| W |
Reservoir Dogs
The movie: I haven't seen this movie in quite some time. Long enough ago that I didn't remember much about what happened. Long enough that I didn't even remember it was done by Quentin Tarantino. Whatever happened to that guy anyway? I bought it a few weeks ago though because it was only $10, and I finally watched it tonight. Anyway. What do I say about the movie. It's pretty cool I guess, but it's also exactly what you'd expect if you've seen any of Tarantino's other movies. Maybe that's why he disappeared. Oh wait, maybe it's because he made that movie From Dusk Till Dawn haha.
Anyway. I'm sure some people think it is one of the best movies ever. I liked it, but ya know, I have to admit, I didn't like it that much. Oooh, the timeline is all reversed or whatever. Have you ever seen Citizen Kane? But it's worth watching.
The DVD: This is an "old" DVD. It's in a letterboxed 2.35:1 format. The transfer was mediocre, and I'd say the same goes for the audio as well. It's pretty much just for the movie, as there aren't any special features beyond a theatrical trailer and filmographies. Inside it came with a little slip of paper stating that the "special edition" of this DVD will be coming out in July 2002. I suspect it will have anamorphic transfers and loads of special features, so if you are a real fan of this movie, you might want to wait for that instead of buying this version.
Quiz Show
The movie: This movie was directed by Robert Redford and a lot of people said it was pretty good, so I rented it. It got off to a bit of a slow start, but after a while it really drew me in and I wanted to see how it would end. It was also pretty interesting to see Martin Scorcese play a small part (he was the Geritol executive) as well as Calista Flockhart had a little part as one of the college kids swooning over Ralph Fiennes.
If you've got nothing better to do, watching this movie is not a bad way to spend your time. Also it's based on a true story, and I know that for a lot of people (for some reason) that's a good reason to see a movie.
The DVD: This is another "old" DVD. It's got a letterboxed 1.85:1 widescreen transfer which I suspect is a recycled laserdisc transfer with their characteristic excessive edge sharpening. I also noticed quite a bit of dust specks and sctratches and grain and all kinds of other junk. Audio was in stereo, and was just OK as well. Not that this would be a real audio heavy movie anyway. There weren't any special features to speak of except for the requisite theatrical trailer.
Wednesday, 16 January 2002
3:15pm
| Y |
Last night, Jeff, Ben, Kris and Chris came over for dinner (which was wonderfully prepared by Cami) and a movie. We watched Made which I'll be reviewing later. It was fun, the food was good, and it's always nice having people over. Now on a totally unrelated note: just how much does the weather affect FM radio reception? A couple weeks ago when I got this receiver I got great reception on like all the stations. Now half of them seem to be kind of on the fringe. Oh well.
I just wrote this whole thing just now, but I erased it because I came off sounding like a pompous prick. Well, I am a pompous prick, but I didn't want that much of it to show in this update, hahaha. So I guess you'll just have to wonder what it was all about. So instead, you'll have to settle for today's DVD review.
Made (Special
Edition)
The movie: This movie was produced, written, and directed by Jon Favreau who also starred in it along side Vince Vaughn (who also produced). If you don't know, these are the same two guys from Swingers, a movie that so many people claim as their favorite. I didn't particularly enjoy Swingers, I think mainly because I couldn't identify with most of the characters (in fact, I was annoyed by most of them, which makes it hard to care for them).
So in some sense, I watched this movie with some reservations about it. What I got was an entertaining little mobster movie with a comedic edge that's a bit smarter than your typical comedy. No slapstick, no dark "hahaha look at that guy whose head just got blown off" comedy, no lame jokes or one liners. The comedy comes from the way the scenes are built up and broken down by the characters, if that makes any sense.
On the other hand, I still found myself completely annoyed by Vince Vaughn in this movie and just wanted him to shut the hell up. But that's exactly how he was supposed to make you feel. Oh yeah I guess I'll give you a little bit into what this movie is about... these guys are like entry level mobsters on their first job. Jon Favreau's character just wants to get it over and done with quickly, meanwhile all of Vince Vaughn's antics get them into more and more trouble. This movie also has small roles played by Puff Daddy (oh I'm sorry, P-Diddy), and one of my favorite actors, Peter Falk.
Was it "Swingers 2"? Yes, and no. You have Vince Vaughn playing pretty much the exact same character he was in Swingers. Jon Favreau's character wasn't such a pathetic, spinless fool, however. I think the overall story was better than Swingers, and found Made to just be a better movie overall.
I gotta make special note for the camera work which I thought was pretty great. Overall, I found this an entertaining movie that's worth a rental, but I don't see it as something that I could watch over and over again. Of course, some die hard Swingers fans would probably think otherwise.
