The following articles were previously published on HighDefDigest.com between 2007-2009. Although the web site still exists, the current owners have unfortunately purged all old HD DVD reviews.

These articles should be read in context of the time they were originally written. Technical standards may have risen in the meantime. (In particular, I know that I revisited Tideland a decade later and was much less impressed with the video transfer quality.) Writing styles and tastes also may have evolved as the author matured.

INDEX:

• 1408
• Carlito’s Way
• Death Proof
• Into the Wild
• Resident Evil
• Resident Evil: Apocalypse – Extended Cut
• Star Trek: The Original Series – Season 1
• Stardust
• Tideland
• The Triplets of Belleville

1408

Reviewed by Joshua Zyber. Published Feb. 29, 2008.

“Where is the bone-chilling terror? Show me the rivers of blood. It’s just a room.”

Early in 1408, the main character makes note that the individual digits in the titular hotel room add up to a total of 13, the famously unlucky number. In the spirit of cinematic math, 1408 itself amounts to about 3/4 of a really good horror movie and 1/4 of a pretty bad one.

The film is based on a Stephen King short story that had been previously published as part of both audiobook (Blood and Smoke) and written (Everything’s Eventual) compilations. Between his novels, novellas, short stories, audio recordings, web-books, non-fiction, epic poems, limericks, and haikus, the author has written on average 867 stories a year for the past 30 years, so it stands to reason that he’s going to repeat himself every so often. This tale of a haunted hotel room that drives its inhabitants crazy shares more than a passing resemblance to The Shining, but fortunately has enough clever twists of its own to keep things fresh.

John Cusack stars as Mike Enslin, a cynical author stuck in a rut of churning out travelogue guides to supposedly haunted vacation spots. The writer himself doesn’t believe in ghosts or monsters, and is completely jaded about his career, cashing the paychecks on a book tour attended by few. Lured to the Dolphin Hotel in New York City, whose room 1408 has a checkered history of murders, suicides, and unusual deaths both natural and unnatural, Enslin begins the trip with his typical skepticism but is quickly intrigued by the ominous warnings from hotel manager Mr. Olin (Samuel L. Jackson). Convinced that it’s all an act designed to build a mystique around the hotel, Enslin cajoles his way into a night’s stay in the room despite being told that no previous guest has ever made it more than an hour.

Once inside, the author is disappointed to discover how dreary and bland Room 1408 appears. There are no spooky cobwebs hanging from rafters, no impenetrable shadows in every corner, and no vampire bats circling the ceiling. It’s just a hotel room, with a bed, a TV, and the usual accoutrements, the same as any other. But there is something not quite right about it, and it doesn’t take long before scary developments start occurring. Mints appear on Mike’s pillow from out of nowhere. The toilet paper roll restocks itself when he’s not looking. It begins with little things at first, just enough to make him think that this is all perhaps an elaborate prank by the hotel’s staff, until the room becomes decidedly more aggressive in its tactics and refuses to let him leave. And then all hell breaks loose.

For about 90 minutes or so, director Mikael Håfström (Derailed) does an extremely effective job building up the eerie claustrophobic atmosphere and psychological terrors. He has an arresting visual style, and when the room reveals its true evil nature, the shock effects are both inventive and unsettling. Samuel Jackson is suitably creepy in what turns out to be a bit part, but the movie is practically a one-man show for John Cusack, who burrows down deep into the character’s personality as the cocky and snide writer is forced to confront the demons of his past. It’s a very good performance, and the movie would fall utterly apart if he didn’t carry it so capably.

During most of its length, the film pulls all the elements together to overcome the more hokey or derivative aspects of its story. Sadly, a misjudged plot twist takes us away from the main action for a long stretch near the end, and the outcome of this diversion is far too predictable and cheesy. The movie never really recovers, and the last 15 minutes or so just seem to drag on forever. It’s clear the filmmakers weren’t sure how to wrap up the movie, and this Director’s Cut has about 5 or 6 false endings before the credits finally come up. The finale that the director eventually settled on for this version is a little darker in tone and slightly more satisfying than the theatrical cut, but neither one works particularly well, which is a shame considering how strong the rest of the picture is.

Even so, 1408 is for the most part a smartly made little shocker that relies more on the psychology of its character than on overdone visual effects, which is a refreshing change of pace these days. Flaws aside, it’s also one of the better Stephen King adaptations of recent years.

THE HD DVD: VITAL DISC STATS

The North American distribution rights to 1408 are held by The Weinstein Company, a studio that has been sitting out the high-definition race for the past year. Fortunately, Dutch Filmworks in the Netherlands has brought the film to both HD DVD and Blu-ray. Both discs are region-free and should function in American playback hardware. (It’s been reported that the bonus features on the Blu-ray version may have some compatibility issues, but everything works fine on the HD DVD.)

The disc starts with an unskippable copyright warning, then jumps right to the movie without a main menu. All pop-up menus are written in English text. Dutch subtitles appear by default, but can be easily turned off. The HD DVD contains only the 113-minute Director’s Cut of the film, not the 104-minute theatrical cut.

THE VIDEO: SIZING UP THE PICTURE

 The movie is presented in its original 2.35:1 theatrical aspect ratio, which seems like an odd artistic choice for such a claustrophobic story, but director Håfström makes it work, framing his shots to emphasize the isolation of the main character in his environment. The 1080p/VC-1 transfer on this Dutch disc has only one significant flaw: the opening credit text and all of the end credits appear very jaggy, as though they’d been poorly compressed. I didn’t notice this problem anywhere else in the movie other than the credit text. Otherwise, the image has very impressive detail and colors, as well as rich contrasts for a nice sense of depth. Light film grain is present in some scenes (a few are grainier than others for effect), but is always well digitized and never looks unnecessarily noisy. Flesh tones may look a little yellowish in the hotel lobby and hallways, but that’s clearly a result of the film’s lighting in those scenes, not a video transfer flaw. Colors elsewhere are vibrant and natural.

Other than the credit text issue, 1408 has a very film-like appearance and makes for a surprisingly effective high-definition showcase.

THE AUDIO: RATING THE SOUND

The movie’s soundtrack, available in either Dolby Digital 5.1 or lossless DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1, is also pretty darn good. The mix makes unsettling use of creepy ambient noises in the surround channels, including numerous discrete directional effects. There’s also a decent amount of low-end activity in the sounds of thunder and other shock scares. Dialogue sometimes comes across a little flat, but fidelity on the whole is well represented. I wouldn’t necessarily rate this among the best audio I’ve heard on a high-def disc, but it gets the job done nicely and has no serious flaws.

The disc offers only Dutch subtitles, without any other language or subtitle options.

THE SUPPLEMENTS: DIGGING INTO THE GOOD STUFF

Aside from the theatrical cut of the film, most of the bonus features from the 2-Disc Collector’s Edition DVD have made their way to the HD DVD as well. While the feature is encoded with VC-1 compression, all of the supplements use AVC MPEG-4.

• Audio Commentary – Director Mikael Håfström is joined by screenwriters Scott Alexander and Larry Karaszewski (Golden Globe nominees for their didactic script to The People vs. Larry Flynt, but somehow overlooked for such classics as That Darn Cat, Agent Cody Banks, and the entire Problem Child series) for this often self-congratulatory but generally worthwhile commentary track. Topics of discussion include the evolution of the script, the original Stephen King short story, shooting in London, and changes made for the Director’s Cut (which both writers are watching for the first time). Oddly, even though the director admits to being influenced by Stanley Kubrick’s 2001, he barely acknowledges any similarities to The Shining.
• Alternate Endings (SD, 10 min.) – Although the theatrical cut is not available on this HD DVD, its original, happier ending is one of the options found here in the supplement package. It doesn’t work any better than the Director’s Cut. A third version has a much longer and more drawn-out resolution that wastes too much time tying up loose ends.
• Deleted Scenes (SD, 11 min.) – These five short scenes wouldn’t have added much to the narrative, but the one where the room’s center of gravity goes all wonky is kind of cool.
• The Characters (SD, 8 min.) – EPK interviews with the director and cast about the development of the room as a character, and how happy everyone was to be working together.
• The Director (SD, 5 min.) – More of the above, focused on Håfström’s directorial style.
• Production Design (SD, 5 min.) – An overview of the work needed to make the room look “ordinary but not boring.” The film’s Production Designer has some interesting things to say about his use of color and careful integration of lighting.
• Physical Effects (SD, 4 min.) – A look at the water tank set needed for the flooding scene and the hydraulic lifts used to tilt the room (for a scene eventually deleted).
• Trailer (HD, 2 min.) – A lame ad that doesn’t sell the film very well.

Also included are some trailers for other unrelated titles from the studio.

THE CUTTING ROOM FLOOR: WHAT DIDN’T MAKE THE HD DVD?

The most glaring omission from the 2-Disc Collector’s Edition DVD is the theatrical cut of the film. Beyond that, some fluffy EPK interview pieces called “Webisodes” are also missing.

FINAL THOUGHTS

A better-than-average Stephen King adaptation, 1408 overcomes its derivative premise with strong performances and atmospheric direction, even if it does go off the rails at the end (what Stephen King story doesn’t?). This Dutch import HD DVD has excellent picture and very good sound, as well as almost all of the bonus features from the 2-disc DVD. Recommended.

Carlito’s Way

Reviewed by Joshua Zyber. Published Oct. 29, 2007.

There’s a scene early in Carlito’s Way that effectively encapsulates Brian De Palma’s career as a filmmaker. The lead character Carlito Brigante visits a seedy pool hall to accompany his naïve young cousin on a drug deal with some shady local thugs. Sensing that something is amiss, Carlito tries to play it cool while scoping out the environment, analyzing the positions of everyone in the room and plotting their next moves. Claiming that he wants to demonstrate a trick shot at the pool table, he carefully rearranges the details of the scene — the balls on the table, the pool cue he’s holding, the people he’s talking to — and lines everything up perfectly so that he can use the reflection off one person’s sunglasses to view what’s happening behind him. And then, just as the baddies launch the attack he anticipated, Carlito reveals the true purpose of his “trick shot” and leaps into action using all of the elements he’s prepared. The sequence is staged with elegance, precision, and nail-biting suspense. In it, Carlito becomes Brian De Palma, directing the scene like a delicate game of dominoes, laying out his pieces with nervous tension and watching them fall into place exactly as he planned. Any tiny misstep would cause the entire thing to fall apart, but when executed properly it becomes a moment of exquisite beauty.

This is the nature of all of De Palma’s films. He adores the set-up of a scene and the anticipation of something happening just as much as the payoff when it finally comes. At times, the director proves himself more game master than storyteller. All too often, especially when he writes his own scripts for movies like Body Double or Raising Cain, the result is a dopey plot that serves only to deliver a handful of brilliant set-pieces. Taken on their own, these scenes are cinematic genius, but when viewed in context aren’t enough to save dumb movies from their other failings. When matched with the proper material, however, De Palma’s technical proficiency, grand showmanship, and artistic sensibilities unite into a perfect formula for rousing populist entertainment, as they did in his greatest commercial and critical success with The Untouchables.

Though it has seldom received the same level of respect as The Untouchables, as far as I’m concerned Carlito’s Way is Brian De Palma’s best film to date. Al Pacino reunites with the director for the first time since their cult hit Scarface a decade earlier. At the time of the film’s release in 1993, the pair were accused in critical circles of merely retreading familiar ground, as if putting the two together in another story about Hispanic gangsters automatically made it the same movie. While it’s true that they were revisiting some of the same themes, the newer film is clearly a more mature and contemplative effort, positing the notion of what would happen to a young thug like Tony Montana had he lived to be a little older, a little wiser, and had time to reflect on the mistakes of his life.

Pacino’s character Carlito Brigante is a former two-bit street hustler recently released from prison and trying to straighten out his life, but who winds up falling back into old circles despite trying to climb his way out. He isn’t helped much at all in his attempts by lawyer Davey Kleinfeld (Sean Penn in a transformative performance), an old childhood friend now an unstable, paranoid coke fiend who demands that Carlito help him sort out some trouble he’s gotten into with the Mob. Yes, it’s true that the One Last Job plot is a familiar staple of the crime genre. At times, you expect to hear Pacino deliver his “Just when I thought I was out, they pull me back in!” line from The Godfather Part III. Nevertheless, a story that could have easily devolved into rote formula hackery is skillfully kept on track by its attention to atmosphere, detail, and nuances of character. Based on a pair of novels by author Edwin Torres and adapted seamlessly by screenwriter David Koepp, Carlito’s Way is one of the few De Palma movies that not only plays clever mind games, but also has a genuine soul.

Set in Spanish Harlem during the late 1970s, the film thrives on the specificity of its environment, each location and character personality vividly sketched. De Palma has enormous fun recreating the street life and disco nightclub scenes of the era, but doesn’t play them for camp. The soundtrack is filled with familiar oldies (carefully selected by music producer Jellybean Benitez) such as disco hits “Got to Be Real” and “(Shake Shake Shake) Shake Your Booty,” all played without irony. When Joe Cocker croons “You Are So Beautiful,” the song is at that moment an honest reflection of the characters’ emotions. And somehow it works, never turning into the ridiculous parody you’d expect.

