies of the 70s and 80s spruces things up with a slicker script, more polished visuals and a fresh-faced, good-looking leading lady who wasn't even born when the original was released. The leading lady in this case is Sarah Butler, who prior to I SPIT ON YOUR GRAVE mostly appeared in television guest roles. She's arguably the best thing about the remake in the same way that her predecessor, Camille Keaton, was the best thing about the original. She doesn't go anything like as far as Keaton in terms of on-screen nudity or the sheer level of violence to which her character is subjected, but she plays the part with conviction and, for a mainstream actress, seems fairly gung-ho about it all (certainly more than Sara Paxton in the recent remake of THE LAST HOUSE ON THE LEFT, for instance).

Beyond Butler's surprising ballsiness, it's pretty much as you would expect. The same basic plot is followed - young aspiring author Jennifer Hills ventures out into the country to write her novel, is set upon and raped by a band of local nogoodniks, survives against the odds and knocks them off one by one - but with the odd tweak here and there to keep us guessing. There are five rapists this time rather than the usual four, there's more build-up to the actual sexual assault Jennifer endures (the initial abuse is more psychological this time round), and her ultimate revenge is considerably more elaborate... and far-fetched too, which is quite an achievement considering that Keaton's Jennifer convinced one of her attackers that she actually enjoyed being raped by him, persuaded him to join her in the bathtub, hacked off his genitals and left him groaning "That's so good it hurts!" The deaths are also thematically appropriate to how each rapist treated Jennifer, and the various protracted deaths are accompanied by witty quips from Ms. Hills, which are delivered with the appropriate degree of venom but feel overly cute (the original's straightforward "Suck it, bitch!" they ain't). The grimy, quasi-documentary look of the original is replaced by pristine digital photography with a bleached-out colour palette, fast cutting and even the odd hint of CGI. It does the job, but it looks like every other film of its kind.

It's also, when all said and done, relatively toothless. The psychological torture Jennifer undergoes in the early scenes is pretty nasty stuff, but the actual rapes themselves are fairly tastefully done, if indeed any rape scene can be done tastefully. Whereas the rapes in the original tended to take place in wide shots with the camera unblinkingly capturing the whole thing, the equivalent scenes in the remake consists of lots of tight close-ups of eyes and faces, and at one point the director, Steven Monroe, even fades to black, sparing us the worst of the ordeal - something Zarchi would never have done. While there's something to be said for leaving things to the audience's imagination, the unflinching nature of the original's depiction of Jennifer's ordeal somehow felt more honest. Here, it's clear that it's all just movie magic, with the technique overshadowing the horror of what's actually happening. Even the nudity is carefully choreographed. A backside here, a nipple flash there - Butler, despite being game for a lot more than your average American actress, doesn't have Keaton's lack of self-consciousness in front of the camera. Again, it all just adds to the sense of artificiality.

Where the film really fumbles, and the director makes some questionable choices, is with regard to the aftermath of the assault. In the original, we rejoined Jennifer fairly quickly and got to witness her pulling herself together - including, crucially, piecing together the pages of her novel that her attackers ripped up. Although this was an admittedly cheesy metaphor, it summed up Zarchi's good intentions, and made it clear that what we were watching was very much a story told from the victim's point of view. The remake goes down the curious route of focusing on the rapists during its second half, keeping Jennifer as a largely off-screen presence. Because we don't get to witness Jennifer recovering physically and coming to terms with what has happened her, the emotional core feels like it has been ripped out. It also gives the impression that the director is more interested in the villains than his supposed heroine. Again, there's a place for this sort of approach, but this film is not trying to provide a reasoned insight into the twisted mind of a rapist - it's a gory revenge fantasy in which a rape victim takes matters into her own hands.

And ultimately, that's what I SPIT ON YOUR GRAVE is. In spite of its flaws, DAY OF THE WOMAN ticked all the boxes required to function as a shlocky exploitation flick while at the same time managing to be something more than that. The remake is both too tame to function as pure grindhouse sleaze and too trashy to be taken particularly seriously. It's perhaps worth a look if for no other reason than to see how they actually managed to turn one of the most infamous "video nasties" of all time into a polished piece of workmanship, but the original, warts and all, is the one that will last. 5/10

And so the winner, as correctly predicted by Trond, is Jennifer Hills.

Coming soon...

12:06 PM / Cinema / 9 Comments

Jennifer Hills

vs.

Jennifer Hills

Who will triumph?

Such a shame Mother of Tears didn't look like this...

6:09 PM / Cinema / 10 Comments

A few stills from the most visually striking sequence of AMER, taken from Anchor Bay's new BD. Click the images above to enlarge them to full size.

