In lieu of a "Monday Morning Foreign Region DVD Report": A slightly belated "High-Def DVD Consumer Guide"

I’ve made a num­ber of inquir­ies with my former employ­er as to wheth­er a piece of text I filed with them in early May was actu­ally going to be used at a web­site of said employ­er, and have received zilch in response. As noth­ing sets action into motion like just going out and doing the damn thing you’re ask­ing per­mis­sion to do, I thought I’d just go ahead and post what would have been the May edi­tion of my High-Definition DVD Consumer Guide here. I mean, sure, the releases aren’t brand-new any­more, but it’s not as if they them­selves have changed in the inter­im. Also, I’m inter­ested in feed­back: is this some­thing you find even poten­tially use­ful? Entertaining? Anybody out there want to pay me to syn­dic­ate new install­ments? Etc., etc., etc. Please respond in com­ments, and enjoy. 

High Definition DVD Consumer Guide #5: Please Put Out Better Movies Edition

Our monthly roundup of the latest in High Definition DVDs has us fiend­ing for, well, bet­ter movies to watch. Not everything we got this month was a dog, but the roster was low on any­thing like a clas­sic, which has led us to ques­tion the mar­ket­ing decisions that go into what gets upgraded to Hi-Def and what doesn’t. Seems like the stu­di­os are still favor­ing the money-to-burn home theat­er mavens (noth­ing wrong with such con­sumers, of course) over library-building cinephiles. Help, at least of a sort, seems to be on the way—but we won’t get to sample such clas­sic or just gen­er­ally excel­lent or maybe just epic films such as Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, Master and Commander, and Patton until next month’s edi­tion. In the mean­time, we sought solace in some comed­ic clas­sics in an obsol­ete Hi-Def format, and were sat­is­fied if not blown away. And there were some oth­er delights as well. 

The 6^th Day (Sony Blu-Ray)
It looks as if High Definition video has giv­en stu­di­os some use­ful new ideas in chas­ing the sow’s‑ear-to-silk-purse fal­lacy, e.g., if you can’t make the movie less putrid, make the Blu-Ray disc look as phe­nom­en­al as pos­sible. Hence this lame-ass latter-day Schwarzenegger sci-fier (made in 2000) gets one of those ultra-popping, 3‑D look­ing trans­fers. It’s so breath­tak­ingly vivid that for long stretches you actu­ally don’t notice stuff like the anti-cloning Ahnuld char­ac­ter mus­ing, “look, it’s the nat­ur­al pro­cess of life,” re a pet’s death, or how thor­oughly unin­spired all the fake Total Recall stuff is. And then a drippy (lit­er­ally!) hair­less unfin­ished clone ver­sion of Michael Rappaport’s char­ac­ter shows up and you think, “Why am I watch­ing this?” Whether the eye candy will be worth the guilt is entirely your decision. Extras are largely EPK grade. Grade: B

27 Dresses (Fox Blu-Ray)
Except for a few night­time exter­i­ors of attract­ively neon-lit New York (at least I think it’s New York), this rom-com star­ring the indefatig­ably charm­ing Katherine Heigl is shock­ingly blah look­ing. Not to harp on the demo­graph­ics of home-theater investors, but I sus­pect this titles Blu-Ray incarn­a­tion is meant as a poten­tial sop to the sig­ni­fic­ant oth­er of the home-theater enthu­si­ast of any giv­en house­hold. If so, it’s bound to be an inef­fect­ive one. Blu-Ray, you’re sup­posed to offer all kinds of made pic­ture detail—well, let’s see the edging on the frost­ing of that wed­ding cake! Only when that hap­pens will such a flick be rel­ev­ant in the format. Grade: C

Alvin and the Chipmunks (Fox Blu-Ray)
Boy, you sure can see why the kids all went for this one—those CGI chip­munks sure are ador­able. (I like how one of them protests “But we talk!” when a freaked-out human char­ac­ter tries to order them from his home.) The picture’s attempts to inject a little smart/hip-humor-to-make-adults-like-the-damn-thing-too is not nearly as suc­cess­ful; only the most needy David Cross fan will be sat­is­fied with what the com­ic brings to his role here. But the disc looks great, bright and vivid and neony just the way you want your stand­ard Hollywood kid movie con­fec­tion­ary col­or schemes to look, and the integ­ra­tion of the digit­al crit­ters with the live-action (such as it is) char­ac­ters is seam­less. The lack of mean­ing­fully fun extras (I’ll bet you could think of a few con­cepts for such without much effort, as could I) is a little dis­pir­it­ing. Grade: B-