Pacino delivers a terrific performance, surprisingly restrained in comparison to his over-the-top flamboyance in Scarface, or for that matter the grating showboating that won him an undeserved Oscar for Scent of a Woman the year before. He’s matched beat-for-beat by Sean Penn, practically unrecognizable beneath frizzy “Jewfro” hair and oversized glasses. Also turning up for supporting turns are Luis Guzman, Adrian Pasdar, and Viggo Mortensen, among others. John Leguizamo’s “Benny Blanco from the Bronx” is an indelibly memorable character.

On equal standing as a character in itself is De Palma’s filmmaking. The director has an unparalleled mastery of film language and widescreen photography, typically keeping every inch of the frame cluttered with important visual information. His restless camera glides through scenes, seductively floating and drifting from character to character in a playful dance, at every moment revealing just precisely the right bit of detail exactly when it needs to appear. During his famous action set-pieces, he has perfectionist control over every element on screen, where, when, and how they’re revealed to the characters and to the viewers. Not just the technique, but the viewers’ growing cognizance of the technique and how it’s employed, works flawlessly to maximize suspense and excitement in a way few other living directors can match.

Even so, during its release in 1993, Carlito’s Way was met with critical indifference and disappointing box office. At the time, De Palma had been riding a string of flops, including the notorious disaster The Bonfire of the Vanities, and his stock in Hollywood was at an ebb. Critics accused him not only of repeating Scarface, but of recycling many of his other familiar films. Indeed, there’s a subway chase in the movie that restages a similar sequence from Dressed to Kill, and a huge action scene set on an escalator at Grand Central Station that clearly calls back to the climax of The Untouchables (itself an allusion to Sergei Eisenstein’s Battleship Potemkin). In the eyes of some, this was De Palma simply reaching into an old bag of tricks, seemingly out of desperation.

Personally, I’ve never understood that view. De Palma has often used his movies to make explicit references to his favorite directors and films, be it the numerous Hitchcockian elements in his suspense thrillers of the ’70s and ’80s, that Potemkin scene in The Untouchables, or practically the entirety of Blow Out, a tribute to both Michelangelo Antonioni’s Blow-Up and Francis Coppola’s The Conversation. (He would also later borrow a scene from Topkapi for his 1996 Mission: Impossible, and lift extensively from 2001 during the dreadful Mission to Mars.) De Palma’s cinematic vocabulary is one that consists in large part of homage. To me, I see these parts of Carlito’s Way as a self-reflexive commentary on his own career and his directorial technique. More importantly, the scenes in question simply work in the new context, never feeling forced, stagy, or in any way inorganic to the movie.

Carlito’s Way runs 2 1/2 hours but never feels long. It’s perfectly paced, the suspense set-pieces effectively measured to punctuate the already compelling dramatic scenes. It’s a rich and rewarding work from a filmmaker who has admittedly been very uneven over the years, but who is here at the top of his game. The film may not have been appreciated enough in its day, but deserves recognition for the scope of its achievement.

THE HD DVD: VITAL DISC STATS

Universal Studios Home Entertainment has released Carlito’s Way on HD DVD. The disc has the studio’s usual generic menus with annoying beeping sounds that can be turned off if you’d like (who would want them on?), but only by scrolling through a bunch of other beeping options to get to that setting. The case art features Universal’s standard ugly swoosh borders.

THE VIDEO: SIZING UP THE PICTURE

Stephen Burum’s glorious 2.35:1 cinematography is replicated beautifully by this 1080p/VC-1 transfer. The opening black & white prologue sequence is marred by a disappointing amount of dirt and specks, but the source materials clear up after that. After the first scene, this is a very colorful movie, and the disc reproduces the rich, vivid colors (witness the deep reds of the pool hall walls) with precision. Black levels are also solid and have good shadow detail, lending the image an excellent sense of depth.

The photography can be a little on the soft side, owing to the choice of lenses used. As a result, the picture isn’t always necessarily razor sharp. However, it does have a satisfying amount of detail, far better than the DVD edition. Only on the HD DVD, for example, can you read the tiny initials sewn into Kleinfeld’s shirt cuffs. The disc has next to no edge ringing artifacts (perhaps a miniscule amount in one or two individual shots) or distracting digital compression issues. The CGI fog effect used during the Taglialucci rescue scene is a little dated, but don’t mistake the smeariness present there as a transfer flaw.

Although Universal has a hit-or-miss track record for catalog titles, this one is a “hit.”

THE AUDIO: RATING THE SOUND

Offered in Dolby Digital Plus or lossless Dolby TrueHD options, the Carlito’s Way soundtrack has never had a particularly showy mix in terms of zinging surround effects or slamming bass action. However, it has nice musical fidelity in both Patrick Doyle’s score and all of the period songs, as well as clear dialogue and crisp sound effects. Gunshots have a clean pop with a little bit of satisfying low-end thump. While the soundtrack may not be an action movie rollercoaster that will shake the foundation of anyone’s house, it impresses in the clarity of subtle audio details, such as the convincing ambient atmosphere that envelops the room during scenes inside the disco or strip club. I probably wouldn’t pull this disc out as an audio showcase to demo for friends, but the sound quality is consistently engaging and suits the movie well.

THE SUPPLEMENTS: DIGGING INTO THE GOOD STUFF

All of the bonus features from the 2005 Ultimate Edition DVD release have been carried over to the HD DVD. You’d think there might be more of them for something supposedly “ultimate.”

• Brian De Palma on Carlito’s Way (5 min., SD) – This short introduction consists of interview soundbytes in which the director, a man who’s built a career out of imitating his idol Alfred Hitchcock and paying deliberate homage to his favorite old movies time and again, hypocritically complains about the new generation of filmmakers whose movies are pastiches of other movies. He also lashes out like a prima donna at all the film critics, especially web critics, who’ve ever written anything unkind about him.
• Deleted Scenes (8 min., SD) – A series of 9 short scenes or scene extensions presented in awful workprint quality. None of them were really essential to the story (a scene of Carlito and Davey stumbling around drunk doesn’t work at all), but it’s nice to see a little extra footage of Luis Guzman in some of these bits.
• The Making of Carlito’s Way (35 min., SD) – A very good documentary by Laurent Bouzereau that features interviews with De Palma, author Edwin Torres, producer Martin Bregman, and screenwriter David Koepp. Torres discusses the autobiographical aspects to his novels. Bregman mentions that an early script draft (not by Koepp) was awful, but Pacino was drawn to the character anyway. And Koepp describes the difficulties of adapting two separate books into one coherent movie. (The finished product borrows more from the second novel, After Hours.)
• Original Promotional Featurette (5 min., SD) – A thick slice of vintage Electronic Press Kit cheese.
• Theatrical Trailer (2 min., SD) – This is a decent enough trailer (extensively lifting the musical score from Born on the Fourth of July) that recaps the essentials of the movie’s plot, but is not the Pacino-focused teaser that I remember quite vividly from 1993.
• Photo & Poster Gallery – Technically, the still images here have been re-encoded into a high-definition resolution using VC-1. However, the images themselves only occupy a tiny portion of the screen, thus negating that advantage.

FINAL THOUGHTS

Carlito’s Way is an excellent movie, perhaps the best in Brian De Palma’s career. The HD DVD has very nice picture and sound, even if the bonus features don’t amount to much. The disc comes highly recommended.

Death Proof

Reviewed by Joshua Zyber. Published Jan. 21, 2009

When they played together as part of the Grindhouse double-feature in 2007, Robert Rodriguez’s monster movie Planet Terror and Quentin Tarantino’s car chase epic Death Proof divided many fans. The majority of viewers preferred the Rodriguez half, with many of them leveling some downright scathing criticism on Tarantino’s entry. Part of the problem is that the two films are very tonally different. While Planet Terror is a goofy B-movie that’s action-packed from start to finish and never takes itself seriously, Death Proof is… well… it’s a Quentin Tarantino film. The picture is extremely talky, complexly structured, and takes its time building up steam. A lot of time.

Conceptually, the two features were actually well-matched in Grindhouse. B-movie double-features of the 1970s often paired together such radically different films that had nothing to do with one another. But there’s no denying that Planet Terror sets a certain expectation that Death Proof more or less deflates. I wonder how audiences would have reacted had the order been re-arranged? On the other hand, Death Proof builds to an incredibly rousing finale that sends the double-bill out on a high note, and seems better positioned at the back-end for that reason.

Much like Planet Terror, Death Proof isn’t really a grindhouse B-movie. It’s Quentin Tarantino’s interpretation of what grindhouse B-movies should have been, filtered through his own sensibilities. The film starts on a languid, hot summer night in Austin, TX. A trio of young babes led by a radio DJ and local celebrity called Jungle Julia (Sydney Tamaiia Poitier) are out on the town trawling bars, getting drunk, and smoking weed, all the while endlessly talking about the sort of things that Quentin Tarantino characters usually talk about — in other words, pop culture touchstones that are both meaningless and deeply imbued with personal relevance at the same time. In this case, the main topic of conversation is music of the 1970s, Julia’s particular expertise.

At some point, Stuntman Mike (Kurt Russell) introduces himself. The girls sum him up pretty quickly as a middle-aged hanger-on, a little pathetic in his attempt to impress the ladies with his dubious Hollywood connections and a jacket adorned with sponsorship labels from the likes of IcyHot and Husky. Yet there’s also something strangely charismatic about him, mixed with no small measure of creepiness. They don’t give him a lot of thought and eventually say their good-byes expecting to never see him again, but Stuntman Mike has other plans for the evening. 

This first storyline takes a long time to get going. In fact, in this Extended and Unrated version, Stuntman Mike doesn’t make his intentions known until a full 45 minutes into the picture, after which the story comes to a shocking and swift conclusion, and then the movie switches gears and jumps forward more than a year in time. The second half focuses on an entirely new set of characters on break from a film shoot in Tennessee. There’s the actress (Mary Elizabeth Winstead), the makeup artist (Rosario Dawson), and two stuntwomen (Tracie Thoms and Zoë Bell, the latter actually playing herself). Similarly to the first act, the ladies spend a lot of time hanging out and bullshitting, primarily about famous movie car chases and Zoë’s obsession with driving a “1970 Dodge Challenger with 440 engine and white paint job” just like the one in Vanishing Point. Stuntman Mike is once again on the prowl, and has some ideas for a day’s entertainment that the women won’t be expecting.

Here’s the thing about Death Proof. On a first viewing, the movie can feel incredibly frustrating in the way the story is laid out. However, at the conclusion (and especially clear in repeated viewings), the structure is kind of brilliant in its way. Tarantino spends a considerable amount of time setting viewer expectations for what type of movie they’re watching, only to pull the rug out halfway through. Then he sets it up again seemingly to do the exact same thing, but turns the tables in the last act with a lengthy and, to be blunt about it, fucking amazing car chase – staged entirely without CGI or other visual effects bullshit, just real cars and real stuntpeople moving very fast – that blows the roof off the whole movie and is quite simply the most purely enjoyable thing that Quentin Tarantino has ever directed.

Although I realize that I’m in the minority with this opinion, I liked Death Proof a lot more than Planet Terror. Of the two, it’s also the one that holds up the best as its own movie separated from Grindhouse. The Extended version adds nearly half an hour of new footage, most of it substantive changes that help to flesh out the characters and story. Among other things, Arlene’s lap dance has been restored, along with a significant amount of material for the Lee character. However, Lee’s storyline is still left hanging without resolution, and I remain disappointed that Tarantino missed the opportunity to cut back to it for a quick wrap-up during the end credits.

In the final analysis, Death Proof is perhaps Tarantino’s weakest film as director so far. The movie functions best as it was originally intended, as part of the Grindhouse double-feature, which was a greater achievement than either of its parts individually. Nonetheless, it’s an entertaining B-movie homage that stands up pretty well on its own.

And Zoë Bell rocks. I just had to say that.

THE HD DVD: VITAL DISC STATS

Rumor has it that Senator Home Entertainment in Germany originally planned to release Death Proof on HD DVD in mid-2008, and pressed the discs at that time. Due to contractual red tape, the studio was prevented from releasing the movie on any high-definition format until The Weinstein Company did so in the U.S. first, which has only happened recently with Blu-ray edition of the movie. If the story is true, these HD DVD copies were sitting in a warehouse for half a year or more, and are only now being released, essentially just for the hell of it. Senator has also released their own comparable Blu-ray edition of the movie at the same time.

If this really is to be the final HD DVD, I suppose Death Proof is an ironic choice of title for the format’s death throes. Unfortunately, the other half of the Grindhouse double-bill (Robert Rodriguez’s Planet Terror) is not scheduled for release on HD DVD.

For what it’s worth, the Death Proof HD DVD is a pretty nice collectible. The disc comes packaged in a fancy Steelbook case and has A/V quality and bonus features on par with the domestic editions of the film. The disc’s menus are entirely in German, but not too difficult to navigate. Even though the movie defaults to a German dub soundtrack, the original English can also be selected from the menus. The German subtitles are optional and can be turned off entirely.

The HD DVD format has no region coding. The Death Proof disc will work in any American HD DVD player.

