HD Wars » Blu-rays

The Muppets Blu-ray Review

jarcher — Wed, 20 Jun 2012 16:46:23 +0000

Studio: Disney
Package includes: Single Blu-ray, stated to play in A, B and C regions
Directed by: James Bobin
Starring: Jason Segel, Amy Adams, Chris Cooper, Kermit the Frog, Miss Piggy, The Great Gonzo, Fozzie Bear, Scooter, Rizzo, Statler, Beaker, Waldorf, Statler and assorted puppet chickens.

To buy this Blu-ray now, click here

The film

Regardless of whether you love or hate the original Muppets TV show – and the assorted hit and miss movies it spawned – you probably thought Disney’s latest stab at breathing new life into the Muppet franchise was doomed to abject failure.

Times and tastes have changed. Original creator Jim Henson has long shuffled off this mortal coil, and the new films’ driving creative force, writer and lead actor Jason Segel, is best known for amiable turns in strikingly adult comedies, not U-certified kid flicks. Even the idea of Disney funding the new film doesn’t necessarily sit well, raising fears that it will just descend into some horrible schmaltz fest, probably featuring a princess who sings about sunshine.

Against all these odds, though – as well as what appears to have been a pretty tight budget – The Muppets succeeds really quite brilliantly.

The Muppets: Emotional stuff.

The key to its appeal is its pitch-perfect tone, which miraculously manages to combine nostalgia with the original spirit of the show and, crucially, a post-modern, self-referential modern edge without a trace of awkwardness or mawkishness. Segel clearly loves The Muppets with a genuine passion, but he’s also savvy enough not to let the script ever become self-indulgent. The tone is affectionate rather than obsessive or slavish, and this allows its atmosphere to quickly become infectious and engaging.

Even more surprisingly, Segel is humble enough in his own role in the film not to leave it feeling like the vanity project we’d half expected it to be.

The Muppets also succeeds at that all-important trick of appealing to adults and children alike, with plenty of multi-level emotions and humour. Heck, even the handful of songs scattered through the film are all pretty brilliant – especially Life’s a Happy Song, which appears to have taken up near-permanent residence in the CD players of people carriers the world over.

If we had to be really picky we’d say that Bobin’s direction is a touch laboured, failing to deliver the same energy that made the original TV shows shine. Also, the obvious desire on Segel’s part to include prominently as many of the Muppets characters as possible results in us not seeing quite as much as we’d like of some of them – especially Animal and Gonzo.

But these problems only detract a small amount from what’s overall an unexpected pleasure – one that’s done well enough, in fact, to generate a 2013-opening sequel as well as surely playing a big hand in persuading the BBC to greenlight a new No Strings Attached puppet show developed in conjunction with the Jim Henson company.

The Muppets: On the road

Picture quality

The makers of The Muppets have very deliberately gone for a ‘TV’ look to their film, using generally naturalistic lighting and a relatively narrow contrast range by typical film standards. But surprisingly, this doesn’t stop it from being a good quality Blu-ray video experience.

The first thing you notice about the 16:9/1.78:1 presentation is how completely devoid of noise it is. There’s none of the grain seen with many films, especially those that deliberately stress the upper reaches of their contrast ranges, and nor is there any sign at all of any MPEG compression noise. This remains true even when there’s lots of motion going on in the image, such as during the final ‘street dance’ sequence. Dark parts of the picture look as clean as bright ones too, avoiding the tendency towards grain or compression blocking that still crops up from time to time in lazier Blu-ray transfers.

HD detail hounds may find the image a fraction soft for their tastes, but we’d put this down again to the desire to give the picture more of a TV show look than a big Hollywood movie ‘sheen’. And anyway, the slightly soft finish certainly doesn’t stop the image from looking genuinely HD, with more texture visible in the fur, feathers and felt of the various Muppet creations than you’ve ever been able to see before. Which is actually quite a treat if you’re as nerdish about these things as we are.

It’s also quite nice to see neither the stressed edges nor the over-gritty effect you get with discs that have had artificial sharpness applied to them. And nor is there any obvious sign of the sort of distracting noise reduction blurring recently seen on the final Harry Potter Blu-ray.

The Muppets: Fart shoes are funny. Period.

Another big success of the transfer is its colour rendering. This is the only area where the film-makers have allowed themselves to have a bit of fun, using hyper-real, 1950’s style palettes for some of the ‘real world’ footage – especially the domestic scenes – and plenty of saturation in the presentation of the muppets themselves. This is never over-egged, and makes the characters seem better suited to the modern visual era. Plus, as we’ve always said, when it comes to Animal, it’s definitely a case of the redder the better, really.

One last thing that might cause consternation for some is the disc’s motion handling, which delivers a fluidity that looks more like video than 24fps film. But again, you have to think of this in the context of the TV flavour to the production generally, within which it fits perfectly.

Sound quality

Disney has gone to town technically with the soundtrack on this Blu-ray, giving it a full 7.1-channel DTS-HD MA English-language mix. It’s a pity, then, that the film doesn’t really make particularly good use of this mix in terms of either its dynamic range or its placement of effects.

The Muppets: Where would they be without the frog?

We guess that to some extent this is a function of the film; after all, it’s a gentle U-certified film, not some gun-toting, explosion-fuelled action flick. Its deliberate stylistic nod to its TV heritage perhaps also precludes any great audio pyrotechnics. But all the same we couldn’t help but think that more effort could have gone into building up the film’s sense of space and location – especially its externals – by including more spot effects around the 7.1 channels. For the vast majority of the time all that the various speakers in your system are used for is reproducing the dialogue and the deliberately simple score.

Thankfully this score is excellent and attractively mixed – A Muppet Musical will surely hit the West End at some point! – as well as enjoying that complete freedom from hiss and compression artefacts that’s always such a highlight of a DTS-HD MA mix. That said, there’s no great dynamic range, even during the song and dance sequences.

Maybe in the end we can be charitable and say that the audio mix is all about immersing you in the consistently light tone of the film and doesn’t want to distract you with any showboating. Just don’t expect your speakers – especially your subwoofer – to be given much of a work out.

SEE PAGE 2 FOR EXTRA FEATURES AND FINAL SCORES

Thor 3D Blu-ray review

jarcher — Wed, 12 Oct 2011 11:28:50 +0000

Studio: Paramount/Marvel
Package includes: 3D Blu-ray, 2D Blu-ray with extra features, DVD with digital copy
Directed by: Kenneth Branagh
Starring: Anthony Hopkins, Tom Hiddleston, Colm Feore, Chris Hemsworth, Natalie Portman, Stellan Skarsgard

PRICE: CLICK HERE TO BUY THIS DISC FOR £17.99

The Film

Film history is littered with films that should work but don’t, but rather less well populated with films that shouldn’t work but do. Thor, we’re happy to say, fits squarely into the latter category.

Not that you’d guess this from the film’s opening few minutes. Seeing the world of Viking mythology being given a modern, high-tech special effects spin feels completely ridiculous – especially as the actors and script appear at this stage to be taking themselves alarmingly seriously even though they’re talking about frost giants, big hammers and ‘realms eternal’.

