Jingle bells December 26, 2006
Posted by Michael Mackenzie in : Technobabble, Miscellaneous, Movie Watching , 1 comment so far
In case you didn’t notice, yesterday was Christmas. As luck would have it, the various presents I had ordered all showed up on Saturday, contrary to all expectation (Saturday being the last day for the postal service until the 27th), and I got one or two surprises in addition to those. Thanks must go especially to Lee for sending me a copy of Burton on Burton, which, as you can probably guess, is a book on director Tim Burton and his bizarre gothic fantasies. I’m sure I’ll enjoy getting stuck into it when I next have a spare moment.
Otherwise, there were no huge surprises. I got The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers - The Complete Recordings (what a mouthful!) on CD but haven’t had a chance to listen to anything but the first couple of tracks. And, in terms of DVDs, my collection now includes Looney Tunes Golden Collection Volume 4, The Double Life of Véronique (Criterion), The Quiller Memorandum and The Texas Chain Saw Massacre (Ultimate Edition). I’ve not had the time to watch any of them, but I gave most of them a brief glance, and have collected my thoughts below.
- The Double Life of Véronique: This release looks slightly better than the French MK2 release (repackaged in the UK under the Artificial Eye label), but it’s a close call. There is less noise reduction and the compression is better handled, giving the image a more eye-pleasing, filmlike appearance. However, I am once again annoyed that Criterion, who are (wrongly, in my opinion) frequently held up to be the pinnacle of DVD production companies, have chosen to assault the image with edge enhancement and brick-wall filtering. Especially following the advent of HD DVD, I am acutely aware that the vast majority of DVDs simply aren’t of an acceptable level of quality.
- The Quiller Memorandum: Probably the worst transfer I’ve seen all year. This DVD was released only a month ago, and yet it looks almost like a LaserDisc master. The image is flat, detail is non-existent, and I once again find myself wondering how Fox, like Criterion, can garner so much praise for such feeble efforts.
- The Texas Chain Saw Massacre: This restoration, undertaken by Synapse’s Don Mar Jr., has been praised to the high heavens on the Internet, and with good reason: the film has undoubtedly never looked better on a home video format, and the material May had to work with can’t have been in particularly good condition. All the more reason, then, for my to be annoyed by Dark Sky’s DVD, which is indeptly encoded, resulting in some of the most blatant macro-blocking I’ve seen in a long time. At times, the screen is such an array of compression blocks that it resembles a UK Freeview TV broadcast (which anyone who has witnessed this ingenious but flawed “digital TV through an antenna” solution will agree is capable of looking very bad indeed).
That’s all for now. Thoughts on the Looney Tunes discs will follow eventually.
Here’s someone else who doesn’t pay import duty December 22, 2006
Posted by Michael Mackenzie in : Technobabble, Movie Watching , add a commentThe HD DVD of The Adventures of Robin Hood arrived from Deep Discount DVD yesterday, and I’m pleased to report that Warner have delivered another stellar disc. It’s becoming quite apparent that, at Warner, there are two processes through which a title can go. The first, which has given us discs like Constantine, Million Dollar Baby and V for Vendetta, delivers a noise reduced, slightly edge enhanced transfer. These are good-looking discs, but not up to the standards I demand. The second, which has given us discs like Corpse Bride, Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire, and now, seemingly, The Adventures of Robin Hood, results in an image that seems to be more or less completely untampered: sharp as a tack, appropriately grainy (or not, as is the case with the all-digital Corpse Bride), and no edge enhancement in sight. A couple of scenes in Robin Hood show some slight ringing, and I’m currently investigating to determine whether this is caused by edge enhancement applied to the transfer, or something else endemic to the source materials (optical process shots, for example, often result in what nowadays we would refer to as edge enhancement).
As for the film, I found it to be a hoot: gloriously colourful, outrageously camp and filled with swashbuckling adventure and melodrama. Not the sort of thing I usually go in for, but I was suitably entertained and found it to be an enjoyable enough way to kill an hour and a half. The high definition Looney Tunes cartoons look gorgeous too, although something is up with the sound on both of them, with a lot of crackling that sounds decidedly digital in nature during the high frequencies. I’ve tried two different sets of speakers, so it’s not my sound system, and I can therefore only assume that this is a mastering fault.
HD DVD review: Miami Vice
Posted by Michael Mackenzie in : Reviews, Technobabble, Movie Watching , add a commentMiami Vice is ultimately close to two and a half hours of posturing, insincere characterisation and abrasive style, none of which would suggest, barring the appearance of his name during the opening credits, that a filmmaker of Michael Mann’s calibre was behind it. To describe it as a failed experiment would be charitable: a mess is a more accurate description.
Colin Farrell and Jamie Foxx don their designer shades and head out to the beach as I review Universal’s recent HD DVD/DVD combo release of Miami Vice.