THE VIDEO: SIZING UP THE PICTURE

Although it may have been authored months earlier using a different compression codec, the Death Proof HD DVD looks virtually identical to the domestic Blu-ray edition. The 1080p/VC-1 transfer (also presented in the movie’s 2.35:1 theatrical aspect ratio) is extremely faithful to the intended style, and has a very natural, film-like appearance. Detail is strong, and a significant upgrade over the DVD edition.

Just like Planet Terror, Death Proof has been deliberately designed to emulate a tattered theatrical print that’s been run far too many times at the grindhouse theater. The picture has recurring appearances of simulated film scratches, dirt, debris, and jump cuts. However, while Robert Rodriguez really went overboard with the effect and made every single frame of his movie look like it’d been scraped off the projection room floor, Tarantino’s film is more organic and natural. The film damage is often sporadic. In fact, the entire last act of the movie is virtually spotless.

In addition to the film damage effects, Death Proof goes through three distinct phases in visual appearance. The first act looks a little soft and faded, with washed-out contrasts that lose detail in both whites and blacks. At the transition to the second storyline, the entire picture turns black & white for an extended scene, as if the footage had to be spliced in from a b&w dupe print. At the end of the scene, the image immediately pops back into full color that’s much sharper and more vibrantly saturated than before. As noted above, this entire final section of the movie is nearly devoid of the scratch and dirt effects. The big car chase makes for some splendid high-definition imagery.

THE AUDIO: RATING THE SOUND

Looking only at the technical specs, the HD DVD would seem to offer a soundtrack inferior to the domestic Blu-ray’s lossless Dolby TrueHD 5.1 audio. The HD DVD uses DTS-HD High Resolution 5.1 instead, which is a lossy (but high bit-rate) compression format. However, in practical real-world terms, the two tracks are audibly indistinguishable.

That’s certainly not a bad thing. In either case, the soundtrack is an excellent representation of the movie’s artistic intentions. In keeping with the grindhouse spirit, audio in the first half is mainly basic stereo without much surround activity. Dialogue is sometimes a little flat, and some of the source music is shrill (like it’s being played off old vinyl), but most of it sounds just fine.

Things pick up in a big way in the second half with the chase scene. The surround channels are put to much more aggressive use and the roar of revving engines will get your subwoofer rocking.

THE SUPPLEMENTS: DIGGING INTO THE GOOD STUFF

The HD DVD also includes almost all of the same bonus features as the Blu-ray, albeit with forced German subtitles here. For convenience sake, I’ve listed the features by their English titles as found on the Blu-ray.

• Stunts on Wheels: The Legendary Drivers of Death Proof (SD, 21 min.) – As Tarantino explains it, this featurette is all about “Real cars, real shit, at full fucking speed.” The director has a pretty big man-crush on stuntman Buddy Joe Hooker.
• Introducing Zoë Bell (SD, 9 min.) – An overview of the stuntwoman’s career, from the documentary Double Dare, to getting the gig as Uma Thurman’s double in Kill Bill, to her surprise at finding out that Tarantino had written a whole movie for her to star in.
• Double Dare Trailer (SD, 3 min.) – A trailer for the documentary about stuntwomen featuring Zoë Bell.
• Kurt Russell as Stuntman Mike (SD, 10 min.) – Tarantino waxes on about the actor’s greatness.
• Finding Quentin’s Gals (SD, 21 min.) – A look at the casting process, writing the roles for the actresses, and re-using many of the same cast in both Grindhouse features.
• Uncut Version of “Baby, It’s You” Performed by Mary Elizabeth Winstead (SD, 2 min.) – A brief extended scene.
• The Guys of Death Proof (SD, 8 min.) – Highlighting three of the male supporting roles.
• Quentin Tarantino’s Greatest Collaborator: Editor Sally Menke (SD, 5 min.) – A video love letter to the director’s longtime editor.
• Extended Music Cues – Audio-only renditions of three music cues by Ennio Morricone, Guido & Maurizio de Angelis, and Franco Micalizzi.

HD BONUS CONTENT: ANY EXCLUSIVE GOODIES IN THERE?

It would appear that Senator originally planned to provide Death Proof with web-enabled content using the DynamicHD platform. Unfortunately, that content never went live. If you select the DynamicHD option in the disc’s menus, you’ll be greeted with a “Please check again later” message. Somehow, I doubt they’ll update that now. To be fair about it, Weinstein’s Blu-ray also offers a BD-Live option that leads nowhere.

With that said, the HD DVD does have one exclusive supplement:

• Stunts on Wheels: The Hot Boxes (SD, 12 min.) – OK, I don’t know if that’s the real title, but it’s the closest available translation. This appears to be an extension of the other “Stunts on Wheels” featurette. Tarantino expounds on his favorite movie car chases.

THE CUTTING ROOM FLOOR: WHAT DIDN’T MAKE THE HD DVD?

The HD DVD is missing a theatrical trailer and a poster gallery found on the Blu-ray. Of course, both are missing the rest of Grindhouse (i.e. Planet Terror and the fake movie trailers).

FINAL THOUGHTS

Objectively speaking, there isn’t much reason for an American viewer to import this Death Proof HD DVD if they own a Blu-ray player. The A/V quality and bonus features are basically the same as the domestic Blu-ray release, but the disc is a lot more expensive. However, as the final release on the HD DVD format, it’s a pretty cool collectible. Interested collectors will find it worth a look.

Into the Wild

Reviewed by Joshua Zyber. Published Mar. 17, 2008

Before Sean Penn decided to adapt it to film, prompting its reissue with one of those obnoxious “Now a Major Motion Picture” tie-in editions (is there ever a Minor Motion Picture?), published copies of Jon Krakauer’s non-fiction bestseller Into the Wild, which was based on a widely publicized true story, freely divulged the fate of its main character right on the front cover. With that in mind, I don’t consider it a plot spoiler to mention that the movie’s hero dies before the end credits. Structured non-linearly with many flash-forwards to his final days, the film makes no pretense of hiding this fact as any sort of surprise twist, and indeed knowledge of the inevitable outcome gives the story its greatest emotional resonance.

After graduating from college in the spring of 1990, Christopher McCandless, a young man from a wealthy but dysfunctional family, went out to dinner with his parents and discussed his plans for law school. They ended the evening on polite, encouraging terms. The next day, McCandless withdrew all of his savings and donated it to Oxfam, cut up his IDs, burned his cash, and headed west in his aging Datsun for an intended spiritual journey. The Datsun didn’t make it very far. Rechristening himself as Alexander Supertramp, the boy hitchhiked across the country for the next two years, never contacting anyone from his old life again. An intellectual with a fondness for the writings of Thoreau, Tolstoy, and the adventure stories of Jack London, “Alex” had grown increasingly disillusioned with what he considered modern society’s materialistic and hypocritical values. Heeding romantic notions of living a solitary existence communing with nature, he sought to flee from the poisons of civilization, retreating to the wilds of Alaska where he could enthusiastically test his mettle and push his body and mind to their limits. He eventually made it there in April of 1992 and lived for the next four months in an abandoned bus in the woods that had previously been used as a hunters’ shelter. He spent the time foraging for edible plants and small game, talking to himself a lot, and keeping a journal of his quest for enlightenment. His dead body was found by moose hunters in September of that year, emaciated to 67 pounds.

As depicted in the book and film, McCandless wasn’t an antisocial Unabomber hermit, but rather an idealistic, somewhat confused, and frankly naïve kid trying to find his place in life. During his cross-country trip, he spent a great deal of time in the company of people whose forthrightness or free-spirited natures he admired, including a pair of traveling hippies (played by Catherine Keener and Brian Dierker), a gregarious South Dakota wheat farmer (Vince Vaughn), and a lonely retiree (Hal Holbrook). Alex became part of each of their families, but in the end his mission pushed him away from them, driving him to spend the rest of his life alone.

Ever since Krakauer’s book was published, it’s been surrounded by accusations of needlessly romanticizing Christopher McCandless and the events leading to his death. Sean Penn’s adaptation will no doubt polarize some viewers as well. The author and director clearly believe McCandless to be a sympathetic character, worthy of an audience’s emotional involvement. On the other hand, many familiar with the story, especially those that understand a thing or two about wilderness survival, consider him just a stupid kid who threw his life away, essentially committing suicide through his own reckless ignorance. In truth, both points of view have their merits, and are not necessarily opposed to each other.

Like many his age, the boy’s youthful arrogance fostered a sense of invulnerability, strengthened further after surviving a dangerous kayaking adventure down the Colorado River despite having no experience. Bringing nothing but a bag of rice, a book on local plants, and a .22 caliber rifle, he was certain that he’d be able to sustain himself for an extended duration alone. Obviously, he was wrong, and if he’d taken the time to properly prepare might have survived the ordeal. But it’s precisely these flaws in his character, and his inability to recognize them until it was too late to save himself, that makes his story a genuine tragedy. If McCandless had walked out of those woods alive, would there even be a story worth telling?

Setting aside his own public personality as a loud-mouth political activist, Penn has a highly regarded reputation as both an actor and a director, and treats the material with respect and sensitivity. He wisely underplays the potentially melodramatic aspects of the story and draws strong performances from his cast. Although backed by a stellar list of co-stars (Hal Holbrook scored an Oscar nomination for his role), the main burden of the movie falls on the shoulders of Emile Hirsch, the young actor from The Girl Next Door and Alpha Dog, who spends much of his screen time completely alone on camera, doing a remarkable job of drawing the audience into the mind of the character. Lovely photography and an understated musical score enhance the sense of atmosphere, as do an assortment of new songs by Eddie Vedder, whose grizzled ballads of alienation and rebellion are exactly the sort of thing that McCandless would have considered personal anthems. Penn has taken a fascinating story and crafted it into a beautiful tone poem, an elegy for lost innocence, and a heartbreaking motion picture.

THE HD DVD: VITAL DISC STATS

Into the Wild comes to HD DVD as one of Paramount Home Entertainment’s final releases on the format, available simultaneously with Things We Lost in the Fire. Almost immediately after announcing its intention to transition high-definition production back to the Blu-ray format, the studio cancelled the remainder of its previously announced HD DVD slate. In all likelihood, the only reason this title made it to retailer shelves is that the discs were already in the distribution chain at the time of the decision and couldn’t be conveniently recalled.

THE VIDEO: SIZING UP THE PICTURE

At least there’s no faulting the technical quality of the presentation. Into the Wild has beautiful photography shot in a variety of scenic locations, and Penn artfully exploits the scope 2.35:1 aspect ratio, frequently placing important information at the extreme edges of the frame and occasionally even indulging in split-screen montages. The 1080p/AVC MPEG-4 transfer is rich and film-like, with a strong representation of fine object detail and a nicely balanced contrast range. The naturalistic colors appear accurate, if not always showy.

The photography is sometimes grainy, and the picture is a little soft here and there (razor sharpness wasn’t necessarily desired). There are moments where it looks like the studio may have applied some Digital Noise Reduction to tame film grain, but generally speaking the image has wonderful filmic textures.

THE AUDIO: RATING THE SOUND

The Dolby Digital Plus 5.1 soundtrack is more notable for its use of quietness than sonic bombast. The mix is a study in understatement, consisting largely of production audio and filled with scenes where subtle ambient cues dominate the soundscape. Dialogue and sound effects are always reproduced with effective clarity. The surround channels are reserved for environmental envelopment, with almost no attention-grabbing directional effects. The score by Michael Brook and songs by Eddie Vedder are both delivered with pleasing fidelity and breadth.

THE SUPPLEMENTS: DIGGING INTO THE GOOD STUFF

Technically, content on the HD DVD is a duplication of the 2-Disc Collector’s Edition DVD release of the film, which only makes it all the more disappointing to discover how sparse the bonus features are.

• Into the Wild: The Story, The Characters (SD, 22 min.) – Produced by Laurent Bouzereau, this half-documentary features interviews with Sean Penn, author John Krakauer, Emile Hirsch, Hal Holbrook, Eddie Vedder, William Hurt, Jena Malone, and Kristen Stewart. All discuss their fascination and connection with the material.
• Into the Wild: The Experience (SD, 17 min.) – A continuation of the above (this was clearly intended as a single documentary that’s been broken into halves to reduce the participants’ royalty payments), here we get a look at the production of the film. Topics include Hirsch’s scary weight loss (he went from 156 to 115 pounds), shooting in the wilderness, locations, the bus, photography, costumes, sound design, editing, the musical score, and Vedder’s songs.
• Theatrical Trailer (HD, 3 min.)

Seriously, that’s all. If you think that’s disappointing enough for an HD DVD, consider that Paramount had the gall to issue two separate DVD editions: one with no bonus content at all, and a more expensive version that needlessly placed these measly 40 minutes of featurettes onto a second disc to make it seem more collectible.  

FINAL THOUGHTS

As the HD DVD format winds down production, worthy titles are still finding release even at the end. Into the Wild is a moving film presented with terrific high-definition picture and sound, though the bonus features are pretty slim. Recommended.

