| Video Roundup April 2008
Recent HD Releases
Gattaca (Sony Pictures Home
Entertainment, Blu-ray) ****
 Gattaca is set in the near
future, when genetic science has advanced to the point that it can determine at birth
whether a child will be fit or not, and how long he or she might live. In one of his best
screen roles, Ethan Hawke portrays a young man who refuses to accept the lot his DNA has
dealt him, and uses any method at his disposal to beat the system and realize his dream.
In its questioning of humankind’s reliance on science in plotting our destiny, Gattaca
is thoughtful, even profound. I thought so when the film was released, and now, having
viewed the film a decade later, I’m positive. It’s one of the great
science-fiction films, a four-star effort in every way that sticks with the viewer long
after the credits have rolled.
The Blu-ray transfer is better than the SD in many ways, if
not really of demonstration quality. There’s a lot of grain and some soft scenes here
and there. The sound, too, is problematical. Sony has provided only a multichannel Dolby
TrueHD soundtrack, and most Blu-ray players, including mine, lack full onboard 5.1-channel
decoding (firmware updates to remedy this are rumored to be released soon). What I can
hear is the core, and it sounds quite good. But this is the sort of film that depends on
the quality of its script, direction, and acting to succeed, and those efforts would shine
through any technical limitations. Of the extras, the deleted "Coda" scene is a
must-see that will keep you pondering long after you’ve watched this disc.
Hitman (Unrated) (20th Century Fox, Blu-ray)
***1/2
 This implausible but highly
entertaining chase flick is based on the video game of the same name. Timothy Olyphant --
the bad guy in Live Free or Die Hard, and Sheriff Seth Bullock in HBO’s Deadwood
-- plays 47, an agent for hire with a distinguishing mark: the back of his hairless head
has been barcoded. When someone 47 is hired to assassinate seems to survive the hit, 47
begins to believe that his target has used a double to confuse Interpol, and tries to
discover the truth while being pursued by guys good and bad. The many shoot-outs and
stand-offs are well choreographed and show Olyphant to be almost as convincing as Jason
Statham (Crank, The Bank Job) as one man fighting a seeming army of
adversaries.
Hitman is more about style than substance, and style
it has in abundance. The Blu-ray transfer is nearly perfect in detail and color balance.
In an early scene, a man pulls up to a house in a rainstorm. As the camera points down the
street, there is a real feeling of depth. This scene and many others throughout Hitman
show the advantage of Blu-ray over upconverted SD DVD: In many cases, backgrounds are just
as sharp as foregrounds, giving images an exciting, three-dimensional feel. The sound is
DTS-HD Master Audio, and though hardly anyone has equipment to decode that yet, myself
included, I could tell from listening to the core that Hitman’s magnificent
mix fully utilizes the 360-degree soundfield. There are the usual extras on disc 1, but
disc 2 is a little different -- a digital copy of the entire movie for use in portable
media players.
Road to Rio/Road to Bali (BCI, HD DVD) ***
 For those too young to remember, Bing
Crosby, Bob Hope, and Dorothy Lamour teamed up for six Road pictures from 1940 to
1962. Crosby and Hope always played two pals who were both after Lamour. The two movies on
this disc are Road to Rio (1947), the fourth and best of the series, and the fifth,
Road to Bali (1952), the only one shot in color. One wonders if the topical humor
would be understood now by anyone under 50, but the classic song-and-dance routines are
still likely to entertain any audience. Road to Rio is represented by a print from
the UCLA Film School restoration project. Its clean black-and-white, while it could use
more contrast, is quite acceptable. The print for Road to Bali was apparently not
restored -- the opening shots show a number of tears and flecks. After that, however,
it’s impressive, with a riot of color. Some scenes include many shades of the same
primary color, all vividly reproduced. Road to Bali is the sort of picture one
thinks of when "Technicolor" is mentioned, and seeing it in such sharp detail
makes it worth having on HD DVD. The Dolby Digital Plus soundtrack is quite adequate for
the cleaned-up monaural sound. There are no extras worth mentioning -- just the end of Road
to Bali in several different languages, a joke that wears thin by the time you get to
Spanish. The Road pictures comprised such a significant major studio series for its
era that it’s a shame more extras weren’t created to celebrate it. It is, at
this writing, available in high definition only on this very-low-priced HD DVD. If you
have an HD DVD player, add this disc to your collection -- for $19.98, you can’t go
wrong. Let’s hope there’s a Blu-ray soon, transferred from the same masters.