The DVD: This is another "special edition" that doesn't have a "standard edition" to go along with it. But it is packed with a whole bunch of bonus features. But first, the actual movie is presented in a 1.85:1 anamorphic widescreen with a great looking transfer. There's a 5.1 audio mix that wasn't bad, but wasn't particularly noteworthy either. The menus were kind of cool, although sometimes they seemed to take forever to load.
Special features. There's a lot. First there are a few little "making of" featurettes, which really are more like three parts of the same documentary than three separate featurettes. There is a whole bunch of additional footage including scenes that were completely deleted, outtakes from scenes that were actually in the movie, and alternate versions of scenes that were in the movie.
There was also a section where you could listen to the music that was used in the movie, as well as a bunch of music that ended up not being in the movie. Then there are your standard theatrical trailers, but the real interesting part of the special features is the "Scene edit workshop". Basically you take a scene that has four shots, and for each of those four shots, you can choose from four different takes. You get to choose which of the four takes you want to use for each of the four shots, and then play it to see how it looks, or compare it to the way the director chose to have the scene appear in the movie. It's kind of fun, though not particularly sophisticated, not that you could really get all that sophisticated with the software on a movie DVD anyway.
I should also note that all of the special features and menus are in an anamorphic widescreen format (yay for me), except for the two trailers which for some reason are still letterboxed. Even the outtakes were anamorphic transfers... so it doesn't really make much sense, but whatever. Overall, I'd say the DVD content on this disc is great, and is worthy of bearing the title "Special Edition" unlike so many special editions that are just full of junk that was thrown together.
Thursday, 17 January 2002
11:59pm
| T |
It turns out it was shot to fit the (second) Cinerama format. The original Cinerama format is credited by many as being the one that really popularized the widescreen format. The original version of Cinerama actually used three 35mm filmstrips being shot simultaneously, with a maximum aspect ratio of 2.65:1. Later on they switched to a single 65mm film format with maximum aspect ratio of 2.21:1 but kept calling it Cinerama... although it's identical (as far is I know) to Super Panavision. Anyway. I learned this stuff from The Widescreen Museum, a website dedicated to the history of the different film formats that are no longer in popular use today. It also has a lot of information about film "roadshows" and how "event" films really were treated as true theatrical events. It was definitely a cool read. At least it was to me.
So I guesss it's official, all seven seasons of Star Trek: The Next Generation will be released on DVD this year, starting with season 1 in March. I can't wait! Cami is already cowering in fear of all the nerdiness that is going to be around this place once I have those things but I can't help it, it's part of who I am! Anyway, that's the update for tonight. Enjoy this pic:
Saturday, 18 January 2002
11:59pm
| F |
Requiem
For A Dream
The movie: This movie is one of the most fucked up depressing movies you'll ever see, and it will haunt you forever. That's how good it is though. It basically depicts the downward spiral of several very different people as the decend into the depths of drug addiction. Yup, if any movie will make you not want to do drugs, this one would be it.
The transformations of the characters are pronounced, but none so well done as the performance given by Ellen Burstyn. She really is quite amazing in this movie. It also stars Jared Leto, Jennifer Connelly and Marlon Wayans. I don't know what else to say about this movie other than it will haunt you for quite a while after you see it.
Oh yes, it was directed by Darren Aronofsky, the same guy who did the movie Pi. But this movie is in color and nobody drills any holes in their head. And also there are two versions of this movie floating around out there -- the Director's Cut and the "Edited Version". I actually own both. The original version of this movie was rated NC-17, and of course, none of the major video rental chains will carry such a movie, so an edited version was created, removing some of the more graphic elements of the film. I own both versions now, and I have to say that if you rent the edited version of this movie, you really aren't missing much and I feel that you will be getting the full impact of the film even without those most graphic shots.
The DVD: As I said, I own both the normal and the edited version of this movie, and they are for the most part, exactly the same (aside from the R-rated editing, of course), and the edited version is also lacking an "easter egg" (the Tappy Tibbons infomercial). The movie itself is presented in a 1.85:1 anamorphic widescreen format that is very clean, bold and crisp.
The 5.1 soundtrack is great, particularly the audio mix of the string quartet that is used throughout the film. So good in fact that at one point I almost said aloud to myself "Dayum! My speakers sound good!". A very clean and very rich mix indeed. As far as special features go, well, this DVD features one of the coolest menu concepts I've ever seen... they look like the blue screen you see at the end of a TV commercial that's selling something with all the information on it.
