The past year has seen more people than ever moving to Blu-ray, and a greater quantity of titles hitting the format than ever before. With that multi-fold increase in volume, the various "growing pains" that have touched the format throughout the year aren't surprising. I've been keeping track, but I easily could have missed something. If you pick up on something I didn't, feel free to drop a line (the name of this column at gmail).
This is not an accurate translation of the words that Eli the vampire is saying.
Let the Right One In: How Do You Say "Re-Translation" in Swedish?
For some godawful reason, Magnolia/Magnet decided to use a different English subtitle track for the US home video release of this genre smash-hit. I'm guessing it had something to do with saving money by not paying the original translator. After some considerable controversy and outrage from fans, Magnet refused to issue a recall, but did state that future pressings of the DVD and Blu-ray would feature the "Theatrical" track and you would know it's a "new pressing" disc by this listing on the back cover. Word has filtered around that DVDs have started appearing in stores with the original subs, but nothing on the Blu-ray front. It's a shame, since the transfer is absolutely delicious.
Acid wash video.
The French Connection: The Transfer from Beyond Hell
Jeff has just today re-posted his righteous takedown of this aberration by director William Friedkin. "It's a scandal, it's a outrage" to be sure. This was the greatest travesty of the year, the decade, or the history of home video:
"I'm especially proud of is the slapdown I gave to director William Friedkin and his "high-contrasty, snow-grained, color-bleeding, verging-on-monochrome" Blu-ray of The French Connection that came out last February.
"This Blu-ray disc was, no exaggeration, the most offensive act of corporately-sanctioned vandalism to happen to a classic film in motion-picture history, and I'm thinking it can't hurt to give Friedkin another couple of lashes for completion's sake, just to put the cap on and to make double sure no one ever tries something like this again."
From your keyboard to the Movie Godz's ears, Jeff.
Ghostbusters: Grain Busted
I've yet to look at this disc myself, but the early word from press was perpetuated as enthusiasts ordered and received their copies. The transfer improves as the movie progresses, but it starts out especially grainy and muddy from all reports. Complaints frequently claimed DVD editions looked better in comparison.
Terminator 2 (US) vs. Terminator 2 (Europe): Codec Title Fight
When you look at these transfers side by side, they look noticeably different, but not because one was restored or remastered and the other wasn't. The difference is in the software compression used to squeeze the movie onto a Blu-ray. Most US discs are compressed using similar techniques, but not all European ones are, so even though both look good, each appears to have different "major plusses" that the other doesn't, whether it comes to contrast, color, or motion blur.
Gladiator: The Battle of Two Masters
When multiple rights holders are involved, you never know who is providing the transfer for a given release. The Extended Cut portions were properly mastered for HD in 2005, but not the Theatrical Cut. Colors are off in the Theatrical parts, and the resolution doesn't match the Extended bits to the point that anyone with an HD monitor could notice the difference. This was an unfortunate stain on Paramount's new Sapphire Series, which debuted with this and Braveheart. It also coincided with the point when they temporarily stopped sending advance review copies of everything from new release to catalog, and many speculated that Paramount had "something to hide". In this one case (and the one below), that may have been the case, but not so with the vast majority of their 2009 titles. I can't in good conscience recommend this title. The only reason I buckled and bought it was the sale price ($10) and the good-as-free $10 rebate coupon inside for existing DVD owners.
Star Trek (The Original Motion Picture Collection): The Wrath of DNR
Wrath of Khan looks better than ever, as does The Search for Spock, but The Motion Picture has some moments of obvious image fuzziness from Digital Noise Reduction. Would the average viewer notice? No, I don't think so. The latter three films all look amazing. Screenshots a-plenty went all over message boards across the net, but they made it look much worse than it really is. If I watched these things with a $10k HD projector, I'd probably go cry on a bag of money and get over it.
Dr. Strangelove: Or, How to Rewrite the History of Aspect Ratios
Jeff decried this release (which I've yet to touch) due to his read of excessive grain in the image and more offensively, a 1.66:1 aspect ratio instead of the original aspect ratio of "Academy" 1.33:1. Others report lovely picture quality and don't seem to care that it's not in Kubrick's intended OAR. It's astounding to me that aspect ratio fidelity is still an issue in this day and age. Did we learn nothing from DVD?
Graingate: The War on Grain
Whether talking about Criterion's The Third Man, Sony's Dr. Strangelove, or various other black & white titles, Jeff has waged a war against "Grain Monks" in 2009. The two "camps seem to be made up of people who love the additional grain as a more "accurate" presentation, and those who want it all scrubbed out, a la Lowry Digital's work on various Disney animated classics. The danger of being anti-grain is you end up being accused of defending the horror show that is Fox's Patton Blu-ray transfer and the weird-looking Sunset Boulevard DVD. What we need is moderation (not outright radicalism), which I think both ends of the argument agree on.
I'm going to get myself in trouble for here admitting that whereas I am not an entrenched Monk, I do disagree with him on his read of the Third Man transfer. I can't defend what Jeff saw on his display, but I can disagree as to who is to blame for his experience and that of others. I'm not alone in defending Third Man, but I am trying to come at it from a more reasonable stance than those treating him like an unknowledgeable jerk (which he's absolutely not). None of us are the bad guy. As usual, the consumer is the one getting screwed over.
The enemy is not one side or the other, but HDTV and blu player manufacturers who didn't standardize any sort of auto-equalizer for different types of content. There are newer sets that do this auto-calibration, like the HG10 series, but the feature should be industry-wide. You really have to be an obsessive tinkerer with some sort of formalized training in HD monitor calibration to get good separate presets for everything from B&W to Technicolor to modern content. As we see more B&W titles hit Blu-ray, we'll inevitably continue to have a lot to argue about in this regard.
Universal's Blu-ray Flippers: Anger Faster Than Lightning
The late in the year announcement that Universal is reviving their "DVD on one side, HD disc on the other" format was instantaneously met with disgust from all sides. One of the positives to Blu-ray is the thicker disc coating that prevents against scratching. That's only going to help the Blu-ray side of these little monsters. Goodbye disc art, hello Scratchland. Other studios are just issuing Combo Packs that include a separate DVD edition of the movie. Universal is...doing their own thing.
Sneaky Canadian "Eh" HD
Canadian DVD & Blu-ray distributor Alliance has been releasing all sorts of movies not yet available on Blu in the States. Titles run the gamut from recent releases to catalog classics like A Hard Day's Night. The problem is, they release them at 720i, 720p, 1080i, and basically resolution other than "True HD" 1080p. All these titles appear in search results when an oblivious American browses Amazon.com for "[movie title] + blu-ray". Thankfully, lots of their titles have been de-listed from Amazon in the last couple of months.
BD-Live: The Stillborn
The "internet connectivity" feature of Blu-ray is nothing close to a killer app. It's more of a "killed app" thanks to insanely long load times, a lack of implementation, or buggy first attempts to make it work. On top of that, tons of new Blu-ray owners don't even have net-connectable or connected players. The live chat screening with McG for Terminator Salvation was a hilarious good time, only enhanced by how often people got kicked off the connection. Studios need to bump up the speed of served content and really make home video a couch-based "happening" for any of this stuff to matter.
Discs of the Year is a look back at the year in disc releases and trends, from the best to the worst.