#1035: Amer

1:53 PM / Blu-ray / 6 Comments

(BD, Anchor Bay, Region B, UK)

Cheap and cheerful

12:42 PM / Model Railways / No Comments

This is the "Evening Star", my newest purchase. The real locomotive was the 999th of the British Railways Standard range and the last steam engine to be built in the UK. It was actually singled out for preservation before it had even been constructed, which tells you something both about the speed at which diesel and electrification were sidelining steam AND that the powers that be already realised that one day people would mourn the passing of these great coal-guzzling beasts. "Evening Star" is part of the 9F class which, with its ten driving wheels, long driving rods and sheer length, always struck me as more stylistically in tune with American heavy duty locomotives than their British counterparts. They were designed as freight trains but were also put to use hauling passenger services... which is a good thing as far as I'm concerned, because I don't have any freight rolling stock.

"Evening Star" has been a staple of Hornby's catalogue for ages, and I always wanted one during my initial forays into the hobby some twenty years ago. This particular variant is part of Hornby's Railroad range - basically less expensive, less detailed models, often made from older moulds. I picked mine up, unopened, for £40 - a very good deal if you consider what it sells for direct from Hornby. It's a fairly recent model - locomotive driven, with sprung buffers and the finer, more realistic coal in the tender than the big clumpy mound that was the norm for the better part of the last 25 years. And apparently this counts as "less detailed"!

It also runs extremely well, hurtling along with the power knob set to 50%, where it takes my A4s to around 80 or 90% to achieve the same speed. I attribute this to the smaller, more numerous driving wheels which provide plenty of traction. I'm slightly surprised, given its length and the fact that only the two-wheel bogey at the front of the locomotive has any sort of side-to-side movement, that it can handle second radius track (Hornby's curved track comes in four radii, with the tight first radius generally reserved for small goods locomotives), but I've been running it in for the past couple of hours (half an hour in each direction, both forwards and backwards) without any derailments. (Actually, I've yet to see a single derailment since getting back into the hobby.)

All in all this was a very worthwhile acquisition. My "Flying Scotsman" is currently at Pastimes, being restored to working order, but it's likely to be March before I see it again, so it's nice to get a bit more variety on my layout instead of just having my two near-identical A4s passing each other every few seconds. My next objective will be to have a serious think about what sort of permanent layout I want to have - shape, size, number of lines, etc.

#1034: I Spit on Your Grave (remake)

7:21 PM / Blu-ray / 15 Comments

(BD/digital copy combo, Anchor Bay, Region A, USA)

This and the previous entry are examples of BDs I perhaps wouldn't have been so quick to order if I'd known I'd be getting an into an expensive hobby. That said, I'm not really sure what the alternative is. Both versions of I SPIT ON YOUR GRAVE have been chopped, crippled and mutilated beyond recognition at the hands of the British censors, making me unlikely to want to rent the local editions. (OK, so "beyond recognition" may be a bit of a stretch as far as the remake is concerned, but I'm still not about to pay good money to see a compromised version.)

Additionally, I've heard unconfirmed reports that the UK version of the 1978 original is in fact a standard definition upconvert. (Can anyone confirm or deny? As far as I can tell, no-one seems to have actually reviewed it.)

Still, these should make for interesting viewing, not least from the point of view of comparison. I'm intrigued that the producers of the remake chose to hire relatively unknown actors and didn't bother seeking a rating from the MPAA. Whether or not it turns out to be a shameless cash-in in the vein of many a horror remake, at the very least this indicates that it has more balls than your average PG-13 retread.

#1033: I Spit on Your Grave

7:18 PM / Blu-ray / 3 Comments

(BD, Anchor Bay, Region A, USA)

#1032: Alice in Wonderland

7:06 PM / Blu-ray / 4 Comments

60th Anniversary Edition (BD/DVD combo, Buena Vista, Region ABC, USA)

Train pics

2:17 PM / Model Railways / 1 Comment

"Falcon", pulling the Heart of Midlothian service, prepares to leave the station...

...while on the other line, "Quicksilver" is just passing through.

"Falcon" stops to commiserate with "Flying Scotsman", currently out of order. Ignore the fact that the liveries are from two completely different eras. Ignore too the stack of SIMPSONS DVDs in the background.

"Quicksilver" and "Falcon" pass each other on the implausibly tight curves of a space-strapped model railway.

What d'you mean, "That looks nothing like York Station"?

Various shots of the details on "Falcon". ("Quicksilver" is from a slightly earlier, less detailed batch - note the less convincing linkage in shot 2.)

