SUCCESS = REPETITION
Sometimes a film can be like a parasite burrowing further inside of you until it finally reaches your cold mechanical heart, where it builds a nest. Like a quality hooker, part of having a personal affection for a film is about coming back for more and things still standing up. That means rewatching on home video and if you’re a tech enthusiast with cash to invest, that’s probably going to mean Home Cinema.
Unlike a melted T3 DVD, Blu Ray is an over-hyped but under-valued medium – it means we can watch movies at home on a big screen (>50″) but with cinema projector-like quality. We can also enjoy sound quality which is a digital copy of the original recordings (like comparing CD to MP3). BRAVO! Now our love for a few precious movie gems can grow and blossom inside of us like a xenomorphic parasite as we rewatch them over and over again (with a cinema-like experience) until they burst through our skin like a spot and pour all over us leaving us feeling like a jellied but satisfied eel. Or… we can enjoy The Strause Brothers’ latest soul destroying snooze-fest without having to put up with those tracksuit wearing, back of the seat kicking, acid spitting chavs…unless I invite them back to my house for a cuddle and a Magners.
A TO B – an art in itself
Chance would be a fine thing. You see the process of getting the final mastered film into digital reproduction requires a human element. I may be a cold and mechanical yet functional object but I’m sure even I could have done a better job at transferring John McTiernan’s jungle-sci-fi-action romp Predator than the effort on the Ultimate Hunter Edition. Look at this!
Davis Entertainment: Predator (on loan from Madam Tussauds)
Why does Dillon look like he just walked out of Madam Tussauds? Because the technician has applied a ludicrous amount of Digital Noise Reduction which has scrubbed the image to such an extent that all the detail is lost, much like the point. Now, I don’t wanna get silly about whether you can pick out a particular hair on someone’s arm but if there a noticeable difference or even worse, the feel of the film is changed because of some post-production work which is applied decades after the film was in the cinema….well… then I’m cross! ‘Blow you out the god damn airlock’ cross.
CAMERON – Come back to Earth, we miss you!
I LOVE James Cameron’s late ’80s/early ’90s movies. I love them like a son or a particularly amazing dog (such as Biolab’s dog F*I*S*T*). Terminator, Aliens, The Abyss, T2. All great. But now I hear that Cameron is about to release a remastered version of Aliens on Blu Ray. The film stock that they used has turned out to be quite rubbish so to get a decent picture Cameron and the colourist he “worked with for Avatar” has “de-noised it, de-grained it, up-rezzed and color-corrected every frame”. Now I don’t know about you, but I’m worried that a film that I love is about to be stomped on – probably more worried than what might happen with The Thing or Alien prequels (because if they’re rubbish I can just ignore them). I know I’ll buy Aliens AGAIN, so that I can enjoy it on my big screen and enjoy the wonderful immersive detail but I don’t want Aliens to look like Avatar – an all CGI, fluorescent wax works.
Seriously can’t you take a step back from this Avatar thing? For what it is, it’s OK but move on. Why not make something low key but which still has punch? I mean we’re now being treated to an extended cut of Avatar in the cinemas (so that they can continue making money after it was pulled due to contractual obligations) but there’s talk of an even longer cut “to wallow in” being made available on Home Video. Enough is enough – don’t make us the editor by putting everything you shot onto disc and telling us to sort it. Make a decision – you’re the director.
Oh…..yeah did you guys also hear the there’s going to be a Blu Ray release of the Star Wars Saga? My god, George Lucas is now 27 years away from when he was onto a good thing. When the films felt real enough that the fantasy element was immersive. God only knows what those releases will look like – one thing’s for sure though – he’s sticking with the 2004 editions as it was “too expensive” to restore and transfer the originals. Pfffft. Something tells me that we’ll never again get to enjoy the original Star Wars Trilogy as we remember it and on a big screen – yours, mine or your local Megaplex.
Blu(e) regards,
Airlock
p.s. I also hear vibrations over the web that there’s to be a rerelease of the Back To The Future Trilogy on Blu Ray and also a rerelease of the first installment to the cinema. Let’s make like a tree and keep our fingers firmly jammed up our backsides for this.
Pablum from the (bio)Lablum 