Resident Evil

Reviewed by Joshua Zyber. Published Jan. 22, 2008

Considering how liberally many video games lift their ideas from movies, I suppose it should come as no surprise that, when experiencing a drought of creative inspiration, the movies return the favor by lifting ideas from video games. It’s a self-perpetuating cycle of cinematic cannibalism. The history of the films-based-on-games genre has not been particularly distinguished, with most falling to hack directors working from incompetent scripts and tiny budgets (see: the complete works of Boll, Uwe). Somehow, Paul W.S. Anderson seems to have had the best run at it, making unexpected hits out of game-based pictures Mortal Kombat, Alien vs. Predator, and of course Resident Evil. None of these are good movies, per se (in fact, AVP is pretty damn awful), but they’re all slick and efficient, relatively coherent, and pander to horror and action junkies successfully enough to turn a profit.

Resident Evil began life as a survival horror game for the first PlayStation console whose original title in Japan was Biohazard. When importing the game to North America, apparently someone at the Capcom corporation with a limited vocabulary assumed that “biohazard” was a Japanese word and changed it to Resident Evil, a meaningless phrase that doesn’t make much linguistic sense but sounds cool enough. Borrowing extensively from George Romero’s famous Living Dead movies, the game involved a paramilitary squad exploring a large mansion and the secret underground laboratory beneath it while fending off hordes of flesh-eating zombies. It was an extremely fun actioner with clever puzzles and mazes, a very moody atmosphere, and even some legitimate scares. (Anyone who’s played the game will admit to jumping out of their chair after first encountering the zombie dogs.) It was a massive hit and spawned a string of follow-ups that have extended to several subsequent game consoles.

Enter director Anderson, who hadn’t made a profitable picture since Mortal Kombat and was eager to return to the game-movie genre. Casting a pair of hot babes (Milla Jovovich and Michelle Rodriguez) and working loosely from the structure of the game, Anderson crafted a gloriously silly fright flick with exciting action sequences and plenty of juicy gore. High art this ain’t, but the result is a lot of fun.

The stunningly beautiful Jovovich stars as a mysterious woman who wakes up sprawled in a shower with no idea who she is or why she’s there. The character doesn’t even have a name in this first movie, but it’s no spoiler to reveal that she’s called Alice in the sequels. With barely enough time to put on a sexy red dress and combat boots (an outfit that would soon become iconic), poor Alice is almost immediately swept up by a team of badass commandos, who inform her that she’s a highly-skilled security operative and drag her along on their mission to infiltrate “The Hive,” the secret high-tech research station beneath the mansion where she awoke. Once inside, they discover the aftermath of a horrible genetic experiment gone awry that turned everyone inside the facility into undead brain-munchers intent on ripping the squad limb from limb. In other words, just a typical Monday at the office.

As Alice recovers bits and pieces of her memory, the audience learns the backstory of the corrupt Umbrella Corporation and her role in their plans, a clever narrative device that provides a convenient excuse to explain the plot. It also allows the main character to develop new skills and combat techniques along the way, mirroring the progression of the game. Refreshing for the genre, none of the characters are bumbling idiots going places they shouldn’t go or doing stupid things that get them killed. They’re all competent and motivated individuals, and they mostly remain collected and focused on their tasks even as members of team are quickly killed off by the lab’s computer defenses or the freaky monsters roaming the halls.

Anderson directs with a maximum of efficiency and a minimum of pretension. Although the lumbering zombies owe plenty of debt to the rules of George Romero’s universe, Resident Evil doesn’t pretend to offer any important social commentary. This is a movie about a hot chick who kicks zombie ass, end of story. The movie has sleek visuals, impressive production design, very effective makeup and gore effects, some particularly inventive death scenes (the elevator sequence and laser grid are rightly fan favorites), and an unsettling musical score by Marco Beltrami and Marilyn Manson. Milla is also considerate enough to offer fans a glimpse of side-boob action at the beginning, plus a little something more if you look closely at the end, and honestly that’s exactly what a movie like this needs.

The picture turns a little dopey with the introduction of a mutated, tongue-lashing monster called a “Licker.” That’s taken straight from the game, but the CGI is poor and the idea frankly should have been scrapped. On the other hand, Anderson remembered the zombie dogs, and they work great. Resident Evil isn’t the type of movie to watch with critical film aficionado standards. It’s a guilty pleasure, but it’s a pleasure all the same.

THE HD DVD: VITAL DISC STATS

The North American rights to Resident Evil are held by Sony, who have released it exclusively on Blu-ray here. However, a company called Constantin Film holds the distribution rights in Germany, and have released it and the second film on both Blu-ray and HD DVD in that country. The HD DVD has no region coding and will function fine in an American HD DVD player.

The disc starts with an anti-piracy ad and trailer before the main menu, which are annoying but can thankfully be skipped. All of the disc’s menus are in German, but aren’t difficult to navigate. Unfortunately, the HD DVD has no pop-up menus available during the feature.

THE VIDEO: SIZING UP THE PICTURE

Despite its low budget, Resident Evil has pretty stylish photography, emphasizing the sleek, metallic interiors of the high-tech laboratory sets. This 1080p/MPEG-2 transfer, presented in the movie’s original 1.85:1 aspect ratio, is very similar in quality to the AVC MPEG-4 transfer on the domestic Blu-ray. The picture is sharp and detailed, with vivid colors (especially reds and blues), rich black levels, and excellent shadow detail. The improvement over standard DVD is immediately apparent during the security camera footage at the beginning of the film. The small text overlays are mostly illegible on DVD but perfectly crisp and clear here.

Being a horror movie, the photography is naturally a little grainy, but not overwhelmingly so. The HD DVD does look a bit grainier than the Blu-ray, yet the grain remains well-compressed without turning noisy until the deliberately stylized ending. There’s a shot at the 5:23 mark where the grain freezes in its tracks for a few seconds, but that has been part of every previous edition of the movie and appears to be an artifact of the production (the shot must have been artificially frozen to extend the beat), not a digital compression problem. One of the movie’s final sequences features super-hot contrasts and an extreme amount of grain and noise, but the effect there is clearly intentional. This disc looks pretty good indeed.  

Important Notice: This German Resident Evil disc is one of the first HD DVDs to be flagged with an Image Constraint Token. If your HD DVD player is connected by HDMI to your display, there should be no issue in viewing the movie at its full 1080p resolution. Unfortunately, viewers connected by Component Video will find the image downconverted to 480p Standard Definition. This is extremely disappointing, to say the least.

THE AUDIO: RATING THE SOUND

Whereas the domestic Blu-ray provides the movie’s English-language soundtrack in lossless Dolby TrueHD 5.1, the German HD DVD uses a DTS-HD High Resolution encoding. DTS-HD HR is not a lossless format, but at least in this case the results are nearly indistinguishable, which is to say that they’re both very nice.

The Resident Evil soundtrack is extremely loud and aggressive, with throbbing bass and jolting stinger scares. The surround channels are used creatively, notably when the Red Queen computer’s dialogue cycles from speaker to speaker around the soundstage. At least for the first half hour or so, sound effects are all crisply recorded and the score is delivered with excellent fidelity. Around the time of the first major gun battle, however, things start to turn muddy. After that point, the mix keeps piling on masses of noise, each competing in loudness against the rest, and the effect is a lot of aural overkill. Don’t get me wrong, this is still a very satisfying and entertaining track, but clarity isn’t always its strong point.

Unlike some import HD DVDs from Europe (the problem seems to be confined to releases from Studio Canal), Resident Evil has no issues with increased pitch.

Optional German subtitles can be disabled in the main menu.

THE SUPPLEMENTS: DIGGING INTO THE GOOD STUFF

The German HD DVD includes most of the bonus features from the original DVD release of the film, plus one from the later Deluxe Edition. All of the supplements default to German subtitles that can be turned off by the remote.

• Cast and Filmmaker Commentary – This notorious commentary features Milla Jovovich and Michelle Rodriguez behaving like drunken idiots. They’re joined by director Paul Anderson, producer Jeremy Bolt, and actor Jason Isaacs when any of them can get a word in edgewise. This is a very jokey, obnoxious track that’s frankly embarrassing to listen to.
• The Making of Resident Evil (SD, 27 min.) – A lengthy EPK piece with the usual cast and filmmaker interviews, as well as brief time spent with the Capcom game developers. The first half is devoted to boring plot and character recaps. Things get more interesting when we’re given a behind-the-scenes look at the commando and fight training, stunt choreography, production design, zombie makeup, and visual effects. It’s also funny to note that, in these interviews at least, Anderson looks a lot like Andy Samberg.
• Scoring Resident Evil (SD, 11 min.) – Marco Beltrami and Marilyn Mason are interviewed separately about their collaboration on the score. Manson in particular has some surprisingly intelligent things to say about what he was trying to achieve. The piece is actually quite interesting.
• Playing Dead: Resident Evil – From Game to Screen (SD, 15 min.) – An overview of the history of the game series and Anderson’s success with his Mortal Kombat adaptation. The actors interviewed make a number of comments about being impressed by the “silence” of the game, which is ironic considering how abrasively noisy the movie turned out to be. Anderson describes the movie as a “prequel” to the first game and justifies the story changes he imposed.
• Storyboarding Resident Evil (SD, 7 min.) – Anderson briefly introduces a series of storyboard-to-screen comparisons. Boring.
• Zombie Camera Tests (SD, 1 min.) – Actors pose for the camera in full monster makeup.
• Milla Jovovich Camera Test (SD, 2 min.) – Milla poses in various action stances.

HD BONUS CONTENT: ANY EXCLUSIVE GOODIES IN THERE?

Exclusive the German disc are the following:

• Behind the Scenes (SD, 16 min.) – Raw production footage of Milla shooting the train scene, Michelle Rodriguez learning her stunts, and Anderson directing a zombie attack. With no structure or narration to describe what’s going on, these clips are rather dull.
• The Evolution of Resident Evil: Bridge to Extinction (SD, 4 min.) – A long-winded EPK promo for the third film featuring clips from all three franchise entries. Not terribly exciting either.

Also included are a handful of German-dubbed trailers, including those for all three Resident Evil films. A printed booklet provides a chapter listing and filmographies for the cast, all in German.

THE CUTTING ROOM FLOOR: WHAT DIDN’T MAKE THE HD DVD?

The Deluxe Edition DVD and the domestic Blu-ray release contain another audio commentary, eight short featurettes, an alternate ending, and a music video that didn’t make it to this German HD DVD.

FINAL THOUGHTS

Resident Evil may not appeal to the film snob side of many viewers, but sometimes you just want to watch a hot chick killing zombies for 100 minutes. To that end, the movie is great fun. The German import HD DVD has very good picture and sound. Dual-format owners will probably be better off buying the domestic Blu-ray release, which has slightly better picture, a lot more supplements, and is less expensive. However, this disc does still come recommended for Resident Evil fans currently only supporting HD DVD.

Resident Evil: Apocalypse – Extended Cut

Reviewed by Joshua Zyber. Published Jan. 15, 2008

Let’s get this out of the way up front: Measured objectively, Resident Evil: Apocalypse isn’t a very good movie. Not that the original Resident Evil was a cinematic masterpiece by any means, but it was fun and exciting, and gave horror fans as much action and gore as they could hope for. It was a little dopey but not excessively stupid, and Milla Jovovich looked incredibly hot running around in cramped corridors wearing a sexy red dress and kicking zombie ass. That picture earned a tidy profit, so a sequel was inevitable. Thus we have Apocalypse. The second film doesn’t work nearly as well, but on the guilty pleasure scale it has some merit.

Here are some of the things I enjoyed about the first Resident Evil: Apocalypse:

• Hot chicks kicking ass
• More zombies
• More guns
• Explosions
• Gore
• Milla teasing us with brief nudity

Frankly, when it comes to this type of movie, my standards just aren’t all that high.

Apocalypse picks up immediately after the final scene of the last picture, and makes a valiant attempt to expand the parameters of the concept by taking the action outside of “The Hive” (the underground research facility where zombies and mutant beasts ran rampant through the halls) and letting all hell break loose on the streets of Raccoon City. As we learned in the prior film’s finale, the T-Virus had gotten loose and begun spreading a plague that turned anyone infected into undead flesh-eating monsters. In response, the evil Umbrella Corporation responsible for this mess has attempted to contain the disaster by walling off the city and leaving anyone trapped inside to fend for themselves. The problem they face is that our girl Alice is in there, as well as a few well-armed cops, a fast-talking hustler, a nosy journalist, and the daughter of one of Umbrella’s chief research scientists, and they all want out. That scientist also really wants his daughter back. Sadly for them, the less ethical members of the Umbrella board have not only decided to screw them all, but to use Raccoon City as a testing ground for their latest biological experiment, a nasty mutant beastie that has ties to Alice.

While the first movie was only loosely based on the Resident Evil video game series (the character of Alice is nowhere to be found in any of the games), Apocalypse makes a token effort to incorporate elements taken mainly from Resident Evil 3: Nemesis. We’re introduced to game characters Jill Valentine (Sienna Guillory), Carlos Olivera (Oded Fehr), the S.T.A.R.S. Special Tactics and Rescue Squad, and the Nemesis monster. Guillory is almost as smoking hot as Jovovich, and is a dead ringer for the animated version of her character. Certain sequences in the movie are taken directly out of the games, and much of the action is shot in a “run-and-gun” style gamers will find familiar.