The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, The Witch, and The Wardrobe (Disney Blu-Ray)
The first install­ment in the multi-film adapt­a­tion of C.S. Lewis’ tale of a fantasy realm where Jesus is a lion and stuff looks kind of dingy at the begin­ning, but soon you real­ize that’s because the begin­ning is set in the real world, which is England dur­ing World War II and the blitz and such. And while dingy, it’s also pretty handsome…once the kids get to the afore­men­tioned realm of Narnia, the visu­al daz­zle­ment is rife, and all of it looks great on this Blu-Ray disc—the snow-covered scenes will bring down the tem­per­at­ure in your view­ing area, even. The pack­age has so many extras that I’m almost ready to believe Disney really needed two discs to hold them all. Almost. The one Blu-Ray exclus­ive extra is a video-adapted Risk-style game called “Battle for Narnia.” I found it less than enga­ging, but I’m more of a “Trivia Whiz” guy myself. In any case, the whole pack­age will be a far-ranging delight for fans of the film. Grade: A+

The Devil’s Own (Sony Blu Ray)
This was, alas, dir­ect­or Alan J. Pakula’s last film (he died in an auto acci­dent soon after its 1997 com­ple­tion), and it does not, alas, find him work­ing at the height of his powers—although it’s a far sight bet­ter than his pri­or The Pelican Brief. It’s one of those pic­tures wherein, as soon as your hear the cop lead character’s part­ner (here por­trayed by Ruben Blades) talk­ing about what he’s gonna do with his police pen­sion (in this case, the idea is to raise pot-bellied pigs), well, you just know what’s going to hap­pen to him before film’s end. As for the lead actors—cop Harrison Ford and IRA fugit­ive Brad Pitt, doing one of his early Experiments With Accents—they’re not quite work­ing at the height of their powers either. However. This also hap­pens to be the final film lensed by cine­ma­to­graph­er and long­time Pakula col­lab­or­at­or Gordon Willis (who’s still with us, albeit retired), and he’s still work­ing at a very high level here, and this disc cap­tures the Prince of Darkness’s char­ac­ter­ist­ic chiaroscuros and often cozily warm interi­ors with impress­ive accur­acy. So that answer to the ques­tion “Who’s this disc for?” is “Cinematography wonks.” Count me in. Grade: B+

First Knight (Sony Blu-Ray)
Shall We Dance? (Disney Blu-Ray)
“Is Richard Gere the new king of High Definition DVD?” I wrote in my notes after watch­ing these discs. I mean, think about it—these pic­tures are almost ten years apart (some­what mis­be­got­ten Camelot rethink First Knight came first, in 1995, while mature-Gere-showcase Shall We Dance is from 2004), they’re in com­pletely dif­fer­ent genres, they were man­u­fac­tured and released by two dif­fer­ent companies…and they both look equally stel­lar. It’s gotta be Gere, I thought. Well of course it doesn’t, but I ima­gine if you’re a big Gere fan with a Blu-Ray play­er these discs are gonna make you very happy. First Knight’s got a great lush col­or palette that takes you back to the pre-Braveheart no-mud depic­tions of the middle ages, while Dance gets good visu­al trac­tion from its Chicago loc­ales and grand ball­rooms. In my book, Knight has an edge because it con­tains a com­ment­ary from dir­ect­or Jerry Zucker and pro­du­cer Hunt Lowry in which they con­stantly bemoan what a lousy job they did on the film. After a while you wanna say, “Come on guys, it’s not that bad.” Grades: Knight: A-; Dance: B+

The Golden Compass (New Line Blu-Ray)
The pop­ular­ity of the Phillip Pullman children’s books on which this film and its now-probably-not-to-be-produced sequels is/are to be based not­with­stand­ing, I can see how this film failed to cap­ture the mass imagination—its world and con­ceit are pretty weird even by fantasy genre stand­ards. I don’t object, I’m just say­ing, that’s all. All of the weirdness—animal “demons” that reflect their human own­ers’ per­son­al­it­ies, ver­mil­lion air­ships, armored talk­ing polar bears—looks pretty good here, until the cli­mactic scene in which the CGI pile-on forces a lot of the “real­ity” out the window—poor Eva Green has been so pro­cessed as to appear par­tic­u­larly rub­bery, not a good look for her. The disc has a Blu-Ray exclus­ive “visu­al com­ment­ary,” in which dir­ect­or Chris Weitz appears deliv­er­ing his com­ment­ary in a picture-in-picture win­dow, with vari­ous behind-the-scenes shots or pro­duc­tion sketches amp­li­fy­ing his remarks. It’s pretty enga­ging, and one admires Weitz’s stam­ina by the end. This isn’t likely to make enough con­verts to revive its franchise-worthiness, but fans and effects-hungry home theat­er mavens will get off plenty. Grade: B+