Three locomotives take five.

I continue to be stunned by the sheer level of detail and accuracy in these models. For comparison, here's a recent photo of the real thing. (Six of the 35 A4 Pacifics have been preserved, four in the UK and two in North America.)

BD impressions: Bean: The Ultimate Disaster Movie

5:17 PM / BD Impressions / 5 Comments

...or just plain BEAN, as the on-screen title has it.

The film: Well, it's no masterpiece, but I rewatch it every now and then and I don't get tired of it. It certainly helps if you enjoy the MR. BEAN TV series, although this movie version uproots Rowan Atkinson's titular buffoon and plonks him in California, where he enters the lives of a suburban American family and wreaks havoc. It actually ends up feeling less like an extension of MR. BEAN and more like a random comedy with Mr. Bean parachuted into it, which probably helps explain why it wasn't all that well received by die hard fans of the character. The subsequent MR. BEAN'S HOLIDAY was a lot more faithful to the tone and spirit of the TV series, but there's some enjoyable stuff going on here, even if many of the gags are simply regurgitated versions of sketches from the show (I'm thinking in particular of the sick bag gag during Bean's plane trip; a similar copy-and-paste of the infamous turkey gag from the Christmas special was thankfully cut before release), and the action for some reason continues to be dragged out for a good twenty-five minutes after the main conflict has been resolved. 6/10

Image quality: Ah, Universal. In this situation, I don't think there's much for me to do except to quote film restorer Robert A. Harris' now-infamous (among AV enthusiasts) plea to the studio after viewing their BD of ELIZABETH:

Heavily processed for grain removal, softened -- and then, of necessity, sharpened, with all of the requisite force fields and halos intact. There is no remaining fine detail whatsoever. This horrific Blu-ray should be put out of its misery.

The fate of cinematography, direction, acting and art direction in the cinema all hinge on reproduction. When quality reproduction fails, so does the film.

As I'm certain that this will not be recalled for some error or other, I believe that the best move for Universal is to halt all distribution of catalog titles. Stop transferring. Stop mastering. Stop distribution. If not for the sake of the films, do it for our planet.

Fail.

4/10

Bean: The Ultimate Disaster Movie
studio: Universal; country: UK; region code: ABC; codec: VC-1;
file size: 26.1 GB; average bit rate (including audio): 41.86 Mbit/sec

Full steam ahead

9:30 PM / Model Railways / 6 Comments

Until the age of about 11, I was obsessed with model trains. My late granddad bought me my first train set at age 4 or thereabouts - a simple "OO" gauge freight tain and oval track loop from Hornby. (He himself had a far more impressive setup in the larger "O" gauge running the entire length of his loft.) Despite their highly temperamental nature (rolling stock accidentally becoming uncoupled, locomotives constantly derailing at the corners, etc.), I became absolutely hooked, and for several years all I wanted for birthdays and Christmasses were new trains, track and carriages. It was always steam locomotives - I had no interest in diesel and electric trains - and my favourites of all were the A4 Pacifics, majestic, streamlined beasts builts in the late 1930s for the London and North Eastern Railway, one of which, 4468 "Mallard", holds the world speed record for steam traction (126 miles per hour).

I'm not entirely sure why my interest in model railways declined, but I'd hazard a guess that it had something to do with the amount of time, money and patience required to build and maintain a really impressive layout, plus the fact that even a modest sized setup requires a great deal of space. (For several years, I had a two-line circuit that occupied a good two thirds of my bedroom floor. I had no space for anything else, and actually getting around the room was virtually impossible.) At around the time I started secondary school, I got rid of all my track, controllers, coaches, wagons and accessories, and packed my four favourite locomotives (three A4s and one A3, a limited edition Flying Scotsman) into the back of a cupboard.

Flash forward a decade and a half, and for some reason the passion has been re-awakened in me last December. I'm at a loss to explain why, but it might have had something to do with clearing out the aforementioned cupboard and rediscovering the locomotives, along with various Hornby catalogues, a booklet of track plans and an incredibly battered book full of photographs of A4s. Fairly soon, I was perusing the stock in Hornby's online catalogue and playing the "if money was no object..." game. Come Christmas, I received some money and decided to put it towards a fairly straightforward train set. Being the A4 enthusiast that I am, I settled on the Yorkshire Pullman set and found it on Amazon for a pretty reasonable price (well, given the RRP, at any rate):

Of course, things have changed quite a bit in the last decade in a half. The locomotives are now more detailed and more accurate (and more expensive) than ever, require less power than their predecessors and now seem to be exclusively engine-driven (the last time I set eyes on a model train, the Hornby steam models were distinctive due to the motor being placed in the tender). Oh, and they're manufactured in China now. I pressed ahead with my rampant spending spree, picking up a couple of track extension packs (to allow me to create a double loop rather than the fairly uninteresting single oval that comes in the set) and one of those self-assemble railway station packs (to make the layout look less sparse). A few days later I also bit the bullet and ordered what I later discovered to be a limited edition of 1,500: the Heart of Midlothian train pack which include a locomotive (the A4 Pacific "Falcon") and three coaches.

