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BD Impressions: Raiders of the Lost Ark

2:57 PM / BD Impressions / 7 Comments

The long-awaited INDIANA JONES: THE COMPLETE ADVENTURES has finally made it to Blu-ray, containing all three films in the Indiana Jones trilogy and, erm, THE KINGDOM OF THE CRYSTAL SKULL. I'm not sure I'll have time to do BD Impressions pieces on all four films, but I couldn't pass up the opportunity to cover the first and, as is so often the case, best film, 1981's RAIDERS OF THE LOST ARK.

The film: I'm unabashed in my love of RAIDERS. It's fantastic: action-packed, heart-stopping, funny as hell. While some people would point to JAWS or CLOSE ENCOUNTERS as their favourite Spielberg film, this one has always got my vote. I saw it as a young kid and, like so many films first experienced at that age, it wormed its way into my subconscious to the extent that, even though I didn't revisit the film until several years later, when I finally did I found I knew it more or less off by heart. And it's one of those special films where knowing what's coming next is no bad thing: the fun lies in its familiarity, and it just gets better with age. I've always found Harrison Ford to be a fairly wooden actor, but oddly enough it doesn't hurt this film one iota, and in many cases his slightly stilted delivery actually adds to the comedy. Karen Allen is brilliant - she was always my favourite Indy leading lady, and the stuff she gets up to here just reinforces how wasted she was when they brought her back for CRYSTAL SKULL. Unlike Mrs. Spielberg in TEMPLE OF DOOM, who served a similar function, her schtick is endearing rather than infuriating, and I love the fact that she's neither a screaming damsel in distress or an unbelievable Strong Independent Woman(TM): she's brash, goofy and actually a bit of a lightweight, even though she clearly thinks of herself as a hard-ass. And of course there are the villains: in particular, Ronald Lacey makes for one of the most sinister movie Nazis ever, which takes some doing.

I can't really say anything else about the film that you haven't heard before. If you've seen it, I've a suspicion you'll agree with all of the above. If you haven't seen it... what the hell is wrong with you, and why are you still reading this? See it now! 10/10

Image quality: For this Blu-ray release, much has been made of the fact that RAIDERS has received a new 4k scan from the camera negative, which I take to mean that, for TEMPLE OF DOOM and LAST CRUSADE, older masters have been reused. I haven't looked at them in any detail yet, so I'll restrict this discussion to RAIDERS, which looks extremely impressive indeed. Shot in anamorphic Panavision, the image has the smooth, fine grain look you'd normally expect from this process. Colours look much warmer than the cooler-looking DVD version that was released nearly a decade ago in the THE ADVENTURES OF INDIANA JONES box set (and was reviewed very positively at the time), but aside from the rather blown-out contrasts during the opening credits (taken from a source at least a couple of generations removed from the negative, naturally, since RAIDERS is a pre-DI title and they haven't been re-composited for this release), the overall balance of colour, contrast etc. is very pleasing to the eye. Either way, the present colour timing comes with Spielberg's blessing, and while that doesn't automatically count for everything (remember the FriedkinVision FRENCH CONNECTION BD from a few years back?), I reckon it stands for a lot more than looking at older DVDs and automatically assuming THEY were accurate and this isn't. Quoting TLEFilms' Torsten Kaiser on the subject:

Re: RAIDERS OF THE LOST ARK: Pretty much "the same picture" as with [the 2012 European BD release of THE TERMINATOR]: close (to the original mostly), but not 100% perfect; but compared to everything before on video masters A HUGE LEAP forward. Everyone who ownes an LPP of the re-issue will know.

(Source: Blu-ray.com forum)

There are a handful of minor glitches that prevent this disc achieving perfection. The aforementioned opening titles with their constrained dynamic range are one; another is this shot of the spiders on Alfred Molina's back, which has a very strange appearance - almost like the effect of watching a 3D film without glasses. I don't know whether it's some sort of compositing side effect, but it doesn't look like an optical so I'm inclined to assume not. There's also a shot at around 01:55:00 where Indy hides from the Nazi U-boat where heavier-than-usual grain has clearly been digitally reduced, but that's really the only shot in the entire film that shows obvious signs of digital manipulation. Otherwise it's an extremely impressive presentation - one of the best I've ever seen for a catalogue title, and continues the almost unbroken streak of Spielberg films receiving top drawer treatment on BD. 9.5/10

Raiders of the Lost Ark
label: Paramount; disc country: USA; region code: ABC;
codec: AVC; aspect ratio: 2.39:1

BD impressions: 101 Dalmatians

11:17 PM / BD Impressions / 9 Comments

Disney's 101 DALMATIANS (or ONE HUNDRED AND ONE DALMATIANS, to use its more cumbersome on-screen title) still doesn't have an official release date for a US BD, but it has been available in numerous countries throughout the rest of the world for a couple of months now. I suspect the eventual US release will be preferable, if only because it's likely to include the original mono mix, removed from the international versions in favour of a multitude of dubs, but until it surfaces it's all academic. Mine happens to be the French one, but there's now a UK release if you don't fancy having non-English text on the cover (I know some people are picky that way).

The film: As far as I'm aware, this is the only instance where I've read the original novel on which a Disney film has been based before seeing the film. As such, it's perhaps not entirely surprising that, as an adaptation, I think this is a bit of a disappointment. It misses a great deal of the nuance of Dodie Smith's book in terms of dogs' behaviour and their interactions with humans, and for the most part turns previously intelligent characters into morons. Of course, it's an animated cartoon, and you can't exactly do a cartoon without exaggeration, but it's a shame to see a great character like the Sheepdog turned into a blundering, senile buffoon, and to lose great set-pieces like the Dalmatians getting their revenge on Cruella De Vil by tearing her collection of furs to pieces.

So why do I still rate it so highly? The art. It's an absolute pleasure to look at. After SLEEPING BEAUTY, Disney was on a cost-cutting mission and developed the xerography technique as a means of keeping the budgets down. While the scratchy, ragged look that resulted would become something of an eyesore in later films as budgets decreased even further, here it goes hand in hand with Ken Anderson's gorgeous, heavily stylised production design... and let's be honest, there's no way they could have made a film called ONE HUNDRED AND ONE DALMATIANS without the ability to photocopy their drawings. The animators are at the top of their game here, with some wonderfully observed caricaturing of animal behaviour, while Marc Davis' animation of Cruella (done more or less single-handed, if the official accounts are to be believed) is a tour de force, and never bettered in the pantheon of Disney villains.

It's a vibrant, jazzy, energetic film with impeccable craftsmanship, and a lot of the time that's enough to make you forget that, as an adaptation of a classic children's novel, it's a bit of a let-down... and even then, there's every chance I'd be saying the same thing about PINOCCHIO or LADY AND THE TRAMP (my #1 and #2 favourite Disneys) if I was more familiar with the source material. 8/10

Image quality: Surprise surprise, this is another of those degrained jobs Disney seem to love so much, though I guess it's preferable to RESCUERS/FOX AND THE HOUND-style blotchyvision. In any event, detail is resolved considerably better than on the downright blurry release of THE ARISTOCATS from a few months back, which I'm inclined to think indicates that considerably finer grained source materials were used for DALMATIANS. Some shots do appear softer than others, but this is probably down to the photography itself rather than any foul-play. Oh, and it's in its intended ratio of 1.33:1 as well, which is a plus given that a number of Disney titles from this era have been cropped to 1.66:1 or 1.75:1 for recent DVD and BD releases.

Given the high level of digital manipulation involved (to tell the truth, I'm actually slightly surprised they didn't try to correct the varying brightness of the Dalmatians' coats resulting from multiple layers of cels within the same shot), there are understandably some glitches. These vary from the largely imperceptible (you probably won't notice the ugly cut-out artefacts around Cruella in this shot as it flies by pretty quickly) to the more obvious, of which this curiosity is by far the worst example. Although the grain has largely been obliterated, it does poke through now and then, particularly during the snowstorm sequence in the second half of the film, where the swirling fog plays havoc with the degrainer and allows the original texture of the film to come through in clumps.

I'm going to sound like a broken record, but I really wish Disney would stop going down this route of grain obliteration on their classic titles. Studio Ghibli have the right idea, and for the most part so too did Gaumont on their ASTERIX releases, in spite of some intermittent DVNR artefacts. PATTON is getting a re-relase in November to correct precisely this sort of shabby treatment; why can't we get the same for the Disney classics? 7/10

101 Dalmatians
label: Buena Vista; disc country: France; region code: ABC;
codec: AVC; aspect ratio: 1.33:1

BD impressions update

2:15 PM / BD Impressions / 7 Comments

It recently came to my attention that the BD impressions captures uploaded to imgPlace had, at some point, started being rescaled to around half their intended size, completely removing the point of uploading full resolution captures in the first place. I've just spent the last couple of hours transferring all the images in question over to ImageShack, which doesn't suffer from these limitations. As a result, the affected captures should now be displaying correctly once again:

• The American
• Die Another Day
• Licence to Kill
• The Lion King
• The Lord of the Rings
• The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King (Extended Edition)
• Rififi
• Torso
• TRON
• TRON: Legacy

I suspect I'll be using ImageShack for all my full resolution captures from now on, with the exception of ones that contravene the terms and conditions... like ones with tits in them. Prudes.

BD impressions: Treasure Planet

11:38 AM / BD Impressions / 2 Comments

The film: Probably Disney's highest profile animated misfire after THE BLACK CAULDRON, TREASURE PLANET was in development for years (it was originally pitched in the 80s alongside THE LITTLE MERMAID), cost upwards of $140 million and bombed at the box office. I'd like to say it was an overlooked masterpiece, but in reality it's yet another wildly uneven post-renaissance effort that seems to be going in all directions at once, with an overarching concept - a mash-up of sci-fi and 18th/19th century swashbuckling - that doesn't work.

First, though, the good. The central relationship - that of young Jim Hawkins and the enigmatic Long John Silver - may be the most mature storytelling Disney has ever attempted. Silver is unique in the Disney canon, doubling up as both a mentor/father figure to Jim and the main villain - a villain who, flying in the face of every convention established by the studio, actually grows and is partially redeemed by the end. True, it's not handled with a great deal of subtlety, but Silver is a million miles removed from the moustache-twirling Captain Hook or the grotesque Ursula. The score by James Newton Howard is also great stuff, and there's plenty of wonderfully skilled character animation to be enjoyed. Sergio Pablos's Dr. Doppler is a particular standout - a complex, detailed construction that feels entirely three dimensional and looks consistent regardless of the angle from which you're looking at him...

...unlike Jim, a bafflingly poor piece of character design that seems to be (badly) aping anime with its triangular chin and floating eyes, eyebrows and nose. The character looks completely different in profile and front-on views, and any attempt to turn his head involves a cheat of some sort as the animators attempt to bridge the two different looks. There's no real sense of dimensionality to him, and when your protagonist's animation is outshone by every secondary character, something's seriously wrong. The character is also completely unlikeable for the bulk of the film's running time, and while I get that the filmmakers were trying to capture teenage angst in an animated form, a lot of the time he just comes off as obnoxious for no apparent reason. He butts shoulders with a bunch of characters who all look like they were designed by different people and belong in different movies, from the gelatinous Silver (a bear-like creature with computer-generated cyborg appendages and an uncharacteristically messy bit of design from the normally excellent Glen Keane) to the infuriating BEN, a flamboyant homosexual (at least that's what I'm inferring) robot voiced by Martin Short who is a perfect illustration of the fact that "he's MEANT to be annoying" is not a valid defence. The heavy use of CG for the backgrounds and props jars too - some of it almost looks like pre-viz work, while shots where the viewpoint weaves around the 3D sets invariably lead to the 2D characters wobbling and stobing as the animators try valiantly to "keep up" with the camera.

It all feels like a case of "too many cooks in the kitchen", with teen angst, fart jokes (this was back when SHREK was considered the bee's knees) and a cute little pink blob called Morph all butting heads. It doesn't know what it wants to be and as a result doesn't end up really feeling like anything. Its 2002 stable-mate, the lower budget, less ambitious but infinitely more focused LILO & STITCH, outclasses it on every level. 5/10

Image quality: TREASURE PLANET is the only film I've seen projected in IMAX and, aside from giving me a headache, it also showed up the limitations of the source material, with the low resolution nature of certain elements being lade bare for all to see. These are less noticeable on the BD, but numerous 3D elements appear blocky and aliased (e.g. Jim's solar surfer in Example 3, making them jar even more with the pristine hand-drawn elements. These shortcomings aside, it's a strong presentation and I really can't fault the disc at all... except for one area: compression. While for the most part it looks fine, there are a handful of moments that completely choke the encoder. One of these is when Jim unlocks the star map for the first time; another is this - yikes! There's also some occasional TARZAN-style blotchy noise (see Silver's stomach in Example 22) and some banding (Silver's stomach again in Example 14). The latter was far more severe on the DVD, and was even apparent in the 35mm version I saw at the cinema back in 2003 (I can't remember whether the IMAX version was affected, but I'd be inclined to suspect that it was). When all said and done, it looks very good, but inferior to the likes of THE LION KING. 9/10

Treasure Planet
label: Buena Vista; disc country: USA; region code: ABC;
codec: AVC; aspect ratio: 1.66:1

Note: Full size captures are hosted on ImageShack and may take a while to load.

