| Video Roundup October 2008
HD Update
 Universal and Paramount, who
released films only on HD DVD until that format died, are now releasing those titles
on Blu-ray. I don’t have the space to cover all of these plus new titles, but in
general, in terms of the video quality, there seems to be little difference from the HD
DVD versions: If it looked great on HD DVD, it looks great on Blu-ray.
The main difference has been in the soundtracks. Universal
took a scattershot approach to sound formats on HD DVD, but now seems committed to
DTS-HD Master Audio for its Blu-ray releases. Thus the titles in the series The Mummy
now have noticeably better sound with greater dynamic range, clarity, and frequency
response. With some other titles, little difference is noticeable because the original
master wasn’t good enough to benefit from the improvement in format.
Paramount seems to have settled on Dolby TrueHD. So far,
the only title with better sound is Transformers, whose HD DVD edition lacked
a high-resolution soundtrack of any sort.
For the most part, if you have a working player and a large
collection of HD DVDs, it’s not worth replacing most of those titles, but it
might be worth your while to replace blockbusters that had only Dolby Digital or Dolby
Digital Plus soundtracks. Transformers is one of those, and I would think that
Universal’s King Kong would be another. In the meantime, here are seven solid
new Blu-ray releases to consider.
Dark City: Director’s Cut (New Line Home
Entertainment) ****
Many "director’s cuts" confound me. One or
two minutes are added, usually of violence, and usually of the gratuitous sort. This
Blu-ray Disc presents a genuine director’s cut, with scenes reordered, 15
minutes’ worth of new footage, and dialogue cut, added, and re-looped. What’s
more, one of the extras, "Director’s Cut Fact Track," uses pop-up screens
to tell us exactly what has been changed, and why. There are also a couple of good
documentaries, a production gallery, text essays, and film commentaries featuring everyone
from director Alex Proyas to film critic Roger Ebert. For my money, the new cut has turned
what was a very good film into a science-fiction masterpiece. If you don’t agree, the
disc takes full advantage of Blu-ray’s storage capacity by offering the original
theatrical edition as well. Both look and sound totally awesome. True to its title, Dark
City is a dark film with many shadows, and in this edition the detail within those
shadows is absolutely clear. Textures are very apparent, and there’s a feeling of
depth to almost every scene. The DTS-HD Master Audio soundtrack allows the dialogue to be
clearly heard by using all 360 degrees of the soundfield to create a revealing
transparency. And yet when oomph is called for, as in the destruction of the city,
it’s really there. My speakers could take it, but a lot of things in my home theater
began to vibrate as never before, so approach these audio tracks with initial caution.
This disc is a definite candidate for Best Blu-ray of the Year.
Day Watch (Unrated) (20th
Century Fox) ****
Day Watch is a sequel to Night Watch, and
each is one-third of a trilogy that will soon be completed with Dusk Watch. The
latter will be in English; first two are in Russian. (The films were made in Belarus.) All
deal with a battle between good and evil that ended with a truce made centuries ago; since
then, a series of Watchers has kept tabs on everyone to make sure the truce remains
unbroken. The action takes place in modern-day Moscow, and crazy folks those Watchers are.
Night Watch was pretty gloomy; if anyone was able to follow the plot, please let me
in on the secret. Day Watch has just as much action but makes much more sense, and
has a wonderful sense of humor. The timing of everything -- events, dialogue, explosions
-- is right on the mark. The Blu-ray edition has excellent definition, and while much of
the film, despite its title, still takes place in the dark, the shadow detail leaves
nothing in doubt. The DTS-HD Master Audio soundtrack is clear and well focused, near
reference quality.
Doomsday (Unrated) (Universal) ***
There’s nothing especially new in this
post-apocalyptic vision of the United Kingdom, set two decades or so in the future. A
virus has killed most of the population and the government has retreated behind an
impenetrable wall, but one day its members realize that video cameras are showing living
people roaming the streets. There must a cure, and someone must be sent to fetch it. That
someone is Maj. Eden Sinclair (Rhona Mitra), who is sort of a cross between Snake Plissken
(Escape from New York) and Lara Croft. The people who have survived look like
extras from Mad Max, and the whole thing is served up with enthusiasm and a bit too
much carnage for my taste. The Blu-ray looks fabulous. Every spattering of blood is
sharply defined, and many scenes have a sense of three dimensions. The sound design has
lots of lease-breaking bass, and completely surrounds the listener throughout most of the
movie. There is also a ton of extras, including Universal’s "U-Control"
feature, which allows you to choose which extras you want to see or read while the movie
is playing. If your guests don’t have weak stomachs, you can use this as a demo disc.