Based on the Marvel comics, the Thor ‘mythology’ really does initially seem to be just too far ‘out there’ to bear up to being translated to the silver screen.

Without you fully understanding when or how, though, the film suddenly starts to reel you in. Maybe it’s the genuinely lavish visuals of the CGI-created world of Asgard. Maybe it’s the almost gleeful campness of it all. Maybe it’s the well-constructed and genuinely spectacular battle with the Frost Giants. Most likely, though, it’s a creeping realisation that the film does have its tongue in its cheek after all, combined with a growing awareness that the theatrically OTT world of Asgard is going to clash at some point with the contemporary Earth setting introduced briefly at the film’s very start.

Thor - Now THAT'S a throne.

Indeed, once the inevitable does happen and Thor ends up on earth, it becomes clear that Kenneth Branagh’s film is at heart more a ‘fish out of water’ film more than a superhero film. Certainly it’s the clash of two completely different cultures which gives the story its emotional and humorous heart – a heart which wouldn’t work properly were it not for the initial earnestness of the Asgardian world.

It’s doubtless this culture clash element that attracted Branagh to the project, for it essentially draws together with hugely fun consequences the two sides of Branagh’s own acting/directing career: the classical-language Shakespearean theatrical side and the ‘realistic’, modern side.

So much fun does the film have with its culture clash them, in fact, that there are times when it feels like an out and out comedy – and a rather good one at that. Some of the one liners are priceless, and Branagh’s direction and editing show a fine sense of visual comic timing. Thor even boasts one of the best ‘drunk man’ expressions ever committed to celluloid. Take a bow, Stellan Skarsgard!

Thor is actually much more than just a comedy, though. It’s also got an epic fantasy tale feel. It’s also an unusually well-crafted action blockbuster. Yet it also manages to deliver a story of growth and redemption in the most classical of traditions.

Thor - Modern chicks dig old-fashioned chivalry. Apparently.

This doesn’t mean Thor is confusing or messy, though. Instead Branagh cunningly brings all the film’s disparate elements together to produce a cracking slice of entertainment that feels much more than the sum of its parts.

If we were being picky, the romance part of the story doesn’t quite develop enough to deliver the emotional payoff the film reaches for at the end. But don’t let this put you off. For Thor succeeds on far more levels than it fails, and in doing so provides the absolutely perfect introduction to Thor’s character ahead of his reappearance in The Avengers next May.

Picture Quality

The first thing to be said here is that the 2.35:1-framed Thor was not shot in 3D. Branagh admits on the commentary track (more on this later) that although shooting in 3D was discussed, he decided to film in 2D because he wasn’t comfortable with the idea of his first 3D filming experience being with such a large production So what we’re seeing on the 3D disc is a 2D to 3D conversion from start to finish. And man, can you tell.

The dark scenes in the desert that open the film have scarcely any 3D effect in them at all, and what minimal 3D there is appears uncomfortable and contrived. The sense of 3D depth gets stronger during bright scenes, but even when the material being shown is much brighter and clearly lends itself to 3D showboating, such as during the establishing shots of Asgard, the 3D depth effect remains frequently quite limited.

Thor - The worst street party ever

Much worse than the film’s lack of depth ambition, though, is its ‘layered’ 3D approach. This finds the 3D depth effect frequently being created more as a series of separate ‘parallax’ layers rather than portraying a genuinely natural sense of space. A particularly good (or bad!) example of this is the sequence early on where Odin prepares to hand over the throne to Thor only to be interrupted by Frost Giants. The different characters arranged around the frame of the shot looking up to Odin at the top of the golden steps look like cardboard cut outs on a shooting range, with some further back than others. There’s no sense of 3D depth to the characters themselves, and the sense of space between the ‘layers’ of characters just doesn’t feel right.

This sort of effect is a classic sign of something that’s been post-converted to 3D rather than something that has been shot in 3D. As is the occasional moment of rather strange contrast portrayal during dark scenes, which makes us wonder if these scenes have been artificially brightened during the 3D conversion.

To be fair, as Branagh makes clear during the commentary track (more on this later), a lot more effort has been put into the conversion process than was the case with the at times merely two-layer (foreground and background) horror show that is the 3D conversion of Clash of the Titans. As a result, there are moments where Thor’s 3D conversion really works; there’s a brilliant looking panning/tracking shot around Jane’s glass-walled laboratory showing the desert and town outside, for instance. And the scene where the Destroyer wreaks havoc in town is also good fun in 3D.

It’s noticeable, too, how the conversion has managed to retain good sharpness for the most part, and remains remarkably untiring throughout the film’s running time.

Thor - Mental note: don't piss off godly beings wielding massive hammers

But overall the 3D effect tends to lend the film a sense of heightened artifice that doesn’t really do it any favours. So as with Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides, we’d say this is another 3D edition that you could happily live without.

Turning to the 2D version, image quality is good but not quite brilliant. The conversion’s biggest strength is its sharpness and detailing, which do mostly superb justice to the sumptuous subtleties of the excellent costumes and glistening city of Asgard, while also bringing a gritty reality to the earth-based sections. It’s great, too, that the sharpness is not forced to the extent that grain becomes unreasonably obvious and edges look stressy.

The image contains a good sense of contrast as well, with fairly inky black levels during dark scenes and some substantial punch to bright sequences. Colours are rich and boldly used for the most part too.

There does seem to be a slight sense of inconsistency to colours, though, especially where skin tones are concerned, with some looking a touch orangey and some looking a touch greeny. Some dark scenes look a little short of shadow detail too, making them feel slightly hollow.

Another minor issue is that one or two very dark shots exhibit obvious MPEG compression artifacts. Thankfully, though, these moments are very shortlived and only occur three or four times, so they’re not a big deal.

Overall it’s unlikely that anyone could feel at all disappointed with the 2D conversion of Thor; certainly its weaknesses are minor and hardly ever severe enough to distract you from what you’re watching. But at the same time it’s not an absolute classic Blu-ray picture transfer.

Thor - Hopkins IS God.

Sound quality

For a man not particularly well known for churning out summer action blockbusters, Kenneth Branagh sure seems to know his blockbuster soundtrack onions. Thor’s main English language DTS-HD Master Audio 7.1 mix is a superbly created affair that’s every bit as muscular, grandiose and yet surprisingly subtle and fun as the film’s titular lead character.

Bass levels are enormous, delivering rumbles that at times hit you in right in the gut. The sense of scale produced by the surround sound mix is suitably grand during the Asgard scenes too, and the surround channels enjoy some pretty potent effects without being used so much that they become distracting.

Vocals are beautifully balanced against the frequent audio bombast too, and Patrick Doyle’s well-judged score is integrated into the soundstage with great skill.

Really it’s hard to see how Thor’s audio mix could have been much better.

