New to Blu Ray is our monthly look at the latest Blu Ray releases. This month we look at new films like Inception and The Expendables, cable shows like Deadwood and classic TV like Doctor Who.
Inception
Well, Inception looks great on Blu-ray. News flash, I know, but at least we can confirm all the forces came together on this one. Between Warner Brothers’ attention to their catalog and I’m sure Christopher Nolan’s insistence on high quality, I don’t have to nit pick about Inception.
All of the scenes look perfectly clear, and this is a movie with several different aesthetic looks for specific purposes. Every scenario of the film looks equally good, whether it’s the rainy streets, the tilting hotel room, the practice dream or the snowy mountaintops. You get crisp detail of rain drops, snow tracks, etc.
The lighting is beautiful too. You can really notice how the light shines on the characters for direct purposes. The visual effects blend into the reality and hold up in high definition, so you won’t be jarred when you see bridges assemble before your eyes or sidewalk cafes explode with debris. It’s all just part of the stunning vision presented on Blu-ray.
Devil
For a movie set in an elevator and dark shafts, Devil doesn’t look too bad. The picture holds up in low light. Certainly the shaft scene could be the trickiest but you see where the hapless technician is lowering himself down. The elevator itself remains clear.
There aren’t a whole lot of HD details to see, but you’ll notice smudges on the elevator door and scuffs in the shaft. There’s lots of sweat and crusted blood as the movie wears on, but mainly it just holds up reasonably so you can watch the film on an HDTV.
The Sorcerer’s Apprentice
Nicolas Cage’s action movie version of the Fantasia short looks like the Jerry Bruckheimer Blu-ray it is. It’s not just high definition, it’s hyper definition. You see all the gritty detail in the New York City locations and all the visual effects the magicians conjure up.
It’s so extreme, you sometimes notice pixels trying to keep up with the picture. Clarity isn’t really the right word. It’s a highly attuned picture that pumps any color or detail up to ultra levels. Scenes like Chinatown are color overload and the sorcerer’s laboratory is a grimy, gritty fantasia itself.
The Expendables
The Expendables on Blu-ray has that gritty modern day look. You see all the stubble, sweat and muscle in a clear picture. There’s a faint hint of grain to show you that even the cameras were gritty. The picture holds up during the fast moving, quick cutting action scenes so you can always see all the gritty detail.
The color is nice. It’s not quite ultra vibrant because that wouldn’t be gritty, but the South American settings look realistically tropical. The industrial settings in the city and the dark brick tunnels hold up well in the light, and provide a nice backdrop for all the explosions. You see the color and the picture stays clear. A few shots might haze up but only briefly and it’s minor.
Hard Boiled
The Dragon Dynasty Blu-ray of this John Woo classic does a great job with a source that was always rough to begin with. Back in the ‘90s, Hong Kong didn’t take good care of it’s movies. They’d release them all scratched up and dirty, and that’s how they’d stay on video.
The Blu-ray preserves the scratches and dirt that were always a part of the film, but still bring the whole picture up to HD quality. You see the detail in the shootouts and the scenes are clear. They’re just clear with scratches and spots peppered around. There are even some nice bright blues and orange/reds. It’s an authentic combination of high definition and historical preservation.
Salt
For a brand new release, Salt looks really not very good. Sure, most of the scenes look normal for Blu-ray, nothing special but clear. A surprising number of shots look rough and speckled with a white haze though.
Part of it is because there are so many flashbacks shot with a different look, so they can’t all hold up. I think another major part is that so much of the film is shot handheld. With the camera shaking so much, it probably can’t pick up enough light to create a decent picture.
Fantasia/Fantasia 2000
Look, we all have different uses for these collections of animated shorts. I’m not going to judge you, but let’s say you’re viewing these films from some sort of altered perspective. I’m just going to tell you how awesome they look on Blu-ray, and you can experience for yourself how much they may or may not blow your fragile minds.
Like the best of the classic Hollywood releases, they’ve managed to take away any grain from the old film source of Fantasia. It looks like these hand drawn images are moving around in real space, and you see the detail of all the brush strokes in the backgrounds adding some texture. The colors are so bright they achieve a level that simply didn’t exist in 1940 paint, but now they do in the digital world. The live-action bits with the band are pretty unreal too.
Fantasia 2000 expands to the full HD frame (the original was standard 4:3.) With more recent materials, it looks even more like a real word reproduction of animation. Some of its visuals look downright three dimensional on a flat screen. The 2D animation still has an unreal color purity. The live-action bits, with more celebrity interplay, are Blu-ray clear segments that look like the stars are in your living room.
Shrek: The Whole Story
With all four Shrek films in one collection, you can see how far the series came technologically. Even the first film looks great, as this was a solid five years into the computer animation game. You can see all the little details the artists would put in the costumes and the backgrounds. But you can see how it doesn’t quite hold up to hi-def standards.
In Shrek 1 you can see little hints of digital fuzz, like the pixels are trying to hold the picture together when they were made for a lower resolution format (either VHS or celluloid.) It’s just a subtle little distinction that demonstrate the gap in technology. Shrek 2 already smooths out the whole picture and shows a vast improvement in the detail and color. Night scenes show where they can achieve all the detail and deep pigment even when it’s not all bright and multi-color.
