July 20, 2009
Posted by Martin:
The Video: A-
The Audio: A-
The Extras: B-
Taken
was written by Luc Besson of The Professional and The Fifth Element fame, and directed by Pierre Morel. It didn’t do so well with the critics, receiving a 57% on Rotten Tomatoes.
The video: A-
The video here is presented in 1080P/AVC and formatted in 2.35:1. This is an attractive image, Michel Abramowicz’s cinematography is well suited for the gritty story line. Most of the action takes place at night and in shadowy rooms, and his work is excellent here.
The Audio: A-
The Audio is present in DTS-HD 5.1. Since this is an action movie the soundtrack pops and is very active, a very attractive soundtrack.
The Extras: B-
I was surprise to see so little extras here. The extras center around two feature length commentaries. The first track is with director Pierre Moral, cinematographer Michel Abramowicz and Michel Julian. This track is spoken in French and given English subtitles. Although it is nice to learn about some of the technical aspect of the movie, reading the text makes the commentary hard to finish. The second commentary is with screen writer Robert Mark Kamen.
Other extras include:
“The Making of” a short standard fluff piece about the making of the movie.
“Avant Premiere” five minutes of footage from the premiere, nothing much here.
“Story board to Screen” a short featurette with key scenes where the story board is shown on one side of the screen as the scene plays on the other. I have never been much of a fan of this type of extra.
The second disc includes the digital copy for your ipod.
Overall, the movie is nice to look at and listen to there isn’t much there in terms of extras. I’m not sure if they would double dip this one, since it didn’t recieve a lot of criticial respect, but you really never know these days.
Other Blu-Ray Reviews:
Dirty Harry
Quantum of Solace
Be Kind Rewind
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Action, Crime | Tagged: Blu-Ray, Blu-Ray Review, Liam Nesson, Luc Besson, Taken | 
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Posted by mctiller
April 8, 2009
Posted by Martin:
Video: A
Audio: A
Extras: D
When these movies were released originally on DVD there was some discussion on the net about a possible double dip, with Miramax releasing both film together as one long film. But that never happened, not sure why, but five years later I would not be opposed to a rerelease of these films in new packaging and presentation.
The Video: A
The video here is extraordinary.
Robert Richardson’s cinematrogrophy is something to behold on Blu-Ray. To my eye there seemed to be some edge enhancement early on in the movie, but nothing that distracts from the rest of the picture.
The video is 1080P in 2.35 format and is encoded in MPEG 4 format.
The Audio: A
The audio is encoded in uncompressed 5.1 PCM, and it is excellent. Tarantino knows how to make music add to the cinematic experience and his great soundtrack is on fire with this transfer.
The extras: D
This is where the disc falls flat. The extras here are recycled from the previous DVD release, and even then they aren’t that great. There is a 22 minute behind the scenes featurette and it is nice, but nothing to write home about. There are musical performances by the 5,6,7,8’s. The girl band shown in the movie, as well as trailers to other Tarantino films. For the capacity of Blu-Ray this part of the disc is very dissappointing.
Overall the transfer of the film is reference quailty. This is how good a film can look when done right. Miramax did a great job with the transfer. I just wish there was more done with the extras and the potential of Blu-Ray. With another Tarantino film coming to theaters in August, I wouldn’t be surprised to see a rerelease of this film and Vol.2 next year, when Inglorious Basterds comes to Blu-Ray.
Other Blu-Ray reviews you might enjoy:
5 Comments | Action, Classics, Crime | Tagged: Blu-Ray, Kill Bill, Kill Bill Vol.1., review, Tarantino | Permalink
Posted by mctiller
March 15, 2009
Posted by Martin:
The Basics:
Video: B-
Audio: B
Extras: B+
Dirty Harry is of course the first film in the Dirty Harry series, released in 1971. Clint Eastwood was already a famous actor having done Rawhide and the Serio Leone Westerns, this film transfers he previous Western character into the streets of San Fransico.
The video:
The video is encoded at 1080P in VC-1 format. Which makes it look very nice. The film element itself that was transferred seems to have some dirt in some of the opening shots. One of the difficulties in transfering film to Hi-Def means every little speck or scratch can be seen. The blacks here are very deep, it is a movie shot mostly at night and it looks very good for such a film.
The Audio:
The audio on the main film is 5.1 Dolby Digital TrueHD. And the mix here is okay, the mix is primarily out of the front two speakers. The original source of the movie is in stereo, and it seems to stay in stereo here.
The extras:
All of the extras from the 2 disc special edition DVD are included here. One annoying trait is that “Dirty Harry: The Original” is presented in letterbox 16:9 in 4:3 format. In other words it will show with black all the way around the image. Annoying. It is a simple documentary and does not reveal a lot of new information about the movie.
The best extra in the bunch and worth the 85 minutes is Clint Eastwood: Out of the Shadows, it is new for this release. This documentary chronicales the carrer of Eastwood, from his very early days as a studio B actor at Universal all the way up through the 1990s. You will learn more about Eastwood in this documentary then in any of the other extras on the disc.
Eastwood is a very hardworking actor and director, and understands his public persona very well and uses it to his advantage. He developed the practice of doing a personal film then a more commercial film. He seems to take it personally when a movie he loves doesn’t do well publicly, such as his bio-pic on Charlie Parker “Bird”. This documentary will have you filling your Netflix queue up with long forgotten Eastwood films.
There is an audio commentary by
Richard Schickel who is a film critic and Eastwood biographer. Schickel speaks of how the movie is shot without close-ups and is primarily in wide and telephoto shots. From the commentary I enjoyed learning that the suicide scene was originally scheduled to be shot over six days, but Eastwood realized that newscoverage at the time could cover the same scene without the additional expensive extra lights. Therefore he was able to get that scene done in one evening. A great lesson on filmmmaking.
Overall this is a good effort on an important American film from the early 70s. Currently this is the only Dirty Harry Blu-Ray available as an individual disc. The others are avaiable as part of the Dirty Harry Ultimate Collector’s Edition [Blu-ray]
.
Other Blu-Ray reviews:
8 Comments | Action, Classics, Crime | Tagged: Blu-Ray, Clint Eastwood, Dirty Harry, film, movie, review | Permalink
Posted by mctiller