BD impressions: The Secret of NIMH

5:28 PM / BD Impressions / 8 Comments

It's been a while, hasn't it? Six months, to be precise. This BD impressions piece, the first of 2012, was one I intended to do as a request from a reader back in March, but I've been finding myself spectacularly short of time recently, so I've only just had the opportunity to watch the disc in question and hit the PrintScreen button a few times. So Emil, sorry about the inordinately long wait, but we got there in the end!

The film: I know this film is beloved by many animation aficionados, but I'm afraid I can't really get behind it. As most people will know, it was the first feature-length film to be directed by Don Bluth, who along with several fellow artists walked out of Disney in 1979, severely depleting the studio's ranks and forcing the delay of its next film, THE FOX AND THE HOUND. Bluth felt that Disney had lost its magic and was annoyed at the cost-cutting being forced on the artists by management... and it's certainly true that THE SECRET OF NIMH is visually many times more ambitious than anything Disney had produced since the 1950s. The film was a labour of love for Bluth and his crew, and what they were able to pull off on a shoestring budget is quite remarkable.

But this doesn't change the fact that, as with most of Bluth's films, it's simply not a very well-told story. Despite the short running time of 83 minutes, it drags like nobody's business and only really comes alive during the climax. The really interesting stuff - the genetically modified rats and their escape from a research lab - is glossed over in favour of devoting oodles of screen time to some mildly funny but ultimately pointless comic relief involving a dopey crow voiced by Dom DeLuise. While the colour palette and effects animation are impressive, the character animation has all the hallmarks of a Bluth production: open-mouthed, buck-toothed, goofy-looking characters flailing about wildly accompanied by strangely anaemic vocal performances. The insertion of magical elements completely absent from the source novel also doesn't quite gel with the scientific origins of the rats' transformation, and leads to a thoroughly convenient deus ex machina solution to protagonist Mrs. Brisby's problems.

Jerry Goldsmith's score is among the great man's best work and gives the film a sense of grandeur I suspect it wouldn't otherwise has possessed, and I do have to admire any "children's" animated feature that includes multiple deaths by stabbing. Overall, though, it's a rather ineffective film and about on par with Disney's THE FOX AND THE HOUND, released a year earlier. 6/10

Image quality: Animated film in looking like film shocker! This release appears to be derived from the same scan used for the 2007 "Family Fun Edition" (sigh) DVD release. Back when that version came out, I remember reading an interview with producer/directing animator Gary Goldman where he lamented only having a very short period to do the transfer and being unable to do a more intensive restoration. To be honest, I'm kind of glad. The image is far from pristine, but I'd imagine it's a far more faithful reproduction of how the film originally looked than one of Disney's completely grain scrubbed efforts.

Sharpness and grain levels vary from shot to shot, with the grain tending to lean towards pronounced but natural-looking, except in a handful of optical shots, where some cack-handed grain reduction has been applied, rendering it blurry and blotchy (see Example 21). Damage, both positive and negative, is visible throughout, although a lot of the most prominent white flecks appear to actually be dust on the original animation cels. (Incidentally, Warner have a policy of leaving this in on their Looney Tunes and Merrie Melodies restorations, arguing that it's an authentic part of the original film. I very much doubt Disney would see it that way.) Overall it's a pleasing presentation, and one of those cases where I'll happily put up with the imperfections when I consider what a rushed clean-up effort could have looked like. This is THE SECRET OF NIMH warts and all, and I don't know about you, but I'd rather see the warts than yet another of Disney's dodgy botox jobs. 7/10

PS. Unlike the DVD release, the BD only includes the 1.85:1 version of the film, leaving out the open matte 1.33:1 version. I must confess to having a slight preference for the latter: the film was shot to be presented in either ratio, but a number of the compositions always struck me as being more natural in the 1.33:1 version.

The Secret of NIMH
label: 20th Century Fox/MGM; disc country: USA; region code: A;
codec: AVC; aspect ratio: 1.85:1

Note: Full size captures are hosted on ImageShack and may take a while to load.

BD impressions: Die Another Day

1:50 PM / BD Impressions / 10 Comments

The film:

** THUNK! THUNK! THUNK! **

Sorry, that was the sound of me pounding my head off my desk repeatedly. In the eloquent words of Roger Moore: "I thought it just went too far - and that's from me, the first Bond in space! Invisible cars and dodgy CGI footage? Please!"

DIE ANOTHER DAY was, until yesterday, the only Brosnan Bond film I'd never seen. (Though I hasten to add that it's been several years since I saw GOLDENEYE, TOMORROW NEVER DIES or THE WORLD IS NOT ENOUGH, so I won't be commenting on them till I get the opportunity to give them a reappraisal.) Brosnan was doing his schtick at the time when I was first becoming properly interested in film, and thanks to the fact that he was the encumbent Bond at the time he sort of became the de facto version of the character for me. That's not to say that I liked him any more or any less than the other two Bonds I was aware of - Connery and Moore - but I suppose I just automatically took Brosnan's interpretation of the character to be an accurate rendition of the source material.

It wasn't until I happened to catch the final hour of LICENCE TO KILL on TV one evening, and had my introduction to Timothy Dalton, that I realised how wishy-washy Brosnan was. He comes off as a sort of "greatest hits" Bond, combining elements of the previous incarnations while mastering none of them. There's a bit of Moore's easy charm, a sprinkling of Connery's self-assuredness, and occasionally - just occasionally - the vaguest hint of Dalton's steely-eyed menace. To be fair, I don't think this is strictly speaking Brosnan's fault. The script seems to be pulling him in every possible direction, going straight from being tortured in a North Korean jail for over a year (Dalton would have excelled in this role, I feel) to swanning into a hotel in his pyjamas. One thing you do get a sense of is that Brosnan is very comfortable in the role by this stage, to the point of it seeming like second nature to him. He never comes across to me as an imposter in the way that Moore did in his first film, or Lazenby in ON HER MAJESTY'S SECRET SERVICE. I never find myself thinking "Who's this man telling everyone he's James Bond?" So no, whatever problems DIE ANOTHER DAY has, I'm not inclined to believe BROSNAN is one of them: it would have been equally shit with Connery, Lazenby, Moore, Dalton or Craig in the role.

This has a reputation for being the worst Bond film, and despite only having watched half the films in the series in recent memory, from the evidence I've seen I'm inclined to agree. The thing is, it's not SO much worse than LIVE AND LET DIE that this was always a surefire thing. For a while, as I was watching Brosnan swanning around Havana and trading lukewarm double entendres with Madonna, they were pretty much neck and neck... Then the ice surfing scene came along and it was a done deal. The trouble is, it actually starts with a lot of promise: the opening titles may be accompanied by THE WORST BOND THEME EVER, but the whole idea of Bond spending over a year in a North Korean jail, only being rescued because his masters believed he'd cracked under torture and was haemorrhaging state secrets, is exciting material and seems like setup for a far darker, more morally dubious film than we eventually get. Alas, the North Korean prologue is brushed aside very quickly in favour of a breezy globetrotting yarn filled with ridiculous gadgets, surreal science, ropey visual effects and a clichéd "I want to destroy the world" megalomaniac for a villain. It feels like a bad Roger Moore film, except Moore never had to contend with anything as stupid as an invisible car or effects as bad as that computer-generated tidal wave.

It doesn't truly hit rock bottom until Bond gets to the ice palace, but that's not to suggest that what precedes it is any good. While Halle Berry and Rosamund Pike are not the disasters I'd been led to expect, there's nothing remotely interesting about either of them and they will surely go down in history as being among the most lukewarm Bond girls ever. The editing is rather obnoxious, filled with the sort of quick cutting and annoying speed ramp effects that feel like part of a concerted effort to turn Bond into some sort of XXX clone... ironic, when you consider that the film's director, New Zealand filmmaker Lee Tamahori, later helmed XXX 2: THE NEXT LEVEL. But oddly enough, none of these are the single worst thing about the film: that would be it is BORING with a capital "B". I've felt that a number of the previous Bonds have been overlong, but this one manages to outstay its welcome by almost its entire 133-minute running time... and then has the nerve to treat us to a reprise of that awful theme song the moment it finally gives up the ghost.

Bearing in mind that I've never actually seen the bulk of Roger Moore's output (or Connery's YOU ONLY LIVE TWICE and DIAMONDS ARE FOREVER), I'm not discounting the notion that there might well be worse Bonds out there, but if so, then they would have to be dreadful indeed. 3/10

Image quality: A bit of a mixed bag, this one. Unlike the previous Bonds I've reviewed, this one hasn't been treated to a Lowry restoration. As a result, it looks considerably more film-like than anything between DR. NO and LICENCE TO KILL (I haven't had a chance to look at the only other Brosnan Bond released on BD, THE WORLD IS NOT ENOUGH, so I don't how it compares). At times, it actually looks better than any of the pre-Daniel Craig releases in terms of detail and film-like texture.

That's far from true of the film as a whole, though. There is a fair degree of ringing in certain shots - particularly during the North Korean prologue (see Example 8), which fares worse than just about any other sequence in the film. In fact, the whole prologue looks like it belongs in a different movie, suffering from a pronounced lack of definition (see Example 15). As soon as Bond wakes up in his hospital bed, things improve substantially, and while there are certainly blips along the way, the overall standard remains high for the remainder of the film. According to the IMDB, DIE ANOTHER DAY received a partial digital intermediate, which may explain the inconsistent look. Certainly some of the effects shots show the tell-tale drop in resolution normally associated with optical compositing, with the occasional shot (e.g. Example 28) looking almost SD-like in terms of its lack of detail. On the whole, though, it's a strong presentation - it's just those early North Korean scenes that drag the score down. 7.5/10

Die Another Day
label: 20th Century Fox/MGM; disc country: UK; region code: ABC;
codec: AVC; aspect ratio: 2.39:1

The tally:

• DR. NO - 7/10
• FROM RUSSIA WITH LOVE - 8/10
• GOLDFINGER - 8/10
• THUNDERBALL - 6/10
• ON HER MAJESTY'S SECRET SERVICE - 7/10
• LIVE AND LET DIE - 4/10
• FOR YOUR EYES ONLY - 6/10
• LICENCE TO KILL - 8/10
• DIE ANOTHER DAY - 3/10
• CASINO ROYALE - 8/10
• QUANTUM OF SOLACE - 5/10

Next I'll be revisiting CASINO ROYALE and then QUANTUM OF SOLACE. The latter left me very cold the first time I saw it, but I'll be curious as to whether I warm to it on a rewatch.

Updated Monday, July 9, 2012 at 12:10 PM: Transferred images from imgPlace to ImageShack. Full resolution captures should now be loading properly again.

BD impressions: The Lion King

4:18 PM / BD Impressions / 5 Comments

Image quality: This is a difficult one to rate because, while this is technically a superb presentation - a flawless one, even - it differs in some key ways from the version of THE LION KING that was released in cinemas in 1994. This is nothing new: when the film was first released on DVD in 2003, it featured a different studio logo and replaced credits, as well as numerous animation tweaks, some more obvious than others (the one people are most likely to remember is the completely redrawn shot of the singing crocodiles from the "I just can't wait to be king" musical number). These animation changes have been carried over here, and the studio logo and credits have been redone AGAIN, this time bringing the latter slightly more in line with the original release (the bulk of the closing credits now scroll once more rather than being static), but they still contain differences in placement and typography, and in addition, the dedication to former Disney chairman Frank Wells has been moved from the start to the end of the film.

On top of that, the aspect ratio has changed. Theatrically, the film would have had a ratio of 1.85:1, while the DVD was presented in the film's "intended" 1.66:1, the ratio that was native to the CAPS digital ink and paint system. This new version represents a compromise at 1.78:1, losing a little picture information at the top and bottom compared to the 1.66:1 DVD. What makes this particularly bizarre is that captures of the 3D version show thin black bars on the left and right of the image and more picture information at the top and bottom, bringing its dimensions a little closer to those of the DVD. (But at the same time, the 3D version contains numerous changes of its own, including the removal of depth of field blur and the seemingly accidental loss of certain picture elements). The colours have been tweaked too, with a tendency towards oversaturation, particularly during the Morning Report scene, the "Hakuna Matata" number and the "Circle of Life" coda at the end of the film. By comparison, the "Circle of Life" sequence at the start actually seems DESATURATED compared to the DVD.

