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.
Mann oh mann December 12, 2006
Posted by Michael Mackenzie in : Reviews, Technobabble, Movie Watching, Telly Tat , 2 commentsThis morning, I received a review copy of the HD DVD/SD DVD combo of Michael Mann’s Miami Vice courtesy of DVD Pacific. I’ve never seen the 80s TV series on which the film is based, so I really didn’t know what to expect.
All I can say is that I’m glad this was a review copy and thus something I didn’t have to pay for, except with the two hours and twenty minutes of my life that I’ll never get back. Miami Vice is an incoherent mess, an eyesore and assault on the ears. It’s one hundred and forty minutes of Colin Farrell and Jamie Foxx slicking back their hair and/or adjusting their shades as they swagger around various seaside locations with their jaws firmly set and their designer shades glinting in the sunlight. The plot feels like your average 45-minute cop show stretched out to beyond the normal length of a feature film, while the characters are nothing more than mere archetypes who spit out corny dialogue and offer us glaring insights into their tedious and insincere emotions.
Style-wise, the film is all over the place. Mann shot it using a combination of traditional 35mm and 1080p high definition. Some of it looks fine, but the night scenes look absolutely vile, filled with obnoxious amounts of digital noise. Meanwhile, a whole lot of scenes have what can only be described as a motion blur effect, presumably the result of shooting the footage interlaced and then deinterlacing it for the final transfer. Mann used similar techniques on his previous film, Collateral, and they were just as bad there. If this is the future of cinema, I think I’d prefer to remain in the past. Oh, and the camerawork is dreadful, too: I get that Mann wanted to convey a sense of urgency, but when your viewpoint is jittering all of the place, Blair Witch-style, I feel ready to vomit rather than being drawn into the action.
Simply put, this is the worst film I’ve added to my HD collection thus far. A 3/10 is, I feel, extremely generous. Not recommended. The disc itself, however, is very good, with an array of extras that I’ll no doubt have to plough through and a solid transfer that does the best it can with the uninspiring quality of the source materials.
It’s called addiction December 11, 2006
Posted by Michael Mackenzie in : Technobabble, Movie Watching , add a commentI’m sure I’m going to regret this when my credit card bill comes in, but at just over £10 per title (thanks to the ridiculously weak US dollar), these HD DVDs at Deep Discount DVD were too cheap to pass up (thanks Phantom for recommending them to me). I ordered The Adventures of Robin Hood and Casablanca, which, released in 1938 and 1942 respectively, will be the oldest titles I will own on HD DVD, not to mention (and correct me if I’m wrong here) the oldest titles available on the format, period. And yet, despite their age, they’re apparently two of the best-looking discs out there.
With Robin Hood, I must confess that the real draw for me is not the main feature itself but the chance to see two Looney Tunes classics, Rabbit Hood and Robin Hood Daffy, in full 1080p high definition - my first encounter with 2D animation in HD. As for Casablanca, I’ve seen it before, and it’s one of those films that I find myself respecting more than actually liking, but, for some reason, I have a genuine hankering to see an Academy ratio black and white film in high definition, and Casablanca certainly fits that particular bill.
Profondo Trauma
Posted by Michael Mackenzie in : Movie Watching , add a commentDario Argento’s 1993 US production Trauma is often considered to be something of a loose re-imagining of his 1975 classic Profondo Rosso - during its development, it was even referred to (probably jokingly) by its original co-writer, Gianni Romoli, as “Deeper Red”. The two films are certainly thematically very much alike, containing so many of the staples of Argento’s gialli - the damaged male protagonist, the terrifying mother figure, the black gloves, etc. However, I never realised how visually similar they were until I read this article by Guillaume Bryon. The text itself is in French, but don’t worry if you can’t read it: by far the most revealing elements are the various screen captures comparing compositions and events in Profondo Rosso with those that resurfaced 18 years later in Trauma.
SD to HD image comparison
Posted by Michael Mackenzie in : Technobabble, Movie Watching , add a commentLa haute définition December 10, 2006
Posted by Michael Mackenzie in : Technobabble, Movie Watching , add a commentFeminists beware! My first HD DVD from Studio Canal is winging its way to me as we speak, and it’s - gasp! - Basic Instinct. As it happens, I’ve never seen Paul Verhoeven’s “classic” (so I’m not yet sure whether “classic” should ineed be inside quotation marks), but I know of its reputation, and, of the currently available Studio Canal titles, it’s the one that I thought seemed like the most interesting. (Whether in a good or a bad way remains to be seen, of course.)
Anyway, I should hopefully receive this from Amazon.fr in a week of so. Isn’t this whole universal 24 fps 1080p and no region coding lark great?
