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Blu-Ray Reviews


Roareye Black

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This is a topic concerning the High Definition quality of Blu-Ray movies, since some of them are utter shitte and others are beyond exceptional. There are reasons for this and it's to do with the transfer process of High Definition content, as described below;

Standard Transfer - Crappiest quality, basically take some copy of the film that is still in cinema quality and give it a direct transfer to HD. This increases picture detail (rather than downscale further to Standard Definition) but allows all abnormalities (dirt, scratches, microscopic issues with the negative) to show through on the final image. This creates a hazy and often washed out picture.

Full Transfer - Best quality. Take the original film negative, process it frame by frame, enhancing the colour depth and cleaning up all abnormalities. The best versions of this enhance the colour and detail depth by doing a manual cleanup of each individual frame (24 frames a second!) to touch up all the picture issues.

I want you to write a review on the quality of Blu-Rays that havn't been added here so I can compile a list of great and bad quality titles.

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POOR QUALITY BLU_RAYS

Commando

Robocop

Star Trek I: The Motion Picture

OKAY QUALITY BLU-RAYS

In The Name Of The King

Dark City (Deliberate)

Reservoir Dogs

Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home

Star Trek: The Captain's Summit (Bonus disc in Star Trek: Original Motion Picture Collection)

Terminator 2 (Awaiting impending Skynet edition in better quality)

TOP QUALITY BLU-RAYS

16 Blocks

3:10 To Yuma

BBC Earth

Beowulf and Grendel

Blazing Saddles

Sin City

Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan

Star Trek III: The Search For Spock

Star Trek V: The Final Frontier

Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country

Star Trek: The Original Series - Season One

TMNT

Unbreakable

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3:10 To Yuma

Top quality title. The audio is lossless, the video is full 1080p and has some extremely great us of colour and picture detail. The only downside you get is sometimes in the night time scenes, there is a slight loss in picture clairty. This is likely due to lighting or maybe even the film they used, but either way this film looks alot better in light than in dark.

Add to that the Special Features are mostly in 1080p too, which means that the Deleted Scenes and the extras hold up to an HD purchase.

Blazing Saddles

Top Quality title. The video is astounding, especially for a 1979 movie. Let's be fair, this is a late 70s comedy. Image quality wasn't the biggest thing at the time (Comparing the visual focus to 2001 or Blade Runner for example would be an unfair comparison. However all being said, this is an impressive package. The audio is again very good, and the extras are especially cool, if mostly only in SD. It comes with the pilot for the unbought sitcom spinoff "Black Bart", which before you watch it sucks total donkey balls.

Robocop

Poor Quality title. My God, this could be quit impresiv in some parts, as some of the lighting filmed was actually great. Problm is this conversion is awful, just awful. In places I'm wondering if I'm not just watching an upscaled DVD (upscaled badly mind you). The colours are washed out, the detail is full of anomolies and dust and the audio is average at best, but can suffer from some areas being very loud and others being quite low. It's perfectly watchable, but with the possibility of getting a better picture from an upscaled DVD, you really shouldn't waste your time. I bought this for £10 brand new and it's still not worth it since the DVD would probably be about £4 brand new now.

In The Name Of The King

Okay Quality Film. Okay, okay, this film is a shit film in itself. However on Blu-Ray it has some major highs and major lows. Major highs have to be the simply breathtaking (and there really is no other word for it) beauty of the outside landscape shots. My God, Uwe Boll should retire to documentary directing because he really really pulls of the most gorgeous backdrops I have probably ever seen on Blu-Ray! The colours, cinematography and pure depth of these landscapes is phenomenal. This, however, is injured severely by the CGI backdrops, which look as fake as a bright lilac mannequin. This isn;t made any better in HD by the fact that you can now see all the smudged textures and lack of lighting detail in those areas. It's like watching Resident Evil 5 on PS3 with small cutscenes from Panzer Dragoon on Saturn. It's dreadful. While you could state this is more an issue with the filming process and not the HD conversion, the fact is that for a proper full HD conversion these crappy backgrounds could, and should, have been fixed. As it stands the film is half SD (without upscaling) and half HD. That's no good for it's hefty price tag.

Unbreakable

Top Quality Film. Unbreakable features outstanding visual quality unimpaired by anomolies, it features a brilliant use of contrast and colour and some amazing cinematography. As an HD purchase this film, arguably Shyamalan's best film, is well worth Blu-Ray. The additional detail and quality of image and sound really help bring this film into a more gritty but more intriguing spectrum.

So guys, just add in your reviews of Blu-Ray movies, telling us which movies are worth your additional money (After all Blu-Ray is still not cheap), and which should be left for either a future release or bargain bin DVD version.

Roareye Black.