So how to rate this? Ultimately, I feel inclined to assign it a score based solely on its technical rather than artistic attributes, which are pretty much peerless. And in that regard, this is a stunning presentation. Detail is spot on, compression is never an issue, and the banding effects that often afflict digitally-sourced animation are nowhere to be found here, which is a relief because they are fairly prevalent in the clips of the film used in the bonus features on the disc. In certain shots, such as this one, artificial grain/noise appears to have been generated, and I would be inclined to suspect that this was done to eliminate banding (the encoders seem to really struggle with perfectly smooth colour gradients but have a much easier time of it if some random noise is introduced). All in all I really can't fault the disc itself in any way, so I'm going with a 10/10.

The Lion King
label: Buena Vista; disc country: USA; region code: ABC;
codec: AVC; aspect ratio: 1.78:1 (theatrical 1.85:1, intended 1.66:1)

Updated Monday, July 9, 2012 at 11:52 AM: Transferred images from imgPlace to ImageShack. Full resolution captures should now be loading properly again.

BD impressions: Licence to Kill

3:23 PM / BD Impressions / 7 Comments

The film: I suspect there was probably a time when it would have been fair to call Timothy Dalton the most underrated Bond and LICENCE TO KILL the most underrated Bond film. Thankfully - and no doubt in part inspired by Daniel Craig's gritty, thuggish take on the character - both Dalton and his two films now seem to be getting some of the respect they've been long overdue. It's not a new hypothesis by any means, but I think there's something to be said for the oft-repeated claim that THE LIVING DAYLIGHTS and particularly LICENCE TO KILL were ahead of their time. After twelve years of campy theatrics from Roger Moore (barring the occasional glimpse of the character's harder edge, which shone through briefly in the likes of FOR YOUR EYES ONLY), Dalton's intense, steely-eyed take on the character was probably a bit too much for some people.

And I can understand that. In taking the character closer to that of Ian Fleming's novels than any other incarnation, many viewers who had grown up with the film series ironically felt that the Dalton films were the least Bond-like to date. Many of them missed Roger Moore's turn as the quintessential English gent, outwitting the bad guys with a smile and a witty quip. Dalton's smouldering rage is a different kettle of fish entirely, but the fact that it's taken me this long to watch another Bond film after LIVE AND LET DIE and FOR YOUR EYES ONLY ought to make it clear that I don't miss Moore's take on the character one bit.

Lest there be any doubt, I think Dalton's Bond is the best of the bunch.

A decade ago, I suspect that would have put me in the extreme minority. Like I said, though, nowadays I get the impression that people are re-evaluating Dalton and his two films and coming to realise that they in fact have a great deal to offer. Look at the polls on the IMDB forums for any of the Bond films and you'll invariably see one if not both of the Dalton films finding their way into most people's Top 10 lists. And that's a Very Good Thing, because he is quite brilliant in the role. There's something about the look he gets in his eyes at times that suggests his version of Bond is ever so slightly mad, which when you think about it makes a great deal of sense for someone who's experienced the sort of life he has. And given the reference to him having been married once, "a long time ago", this is evidently the same Bond from ON HER MAJESTY'S SECRET SERVICE, which gives you some idea of the sort of baggage he's carrying. (As it happens, Dalton was offered the role for OHMSS but turned it down - ah, what could have been.)

That's not to say that LICENCE TO KILL is a masterpiece. It's actually a frustratingly uneven film, suffering from some cack-handed dialogue and a number of lurches in tone and characterisation. The reason it largely works, in spite of its problems, is because it was tailor-made for Dalton's interpretation of the character: it is, by a considerable margin, the most violent and (dare I say it?) mean-spirited Bond film I've come across (CASINO ROYALE may offer some stiff competition, but in that film Bond doesn't off people anything like as sadistically as he does here), and sees the character at his nastiest and most vindictive. He has good reason: a drugs baron, Franz Sanchez (Robert Davi), has offed long-term friend Felix Leiter's wife and fed poor Felix's leg to the sharks for good measure. And it looks like he's going to get away with it. Stripped of his licence to kill by M, Bond finds himself operating as a rogue agent hunting down Sanchez on his own, making this a purely personal mission. This time, it's not about queen and country: it's about killing a nasty (but all too human) crime boss by any means necessary.

The clarity of focus and Dalton's intensity in the role of Bond make it possible to overlook the film's many glaring problems. I already mentioned ropey dialogue and uneven characterisation. The latter is most apparent in the form of Pam Bouvier (Carey Lowell), one of the two Bond girls in this outing and Bond's sidekick for the bulk of the film. For the record, I like Lowell a lot: she's a stunning-looking woman and one of the few Bond girls to actually get something useful to do and look convincing doing it to boot (whether it's flying a plane, deliberately crashing a boat or brandishing a pump-action shotgun), but her character lurches between "tough-as-nails army pilot" and "petulant little girl having a tantrum" a few too many times. On the whole, though, the character works, mainly because Lowell takes the harder-edged aspects of the character as seriously as Dalton does, meaning that you remember the Bouvier who holds her own against a bar full of thugs rather than the one who goes off in a strop because she sees Bond with another woman. (The other woman, by the way, is Lupe, played by Talisa Soto, who may not be one of the worst Bond girls in history, but is somewhat lacking in terms of acting ability.)

Unlike THE LIVING DAYLIGHTS, LICENCE TO KILL was written no-one but Dalton in mind. That said, I get the sense that writers Michael Wilson and Richard Maibum (this was the last Bond film penned by the series veteran, who had been around since the days of DR. NO) weren't entirely comfortable with committing fully to the darker tone that was Dalton's signature style. While his cold-blooded intensity is invariably what you take away from the film, it also has its share of the sort of silliness that wouldn't have seemed out of place in one of Roger Moore's more puerile romps. I'm thinking in particular of the character played by Wayne Newton, a crooked televangelist on Sanchez's payroll, or the sight of Bond and Leiter parachuting down to Leiter's wedding right after foiling the bad guys... to say nothing of the winking fish statue in the final shot. Desmond Llewelyn's Q shows up too, with an array of useful gadgets, and while most of them are at least halfway practical, there's at least one item - a camera that emits a laser beam and takes X-ray photographs - that never actually serves any purpose and feels like it belongs in a different movie. (Contrast this with Daniel Craig, who got a much more tonally consistent script in CASINO ROYALE.) And then there's the one-liners. They're the one aspect of the character that I've never felt Dalton was able to master. When asked to deliver lines that are meant to be deliberately funny - such as "Looks like he came to a dead end" - he just seems to look and sound awkward. That said, the puns and one-liners have never been my favourite element of this series, so perhaps I'm biased in that regard.

Writing flaws and Alec Mills' rather bland camerawork (in comparison to most of the other entries in the series) aside, I must say there's something extraordinarily watchable about this film. I can completely understand why some hardcore fans dismiss it, saying it feels more like a DIE HARD film than a Bond film, but personally I think the change in tone and atmosphere was much-needed after the worst excesses of the Moore years. It's a real fish out of water scenario for the character, and the essence of that character - a ruthlessly driven bastard with a weakness for the ladies and more than a hint of a sadistic streak - shines through, regardless of the location or forces he's up against. I prefer CASINO ROYALE and FROM RUSSIA WITH LOVE, but in terms of my chronological trek through the series (and bearing in mind that I've missed out a good many instalments, including most of Roger Moore's filmography), this is the most fun I've had with a Bond film since GOLDFINGER. Now hurry up and release THE LIVING DAYLIGHTS on BD. 8/10

Image quality: A mixed bag like all the Lowry Bond restorations, but this time with its foot firmly in the "good" camp, leaning towards "very good". After the softness of FOR YOUR EYES ONLY, this is on the whole a crisper affair, and the grain freezing and "cut-out" effects are less pronounced than in earlier entries in the series. Some ringing is apparent throughout, but it's definitely not the worst I've seen and certainly doesn't make the film unwatchable. Basically a decent but flawed presentation of a catalogue title, and one that has been treated considerably better than its reputation as the red-headed stepchild of the Bond series had led me to expect. 8/10

Licence to Kill
label: 20th Century Fox/MGM; disc country: USA; region code: A;
codec: AVC; aspect ratio: 2.39:1

The list as it currently stands:

• Dr. No - 7/10
• From Russia with Love - 8/10
• Goldfinger - 8/10
• Thunderball - 6/10
• On Her Majesty's Secret Service - 7/10
• Live and Let Die - 4/10
• For Your Eyes Only - 6/10
• Licence to Kill - 8/10
• Casino Royale - 8/10
• Quantum of Solace - 5/10

DIE ANOTHER DAY follows in the queue, and I promise I'm going to give it a fair hearing.

Updated Monday, July 9, 2012 at 12:23 PM: Transferred images from imgPlace to ImageShack. Full resolution captures should now be loading properly again.

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.

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.

BD impressions: Rififi

9:35 PM / BD Impressions / 11 Comments

Sorry for maintaining radio silence for so long. You know how it is - busy busy busy! I've bought a new laptop (full story later - it's not pretty), been working on both my academic and scripterly writing ventures, and, y'know, actually watching the odd film! By the way, you'll probably have noticed that I've switched back to the tried and trusted 10-point scale for BD image quality ratings. I liked the idea behind the various degrees of recommendation ("Recommended but with issues" etc.), but in practice it proved to be too cumbersome and failed to convey the overall quality as clearly as a good old fashioned number. I'd still like to find some way of making it work, but for the time being I'm going to stick with what I know...

The film: Apparently they're remaking RIFIFI. If this comes to pass, there is something very wrong with the world. What's next? CASABLANCA? CITIZEN KANE? HOWARD THE DUCK? I'd all rather academic anyway, as I actually enjoyed RIFIFI more than any of these three films.* I saw it for the first time on Sunday night and found myself admiring it a great deal for its calm, measured sense of pacing and the manner in which it clinically documents the planning, execution and aftermath of the jewel heist around which the film revolves. I'd be inclined to suggest that things do sag a little immediately after the completion of the robbery, which occurs roughly two thirds of the way through the film, but it all comes together for a stunning violence and a car ride through the streets of Paris that I won't be forgetting in a hurry. I've always had a soft spot for "howdunits" - DIAL M FOR MURDER remains one of my favourite Hitchcock films for that very reason - and RIFIFI, released just a year later, unquestionably deserves to stand alongside it as one of the very best examples of the form. 9/10

* OK, I lied. I haven't actually seen HOWARD THE DUCK.

Image quality: After writing a string of lukewarm or negative reviews of BD releases from Arrow, it's a pleasure to finally be able to give credit where credit's due and praise them for the superb work done here. They were clearly given an excellent master to begin with, but there are no problems at the encoding end and I see no sign of the grain reduction that plagued the likes of INFERNO and PHENOMENA. Except in the various optical shots, detail is razor sharp, resulting in an image that I doubt looked this good even in first-run theatres. The only downside is what looks like some contrast boosting, resulting in clipped highlights in a number of shots.

There's not much more to say about this disc. It's one of the best presentations I've ever seen of a film of this age (looking at it here, it's hard to believe it's nearly 60 years old) and unquestionably the best-looking BD I've seen from Arrow. 9.5/10

Rififi
label: Arrow Films; disc country: UK; region code: B;
codec: AVC; aspect ratio: 1.37:1

Updated Monday, July 9, 2012 at 12:56 PM: Transferred images from imgPlace to ImageShack. Full resolution captures should now be loading properly again.

BD impressions: TRON: Legacy

4:26 PM / BD Impressions / 14 Comments

The film: The original TRON left me cold. The sequel, oddly enough, impressed me more despite suffering from a raft of problems of its own. The plot is as generic as they come - augmenting the original's "defeat the evil emperor" with the overused "boy grows into man" framework - and Garrett Hedlund has got to be the most singularly wooden and uncharismatic lead I've seen in a movie in quite some time. But it has plenty of strengths too, not least an inspired (and more coherent) visual design for the Grid (though is it just me or do most of the visual and aural cues owe a debt to the MASS EFFECT game series?), as well as a more mature Jeff Bridges in grizzled sensei mode. It's actually a shame he's relegated to a supporting role - I'd much rather have watched a film about him, Olivia Wilde and her Louise Brooks wig than the personality vacuum that is Hedlund. Still, it never drags (unlike the original, and despite being nearly half an hour longer than it), and it stands up well as an actual film rather than the technology demo the original ended up resembling. Just don't mention the the uncanny valley Jeff Bridges CGI stand-in. 6/10

Image quality: A plea to all filmmakers: can you PLEASE stop making these multi-aspect ratio IMAX films, or at the very least stop releasing them on BD in this form? At least offer us an opportunity to watch the film in 2.39:1 from beginning to end, as we would have done had we gone to see it in a non-IMAX cinema. It's not clever, it destroys any sense of immersion and, most annoyingly of all, it draws your attention to the fact that, for home viewing, what you're getting with the 2.39:1 ratio is an image that is less tall rather than wider. TRON: LEGACY jumps between 1.78:1 and 2.39:1 throughout its running time, often seemingly arbitrarily (some dialogue scenes are 1.78:1, some action scenes are 2.39:1, and vice versa), and it adds nothing to the presentation.