The problem is that the script for the movie (written by Paul W.S. Anderson again) is really dumb, more so than the last time. The attempts to add comic relief with annoying sidekick characters (specifically the bimbo reporter and the goofy pimp) are miscalculated, and the plot has some serious lapses in basic logic. In its worst scene, our heroes run through a cemetery and are attacked by zombies bursting from the graves, a direct contradiction of the rules established in the first film, which stated that the T-Virus could only reanimate the recently deceased. Despite being directed by Alexander Witt, an accomplished 2nd Unit Director on countless huge Hollywood action movies (Black Hawk Down, The Bourne Identity, The Italian Job, Casino Royale, and more), many of the fight scenes are incoherently staged and shot. Worst of all, the big baddie Nemesis monster is just incredibly cheesy and lame.

On the plus side, the movie opens with a really cool recap sequence of the previous picture, and the first ten minutes or so begin the action with a nice jolt. The zombie dogs are back and still awesome. We’re also given some zombie hookers and, in an inspired bit of depravity, a gaggle of zombie schoolgirls who provide a much-deserved comeuppance to one of the more irritating characters.

No, Resident Evil: Apocalypse is not a great movie, or even a particularly good one. But once you’ve lowered your expectations sufficiently, it offers some legitimate entertainment value.

THE HD DVD: VITAL DISC STATS

The North American rights to Resident Evil: Apocalypse are held by Sony, who have released it exclusively on Blu-ray here. However, a company called Constantin Film holds the distribution rights in Germany, and have released it and the first film on both Blu-ray and HD DVD in that country. The HD DVD has no region coding and will function fine in an American HD DVD player.

The disc starts with an anti-piracy ad and trailer before the main menu, which are annoying but can thankfully be skipped. All of the disc’s menus are in German, but aren’t difficult to navigate. Unfortunately, the HD DVD has no pop-up menus available during the feature.

Unlike the domestic Blu-ray, the German disc contains an Extended Version of the movie that runs 98 minutes, in comparison to the 94-minute theatrical cut. The extended cut incorporates about half of the footage found in the Deleted Scenes section of the Sony Blu-ray release, but also removes some footage from the theatrical version. The changes are unlikely to radically affect a viewer’s opinion of the film, neither helping nor hurting it in any significant measure. My first time through, I had a hard time telling the difference. Perhaps the biggest improvement is the removal of some of the flashbacks to the first movie. After seeing the theatrical cut of Apocalypse, I commented to a friend that Eric Mabius should have received an above-the-title credit on movie posters for the number of times the film reused clips from his role in the previous picture. That isn’t the case in this version; he’s only shown once or twice now.

THE VIDEO: SIZING UP THE PICTURE

The 1080p/MPEG-2 transfer on this German Apocalypse HD DVD looks largely similar to the domestic Blu-ray release of the film, which is to say not all that impressive. The 2.40:1 picture is rather soft, with only fair but not exceptional detail. It appears that a lot of Noise Reduction has been applied. Colors are often exaggerated, and the contrast range is dull. The result of all this is a flat image without much depth or dimensionality. The first movie looks a lot better.

I compared to the Blu-ray and found the picture on that disc a tad sharper and clearer, but not dramatically so.

Another problem that American viewers will find is that all on-screen text such as location identifiers are presented in German text in this version of the movie. It’s a minor nuisance, but one that can be rather distracting.

Important Notice: This German Resident Evil: Apocalypse disc is one of the first HD DVDs to be flagged with an Image Constraint Token. If your HD DVD player is connected by HDMI to your display, there should be no issue in viewing the movie at its full 1080p resolution. Unfortunately, viewers connected by Component Video will find the image downconverted to 480p Standard Definition. This is extremely disappointing, to say the least.

THE AUDIO: RATING THE SOUND

Whereas the domestic Blu-ray provides the movie’s English-language soundtrack in uncompressed PCM 5.1 format, the German HD DVD uses a DTS-HD High Resolution encoding. DTS-HD HR is not a lossless or uncompressed format, but the results are nonetheless nearly equivalent.

The movie’s soundtrack features punishingly deep bass, and a lot of it. There are many sharply recorded gunshots and stinger scares. The car crash at the beginning is sure to grab your attention. Surrounds are used aggressively, but not as creatively as the first film. Overall fidelity is also merely OK. Dialogue and music sound a bit dull, which is largely factor of the sound design continually layering louder and louder noises on top of each other. Subtlety was not on anyone’s agenda here. It sounds fine, and will likely impress those who measure sound quality by how much their subwoofer rattles the windows, but I’ve listened to many superior soundtracks on other high-def discs.

Unlike some import HD DVDs from Europe (the problem seems to be confined to releases from Studio Canal), Resident Evil: Apocalypse has no issues with increased pitch.

Optional German subtitles can be disabled in the main menu.

THE SUPPLEMENTS: DIGGING INTO THE GOOD STUFF

The German HD DVD includes most of the bonus features from the original DVD release of the movie and the Blu-ray. Unlike the HD DVD for the first film, all of the supplements default to German subtitles that I could not manage to turn off.

• Filmmaker Commentary – Director Alexander Witt is joined by producers Jeremy Bolt and Robert Kulzer for a discussion of the development of the project. The track is OK but rather pretentious. None of the participants seem to realize how lame the movie turned out.
• Cast Commentary – Milla Jovovich and Oded Fehr babble on about nothing, while Sienna Guillory (recorded separately) takes her role in the movie way too seriously.
• Writer and Producer Commentary – The most interesting of the three tracks features Paul Anderson and Jeremy Bolt talking about the themes of the series, such as they are.
• Game Over: Resident Evil Re-Animated (SD, 50 min.) – A thorough making-of documentary that covers topics such as keeping the movie true to the game, expanding beyond the scope of the first film, the action and stunts, creating the zombies, production design, weaponry, and visual effects.
• Symphony of Evil (SD, 8 min.) – A montage of stunts and behind-the-scenes footage, as well as before-and-after comparisons of the visual effects shots.
• Game Babes (SD, 11 min.) – EPK drivel about the trend of women taking over action movie roles.
• Corporate Malfeasance (SD, 3 min.) – A lame explanation of the Umbrella Corporation story.
• Deleted Scenes (SD, 7 min.) – The DVD and Blu-ray have 12 minutes of brief deleted scenes, but the German HD DVD has only 7 minutes. The difference is that the missing pieces were all incorporated into this extended version of the movie.

HD BONUS CONTENT: ANY EXCLUSIVE GOODIES IN THERE?

Exclusive the German disc are the following:

• The Evolution of Resident Evil: Bridge to Extinction (SD, 4 min.) – A long-winded EPK promo for the third film featuring clips from all three franchise entries. Not terribly exciting.
• Teaser Trailer (SD, 1 min.) – This clever teaser trailer starts off as a fake Umbrella commercial. Unfortunately, the piece is dubbed into German here.

Also included are a handful of other German-dubbed trailers, including those for all three Resident Evil films. A printed booklet provides a chapter listing and filmographies for the cast, all in German.

THE CUTTING ROOM FLOOR: WHAT DIDN’T MAKE THE HD DVD?

Missing from the DVD are some outtakes, a poster gallery, and more trailers.

FINAL THOUGHTS

Resident Evil: Apocalypse is a decided step down from the first film, but once you lower your standards it offers some fun. The main attraction of this German HD DVD is the extended cut of the movie, which is an interesting variation but not dramatically different. The HD DVD otherwise offers only fair picture and decent sound. Die-hard fans of the series will want to scoop it up, but I expect that most viewers will be satisfied with the domestic Blu-ray or even the DVD.

Star Trek: The Original Series – Season 1

Reviewed by Joshua Zyber. Published Jan. 27, 2007

When I first heard that Star Trek: The Original Series would be undergoing a Star Wars-style complete digital makeover, in which all of its 1960s model and miniature special effects would be replaced with modern CGI, frankly I was appalled at the news. I outright despise the tinkering that George Lucas has imposed onto Star Wars, and refuse to watch those movies in anything other than the original theatrical versions as I first saw them. And now the same was going to happen to Star Trek? Doesn’t everyone realize that its datedness is a big part of the charm and appeal of The Original Series? The miniskirts and crazy costumes, the chintzy sets, goofy monster makeup, and hambone theatrical acting, these are all things to cherish. Star Trek is a product of its era, and should remain so.

But then a funny thing happened. Images from the new “Remastered” versions of the episodes were released, and they didn’t look so bad. Statements by those implementing the changes (including renowned Trek experts Michael and Denise Okuda, writers of many Trek-related books and the pop-up trivia tracks accompanying earlier DVD releases of the shows and movies) actually made some good, valid points about the work they were doing and the need for it. So now we have it, the complete first season of Star Trek, episodes dating from 1966 to 1967, here revamped, refreshed, and revitalized. And you know what, I think it’s great. Despite my skepticism, I’ve officially been won over.

Here’s the difference between the revised versions of Star Trek and Star Wars: The people updating Star Trek aren’t trying to change everything. Although the prints have been cleaned and the visual effects modernized, there are no goofy flying robots buzzing around scenes just to show off, no crappy deleted scenes that should remain on the cutting room floor needlessly reinstated, and no significant alterations made to the plot or the fundamental personalities of the characters. This is still Star Trek as Gene Roddenberry envisioned it in the 1960s. The material has been treated with absolute loving respect and even reverence; it’s just been spruced up a little to brush away the cobwebs of age and of the severe production limitations faced at the time.

So what exactly has been done to the show? Most obviously, almost every single space shot involving grainy stock footage of the Enterprise model dangling on wires in front of plastic schoolroom globes has been replaced with a fresh digital rendering that orbits credible-looking planets. It’s still the Enterprise we know and love, recreated down to the last detail (even the silly glowing orange tips on the warp nacelles), just cleaner and less obviously toy-like. The shots run the same length and usually retain the same content and composition. The impulse to add stuff to shots or to make everything look sleeker and flashier has been largely resisted, and the restraint is often admirable. Many of the original effects, like the cartoonish phaser blasts and shimmery dissolves, haven’t been touched at all, and many that were cleaned up were designed specifically to go unnoticed. The old matte paintings in the background of shots are sometimes tweaked a bit, but they still look like matte paintings. The aliens in ridiculous costumes haven’t been digitally wiped out and replaced with complex CGI creatures, even when that might have been for the best; he may now blink, but the Gorn is still just a guy in a bad rubber monster suit. When the Enterprise jumps to warp speed, it cruises through the shots with the same movement it always did; no one has tried to add in the slingshot warp effect used in The Next Generation. The work of the original artists has been respected. The intent isn’t to change the show, but rather to restore it. This is what the producers of the series would have wanted it to look like if they’d had the budget and the technology at the time.

That being the case, occasionally some major alterations do creep in. Sometimes they’re necessary, such as replacing a matte painting in The Menagerie to correct a continuity error concerning the scene’s time of day, but sometimes the digital artists are a little overzealous in wanting to wow a modern audience. On some alien planets, wide establishing shots have been inserted where previously we saw only close-ups and medium shots. This is helpful at times, but unnecessarily distracting at others. In some instances, the new visual effects are too ambitious in scale and detail, and look out of place mixed with the cheapie physical sets and props. (The contrast is especially jarring in The Galileo Seven, where elaborate shots of the shuttlecraft flying through a beautiful green ion storm cut away to interiors set in a small room with blank gray walls and a handful of plastic chairs.) There are also a few cases where the new effects just look a little video game-y, but those are fortunately rare and certainly no cheesier than the originals.

What surprised me the most about the Remastered Star Trek is how well the majority of the new footage blends right into the old. While the differences stand out in a few occasions, in most others the transition is amazingly seamless (a claim that cannot be made about the revamped Star Wars). The new effects serve to pull you into the stories and the universe Gene Roddenberry created, not knock you out of them. I must admit that I’m a lot more impressed than I expected.

As for the show itself, Star Trek remains a nearly ideal blend of campy fun, exciting adventure, and surprising intellectual depth. Really a series of morality plays, psychological character studies, and philosophical treatises set within an outrageous science fiction backdrop, the show may be remembered most for its Technicolor sets and costumes, William Shatner’s hammy charisma, and its goofy alien monsters, but the material thrives on the strength of its writing and the chemistry of its cast. There’s good reason it has so far inspired five spin-off series, ten feature films, and undoubtedly more on the way.

Although it took a little while to find its footing, this first season is arguably the show’s best, and contains many of its most iconic episodes. Where No Man Has Gone Before, The Naked Time, Mudd’s Women, The Corbomite Maneuver, Balance of Terror, Space Seed, Devil in the Dark, and City on the Edge of Forever are just some of the gems found here. Sure, there are a few clunkers like Shore Leave, The Galileo Seven, and the finale Operation: Annihilate! that even the best special effects updating in the world can’t rescue from their inherent cheesiness. Even these turkeys have been lovingly restored with the same care and attention as the season’s finest. They’re mercifully few in number, and nowhere near as bad as the way the show would fall apart in its third season.

The film purist in me likes having the old versions of the episodes around, but the Trek fan in me had a blast watching the new ones. It truly felt like discovering something special for the first time all over again. Star Trek is classic television, and these newly Remastered episodes breathe fresh life into a series that had grown a little too comfortable with familiarity over the years.