I was glad I did, because a couple of weeks after Christmas, everything except the main item - the Yorkshire Pullman set - had arrived. As such I was glad to have a train and some spare track to mess about with... and was even more glad when the set finally DID show up, nearly a fortnight after dispatch, and turned out to be the wrong item. (I was sent the SHEFFIELD Pullman, an easy mistake to make, but still - grrr!) Naturally, it was packaged up and returned to sender, with promises of the correct model arriving "shortly". (It took an additional week to reach me. None of this, as I'm sure you'd agree, is the sort of service you'd expect to receive given the £15 delivery charge.)

In the meantime, I'd discovered a problem: the locomotive from the Heart of Midlothian pack didn't like performing left hand turns. It was absolutely fine going clockwise around my loop of track (and therefore only ever having to turn right), but flip it round and try to send it the other way and it would invariably short circuit the entire loop within seconds. I was at a loss to explain this and was just getting to the stage of sending it back to the supplier (not something I was looking forward to, given its limited edition status and the fact that they had sold their last remaining stock to me) when I discovered a model shop a mere bus ride away from where I live. "Bring it in and let me take a look at it," said the fellow behind the counter. I dutifully did so. "Here's your problem," he said, and pushed the locomotive's chassis back into place. (It was previously out of alignment, causing one of the connecting rods to brush against one of the wheels during - you guessed it - left hand turns.)

And here are the results:

OK, so it may not be the world's most thrilling layout at the moment, but I've got plans for it. Space on my bedroom floor is fairly limited, so my aim is to construct a sort of table with foldable legs that can be propped up against the wall when not in use. That will allow me to design something a bit bigger than the setup in the picture above without worrying about not being able to move from one side of the room to the other. (I must admit, though, that I'm slightly surprised by just how effortlessly it all runs on nothing more than a sheet of glossy sheet of paper (Hornby's scenic TrakMat) laid on top of the carpet. My last layout had a dedicated cork baseboard and trains derailed on it constantly. The track and/or locomotives must have come along leaps and bounds since then.) I envy those who can dedicate an entire room to their layout. (And of course there's also this.)

I'll take some more pictures of the layout when I get the chance to in daylight, but for now, here are a few snaps from last week of the Heart of Midlothian service on its lonely run round a single loop of track through some very blue, carpet-like countryside:

The third shot shows Falcon next to her older, less accurate, dust-clogged and currently non-functioning sister, Mallard (in for servicing as I type this).

PS. A word of warning to my fellow Blu-ray aficionados: while I do intend to keep up my "BD impressions" posts (and currently have a bit of a backlog which I'll hopefully get round to over the next few days), the expense of a model railway hobby does mean that I'm going to have to be a bit more selective about the BDs I buy. In practice, all this really means is that I'll be relying a bit more on rentals than I did in the past, but it does mean I'll be less likely to blind-buy non-UK discs.

PPS. By the way, anyone with an interest in model railways living in or near the Glasgow area should definitely check out Pastimes on Maryhill Road (towards the St. George's Cross end). It's an absolute treasure trove of rolling stock and the gentleman who runs it, Gordon, is incredibly helpful and knowledgeable.

Veronique, attempt no. 2

2:56 PM / Blu-ray / 3 Comments

About a year ago, I reviewed Artificial Eye's UK BD release of THE DOUBLE LIFE OF VERONIQUE and came down quite hard on the image quality, describing it as "a bit of a disappointment" and "blasted with heavy noise reduction, rendering the grain static and unnatural and giving many shots a soft, rather smudgy quality." At the time, my thoughts on this disc were out of step with those of the majority. Now, however, the film has been released in the US as part of the Criterion Collection, derived from the same master.

And, as the screen captures accompanying DVD Beaver's review demonstrate, the master may be no stunner but it certainly looked a good deal more film-like before Artificial Eye added grain reduction to it. Criterion, it seems, have done a much better job of retaining the filmic look with their release, rendering their version far superior. It's not a film I'm madly in love with (I prefer Kieslowski's THREE COLOURS trilogy) so I won't be rushing out to replace my Artificial Eye disc immediately, but for those yet to decide which to pick up, it seems the choice is simple. Or at least it would be if the Criterion wasn't region coded.