SEE PAGE 2 FOR EXTRA FEATURES AND FINAL SCORES

Star Wars: The Complete Saga Blu-ray boxset review

jarcher — Tue, 20 Sep 2011 10:14:57 +0000

Studio: 20th Century Fox
Blu-ray Regions Supported: A/B/C
Package includes: six Blu-ray film discs, and three Blu-ray extras discs.
Directed by: George Lucas, Irvin Kershner, Richard Marquand
Starring: Harrison Ford, Alec Guinness, Carrie Fisher, Liam Neeson, Ewan McGregor, Mark Hamill, Peter Cushing, Anthony Daniels, Kenny Baker, Natalie Portman, David Prowse, Iain McDiarmid, Billy Dee Williams

Price: Click here to buy from Amazon for £67.49

The films

OK, let’s get this out of the way right away: the original Star Wars trilogy – that’s Episodes IV, V and VI by today’s reckoning – appear in this Blu-ray boxset not in their original theatrical versions but in the ‘tinkered with’ form found in 1997’s controversial re-releases.

This will immediately make some die-hard Star Wars fans madder than a Jedi warrior who can’t save his wife from death during child birth. But as well as reminding such people that hate invariably leads to the dark side, we also think it should be said that surely George Lucas has more than earned the right to tinker with his films if he so desires. Especially as cinema isn’t the same as most art forms, as it is continually being changed by technology.

That said, having just watched all six films back to back (in the Episode I-VI order presented in the boxset) we’re not sure any of the ‘improvements’ added to the original films actually make them better. In fact, one or two of them make them worse; most notably the rejigging of the scene where Han shoots Greedo in the cantina (even though the latest re-edit on the Blu-ray release isn’t as disastrously awful as the previous re-edit!).

Star Wars - Artoo goes in search of a botwash

It is not the intention of this review, though, to get bogged down in delving into the minutiae of the changes that have been made to the original trilogy on this Blu-ray. For in the end, all that really needs to be said is that while we find ourselves willing to cut Lucas some slack for wanting to mess about with his films, we’re less able to forgive him for not taking the opportunity on this supposedly comprehensive Blu-ray release to provide both the original theatrical versions and the latest re-jigged versions on the same disc.

Blu-rays support seamless branching, after all, so it would have been little trouble to provide access to every version of the film in existence. It’s possible the theatrical cuts would have had to undergo another new mastering process to meet Blu-ray standards, but surely the die-hard fans being asked to buy these films for yet another time deserve such effort.

The problem is that Lucas went on record in 1997 to say that so far as he is concerned, there is only one final cut of the films, his tweaked one. And he adds that “the other versions will disappear. A hundred years from now, the only version of the movie that anyone will remember will be the DVD Version [in the special edition].” But however proud Lucas might be of his films and his later adjustments, to ignore the obvious wishes of a healthy chunk of the Star Wars fanbase when Blu-ray gave him the chance to keep both himself and those fans happy smacks of a stubbornness bordering on the maniacal.

Star Wars - Darth Maul, AKA The Phantom Menace's saving grace

Other things, briefly, that occurred to us as we watched all six films more or less back to back in the order they appear in the boxset (Episodes one to six) are that while the second and third prequel films aren’t as bad as we remembered them being, Episodes IV and V are clearly in a different class – especially when it comes to actually allowing actors to act and thus develop characters you care about. Consistently in the prequels actors are reduced to being nothing more than characterless conduits for the narrative.

One final point is that no amount of viewings over the years has been able to make us really like Return of the Jedi. While the stuff between Vader, Luke and the Emperor plays out well, the re-use of the Death Star concept grates, and the rest of the film just feels like an extended edition of the Muppet Show.

Picture quality

For the most part, the standard of the visuals of the six Star Wars films on Blu-ray is very good. Not surprisingly the most modern films – Episodes II and III - look the best. Colours with these are bold if occasionally a little unnatural, edging looks crisp but never forced, and detail levels are terrific except for one or two slightly softer moments.

Contrast is exemplary in episodes II and III too, delivering profound black levels that don’t seem to have been subjected to any LCD TV-suiting brightness boosting. This really helps the picture ‘pop’ on a good plasma screen or projector.

Star Wars - Note to Dark Lords of the Sith: don't use pink lightsabers

Great examples of the picture transfer at its HD best are the space fight at the start of Episode III, and the shots of Artoo hiding in the hangar in the same film while he’s trying to operate the lifts for Obi-Wan and Qui-Gon Jinn. During the latter scene, the amount of detail you can see on Artoo’s slightly beaten up chassis is remarkable.

It’s a little surprising to find Episode I not looking quite as pristine as II and III, with more noise, a slightly more compressed dynamic range and a less crisp finish. But it’s still very much an HD experience overall.

Not surprisingly, the vintage of Episodes IV, V and VI prevents them from achieving the same HD quality as the prequels. That said, they actually look far better than expected – especially when compared with the Blu-ray transfers of many other vintage films we’ve seen, such as the original Scream movie.

Particularly startling is how little noise images suffer with across all three original movies. Even dark scenes are predominantly free of the sort of graininess, fizzing and MPEG artefacting we commonly see with HD transfers of relatively old films. What’s more, aside from a handful of exceptions – predominantly those showing wide-shot images of deserts and blue skies – this lack of noise seems to be down to the frame by frame quality of the mastering process rather than heavy-handed noise reduction processing. It’s only during the desert shots mentioned – such as the one in A New Hope that shows Artoo and C3Po landing on Tatooine – that you get that sort of gauze-like finish over the image that’s usually associated with noise reduction.

Star Wars - the bigger they come, the harder they fall

There’s a slightly more ‘exposed’, bright, almost fragile look to the video of the original films than you get with the prequels. But we don’t mind this at all, actually, as it makes them feel more natural and tangible than the CGI-generated prequels.

Some people, we know, haven’t been happy with the way colour has been tinkered with for the original films in the remastering process. But this really didn’t trouble us very much at all. In fact, the extra vibrancy injected into many sequences and, more controversially, some of the lightsabers, is a positive rather than a negative – as well as being nigh-on essential for giving the film the sort of colour intensity we expect from HD films now. Plus it makes the original films look more similar in colour terms to the newer prequels.

The one area where a bit more effort might have gone into mastering the original trilogy for Blu-ray is detail/sharpness. For while the image holds up well enough in this respect to look much sharper and cleaner on our 100in projection screen than the previous DVD release, there isn’t quite the same sense of total precision you get when watching the prequels. Except, perhaps, for the occasional beautifully-rendered bright, interior original trilogy sequence.

Oddly, it seemed to our eyes that the detail levels of Episode IV, the oldest film, are higher than they are in the transfers of Episodes V and VI. Though it’s possible that this might be down to some extent to the original film employing more simplistic, naturalistic lighting systems and sets, which are easier to render during an HD mastering process.

See page 2 for sound quality and extra features

Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides 3D Blu-ray review

jarcher — Sat, 17 Sep 2011 15:48:48 +0000

Studio: Universal
Running Time: 136mins approx
Blu-ray Regions supported: A/B/C
Package includes: One 3D Blu-ray, one 2D Blu-ray, one digital copy disc
Directed by: Rob Marshall
Starring: Johnny Depp, Penelope Cruz, Richard Griffiths, Geoffrey Rush, Ian McShane

Price: £17.99 from amazon

The film

This is likely going to be a rather short review. Why? Because despite only watching the latest instalment in the Pirates of the Caribbean franchise two days ago, we’re struggling to remember anything about it.