With that little rant out of the way, TRON: LEGACY looks rather good on BD, though it's limited by the digital cameras used to shoot it in a way that its predecessor's 70mm photography wasn't. Interestingly, while the original TRON's "real world" photography was basically flawless and its "Grid" photography suffered slightly as a result of its heavy use of opticals, it's the other way round here: the digital photography lends itself well to the cold, artificial world of the Grid (and a lot of what we're seeing in those scenes is actually wall-to-wall CG anyway), but in the "real world" scenes, it has the feel of a cheap made-for-TV production. Shots occasionally look harsh and processed too - see Example 11. There's also a dead pixel visible in one shot, though I must point out I only noticed it after taking the capture.

That said, I suspect the disc is largely a faithful representation of the master. Mild compression artefacts are visible on occasions - see Example 2 - but otherwise it's a solid disc. Recommended.

TRON: Legacy
label: Buena vista; disc country: UK; region code: ABC;
codec: AVC; aspect ratio: 1.78:1 and 2.39:1

Updated Monday, July 9, 2012 at 01:16 PM: Transferred images from imgPlace to ImageShack. Full resolution captures should now be loading properly again.

BD impressions: TRON

8:37 PM / BD Impressions / 5 Comments

The film: Pixar and Disney creative lead John Lasseter credits TRON as the film that inspired him to explore CG animation - if memory serves (and I'm paraphrasing here), not because of what he saw but because of the POTENTIAL he saw. And I think that's ultimately TRON's legacy, hardcore fans notwithstanding: a trial run, a launching-off point, a suggestion of what was to come later. Taken on its own merits, TRON is not a particularly good film, and I doubt it would have been any better even if the visual effects hadn't dated so much. As it is, they certainly don't help: the movie is so abstract in terms of its visual that I found myself incredibly distanced from the action to the extent that I struggled to care about what was going on. Underneath the admittedly arresting graphics is an archetypal "defeat the evil emperor" quest in the swords-and-sorcery vein, albeit transplanted into a sci-fi world. Like Disney's SNOW WHITE AND THE SEVEN DWARFS, I find it more interesting for its historical significance than for any pleasure I derive out of watching the film itself, though it has to be said David Warner does make for a deliciously dastardly villain. 5/10

Image quality: In stark contrast to the way in which they treat their animated features, Disney have had the good sense to leave TRON completely alone, as far as I can tell. The film was photographed in Super Panavision 70, a 70mm process, and the benefits are clear. Given that every shot that takes place inside the Grid is an optical effect, often with several different layers, the increased resolution of 70mm provides an effective "buffer" against the detail loss incurred.

Unsurprisingly the material taking place in the real world, which for the most part is devoid of visual effects, looks the best, with detail often razor sharp (see Example 4. In his review, Adam Tyner stated that "there are plenty of moments in this thirty year old film that look like cameras were rolling last Thursday", something I concur with completely. Understandably, detail is less impressive on the material inside the Grid (though still very impressive), and various rendering and optical processing artefacts can be glimpsed in the form of blocking (see Example 35) and ghosted lines (see Example 45).

Still, though, an extremely satisfying presentation all round and one that actually offers more detail than the BD of the 2010 sequel (more on that in a subsequent review). Recommended without hesitation.

TRON
label: Buena vista; disc country: UK; region code: ABC;
codec: AVC; aspect ratio: 2.20:1

Updated Monday, July 9, 2012 at 01:31 PM: Transferred images from imgPlace to ImageShack. Full resolution captures should now be loading properly again.

BD impressions: The Lord of the Rings

2:06 PM / BD Impressions / 2 Comments

The film: As I suspect most people know by now, Ralph Bakshi originally planned to adapt Tolkien's THE LORD OF THE RINGS as two films, only the first of which ever saw fruition. Despite Part 1 being a box office success, distributor United Artists abruptly decided not to finance a sequel, meaning that the action only advances to the point of Frodo, Sam and Gollum setting off for Cirith Ungol and victory at the Battle of the Hornburg - coincidentally (or not, as the case may be) the exact same point in both story strands at which Peter Jackson elected to end his later adaptation of THE TWO TOWERS.

I first saw Bakshi's film at the age of nine while I was less than half way through reading THE FELLOWSHIP OF THE RING (I believe I was still in the wilderness between Bree and Rivendell with Strider and the hobbits - at any rate, I had yet to discover the reason for Gandalf's delay). Suffice it to say that it made a big impression on me, and for some considerable time it shaped my impression of Middle-Earth as a land filled with gloomy, overbearingly drab landscapes; monstrous, ape-like orcs; and of course lots and lots of men with no trousers. Bakshi's take on the material is nothing if not idiosyncratic, and while we were ultimately spared the horror of what would have been John Boorman's take on what has been called the greatest novel of the 20th century, it goes without saying that the end result didn't exactly match many people's interpretation of Middle-Earth.

Which is not, in and of itself, a bad thing. Bakshi's film is unquestionably his own - I doubt anyone else could have come up with anything quite like this, and while many people decry his bizarre depiction of Aragorn as a Native American or Boromir as a Viking, it always amuses me that many of the same people happily swallowed Peter Jackson's far greater departures from the source. Actually, on a narrative level, Bakshi is incredibly faithful to the novel, though this is something of a double-edged sword as it requires a degree of pre-existing familiarity with the material in order to actually understand what's going on. A case in point, and an example that is characteristic of Bakshi's scattershot approach, comes when Gandalf, after asking Frodo if he sees any markings on the Ring, flings it into the fireplace at Bag End. In the novel, this serves two purposes: first, it highlights how attached Frodo already is to the Ring; second, it reveals that fiery letters on the Ring that confirm beyond doubt that it is the One. Bakshi gets the first part right: Frodo gapes in horror and has to be held back by Gandalf to stop him diving in after it. The fire-writing, however, never materialises, which begs the question as to why Gandalf brought up the subject of markings in the first place.

The answer, I suspect, is that Bakshi, an avowed Tolkien fanatic, was determined to be as faithful to the book as possible (unlike Jackson, he lifts whole chunks of dialogue with only minimal alterations) but knew he had to cut, cut, cut to get the running time down to a manageable length. Lacking the necessary distance from the material, he failed to see how incomprehensible certain deletions would make the film. In perhaps the most serious instance, I wonder if anyone who hadn't already read the book would actually understand precisely WHY the Fellowship was taking the Ring to Mordor. And yet, despite Bakshi's apparent love of the book, the film is littered with mispronunciations - witness the, erm, creative ways the actors find to say words like Minas Tirith, Sauron, Balin, Uglúk, Celeborn and Gríma... to say nothing of the White Wizard, who is alternately referred to as both "Saruman" and "Aruman", sometimes within the same scene. Apparently bean-counters were worried that audiences would confuse Sauron and Saruman and asked for the latter's name to be changed to better distinguish them. A valid concern, I suppose, but the end result only serves to make the situation even MORE confusing.

The result is a film that is at times as staggeringly incoherent as it is idiosyncratic... and yet it contains so many moments of brilliance, however fleeting, that it's difficult to dismiss it out of hand, even with the altogether more consistent Jackson adaptations now readily available. True, it frequently lurches from inspired madness to just plain awfulness, but a surprising amount of it genuinely works. The orcs in this version are truly hideous, far more effective than Jackson's comedy Cockneys, and the Black Riders are similarly chilling. I still remember the shiver that ran down my spine on seeing that low angle shot of the Rider on his horse while the hobbits hid from him in a hollow beneath the roots of a tree (a sequence shamelessly plundered by Jackson, along with a later scene involving the Riders raiding the hobbits' room at the Prancing Pony), and the "Flight to the Ford" sequence, in which Frodo's gradual succumbing to the poison of the Morgul-knife is brilliantly realised as something approaching a fever dream. Later on, the orc band's death march and the attack on them by Éomer and his riders are handled far, far better than in the Jackson version, and in his final appearance towards the end of the film, we get a brief glimpse of a run down, exhausted Frodo that perfectly evokes the toll the Ring is taking on him. I even like the oft-criticised Leonard Rosenman score a great deal, which may not be a patch on Howard Shore's work on the Jackson trilogy but has its own moments of brilliance.

The visual depiction of Aragorn is bizarre to say the least, but the vocal performance by John Hurt is exceptional, and his remains the voice that I hear in my head whenever I read the character's dialogue in the novel (just as I hear Michael Hordern as Gandalf and Ian Holm as Frodo, both from the later BBC radio adaptation). Actually the voice acting on the whole is rather good (and Peter Woodthorpe as Gollum and Michael Graham Cox as Boromir obviously impressed someone, as they were both subsequently cast in the same roles in the radio version), with the exception of Fraser Kerr's shrill, raspy Saruman (no Christopher Lee, this man). As for Sam, his characterisation sucks, but I'm not sure whether the blame lies with the voice actor, Michael Scholes, or Billy Barty, from whose performance the rotoscoped animation was derived. (Scholes certainly falls into the trap avoided by Bill Nighy in the radio version and Sean Astin in the Jackson films: he interprets the dialogue literally, meaning that the character more often than not comes over as a buffoon.)

It's too bad the animation so rarely matches the quality of the vocals. In choosing to rotoscope the entire film (i.e. shooting live action footage first and then tracing over it), Bakshi delivers a film that looks as wildly inconsistent as the script itself, occasionally impressive but more often than not sloppy, jittery and overly pantomimey. In this regard the increased resolution of the Blu-ray version doesn't do the film any favours: I remember being a lot less distracted by the ropey animation when I was watching it through the haze of a second-generation VHS copy. Particularly in the film's second half, a decision seems to have been made (whether as a cost- and labour-saving measure or for more creative reasons) to simply copy much of the live action footage to celluloid with the contrast ramped up, foregoing the tracing process altogether. Ironically, this process is far more effective than the rotoscoping, not least because it is largely restricted to the orcs and Black Riders (at least until the Rohirrim show up) and gives them a palpable otherworldly quality. On the whole, though, it's a spectacularly ugly-looking film, with even the locations that are meant to appear lush and striking, such as the Shire, Rivendell and Lothlórien, looking grim and depressing.

Bakshi's film concludes unsatisfyingly and self-contradictingly with a voice-over that states both that "the forces of darkness were driven for ever from the face of Middle-Earth" and that here ends "the first great tale of THE LORD OF THE RINGS", and for all its faults I wish the film hadn't been cut off so abruptly. Had Bakshi got a chance to make his second part, a number of lingering questions could have been answered. Would Faramir have shown up? Would Boromir's fellow Gondorians have been similarly attired in Viking-like garb? How would Bakshi have resolved the problem of not having bothered to introduce Arwen at all? (Perhaps he would have gone with Tolkien's original plan to make Éowyn Aragorn's love interest.) Would the Scouring of the Shire have been depicted? And perhaps, most importantly of all, would we have got to see an army of giant carrots destroying Isengard? (If you've seen how Treebeard is depicted in the film, you'll know what I'm talking about.) Bakshi's THE LORD OF THE RINGS is one big, frustrating "What the fuck?" but a fascinating work all the same, in spite of (and indeed in many cases BECAUSE OF) its numerous flaws. 6/10

Image quality: THE LORD OF THE RINGS is a film that looks its age on BD, for better or worse. No Disney-style grain obliteration here, and despite what look like occasional mild DVNR artefacts (though given the extent to which the images and pencil lines wobble and flicker it's often hard to tell) a surprising amount of print damage. I can't say I'm overly thrilled by the framing: it looks on the whole too tight vertically, with some compositions coming off as rather wonky. The film almost certainly had a theatrical aspect ratio of 1.85:1 (so slightly less tall than what we're seeing here), but I remember the framing on my old open matte (1.33:1) VHS copy looking a lot more comfortable.

