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Horseman (Blu-ray Review)

admin — Sat, 31 Jul 2010 04:30:02 +0000

'The Horseman' is not (repeat NOT) a western.

Revenge films are among the most basic and often among the most satisfying genres in all of moviedom. It doesnt take long to set up a situation where we find an emotionally devastated protagonist (usually the relative of someone who has been slain, or at the very least kidnapped), give him the tools to enact his justice on the perpetrators, and then simply sit back and watch the chips (and broken bones) fall into place. When the modern revenge film found its voice with the Death Wish s...

Video

The Horseman is not going to win any videophile awards for its VC-1 encoded 1080p image (with a 1.78:1 aspect ratio), and yet it is perfectly evocative of director Kastrissios vision, Im sure, especially considering the films paltry budget. What were greeted with here, aside from the ubiquitous use of post-processing (more about which later), is a rather grainy stock with blown out contrast that gives the film a perfect indie verité quality, which is exactly what I bet Kastrissios wa...

Audio

On the other hand (and/or ear), The Horsemans staggeringly robust DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1 mix will leave you ducking for cover as thumps, cracks, moans and groans fly about the room as all sorts of mayhem is unleashed. This is a really bombastic soundtrack that takes no prisoners and delivers a lot of sonic punch, especially considering the films relatively small budget. While the smaller, more dialogue driven moments of the film are delivered with crispness and clarity, its in the e...

Supplements

Aside from two quite excellent Commentaries, one with the director, and the other with cast and crew, The Horseman also offers these SD supplements:

The Making of The Horseman (35:58), is a cut above the typical EPK-fest, with some nice background on the lesser known talents in front of and behind the camera.
Deleted Scenes (9:08) presents three scenes, including some extended as opposed to totally deleted items. Nothing really earth-...

Final Words

Make no (broken and twisted) bones about it, The Horseman is violent, bloody, gruesome and often gasp inducing in its absolute mayhem. That said, there's just an inkling of some actual moral consciousness running beneath the surface of the gore which augurs well for Kastrissios once he becomes a bit more mature as a writer and craftsman. This certainly isn't family fare, or for the even moderately squeamish, but if you're a fan of this kind of vengeance flick, The Horseman is rec......

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Horseman (Blu-ray Review)

Home (Blu-ray Review)

admin — Sat, 31 Jul 2010 01:11:03 +0000

Home is where the heartand the highwayis.

The mosquito buzzing at night in your bedroom. A distant car alarm that wont stop. That distracting
hum from the back of your plasma TV. The incessantly barking cocker spaniel next door and the
neighbor upstairs who wears lead shoes and apparently enjoys rearranging his furniture at three in
the morning. The midnight dripdripdrip of the faucet. Sound can be the ultimate aggravator,
worming itself into your brain, expanding and exaggerating, fraying nerves and putting tempers on
edge...

Video

Kino International brings Home to U.S. audiences with a 1080p/AVC-encoded transfer thats
framed in the films original 1.85:1 aspect ratio. The film makes a strong but understated appearance
on Blu-ray, with an un-tampered-with look that does justice to Agnes Godards evocative, naturalistic
cinematography. Fine detail is more than adequately reproduced here, and you can easily discern facial
texture, the threading in clothing, the knobbiness of a terrycloth towel, and even make ...

Audio

Since sound plays such a huge role in Homes story, I expected this discs DTS-HD Master
Audio 5.1 surround track to be fairly robust. In a way, however, its curiously restrained, although I still
think that its successful in ratcheting the familys ever-increasing tension. In the beginning of the film,
before the highway opens, the mix is dominated by dialog, with only hushed ambiencecrickets and
airy wind, mostlytaking up residence in the rear channels. Once the roar from th...

Supplements

Sleepless by Ursula Meier (1080i, 33:39)
The best inclusion on the disc is Ursala Meiers second short film, from 1998, which won awards at
several international film festivals. Do note that while the film is technically presented in 1080i, the
image is windowboxed within the frame and obviously upscaled.

Interview with the Director and Cinematographer (1080i, 32:36)
In lieu of a directors commentary or making of documentary, we get an insightful conve...

Final Words

Stifling, suffocating, paranoiacHome is a grim examination of how external forces can alter
the emotional dynamics of a family. Whatever you want to call itenvironmental fable, character
study, pastoral gone claustrophobicthe film is an exceptionally strong debut from director Ursula
Meier, who coaxes yet another ravaging performance out of Isabelle Huppert and teams up with
cinematographer Agnes Godard to paint an increasingly bleak family portrait. This is another great
rel......

