| Video Roundup November 2008
HD Update
 Blu-ray is hitting its stride
and establishing its groove. Recent theatrical films are now regularly released in the
high-definition format, but so are a number of B movies, television series, and
documentaries. The upcoming holiday season will determine just how much Blu-ray is
becoming part of our cultural fabric. In these times of economic distress, it’s
possible that sales will be lower than they might otherwise have been -- but it’s
also possible that sales will rise as people, especially Americans, stay home to watch
movies. Maybe it’s time to watch all those releases that have been gathering dust on
the shelves. Here are some new ones to add to the list:
Beetlejuice: 20th Anniversary Deluxe Edition (Warner
Home Video) ***1/2
In Beetlejuice, one of director Tim Burton’s
most successful early films, a young married couple (Alec Baldwin and Geena Davis) who
live in an archetypical New England village are drowned and return home as ghosts. Unhappy
with the boorish couple (Jeffrey Jones and Catherine O’Hara) who have bought their
home, they try to cook up ways to scare them off. In this they’re aided by Juno
(Sylvia Sydney), their afterlife caseworker; Lydia (Winona Ryder), the teenage daughter of
the new family; and a down’n’dirty spirit called Beetlejuice (Michael Keaton).
Keaton chews a lot of scenery in this film, and quite successfully, and Ryder seemed
destined for this role of a black-veiled Goth teen preoccupied with death. The soundtrack
put Harry Belafonte back on the map for a time; the most hysterical scene is when
dinner-party guests become possessed and sing "The Banana Boat Song" while
calypso-dancing around the table. The Blu-ray has a slight advantage over the regular DVD
in richness of color and definition. Though the sound is Dolby TrueHD (as with other
Warner Blu-ray titles, you have to select it; it’s not the default soundtrack), one
wonders if it was really needed -- the tracks sound very much of their period, decent but
without a lot of bass or surround. The extras aren’t so hot: three episodes of the
excruciatingly unfunny animated series based on the film, a trailer, and a music-only
audio track. The best extra is a second disc, a CD containing "The Banana Boat
Song" and five cues from Danny Elfman’s score.
Fighter Pilot: Operation Red Flag (Image
Entertainment) ***
Before they go off into the wild blue yonder to participate
in real dogfights, pilots attend war games -- battles fought with (mostly) simulated
weapons that are nonetheless dangerous. The subject of this documentary, Operation Red
Flag, is a rigorous set of exercises over the Nevada desert, a series of mock battles that
drew pilots from the US, Canada, Germany, and the UK. Certain planes are designated as
Enemy, others as Defenders. If one of the latter is "hit," he is retired from
the fight, but if an enemy is "destroyed," he is regenerated to keep fighting.
Ground forces keep track with computer screens that make it look for all the world as if
they’re playing video games, though the soundtrack narration points out that the
stakes are much higher than that. The aerial shots are often breathtaking, but this short
film (48 minutes), first shown in the IMAX format, has quite variable video footage. Some
of it is crisp, but some sequences are soft and lacking in what we think of as hi-def
detail. The short production featurette shows how difficult it is to handle the oversize
IMAX camera; you can understand some inconsistency in filming. The DTS-HD Master
Audio 5.1 tracks use the surround channels frequently and help put the viewer at the
center of these dogfights, but unless you’re a serious fan of aerial photography, Fighter
Pilot is probably best experienced as a good rental -- a short subject to be used as a
prelude to a medium-length feature. You might try Top Gun -- they share the same
subject and the same cinematographer.
From Russia with Love (MGM Home
Entertainment) ****
"Blu-ray was made for Bond!" trumpets the
back-cover tag. After seeing this release, I can’t argue. I believe this Blu-ray
release was produced from the same elements that gave us the deluxe Bond series a few
years back. The extras seem to be mostly the same, and there’s no content that would
require one to have a Blu-ray 1.1 or 2.0 player. Still, at the beginning, I was not
encouraged. The night training scene in which Robert Shaw stalks and kills a Bond
lookalike is still very grainy, and the blacks are loaded with noise and not very solid.