THE HD DVD: VITAL DISC STATS

Star Trek: The Original Series – Season One comes to HD DVD in a 10-disc box set from CBS Home Entertainment (via distributor Paramount Home Entertainment). The packaging has a funky design vaguely reminiscent of a Transporter deck. It looks interesting on a shelf, but truth be told the plastic shell, the cardboard box sleeve inside, and the plastic disc trays are all rather flimsily constructed. Little plastic pieces of the tray were already rattling around inside the shell by the time I opened my set for the first time, and one disc had popped off its hub and gotten scratched.

Also in the box are five “data cards” that list the episode and bonus feature contents of each disc.

All ten discs are encoded in Combo format, with HD DVD on one side and standard DVD on the other. In a marketing first, the Remastered versions of the episodes are only available in this box set. No comparable release for just standard-def DVD is available at this time. The discs contain only the Remastered episodes on both sides, not the original versions with their 1960s special effects. (Those are already available on DVD, but not on HD DVD.)

The episodes are presented in their original broadcast order, which causes a few minor continuity problems, such as Dr. McCoy’s presence in the first two episodes The Man Trap and Charlie X, followed afterwards by the actual pilot episode Where No Man Has Gone Before with a different Chief Medical Officer (Dr. Piper). To make matters more confusing, the disc menus number the episodes in their production order. Thus, Disc 1 contains episodes 6, 8, and 2. If you wish to watch the episodes in production order, you’ll have to sort that out by reading the “Mission Stardate” trivia notes on the included data cards. However, it should be noted that this box set does not contain the first produced pilot episode (The Cage starring Jeffrey Hunter as Capt. Christopher Pike) that was rejected by NBC. If CBS/Paramount follows the DVD release pattern, we can expect that episode at the end of the eventual Season Three box set.

THE VIDEO: SIZING UP THE PICTURE

Befitting a television series produced in the 1960s, the Star Trek HD DVD transfer retains the show’s original 4:3 aspect ratio, encoded on disc with pillarbox bars at the sides of the 16:9 frame. This includes all of the new visual effects footage, which was technically rendered at a wider 16:9 ratio but is center-cropped to 4:3 here. In fact, in preparing the Remastered episodes, the studio struck three separate high-definition transfers: one at a consistent 4:3 ratio (the version available in this box set), one that varies between 4:3 for live action footage and 16:9 for visual effects (XBox Live users may have downloaded episodes in that format), and one with all of the live action footage cropped and stretched to 16:9 (reportedly, that one will be released on HD DVD in Japan). As far as I’m concerned, the 4:3 version is the most appropriate and the only one worth considering.

It should go without saying that the quality of television broadcast (not to mention the TVs themselves) in the 1960s was nowhere near the standard available today, and even the show’s syndicated broadcasts over the decades have rarely captured the vibrancy of its original photography. By the time the series was released on DVD, the episodes there already looked significantly better than anyone had ever seen them before. The 1080p/AVC MPEG-4 transfers in this HD DVD set take things to the next level, revealing a world of detail that viewers in the 1960s could scarcely imagine was available. The high-definition imagery is clear enough to resolve the powder of the actors’ makeup, the hairs on Shatner’s chest, and the pockmarks of George Takei’s bad complexion. Ironically, the seams in many alien costumes and the frayed edges of the Starfleet insignia on Kirk’s uniform expose budgetary limitations previously hidden by less-detailed transfers.

With that said, the show’s style does at times limit the amount of detail visible. Every single close-up of an actress, for example, was photographed in soft focus. The difference in focus between the male and female actors may not have stood out as much in standard-definition, but here is almost comically apparent. In addition to its fresh telecine transfer, the show has had much of the dirt and age-related defects from the source elements digitally erased. Not everything was cleaned up, though, and there are quite a few surprising instances of visible dirt and damage. Still, it’s much cleaner than we’ve ever seen it before.

The Original Series is famous for its garish costumes and sets, and the purity and almost surreal vibrancy of colors in the new transfer far exceed that of the prior DVD releases. The yellowish tinge of Leonard Nimoy’s makeup in the early episodes is much more obvious here than it’s ever been before. (The thinking at the time was that Spock’s green blood would leave his skin with a jaundiced look, an effect that was toned down as the series progressed.) Contrast has also been digitally tweaked to enhance black levels and depth, effectively highlighting the show’s expressive lighting schemes but also sometimes leading to crushed shadow detail.

On the downside, the show’s photography is frequently grainy, sometimes quite a bit so, and the grain is not always adequately digitized or compressed. It appears that noise reduction has also been employed to tame the worst of it, a process that softens detail at times and can cause its own artifacts. Viewers with keen eyes will notice posterization and pixelation problems in a number of episodes, notably on the doors behind Kirk and Spock in The Naked Time around the 40-minute mark. A first instinct may be to blame the AVC compression, however the same artifact is present (though less visible due to the lower resolution) at the same spot on the DVD side of the disc. Whatever the cause of this problem (likely aggressive noise reduction or digital recoloring), is part of the master, not something specific to the HD DVD encoding. For what it’s worth, the same scene in the pre-Remastered 2004 DVD set does not show any pixelation.

Nitpicks aside, Star Trek has never looked this good before. It’s not perfect, and some episodes look decidedly better than others, but overall the high-def transfer certainly brings a whole new life to the series.

THE AUDIO: RATING THE SOUND

The show’s soundtrack is offered in either Dolby Digital Plus 2.0 or lossless Dolby TrueHD 5.1 formats. The TrueHD track is set for a much lower volume by default, and will require significant amplification. If listening through TV or computer speakers in a basic stereo configuration, the 2.0 DD+ track may be better suited. In a proper surround sound listening environment, the TrueHD track has clear advantages.

As with the updated visual effects, the purist in me takes issue with the show’s original monaural soundtrack being remixed to stereo or surround. Fortunately, those qualms were put to rest as soon as I heard the results. The mixers have been very careful not to lose the flavor of the original sound. Each episode remains primarily anchored in the front soundstage, with few gimmicky or inappropriate surround effects as have plagued some other 5.1 remixes of previously mono tracks.

The show’s theme has been freshly recorded from a new orchestration and sounds wonderful. The Enterprise now whooshes from the front speakers to the back during the opening credits, and in many episodes there may be one or two instances of obvious movement in the rear channels, but generally speaking dialogue and most sound effects remain in the center channel, with the musical score spread out to a mild stereo dimensionality. The audio is clean and clear, if not particularly aggressive in envelopment or dynamic with bass. This may not be an auditory powerhouse like modern feature films, but the soundtrack is appropriate and respectful of the original material. Even so, I find it inexcusable that the studio didn’t find room to include the original mono tracks at least as a supplement.  

THE SUPPLEMENTS: DIGGING INTO THE GOOD STUFF

The box set contains a mixture of bonus features, some new and some recycled from the 2004 DVD release of the pre-Remastered first season. We’ll start with the content carried over from the DVDs, all of which is located on the Side B (the standard DVD side) of each disc.

• The Birth of a Timeless Legacy (24 min., SD) – A look at the origins and development of the series, from its two pilot episodes to its many budgetary and production problems. Shatner, Nimoy, and other cast members are interviewed (separately), along with vintage clips of Gene Roddenberry.
• Reflections on Spock (12 min., SD) – Leonard Nimoy reminisces about his famous character, and the controversy that surrounded his I Am Not Spock memoir.
• Life Beyond Trek: William Shatner (11 min., SD) – Recorded in 2003 (prior to his current stint on Boston Legal), this interview finds Shatner discussing his passion for raising horses. There’s not much relevant to Star Trek, or particularly interesting for that matter, in this piece.
• To Boldly Go… Season 1 (19 min., SD) – Nimoy, Shatner, other cast members, guest stars, and show producers look back on key episodes of the first season, including The Naked Time, Arena, and Space Seed. Production difficulties are once again covered, as well as the actors’ approaches to their characters.
• Sci Fi Visionaries (17 min., SD) – A tribute to the quality of the show’s writing, and the potency of its science fiction concepts.
• Preview Trailers (times vary, all SD) – On the DVD side of every disc, each episode contains its original TV trailer. The footage is generally in very poor condition.

HD BONUS CONTENT: ANY EXCLUSIVE GOODIES IN THERE?

New to the HD DVD are the following:

• Starfleet Access – Functioning nearly identically to the U-Control features on selected Universal discs, Starfleet Access is an interactive Picture-in-Picture (or more accurately Picture-outside-Picture) functionality that accompanies episodes Where No Man Has Gone Before, The Menagerie Part I, The Menagerie Part II, Balance of Terror, The Galileo Seven, Space Seed, and Errand of Mercy. Various icons will appear in the black pillarbox bar to the right of the series picture, broken down into categories such as Genesis, Federation Files, Environments, Technology, and Life Forms. When selected, the show will shrink down into a smaller box and shift to the left of the screen, while interviews, VFX comparisons, and trivia are displayed on the right. As with U-Control, the amount of manual interaction required by the viewer becomes quickly frustrating, especially when content from multiple categories overlap at the same time. The Genesis category contains the most useful information, consisting of interview footage from the cast, producers, writers, visual effects artists, and Star Trek experts Michael and Denise Okuda. The stream of material on the first episode Where No Man Has Gone Before is nearly constant, but unfortunately appears more sporadically in the following episodes. Despite some hiccups, this is for the most part an interesting and welcome feature. 
• Spacelift: Transporting Trek into the 21st Century (20 min., SD) – An overview of the Remastering process, from telecine transfer to digital cleanup, coloring, re-recording of the theme song (clips from this circulated on YouTube earlier this year), and of course the new visual effects. Altogether pretty fascinating.
• Billy Blackburn’s Treasure Chest: Rare Home Movies and Special Memories (14 min., SD) – Supporting actor Blackburn is seen in a great many Trek episodes as the dialogue-less ship navigator Lt. Hadley, as well as numerous other non-speaking roles including crew members, Red Shirts, crowd extras, and costumed aliens (he was the Gorn!). In this interview, the actor shares his remembrances of the production and his 8mm home movies shot on the set.
• Kiss ‘N Tell: Romance in the 23rd Century (9 min., SD) * – An amusing look at the progression of Capt. Kirk’s overactive love life. Shatner jokes around about the hardship of kissing so many beautiful women. Romance storylines for Spock, McCoy, Sulu, Chekov, Scotty, and Uhura are also highlighted.
• Trekker Connections (4 min., SD) * – A pointless trivia game in the vein of “6 Degrees of…” The feature isn’t even interactive. Lame.
• Star Trek Online Game Preview (3 min., SD) – Equally lame, an extended commercial for the multi-player online role-playing game.
• Interactive Enterprise Inspection – Somewhat better, this visual tour of the Starship Enterprise’s exterior allows the viewer to select which parts of the ship to visit, presented with or without an audio “data track” explaining the purpose and function of each section. The computer graphics are nicely rendered in high-definition, though there isn’t really a whole lot of information here that Trekkers won’t already find familiar.
• Star Trek: Beyond the Final Frontier (90 min, SD) – This History Channel documentary was originally aired in conjunction with a massive Star Trek memorabilia auction. The piece affords many associated with the franchise an opportunity to reflect on 40 years of Trek, though for some reason absolutely no one seems to remember the animated series from the ’70s. We also get a close look at many terrific props and models used in the various series and movies. This is an enjoyable feature, but it should be mentioned that it focuses more on the Next Generation years than it does The Original Series.

* Note that technically the “Kiss ‘N Tell” and “Trekker Connections” featurettes first appeared on a promotional bonus disc included with purchase of the 2004 Star Trek Complete First Season DVD set at Best Buy Stores.

THE CUTTING ROOM FLOOR: WHAT DIDN’T MAKE THE HD DVD?

Not carried over from the 2004 DVD set are the pop-up trivia text commentaries for episodes Where No Man Has Gone Before, The Conscience of the King, and both parts of The Menagerie. That content has been largely replaced by the new Starfleet Access features, at least as it pertains to Where No Man Has Gone Before and The Menagerie. However, The Conscience of the King has no comparable coverage in this set.

Also missing is a photo gallery and various easter egg clips about the making of certain episodes. (If those are hidden here, I didn’t have the patience to locate them.)

FINAL THOUGHTS

Almost all of my concerns about the Remastered episodes of Star Trek: The Original Series were put to rest when I finally saw how tastefully the visual effects changes were implemented. There is a world of difference between the loving care taken to restore this classic TV series and the tacky desecration that George Lucas imposed onto his Star Wars movies. I went in with skepticism, and came out a believer.

 The high-definition transfer has a couple of faults, but is by and large a joy to behold. The supplements sound more impressive in volume than many of them wind up being in content, but the Starfleet Access feature available on seven of the episodes is pretty nifty. With a list price of nearly $200, the HD DVD box set may unfortunately be priced out of the reach of many fans and casual viewers. For those who love Star Trek, it’s worth the expense.

Stardust

Reviewed by Joshua Zyber. Published Dec. 17, 2007

There’s been an attempt in certain quarters to promote Stardust, the moderately-budgeted fantasy picture based on a novel by Neil Gaiman, as a new generation’s Princess Bride. Don’t buy into it. I can’t speak for the novel, but the movie is utterly lacking in the wit, charm, and grace of that classic by Rob Reiner and William Goldman. Where The Princess Bride is playfully minimalist, Stardust is indulgently overwrought. Where The Princess Bride inventively deconstructs famous fairy tales, Stardust is derivative and dull. The two movies obviously set out to achieve the same goal, but the results couldn’t be further apart.