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TOP QUALITY BLU-RAYS

Dark City: Directors Cut

Dark City: Directors Cut is an unusual Blu-Ray for the simple reason that it wasn't a blockbuster film, it doesn't have a popular (so much as cult) following, it's been on DVD for years and can now be picked up brand new for as little as £5...

But other than the film you get the following...

A trailer... a photo gallery... thats it...

It's Blu-Ray contains the following extras.

* Theatrical Cut.

* Directors Cut.

* Expanded feature commentaries (both versions I think)

* Directors cut fact track.

* Production gallery.

* Documentaries.

* Feature commentaries. (again, both versions of the film)

* The Metropolis comparison.

* Neil Gaiman on Dark City.

* Theatrical Trailer.

WOW! Thats certainly a step up from the near 10 year old original dvd! Some of the extras are old and not had any touching at all, even the back of the box admits that some are running on standard def. But is that a problem?

The visual itself is strange... because in some areas it doesn't look as nice as most new blu-ray movies... yet in a way, if it did, it would ruin it. Dark City is a film noir picture. It's character is it's dark grainy look. To perfectly remove the grainy aspects would ruin apart of it's character.

A major flaw I have with new HD movies is that they look TOO real. For instance, I used to own a video copy of Christmas Vacation. The scene in the attic would always make me smile. There was just something about the old poor visual and poor audio that gave that scene more character... the dvd... it fixed it all... brilliant colours, brilliant audios... it ruined that scene for me. Dark City however has not made this mistake, whilst the film looks a hell of a lot better compared to the original DVD (Yes I do own it), it's not been treated to perfectly. It's kept a sense of the grainy atmosphere which helps convey it's dark gloomy and tense tone that the original picture holds.

The Audio... quite simply... outstanding... the enhanced audio has really given the film a new dimension... Dark City was a film where just about every sound effect, every movement, every shot every spoken word was a deliberate piece of art... unfortunately, over the years, VHS tapes lost the audio far greater than the video. DVD... well... it was back. But you didn't really notice it unless you were really looking. However on Blu-Ray. The audio has returned. Everything can now be heard again as it was intended, from the tapping of a glas, to the dripping of a distant tap, to the fins of the goldfish... everything feels like it's own tiny piece of art which adds to the mysterious noir tone.

It's difficult to tell just how much of the film has been transfered to true 1080p, the reason being is that whilst the box claims it's true 1080p, if I were to watch a true 1080p, some scenes wouldn't look the way they do, the makers have made a very clear choice not to enhance it beyond a point that would turn the film into something that it's not. Dark City is quite possibly a very good example of where you need to stop 'improving' the movie and just let the movie do it's thing.

That said, if I compare it to my old DVD, the difference is... well... it makes the DVD look like my old VHS copy of Christmas Vacation. The director and the team behind it have certainly given it the full works treatment, but they've done the smart thing by stopping short of pulling a Gok Wan on the film, as it doesn't need it.

It's around £10 now in HMV... Interestingly... the Directors Cut DVD is also there... for £15!?

Mini Review:

Terminator 2: Judgement Day. --- The Best version of Terminator 2 out there... until May 19th 2009 when the Skynet version is release which according to the reviewers is even more enhanced and better than this one... Do not buy T2 Blu-Ray until the Skynet version is released.

Edited by Casanova
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Commando

My God. The ultimate in Arnie cheese-fest action movies is released on Blu-Ray, and how epic is it? Unfortunately not very :(

While it's true Commando isn't the high epic with devotion to detail, the fact is that even for a movie of this calibre it's an extremely poor conversion. The additional detail is there, covered in a fog of abnormalities and moving black spots. The only true benefit of Commando on Blu-Ray is some of the additional detail, but it's all just stuff that makes the film look more cheesy (Such as seeing the cable on Sully's leg as Arnie holds him off the cliff). While this would work well in the films favour normally, the issue is it feels like you're watching the film through smudged and foggy glasses, and that doesn't make for comfortable viewing. The audio isn't lossless, and in fact doesn't sound like much of an improvement at all to the DVD (Which I also own). The special features are just the trailer in crap HD to match the rest of the film. Avoid until they give it a proper clean-up.

TMNT

It's safe to say I'm a fan of this movie, the CGI version from a couple of years ago. It was one of the first purchases on my HD DVD (Which is the same quality as Blu-Ray so whatevs) and it stands as one of the best. If one thing lends itself well to HD it is CGI movies, as the issues of cleaning up dust and dirt particles on a negative doesn't exist. What the HD version of this film does do, is allow you to see the pure amount of quality that the film has included, at least animatically and graphically. The colours, the detail, the sound, it's all a stellar outing. Even if I didn't like this film, there's one thing that's definate. The fight scene between Leo and Raph is one of the best scenes I've seen on an HD movie. If you're a fan, you can't be without this version. Top Quality Movie.