After that, things improve a lot. Daylight scenes are often astonishing in their clarity,
and colors have a depth and richness I’ve seen in no other video transfer of this
movie. The scene of Bond (Sean Connery) and Shaw fighting aboard the train is cleaner than
ever -- much more so -- and almost every scene has new depth due to background items being
as sharply in focus as those close up. I did spot a little edge enhancement in a few
scenes, but it’s minor. The DTS-HD Master Audio tracks are bright and clean. The
extras all seem to be SD, however, and though plentiful, some look pretty bad compared to
the HD feature. Five other Bond films have been recently released on Blu-ray: Dr. No,
Thunderball, Live and Let Die, For Your Eyes Only, and Die Another
Day. (There seems to be no rhyme or reason in the order of release.) In addition to
being out on single discs, these are also available in two three-disc sets which
themselves are available as a single package, so shop around. The latest SD DVDs look
awfully good, but this Blu-ray looks better enough that if Bond and Blu-ray are both your
thing, you’d best investigate them.
Madagascar (DreamWorks Home Entertainment)
***1/2
A group of Central Park Zoo animals are accidentally
shipped to a game preserve in Kenya, but en route they’re hurled overboard and end up
washing ashore on a Madagascar beach. Each has dreamed of freedom, but finds that making
it in the wild is harder than expected. The movie has endearing characters and spot-on
voice characterizations by Ben Stiller, Chris Rock, and David Schwimmer. A quartet of
military-thug penguins steals the show when they’re onscreen, and the best extra on
the Blu-ray Disc is the holiday short starring them, A Christmas Caper. Though
never achieving the level of Disney or Pixar, Madagascar is genial and often quite
funny. The video transfer is sharp as can be, devoid of grain, with nary an artifact to be
seen. The Dolby TrueHD soundtrack is excellent, with the main sounds up front and ambient
ones in the rear, very warm and aggressive without angst. There’s a ton of
little production featurettes, plus a trivia pop-up track. You get your money’s worth
with this release.
Poltergeist (Warner Home Video) ****
"They’re heeeere," chimes little Carol Anne
Freeling (Heather O’Rourke), adding a phrase to pop culture while letting us know
that her "TV People" are in the house, in the TV set, and just about everywhere.
What begins as playful jokes in furniture rearranging builds into something much deadlier
in this crowd-pleasing supernatural classic directed by Tobe Hooper. It’s been
released on Blu-ray in Warner’s deluxe Digibook series, in which each film comes in a
hardbound volume with pages of meticulously reproduced color photographs. The video
transfer is the best I’ve seen of this film, but there’s still room for
improvement. The colors are rich, the blacks solid, and the sharpness at times excellent,
though at others the picture is decidedly soft. The sound is impressive, with good stereo
separation up front, wide frequency and dynamic ranges, and good, if only occasional, use
of the surround channels. You need to select Dolby TrueHD; it’s not the default sound
format. The extras are the same lame ones found on the deluxe SD DVD from a few years
back: two uninspired documentaries about real ghost hunters.
Salem Witch Trials (Echo Bridge) ***1/2
This 2002 miniseries argues that land and inheritance were
at the core of the accusations that led in 1692 to the trial and imprisonment of more than
a hundred people in the Salem, Massachusetts area. Many innocent people were hanged, and
the events have gone down as some of the darkest in American history. The accusations and
trials produced a very complex tapestry (see www.law.umkc.edu/faculty/projects/ftrials/salem/salem.htm)
that has been simplified for this two-night presentation. It makes no attempt to explain
the strange symptoms of possession that brought forth accusations from several young
girls, though it hints that it might have been some sort of attention-deficit disorder,
coupled with resentment and a desire for attention. The overall tone of the series is
grim, and the hangings and tortures seem quite realistic. There are also several good
guest spots for aging actors: Peter Ustinov is excellent as William Stroughton, the zealot
put in charge of the trials, as is Alan Bates as Governor Phips, who appointed him; and
Shirley MacLaine makes a heartfelt, surprisingly low-key presentation as the elderly
Rebecca Nurse, who is strip-searched to prove her guilt. Echo Bridge has made all of its
Blu-ray titles exceptionally affordable in bare-bones releases with no extras. But the
189-minute feature looks good, with excellent resolution and a choice of two sound
formats: uncompressed PCM 2.0 stereo and Dolby Digital 2.0 stereo. For those interested in
American history, this earnest production will provide solid entertainment, but even at
the low asking price, it’s probably better to rent than buy this one.