Relative newcomer Charlie Cox stars as Tristan Thorn, a young lad from the rustic English village of Wall, so named for the (strangely, not all that tall) stone barrier that the locals have been told separates them from another world and have been forbidden from ever crossing. With some help from his father, the only person who has ever snuck through the sole gap in the wall and returned, Tristan sets out on a quest to claim a falling star for the shallow and annoying girl (Sienna Miller) he wishes to woo. Once on the other side, the boy finds himself in the fantasy kingdom of Stormhold, a magical land where that falling star has manifested as a beautiful damsel named Yvaine (Claire Danes). Determined to bring her back as a prize for his love, Tristan essentially kidnaps the girl and begins the trek home, only to have his mission jeopardized by the conniving princes of the land and a trio of evil witches, all of whom want the star (or the locket she possesses) for themselves.

The premise sounds clever enough, and the movie has a pretty good cast including Michelle Pfeiffer as the head witch, Robert De Niro as a pirate lord who helps Tristan on his journey, and Ricky Gervais in a bit part as a merchant of magical goods. Pfeiffer is every bit as gorgeous as ever (when she’s not hidden under old hag makeup), and seems to be having fun vamping it up as the villainess. Claire Danes is also quite charming as the distressed celestial entity, one of the few critical elements in the movie that works exactly as intended. Some humor involving Pfeiffer’s goat-like henchman Billy and an ever-increasing number of dead princes who hang around as ghosts to comment on the action is indeed fairly amusing, if not quite gut-busting.

Unfortunately, the picture’s tone almost never hits the right notes. Directed by Matthew Vaughn, whose last effort was the entertaining crime caper Layer Cake, the film is lead-footed when it needs to be breezy and nimble, and irritatingly forced when it tries to be whimsical. It lacks the sly humor and witty verbal banter that made The Princess Bride so winning, and is overly reliant on the spectacle of mediocre CGI. The whole thing is slathered in a dreadful musical score. Worse, Robert De Niro, apparently believing himself to be starring in a revival of The Bird Cage, delivers an embarrassing and offensive performance of swishy gay stereotypes. He might have gotten away with something like that in a Saturday Night Live skit, but not a feature film.

The movie does pick up towards the end, and actually has a reasonably exciting climax, but it’s just not enough to make up for how dull the rest of it is. The film’s marketing campaign failed to make any of it look appealing (what did they have to work with?), and Stardust tanked at the box office. In this case, I don’t feel all that bad for it.

THE HD DVD: VITAL DISC STATS

Stardust comes to HD DVD from Paramount Home Entertainment, who’ve packaged it in some really ugly cover art. On the plus side, the studio doesn’t seem to be forcing their high-definition promo trailer at the start of their discs anymore.

THE VIDEO: SIZING UP THE PICTURE

Stardust is presented in its original 2.35:1 aspect ratio, in a 1080p/AVC MPEG-4 transfer that’s nothing special in any respect. The movie seems to have been photographed in a diffuse, soft-focus style to enhance the fairy tale atmosphere or something. On top of that, the entire movie has a very “processed” appearance, with wonky colors that rarely look natural. The result is a muddy image with an unimpressive level of detail. Most facial features are waxy, even in close ups. The actors have pallid flesh tones and bright pink lips. Meanwhile, colors elsewhere are artificially oversaturated in a way that screams of digital manipulation. The contrast range is also rather flat.

I’m not going to pretend to know how much of this is the fault of the original photography, how much was caused by creative tinkering at the Digital Intermediate stage of post-production, or how much is the result of excessive filtering during the disc transfer. It doesn’t look terrible by any means (I’ve certainly seen worse), but the whole thing is just rather blah. Considering the movie we’re talking about, I suppose that’s fitting.

THE AUDIO: RATING THE SOUND

The Dolby Digital Plus 5.1 soundtrack didn’t do much for me either. The film’s sound mix is poorly balanced between quiet dialogue moments and excessive bombast. Either the movie is really quiet, or it’s gratingly loud, with almost nothing in between. The lousy musical score has a fair amount of swell, but fidelity is a bit dull. Bass gets a moderate workout during the action scenes. Surround activity is limited to gimmicky, attention-grabbing directional effects. There is no attempt whatsoever to fill the back soundstage with subtle ambient cues. As with the video quality, the soundtrack isn’t awful, but it is awfully bland.

THE SUPPLEMENTS: DIGGING INTO THE GOOD STUFF

To say that the HD DVD retains all of the bonus features from the standard DVD edition isn’t much of a compliment when the pickings are this slim.

• Good Omens: The Making of Stardust (30 min., HD) – Credit where it’s due, this is one of the few “Making of” specials I’ve watched in ages that actually had anything to do with the making of the movie in question. Where most are really EPK promotional nonsense comprised of interviews with the cast gushing about what a wonderful experience they had and how great everyone was to work with, instead here we get a real glimpse of the movie’s production, from the sets being built to the actors shooting in front of green screens and the visual effects being added later. Even so, it’s not all that exciting, and contains no real insights or revelations into the filmmaking process.
• Deleted Scenes (6 min., SD) – Six brief scenes are offered in terrible workprint quality, with time codes and Paramount watermarks plastered all over the screen. Two of the scenes involve the ghost characters and are kind of amusing, if insubstantial. An alternate ending doesn’t work any better than the one that made the cut.
• Blooper Reel (5 min., SD) – The usual assortment of flubbed lines and actors stumbling around the sets. Boring.
• Theatrical Trailer (2 min., HD) – This misleading ad makes the picture look like an exciting action movie. What happened to that movie? That’s the one I’d rather see.

FINAL THOUGHTS

Sometimes, great movies get inexplicably overlooked by the critics and the public, only to make wonderful discoveries on home video. Stardust is not that type of movie. Sometimes a bomb is just a bomb. Further, the HD DVD offers nothing special in terms of picture and sound quality or bonus features. There’s just no reason to buy this. Stick with a rental if you’re really curious.

Tideland

Reviewed by Joshua Zyber. Published Mar. 31, 2008

Terry Gilliam, the notorious perfectionist with a reputation for feuding with his producers, had just come out from a knock-down, drag-out fight with the Weinsteins over his last picture, The Brothers Grimm, an unwatchable mess and by far his worst film to date. Attempting to recover from that debacle, the director decided to bypass the studio system entirely for his next project, an independently financed adaptation of Mitch Cullin’s dark fantasy novel Tideland. Produced off the Hollywood grid in rural Canada with just a few sets, a handful of actors, and free rein to do whatever he wanted, the finished product is certainly one of Gilliam’s most focused and consistent movies in years, 100% his vision without compromise. It’s also his most difficult film to watch, and has been decried as a disaster by many critics and even some of his staunchest fans.

The movie opens with the introduction of Noah (Jeff Bridges), a washed up rocker turned paranoid and irrational druggie, his horrible shrew wife (Jennifer Tilly, doing a freakshow impersonation of Courtney Love), and their beatific 9-year-old daughter Jeliza-Rose (Jodelle Ferland, the child-in-danger from Silent Hill). The parents, if you could accurately use that term, have no regard for their own lives, much less the little girl’s. Having known no other way of life, Jeliza-Rose blithely preps the heroin needles to help daddy go on his “vacations” and massages momma’s gnarled feet while listening to her manic verbal tirades. It isn’t long before the mother drops dead and Noah, fearing imminent police intervention, hightails it out of town with daughter in tow on a bus ride to grandmother’s house.

Located precisely in the middle of nowhere, the ramshackle old building they arrive at is spookily isolated on a vast prairie. (Horror fans will recognize it as the same setting recently seen in The Messengers.) Of course, grandma is long since dead, and Noah himself checks out soon after arrival, settling down for a vacation from which he won’t return. Though she doesn’t exactly comprehend the predicament, this leaves young Jeliza-Rose to fend for herself while daddy’s corpse decomposes in the living room. Fortunately, she’s brought along her four best friends, a set of disembodied doll heads she converses with regularly. Lacking any other form of support, Jeliza-Rose’s active fantasy imagination is her only protection from the many adversities she faces, including abandonment, hunger, boredom, and her run-ins with the batshit-crazy lady from a neighboring property, whose mentally-impaired teenage brother will become the girl’s closest living friend, as well as possibly a dangerous physical threat.

Tideland is a film with obvious artistic merit that is nonetheless extremely unpleasant to watch. Making the same mistake he did in Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, Gilliam falls into the trap of wallowing in over-the-top filth, ugliness, and despair, hoping that the few shining moments of beauty he extracts will lead to transcendence. He almost gets there, almost entirely by virtue of the fact that Jeliza-Rose is a much more sympathetic character than those in Fear and Loathing. Once Jeff Bridges leaves the scene (which isn’t very far into the picture), the rest of the movie is practically a one-girl show for Jodelle Ferland, every scene told from her character’s perspective. The young actress delves into dark areas that no one her age should ever be asked to go. Although Jeliza-Rose is never actually physically abused, she’s put into many uncomfortable situations, some of her own doing and some not, involving emotional abuse, death, and sexuality, one after another in a constant stream of horrors she doesn’t recognize or understand, but the audience certainly does. Ferland delivers a strong performance, but it’s one that the material almost cynically demands be described as “brave.”

For Gilliam, the film is clearly intended as a dark fairy tale, and he layers in many references to past works of the genre: mirrors, rabbit holes, a journey to grandmother’s house, a wardrobe in the attic, etc. The trips through Jeliza-Rose’s imagination allow him to indulge in the type of surreal fantasy set-pieces he’s famous for, and there are many moments of true lyrical genius in the movie. But it keeps coming back to one central problem, which is that Gilliam has designed the picture as an affront on the audience’s sensibilities, without ever making a case for why it’s necessary. What is the point of putting this child into such harrowing circumstances? What is the message of the movie – that children are resilient and fantasies help us to escape the unpleasantness of reality? Is that all, and if so is that really a sufficiently worthy goal that couldn’t have been reached any other way? I think I could have gotten that message without needing to see Jeff Bridges’ corpse taxidermied and propped up in bed for his daughter to snuggle with, thank you very much.

Seriously, ick.

THE HD DVD: VITAL DISC STATS

The North American distribution rights for Tideland are held by TH!NKFilm, a studio not yet committed to high-definition, and whose DVD edition of the movie was mastered at an incorrect aspect ratio in any case. Happily, Concorde Home Entertainment in Germany has treated the film with more respect, releasing it on both HD DVD and Blu-ray with an excellent transfer. The region coding of the Blu-ray is unconfirmed at present, but the HD DVD is region free (as are all discs from the format) and will function in any American HD DVD player.

The disc opens with a skippable anti-piracy ad, followed by a video introduction from the director that played before the film in theaters. The soundtrack here defaults to a German overdub (a narrator translating on top of Gilliam’s speaking voice) that can be disabled by using the Audio button on the remote to hear the original English. After this, the movie starts immediately without a main menu page. Once again, the movie defaults to a German dub soundtrack until manually changed to the correct English.

Although no pop-up menus were available during the intro, they are available once the movie starts. All menu text is written in German, but the organization is fairly straightforward and should be easy enough for an English speaker to navigate. Frustratingly, the menus disappear from the screen after barely a few seconds unless you actively move around in them and choose your selections quickly. Also, the disc automatically triggers German subtitles on screen and closes the menu when you select English audio, forcing you to re-open the menu to turn off the subtitles. It’s a minor nuisance, but annoying all the same.

Inside the HD DVD case is a small booklet with some photos and notes (in German) about the movie.

THE VIDEO: SIZING UP THE PICTURE

The history of Tideland on home video is practically a comedy of errors. The movie was shot using the Super 35 format and projected at a 2.35:1 aspect ratio in theaters. Director Terry Gilliam felt that the framing was a hair too tight and instructed that the DVD releases open the mattes off the top and bottom slightly to 2.25:1. Somehow, this simple instruction was misinterpreted in a variety of ways. The UK DVD release from Revolver Entertainment left the top and bottom mattes in place as is, and instead cropped some picture off the sides, for a ratio of about 2.10:1. Later, the American DVD from TH!NKFilm mastered the movie with a screen-filling 16:9 transfer that completely lifted all of the vertical mattes and yet also retained the horizontal cropping from the UK disc. The result was a picture visibly missing information from the sides while exposing far too much unintended image above and below the active frame.

The Dreams web site (a Terry Gilliam fanzine) has an excellent article about the aspect ratio controversy with photos comparing the various DVDs to the cinema image and the original camera negative.

After all this, Concorde released the film on DVD and high-definition in Germany with a brand new transfer that restores the original 2.35:1 theatrical ratio. While it’s true that Terry Gilliam never got the 2.25:1 ratio that he wanted, the German transfer is an accurate presentation of the theatrical framing and most closely captures his artistic intent. Further, it should be said that the 2.35:1 ratio looks perfectly balanced, and to my eye never seemed overly tight as Gilliam may feel about it.