Detail levels are acceptable, and as with the rotoscoped animation itself, the effect improves somewhat in motion. However, it's certainly no stunner, and the fact that numerous sequences are essentially one giant optical presumably doesn't help matters. Still, on the whole the presentation is considerably better than I was expecting. Recommended, but with significant issues.

The Lord of the Rings
label: Warner; disc country: USA; region code: ABC;
codec: VC-1; aspect ratio: 1.78:1 (theatrical 1.85:1)

Updated Monday, July 9, 2012 at 01:45 PM: Transferred images from imgPlace to ImageShack. Full resolution captures should now be loading properly again.

BD impressions: The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King (Extended Edition)

3:12 PM / BD Impressions / 6 Comments

The film: THE RETURN OF THE KING is a somewhat frustrating film for me, arguably more so than either of the previous instalments in Peter Jackson's trilogy. It remains the only instalment for which the extended material is really a "make or break" situation: the theatrical version is missing two scenes so crucial to the entire trilogy that I honestly consider it a woefully inferior version in that form. Even with these vital scenes restored, however, the film leaves something to be desired as an adaptation of Tolkien's novel, skipping or glossing over important elements while expanding or inventing others which slow things down and distract from the main narrative.

As I mentioned in my review of THE TWO TOWERS, that film only covered just over half of the book, meaning that come ROTK Jackson and his writers have a great deal of ground still left to cover: the confrontation with Saruman and Pippin's escapade with the palantír, Gandalf and Pippin's flight to Minas Tirith, Frodo and Sam's passage through Cirith Ungol and encounter with Shelob, and of course Frodo's capture by orcs after Sam, leaving him for dead, makes off with the Ring. It's somewhat surprising, then, that ROTK immediately throws a whole lot of invented and/or redundant material at us, including a flashback showing the corruption of Gollum (originally intended for TTT at the point when Gollum's Sméagol personality re-emerged - a far better fit for the material, in my opinion), lengthy scenes of celebration at Edoras and an ill-judged sequence in which Frodo, contrary to the novel, sends Sam packing and Sam, contrary to everything we know about his character, acquiesces. These additions are problematic enough before you even consider that, in the theatrical version, they come at the expense of one of the most important scenes in the entire trilogy: the confrontation at Orthanc at which Gandalf breaks Saruman's staff and casts him from their Order. I've harped on about this before but it bears mentioning again: to remove the demise of the second film's main villain (and the true on-screen "Big Bad" given that in the novel Sauron is never seen in physical form and in the film is rendered only as a giant floating eye), putting the matter to bed with some cursory line about him no longer being a threat, strikes me as madness incarnate, and I would argue that the reinstating of this scene near the beginning of the extended edition goes a long way towards making up for the flaws of the theatrical cut. I'd go as far as to say that it, plus the restoration of the confrontation with the Mouth of Sauron at the Black Gate (which completely alters the tone and purpose of the final desperate battle against the forces of Mordor), turn what was merely a good film into a great one.

There are plenty of other flaws, to be sure. Poor old Gimli is there as little more than comic relief; the nonsense involving Arwen's life inexplicably becoming tied to the fate of the Ring is nigh on incomprehensible and drags the pacing down; the loss of the Scouring of the Shire, while understandable, does leave the hobbits' character journeys feeling unfinished (given that it's the point at which they truly rise to the occasion and settle their own affairs without the need of elves, rangers or wizards to aid them). As for the PIRATES OF THE CARIBBEAN-style depiction of the Oathbreakers, not to mention the decision to have them show up at Minas Tirith and save the day in a flood of what I once saw described as "green mouthwash" - the less said the better. And in terms of the additions in the extended version, I'm not a fan of the cheesetastic "You and what army?" "This one!" exchange between Aragorn and the corsairs or Frodo and Sam's encounter with a band of orcs in Mordor, which descends into a mood-breaking slapstick farce. Nor am I particularly fond of Gandalf's encounter with the Lord of the Nazgûl, an iconic moment in the book (and, for what it's worth, Tolkien's favourite scene) that loses much of its grandeur when it turns into a scene in which Gandalf falls off his horse and Pippin does a lot of screaming...

...but there's so much else going on that's so good that the positives do outweigh the negatives. I remain unconvinced by Elijah Wood's portrayal of Frodo (his idea of showing Frodo's inner pain seems to be to speak... really... slowly), but the character's physical and mental decline is handled very well here, and Sean Astin's Sam is, as throughout the rest of the trilogy, excellent. Merry and Pippin finally get to rise above their goofy comic relief roles (the juxtaposition of Pippin's singing and Denethor's less than civilised table manners with Faramir and his men riding to certain death is, while heavy-handed, quietly chilling), and Éowyn's defeat of the Lord of the Nazgûl provides one of the trilogy's few "fist in the air" triumph moments. I'm not sure I'd agree with the general consensus that it's the best of the trilogy: compared with THE FELLOWSHIP OF THE RING, it does feel a little bloated and lackadaisically plotted, with a handful of plot holes that continue to niggle. (How on earth does Elrond reach Dunharrow from Rivendell so quickly? Why are we given so many hints as to Denethor's apparent "second sight" but then never shown that he too possesses a palantír? Why is the notion that Sauron believes Pippin has the Ring brought up and then never followed through?) Ultimately, though, there are very few movies of this length (more than four hours in its extended form) that I can sit through without becoming bored. It's ambitious, gripping, somewhat flawed and in places a bit shambolic, but taken as a whole Jackson's THE LORD OF THE RINGS trilogy is probably as good a rendition of a supposedly "unfilmable" book as could have been hoped for. I doubt I'll ever be able to watch it without thinking "I wish X had been included" or "I wish Y had been left out" or "I wish Z was more like it was in the book", but such is always the fate of adaptations when you have a particularly strong attachment to the source material. I'll probably always prefer the 1981 BBC radio adaptation, but for all its myriad flaws, this is really, really good. 8/10

Image quality: ROTK is, by a comfortable margin, the best-looking instalment of the trilogy on BD, lacking both the green tint of FOTR and much of the noticeable processing that afflicted TTT. Detail, edge enhancement (or lack thereof) and overall film-like texture continue to vary from shot to shot (and even between different elements within the same shot), but a greater degree of consistency is achieved than in the two previous films and, when it's at its best, the film looks as good as the best-looking DI-sourced titles I've seen from the early/mid 2000s. Detail, particularly in facial close-ups, is often striking (see Example 28 and Example 65), and wide shots generally fare well too - almost too well, as the computer generated nature of the crowd scenes is at times noticeable (see Example 42). Certain scenes to take on a somewhat harsh, processed look, with the Minas Tirith exteriors seeming to be especially affected (see Example 33), but generally speaking this is the most natural-looking of the bunch. Certain shots do look a little underwhelming (this one of Théoden is reminiscent of a Universal catalogue release!), but they are few and far between and, as with the BDs of the other two films, are probably the result of issues with the DI itself rather than meddling at the BD stage.

As with the previous two films, this release marks a significant improvement over the theatrical BD in terms of the comparative lack of digital processing artefacts (again I direct you to BluBrew's comparison). Grain reduction is apparent in certain shots (it's not apparent in the capture, but the close-up shots of Sam on the slopes of Orodruin when he asks Frodo if he remembers the Shire show clear "sluggishness" and freezing in the grain), but again I'm inclined to believe that this is simply an accurate representation of what the master looks like. In the final assessment, while it falls short of "reference" quality, ROTK has received a satisfying presentation - one with minor niggles rather than major flaws. Recommended.

The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King (Extended Edition)
label: Warner/New Line; disc country: USA; region code: ABC;
codec: AVC; aspect ratio: 2.39:1

Note: In an attempt to save disk space and also provide readers with a greater number of shots, I'm currently trialling uploading captures to free image hosting sites rather than my own web space. Images should take longer to load, but in my opinion the benefits should outweigh the negatives. Any thoughts? Let me know.

Updated Monday, July 9, 2012 at 02:12 PM: Transferred images from imgPlace to ImageShack. Full resolution captures should now be loading properly again.

BD impressions: The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers (Extended Edition)

5:47 PM / BD Impressions / 9 Comments

The film: It's probably safe to say that THE TWO TOWERS is a much harder book to adapt than its predecessor. Not only does it have to contend with being the middle child of the trilogy and thus lacking a true beginning or end, it's a structural nightmare, focusing on three different groups of characters and told non-linearly. For their adaptation, Peter Jackson and co have made the wise decision to rearrange events into chronological order, but it's with this instalment that some of Jackson's more questionable narrative changes come to the fore and the structure becomes a little too unwieldy for its own good.

First of all, while the film bears the title THE TWO TOWERS, I'd estimate that it only covers around 60% of the book of the same name. A considerable amount of material is held back for the third instalment, on top of the material from Chapter 1 of TTT reappropriated to the end of Jackson's FOTR. The restructuring is a little odd, because it means the film doesn't actually cover anything like as much ground as either the novel or the other two films in the trilogy, despite Jackson and his team inventing a number of what might politely be described as deviations... or, if I'm feeling less generous, distractions. More so than the other two films, this instalment contains considerable amounts of material not originating from Tolkien. Some of these inventions are admittedly good ideas - for instance, despite my initial reservations, I've come round to the idea that the less flattering portrayal of Faramir works well in the grand scheme of things, while by the same token Théoden's despair and refusal to confront Saruman head-on make him a somewhat more complex character than he was in the novel.

Other changes, however, just feel like padding. The warg attack and Aragorn's false death serve no narrative purpose whatsoever beyond giving him an opportunity to catch sight of the army making its way towards Helm's Deep (the point of which I fail to see, given that everyone already knew Saruman was preparing to crush Rohan). The arrival of Haldir and his elves at Helm's Deep is nonsensical, not least because it begs the question of how they could possibly have reached Rohan within hours, when the same journey took Aragorn and company several days... to say nothing of the utterly daft alteration to the Merry/Pippin strand, which sees the Ents refusing to become involved in the war until Pippin conveniently arranges for Treebeard to take them past Isengard and witness the extent of Saruman's destruction of the forest. I'm also less than thrilled with the sheer amount of time devoted to the battle at Helm's Deep. While for some reason I remembered it being longer than it actually is, it still takes up far too much screen time that could have been better served advancing the narrative. In the book, Tolkien devotes all of ten pages to the fighting; in the film, Jackson makes it the focal point of the entire film and, seeming to forget he's telling a multi-stranded epic, for a while settles into action movie mode. To be fair, Ralph Bakshi too devoted far too much time to Helm's Deep... although at least he never had Legolas skateboarding on an upturned shield. Going to be a long time before I forgive you for THAT, Pete. ;)

For all these complaints, though, I do feel the need to commend the casting of the characters appearing for the first time in this film, particularly Bernard Hill as Théoden, Miranda Otto as Éowyn and Brad Dourif as Wormtongue. Otto in particular is a wonderful presence - the real thing in contrast to the rather unconvincing "warrior Arwen" of FOTR - partly thanks to the Éowyn of the book already being something of an unintentional equal rights champion (at least until her wholly unconvincing eleventh-hour "I will be a shieldmaiden no longer" speech) and partly because Otto is, frankly, a much better actress than Liv Tyler. Her finest hour comes in the next film, but already here she's a vastly more interesting screen presence than either Arwen or Cate Blanchett's trippy Galadriel. Karl Urban's Éomer, by contrast, has so little screen time in the films as to effectively become a non-entity. Jackson's decision to combine his role with that of Erkenbrand is, however, a wise one... though once again I feel compelled to point out that he's following in the footsteps of Bakshi, who did precisely the same thing with his version.

The other major new presence is of course Gollum, and I have mixed feelings about him. While the CGI effects used to bring him to life - in conjunction with the motion capture and voice, both provided by Andy Serkis - are unquestionable extremely impressive, I would dispute the claim made by some that he looks truly real. The character design is far enough removed from reality to avoid the "uncanny valley" effect, but I'm always aware that I'm watching visual effects whenever he's on screen, and they have certainly dated in the nine years since the film's release. I'm also not bowled over by Serkis' vocal performance: to me it seems too high-pitched and whiny, in stark contrast to the late Peter Woodthorpe's lower, more menacing rasp in both the Bakshi film and the BBC radio play. It doesn't help that Serkis' Gollum sounds almost identical to Gurgi in Disney's THE BLACK CAULDRON - hardly a flattering comparison.

