The Oppo has landed

I am not sure what is up with that.

The thing that I liked the most about Triangle is the way the narrative keeps shifting every fifteen minutes or so to keep the viewer on his or her toes. It does so without too many dramatic "Twilight Zone"-style u-turns; I would characterize them more as 45 degree turns. Even after the big reveal at her house, it still has a few surprises up its sleeve when she hits the highway at the end. (By the way, did you watch the opening credits again after you finished the movie? It is a classic example of how selective editing can change the impressions giving to a viewer.)

I also picked up Taxi Driver and the best direct-to-video movie in the DC "Timmiverse," Batman Beyond: Return of the Joker.. The former needs no introduction, but the latter is in my view every bit as good as the theatrical Batman: Mask of the Phantasm. It helps to have at least a passing familiarity with the Batman Beyond series, and it really helps to be familiar with Tim Drake's version of Robin from either the comics or the original animated series -- the movie makes a shocking alteration to the canon involving him.

Bit of a snag with The Walking Dead. Disc 2 in my set is a DVD, not a Blu-Ray. I did a quick Google search and did not see anyone references to that happening, so I will have to dig up my receipt and go back to Target next week where I bought it. So no ending for me this weekend, sadly.

I'm not sure either. Rumour has it that they stopped doing R&D for that project.

I did rewatch the opening credits of Triangle. I liked how the twist and reveal was handled. Incidentally, that is the one beef I had with Heavy Rain. The reveal that Scott is actually the killer was a tad difficult to swallow given that during gameplay we control him during the visit to Manfred's typewriter store. I know there is a brief cutscene where Lauren plays with the music box and we do not control Scott, but it is difficult to understand how Lauren could not have heard or noticed Scott slip into the back of the store, kill Manfred, set up the scene to make it look like someone else did it, and then slip back to the store front unnoticed. That one felt a bit forced to me.

I only know a little of the Batman Beyond series. I'm really not that familiar.

On Blu, I picked up copies of Piranha (2010) (I have still to see the ending), Event Horizon, Near Dark and Dawn of the Dead (2004). The last two I got as a two for $20 special, which is pretty good given standard pricing in iglood land.

Sorry to hear about your disc mix up. That is the first I have heard of something like that happening. Another AMC series I'm currently watching is Breaking Bad. Have you picked that up yet? You also need to do Six Feet Under and Big Love at some point (both are HBO).

I just read that Bryan Cranston is in Beaking Bad, so I may have to check that one out. (There was a news story that he has been cast as the villain in the remake of Total Recall and it mentioned that he was from Breaking Bad. I associate him so strongly with Hal that it would be interesting to see him in something different.

I agree about the reveal of the killer in Heavy Rain. It always feels forced when you are controlling a character who is conciously something that you do not know (as opposed to the old canard of the character having amnesia so that you learn the reveal with him.) In fact, it threw me off so much that when the scene with the reveal happens I did not understand what was happening. By the time I figured it out I was so confused that I started that chapter over to watch the reveal again. Still, that is a relatively minor slip in an otherwise excellent game.

Event Horizen and Dawn of the Dead both look very good on Blu, but do not get your hopes up too much with the transfer for Near Dark. It is pretty soft.

And I want to know what you think of the whole movie Piranha once you finally finish it!

He does well in Breaking Bad. I think you'd like the show.

The other thing that bothered me about that scene in Heavy Rain was the exercise to remove finger prints. When I play games like that, I generally search every spot I can, as I don't like to miss clues. Wiping everything down required a bit of effort! But now I'm digressing.

I did not get to Piranha this weekend. Instead, I watched Dark Crystal. I've had that movie lying around for a while. I picked it and Labyrinth up -- they were bundled together (on separate discs and in their own packaging).

I went and saw Hannah with a couple of friends on Saturday, and we got to talking about the Breaking Bad thing. They both recommended it as well. In fact, when I was explaining how I loved Cranston in Malcolm because he was willing to do absolutely anything for a gag, even having himself covered in bees for a shot that lasted all of five seconds. The one friend explained that I would love the first episode of Bad since it amply showed Cranston's willingness to put himself on the line.


I exchanged my Walking Dead discs over the weekend and finished it. On the whole, I loved the series. It had a bit of the Star Trek movie factor going -- the best episodes were 2, 4 and 6. I thought that the ending in episode 6 was great (minus the slightly shaky visual effects for the explosion, of course, but the budget had to cost them sooner or later.)

Dark Crystal and Labyrinth both look very good on Blu, especially the former. It has less optical effects than the latter and is consistently sharper and more detailed -- especially when the wires are clearly visible! It also corrected the colours a bit from the remastered DVD of a few years ago; that one had a somewhat exaggerated purple tint to many of the scenes.

Cranston does indeed put himself on the line.