National Treasure (Disney Blu-Ray)
National Treasure 2: Book of Secrets (Disney Blu-Ray)
Having duti­fully sat through the High-Def discs of these two hol­i­day block­buster megapro­duc­tions of exceed­ing, well, know-somethingish dum­bassery, I’ve finally figured out the func­tion of the National Treasure fran­chise: these Nick-Cage-starring-films movies are like Con Air or The Rock for THE WHOLE FAMILY, largely because they’re edu­ma­ca­tion­al (not really) as well as action packed and excit­ing! Yeah, I know…what took me so long. Both these discs are, in trad Disney Blu-Ray fash­ion, pretty big-bang-for-your-buck present­a­tions, so well detailed that, say, when you’re watch­ing the mont­age in the first film that shows the trans­ition from the Arctic to Washington D.C., you can actu­ally tell which one of the three heli­copter shots of the Nation’s Capital is pulled from stock foot­age rather that second-unit shot. If that kind of thing floats your boat. If you can only afford one disc, I’d recom­mend Book of Secrets, as it has the more enter­tain­ing com­ment­ary. The first film’s audio sup teams dir­ect­or Jon Turtletaub with the blandly snarky act­or Justin Bartha, while the second’s fea­tures Turtletaub with the genu­inely loopy Jon Voight. You haven’t lived until you hear him enthuse about his on-screen kiss with Helen Mirren near the end of the film. 
Grades: National Treasure: B; Book of Secrets: B+ 

The Orphanage (New Line Blu Ray)
This 2007 Spanish hor­ror movie, pro­duced by Guillermo del Toro and writ­ten and dir­ec­ted by his sort-of protégé A.J. Bayona, is the most impress­ively styl­ized and emo­tion­ally wrench­ing hor­ror pic­ture since, well, del Toro’s own Pan’s Labyrinth. Certain sim­il­ar­it­ies between del Toro’s film and this one end up work­ing to this one’s dis­ad­vant­age, but not fatally—again, par­tic­u­larly if you’re a genre fan. The Blu-Ray disc has a very strong pic­ture, with its oft-green-tinted col­or palette provid­ing a lot of men­ace and cer­tain details—the raggedy bur­lap of a hor­rif­ic mask, for instance—rendered as palp­ably as they’re meant to be. I was a little sur­prised, giv­en DVD nut del Toro’s pat­ron­age, at the rel­at­ive paucity of extras—the sup­ple­ments are enga­ging but not nearly as crazy gen­er­ous as they were on the Labyrinth Blu-Ray—but that doesn’t dis­tract much from what sat­is­fies about the film and its trans­fer. Grade: A-

Road to Rio/Road to Bali (BCI/Eclipse HD Disc)
My Favorite Brunette/Son of Paleface (BCI/Eclipse HD Disc)
Just as the HD-Disc format goes down, BCIP/Eclipse, a com­pany with its fin­gers in all sorts of pies, includ­ing the pie con­sist­ing of films that have fallen into the pub­lic domain, comes out with two discs I should be able to get behind, in theory—a couple of Hope/Crosby Road pic­tures and a Hope double fea­ture that includes a clas­sic of cartoon-to-live-action humor dir­ec­ted by Frank Tashlin. BCI’s not what you’d call a major—in fact a lot of product is the sort of thing you’d find in the bar­gain DVD bins of a Walgreen’s. So how do they fare in High Definition? It’s kind of a vexed ques­tion. Clearly some care was put into both releases. The print of the B&W Road to Rio is from the UCLA Film Archive, for instance, and the pic­ture looks swell. No, the black-and-white stuff doesn’t look as good, say, as the HD of Casablanca. And no, the Technicolor stuff —Bali and Paleface, the lat­ter the Tashlin film, which has a nice zing in its visuals—doesn’t look as good as the HD of Robin Hood. But the com­ed­ies them­selves didn’t look as good ori­gin­ally as the afore­men­tioned clas­sics. Could these pic­tures look bet­ter on video? It’s pos­sible. But it’s unlikely that we’re ever going to find out, and the fact is, these ver­sions are the best they’ve ever looked on video. Like I said, a vexed ques­tion. In the mean­time, I’m very glad they exist. Grades: Both discs, B+ 