As far as the differences between the theatrical and extended cuts are concerned, I can take or leave many of the additions, and in some cases feel that they may be overegging the pudding a bit (the inclusion of extra material involving Merry and Pippin redresses their overly brief screen time in the theatrical cut, but it doesn't help that most of their additional scenes involve the Ents, whose lack of haste is captured a little too effectively). Many are good, though, particularly Théodred's funeral, while the flashback showing Boromir in the aftermath of having retaken Osgiliath is worth the price of admission alone. This brief scene explains so much about both Boromir and Faramir's motivation and behaviour that to this day I think Jackson made a big mistake in cutting it from the theatrical version (couldn't he have cut down Helm's Deep a bit instead if running time was an issue). In some way, it also gives justification to the decision to have Faramir drag Frodo and Sam all the way to Osgiliath.

As an adaptation of Tolkien's novel, I find THE TWO TOWERS a bit of a mixed bag. While FOTR was a largely straightforward adaptation, TTT ends up taking more liberties with the source material. On the whole I like the film, but there's a lot wrong with it and, on balance, I feel that it's the weakest of the trilogy. 7/10

Image quality: In contrast to the complex situation regarding the extended BD of FOTR, this review of TTT will be a bit more straightforward. Having already been a 100% digital intermediate title to begin with (barring, oddly enough, the closing credits, which like those of FOTR exhibit gate weave), TTT has not received a completely new master, and as a result looks more or less the same as it has done for the last nine years. BluBrew's comparison shows that there are some slight differences in colour balance between this and the theatrical BD, but they are largely minor (see the shot of Elrond for a rare example of a more pronounced change). There is certainly no green tint to be found here, providing further evidence that FOTR's tint was unintentional.

Where major differences are to be found, they come in the form of the removal of much of the destructive DNR that plagued the theatrical BD. Again, BluBrew's comparison is most illuminating, showing that on the theatrical BD the grain reduction wreaked havoc on hair and skin texture - just look at the close-ups of Gandalf (not an exact frame match, but still sufficient to show the level of difference) and Théoden! This sort of DNR appears to have been standard practice at New Line for their BD releases (see also the likes of PAN'S LABYRINTH, A HISTORY OF VIOLENCE and, perhaps worst of all, DARK CITY) and the fact that the extended BD shows such an improvement is a cause for celebration. Hopefully, with Warner now handling New Line's BD releases themselves, these follies can be consigned to the past.

That said, before anyone breaks out the champagne, it needs to be stressed that, while much of the DNR is now gone, some is still present, making this the weakest-looking of the three films on BD from a filmic standpoint. Generally speaking, detail is not as impressive as in the other two films, and smearing artefacts crop up on a number of occasions, some more severe than others (this frame of Théoden is a particularly odious example, while this frame shows some pretty severe artefacting on the tree to the right of the frame), but my suspicion is that a grain reduction pass was applied to the entire film. Particularly during wide shots where the pans over New Zealand's impressive landscapes, there is an overall lack of texture, with camera movement resulting in noticeable smearing in quite a few shots. The question that remains, I suppose, is at what stage in the chain this process was applied. It's impossible to say with any certainty, but I suspect the fact that FOTR and ROTK are unaffected points to it having been done at the level of the master itself rather than something that was specifically done for the BD. It is, on the whole, a good presentation, but far from a reference one. Recommended, but with issues.

The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers (Extended Edition)
label: Warner/New Line; disc country: USA; region code: ABC;
codec: AVC; aspect ratio: 2.39:1

BD impressions: The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring (Extended Edition)

8:54 PM / BD Impressions / 19 Comments

The film: I first read J.R.R. Tolkien's THE LORD OF THE RINGS when I was in primary school. If you asked me a decade ago, I would probably have described it as my favourite book, and although I've become more aware of its flaws as the years have passed, I still maintain considerable affection for it. I saw the Ralph Bakshi 1978 animation/live action hybrid film while I was still making my way through the book, and even at the time was aware that it was a deeply flawed (if unique) take on the material. Conversely, the 1981 BBC radioplay, which I encountered some years later, always struck me as a superb piece of adaptation, neatly condensing all three instalments into 13 hour-long episodes. To this day I still consider the radio version to be the definitive adaptation of Tolkien's work, to the extent that when I read Gandalf's dialogue, I always hear Michael Hordern in my head, and ditto Ian Holm for Frodo.

I mention all this because, when THE FELLOWSHIP OF THE RING (FOTR), the first instalment of Peter Jackson's trilogy of films, was released back in 2001, I had a fairly lukewarm reaction to it. I liked certain elements and was impressed that Jackson had managed to turn what many had considered an unfilmable book into something so coherent, but I still found it to be heavily flawed and believe I even suggested at the time that the Bakshi version was the better of the two. (It's certainly the more idiosyncratic, but that's an article for another time.) Rewatching FOTR in its extended form for the first time since that cut was first released in 2002, I like it more than I did before and suspect that I'll end up considering it the most coherent and best paced of the trilogy once I've made my way through all three films, but there remain for me certain decisions on Jackson's part that I just can't get my head round, and I think it does suffer in comparison to the radio version, which proved that you can condense and streamline the material without altering it beyond recognition.

To Jackson's credit, his alterations are not of the "beyond recognition" variety, and although once you look past quirks like his bizarre decision to depict Aragorn as a Native American and Boromir as a Viking, Bakshi's version is actually closer to the original writing in a textual sense, the 2001 film ends up "feeling" more like Tolkien. This is in part due to the decision to hire John Howe and Alan Lee, Tolkien illustrators par excellence, as conceptual designers: having illustrated countless book covers, calendars and the like over the years, their art has become synonymous with Middle-earth (though personally I was always rather partial to Ted Nasmith's paintings). Jackson's attention for detail and accuracy is at times awe-inspiring. Not content to merely get the pronunciation of the likes of "Minas Tirith", "Balin" and "Sauron" right (something Bakshi failed to do), he inserts any number of minor details that dedicated fans will appreciate but will pass most casual viewers by: for instance, Legolas walking ABOVE the snow while everyone else wades through it during the Caradhras sequence is right out of the book, and on numerous occasions characters drop into authentic (subtitled) Elvish.

Where Jackson departs noticeably from the source material, the results are a mixed bag. I like the hobbits' exploits in the Old Forest and their meeting with Tom Bombadil in the books, but I don't mourn their absence here (there's a reason all three adaptations jetison that particular diversion), and I'd even go as far as to say that the alterations made to the Aragorn character, crucially giving him an actual arc, improves on the original. Until Weathertop, Jackson does an impressive job of condensing what is often meandering and leisurely on the page, turning it into something pacy and exciting, while maintaining the guts of the source material (it's worth noting, however, that he lifts two scenes directly from Bakshi - the hobbits hiding under the roots of a tree from a Black Rider, and the Riders' attack on the inn at Bree - something that few reviewers seem to have acknowledged). Considerably less successful is the decision to shoehorn Arwen into the role held by Glorfindel in the book, which reeks of a cynical attempt to fulfil the "girl power" quota (Éowyn doesn't show up until Film 2) and is completely out of kilter with the portrayal of the character in the rest of the series (Bakshi's decision to use Legolas is a much more effective substitution). Having her confront the Riders at the Ford of Bruinen also robs Frodo of one of his few genuinely heroic moments, and although I'm not much of a fan of Elijah Wood's wet, weepy interpretation of the character in general, I do think letting him make his stand at the Ford - one of the most iconic moments in the book - would have gone some way towards mitigating this. Likewise I strongly dislike Cate Blanchett's portrayal of Galadriel as if she's just ingested a considerable amount of some mind-altering substance or other... and I like Blanchett in pretty much everything I've seen her in.

In terms of the differences between the theatrical and extended cuts, I do feel that, with each subsequent instalment, the added material becomes more essential. While I think THE RETURN OF THE KING is severely crippled without Saruman's demise and the confrontation at the Black Gate with the Mouth of Sauron, the additions to FOTR don't really change anything significantly. As with all three films, some of the added scenes work better than others (Frodo's "Gandalf, which way is Mordor?" always makes me cringe, as does the fart joke involving the lembas bread), but on balance I have a slight preference for the extended cut. 8/10

Image quality: I'm pretty late to the table with this review, and it feels as if just about everyone has already had their say about this most controversial of discs. Still, the dust doesn't look like settling any time soon. As regards the rights and wrongs of this release, I'm inclined to take something of a middle of the road approach. Yes, there IS unquestionably a uniform green tint across the entire movie. No, it DOESN'T ruin the film beyond recognition, and it certainly doesn't deserve to be mentioned in the same breath as travesties like the original BD releases of GANGS OF NEW YORK and GLADIATOR, or the recent DON'T LOOK NOW disaster.

My own suspicion is that there are in fact two separate issues to consider: (1) the new colour timing created under the guidance of Peter Jackson and cinematographer Andrew Lesnie, and (2) the aforementioned green tint. Only around 70% of FOTR received the digital intermediate (DI) treatment, with the remaining 30% being colour timed photochemically. For this extended edition BD release, Warner have gone back to the digital files and created the film's first complete DI, and as a result there are some pretty significant changes to the film's look. I'd hazard a guess that most of the captures you've seen highlighting "problems" with the new release are primarily instances in which Jackson and Lesnie have deliberately altered the colour balance - the now-sickly, undersaturated scenes after the hobbits and Aragorn leave Bree, for instance (see Example 16), or the now heavily blue-tinted Caradhras sequence (Example 26). As a result, this is not the same FOTR we saw in cinemas or on DVD, but if you value directorial intent, it's still a valid representation of the film.

On top of that, though, is the green tint. Not to beat about the bush, but I'm convinced something went wrong here and have a hard time viewing any of the various excuses I've heard as in any way credible. It simply doesn't make sense to me that Jackson (or indeed any director) would choose to apply a green push to an entire film from beginning to end - not given the attention to detail he has shown in every other respect with regard to the trilogy. (And it's worth emphasising that EVERYTHING is affected: even the title card and burned-in subtitles are now green rather than white.) So, either Jackson made a sloppy, unprofessional and decidedly uncharacteristic decision... or someone screwed up at some other point in the chain. I know which of the two explanations I find more plausible.

So, how detrimental is the tint on the presentation? It varies from scene to scene, from unnoticeable to pretty damn annoying. The worst affected material is the early Shire scenes, where the green tint, on top of a palette that already leaned heavily towards green, is close to overpowering (see Example 4), and scenes lit with fire- or torchlight, where the warm yellow and red hues now look decidedly sickly (see Example 8). The opening prologue and Moria sequences also look far darker than they did before, to the extent that visibility is at times an issue, but I'm hard pressed to say whether this is the result of the tinting or the deliberate alterations Jackson and Lesnie have made to the colour timing.

Otherwise, this is a very good presentation, although the clarity improvements (compared with both the mediocre DVDs and less than impressive theatrical BD release) do show up certain inconsistencies in the source material. Some shots look razor sharp, as detailed as anything I've seen on a BD (see Example 35), whereas others look considerably less impressive (see Example 7). Sometimes clarity varies wildly between different shots in the same scene - there's a conversation between Frodo and Aragorn in Bree where the shots of Frodo are wonderfully crisp (see Example 14) while those of Aragorn look almost like a multi-generational dupe (see Example 15). We also get to see some ropey compositing (see Example 6) and a small number of instances where overbearing DNR appears to be baked into the master (see Example 30). None of these are black marks against the disc per se, but it does mean that the presentation is somewhat inconsistent in a way not previously seen (because earlier releases had a "ceiling" that essentially homogenised the whole film to the same level of mediocrity). Certainly, the ugly smearing artefacts that plagued the theatrical cut BD are gone.

In the final assessment, the positives outweigh the negatives. In terms of overal detail and filmlike appearance, this is unquestionably the best release of FOTR to date. The colour tinting, while noticeable and objectionable, is not as bad as you've probably been led to believe - it certainly doesn't make me want to go back to my old DVD. Were it not for the tint, I suspect this would have ended up being the best-looking of the entire trilogy... but I'll discuss this in more detail in my reviews of the subsequent two films. Recommended, but with significant issues.

The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring (Extended Edition)
label: Warner/New Line; disc country: USA; region code: ABC;
codec: AVC; aspect ratio: 2.39:1

BD impressions: The Taking of Pelham One Two Three

7:33 PM / BD Impressions / 2 Comments

"Why don't you go grab a goddamn aeroplane like everybody else?"

The film: THE TAKING OF PELHAM ONE TWO THREE is one of my favourite films of the 70s - a brilliantly efficient, genuinely tense and incisively witty thriller about a group of armed men, led by the brilliant Robert Shaw, who hijack a subway carriage and demand $1 million for the release of its passengers. Pitted against them is Walter Matthau at his hangdog best, embarking on an understated battle of words with Shaw as he attempts to secure the safety of the hostages.