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Home (Blu-ray Review)

Starcrash Blu-ray Announced and Detailed

admin — Fri, 30 Jul 2010 23:07:35 +0000

Shout Factory has officially announced Starcrash for Blu-ray release on September 14, as part of the Roger Corman Cult Classics collection. This Italian-produced sci-fi movie will be presented with DTS HD 5.1 sound, a reversible cover featuring vintage art for original movie posters and a payload of bonus content including all-new interviews and commentaries with cast and crew, rare behind-the-scenes footage and much more....

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Starcrash Blu-ray Announced and Detailed

Road to Perdition (Blu-ray Review)

admin — Fri, 30 Jul 2010 19:06:51 +0000

A masterpiece of sight, sound, and story debuts on Blu-ray as a stunning package from Paramount.

Is one more body going to make a difference?

Road to Perdition is an innately gorgeous exhibit of art moving at 24 frames per second.
The film, as directed by Sam Mendes (Jarhead) and
photographed by Conrad Hall (American Beauty), is
as visually captivating as it is thematically enthralling, a potent combination to be sure...

Video

It's almost criminal to give Road to Perdition's fantastic and wonderfully faithful 1080p
transfer
less than a perfect score, but wobbly opening title credits and some random pops and speckles
over the image prove just enough to knock the total down a half-notch. Don't let those nitpicks
detract from just how gorgeous Paramount's high definition presentation truly is, though. Road
to
Perdition isn't one of those eye-popping, three-dimensional, brightly-colored, and ...

Audio

Road to Perdition's Blu-ray release features a reference-quality DTS-HD MA 5.1 lossless
soundtrack. Paramount's latest offering is consistently smooth and seamless in presentation.
Thomas Newman's (Revolutionary Road)
Oscar-nominated score enjoys a warmth and richness that blends seamlessly with the visuals and
seems to float into the soundstage with no effort and with a realism that's hard to top. The tra...

Supplements

Beginning with a brief introduction to the film's Blu-ray release with Director Sam Mendes (1080i,
1:18),
Road to Perdition features a nice assortment of extra content. A feature-length
audio commentary track with Director Sam Mendes is one of the highlights. He offers up a
wonderfully absorbing track,
discussing a string of pertinent thematic and technical issues that frame the picture within a context
of
the difficult and involved work that went into the making of the fi...

Final Words

Every year, there are always a few select films snubbed from contention in the race for Oscar's best
picture. Every decade, there are one or two films that stand out amongst those as the best of the
unjustly left behind. One such picture is Director Edward Zwick's Glory, and another is Sam
Mendes' Road to Perdition. Though not completely overlooked during awards season -- Conrad
Hall won a much-deserved post......

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Cairo Time (Blu-ray Review)

admin — Fri, 30 Jul 2010 18:51:49 +0000

Winner of the Best Canadian Feature Film award at the Toronto International Film Festival, Ruba Nadda's "Cairo Time" (2009) arrives on Blu-ray courtesy of Canadian distributors Mongrel Media. The supplemental features on the disc include an audio commentary director Ruba Nadda and cinematographer Luc Montpellier; making of featurette; conversation with director Ruba Nadda, Patricia Clarkson, and Alexander Siddig; and the film's original theatrical trailer. In English, without optional subtitl...

Video

Presented in an aspect ratio of 2.35:1, encoded with MPEG-4 AVC and granted a 1080p transfer,
Ruba Nadda's Cairo Time arrives on Blu-ray courtesy of Canadian distributors Mongrel Media.

This is a strong high-definition transfer. Fine object detail is good, clarity pleasing and contrast levels consistent throughout the entire film. The color-scheme does not disappoint either; yellows, reds, blues, greens, browns and blacks are rich and well saturated; overall, the film has a ...

Audio

There are two audio tracks on this Blu-ray disc: English Dolby Digital 5.1 and French Dolby Digital 5.1. For the record, Mongrel Media have not provided optional English or French subtitles for the main feature.

I am slightly disappointed that Mongrel Media have not included a loseless audio track of some sort on this Blu-ray disc. Cairo Time is complimented by a wonderful music score, courtesy of Niall Byrne, which certainly would have benefited from a strong loseless treatme...

Supplements

On Cairo Time - a wonderful conversation with director Ruba Nadda, Patricia Clarkson, and Alexander Siddig in which they discuss their work on the film, their impressions of Cairo, the characters they play, etc. In English, not subtitled. (26 min, 480/60i).