The thing I liked about Walking Dead is that while, at its roots, it stayed true to being a zombie show, the series also explored issues around the charcters. At many times, there were more pressing threats than the zombies. By the way, what did you think of the disguise scene? I was having a late dinner and eating lasagna when that scene popped up on screen . . .

As for the puppetry, I liked being able to see the wires.

The "meat" scene was in episode 2, and is one of the things that I liked best about the episode. There have been similar ideas in other zombie material, but no one quite went that far with it. In the special features on the discs, Frank Darabont (and others) pointed out how surprised they were that AMC never had any complaints about a single shot of that scene.

I take my hat off to them for having the balls to give that scene the green light.

That was more or less exactly what Darabont said. He said that AMC was on board with what they wanted to do from the beginning, and wanted to push the envelope. Interesting how things have changed, considering that George Romero had to release Day of the Dead unrated back in the Eighties. That was a bit more graphic than the series, but not that much so.

We're a bunch of desensitized hooligans nowadays. Scary to think about where we'll be 20 years from now.

Yes, but a few non-sexualized F-bombs got The King's Speech an R rating, so at least we are safe from that.

Does Joe Pesci know?

The Weinstein Co. did eventually release a PG-13 version of King's Speech, but it did not do very well. Apparently, it was not the R rating that was keeping kids away from seeing a period picture set in England, but the fact that it was a period picture set in England. Imagine that.

I would have never guessed.

That was one of the Weinstein Company's odder moves. After fighting the MPAA unsuccessfully over the original R rating, refusing to change anything and releasing it as an R, grossing over $100 million in the U.S. alone, and finally winning multiple Oscars including Best Picture, they suddenly decided that the R rating was keeping viewers away from seeing the film, so they changed it without director Tom Hooper's approval and failed to make any more money. Slick.


By the way, speaking of ratings, I saw Hannah last weekend and thought it was a very good film, but holy cow was that one violent PG-13. Not that inconsitency from the MPAA is particularly newsworthy at this point, but it really stood out in this case.

I was wondering if Hanna was any good. The movie trailer I saw suggested it might be a bit cheese.

Anything but that. It was directed by Joe Wright, who directed Atonement and the Kiera Knightley version of Persuasion. He has never directed an action movie before, so needless to say it is a fairly unconventional one. Wright is very precise in his use of sound, music and editing. If you saw Atonement, that has a very interesting opening where the main character is typing and it takes a moment for it to register with the viewer that the typing is in in rhythm with the music (and the editing, too.) He does something similar in Hannah, which has a soundtrack by the Chemical Brothers. The main character has grown up in the wilderness and has never heard music or any modern sounds, so Wright deliberately makes it difficult to tell where the music stops and the sound effects begin -- mirroring her confusion with all that she hears.

The movie is also a deliberate fairly tale -- sometimes in perhaps too literal ways, but for me it worked great. (One other thing that Wright pointed out in an interview, if you see the film: he said that since he had never directed an action film before, he learned as he was shooting. The opening scenes in the wilderness were the first that he shot, and they are the most conventional. He said that he learned alternative ways of approaching things as he went along, and you can see how he learned in the finished film.)

DVDBeaver weighed in with a very interesting review of the 95:

http://www.dvdbeaver.com/film3/blu-ray_reviews53/Oppo_BDP-95_Blu-ray_player_review.htm

Hanna sounds like it might be an okay flick.

That was a different sort of review from DVDBeaver. Of course, their testing equipment isn't run of the mill. I'm not sure if you've had the chance to play with Audio Note equipment, but some of it is not cheap. I've listened to Audio Note equipment and, to be honest, wasn't blown away, but I know a few people who swear by Audio Note. Anyway, I estimate DVDBeaver was running between $250,000 to $300,000 of Audio Note equipment. The question is, where does one draw the line when Norwitz states ". . . the BDP-95 isn’t targeted for those who dump their HDMI into a TV or cheap surround receiver or just about any manufacturer’s integrated surround sound receiver/speaker system." I don't consider my stuff cheap, but then it is nowhere near a quarter of a million dollars either! And keeping in mind that Johnson Junior couldn't hear a difference between the 95 and 93 running through $20,000 equipment, one has to wonder . . . .

It was definitely a "subjectivist" review, but I like the fact that it was a panel of people doing the listening and viewing. Regarding his comment about the Oppo not being for those dumping the signal via HDMI into a cheap receiver, keep in mind that he did explain that the DACs in the Oppo were superior to those in most current receivers and processors, so the phrase that you quoted was a bit hyperbolic. My older Krell certainly had fine DACs in it -- and cost a shipload of money -- but the DACs in the Oppo are clearly superior.

With a shipload of money, just think of the toys we could run.

I am still torn between the 95 or the 93NE . . .

Well, I am just going to have to hope that I win that contest!

That would make it easy.

In the meantime, I am still content with my 83SE.

Is the draw at the end of this month?