Pencils at the ready! December 21, 2006
Posted by Michael Mackenzie in : Technobabble, Movie Watching , add a commentSource: Animation Nation
Some potentially very interesting, not to mention shocking, news has just surfaced regarding Walt Disney Pictures. As you probably know, shortly before the release of Home on the Range, it was announced that this would be the studio’s finally traditionally animated feature, with the bulk of the staff being laid off and the remainder retrained in 3D animation. However, when Pixar big-shots John Lasseter and Ed Catmull took over Feature Animation as part of the terms of Disney’s acquisition of Pixar, it was widely expected that 2D would eventually make a return to Disney in some form. I don’t think that anyone, however, was expecting this:
Pencil. Paper. Have you two met? I think the better question may be directed to the animator — do you remember how to use them? I remember when Toy Story came out in 1995 — it was huge! It broke barriers being the first full-length computer animated film. It was exciting and quickly became the thing to do; seemingly making hand drawing the thing of the past. Disney animation is now putting a stop to the CGI addiction and returning to a more traditional drawing plan.
This change, just announced today by John Lasseter and Ed Catmull, will take place in Walt Disney Co.’s Burbank studios, leaving Pixar to exclusively work on CGI projects. There isn’t a specific answer to why the change happened, but one rumor centers around Chris Sanders who is responsible for Lilo and Stitch and the upcoming film American Dog. Lilo and Stitch, if you can remember, was hand-drawn — and was a huge success. Perhaps they’re hoping the same hand-drawn success with American Dog.
If this turns out to be true, all I can say is “wow”. This is something that I never thought would happen in a million years, but it sounds as if traditional theatrical animation is well and truly on its way back. It sucks that so many artists were laid off in the first place, many of them after having already completed extensive 3D retraining, but if ditching Disney’s schedule of CGI flicks in favour of a return to the studio’s roots means yet more upheaval in the short term, I’m sure most will agree that the benefits will be immense in the long run.
Buena Vista quietly switches to VC1 December 20, 2006
Posted by Michael Mackenzie in : Technobabble, Movie Watching , add a commentSource: High-Def Digest
Due in stores today, Disney’s latest wave of Blu-ray titles features the studio’s first VC-1-encoded title, the Jodie Foster thriller ‘Flightplan.’
Interesting, interesting. Could we be in line for an HD DVD announcement at some point in the new year?
Le DVNR et la compression
Posted by Michael Mackenzie in : Technobabble, Movie Watching , add a commentMy copy of Studio Canal’s recently released HD DVD of Basic Instinct arrived from Amazon.fr this morning.
Unfortunately, the transfer, while clearly in a different league compared to standard definition, is artefact-ridden in a way that I’ve never seen on an HD DVD until now. Daylight scenes generally look fine, but those taking place at night or in subdued interior lighting conditions (which accounts for a considerable portion of the film’s duration) look smeared and defocused. Grain patterns stick to the walls and actors’ faces during panning shots, making it pretty clear that some intensive DVNR has been applied. And why? The film isn’t even 15 years old, and the compressionists have 30 GB of data to play with (and no extras, barring a trailer for other Studio Canal titles and some test patterns). I don’t think I’d go so far as to say that this is the least impressive HD DVD I’ve seen so far (Lara Croft: Tomb Raider and An American Werewolf in London are contending for that crown), but it’s definitely underwhelming and not the sort of thing I’d show to someone to sell them on the delights of high definition.
I just hope this isn’t indicative of what we can expect from Studio Canal as a whole. Certainly their trailer reel, which showcases everything from The Elephant Man to Rambo to Ran, looks rather mixed in terms of quality, with some material looking absolutely excellent (the grain in Rambo looks phenomenal, and their version of Million Dollar Baby looks more impressive than Warner’s), but some not so impressive (Ran is marred by giant edge enhancement halos).
Here’s looking at you, HD DVD December 18, 2006
Posted by Michael Mackenzie in : Technobabble, Movie Watching , add a commentMy HD DVD of Casablanca arrived from Deep Discount DVD this morning (The Adventures of Robin Hood was dispatched a few hours later than it, so presumably it will come tomorrow).
I’m very impressed with the work Warner has done on the transfer, and would place it at around a low 9/10 on my scale. First of all, this disc should put paid to the foolish notion that there’s no point in buying “old films” in high definition. The higher resolution results in as much of an improvement to the overall level of detail as any modern film I’ve seen, and by and large the digital tampering is kept to a minimum. There are a few niggles, however. The first is some occasional edge enhancement and filtering of the grain, suggesting that this disc was encoded (or the master created - it’s unclear at which stage in the chain the faults are being introduced) by whoever was in charge of Constantine and V for Vendetta rather than whoever did Corpse Bride and Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire. Lyris also noticed some evidence of DVNR, particularly during the airport climax in a shot where Humphrey Bogart turns his head rapidly, resulting in the grain and the details of his face “dragging”.
By and large, though, this is a great-looking HD DVD. If Warner manages to top this with The Adventures of Robin Hood I will be very impressed.