The Sixth Sense (Hollywood Home
Entertainment) ***1/2
I found that while the suspense built up in this film
happened only the first time I watched it, before I’d seen the ending, in subsequent
viewings that same knowledge gives me the freedom to study the performances. That of
ten-year-old Haley Joel Osment as Cole Sear stands out, but Bruce Willis also turns in a
very creditable performance as Dr. Malcolm Crowe, a psychologist who becomes involved with
the paranormal when he meets Cole. The movie angered me, in a way -- it was the first big
hit for director M. Night Shyamalan, whose movies have since gone steadily downhill, most
recently hitting bottom with this year’s bomb, The Happening. One can see, in The
Sixth Sense, that the director once could craft suspenseful entertainment. Why
can’t he do it now? For the moment, you can enjoy this Blu-ray Disc, which has an
excellent, detailed picture and a transparent, effective multichannel sound mix in
uncompressed PCM. There’s a fairly large set of extras, some good, some forgettable.
The best is "Reflections from the Set," in which Shyamalan divulges a great deal
of information about his work with the movie. The deleted scenes include an extended
ending that will have you wondering if the final cut was the best choice.
The Strangers (Universal) ***1/2
First-time director Bryan Bertino is very young, so perhaps
we can forgive him the few things that are wrong about this movie and revel in the parts
that are right, while eagerly awaiting his second film. The Strangers, though
bloody when need be, is no gore fest, and is more about terror than horror. It’s
possible, it could happen, and that makes it all the more frightening. Basically,
it’s a story about home invasion, but these perpetrators have a particularly evil
streak. They appear in masks and scare the bejeezus out of the young couple they attack,
and the audience as well. Bertino creates some particularly creepy scenes, especially ones
in which the viewer can see a situation before the characters do, making one want to shout
out warnings. The DVD contains two versions of the film: the theatrical edition and a
director’s cut, the latter five minutes longer. The picture is grainy and at times
soft, but I’ve a feeling that’s what the low-budget original was like.
There’s nothing cut-rate about the sound, however. The mix uses all the channels --
sounds come from unexpected places to make you jump. There’s also some extremely low
bass; my speakers could take it, but the wall between my home theater and the bathroom
couldn’t, and groaned right along with the action. The extras include some justly
deleted scenes and a brief but fairly good making-of featurette.
Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street
(DreamWorks, Blu-ray) ****1/2
Perhaps extras can’t make or break a disc sale --
after all, it’s how the main feature looks and sounds that’s most important --
but when extras enhance the enjoyment of the movie, they’re worth mentioning, and the
ones here are just the sort you want to have. There’s a featurette on the
"real" Sweeney Todd, who slit his clients’ throats and gave their bodies to
Mrs. Lovett, who would bake them into meat pies. The general conclusion is that Todd was a
creature of fiction who first appeared in a Penny Dreadful pulp publication in the
mid-1800s. Another feature discusses London at the time of Todd’s popularity -- a
dire place to live, if you weren’t of the gentry. Yet another explores the stage
version of Stephen Sondheim’s musical (Sondheim is on hand for a lot of interview
time) and how it was translated to film. There’s also a mind-numbing featurette on
the Grand Guignol tradition of drama and how Sweeney Todd fits into and extends it.
And all of these, and the many other featurettes, are in hi-def! But I said above that
what’s important is how the main feature looks and sounds, and there’s no
problem here. Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street is a dark film with
all sorts of shadows and some light, its colors like blood drained from a living body, and
this Blu-ray transfer gets it all exactly right. Everything is detailed in the dark -- no
mud here. Most of the sound -- music, dialogue, singing -- is up front but very
transparent, with an appealing ambience that warms it up a lot. On occasion, the surround
channels are effectively used for ambient sound. In all respects, the Blu-ray edition of
this brilliant screen translation of Sondheim’s macabre musical masterpiece is a
winner.
. . . Rad Bennett
radb@hometheatersound.com |