Serenity December 9, 2006
Posted by Michael Mackenzie in : Uncategorized , add a commentWith the UK release of Serenity, Universal have done what, five months ago, I wouldn’t have thought was possible: taken my favourite HD transfer of all time and improved it. No, I don’t think I’d recommend that everyone who already owns the US version immediately rushes out and picks up the UK release, but the difference is there. If you don’t already have the US disc, be in no doubt: the UK release is the finest-looking digital video disc this reviewer has ever seen, and Universal and their competitors are going to have their work cut out one-upping this beauty.
Eight months after HD DVD first launched, it’s double-dipping time! I’ve reviewed the recent R0 UK release of Serenity, investigating whether Universal’s new, more efficient transfer is any different from its predecessor.
Wolf Creek
Posted by Michael Mackenzie in : Reviews, Technobabble, Movie Watching , add a commentAs the first HD DVD I’ve seen from the Weinstein Company, Wolf Creek is a bit of a mixed bag. It has moments that are genuinely impressive, but on other occasions, technical issues that could probably have been avoided get in the way. However, it goes without saying that this is the best the film has ever looked outside a theatrical environment or the original camera recordings, so, if you are HD-capable, this is definitely the version of the film to pick up.
The Weinstein Company jumps aboard the HD DVD bandwagon this month with a variety of releases. I offer a sneak preview of Wolf Creek, an effective exploitation horror piece from the land down under.
HD for High Disappointment
Posted by Michael Mackenzie in : Technobabble, Movie Watching , add a commentTwo new HD DVDs winged their way to me from DVD Pacific this morning: An American Werewolf in London, from Universal, and Wolf Creek, from the Weinstein Company. Unfortunately, these are the most disappointing high definition discs I’ve received so far.
Let’s start with An American Werewolf in London. Prior to receiving it, I was under no delusions as to how it would look. This is a low budget film from 1981, and one that, despite its cult following, is neither prestigious enough to be eligible for a Casablanca-style restoration, nor for the same standard of storage. So far, all of the HD DVD’s I’ve bought have been of recent (i.e. less than 10 years old) films, many of them sourced from digital intermediates with the film negative itself being scanned almost as soon as it was shot. As such, there is a certain “look” that you can expect from them that you aren’t going to get with something like American Werewolf. Still, I expect the technicians to do the best they can with the materials they are handed, and not to attempt any sort of invasive digital manipulation. Unfortunately, those responsible for the master used for this HD DVD clearly missed that particular memo from the HMS Whimsy, for they have attempted to compensate for the inherently somewhat soft look of the source materials by adding a tonne of edge enhancement. The aliasing on this particular title is the worst I’ve seen on any HD DVD, and would probably be considered pretty noticeable even on a standard definition release. All things considered, this gets a very low 6/10 from me.
Even the sound is a disaster - a 0/10 affair. American Werewolf was, unsurprisingly, mixed in mono, but, for the most recent theatrical re-release, Universal undertook a whiz-bang new DTS 5.1 remix, and in doing so not only fed the existing audio through multiple channels, but also threw in all manner of new sound effects not present originally. Unfortunately, on the DVD, and now the HD DVD, only this mangled 5.1 mix is provided. As far as I am concerned, this is not the film as it was originally released, and as such is a faulty product. Sorry to be harsh, but intrusive revisionism of this sort has absolutely no place on a disc whose cover art proclaims “The Look and Sound of Perfect™”, unless of course the original version is also provided as an option.
Wolf Creek next, and I’m afraid things go from bad to worse. This film is actually not a “film” at all, since it was shot in 1080p high definition. As such, an HD DVD encoded at 1080p should theoretically provide a more or less perfect pixel to pixel replication of the original image that was recorded. Unfortunately, Wolf Creek has what my brother refers to as “the Blu-ray look”. The image is incredibly inconsistent. Some shots look absolutely brilliant, with razor-sharp details, while the fake grain added to many scenes to make the movie look a little more intense (and less like a home video) is accurately represented. Other scenes, though, show noticeable compression artefacts and give everything an odd “waxy” look, as fine details are smeared out, a little like the HD DVD of Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. Unlike most North American HD DVD studios, the Weinstein Company are using AVC/MPEG4 as their codec instead of VC1, and, while I personally was very pleased by the results that this produced for the Japanese HD DVD of The Machinist, I’m beginning to see why so many people are down on it if Wolf Creek is representative of how it generally looks. Another 6/10.Oh, and the disc took absolutely ages - about three minutes - to boot. Apparently this problem affects all of the Weinstein Company’s HD DVDs, for some reason.