High definition, every hour on the hour
Posted by Michael Mackenzie in : Technobabble, Miscellaneous, Movie Watching , add a comment
To get an idea of the general sales performance of the two rival HD formats, I generally refer to The DVD Wars, which provides a comprehensive run-down of Amazon.com’s DVD (which also encompasses HD DVD and Blu-ray, for some reason) sales rankings. The site is a valuable resource, but it has its shortcomings, among them an inability to display the sales rank of every available title. That’s where HD Game Database’s new HD DVD/Blu-ray Sales Rank page comes in.
According to them,
This page is a different representation of the same data. The primary reason for this page is due to curiousity raised by the top 10 listing on The DVD Wars…namely, what lies beyond each format’s top 10?
The data below is sortable by several different fields. Both HD DVD and Blu-ray are listed in one ranking list. All movies in the database have been scrubbed of any invalid DVDs (WMV-HD, etc.). The data retrieved from Amazon.com contains ALL available next-generation titles (including pre-orders). The data displayed below contains only those movies with a sales rank.
A studio summary is listed at the bottom and is updated according to the list size (Top 10, Top 25, etc.) selected in the drop down list.
There are certainly some interesting numbers on display, especially with regard to the number of titles released by each studio: for example Warner, the studio that, along with Universal, continues to be the most enthusiastic supporter of either format, has 55 titles on HD DVD, but only 33 on Blu-ray. The statistics are not infallible, however: while Paramount seems to have 16 titles on Blu-ray but only 15 on HD DVD, in actual fact this is due to U2 - Rattle & Hum inexplicably not being listed as available on HD DVD, when in fact it is.
DVD image comparison: An American Werewolf in London
Posted by Michael Mackenzie in : Technobabble, Movie Watching , add a commentIt’s that time of the month again: I’ve done a brand new DVD Image Comparison, this time focusing on John Landis’ horror classic An American Werewolf in London. Entering the ring tonight are the DVD side of the recently-released US HD DVD/DVD combo (which seems to be identical to the standalone R1 DVD), and the R2 UK Twenty-first Anniversary Special Edition (how’s that for a mouthful?).
Who will be victorious? Click and all will be revealed.
Kerbang! Boom! Crash! December 16, 2006
Posted by Michael Mackenzie in : Technobabble, Movie Watching , add a commentMy copy of Operation Crossbow (R1 USA) arrived from DVD Pacific this morning. As I mentioned back in August, back in May 2006 Warner gave fans the chance to vote for which catalogue titles they would like to see released. The only title in the list that appealed to me was Operation Crossbow, a World War 2 spy/action movie that I’d loved ever since I happened to catch it on TV back in the early 1990s, so naturally it was the title I voted for. Apparently I’m not alone in my love of this film, for it was one of the five titles announced for a December 2006 released (another five will be released in January).
I’ve seen the film several times before, but never in its original 2.35:1 ratio. Uncropped, you really come to appreciate the scale of the piece, especially the cavernous underground set in which most of the film’s second half takes place. Warner’s transfer is also very nice: it’s certainly not a Casablanca or Citizen Kane style or restoration, but that suits me absolutely fine, because it looks just as I would expect a film from 1965 to look, with grain, white flecks and the occasional visible splice. I was a little concerned, initially, by the fact that the only English track on the disc is a 5.1 affair, but it turns out that the 70mm prints of the film were accompanied by a 6-track recording, on which I presume the DVD’s track was based.
But what of the film itself? How does it stack up after all these years? Very well, for the most part. It certainly runs hot and cold, thanks to a rather uneven pace and an inability to keep the focus on the spies/saboteurs once they enter the underground rocket lab (it keeps jumping back to London, where the goings-on are considerably less interesting). Sophia Loren, who gets title billing, is also wasted in a role that turns out to be not much more than a glorified cameo. Otherwise, though, this is a great mindless romp that keeps me engaged despite the two-hour running time. It’s no Where Eagles Dare, that’s for sure, but it is the sort of movie you can pull out every few years and still find as entertaining as it was the first time you saw it.
2007: year of the pervert December 15, 2006
Posted by Michael Mackenzie in : Movie Watching , add a commentSource: DVD Maniacs
Severin Films have unveiled the specifications, cover art and release date for their upcoming DVD of Lucio Fulci’s long-lost giallo, One on Top of the Other… although they have elected, presumably for marketing reasons, to go for the seedier alternate title of Perversion Story.
Released on February 27 2007, this will be a 2-disc set, with the first disc (a DVD5) featuring nothing more than the trailer and a Fulci bio. The second, however, will be a “rare bonus CD featuring music by Riz Ortolani” - although it’s unclear whether this will be the actual score to the film or simply a compilation of various pieces by Ortolani, akin to the Stelvio Cipriani compilation NoShame Films provided in their Luciano Ercoli Death Box Set earlier this year.
Oh, and the DVD will come with both English and Italian audio (and English subtitles) - a very nice move by NoShame that I wish some of their competitors (*cough* Anchor Bay *cough* Blue Underground) would also adopt.