Which is, of course, significant in itself. We weren’t tired or drunk when we watched it, so the film’s failure to make any significant impact on us has to be down to its own failings rather than anything up with us.

Pretty much everything about the latest Pirates is painfully mundane. The potentially interesting story about a hunt for the fountain of youth is turned it into some hopelessly underdeveloped, pointless and tension-free race to the fountain between three different groups none of whom you could care less about. And any interesting themes that might have been developed around the fountain remain almost stubbornly unexplored.

Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides - Cruz Control

Director Rob Marshall takes on the Pirates franchise for the first time, replacing Gore Verbinski, and having already done sterling work with Chicago. Here, though, he shows precious little understanding of pacing or action direction, just going through the motions to progress the story with minimal imagination or flare.

Aside from a couple of laugh out loud moments, even Johnny Depp as Captain Jack seems to be on auto-pilot – or perhaps it would be fairer to say that he just isn’t given room to shine. It’s tragic to see, too, that the film-makers still haven’t realised that the Captain Jack character only works when he’s a bumbling eccentric loner – trying to make him a lothario just doesn’t work. Even though he looks like Johnny Depp…

It’s no accident that the only bit of the film that’s remotely good is the sequence featuring some mermaids. For here at last we suddenly find a genuinely interesting and even quite disturbing foe that delivers more thrills in 10 minutes than the rest of the film put together. Maybe if the franchise does manage to continue after this third mis-conceived sequel in a row someone will finally realise that what Pirates of The Caribbean needs is simplicity, not unnecessarily complicated stories that bog down both the characters and the action.

Picture quality

Kicking off with the 1080/24p, 2.4:1 3D transfer, it starts brilliantly. The opening scenes in London feature some of the best-constructed and most pin-sharp 3D we’ve seen, breathing new life into crowded scenes like those in the court and the bustling streets outside. The lighting during many of these early scenes – especially the sequence in the palace with King George – has clearly been designed to emphasise the 3D effect and develop a sense of 3D space.

Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides - My, that's a big one.

The film was actually shot in 3D rather than converted to 3D in post production, which likely explains both the exceptional sharpness of the 3D image and the wonderfully natural sense of depth. There’s none of the forced, artificial depth ‘layers’ you so commonly see with films that have been converted to 3D, leaving the whole London sequence looking like reference-level material.

While this sharpness and natural sense of depth remains throughout the 3D transfer, though, the impact of the 3D does not. In fact, for the majority of the film the 3D doesn’t seem to add much to your viewing experience at all, even during the jungle sequences that could/should have delivered a real 3D showcase.

Much of the London sequence was actually shot towards the end of principal photography, so you can’t help but think that maybe it benefits from the 3D experience the crew gained while doing a rather less successful job of shooting the rest of the film.

So ineffective is the On Stranger Tides 3D in adding anything significant to the viewing experience as a whole (aside from the London sequence) that we have to say we preferred watching the film in 2D. The 3D experience just doesn’t offer enough of a reward for the hassle of donning 3D glasses and having to watch a much dimmer picture.

For most of the time the 2D transfer is very good indeed. Colours are bright and punchy, sharpness and detail levels are quite – though not exceptionally – high, and there are no severe noise issues to distract you from what you’re watching.

Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides - Don't fancy yours much

That said, the transfer isn’t quite as pristine as we might have expected. It seemed to us that detail levels could have been slightly higher; indeed, the 3D image arguably feels sharper than the 2D one. There are also some sections where the picture quality noticeably deteriorates, with MPEG artefacts and uneven grain. A good example would be the scene in the pub where Jack first meets up with Angelica; maybe the disc authorers haven’t adjusted the coding bandwidth enough at this point to cope with the amount of swirling smoke in the image.

You can minimise the impact of the disc’s moments of video noise by making sure you’ve haven’t got the contrast and brightness on your display too high, but it’s still a little surprising that you should have to take such precautions at all given the impressive visual history of the Pirates films on Blu-ray.

The oddest thing about the 2D Blu-ray transfer, though, is that there are times when its colours seem really quite off. Take for instance the first scenes on Blackbeard’s boat. The skin tones throughout this sequence look oddly orangey, and out of kilter with the subdued tones around them. Such skin tone issues occur at pretty regular points throughout the film, to the extent that we started to wonder if we were seeing some relic of the film’s 3D colour process.

Overall it’s just about worth getting the 3D version of the film (which includes the 2D version as well) just for the London scenes. But it’s by no means as clear cut a decision as we would have hoped, and we wouldn’t blame anyone at all for deciding to save a few bob and just get the 2D version instead.

Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides - Now that's what we call a party

Sound quality

Here again we didn’t come away feeling quite as satisfied as we’d expected to be. The DTS-HD Master Audio 7.1 mix is superbly immersive, at least, especially if you’ve got a full 7.1 speaker system, leaving no ‘gaps’ in the soundstage, and painting quite a vivid and accurate sense of space.

The score sounds rich and smooth too, and dialogue is always clear without ever being dominant or sounding forced. There’s some pretty hefty bass extension at times as well.

The problem is that if anything the sound design is a little TOO smooth. For instance, as with the film itself, the soundstage feels a bit ‘one note’; we’re struggling to think of any really strong or imaginative uses of audio to create any great sense of drama or urgency in the film.

There’s surprisingly little use of specifically steered effects too, and nor is there much of the sort of subtle treble ‘ambience’ that defines the most carefully constructed audio mixes.

Probably the best way to sum the audio mix up is ‘by the numbers’.

See page 2 for extra features and final scores.

SCARFACE BLU-RAY REVIEW

jarcher — Sat, 10 Sep 2011 21:58:33 +0000

Studio: Universal
Running Time: 170min
Blu-ray Regions supported: B
Package includes: One Blu-ray disc, digital copy disk, DVD
Directed by: Brian De Palma
Starring: Al Pacino, Steven Bauer, Robert Loggia, Michelle Pfeiffer, Mary Elizabeth Mastrantonio

Price: £17.93 for the steelbook version, or £15.93 for the normal version

THE FILM

If there’s one film that definitively proves that film critics don’t know shit, it’s Scarface. For while Brian De Palma’s coke-gang epic was immediately embraced by contemporary audiences on its release in 1983, it was almost universally panned by the critics, most of whom couldn’t see past what they perceived to be the film’s extreme violence.

Obviously there are moments of violence in the film that still have the power to startle even today. But far from being a weakness, the fact that these moments have so much impact is just a testament to De Palma’s brilliant film-making. What’s more, their visceral intensity is simply a part of a conscious decision by the film-makers to make Scarface a deliberately larger-than-life film.

