Hmmmm… so Paramount and Dreamworks Animation have cancelled many of their upcoming HD DVDs. So, as of now they’re basically only releasing DVDs, but you just know they’re about to announce some Blu-ray titles 
Monthly Archive for February, 2008
Variety is reporting that Warner Brothers studios is buying up New Line…
Just to remember, New Line is the studio that brought us amazing films such as (to name a few):
- The Lord of the Rings trilogy
- Nightmare on Elm Street
- American History X
- The Blade trilogy
- Wedding Crashers
The EOL or Encyclopedia of Life is now live. They have about 30,000 pages up and right now the site is abysmally slow as it’s launch was mentioned on Slashdot. Still, I think the project is terribly useful and could be a real boon to knowledge sharing. I especially like the concept that there is a slider allowing for more or less detail depending on your skill level. With the one fish I browsed to, this selector did not make much of a difference, but I do think this could be put to wonderful use. Go and check it out, but please be patient due to the slashdotting…
This was started a couple of weeks ago and I just got around to finishing it up…
FILM: 3 out of 5 stars
BD: 3 out of 5 stars
Heather went out with friends last night and Ben had hit the sack, so I decided to grab one of my Netflix BDs (Blu-ray discs) and relax on the sofa with a flick. I chose The Prestige starring Hugh Jackman, Christian Bale, Scarlet Johansson, and Michael Caine.
Generally the film is about two magicians, Jackman & Bale, at the turn of the last century. They begin by working for the same magician, but quickly turn into fierce rivals. Michael Caine and the Scarlet Johansson are intertwined into both of their lives as supporting characters, but neither has the presence in the film that the two leads have. This is a somewhat slow-moving, methodical period piece by Christopher Nolan, director of Memento, Insomnia, Batman Begins, and The Dark Knight.
On the Blu-ray side of things, I think the picture was quite good at 720p, but I still have no good home theater to properly check out the audio. The menus were VERY small and hard to read from a reasonable sitting distance (yes, I did have my glasses on ). It just seems they generally did not design the menus for a movie watching scenario, but more for if I was watching from my office chair. I have had this issue with other Blu-ray discs where the authoring did a poor job of taking advantage of the available screen size. Ratatouille is another example where the scene selector show such small screenshots, when much larger could have been used.
Still a relatively small quibble. I would say this movie is definitely worth a rental, but I can’t see buying it…
Paramount Goes Blu | High-Def Digest
Just saw this hit my news reader. As expected, Paramount is now on the Blu-ray bandwagon (not as if this is a surprise). It’s good to see all major studios backing one HD optical format. At this point, I can’t even say I would have cared which one won, just that one of them had to. It simply frightens off too many consumers to have the division of a format war.
So, Mr. Bay, when can I expect to have my Blu-ray edition of Transformers (with every piece of supplemental content from the HD DVD)?
WB takes franchise turn with ‘Akira’ – Entertainment News, Film News, Media – Variety
It looks like Warner Brothers now has the film rights (again) to the Akira graphic novels/manga. They are planning to adapt the 6 volumes of Akira TPB into 2 films. I personally can’t wait to see this as I very much enjoyed the anime adaptation, but I have never personally read the TPBs, but I really should.
I think this is one of those adaptations that is going to absolutely rock or absolutely suck. I can’t see it falling in the middle
Slashdot | Full Lunar Eclipse for the Americas on Wednesday
I really wanted to check this out tonight, but as I walked outside, I noticed that our current cloud cover prevents me from even seeing the moon 
According to the story, we won’t see another until December 2010. Oh well, at least Ben will be a bit older at that point and maybe I can keep him awake to enjoy the spectacle with me 
So, I haven’t touched it but I followed this news closely using my Samsung Blackjack while on vacation (damn! I want an iPhone ). So, Toshiba has now come out and said that they are discontinuing their HD DVD business. Here is the press release. I am surprised that it happened as quickly as it did, but I’m not terribly bothered by the news. I do now have a dead format in my Xbox 360 HD DVD player. I’m sure I will end up selling it to someone who has a large collection who would like a 2nd player (we’ll have to see what happens).
Also, now, Universal has announced support for Blu-ray. All that is really lacking is Paramount at this point…
No one should be terribly frustrated with this situation as this is the life of an early adopter. Oh, and by the way, I think everyone should ignore the talking heads on the news that suggest that all of this is for nought and downloads will come in and trump it all. Here are my reasons:
- Downloads are still slow (steadily improving)
- Limited title availability (more so than HD optical media from what I’ve seen)
- None, and I repeat, NONE reach the same quality level as Blu-ray or HD DVD
- No purchase options – every option I have seen is a transient rental option with no long term ownership. I don’t want (nor do I think many people would) to have to re-rent a title I enjoy watching repeatedly
- Storage space – assuming ownership is allowed. Storage space would be a major problem for more than a handful of titles. Backups would be even more of an issue…
- There is something about physical ownership of movies. So far, audio is different as it is something that is more engrained into our daily lives. People seem to want to OWN a physical movie and stick it up on the shelf…
A few more interesting points that I found on PS3Blog.net…
FILM: 2 out of 5 stars
BD: 3 out of 5 stars
I watched Good Luck Chuck on Blu-ray a couple of days ago. I wish I could get that little bit of my life back. I like Dane Cook’s comedy, but he hasn’t terribly impressed me as an actor. He’s okay, but nothing special. I also like Jessica Alba going all the way back to her time on Fox’s Dark Angel. She’s a decent actress, but not a whole lot more than a pretty face, but I can’t say I mind that at all. The script is horrible. The gross out jokes have zero payoff like those from movies like Superbad did. However, I think the single biggest failing is Dane Cook’s best friend played by Dan Fogler. His character is crass, uninteresting, and downright offensive. My assumption is that this is how the character was written and not the actor’s interpretation given the rest of the movie. Given all of that, I can’t recommend this flick to ANYONE unless you get it free as part of a Netflix subscription