The phrase "they don't make 'em like this any more" is overused, but it's completely accurate here, not just in terms of its measured, understated approach (you only need to watch the loud, MTV editing-infused Tony Scott remake starring Denzel Washington and John Travolta to see what a 21st century take on the same material would look like) but also how distinctly 70s it feels - the costumes, the attitudes, David Shire's wonderful score... it all adds up to evoke something that doesn't exist any more. The New York of the film is very much a character in its own right - this was, of course, long before the city's Film Production Tax Credit Program was set up to effectively offer incentives in exchange for showing the city in a positive light. In PELHAM, we're shown a grungy, grubby, dangerous, jaded New York in which Matthau's character seems to be the only person around who gives a shit about the hostages. It's tempting to describe the film as a commentary on an increasingly depersonalised and profit-focused society, but I don't think that's the film's intention - at least not its PRIMARY intention. It's simply an excellent, well-made thriller and a perfect example of how films like this should be done. 9/10

Image quality: Taking into account this disc's status as a budget release (and a Best Buy exclusive, though I managed to source a copy from Blu-rays For Everyone), THE TAKING OF PELHAM ONE TWO THREE actually looks pretty damn good. It's abundantly clear that Fox didn't push the boat out for this release, but the image looks film-like and unmolested. Detail isn't brilliant, but I feel disinclined to suspect any foul-play in that regard. It's a lot darker than my old non-anamorphic PAL DVD, to the extent that once the lights are cut in the subway carriage it actually becomes pretty difficult to see anything... but then again, that's hardly unrealistic, and in every respect director Joseph Sargent and cinematographer Owen Roizman (of THE FRENCH CONNECTION and THE EXORCIST fame) seem to have been going for grungy realism. Shadow detail is hardly stellar, but again I get the impression that that's to be expected. I have no complaints about the compression, and while there is some visible print damage in the form of specs and scratches, they aren't too distracting and stand as compelling evidence that the film has been left alone. Recommended, but with issues.

The Taking of Pelham One Two Three
label: 20th Century Fox/MGM; disc country: USA; region code: ABC;
codec: AVC; aspect ratio: 2.35:1

BD impressions: M (80th anniversary edition)

2:09 PM / BD Impressions / 10 Comments

Few films can claim to have as troubled a history as Fritz Lang's M. Heavily cut by the censors, altered by a succession of distributors and subjected to numerous incorrect presentations on video, LaserDisc and DVD over the years, it's thanks to the efforts of various dedicated restorationists and preservationists that it survives at all, in any state.

The version I'm reviewing here is the new 80th anniversary edition released by German label Universum Film, which features a new restoration created by the people at TLE Films. For the most part, this new version consists of a new scan of the 35mm archival preservation fine grain positive supervised by Martin Koerber in 2000/2001, which was also the basis for the Criterion (US) and Eureka (UK) BDs, though there are some quite significant differences which will make this release of interest even to those who own one of the previous versions. Perhaps most significant of all is the inclusion of additional, previously lost material, sourced from the French preservation negative and making this the most complete version of M released on home video to date - a cause for considerable celebration.

Much work has also been done to remove dust, tears and scratches, as well as perfect colour timing, reduce flicker and improve the stability of the image. The latter is particularly noticeable when viewed in comparison with one of the various earlier releases - in my case the Criterion 2-disc DVD set from 2004. While the DVD contains a significant amount of weave, both horizontal and vertical, particularly during cuts between different shots, this is largely negated on the Universum BD. A by-product of this has been the need to slightly crop the image in comparison with the Criterion and Eureka releases, but the effect is fairly minor (not to mention well within the safe action area, which defines the area of the frame that is meant to be visible when projected - see this reproduction of the SMPTE frame, kindly provided by Torsten Kaiser) and the improvements to the image's overall stability make it a price worth paying. The clean-up work, incidentally, extends to the film's audio, which comes in two flavours: a cleaned-up version in which the silent parts of the film truly are silent, as per Lang's intentions, and the preservation master created in 2001, in which age-related background noise is audible even during the silent sections.

The encode, which has a very healthy bit rate hovering at 36 Mbit/sec (excluding the audio tracks), is solid throughout, and for the most part detail is very impressive indeed. That said, it's worth noting that only around 70% of M's negative still exists, resulting in a need to draw upon other less optimal sources to assemble the most complete version possible. It's clear that as much as possible has been done to bring this footage in line with that of the bulk of the film, but it's fairly obvious whenever material had to be inserted from a poorer quality source. This is particularly apparent during the scene in which Gustaf Gründgens' Safecracker character is introduced (see Example 14).

A degree of damage remains visible, though never to the extent that it becomes distracting, and no doubt vastly preferable to the artefacts that would have resulted from attempting to create a completely "clean" image. (TLE Films' commitment to restore all 160,000 of the film's frames by hand, without resorting to any form of automated clean-up, can only be described as daunting.) More noticeable to me are instances in which the film grain varies in intensity around different parts of the screen - Example 4 shows a particularly clear instance of this. I discussed this at some length with Torsten Kaiser, senior producer at TLE Films and the guiding hand behind this new release, and he explained to me that in the case of Example 4, the inconsistency of the grain results from a heavily damaged frame having had to be reconstructed, with the "patchwork" effect stemming from inconsistencies in gradation and density between different frames from the same element. Torsten also mentioned that the effect is less pronounced on the master and is likely to have been accentuated to a degree by the encoding. Given the massive difference in size between the uncompressed DPX files (with a bit rate of over 1,200 Mbit/sec) and BD (with its upper limit of 36 Mbit/sec for video bit rate), "something's gotta give", as the saying goes - particularly with grain this coarse. To be clear, these issues seem to have been unavoidable, and I'm not for a moment suggesting that they hamper the presentation unduly. I noticed them during normal playback, but it's worth pointing out that, as far as I'm aware, no other reviewer has mentioned them. Unfortunately, not having access to either the Criterion or Eureka BDs, I'm unable to confirm whether similar issues occur on them.

It's incredibly difficult to assign a numerical score to a release such as this. M is eighty years old and that it looks as good as it does is quite miraculous. The presentation undoubtedly has flaws, and despite being unavoidable, unavoidable flaws remain flaws nonetheless. This, however, makes the review less an exercise in calling anyone out on perceived failings and more an opportunity to point out that the film must be understood within the context of its age and history. Basically, you can't compare this with, say, a modern DI title, and it would be foolish to try. The improved audio-visual presentation, coupled with numerous insightful extras (many of them in English or German with English subtitles), makes this a very impressive release of a landmark film. Strongly recommended.

M (80th anniversary edition)
label: Universum Film; disc country: Germany; region code: ABC;
codec: AVC; aspect ratio: 1.19:1

BD impressions: Machete

7:06 PM / BD Impressions / 16 Comments

The film: MACHETE is probably about as good a film as can be expected from something that began life as a three-minute gag. That gag was a trailer for a non-existent "Mexploitation" film attached to the start of GRINDHOUSE, Robert Rodriguez and Quentin Tarantino's joint ode to the B-movies they grew up loving. While I felt GRINDHOUSE was worth it if only for the amazing half-hour that concluded Tarantino's half, DEATH PROOF, I'm of the opinion that both it and Rodriguez's piece, PLANET TERROR, were far too long for what they had to say, and the same is true of MACHETE. Yes, the sight of Danny Trejo running around dispatching goons left, right and centre while Robert De Niro and Don Johnson ham it up and Lindsay Lohan plays a drug-addled floozy (ha ha) is initially exhilarating, but the joke eventually wears thin and it comes hard to ignore the growing sense that Rodriguez is simply using the minimal plotting and hammy acting of the films he's spoofing as limp excuses for, well, minimal plotting and hammy acting.

It doesn't help that, like PLANET TERROR, MACHETE doesn't actually look like the zero-budget grindhouse flick it's pretending to be. While Tarantino had the sense to actually run DEATH PROOF's print through the grinder (well, the first half of it, at any rate), Rodriguez's love of CGI and digital cameras means that his films simply look like what they are: healthily budgeted modern day productions with a layer of artificial grain and print damage slapped over the top. At least here the fake print damage doesn't extend beyond the pre-credits prologue and the faux grain is largely unobtrusive, but you're left wondering how so much money ($10.5 million, according to IMDB) could be spent trying to make something look like it was shot on a shoestring. (Meanwhile, the likes of Gareth Edwards has managed to ACTUALLY shoot MONSTERS on a shoestring and make it look like it cost a hell of a lot more.)

It is what it is, more or less, and if you enjoyed PLANET TERROR chances are you'll get a kick out of this too. Myself, I found it a pleasant enough way to kill 105 minutes, but it's not something I can see myself ever watching again. 6/10

Image quality: A difficult one to rate, this, since like the film itself, many of the flaws are essentially deliberate (or at least a convenient excuse). With that in mind, I suspect Sony Pictures' encode is pretty much faultless, while the inconsistent detail, noticeable colour fringing (see Example 7) and occasional harshness (see Example 6) clearly stem from the photography itself. (Rodriguez used the Panavision Genesis HD Camera, footage from which has generally impressed me the most out of all the various shot-on-video productions I've seen, but the footage has been manipulated in post to such an extent as to make it hard to decipher what it originally looked like.) Recommended.

Machete
label: Sony Pictures; disc country: UK; region code: ABC;
codec: AVC; aspect ratio: 1.85:1

BD impressions: The Cat O' Nine Tails

2:13 AM / BD Impressions / 60 Comments

The film: At one point, Dario Argento was quoted as saying that THE CAT O' NINE TAILS was his least favourite of his films, and while I personally think he's being a tad harsh, it does stand out to me as the least impressive of the films he made in the 70s and 80s, when he was at the peak of his powers. Compared to the exciting, energetic THE BIRD WITH THE CRYSTAL PLUMAGE, this sophomore effort and the second instalment in his unofficial Animal Trilogy feels rather more plodding and conventional. It feels long and the roster of suspects, with the exception of the icy Anna Terzi (Catherine Spaak), all tend to blur into one another. Put simply, it feels like Argento is going through the motions with the plot, which at times feels a lot like the work of one of his lesser competitors.

The film's strengths lie primarily in a couple of powerful set-pieces in the second half of the film, among them a tense rooftop battle and a nail-biting sequence in a mausoleum, as well as the strong characterisation of the two protagonists, blind puzzle maker Franco Arno and ambitious journalist Carlo Giordani. That they are played by Karl Malden and James Franciscus respectively is an impressive casting coup and Argento makes the most of their combined talents. The two men form an unlikely bond and there is genuine chemistry and affection between them. Stylistically, the film lacks the perfect synergy of THE BIRD WITH THE CRYSTAL PLUMAGE, in which every frame was fresh and exciting, but Argento's growing fondness of subjective point of view shots is very much in evidence here, and Ennio Morricone's nervy, atonal score makes for a nice companion piece to that of the previous film.

It's far from Argento at his best but it's ultimately a solid giallo with better than average performances and a genuinely haunting coda. "Nine times more scary" than THE BIRD WITH THE CRYSTAL PLUMAGE (to quote the trailer)? Hardly, but it sure beats just about anything the maestro has given us since the end of the 80s (barring the excellent THE STENDHAL SYNDROME). 7/10

Image quality: * Dons bulletproof vest. * I write this review knowing full well that I'm opening myself up to a barrage of hate mail. Blue Underground's BD of THE CAT O' NINE TAILS - the film's high definition debut - has been getting uniformly positive reviews, with some even calling it the best disc the label has produced. I'm sorry, but I can't see it. I wish I could say otherwise, but THE CAT O' NINE TAILS looks bad - shockingly bad, in fact, and I'm going to do my best to explain that badness here as clearly as possible. If you want to disagree with my assessment, that's OK, and I'd be more than happy to read any reasoned rebuttals - but please, let's keep it civil.

First of all, I've looked at the disc on three different displays, ranging from large to small: the projection setup on which I watch all my BDs (a JVC DLA-HD750 projector and a 123" Da-lite Cinema Vision Perm-Wall screen, calibrated by an ISF-certified technician), a 42" Panasonic Viera TX-P42G20 Plasma and a 27" Dell Ultrasharp 2709W LCD monitor. I've both watched the entire film in motion and examined individual frames in considerable detail, and my assessment is that what we're looking at is an image that has been blasted with grain reduction and has a harsh electronic noise pattern overlaid on top of it. Similar accusations have been levelled against other BD releases of Italian cult titles in the past, among them DJANGO and CITY OF THE LIVING DEAD, the latter of which looks extremely similar to what I'm seeing here: soft, little to no fine detail except in close-ups, but with a uniform blanket of harsh noise making the image look unnaturally fuzzy. Fabric and wallpaper textures disappear, faces in anything further away than medium shot are an undefined blur, motion resolution is nonexistent... With CITY OF THE LIVING DEAD, some argued that the film's look on BD was that of 16mm film. I didn't believe it at the time (a) because it looked nothing like any 16mm film I'd ever seen and (b) because this was the first time anyone had ever claimed the film to have been shot on 16mm. To me, it seemed like an attempt to rationalise an inexplicably poor quality image. Now, a virtually identical look has shown up on a film that there can be no doubt was shot on 35mm film in 2-perf Techniscope (the same process as THE BIRD WITH THE CRYSTAL PLUMAGE, the BD of which looks immeasurably better).