Everything about Scarface – Pacino’s unbelievably charismatic performance, the astounding final shoot out, much of Oliver Stone’s career-best script, the outrageously opulent sets, the amount of coke lying around by the film’s end, the war-like levels of weaponry, the hilariously crude humour, Giorgio Moroder’s ‘coke-synth’ soundtrack – makes it clear from the get go that everyone involved wanted to make a gangster film as far removed from the cerebral approach of The Godfather as possible – even though, to some extent, Scarface follows the same story arc.

The fact that Scarface takes an almost operatic approach to its rags-to-riches dissection – or explosion – of the American dream was always going to be more controversial and divisive than Coppola’s approach. Which is why the film still has its detractors now, despite having become the definition of a cult classic.

The bottom line, though, is that aside from one or two slightly clumsily executed ‘crowd’ set pieces (and even those are carried by Pacino’s mesmerising performance), Scarface is fully deserving of its huge modern fanbase, and in its own visceral, subversive way is every bit as powerful and relevant as Coppola’s films.

Or to put it all more simply, any film that contains the line ‘All I have in this world is my balls and my word, and I don’t break ‘em for no one’ is clearly doing something right.

PICTURE QUALITY

As we watched the 1080p/24, 2.35:1-ratio master of Scarface on this new Blu-ray release, our emotions regarding its picture quality veered between smiling like the cat that got the cream, gentle satisfaction, and real disappointment. Which our slow brains finally came to realise was an indication that it’s a rather inconsistent transfer.

Scarface introduces some people to his little friend

The biggest issue is that noise reduction and edge enhancement tools have been rather liberally used throughout the film. The former can make the picture feel a little processed and ‘video-like’ at times, while the latter can result in some occasionally distracting artifacts around moving objects. For instance, as Pacino crosses a street in Chapter 28 you can clearly make out a soft halo around the edges of his body that’s an obvious indication of edge enhancement processing.

While it’s possible that the use of noise reduction might be responsible for the relatively unspeckled look of the image compared with some other recent vintage film Blu-ray releases we’ve seen, neither we nor most other film fans we know like to see it.

There are other problems too. For instance, a lack of detail in some dark scenes suggests they’ve been crushed to produce a richer sense of contrast someone perhaps thought was better suited to home video displays. Some scenes look softer at the edges than they are in the middle too, and despite the noise reduction one or two dark scenes look oddly much grainier than the rest of the film.

For all the scenes that exhibit problems though, there are half a dozen others that look excellent. The extended scene where Montana first meets Sosa in Bolivia, for instance, is stunning, with superb detail levels, gorgeous colour accuracy, and seemingly no noise at all beyond the small amount of film grain you would expect to see on an accurate transfer of a vintage film.

Overall, the good looking scenes are more than common enough to make the new Blu-ray transfer of Scarface well worth buying by any fan who might already have the DVD version. In fact, even during its lowest moments the picture still looks ‘HD’, and so comfortably represents the best the film has ever looked on a home video format.

It’s particularly gratifying to see so much justice being done by most of the transfer to the film’s stunning set designs, especially during the final extended sequence, breathing new life into Tony Montana’s increasingly excessive and overblown world.

SOUND QUALITY

Oh-oh – the Universal tinkerers have been at it again. For the original 4-track stereo soundtrack of Scarface has here being revamped into a 7.1 DTS-HD Master Audio mix for the main English track on the Blu-ray. But unexpectedly we don’t actually mind, since for the most part the remix has been done sensitively and effectively, without sounding artificial or out of place, and without exaggerating the weaknesses in the original mix.

Scarface eyes up his unusual sugar collection

The key to why the remix works, it seems, is that Universal hasn’t tried to push things too far, using the surround channels predominantly for ‘souping up’ the score rather than trying to force in too many spot effects or inject an extra sense of surround space that wasn’t there in the original stereo mix.

This revamp of the score – which appears with startling quality and clarity – delivers an extra sense of immersion in the film’s 1980s setting and makes the film a more ‘modern’ experience for people who might not have seen it before.

Occasionally the weight of the surround sound score slightly overwhelms the dialogue track in the centre speaker, but such moments are rare, and actually the handling of dialogue is usually done well by the new remix – especially considering that a number of scenes feature dialogue recorded quite naturalistically during large crowd scenes. The only exceptions to the generally good vocals occur when there’s a lot of shouting, at which point the need to ‘ramp up’ the vocal track to keep it in sync with the surround sound remix can make the shouted vocals sound harsh.

If you’re a true purist who’s still feeling disgruntled at the very idea of anyone messing with the original Scarface theatrical mix, though, don’t worry. There’s also a DTS stereo 2.0 English mix on there too!

SEE PAGE TWO FOR EXTRA FEATURES AND LAST WORD

Don’t Look Now Blu-ray review

jarcher — Wed, 10 Aug 2011 13:41:21 +0000

Studio: StudioCanal
Running Time: 111mins
Blu-ray Regions Supported: B
Package incudes: One Blu-ray disc
Directed by: Nicholas Roeg
Starring: Julie Christie, Donald Sutherland

Price: £9.49 from Amazon

The Film

Now that we’re officially old farts (ie, turned 40), we can look back over our formative years and realise there are only five films that we can remember exactly when and where we were when we first saw them. Those films are Alien, The Terminator, Once Upon A Time In America, Picnic At Hanging Rock, and Don’t Look Now.

Why is Nic Roeg’s 1973 classic so memorable? Simply because it’s so emotionally powerful, employing a dazzling array of unsettling editing techniques and extraordinary, off-kilter visuals to create an almost visceral sense of loss, love, devastation and fear that lingers with you long after the final credits have rolled.

Of course, the film also has its detractors – the ‘not much happens for most of the time and then the ending is just bonkers’ mob. But such criticism entirely misses the point that Don’t Look Now is all about mood and atmosphere, not conventional story-telling.

It’s worth adding in this respect that it probably doesn’t do the film any favours in terms of finding detractors that so many people call it a ‘horror film’. This does it a huge disservice, as calling it a horror film establishes a set of preconceptions in modern audiences that Don’t Look Now doesn’t remotely satisfy.

The reality is that Roeg’s timeless, devastating classic is one of those rare films that’s got so many levels to it that it pretty much defies categorisation. Unless there’s a category that says ‘absolutely bloody brilliant’.

Picture Quality

Although overall the picture quality of the Don’t Look Now’s Blu-ray debut is a little hit and miss, the over-riding point is that the film’s 1.85:1, 1080p/24 presentation looks far, far better than it ever has on any previous video format release. The potential of Blu-ray has been harnessed superbly in delivering a digitally restored version of the film – with direct input from Roeg himself – that glows with HD detail for most of the time, and looks almost uncannily pure and clean of celluloid ‘detritus’ for a film released in 1973.

The vast majority of daylight exterior shots, in particular, look nothing short of stunning – as if they were shot just yesterday. In fact, they quite possibly look better than they did when the film was first released into cinemas.

Needless to say, this is a pretty good starting point for a film that’s predominantly shot so brilliantly in arguably the most beautiful but also strange city in the world, Venice.

The film’s thematic use of colour is easier to appreciate on this Blu-ray restoration than ever before too, and it’s great to see that with maybe just a couple of momentary exceptions, nobody appears to have been tempted to introduce any noise reduction processing to the image.

