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Films I saw for the first time in October 2011

11:59 PM / Cinema / 3 Comments

• Monday, October 3, 2011: TOMORROW, WHEN THE WAR BEGAN (Australia, 2010) 6/10
• Wednesday, October 5, 2011: HEREAFTER (USA, 2010) 5/10
• Sunday, October 9, 2011: THE DOWNFALL OF BERLIN: ANONYMA (Germany/Poland, 2008) 8/10
• Wednesday, October 26, 2011: STONE (USA, 2010) 4/10
• Thursday, October 27, 2011: THE AMERICAN (USA, 2010) 7/10
• Friday, October 28, 2011: PERFECT BLUE (Japan, 1997) 8/10
• Monday, October 31, 2011: SCRE4M (USA, 2011) 5/10
• Monday, October 31, 2011: WAKE WOOD (Ireland/UK, 2011) 3/10

BDs and DVDs I bought or received in October 2011

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

• Thursday, October 13, 2011: THE SECRET OF NIMH (BD, Region ABC, USA)
• Monday, October 24, 2011: WAKING THE DEAD: THE COMPLETE SERIES NINE (DVD, Region 2, UK)

Happy Halloween!

12:36 PM / General / 10 Comments

Spine-tingling seasonal greetings to you, faithful readers! Tonight's spooktacular viewing aboard the HMS Whimsy shall consist of:

SCREAM 4 (Wes Craven, 2011) - Despite the negative word of mouth, I'm doing my best to keep an open mind about this one.

THE DESCENT (Neil Marshall, 2005) - One of the best horror movies of the last decade, I have a sneaking suspicion I may need this to cleanse myself after SCREAM 4.

WAKE WOOD (David Keating, 2011) - The latest from Hammer. I believe Mark Kermode had some nice things to say about it on his Radio 5 show.

BD impressions: The American

12:22 PM / BD Impressions / 6 Comments

The film: THE AMERICAN is described as a "sexy suspense thriller" on the back cover, but I'd be lying if I said I found it particularly suspenseful or particularly thrilling. The "sexy" component is provided by a variety of glamorous women, led by the fascinatingly-named Violante Placido... and if they don't float your boat there's George Clooney, I guess.

A slow-burner in every sense, it deals with a gunmaker (Clooney) who hides out in a remote town in the Italian countryside after his previous cover is blown. While there, he accepts one last assignment from steely-eyed Thekla Reuten (most recently seen playing a similar role in the BBC1 serial HIDDEN), while at the same time starting a relationship with a local prostitute (the aforementioned Placido). And that's basically it. Not a whole lot happens in its 1 hour 45 minute running time, but I'd be lying if I said I didn't get sucked in. Admittedly, I'm not convinced there's enough material to justify the running time, but there's something nice about a film that seems to be in no hurry to reach the finish line and doesn't feel the need to provide a gunfight every 15 minutes (though that's not to say we don't get any action). The director, Dutch filmmaker Anton Corbjin (whose previous film, CONTROL, I haven't seen), milks the setting for all it's worth, delivering some stunning vistas and aerial shots. It's not exactly riveting viewing, and it certainly didn't set my world on fire, but it's a nicely low key, reflective piece and a perfectly pleasant way to spend 105 minutes. 7/10

Image quality: It's been ages since I did a BD Impressions piece - and it looks like I chose a good one to kick off with. However much we might gripe about Universal's treatment of their catalogue titles (and with good reason), when they get their hands on a pristine DI they're more than capable of hitting it out of the park. Detail is absolutely stunning on this disc, just as much in the long shots as in the close-ups. The encoding (the first VC-1 encode I've seen in absolutely ages) can't be faulted either. This is just an all-round excellent presentation that I can't in any way criticise. 10/10

The American
label: Universal; disc country: UK; region code: ABC;
codec: VC-1; aspect ratio: 2.39:1

Updated Monday, July 9, 2012 at 12:32 PM: Transferred images from imgPlace to ImageShack. Full resolution captures should now be loading properly again.

#1095: Waking the Dead: The Complete Series Nine

8:51 PM / DVD / No Comments

(DVD, 2 Entertain, Region 2, UK)

Speaking of series that recently came to an end...

It's the only standard definition DVD I've bought this year, by the way.

R.I.P. Ruth Evershed...

1:59 PM / Television / 2 Comments

...and R.I.P. SPOOKS. Thank you for ten hair-raising years of quality TV.

#1094: The Secret of NIMH

10:52 AM / Blu-ray / 12 Comments

(BD, 20th Century Fox/MGM, Region ABC, USA)

A freebie via the PlanetAxel rewards scheme. (Did I mention I really, really don't like the cover art?)

It's coded for all regions, by the way, despite being labelled as Region A on the back cover.