Shrek the Third fits in with Shrek 2 and creates more scenes to show off the dynamic dark ranges, with caves and stormy seas to portray. Shrek Forever After looks the best, although we’re talking degrees here. Maybe because it comes from a 3D source, they had two sets of HD images to pull from. Or maybe just the dark alternative reality creates a Mad Max apocalypse landscape. Whatever the reason, you’ll be able to notice details in each film, and maybe go Fantasia on the colors, on Blu-ray.
The Wiz
The Motown version of The Wizard of Oz might not be the signature catalog title for Universal that the original one is for Warner Brothers, but it’s a very good looking Blu-ray. Like the best Blu-rays of ‘70s movies, The Wiz has a perfectly clear picture so you can see every little detail, like it’s not even from film. You’re just looking into the hip disco Oz.
It makes this version of Oz even weirder. The Michael Jackson scarecrow is in some gritty industrial space and the tin man makeup is super creepy when you can every bit of rust. You can see the seam in the studio backdrop, but I like those little revealing details. I never thought Oz was real so I’m happy to see how they made it. They certainly got the colors right so the yellow, red, green and gold totally glow on Blu-ray.
Deadwood: The Complete Series
HBO’s western series is a solid Blu-ray. It was produced just before they were thinking of long term HD preservation. It was probably enough for broadcast but shows a little softness on Blu-ray. Dark interiors grain up like decades old film that can’t get any better, but sunlit trails and town streets hold up. You’ll see all the detail in the beat up, tattered costumes, weathered old frontier town and dusty/muddy streets.
By the last disc of the set, the picture seems to improve. You’ll still see some grain or haze in a really dark scene but the overall picture seems crisper. It’s common for series to improve in quality, like they invest in stronger materials. Season three episodes look a tad brighter too.
Doctor Who: The Complete Fifth Series
The Matt Smith episodes make solid Blu-rays. There’s a lot packed into the frame whether it’s actual set or visual effect. I think you can distinctly tell where the set ends and the green screen begins, but maybe that’s part of the charm. Well lit sets and exteriors have perfect clarity and bright colors, like the best of modern HD.
More visual effects heavy shots or more experimentally lit scenes are harder to maintain. You may see some haze, but even more than that it’s like there’s something wrong with the light in those shots. It’s like the light de-particle-izes as it hits the subjects. It’s like a combination of slightly cheesy effect and not quite holding up in high definition, so ultimately very Dr. Who even when it’s not totally clear.
Twilight Zone: Volume 2
When Star Trek came out on Blu-Ray, the first season was an amazing HD revelation. The picture got so clear you could see detail that shouldn’t even have existed in old television footage. Then they did the second and third seasons and they just looked like cranked out transfers, okay but not hyper clear like the first.
The Twilight Zone did the same high definition quality for old black and white footage, only they kept it up for the second season. Once again, the clarity is so unreal you see more detail in black and white than you usually notice in color. There is the odd episode (“Twenty Two”) that looks like it came from video, but if that’s the only source they had, okay. The rest of the episodes look fantastic.
Meet the Parents/Meet the Fockers
The good thing about sequels is that whenever they come out, they put the originals out on Blu-ray. Not that we were clamoring for high definition transfers of the Focker comedies but I’ll still take ‘em.
Parents has a sort of smooth gloss that keeps it looking like a transferred film. Sort of like home video, not quite theatrical because there’s no grain. The picture holds up on a large screen, and I don’t think there are any major details to notice in the suburban setting.
Fockers actually looks more like film. You definitely see grain, although sometimes it seems like digital pixels. It really pushes the colors so the greens and reds are super loud. Either way, both films look okay so you can watch them in the new format.
Knight and Day
So I guess Fox is putting unskippable intros on their Blu-rays now. That’s not cool, but the new HD logo looks nice.
The latest Tom Cruiser has that ultra saturated look on Blu-ray. It’s clear, but it pushes the color to the extreme so sometimes you see those little color particles. It definitely keeps the pretty faces and ripped bodies looking smooth.
The visual effects blend in nicely. All those fast paced action scenes where Tom Cruise is nearly crushed by flying cars actually look real, so the elements blend with this look. The exotic locations look good in this transfer too.
Flipped
I’m going to highly recommend you give this childhood romance movie a chance. It’s not the sappy chick flick you may think. It’s more like a Stand By Me portrait of growing up, but without the corpse. Set in 1960, the film has an old time look that reproduces well on Blu-ray, thought not quite like Mad Men.
The ‘60s suburbs are more green with a yellow light than the crisp black and white of Mad Men. Also this Blu-ray looks like it’s not quite all there. It’s clear and bright and detailed, but the light seems a little bit off. Maybe they didn’t quite push it all the way, or maybe Rob Reiner has some obscure artistic vision.
The Last Airbender
For the M. Night defenders like me, we can actually see his latest controversy clearly on Blu-ray. Without fake 3-D glasses, the epic shots clearly. They actually look more dimensional in flat HD than the theatrical post-conversion. Shyamalan’s steady camera creates smooth shots full of visual wonder.
There’s total detail in the natural terrains, from icy snow to rocky earth lands to rippling oceans. Sets like the battleship and the ice castle are full of fine detail constructed by artists and maybe some post-production. The colors of the elements keep the CGI fire, dust and water looking real. The whole widescreen frame remains crisply clear. I recommend you give the story a chance too but we’re just talking about the HD transfer here.