The downside to the transfer is its inconsistency. In general terms, this finds interior scenes looking markedly grainier and noisier than the frequently gorgeous exterior shots, to a degree that often felt quite jolting on our 100in projection screen.

Obviously this is a 38-year-old old film shot for the most part using ‘practical’ rather than high-end cameras, especially during its interior scenes, so it’s not going to have that silky smoothness and consistency offered by so many modern Blu-ray releases. But the amount of noise during some interior scenes does sometimes seem to go beyond mere issues with the original film techniques and printing – especially as the noise can include white sparklies as well as the more common dot crawl and grain. Maybe these scenes have been artificially sharpened a touch?

There are a couple of points where print issues have slipped through the restoration dragnet. For instance, the sky in the very first exterior shot of Venice in the film has an obvious series of light lines running down it – but thankfully this doesn’t last long and isn’t repeated. Also, during the scene where Baxter visits the detective for the first time, there are clear blue ‘scoring’ lines running over the detective’s suit. However, this really doesn’t amount to much to complain about at all for a film of Don’t Look Now’s vintage.

In fact, while the picture quality of this new Blu-ray version of Don’t Look Now might not be absolutely definitive, it’s still a very worthy effort – especially as you gradually stop noticing the noise issues as much once the film’s uncanny power really starts to grip you.

Sound quality

There’s obviously only so much you can do with a film that was shot with an original mono soundtrack. And thankfully Studio Canal has realised this, refusing to do anything horrible like trying to reform the soundtrack into a stereo or – shudder – forced surround mix.

Instead you get a 2.0 mono mix that feels perfectly natural, and is actually quite a revelation in its own way, as it appears completely devoid of all the hiss and popping that’s been noticeable on some previous transfers of the film.

What’s more, it delivers this sense of cleanliness without sounding manipulated, compressed or digitally tinkered with in any way, and as such does a pretty much pitch-perfect job of delivering the film’s unsettling audio track and stunning score.

See page 2 for Extra features and final scores

The Lord Of The Rings Extended Edition Blu-ray Boxset review

jarcher — Fri, 29 Jul 2011 19:00:46 +0000

Studio: New Line
Running Time: 726mins (seriously)
Blu-ray Regions Supported: B
Package incudes: Six Blu-ray discs, and 9 DVDs
Directed by: Peter Jackson
Starring: Elijah Wood, Viggo Mortensen, Sean Bean, Sean Astin, Cate Blanchett, Orlando Bloom, Ian McKellen, Christopher Lee, Ian Holm, John Rhys-Davies, Billy Boyd, Dominic Monaghan, Liv Tyler, Hugo Weaving

Price: £42.00 from amazon

The Film

Considering that most adaptations of even short novellas seldom if ever manage to be as good as the books they’re based on, the fact that director Peter Jackson has managed to produce a film trilogy that genuinely at least does justice to J.R.R. Tolkein’s huge masterpiece is borderline miraculous.

To appreciate the full scale of Jackson’s achievement, you only have to look at how rapturously the films have been received by the vast majority of the book’s enormous and obsessive fanbase. For such fans not to feel betrayed by the distilling of the novel into a ‘mere’ trilogy of films is about as big a tribute as there can be to the passion Jackson and his crew – especially co-writers Fran Walsh and Philippa Boyens – brought to their source material.

Even in their original theatrical cuts the three LOTR films make for an awe-inspiring day of viewing. But the extended versions contained in this boxset unquestionably deliver the definitive experience. And in our humble opinion it’s an experience that every human being on the planet should be required to indulge in at least once before they die.

Picture quality

All three films are presented in their original 2.40:1 aspect ratios, in 1080p/24.

While the overall picture quality of the original LOTR Blu-ray boxset, containing the theatrical releases, was good overall, the first film did look noticeably less pleasing than the other two. Or perhaps a better way of putting it would be that it didn’t seem to share the same aesthetic ‘look’ as the other two.

The film-makers have apparently tried to address this issue for the extended trilogy boxset, mostly by working on the colour mastering for the first film to make it look more in line with the other two films. And actually, for the most part this risky decision seems to have paid off, as the Fellowship of the Ring’s picture quality looks appreciably better than it has before. Especially as the latest remastering process seems to have led to a reduction in dotting and other noise types.

With the other two films looking at least as contrast- and colour-rich, noiseless, decently sharp and completely natural (in that there’s little to no evidence of digital tampering where motion or edges are concerned) as their theatrical cuts did before, for the vast majority of its vast running time the LOTR trilogy is an HD feast for your eyes that’s got to be one of the best arguments ever for sorting yourself out with a decent projection system.

The image isn’t completely perfect. The recolouring of the first film does lead to one or two peculiarities, such as some bluish snow over the mountain peaks at the start of disc 2, and a few scenes where Sam’s hair looks distractingly orange. There are also sometimes signs of minor compression noise across all three discs, such as in the walls of Bilbo’s house. And ideally the picture might have been just a touch sharper.

Overall, though, given how long the films are, the times where you’re anything less than totally engrossed in and impressed by the quality of what you’re watching are remarkably few and far between.

Sound quality

While the picture quality of the LOTR extended trilogy might ‘only’ be very good, its audio is nothing short of spectacular.

Each film carries a 6.1-channel DTS-HD Master Audio track, and in all three cases the mix is true reference-grade stuff. For starters, the dynamics involved are mind (and potentially speaker!) blowing, plumbing crazy bass depths and hitting terrifyingly high trebles – sometimes simultaneously! – with startlingly pure ease and consistently powerful results. Effects whizz around all of your 6.1 speaker set up with awesome clarity and accuracy, dialogue is never less than perfectly judged in terms of its clarity and volume relative to the rest of the soundstage, and the use of the mix and score to add power and intensity to scene after scene after scene deserves to become a ‘copy book’ for film sound design.

Particularly stunning highlights include the moment where the gates to Minas Morgul/the Dead City open to spew forth hordes of hideous enemies under the watchful eye of a Nazgul; the moment where Gandalf rides out to save fleeing soldiers from relentless Nazgul attacks; and pretty much any scene where Frodo puts the ring on.

It’s not just the loud bits that make LOTR such a spectacular work out for your speaker system, though. Its quiet bits are also exquisitely envisioned and lovingly mixed, making the trilogy arguably the most consistently immersive and spectacular soundtrack we’ve heard from a Blu-ray to date.

Really our only gripe is that just occasionally we noticed momentary lip-synch errors across all three films. Mind you, so good is the mix generally that we’re tempted to think these errors had more to do with glitching by our amp than errors on the disc. If you spotted any of these moments too, feel free to say so in the comments section so that we can let our amp off the hook!