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STAR TREK - ORIGINAL MOTION PICTURE COLLECTION

Bet alot of people are looking forward to this one. IT's not out til 12th May in America, so if you are a Trek fan, here's a preview of the quality to expect. I'm going to do it film by film.

Star Trek I: The Motion Picture

Trash. Absolute trash. When they said they remastered this film, they really didn't bother at all. First of all, it isn't the Directors Cut, because the Directors Cut was only produced and actually compiled in Standard Definition. So this is the original lengthy Cinema version. Number 2, they just didn't bother. There are parts of this film (Such as when V'Gers lightning effect probe rips up the computers on the bridge) which actually look VHS quality at best! I'm appalled by this, but there's likely a good reason for it. I would assume they're working on remaking the Director's Cut in HD and will likely give it a full cleanup for that later release. Either way even on the best quality setup possible (My friend has the nuts of a setup) this is full of distortion, anomolies appearing and disappearing from screen and in one scene you can even see a blue bit of planet effect cover over a foreground pylon! Abysmal quality.

Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan

In a shocking emergency twist, this is one of the best Blu-Rays I've ever seen. That would likely be because this is the only film in the collection to have had a complete and full quality restoration, but it certainly shows. The battles are colourful but powerful and there are countless details on the Enterprise and Reliant models I've never seen before. This is a simply breathtaking film, and really shows what HD is capable of in itself. The sound, the picture, it's all stunning. I just wonder how Paramount thought they could get away with putting a VHS quality turd at the forefront of a collection when they have such marvelous efforts such as this underneath.

Star Trek III: The Search For Spock

Superb quality. Although not restored, only remastered, this film offers exceptional visual quality. This is a huge testament to the quality of the filming, as the colours in the backgrounds and the detail is exceptional. Considering this apparently had the exact same treatment as The Motion Picture, it's surprising to see that this is an amazing looking movie over the hammer-faced dog that the first film is in the collection. The most impressive thing in this film is depth of colour in the backgrounds which isn't present in the films directed by Nicholas Meyer (Wrath of Khan and Undiscovered Country) which really make it stand out as a brilliant piece of eye candy.

Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home

Here comes some confusion. Wrath of Khan looks phenomenal because it's had a full restoration, The Motion Picture looks rubbish you would assume because it's only been Remastered. And yet Voyage Home didn't get any more special treatment (at least it's not advertised to have done) and it looks fantastic! There is a level of depth and visual clarity not available before and it's a great offering. There is still issues of some anomolies infrequently appearing and the image isn't the best available, but that's the issue with having remastered it. However the remaster on this makes it a high-end OKAY QUALITY BLU-RAY. It just begs the question, what the hell happened with The Motion Picture?

Star Trek V: The Final Frontier

Surprisingly superb offer, though doesn't fix the problems evident with the special effects (Due to budget and effects company issues during the films original production). However in terms of what the Blu-Ray has done to the video quality is stellar. An excellent addition to an overall very worthwhile purchase. Just forget The Motion Picture exists all over again.

Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country

My God, this is easily as good at Wrath of Kahn in pure visual quality despite not being Restored at all! The phenomenal quality of this movie really helps build this as a worthy purchase. The fact that this "simple" remaster is so mind-numbingly impressive visually is a real crowd pleaser, being considered one of the best of the movies. There are few anomolies in the picture and extremely rare, seeing McCoy and Kirk's faces in the Klingon Court Room just show the level of depth and detail the film is showing, and certain small details (Such as Iman's blue/green blood) can actually be seen from a distance. Sublime, and top quality.

Star Trek: The Captain's Summit

A very unique bonus disc. The picture quality is actually good on this, although it's not a high octane action thriller lol It's simply 5 people sitting and chatting. It's a fun watch however due to the trivia and mostly the comedy coming out of the 5 celebrities, really a very good addition to the collection and a brilliant Extra.

The Celebrities are; Jonathon Frakes (Riker), Patrick Stewart (Picard), Leonard Nimoy (Spock), William Shatner (Kirk) and Whoopi Goldberg (Guinan - not a Captain, but she's chairing the meeting).