BD impressions: Torso

11:09 PM / BD Impressions / 63 Comments

The film: I've always thought TORSO was the missing link between the giallo and the later US slasher movie movement, far more so than the usually cited BAY OF BLOOD. (Mikel J. Koven makes a similar argument in his book LA DOLCE MORTE, but I noticed the connection first, dagnabbit! :D) It's unusual among gialli in that it focuses on an all-girl group of college students (most gialli tend to be about mixed sex groups of adults in their late 20s or 30s) and, while it features a whodunit of sorts, it's half-hearted to the point of not mattering. It's therefore worth seeing for its status as a sort of bridge between two distinct filmic movements, and for the superb final 25 minutes - an almost dialogue-free game of cat and mouse in which the Final Girl (told you it was reminiscent of US slashers) is trapped inside an isolated country villa with the killer, who doesn't realise there's someone still alive in the house.

It's a shame the rest of the film doesn't live up to the quality of that final act. I've never had as much time for Sergio Martino as some giallo fans, but I'll concede that he did do some very nice work with the giallo/ROSEMARY'S BABY rip-off hybrid ALL THE COLOURS OF THE DARK. Quite a few people consider TORSO his best effort, and I think there's an argument to be made that the aforementioned climax is the best thing he's ever directed, but the rest of the film is a fairly bland plod through the usual clichés, with a grubbier, less refined visual style than his earlier gialli. Suzy Kendall (perhaps best known as Tony Musante's love interest in the vastly superior THE BIRD WITH THE CRYSTAL PLUMAGE) does reasonably well as the fairly bland heroine, and the late Tina Aumont looks resplendent (it's those big smoky eyes that do it for me), but beyond that there's not a massive amount to recommend. You'll likely guess the killer's identity in his first scene, despite the numerous red herrings Martino and co-writer (and giallo legend) Ernesto Gastaldi throw our way. It ultmately all just feels a bit tired, only truly coming alive for that outstanding third act. 5/10

Image quality: The good news: it looks much, much better than THE CAT O' NINE TAILS... though that really wouldn't be difficult.

The bad news: it's derived from yet another seriously compromised CRT-based telecine from Italian post house LVR.

One of the claims most frequently repeated by the anti-screenshot contingent is that screenshots don't accurately represent viewing the film in motion, and there is a degree of truth in this, although it has been twisted and blown out of proportion by certain individuals who don't seem to properly understand how the process works. Yes, it's true that you can come across captures that feature additional processing and are therefore unrepresentative of the disc (such as those found on a certain prolific image comparison site that has yet to amend its practices despite having been notified about the problem several times) but for the most part the captures the various review sites and individual users upload are accurate reproductions of individual frames on the discs in question. However, while you can tell a lot about a disc's look from an individual capture in terms of colour, brightness and overall detail, it's much harder to discern the overall texture of the movie, particularly those shot on film, given that the entire image is made up of individual grain particles that change on a per-frame basis.

Why is all this relevant? Because, when I came across captures of this disc in the review at Rock! Shock! Pop! I was pleasantly surprised. The same machine noise that afflicts all LVR's CRT jobs (even the better ones, like THE BIRD WITH THE CRYSTAL PLUMAGE and DEEP RED) seemed to be present and correct, and a number of shots had that familiar smeary look, but others looked quite impressive and film-like. I bought the disc primarily on the strength of those captures, only to be a little let down when I saw it in motion.

Don't misunderstand me: there's nothing wrong with Rock! Shock! Pop!'s captures. They're an accurate representation of what's on the disc. The trouble is, what they don't reveal is that a heavy pass of noise reduction has rendered the grain that's visible in the captures largely static when played back. I've no idea at what point this happened (the CAT O' NINE TAILS debacle suggests that, at least on some titles, LVR are actually performing DNR at the telecine stage) or whether the responsibility lies with LVR or Blue Underground, but either way the result is not particularly filmic, and introduces some nasty artefacting in certain scenes: the forest murder, shot day-for-night (and correctly tinted here, unlike on the German X-Rated Kult DVD release), is a particularly strong offender. Close-up shots with little movement in them generally fare quite well, with a decent amount of genuine detail coming through, but movement and especially wider shots reveal a lack of fine detail and a generally mushy appearance that I don't think can be blamed on the original photography.

I suppose on the whole it's a fairly acceptable presentation of materials that likely didn't look too stunning to begin with, but it's a problematic release all the same. Now that we've identified the company responsible for these transfers (and the less than state-of-the-art equipment they're using), we at least have something approaching an explanation for why so many of these titles have such a weird look. Perhaps, just perhaps, now's the time to admit that there's a problem and take steps to correct it. 6/10

Note: The BD contains both an export version and a slightly longer Italian cut of the film, presented as two separate encodes without using seamless branching. Barring the first image, the captures below are all derived from the Italian cut. There's no appreciable difference in image quality between the two versions, both of which are derived from the same scan.

Torso
label: Blue Underground; disc country: USA; region code: ABC;
codec: AVC; aspect ratio: 1.66:1

Updated Monday, July 9, 2012 at 12:46 PM: Transferred images from imgPlace to ImageShack. Full resolution captures should now be loading properly again.