SEE THE NEXT PAGE FOR EXTRA FEATURES

True Grit Blu-ray review

jarcher — Sat, 25 Jun 2011 14:54:50 +0000

Studio: Paramount
Running time: 106mins
Blu-ray regions supported: B
Package includes: Blu-ray, DVD, Digital Copy
Directed by: Joel and Ethan Coen
Starring: Jeff Bridges, Matt Damon, Josh Brolin

Price: £15.97 from Amazon

The Film

Words like ‘Masterpiece’, ‘work of art’, and ‘tour de force’ are used with gay abandon to describe the Coen brothers’ remake of John Wayne classic True Grit. Or as the Coen Brothers would probably prefer to put it, their adaptation of Charles Portis’ novel.

In truth, though, while it’s certainly a good film, it’s hardly up there with the Coen brother’s finest hours. As we’ve noticed before, the Coen’s penchant for verbose, mannered scripts and intellectualising their characters just doesn’t sit comfortably with relatively traditional structures or Hollywood themes like the ones on show in True Grit. The verbiage leaves you feeling rather cold and detached while other things about the film – the visuals, the inevitable Carter Burwell score – seem to be trying to coax out your emotions.

So while there plenty of iconic images, plenty of sumptuous dialogue, and some terrific performances, it’s not ultimately a film that stays with you for as long as some of the Coen’s own, more overtly offbeat films.

Picture quality

Presented in 1080p/24 using a 2.35:1 anamorphic ratio, True Grit’s visual presentation shifts between very good indeed and absolutely beautiful.

For starters, detail levels are nothing short of mesmerising. Not a single shot goes by without supplying some immaculate reminder of just why the public has become so quickly and expansively invested in HD technology. All the classic HD trademarks are there – pore details, individual hair strands, the weaves in the actors’ outfits, and so on. But more importantly, the incredible sharpness of the transfer helps deliver a truly cinematic sense of the immense depth of field emphasised in many of the film’s exterior shots, particularly those around the town at the film’s start.

The pristine clarity pays handsome dividends with interiors too, though. After all, period locations just feel so much more alive, immediate and real when HD lets you see the worn out paintwork on stairways, the texture in the wallpaper, and so on.

The disc’s clarity also does a gorgeous job of showing off the film’s consistently beautiful lighting. The sequence in court, where an almost solid ray of pure sunshine streams in behind Rooster Cogburn’s dark suit and craggy, world-weary features, is particularly exquisite – especially as you can see wisps of smoke swirling around in it to an extent that just wouldn’t be possible without HD levels of resolution.

Blu-ray transfers as sharp as True Grit – which are in any case rare – tend to have their sharpness accompanied by dot noise or over-emphasised grain. But not here. Instead the transfer looks immaculately clean (without any sign of noise reduction processing), leaving no barriers between you and the pin-sharp action.

The disc’s reproduction of the film’s stylised, very high-contrast photography is also absolutely superb. Particularly impressive is how impeccable really dark parts of the picture look, with no trace of the sort of dot noise and compression artefacting still found during dark scenes on some Blu-ray discs.

Dark scenes also benefit from a rich black level response that leaves black colours looking as they should rather than grey, green or washed out.

The film favours a quite bleached look, and this again is superbly rendered by the disc – partly because of the contrast range noted a moment ago, but also because the subtlety of colour in these bleached sequences is exquisitely and entirely believably rendered.

All in all, to any serious devotee of simple picture quality, the True Grit transfer delivers demo-level excellence from start to finish. Outstanding.

See page 2 for sound quality, extra features and final scores

Tangled 3D Blu-ray Review

jarcher — Tue, 07 Jun 2011 16:42:30 +0000

Studio: Disney
Running time: 100mins
Blu-ray regions supported: A, B, C
Package includes: 3D Blu-ray, 2D Blu-ray with extra features, Digital copy
Directed by: Nathan Greno and Byron Howard
Starring (voices): Mandy Moore, Zachary Levi, Donna Murphy, Ron Perlman

Price: £17.99 from Amazon

The Film

Apart from having a photogenically big tower in it, Rapunzel has never struck us as a particularly cinematic story – which may explain why it’s taken Disney so long to get round to making a film based on it. Against the odds, though, Tangled turns out to be one of Disney’s best cartoons yet.

There’s no need to dwell on the story, obviously. It’s just an every day tale of nasty woman locks stolen child with magic hair in a tall tower until she’s rescued by a cheeky chappy with chiselled cheekbones. But the very lack of story with the Rapunzel tale is arguably what helps Tangled work, as it forces screenwriter Dan Fogelman to focus on developing the film’s characters through loads of consistently pithy and witty banter, as well as introducing an inspired extra comic touch in the shape of Maximus, the horse who thinks he’s a dog. The result is a fun film for adults and kids alike – and one that looks gorgeous to boot.

Picture quality

We went for the 3D version of Tangled, and have to say that we don’t regret it at all. Obviously animated films lend themselves rather well to ‘3Dfication’, but even by the consistently high standards of 3D animation, Tangled stands out. In fact, it’s only equalled in our opinion by How To Train Your Dragon and some bits of Despicable Me.

The most interesting thing about Tangled’s approach to 3D is how subtle it is. This might initially sound like a negative thing – and it’s certainly true to say that people who like to have 3D effects shoved in their faces might be disappointed. But for us, Tangled’s 3D restraint seems a deliberate choice born out of growing maturity with the 3D format.

The main plus of Tangled’s 3D restraint is that it makes the film brilliantly relaxing to watch. Hardly ever during any of its 100min running time did we feel as if our eyes were being worked too hard. What’s more, even though we were watching Tangled through reviewer’s eyes rather than just for fun, we seldom found the 3D effect showy to the extent that we started focussing on the composition of the images rather than on the film’s story and characters. In other words, the level of 3D used in the film feels just right, adding a sense of immersion to the film without distracting you out of it.

As part of this, it’s interesting to note that aside from a couple of sequences (see our Showstoppers at the end of the review) Tangled doesn’t try to overload its 3D images with different layers of depth; it generally has two or three ‘layers’ in the relative foreground while leaving objects in the far distance feeling more or less flat. This doesn’t look as unnatural as it maybe sounds when described, and actually serves to keep your eyes focussed on where the main action is as well as saving your eyes from working too hard.

Tangled is also one of the first films we’ve seen where 3D actually contributes thematically to a film. For instance, the use of 3D really adds power to the contrast between the tiny, confined world of Rapunzel in her tower and the complete freedom enjoyed by Flynn Rider as he hops across rooftops and charges through forests.

The extreme brightness and colour-richness of so many of Tangled’s visuals also helps it still look punchy and dynamic even after you’ve put your 3D glasses on, and some scenes, like the opening one with the ‘golden flower’, show how different brightness levels between objects and backgrounds can enhance the 3D effect.

The only complaint we can make about Tangled’s 3D visuals is that they are occasionally very demanding of your 3D screen. There are quite a few scenes that feature bright objects against predominantly dark backgrounds, a combination guaranteed to produce crosstalk ‘double ghosting’ noise on screens that suffer from it (like most do). The lantern sequence in particular – which is also used to provide the 3D disc’s menu screen – can look a blurry mess on screens which suffer even a little with crosstalk. This was even the case on a Samsung PS64D8000 plasma TV we’ve just received (and will be reviewing soon), despite plasma usually handling crosstalk better than LCD TVs.