Tremors (Universal, HD DVD) ***1/2
 This small film was a complete
surprise when it came out in 1990. Many found it a delightful homage and throwback to the
monster movies of the 1950s, and it has since established a large cult following. Kevin
Bacon and Fred Ward star as two jack-of-all-trades handymen stuck in the middle of the
desert in a town that would be little more than a crossroads, if it had one. There are
strange rumblings underground, and the town’s already tiny population becomes even
smaller as, one by one, they’re sucked underground. It turns out that the damage is
being done by four reptilian creatures that burrow through the earth at great speed. Tremors
was followed by two inferior sequels and released on DVD several times, none of which
prepared one for this meticulously detailed hi-def version. Though there’s a bit of
edge enhancement, this edition cries "Hi-Def!" from the word go. It’s
mostly bright, faithfully reproducing a parched desert in bright sunlight. The soundtrack,
remastered to Dolby TrueHD, has plenty of wallop and bass, and remarkably clear dialogue.
Like the film itself, this HD DVD is a winner all the way. No Blu-ray edition has been
announced, though it seems inevitable that one will be, as Universal has jumped off the HD
DVD wagon. Look for it.
30 Days of Night (Sony Pictures Home
Entertainment, Blu-ray) **1/2
 Vampires always look for a loophole.
Remember the Jewish one in Roman Polanski’s The Fearless Vampire Killers? A
crucifix wouldn’t deter him! And look at poor Nick Knight of Forever Knight --
tortured by remorse for the crimes he committed, he kept cow’s blood in his fridge.
We all know that the fanged ones can’t survive sunlight, but in 30 Days of Night
they’ve found a way around that, too. They gather in Barrow, Alaska, which is so far
north that its winter night lasts 30 days. It doesn’t take these fiends long to kill
all but a few of the small town’s inhabitants. It’s a great premise, but after a
promising start, 30 Days settles into a kill-by-numbers exercise that just
isn’t that scary, despite gallons of spilled blood.
This Blu-ray edition is worth seeing, if only to marvel at
the picture and sound. There’s snow everywhere, so buildings, cars, people -- and,
yes, frozen pools of blood -- stand out crisply and clearly against those white
backgrounds in this sharp video transfer. The town itself is the spookiest element of the
movie, and the DTS-HD Master Audio soundtrack places the listener at the center of a
vortex of screams and whistling wind. In one extra feature, 30 scenes are compared with
their counterparts in the graphic novel on which the film is based.
20 Million Miles to Earth (Sony Pictures Home
Entertainment, Blu-ray) ***1/2
 William Hopper and Joan Taylor get
top billing for this 1957 science-fiction flick, but the real star is special-effects guru
Ray Harryhausen, who used stop-motion animation to create a Venusian monster hatched from
an egg brought home by the survivors of a failed space mission. Even compared to the
latest CGI effects, Harryhausen’s work stands up very well. In one extra feature, he
says that he’d always thought of this movie in color, but they could afford only
black-and-white. This Blu-ray disc presents it that way, as well as in a new, colorized
version that I found amazing. (The extras include a discussion of the new colorizing
process.) You can switch back and forth between versions to compare. Unfortunately, the
improved definition of Blu-ray reveals some flaws. There’s a lot of grain (softened a
bit in the color version), and quite a few print flaws. The sound has been remastered to
Dolby TrueHD 5.1, and is impressive for tracks half a century old: The crash of the
returning spaceship near the beginning of the film is accompanied by point-of-view Foley
that is quite accurate. I saw this movie when it was first released; it’s pretty
amazing that I can marvel at it now as I did then.
Justin Timberlake: Futuresex/Loveshow Live
from Madison Square Garden (Jive/Sony, BMG Music Entertainment, Blu-ray) ****
 Justin Timberlake is the only veteran
of the not-so-long-ago resurgence of the boy band to have since enjoyed a successful solo
career -- and not merely a solo career, but one with many facets. He sings, composes,
dances, and acts with equal aplomb. His appearances in films have been a lot more
successful than those of the average pop star inserted in a movie to make someone money.
(If you doubt that, check out Black Snake Moan.) Performing on the stage of the
cavernous Madison Square Garden, Timberlake is in complete control -- he controls the
audience like a master puppeteer, and his experience as a member of ’N Sync has
evidently taught him a lot about production values. Though designed to look spontaneous,
Futuresex/Loveshow was obviously rehearsed down to the split second. The choreography
is sexy and hot, and the backing artists are accomplished.
The Blu-ray picture is about as good as it gets. Colors are
fast and steady, there’s plenty of detail in close and long shots 95% of the time,
and the immense depth and size of Madison Square Garden can be sensed in a way that only
hi-def can provide. The sound is solid, with awesome bass, but the surrounds are used
largely for crowd noise. It’s a good mix, if not the most imaginative. There is an
entire second disc of extras, all in SD. Weight down the ash trays, put out the cat, turn
this up, and you’ll feel as if you’re almost there.
...Rad Bennett
radb@hometheatersound.com |