But yeah, this disc is packed with special features, including commentary by the director and the DP, a "making of" segment, deleted scenes, theatrical trailers and a bit where Ellen Burstyn interviews Hubert Selby Jr., the man who wrote the book that this movie was based on. And as I mentioned earlier, the Director's Cut version also has an easter egg. Go to the chapter selection screen and highlight the spot that is titled "#3 SHHHHHH". Press up twice, then enter, and you'll get the complete Tappy Tibbons infomercial, which even reveals what "#3" is. If you've seen the movie then you just might know what I'm talking about. Overall, this is a pretty good DVD, and the movie as I said, is great. But really depressing. So be ready for that!
Rosemary's
Baby
The movie: This is the classic horror movie from 1968, and has been highly rated by many different sources, and I'd never seen it before, so I rented it from Netflix. For most of the movie I was drawn into the story. It's not really a "scary" movie in the classic horror film type way. Nothing ever pops out at you, there aren't any ghosts or anything like that. But the entire movie you just get this feeling that there's something that isn't quite right, and it's just wrong enough to keep you wondering what it is.
That being said, I think the end really fizzled out. It just seemed really contrived, and it just seems like there could have been a better way to do it. But as I said, the rest of the movie had me pretty well interested in what would happen next. Also, Mia Farrow was a total hottie, so that made this movie alot easier to watch too.
I couldn't help but notice though that many elements of this movie were reused in the Keanu Reeves / Al Pacino movie Devil's Advocate. The moving into a fabulous new apartment, the strange, unexpected new hairdo, the slightly off-kilter neighbors... too coincidental to just be coincidence, I say!
The DVD: This DVD is pretty straightforward with not many bells and whistles. The movie is presented in a 1.85:1 anamorphic widescreen format with a video transfer of average quality. The level of film grain is consistent with the era, but my research has revealed that this movie was originally shot in a 1.66:1 aspect ratio, so I assume that this version then has the top and bottom cropped. The audio is in mono, and sounds about as good as you'd expect a movie from this era to sound like. As far as special features go, there are retrospective interviews with the people involved, and also a "making of" featurette from the time the movie was made, and that's about it.
Overall I'd say this movie is worth watching at least once, and the DVD is pretty much good only for the movie itself. The 1.85:1 aspect ratio has me wondering if a pan and scan version with the sides cut off would have less of the image missing. Who knows.
2001: A
Space Odyssey
Ahhh, the classic science fiction movie by Stanley Kubrick based on the book by Arthur C. Clarke, also incidentally from 1968. This movie simply looks beautiful. The camera work is awesome, and I can't say enough about the special effects, especially when you consider the year in which this movie was made! The ballet of the ship docking with the spinning space station comes to mind... I have no idea how one would even make such a thing look so good with a computer, yet at the time this movie was made, no one had any idea that you'd be able to make something like that on a computer since this was before the days when computers even had monitors!
And what an amazing vision of the future they had -- the computers in this movie have monitors, even though no such thing was ever conceived of in reality before! Most of today's moviegoers would probably consider the pacing of this movie to be very slow. It dwells alot on objects floating through space which today we have seen in movies millions of times, but at the time I don't think there ever was such a level of detail or realism in any movie before it.
The sound design is also very sparse. There is no music that's just "background music"... every sound has a definite purpose. Also, unlike most space movies, any time the camera is actually in space, it's completely silent -- just as it would be in real life, since there is no sound in space. Ah and the camera work! What amazing camera work! This movie just looks so beautiful in every shot it blows my mind.
And the story... what a great story... spanning millenia, featuring the HAL 9000 computer with it's haunting voice... the monolith... and that ending that is guaranteed to make your brain melt if you try to figure out what it means. Like woah. This is definitely one of the greatest science fiction movies ever created. I just wish I could have seen this movie the way it was meant to be seen -- on a giant Cinerama screen with the screen wrapped around the audience!
The DVD: The 2.21:1 anamorphic widescreen transfer of this movie comes from restored film and looks amazingly clean, crisp, and clear. This movie has probably never looked better! At least, not for home viewing, anyway. The 2.21:1 aspect ratio is the original one used for the first "roadshow" run of this movie. My research discovered that for later runs for smaller theaters, a non-cinerama 35mm print was made, cropped down to a 2.35:1 aspect ratio, which is not the "original". I did notice some significant artifacting in areas of gradients, such as fog or bright light. This is typically one of the more difficult types of images to encode well to the DVD format, and it definitely shows here. But other than that, this movie looks great.
The design, as I noted earlier, is very sparse, but the audio also sounds pretty damned good. It's technically a 5.1 surround mix, but it's mostly centered around the front speakers and the rears don't do a whole lot during this movie. But as I noted before, the overall sound design is pretty sparse. The only special feature is a theatrical trailer.
This DVD is definitely one that is worth checking out, and actually I think most people should own this. It's just one brilliant example of filmmaking, and this DVD definitely does the movie justice. I can't get over how good it looks. And I'll leave you with a shot from one of the more brain-melting sections of this movie...