What can we say about the image that's positive? Well, for a start, it's in the film's correct aspect ratio, unlike the new Storaro'd THE BIRD WITH THE CRYSTAL PLUMAGE master. Some very tight close-ups actually look quite detailed, particularly those in which there is little to no movement (e.g. Example 18). Also, compared to the overly dark-looking DVD, the overall balance seems much more appropriate. Of course, it's difficult to ascertain which - if either - is the correct look, but I know which one I prefer. It's because of this, and a lack of the unfortunate sharpening the plagued the DVD, that means that this BD is on the whole an upgrade. That's about the best I can say in the disc's favour, though.

Let's be clear: I don't hold Blue Underground responsible for this transfer. My guess is they were handed the master tape (quite possibly after they signed the licence agreement) and simply had to make the best hash of it they could. No, the blame lies solely with the company responsible for the creation of the master. This is, as far as I can tell, the first time this master has seen the light of day, and while it's entirely possible that it has been languishing in a vault for a number of years, dating back to a time when standards were considerably lower than they are today, I'm more than a little concerned by the possibility that this is in fact a freshly minted transfer. If so, then the company responsible needs to take a serious look at their mastering process, because the results simply don't pass muster in 1080p.

I actually discussed this disc, among others, the other day with a highly respected film restoration and preservation expert, and we were very much on the same page as regards what is wrong with transfers like this and a number of other Italian cult titles. In a nutshell: no actual detail, just a whole load of harsh noise. Look, I'm not expecting every BD of a 70s film to be another TAXI DRIVER or even a DEEP RED, but let's be clear: the flaws we're seeing here are nothing to do with the film's budget, obscurity or the condition of the elements. Everything that's wrong here is digitally induced and, I'm sure, could have been avoided.

I know my review is the exception. Plenty of other reviewers are more than happy with this disc, and I'm pleased for them. Given that, I can only assume that plenty of viewers will also be happy with the disc, but I'm not in the business of tailoring my reviews to match those of the majority. I can't get inside someone else's head, so all I can do is call it as I see it and make a reasonable stab at trying to work out WHY I'm seeing what I'm seeing. If anyone has any questions, please let me know. 4/10

PS. As you can see from Example 1, the opening credits have been electronically generated, failing to properly match the font of the original titles. The end credits are intact. In the grand scheme of things, it's a minor issue (certainly compared to everything that is wrong with the transfer), but I thought I should mention it.

The Cat O' Nine Tails
studio: Blue Underground; disc country: USA; region code: ABC;
codec: AVC; aspect ratio: 2.35:1

BD impressions: Black Swan

1:50 PM / BD Impressions / 7 Comments

The film: As Mike Sutton says in his review of BLACK SWAN at The Digital Fix, Darren Aronofsky's latest movie is essentially "high-trash melodrama". It's frequently over the top and absurd, and revels in all sorts of daft clichés about mental illness - particularly the A/B white/black personality split from which its heroine suffers... and yet despite all this it's a dazzling, visceral piece of work if you accept it on its own terms. I don't personally think Natalie Portman deserves quite the degree of plauditry she's received for the role (as I've mentioned on a few occasions now, I felt that her fellow BAFTA nominee Noomi Rapace wiped the floor with her as Lisbeth Salander in THE GIRL WITH THE DRAGON TATTOO, and as far as I'm concerned the award went to the wrong actress), but the shrill hysteria that infuses her performance is entirely suited to the overall mood of the film and calls to mind Catherine Deneuve in Polanski's REPULSION.

REPULSION, in fact, is probably the film from which BLACK SWAN draws most influence (except, of course, for SHOWGIRLS) in its portrait of a deeply disturbed young woman slowly unravelling. A lot of people, among them Mark Kermode, have loudly proclaimed Aronofsky to have been borrowing wholesale from Dario Argento, and while the ballet setting and focus on a wide-eyed ingénue dancer (as well as some of the colour choices during the climax) do call to mind SUSPIRIA, I do think the similarities have been overplayed to a certain extent. Indeed, if any Argento film informs BLACK SWAN to any great extent (and I have to believe that Aronofsky was indeed drawing on the maestro's work, at least subconsciously), it's OPERA, with Portman taking on the Cristina Marsillach role (complete with domineering mother figure) and Vincent Cassel in Ian Charleson's part.

Regardless of the influences it wears so openly, though, BLACK SWAN does manage to feel cohesive and manages to forge its own identity despite not really bringing anything new to the table. I know a few people who outright loathe the film for its over the top and absurd nature, and others who think it's a load of pretentious wank masquerading as high-brow in order to avoid admitting that it's basically a B-horror movie with pretensions above its station. I see their point but I don't really agree with them: once I saw BLACK SWAN for what it is - an old-fashioned pulp horror movie packaged as high art - I got completely on board with its merging of high art and exploitation. 8/10

Image quality: Like Aronofsky's previous film, THE WRESTLER, BLACK SWAN was shot on 16mm film. The result is very grainy, and as such the usual caveat applies: it looks considerably more detailed in motion than in still frame form. The captures look a little on the soft and clumpy side, but while there ARE some shots that are naturally softer than others, the overall effect in motion is quite pleasing. As usual, Fox have done a bang-up job with the encode, resulting in a very satisfying presentation, provided you know what to expect and accept the film's intended look for what it is. 9/10

Black Swan
studio: 20th Century Fox; disc country: USA; region code: AB;
codec: AVC; aspect ratio: 2.39:1

BD impressions: Taxi Driver

3:46 PM / BD Impressions / 13 Comments

The film: I'm decidedly late to the party, having only seen TAXI DRIVER for the first time last night. As such, I very much doubt there's anything I could say about it that hasn't been said before. I really enjoyed it... if enjoyed it the right word: it's grim, gritty, blackly comic, and Robert De Niro is superb in the role of Travis Bickle. It's just a shame the whole "You talkin' to me?" scene has been lampooned to death, as I suspect it does dilute its intensity somewhat. 8/10

Image quality: Sony Pictures + Martin Scorsese definitely makes for a winning combination. This director-supervised restoration is top-notch: faithful to the source and without any overt evidence of major manipulation. As Matthew McKinnon pointed out on this side, the clarity of the transfer is such that the reduced quality of the numerous opticals (including the infamous climactic scene, which was processed to desaturate the colour in order to obtain an "R" rating) sticks out like a sore thumb in comparison with the rich detail that is visible elsewhere (see Example 13). It's a shame the original negative couldn't be sourced for the aforementioned climax, because it does look decidedly wonky in comparison to the rest of the film, but I digress: a good 90-95% of the film looks excellent. We're incredibly fortunate that both Scorsese and Sony understand how to treat a film with care for release on BD. More like this, please. 9/10

Taxi Driver
studio: Sony Pictures; disc country: USA; region code: ABC;
codec: AVC; aspect ratio: 1.85:1

By the way, there's an excellent, Blu-ray.com has an insightful interview with Grover Crisp, Sony Pictures Entertainment's Senior Vice President for Asset Management, Film Restoration and Digital Mastering, regarding TAXI DRIVER:

Scorsese insisted that the restoration should look like "a product of the time and place in which it was made," with no attempt to modernize the look or the color palette, with special mention of the shooting scene at the end of the film. Crisp starts by saying that Scorsese "feels it best to leave the film as it is."

[...]

Crisp said that at Sony "we don't take the position that grain is an automatic 'problem', and we usually just leave it alone." They are aware of all the digital tools available to alter the grain, but "unless there is a really compelling reason" to do that, they don't. He proudly adds that that decision hasn't earned them negative Blu-ray reviews; "just the opposite, it seems."

Crisp didn't shy away from the ongoing DNR debate. "I really do not like the super clean, waxy look that is often the result of over-processing," he said. "It not only buries detail, but it gives the film an odd feel to it, an artificial feel, that I think detracts from the achievement of the filmmakers and is distracting to discerning viewers, all of which ultimately just cheats the audience. Most filmmakers know what they are doing with the resources at hand and our job, after all, is to replicate the vision of the filmmaker, not to impose our own aesthetic outlook on a film. People are entitled to their opinion on this subject, and lots of people have opinions on this, but we try to take a fairly authentic and neutral approach to every title - and they all differ in certain ways - so that each title looks, feels, sounds, like a product of its time and place, while trying to make them look their absolute best on Blu-ray. And, that's kind of what it's about, you know? [...]"

Amen.

BD impressions: London Boulevard

10:03 PM / BD Impressions / 2 Comments

The film: There are some good ideas in LONDON BOULEVARD, William Monahan's adaptation of the Ken Bruen novel of the same name - itself something of a take-off of SUNSET BOULEVARD, mixing the story of a man who becomes infatuated with a reclusive movie star together with an east end gangster plot. Unfortunately, it all gets a bit muddled, with what should have been the main focus - the growing bond between Colin Farrell's en-con and Keira Knightley's skittish starlet - being given short shrift, playing second fiddle to the hackneyed gangster storyline, which revels in the sort of movie stereotypes most people will call to mind when they hear the words "east end gangster".

The supporting cast is top notch, with Ray Winstone bringing some genuine menace to the role of crime boss Rob Gant, despite the character being a walking, talking cliché - right down to the casting of Winstone himself. Anna Friel does a nice turn as Farrell's flighty, drugged-up sister, and David Thewlis is amusing as an unemployed actor-turned-producer ("I was on a kid's show... then I was on methadone... then I was a producer"). Knightley is good if sadly underused, and as another reviewer noted, it's nice that directors have started to acknowledge the fact that she has a very odd-looking face (in the best possible way) rather than hiding it. Farrell, however, feels like the weakest link. He's the glue that's supposed to hold it together, uniting the various disparate plot strands, but he's a fairly ineffectual presence, and as a result I suspect the film's failure to come together as a whole is largely because of him. 6/10

Image quality: MPEG-2. In 2011. Huh. Still, I don't think any would deny that it's very impressive-looking MPEG-2 - better even than KINGDOM OF HEAVEN, the previous reigning champ of MPEG-2 encodes (and, as coincidence would have it, also penned by William Monahan). Detail is very good, taking into account that some shots are naturally softer than others due to the focus, while the light grain is rendered very well for the most part, with some slight artefacting in the shadows visible on occasions. Regardless of the codec, it's a very good result. 9.5/10

London Boulevard
studio: Entertainment in Video; disc country: UK; region code: B;
codec: MPEG-2; aspect ratio: 1.85:1

BD impressions: Unstoppable

9:30 PM / BD Impressions / 6 Comments

The film: OK, how to put this politely? This is a big ol' pile of shit. It's a passable enough distraction up to a point, but it's easily the most brain-dead movie I've watched recently. I've got nothing against but stupid action films that simply require you to check your brain in at the door, and when Tony Scott's on the ball he does that sort of popcorn fare better than most, but this is not one of his better efforts. Once you dispense with the ridiculous clichés (they even trot out a carriage full of giggling schoolchildren), the script is actually incredibly one-note, and to sustain what is basically an incredibly uneventful story, Scott compensates for the fact that nothing particularly interesting is going on by throwing every MTV-style trick he can muster at the screen. If the camera isn't spinning 360 degrees round the actors, it's doing that infuriating jump-zoom at the start of every shot, and while the actors scream and shout about how dreadful the situation is, we're never really given any reason to care. Everything is told in the same screaming in-your-face style that what should be the dramatic high points fail to make any impact.

When I first heard about this film, the premise sounded too ridiculous to pass up, but in reality it lacks the "so bad it's good" quality that could have propelled this beyond mediocrity. I can't say it bored me and, at just over an hour and a half, it's at least short enough not to linger like a bad smell, but I can't really think of a single good reason to watch it. 5/10

Image quality: Another superlative effort from Fox. UNSTOPPABLE is a Tony Scott film through and through - frenetic handheld camerawork, excessively pumped colours and contrast, a heavy blanket of grain - but none of this causes so much as a hiccup for the encoder. It's not what I'd call a particularly attractive film, but it's reasonably safe to say it looks as good here as it possibly can on BD. 10/10

Unstoppable
studio: 20th Century Fox; disc country: UK; region code: BC;
codec: AVC; aspect ratio: 2.39:1

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