In other respects, the quality of the transfer is pretty terrific. The picture is very sharp and detailed throughout, with no edge enhancement ringing to distract. There are many moments of truly breathtaking clarity once the action moves to the brightly lit, wide open fields on the prairie. The movie’s color palette was digitally manipulated by the filmmakers in a number of ways and sometimes looks a little artificial, but is undoubtedly faithful. A mild amount of film grain is present in some scenes, well compressed and not noisy. The only negative thing I have to say about the picture quality is that a few of the darker scenes have elevated, washed-out black levels. Whether this was present in the original photography or is an artifact of the disc transfer, I’m not sure. Regardless, the HD DVD has a wonderful, film-like image and looks great.

THE AUDIO: RATING THE SOUND

The DTS-HD High Resolution 5.1 soundtrack is also quite good. The track has pleasing fidelity, especially in the musical score. There generally isn’t much low-end activity, but the few moments that require heavy bass deliver as promised. Surround usage is a little schizophrenic. For the most part, the mix doesn’t have much going on in the rear channels, until the fantasy sequences that become decidedly more aggressive and immersive.

The soundtrack has no problems with incorrect pitch, as has occurred on some other European releases (primarily from Studio Canal). The audio on the disc may not have wowed me, but I have no complaints either. It’s a solid, satisfying presentation.

Frustratingly, the disc also has a lossless DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1 track, but only for the German dub, not the original language. Subtitle options are limited to German subtitles or German Captions for the Hearing Impaired.

THE SUPPLEMENTS: DIGGING INTO THE GOOD STUFF

Amazingly, Concorde has provided almost all of the bonus features found on the 2-disc TH!NKFilm DVD.

• Introduction by Terry Gilliam (SD, 1 min.) – This grainy, black & white, 4:3 clip in which the director warns audiences that many of them will actively hate the movie they’re about to see played before the feature in theaters, but really shouldn’t have. It comes across as defensive and condescending. The piece automatically runs prior to the start of the movie, but fortunately can be skipped.
• Audio Commentary – Speaking of defensive, Gilliam and screenwriter Tony Grisoni spend a lot of time in their commentary track whining about the negative critical reaction the film received. They eventually get over it and move on, but it takes a while. Once you get past that, Gilliam is an old pro at the commentary format and pulls himself together. The rest of the track is pretty interesting. Topics of discussion include the Mitch Cullin novel, the difficulties in financing the movie, casting and working with a young child on such dark subject matter, their artistic intentions, and the symbolism used.
• Getting Gilliam (SD, 43 min.) – Director Vincenzo Natali (Cube) was brought in during production to document the making of the film. His nasally narration is incredibly annoying and filled with grating hero-worship, but the featurette does provide a decent overview of Gilliam’s career, working methods, and the “curse” that seems to haunt all of his movies. Amazingly, despite many problems with weather, destroyed footage, and a bug bite that caused Jodelle Ferland’s lip to swell to three times its normal size, Tideland is one of the few Gilliam features to come in on time and budget. While Getting Gilliam is better-than-average for the making-of genre, it doesn’t hold a candle to the outstanding documentaries found on discs for Brazil and 12 Monkeys, nor the superlative Lost in La Mancha feature documentary about Gilliam’s aborted Don Quixote movie. [Note that the HD DVD is missing the extra commentary track from the DVD that Gilliam and Natali delivered over this featurette.]
• The Making of Tideland (SD, 5 min.) – EPK fluff with the usual talking-head interviews and clips from the movie.
• Deleted Scenes (SD, 6 min.) – Five short scenes are presented with forced Gilliam commentary. It might have been nice to hear the original dialogue, especially on the flashback where Jeliza-Rose first meets her doll head friends. None of the scenes really needed to be in the movie, however.
• Filming Green Screen (SD, 3 min.) – The underwater and rabbit hole fantasy sequences are analyzed.
• Interviews (SD, 25 min.) – Gilliam speaks for 15 minutes and producer Jeremy Thomas for 10 minutes in these additional talking-head clips.
• Trailers (SD, 4 min.) – A German trailer is presented in decent-quality anamorphic widescreen, but the audio is dubbed and the piece misleadingly tries to sell the movie as a trashy horror thriller. The original English language trailer is much better, but is here presented in awful quality 4:3 video.

HD BONUS CONTENT: ANY EXCLUSIVE GOODIES IN THERE?

New to the German disc are the following:

• More Interviews (SD, 5 min.) – In addition those by Gilliam and Thomas, further EPK interviews with Jeff Bridges, Jodelle Ferland, and Jennifer Tilly are available.
• B-Roll (SD, 21 min.) – Raw behind-the-scenes footage of the production, without structure or narration. This sort of thing gets pretty dull after just a few minutes.
• Photo Gallery (HD, 2 min.) – An animated montage of production photos.  

Also included are some trailers for unrelated movies, all dubbed into German.

THE CUTTING ROOM FLOOR: WHAT DIDN’T MAKE THE HD DVD?

Missing from the DVD is a commentary track by Terry Gilliam and Vincenzo Natali over the Getting Gilliam featurette. Everything else is present.

FINAL THOUGHTS

I can see why many viewers develop a strong and almost instantaneous adverse reaction to Tideland, but I am not so quick to write it off. I recognize the artistry in the film, even if I don’t have a compelling desire to watch it again right away.

This isn’t the type of movie one recommends as a blind purchase. For Terry Gilliam fans who’ve already seen the movie or feel sufficiently prepared for it, the German import HD DVD has excellent picture, very good sound, and a decent selection of bonus features. It merits a qualified recommendation.

The Triplets of Belleville

Reviewed by Joshua Zyber. Published Mar. 26, 2008

The Triplets of Belleville, Sylvain Chomet’s deliriously warped animated musical, is a movie whose artistry is easy to admire even if the film as a whole doesn’t quite live up to its potential. Since first seeing it a few years ago, I was left with very mixed feelings. While I quickly fell in love with its style and design, as well as its endearing main characters, the plot chosen to hold all of its elements together left me cold. Rewatching now, the picture holds up a little better after a repeat viewing, where I was able to catch many little details missed the first time around, but I still feel that the Chomet’s deliberately weird affectations overwhelm the movie and leave it, in the end, more strange than really enjoyable.

Things begin brilliantly, with a black & white prologue designed like an old-timey cartoon, complete with dirt and scratches on the print. Here we’re introduced to the title characters, a trio of flapper-era dance hall singers at the height of their popularity, playing to an enthusiastic sold-out crowd. We’re also given our first taste of the movie’s tone, a mix of outrageous surrealism and slapstick humor propelled to rollicking jazz beat. The scene is fantastic. Soon we jump forward several decades to meet Madame Souza, a diminutive old French lady raising her portly grandson. The boy doesn’t take to her attempts to introduce him to music, but after buying him a tricycle, an obsession is born. Jumping ahead again, we find the now-grown grandson a dedicated cyclist training day and night for the Tour de France.

Unfortunately, his entry in that race sets in motion a bizarre subplot in which the boy is kidnapped right off the course by mobsters and whisked across the ocean in a freight steamer. Mme. Souza and her very fat dog Bruno follow, trailing the kidnappers by paddleboat to the metropolis of Belleville (an amalgamation of New York, Paris, and Montreal with buildings shaped like wine bottles dotting the skyline). Once there, she enlists the help of the elderly Triplets to rescue her grandson and break up the crime ring that has been snatching cyclists for an exclusive betting racket.

Throughout, the story is told with no dialogue, just pure physical comedy and the occasional musical interlude. Chomet has an idiosyncratic visual style, made up of distorted caricatures and silly stereotypes. Mme. Souza is about two feet tall, with legs of uneven lengths. As an adult, her grandson the cyclist is gangly and rail thin, with absurdly bulging leg muscles that cause him to trot like a horse. Peripheral characters include obnoxious and obese Americans, snooty frog-eating French, and a mechanic who looks and squeaks almost exactly like a mouse. Chomet’s world is cluttered with layers of intricate background detail that may take several viewings to fully absorb, and the Rube Goldberg-like logic that drives even the simplest of scenes is often hilarious.

For quite a while, the movie is extremely entertaining, but it falls apart when the caper plot takes over. Even by the strange rules previously laid down, the last act strains credibility, with some uncomfortable violence that feels out of place and a final chase scene among the dopiest ever put to celluloid. Though it runs barely 80 minutes, the film runs out of steam, as if it started as a clever short subject that’s been padded out to feature length.

With all that said, The Triplets of Belleville may not be a perfect movie, but it’s a wholly unique vision whose breezy humor and snappy musical numbers are worthy of revisiting from time to time.

THE HD DVD: VITAL DISC STATS

The North American distribution rights to The Triplets of Belleville are held by Sony, who haven’t made any high-def plans for it yet. However, the movie was released on HD DVD in France by a studio called France Télévisions Distribution. The disc has no region coding and should function fine in any American HD DVD player.

The HD DVD offers no English audio or subtitle options, but with next to no dialogue, the movie itself can be enjoyed by viewers of any language without the need for translation.

THE VIDEO: SIZING UP THE PICTURE

By obvious design, the film opens like a ratty old print of an early talkie from the 1920s, in black & white and a 4:3 aspect ratio (pillarboxed in the center of the frame), with scratches and nicks drawn on for good measure. At the jump forward in time, the picture changes to full color and expands outward to a wider 1.66:1 European theatrical ratio. Even this is less wide than the 16:9 high-definition frame, and small pillarbox bars remain on the sides for the rest of the movie.

The 1080p/VC-1 transfer is extraordinary. The animated image has very crisp lines, with rich colors and excellent detail. Even individual pencil strokes in the artwork are visible. The background plates in scenes often have fascinating textures. This is definitely the type of movie where you’ll want to savor the details, and they’re all here on clear display. The picture has no edge enhancement or compression artifacts (despite being authored on a single-layer disc). In fact, I could find nothing wrong with it at all. As far as I’m concerned, this disc rates a perfect video score.

THE AUDIO: RATING THE SOUND

The DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1 soundtrack is also very strong. With no dialogue of any consequence in the movie, the sound design takes an even more prominent role. The mix is extremely directional across all channels, but not in a gimmicky way. Discrete surround effects help to create a convincing, immersive soundspace. Individual sounds in the mix are rendered with admirable clarity.

The bouncy musical score has nice separation and fidelity, filling a broad soundstage. I did however wish for better distinction from the strumming cello, which doesn’t seem to hit the low notes as effectively as it should. On the other hand, bass does come out at the end of the movie during the big chase scene.

Only the original French language track has been provided, with no alternate language or subtitle options. Given the almost total absence of dialogue, this shouldn’t be a concern. Even the English dub track on the American DVD left most of the background chatter (radio and TV announcers, voices in the crowd, etc.) in French without translation, and the few lines of actual dialogue make no real impact to the story.

THE SUPPLEMENTS: DIGGING INTO THE GOOD STUFF

The HD DVD carries over all of the supplements from the 2-disc Édition Spéciale DVD released in France, which had more bonus features than the domestic DVD from Sony. Unfortunately, aside from a few brief moments in the featurettes where particular interviewees happened to be speaking English, most of the bonus content on the disc is presented only in French audio without subtitles. Nevertheless, there are a few things that an English-speaking viewer may find interesting even without translation.

All of the following are found on the Region 1 DVD, should an interested viewer wish to seek them out with English subtitles:

• The Making of The Triplets of Belleville (SD, 36 min.) – Sylvain Chomet and his animators explain their hard work creating the film. [Note that the Region 1 DVD contains only a 16-minute excerpt of this piece.]
• Music Video by –M– (SD, 3 min.) – An exceedingly weird music video by the French singer Mathieu Chedid, who goes by the stage name of –M–. The video varies between clips from the movie, into which an animated version of Chedid has been inserted, and black & white live-action footage staged like a surreal silent film made by someone on hallucinogens. No English translation is required to get the gist of this one. It must be seen to be believed.
• The Cartoon According to Sylvain Chomet (SD, 5 min.) – The director demonstrates how he designed the characters.
• Selected-Scenes Commentary (SD, 7 min.) – Three scenes from the movie are replayed with commentary (in untranslated French) by Chomet.
• Trailers (SD, 3 min.) – One theatrical trailer and one teaser are offered in sub-standard quality SD video. The main trailer pretty much gives away the entire plot of the movie.

The rest of the bonus features were previously exclusive to the French DVD:

• The Making of the Music Video by –M– (SD, 3 min.) – Behind-the-scenes footage from the production of the video. Subtitles aren’t really necessary to understand what’s happening.
• Le Temps d’un Tournage (SD, 6 min.) – The closest translation of this piece’s title is “The Time of a Turning,” whatever that’s supposed to mean. It appears to be a TV interview with Chomet, with a look at some of his earlier work and his animation studio.
• The Triplets Seen By… (SD, 15 min.) – French comedian and cyclist Antoine de Caunes, French singer –M–, French animator Michel Ocelot, and American animator Bill Plympton are interviewed about their appreciation of the film. Plympton’s section is spoken in English with French subtitles.
• Slideshow (HD, 2 min.) – A short animated still gallery montage.
• Disc Credits (HD, 1 min.)

FINAL THOUGHTS

I’m still not completely in love with The Triplets of Belleville as a whole, but the film is packed with individual elements so idiosyncratic and unique that it earns a visit every once in a while. The HD DVD looks about as flawless as the movie can, and sounds pretty great too. The bonus features on this French import disc don’t offer English translation, but a couple of them (like the music video) are interesting anyway.