The Making of Cairo Time - in this featurette director Ruba Nadda explains how Cairo Time was shot, what are some of the challenges her team had to overcome while shooting on the streets of Cairo...

Final Words

Canadian director Ruba Naddas Cairo Time is a beautiful, old-fashioned romantic film with fantastic performances by Patricia Clarkson and Alexander Siddig. The Blu-ray disc herein reviewed, courtesy of Canadian distributors Mongrel Media, looks and sounds very good. My only minor complaint about it is that it does not offer a loseless audio track. Still, Cairo Time is a wonderful film and well worth owning. RECOMMENDED. ......

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Cairo Time (Blu-ray Review)

HD Moods - Rebel (Blu-ray Review)

admin — Fri, 30 Jul 2010 17:06:39 +0000

This is one 'Rebel' with a cause.

Theres always a certain amount of hype that attends even minor home video releases. You know the drill, it includes everything from pull quotes from some reviewer in Podunkville to breathless, purple prose adorning the keepcase insert. One quickly learns to take all of the public relations hoo-hah with a grain (or even a pillar) of salt. When every film or home video release is deemed A masterpiece! by at least one voice in the wilderness, the only thing that ultimately matters is how you ...

Video

Rebel, like its sibling Rise, is a spectacular feast for the eyes (perhaps even more so than Rise), with a sterling AVC encoded 1080i transfer (in a 1.78:1 aspect ratio). Despite some fairly heavy post-processing effects, and an interlaced image, there are no egregious artifacts to report. Instead we get a blisteringly sharp image that may not depend on the beauty of nature as much as Rise does, but which supplements the basic source material with a wealth of gorgeo...

Audio

It's rather odd that Topics, which is really jumping to the head of the line in this genre with these new AMOS releases, would have their Blu-rays default to a Dolby Digital 2.0 mix when the Blu's come with not one, but two, uncompressed lossless audio options, a DTS-HD Master Audio 2.0 and an LPCM 2.0. It's even stranger that the slipcase and insert hawk the Dolby option and not the lossless options. That said, these are extremely robust soundtracks, with some pretty overpowering low end, esp...

Supplements

No supplements are included on this budget priced disc....

Final Words

Rebel proves that Rise was no fluke, and that Topics has an extremely potent new brand with these AMOS releases. If you ever bought some of those old VHS tapes that featured compilations of the then-nascent CGI genre, you might have some idea of the fun and variety that Rebel has in store. Yes, this is niche marketing at its perhaps most obscure. But take a chance on these AMOS releases, and I doubt you'll be disappointed. Rebel comes very highly recommended.......

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Disney Sells Miramax to Investor Group

admin — Fri, 30 Jul 2010 14:59:21 +0000

Confirming the agreement in principle announced earlier this month, Walt Disney Co. has finalized a deal to sell its Miramax Films unit, including its library, for over $660 million. The buyer is Filmyard Holding, an investor group led by Los Angeles construction magnate Ron Tutor. Filmyard Holding has not yet detailed its plans for the Blu-ray release of Miramax catalog films....

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Disney Sells Miramax to Investor Group

Last of the Mohicans Blu-ray in October

admin — Fri, 30 Jul 2010 10:17:09 +0000

An early announcement to retailers indicates that 20th Century Fox Home Entertainment is set to release Michael Mann's The Last of the Mohicans on Blu-ray on October 5. The movie will be presented in a "director's definitive cut," and bonus features will include an interview with actor Daniel-Day Lewis....

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Last of the Mohicans Blu-ray in October

Iron Man 2 Blu-ray to Include Captain America and Thor Footage

admin — Fri, 30 Jul 2010 10:10:19 +0000

Comicbookmovie.com is reporting that the two-disc special edition Blu-ray of Iron Man 2 (due out September 28) will include teaser trailers for the Thor movie and Captain America . Both will reportedly be easter eggs, hidden in a special S.H.I.E.L.D. Data Vault....

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Iron Man 2 Blu-ray to Include Captain America and Thor Footage

Redbox Rolls out Blu-ray Rentals

admin — Fri, 30 Jul 2010 09:51:10 +0000

As was announced earlier in the year, Redbox has started offering Blu-ray titles for rental at more than 13,000 of its 23,000 kiosk locations. Rental price is $1.50 a night (50 cents more than for DVD). By the fall, all of the company's kiosks will offer BDs; and by the end of the year, 10% of kiosk inventory will be in high definition. Customers can check for Blu-ray availability in their area at the dedicated Redbox Blu-ray site....

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Redbox Rolls out Blu-ray Rentals