Fearless Planet (Image
Entertainment/Discovery Channel) ***1/2
The title of this documentary series indicates that the
scientists who gather facts about the history and makeup of planet Earth must be into
extreme sports to execute their research. They hang-glide, rappel, and climb to dizzying
heights to secure specimens of rock that will prove their theories. One of these is that
the Sahara Desert used to be a lush tropic region. Another is that the Grand Canyon used
to be underwater. All incredible thoughts, perhaps dismissible as fantasy, but the
scientists have proof that says it’s so. Computer animation fills us in on how the
earth’s original single continent was split asunder, and how volcanoes rose from the
ocean floor to build up land masses. The six segments -- Sahara Desert, Hawaii,
Alaska, Grand Canyon, Great Barrier Reef, and Earth Story --
are each about 50 minutes long. As often in such series, the cinematography varies in
quality, but when it’s good, it’s very, very good. I found the underwater shots
of the Great Barrier Reef to be the best -- various details of the exotic life found there
were brought out with singular clarity. The soundtrack is merely Dolby Digital, but that
seems perfectly adequate for tracks devoted mostly to front-channel narration.
Forgetting Sarah Marshall (Universal) ***1/2
All Blu-ray producers take note: Universal has created a
near-perfect menu for this disc. It pops up quickly and zooms in from the left, rather
than the bottom. It’s a breeze to use and responds very quickly. On the debit side is
Universal’s U Control, a fancy picture-in-picture format for running commentaries and
supplemental features. It’s complicated enough that Universal provides a tutorial,
but it works smoothly once you get the hang of it. However, the audio of the main feature
is scarcely altered when the images pop up, so you might have difficulty hearing what the
talking heads are saying. The picture is bright and colorful, with good contrast and
excellent definition. Such a dialogue-driven comedy scarcely needs DTS-HD Master Audio
sound, but when a pop song punches in at full volume, you’ll be glad the
higher-resolution tracks are there. A very enjoyable release, and a new-familiar take on
breaking up that really works.
The Lost Boys (Warner Home Video) ***1/2
The Lost Boys is a guilty pleasure. It’s slick,
has good-looking stars, and an appealing rock soundtrack. The idea that some of the weird
kids we see at night on the boardwalks of beach towns (here the fictitious Santa Clara,
California) might be vampires makes a perverse sense, as does the idea that they might
account for a lot of the faces we see on posters announcing lost children. And it has some
great one-liners, such as "Death by stereo." The SD DVD edition of two or so
years ago was quite good, so my expectations for the Blu-ray were high, and they’ve
been partly met. There’s a lot of detail in crowd scenes, which gives the picture a
more three-dimensional quality. The colors, good to begin with, are just as rich here. The
Dolby TrueHD 5.1 soundtrack is quite good; the music, in particular, has a transparency
and separation that I don’t remember hearing from the Dolby Digital tracks on the SD
DVD. All of the extras seem to have been carried over from earlier editions, though Warner
has made no effort to improve any of them by making them HD.
Stephen King’s The Mist: Two-Disc
Collector’s Edition (Dimension-Genius Products) ****
This old-fashioned creature feature has an art-house twist;
it’s a thinking man’s horror movie. A group of disparate people, some locals,
some not, are trapped in a supermarket in a small New England tourist town when the store
is enshrouded in a mysterious mist. Lurking in the murk are beasties not of this
dimension, and all of them seem hungry for human flesh and blood. Director Frank Darabont
has added an ending to Stephen King’s story that King says he wishes he had thought
of, and that will linger in your memory probably forever. The original theatrical print is
served up here on disc 1, the director’s cut on disc 2. The latter is identical in
length and content to the former; the only difference is that it’s in black and
white. In his introduction, Darabont says that he wanted to shoot The Mist in
B&W to begin with, but that it wouldn’t have done well at the box office. He
explains that it’s great to have two versions, the color one as homage to the horror
films of the 1970s, the B&W as a tribute to those of the ’60s. Both look good on
Blu-ray, but the B&W is outstanding, with a picture that looks like a glossily
printed, sharply focused postcard, and engaging multichannel Dolby TrueHD sound that
underscores the feeling of terror. And there are lots of extras. There aren’t many
days to Halloween, so be ready with this set.
. . . Rad Bennett
radb@hometheatersound.com |