Saawariya (Sony Blu-Ray)
I can totally get behind the idea of Bollywood spec­tacles on Blu Ray. Although, truth to tell, this 2007 pic­ture is not an entirely “rep­res­ent­at­ive” Bollywood spec­tacle, being some­what stage-bound, largely set at night, and such. It also betrays a little more of the influ­ence of Moulin Rouge than a Bollywood spec­tacle ought to…especially con­sid­er­ing how much Moulin Rouge owes to the Bollywood spec­tacle. But let’s not quibble—this par­tic­u­lar spec­tacle, based on, of all things, Dostoevsky’s “White Nights” (fol­low­ing in the foot­steps of Visconti’s film of the same name and Bresson’s Four Nights of a Dreamer, and anti­cip­at­ing James Gray’s Two Lovers) is an eye-filling (sure it’s stage­bound, but the sar­is alone are a galaxy of col­or) and ear-pleasing (quite richly recor­ded South Asian pop). The deep dark blues of the story’s four nights are almost lit­er­ally intox­ic­at­ing. I know—another quibble. Although the Gallagher-esque qual­ity of lead act­or Ranbir Kappor’s headgear is a little dis­tract­ing. Okay, anoth­er quibble. Never mind. Sony: More, please. How about the crick­et epic Lagaan: Once Upon a Time In India? Grade: A-

Untraceable (Sony Blu-Ray)
The movie, mor­bid trash about how the Internet helps us kill, rep­res­ents anoth­er sad mis­step for dir­ect­or Gregory Hoblit. His 1996 Primal Fear made him look like someone you could rely on for a thrill­er, and then came Fallen and Frequency…Fracture was a comeback of sorts, but this brings his bat­ting aver­age way down. Poor Diane Lane looks hag­gard as an FBI agent taunted by a high-tech killer. In any case, the disc repro­duces the film’s gen­er­ic post-7even would-be-eerie din­gi­ness quite well. But the most note­worthy thing here is the PIP com­ment­ary sup­ple­ment fea­tur­ing the film­makers. A pretty elab­or­ate extra for a movie that got such a per­func­tory the­at­ric­al release, and a good indic­a­tion that sup­ple­ments are going to be more marketing-driven on High-Def mater­i­al than they’ve ever been. Nice to learn. Grade: C

Walk Hard: The Dewey Cox Story (Sony Blu-Ray)
This is one of the first Blu-Ray discs to incor­por­ate “BD Live” fea­tures, via which you can down­load non-disc extras for the movie via wire­less inter­net, as well as trail­ers and the like. It’s a pretty neat idea. The three BD-Live fea­tures for this music biop­ic lam­poon are ana­lyses of three Dewey Cox songs by a British “Coxologist” amus­ingly incarn­ated by Bill Hader. They do take SOME time to down­load, so go make cof­fee or some­thing dur­ing the wait. But I didn’t find the pro­cess quite as tedi­ous as some oth­er review­ers did, which might just mean that the firm­ware upgrades really do take care of such con­cerns. Oh brave new world, that has such enter­tain­ment poten­tial in it!… This isn’t to say that there aren’t enough on-disc extras in this (again, per­haps unne­ces­sary giv­en the stor­age capa­city of Blu-Ray discs) two-disc set. This picture—which does in fact do, among oth­er things, an excel­lent job of par­ody­ing the look of vari­ous music biop­ics as well as the peri­ods in which their set—seems to want to be a cult item on the level of This Is Spinal Tap. With cult stuff, wish­ing doesn’t make it so, but the movie is often quite funny and this pack­age is a beau­ti­fully put-together one. Grade: A

Youth Without Youth (Sony Blu-Ray)
Francis Ford Coppola’s return to dir­ect­ing after a ten-year hiatus is a remark­ably ambi­tious work that I didn’t think worked all that well, but damn, is it a visu­ally hand­some and fre­quently, yes, invent­ive his­tor­ic­al fantasy, and if you’re going to watch it on video at all this is the way to go. The red of the styl­ized painted rose on the open­ing cred­it is utterly lus­cious, and the tex­tures of the visuals—the prickles of hair on Bruno Ganz’s pâté, the hard white enamel of Tim Roth’s new teeth after his aged char­ac­ter turns into a young­er man after being hit by light­ning, the woven swastikas on the garters of the Nazi spy who seduces Roth’s char­ac­ter, and so on—have an incred­ible vibrancy in this format. Every now and then there’s a little too much bright­ness in instances of dir­ect light­ing, but that’s the sole flaw I could catch. The disc also boasts a typ­ic­ally enga­ging and intel­lec­tu­ally peri­pat­et­ic com­ment­ary from the ever-voluble Coppola. Grade: A