Sunday, January 23, 2011

BD impressions: Bean: The Ultimate Disaster Movie

5:17 PM / BD Impressions / Comments5 Comments

BD Impressions
Blu-ray

...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

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5 Comments

1. Trond said:

Hahahaha, that quote is some of the funniest I've read in a loooooooong time. Go Robert A. Harris.

(Posted on Sunday, January 23, 2011 at 9:30 PM)

2. David Mackenzie said:

I bought the DVD version of this before the BD came out, derived from the same master.

The DVD has the same poor dynamic range (with white radioactive glowing windows etc.) but you don't notice as much because it has a good amount of grain. This BD was just painful.

(Posted on Sunday, January 23, 2011 at 10:03 PM)

3. paku said:

No surprise there. Seriously though, what is wrong with Universal? Why is it that even the smallest distributors can do new transfers of the most obscure films, yet Universal as one of the big six can't even do new transfers of the biggest blockbusters? It's like it's written in their mission statement or something, "Not a single cent shall be spent on restoring catalogue titles in HD, or to make them even remotely fit for the Blu-ray format."

Of course they totally get away with it too. It really sucks for us who care, that so many can't tell the difference.

(Posted on Monday, January 24, 2011 at 4:56 AM)

4. David S.H. said:

DNR and edge enhancement, probably only someone of Mr Beans intellect would believe they're a great combination.

Its frankly disturbing that Universal can still be making these rookie mistakes in a 2010 release.

(Posted on Monday, January 24, 2011 at 1:07 PM)

5. David Mackenzie said:

From what I gather, Universal's tech people (or tech person?) were big advocates of CRT-based telecine and have been doing HD telecine since the early 1990s.

If this is true, it would make sense that they have a lot of "early HD" masters that might have looked just fine on CRT monitors.

And given that we're in the minority about actually caring about picture quality, I can see why they aren't in a hurry to do new scans on modern equipment.

(Posted on Wednesday, January 26, 2011 at 12:28 AM)

 
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