The only 3D TVs we tried Tangled on that were able to suppress crosstalk to almost nothing and thus allow the disc to deliver its full 3D glory were, inevitably, Panasonic’s latest 3D plasmas.

Turning to the 2D disc for people who don’t have or don’t care about 3D, the news is again very good. In fact, the image is pretty much flawless. Detail levels are immense without any sort of grain or dotting noise (as usual with animation). There’s no sign of any edge enhancement, noise reduction, telecining or other such nonsense either.

Colours are dazzlingly rich but also beautifully subtle and textured, and the image’s contrast range is natural and perfectly judged in that bright scenes don’t seem over-aggressive while dark scenes don’t push their darkness so hard that shadow detailing is lost.

The bottom line here is that regardless of whether you’re watching Tangled in 2D or 3D, it’s an absolute visual feast.

Sound quality

Whether you think Tangled’s soundtrack – available in 7.1-channel DTS-HD Master Audio if you’ve got the AV kit to handle it – is great or merely good depends on what you like from your soundtracks. If you’re a fan of lots of aggressive effects placement, boldly portrayed speaker transitions or even subtle use of the rear channel speakers to portray a sense of space, then Tangled’s audio mix may leave you a little cold.

Instead it focusses on delivering a very lush, immersive, and ‘smooth’ (for want of a better word) soundstage designed to keep your focus on the film rather than the sound mix. In this respect it’s a perfect match for the unflashy style of its 3D visuals.

Don’t take this to mean that Tangled’s audio mix is poor, though. Yes, the mix is perhaps a little too centred on the front speakers at the expense of the rears. And yes, the smooth, undetailed nature of the mix meant that we didn’t feel the 7.1-channel version added much beyond the the 5.1-channel version (except for a little more seamlessness if you have a particularly large room). But the reproduction of the film’s score is outstanding, and the vocals and what few effects there are are delivered with absolute clarity and precision.

If you initially doubt the mix, just try closing your eyes for a minute or two during one of the musical numbers, and let the DTS-HD dynamics wash over you…

See the next page for extra features and final scores

Black Swan Blu-ray review

jarcher — Wed, 25 May 2011 00:33:54 +0000

Studio: 20th Century Fox
Certificate: 15
Running time: 103 minutes
Blu-ray regions supported: A, B
Package includes: Blu-ray, DVD, digital copy
Directed by: Darren Aronofsky
Starring: Natalie Portman, Mila Kunis, Vincent Cassel, and some icky prosthetics.

Price: £16.93 from Amazon

The Film

Man, is this film going to piss some people off. It’s got so many different things going on stylistically and emotionally – some working in direct opposition with each other – that it’s almost impossible to settle into any kind of consistent viewing relationship with the film. Or perhaps a better way of putting it would be to say you can’t get comfortable with Black Swan.

This will leave some people feeling detached from it and even, we suspect, hostile towards it. But for people who ‘get it’, who are willing to commit to the ride, Black Swan is actually a startlingly intense and visceral meditation on pressure, ambition, repressed sexuality, obsession, psychological abuse, body ‘issues’, a woman’s descent into insanity, and probably quite a few other things besides that we’re not clever enough to spot. And that’s before we’ve even started on the film’s discomfiting mix of a gleefully grubby visual aesthetic and a lush audio score.

Personally, despite it containting one or two overly histrionic moments, we liked Black Swan. It’s certainly a film we won’t forget in a hurry, at any rate – not least because it will probably be the only time a French New Wave vibe has been applied to what is ultimately a fairly classic Hollywood horror story.

Picture quality

After watching a trio of gorgeously presented trailers, getting down to watching Black Swan initially comes as quite a shock. And not in a good way.

For basically the 2.40:1 aspect ratio, 1080p/24 picture looks as grubby as hell. There’s masses of grain and dot crawl around, the colour palette looks compressed and wan, and the contrast range and lighting are about as cinematic and ‘showbiz’ as a rainy day scene in Ian Beale’s EastEnders’ caf. Anyone expecting a sumptuous visual feast of balletic beauty is going to be left feeling not just disappointed, but positively depressed.

But then the film’s grubby look is totally ‘as the director intended’. For Black Swan is actually much, much more an intensely personal film about someone having a breakdown than it is a showpiece for lots of beautiful, socks-down-tights dancing action. So insanely confident but still likable director Darren Aronofsky consciously decided to shoot his film in a ‘documentary’ style rather than a Hollywood or theatrical style.

This is partly to get over the point that behind the beauty of the ballet is an awful lot of personal hardship and emotional pain. But there’s also a practical side to the drab film finish, since Aronofsky’s desire to film the ballet sequences ‘from within’, following the central character around the stage, inevitably meant having to use much lighter and more flexible cameras than Hollywood’s usual big 35mm jobs – as well as much more minimalistic lighting than you would normally get if shooting a film in any even half-conventional way.

The whole film was thus shot on a combination of Super 16 and digital cameras, with a 16mm film negative used for the final print. So it’s no surprise that this all adds up to a picture that really doesn’t look pretty at all on our 90in projection screen. It’s pretty inconsistent, too, with the digital footage looking clearly different to the stuff shot on 16mm.

The question, of course, is whether it’s fair to criticise the Blu-ray transfer for simply reproducing – actually very accurately – the way the film looked in the cinema. And the logical answer has to be that it isn’t. The disc can only reproduce what was ultimately committed to film by the film-makers.

This doesn’t alter the fact, however, that Black Swan’s messy visuals don’t do anything at all to make us feel good about our projector, our big screen, or our expensive Blu-ray player.

So in the end, while we can’t fault the transfer (thankfully nobody has tried to apply any sort of noise reduction to proceedings during the mastering process), and totally understand the thinking behind the rough video style used to make the film, we also make no apology for knocking a few marks off this disc for picture quality simply because it doesn’t do our AV system proud. And yes, we’re fully aware that this decision will have sniffy cinephiles choking on their popcorn.

Sound quality

Now this is more like it. During one of the extra features on the disc there’s a mention of how the film-makers decided to underline the film’s many tensions aesthetically by accompanying the deliberately downmarket picture quality with a particularly lush and well-produced score.

So it is that the 5.1 DTS-HD Master Audio track sounds brilliant from start to finish. The highlight, obviously, is Tchaikovsky’s monumental score for the Swan Lake ballet, which swells right around your surround soundstage with an overwhelming combination of power and precision, immersing you in the music completely while strangely feeling like the accompaniment to a very personal, intimate drama rather than the inspiration for the huge production it was composed to accompany.

It should be said that the Master Audio mix has notably more range and power during the full ballet sequences than the normal resolution mix.

Clint Mansell’s bits of original scoring sound great too, and away from the music the soundstage is used consistently excellently to build tension. This takes the form of either sudden extreme volume transitions, or the placement of subtle, unnerving sounds in your rear speakers that soon have you feeling nearly as spooked as Nina is.

Black Swan’s audio mix really is an outstanding effort that makes us thank the good lord of AV that they didn’t decide to mix the audio to match the rough look of the video.