My top 10 BD transfers of 2010

10:44 PM / Blu-ray / 3 Comments

Spoiler-tagged for those who haven't listened to Movie Matters #5 yet:

• Aliens (20th Century Fox)
• The Evil Dead (Anchor Bay)
• Gladiator (EU re-release) (Universal)
• Minority Report (20th Century Fox)
• Moulin Rouge! (20th Century Fox)
• Ponyo (Buena Vista)
• Se7en (Warner)
• The Sound of Music (20th Century Fox)
• Whip It (Lions Gate)
• Zombieland (Sony Pictures)

In alphabetical order - when you're talking about the best of the best, a numerical ranking doesn't make a whole lot of sense. Distribution companies listed because, in certain instances (numbers 2, 3, 4, 6 and 9), the films were released by separate countries in different territories, each using their own encode.

My top 10 films of 2010

10:41 PM / Cinema / 3 Comments

Spoiler-tagged for those who haven't listened to Movie Matters #5 yet:

1. The Social Network
2. Toy Story 3
3. The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo
4. The Ghost
5. Splice
6. Ponyo
7. The Princess and the Frog
8. Whip It
9. Amer
10. Video Nasties: Moral Panic, Censorship & Videotape

Going by UK theatrical release dates (which explains the inclusion of numbers 3, 7, 8 and 9).

Movie Matters #5

7:35 PM / Podcast / 6 Comments

In the first Movie Matters episode of 2011, co-hosts Lee Howard and Michael Mackenzie cast they eyes over the best (and some of the worst) films of 2010, counting down their ten favourites of the past year. The listeners also get their time in the spotlight with their own personal lists.

With over 2 hours and 45 minutes of banter, this is the biggest Movie Matters episode yet!

• http://rapidshare.com/files/443451286/moviematters-episode5-19-01-11.mp3
• iTunes

The music sampled in this episode is from SHUTTER ISLAND (Symphony No. 3, 4th Movement: Passacaglia - Allegro Moderato by Krzysztof Penderecki), AMER (from WHAT HAVE THEY DONE TO YOUR DAUGHTERS? by Stelvio Cipriani), KICK-ASS (the Prodigy), the Millennium trilogy (Jacob Groth) and TOY STORY 3 (Randy Newman). Special thanks to David Mackenzie for audio support.

http://moviematterspodcast.blogspot.com

#1031: Dollhouse: The Complete Season 2

6:15 PM / Blu-ray / 1 Comment

(BD, 20th Century Fox, Region A, USA)

In praise of LDHosting

7:33 PM / Web / 5 Comments

I thought I'd take a few moments to say some kind words about my web host, LDHosting. I've mentioned them a few times now, but I should do so more often, as I really can't say enough good words about them. After a string of ventures with other hosts who either started out good and went down the tubes or were simply not very satisfactory to begin with, I've now been with LDHosting since July 2009, and (touch wood) have no intention of going anywhere else. For €4.95 a month I get their silver plan, which gives me 10 GB of disk space, a 100 GB monthly bandwidth allowance (now reduced to a still generous 60 GB for new customers), unlimited FTP accounts and MySQL databases, support for cron jobs, Perl, SSI and a whole bunch of other services - actually, far more than I'll ever need. That, and the longest I've ever had to wait to get a response from customer support has been about 20 minutes. Oh, and they boast an uptime of 99.97%.

It gets better. Thanks to Bucks4Banners (an unrelated service), I get £5 every month simply for hosting banners on a handful of the sites on this page. (When I signed up, I put them on my most accessed DVD image comparisons.) In effect, this means that this site costs me less than nothing to maintain.

So yeah, basically if you're in need of cheap web hosting with excellent customer service and a solid range of options, go with LDHosting. Their cheapest plan is €3.50 a month (I went for the slightly pricier silver plan because I need the extra disk space, but for those not hosting a massive archive of BD screen captures, the bronze plan's 5 GB should be more than enough). They're the best web host I've ever used, and I don't say that lightly.

And no, they didn't pay me to write this post.

Rooney Mara is David Fincher's Lisbeth Salander

2:12 PM / Cinema / 18 Comments

OK, I buy it. Different from Noomi Rapace but still undoubtedly Salander.

More pics (and an article) here. (Thanks Erik!)

#1030: The Social Network

1:59 PM / Blu-ray / 8 Comments

(BD, Sony Pictures, Region A, USA)

#1029: Army of Shadows

1:57 PM / Blu-ray / 5 Comments

(BD, Criterion, Region A, USA)

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