STAR TREK - The Original Series: Season One

A sublime collection. I already owned this collection on HD-DVD and bought it anyway for several reasons (Mostly that the box on the HD-DVD is annoying, the episode cards I got were bloody German and the spread of extras across DVD and HD-DVD was aggrivating). First thing to note is that the menus are alot more interesting to look at, as well as being alot easier to navigate than it's HD-DVD counterpart. The extras are either more, or just easier to find (I didn't watch any of the HD-DVD cos it was fiddly to reach) and make for great viewing. One of the bonus features that might help sell this to fans is the fact that Disc 1 comes complete with a full HD trailer of the new upcoming Star Trek movie ;)

As for the episodes themselves, they are simply breathtaking. Given a full and loving restoration, this late 60s TV show easily out-classes the majority of more modern Blu-Rays in terms of picture quality. The ambient background lighting has been given more strength so the Enterprise is no longer just a grey industrial walled area, instead having streams of red, green and purple covering otherwise dull grey bulkheads. One of the features over the HD-DVD is the ability to also view the episodes with the original 60s special effects. The main issue with this is that they've not been restored at all, which ruined an otherwise very excellent feature (You can switch between original and new effects by pressing the angle button). The CGI effects look great, even having a little more polish than the HD-DVD version (Operation: Annihilate especially improving).

For anyone who is a fan of Star Trek, or is just looking for something to stun their mates with how exceptional Blu-Ray really can be over DVD, look no further than this gem of a collection. For best results, try Balance of Terror, the detail in that episode really shines as the best of this collection.

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BBC Earth

This is by FAR the best bluray disc out there I have seen.

I purchased this bluray because I saw it playing on a demo TV in the local JB HiFi and I was blown away, and only got it as a benchmark to test all footage and bluray on my TV.

Doesn't matter if you are a doco fan or not, this Bluray compilation of the popular BBC series narrated as always by the easily excitable David Attenbrough; is one of the greatest Bluray discs available on the commerical market today. The stunning cinematography takes advantage of the HD format and presents us with one of the clearest and most beautiful documentary series ever produced.

From the deep sea's of the Atlantic to the high mountains of China, you can see why these chose to release this in a High Definition format. It's look phenominal on a widescreen. The opening shot of the sun slowly illuminating the earth from space in its own is enough to stimulate a sense of awe and amazement of just how rich and stunning this disc set is. In terms of extra's, be prepared to be let down, but the main package itself is well worth the price, and without a shadow of doubt, anyone who owns a Bluray player or PS3 should invest in this wonderful series.

Edited by Hawkz
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Sin City

Despite it's often simplistic black and white tones and the odd shot only consisting of black and white outlines, the majority of Sin City merges this comic book simplicity with sharp detailed CG and even sharper film quality. This, merged with the striking colours splashed across the film make it a very sharp film. The Blu-Ray simply makes this striking film a hundred times better, including extended scenes and the ability to watch the film in it's original theatrical style (All merged together) or each as in individual story. The HD quality allows the black and white areas to be filled with detail and depth, while allowing the striking colour to come out in much more depth than before. If you own Blu-Ray, you gotta own this film.

16 Blocks

Bruce Willis and Mos Def in what must be one of the most overlooked but quality films of the last several years. Bruce Willis plays an old cop, wrought with loneliness, depression and guilt which is then made worse by alcoholism. To put it simply, he's in rough shape. The Blu-Ray emphasises this point by really showing how horrendous he looks. The detail is exceptional, bringing out all the wrinkles and bad skin on Willis' face. This isn't just singled out for Willis, the entire film is crisp and the detail really helps the action sequences build more effectively. The sound is also top quality, really emphasising the action on screen effectively. A superb Blu-Ray.

Beowulf and Grendel

Don't know how many people here watch stuff based on the more historical periods (I'm going to guess at only a small few) but regardless I'll write about Beowulf and Grendel. Bear in mind this ISN'T the film Beowulf which was CGI and starred Angelina Jolie and Ray Winstone. This is the live action version starring Gerard Butler.

The Blu-Ray of this film is brilliant, with deep and detailed landscapes, meticulous detail on the costumes and some excellent character pieces, in HD you really do capture everything. The film itself tends to run on a washed out colour palette (The way it was filmed and intended to be seen). While it still looks superb in terms of detail, the lack of bold colour in places really stops the film from being overtly striking. It can be argued that the sort of deep colour HD provides would remove some character and atmosphere from the movie, in fact I can guarantee that would be the arguement of the director/cinematographer. Nonetheless it seems a slight shame for it to be missing. However since that was an artistic decision not an issue of HD, and the picture quality is superb, this really is a class movie on BD.

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Reservoir Dogs

Okay quality. Reservoir Dogs is a stylish film, and Blu-Ray allows it the detail it needs to show off every facial move, every character building look or motion to really build up an effective visual film. Alot of this detail is there, unfortunately though the film is not fully restored. There are infrequent spes of irt shooting across the screen, the colours are washed out (And not in a good way) too much for my liking and the visuals crisp finish looks like someone pressed the Sharpen tool on Paintshop one too many times. That being said, these dust particles are infrequent and the image is very clear. I just think this film could have used some restoration. It also comes packed with tonnes of extras.

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