and now back to what I'd usually talk about
Since no one else is updating, I will.
No one commented on Red Letter Media's Attack of the Clones review, so I'm gonna just embed it right hurr. Figure that'll get your attention.
Y'know, the way Marvel is doing their self-financed movies is exactly how Lucas should've handled the prequels, but the past is the past.
As timing would have it, I actually sold off my dvd's of the six-film "saga" (ughhhhhh) within the last several months. I'm convinced that when the movies hit blu-ray, Lucas will use his - as always - good business sense and throw in a remastered 1080p transfer of the original-original trilogy. The argument for "keep dreaming" is that, well, the happy fan has everything he needs and never needs to buy anything from him ever again, so why would he do that? Well, the answer to that is simple: the industry is gonna figure out how to make digital downloads a mass medium a lot sooner than you think. Lucas isn't gonna double dip on Star Wars .... which brings me to my next subject.
So the theatrical version of the LOTR trilogy hit blu-ray this week. Conveniently for people like me, it's basically a blu-ray port of the 2-disc theatrical dvd's from 2002, 2003 and 2004. I sold off my copies months ago after the blu-ray's specs were announced, and then went ahead and sold off the extendeds since, well, it's still worth something and will be worth nothing once it also hits blu-ray. Anyway, the current blu-ray isn't something that had been on my "oh yeah, gotta have it" list, but it's just one of those "nice to know it's there" in terms of how I could pick it up on sale at some point and get everything from the old dvd's.
Anyway, the early screenshots that went up several weeks ago looked good-not-great to me. Certainly faithful to how the films have always looked, but then again these movies always had a certain aesthetic to them and aren't exactly the 100 percent digital fuck-your-eyeballs of a Pixar. Some of the screenshots though, particularly the ones from scenes in Bilbo's house, looked severely DNR'd. If you want to know what I'm talking about, look no further than these comparisons right here:
http://forums.highdefdigest.com/1885998-post125.html
http://forums.highdefdigest.com/1887689-post145.html
http://forums.highdefdigest.com/1888542-post149.html
http://forums.highdefdigest.com/1883031-post2.html
The hdtv broadcast (the one labeled MPEG-2) looks natural and the blu-ray doesn't. Warner Brothers, in their infinite wisdom, decided that slathering the video with DNR was somehow a good idea. Now, I should stress - from the reviews at least - it appears most of the movies' running time has been unaffected. Shots like this, for example, look fucking gorgeous:
http://forums.highdefdigest.com/1887690-post146.html
http://forums.highdefdigest.com/1890386-post163.html
http://forums.highdefdigest.com/1883040-post11.html
Nevertheless, the studios need to actually back up their words with actions. Catalog titles don't get much higher profile than Lord of the Rings and if this release doesn't get the studios to lay the hell off the DNR dial, nothing will.
Anyway, I'm watching The Other Side of Midnight right now after catching the tail end of Five Minutes to Live where Johnny Cash plays a hit man or something.
get a load of this:
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0076507/trivia
.... and with that, my post comes full circle!
No one commented on Red Letter Media's Attack of the Clones review, so I'm gonna just embed it right hurr. Figure that'll get your attention.
Click to viewY'know, the way Marvel is doing their self-financed movies is exactly how Lucas should've handled the prequels, but the past is the past.
As timing would have it, I actually sold off my dvd's of the six-film "saga" (ughhhhhh) within the last several months. I'm convinced that when the movies hit blu-ray, Lucas will use his - as always - good business sense and throw in a remastered 1080p transfer of the original-original trilogy. The argument for "keep dreaming" is that, well, the happy fan has everything he needs and never needs to buy anything from him ever again, so why would he do that? Well, the answer to that is simple: the industry is gonna figure out how to make digital downloads a mass medium a lot sooner than you think. Lucas isn't gonna double dip on Star Wars .... which brings me to my next subject.
So the theatrical version of the LOTR trilogy hit blu-ray this week. Conveniently for people like me, it's basically a blu-ray port of the 2-disc theatrical dvd's from 2002, 2003 and 2004. I sold off my copies months ago after the blu-ray's specs were announced, and then went ahead and sold off the extendeds since, well, it's still worth something and will be worth nothing once it also hits blu-ray. Anyway, the current blu-ray isn't something that had been on my "oh yeah, gotta have it" list, but it's just one of those "nice to know it's there" in terms of how I could pick it up on sale at some point and get everything from the old dvd's.
Anyway, the early screenshots that went up several weeks ago looked good-not-great to me. Certainly faithful to how the films have always looked, but then again these movies always had a certain aesthetic to them and aren't exactly the 100 percent digital fuck-your-eyeballs of a Pixar. Some of the screenshots though, particularly the ones from scenes in Bilbo's house, looked severely DNR'd. If you want to know what I'm talking about, look no further than these comparisons right here:
http://forums.highdefdigest.com/1885998-post125.html
http://forums.highdefdigest.com/1887689-post145.html
http://forums.highdefdigest.com/1888542-post149.html
http://forums.highdefdigest.com/1883031-post2.html
The hdtv broadcast (the one labeled MPEG-2) looks natural and the blu-ray doesn't. Warner Brothers, in their infinite wisdom, decided that slathering the video with DNR was somehow a good idea. Now, I should stress - from the reviews at least - it appears most of the movies' running time has been unaffected. Shots like this, for example, look fucking gorgeous:
http://forums.highdefdigest.com/1887690-post146.html
http://forums.highdefdigest.com/1890386-post163.html
http://forums.highdefdigest.com/1883040-post11.html
Nevertheless, the studios need to actually back up their words with actions. Catalog titles don't get much higher profile than Lord of the Rings and if this release doesn't get the studios to lay the hell off the DNR dial, nothing will.
Anyway, I'm watching The Other Side of Midnight right now after catching the tail end of Five Minutes to Live where Johnny Cash plays a hit man or something.
get a load of this:
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0076507/trivia
.... and with that, my post comes full circle!