The Other Bench Apropos of Nothing #1

I have to be honest: I will not be rushing out to pick that one up. It did not do it for me in the 80s, and I don't think it will do it for me now. Still, infinitely better than the latest:



One of my favourite vintage Corman films:



And speaking of newer horrors, this one appears to be a complete gorefest:

Did you ever pick up The Maxx on DVD?: Link.

I did indeed. It is a manufactured-on-demand DVD, but the quality was very good. It even has extras like a commentary track. Looks great, too.


. . . and Sharktopus has actually gotten some halfway good reviews, believe it or not. Of all the new Corman made-for-cable titles it supposedly has more of a real sense of fun.



My favorite Corman:




. . . and my second favorite:



O.K., so the latter is no classic by any means, but it has one of the greatest non sequitor jokes of all time, and the wizard duel at the end is truly inspired.

I will give you The Raven. I will have to pick up The Maxx the next time I order from Amazon. It's a decent price, too.

Did you check out the trailer for Eaters? Maybe I am going soft, but that is the goriest trailer I have seen in some time. I can only imagine what the full feature is like.

One of my favourite horrors from the 70s:

Actually, I had a hard time making it past the "Uwe Boll Presents" title card in the Eaters trailer. Every thing after that seems mild.

Never was much of a fan of The Omen. Did you see the remake?



The start of the Eaters trailer reminded me that they are finally releasing an American DVD for [REC]2, the sequel to the near-classic Spanish film. Here is a teaser for the original:



. . . and here is one for the sequel, which I have yet to see:



The original is one of the best "found footage" horror movies that I have seen, and infinitely better than the American remake Quarantine. The sequel got very good reviews, but has been unavailable so far in America. I am looking forward to it.

Do you have the DVD or Blu-ray for [Rec]? I checked out options for purchasing online, but within North America could only find the DVD release. The Blu-ray is available in the UK and Spain, but I'm not sure that those versions will play on North American Blu-ray players.

I have the DVD. The movie(s) were shot on digital video, and in the case of the first film they were standard def. The Blu-Ray would not likely be a huge improvement. The second film appears to have some segments shot with a higher resolution camera. High Def Digest reviewed the Spanish Blu-Ray for the latter film, and said that it is region A locked, so it will play in domestic players, but the supplements are 1080/50 so they will not play.

The bottom line is that the movies are worth picking up, even on DVD. (Well, I am only going off the reviews on the second one, but those reviews seem very promising.)

If that is the case, I can pick up the first one on DVD at a local store. I will just need to check that it is not pan-and-scan. It appears that two versions of the DVD were released: original aspect ratio and pan-and-scan. I really loathe the latter.

While I can live with standard DVD for some things, P&S will never, never do.

Indeed. Pan-and-scan is a horrible, horrible thing.

I did pick up a copy of [Rec] with, what I assume, is the correct aspect ratio of 1.85:1. I also noticed that it is dubbed in English and French. Maybe I am in the minority, but that is another thing that does not rub me well. I prefer to watch movies in the native language, with subtitles on. I find that dubbed languages take away from the actor's performance, masking their emotional response to the scene. So, needless to say, I will be watching in Spanish. It will also be interesting to see how much of the Spanish I can follow. If people are speaking quickly, I usually get lost. I am also more familiar with Latin American Spanish than traditional Spanish.

I know that I w atched it in Spanish. I think that my disc defaulted that way, but I may be wrong. You will not find many foreign films, especially recent ones, that do not have Englished dubbed tracks. (And, by the way, you will not find many English language films that do not at least have a Spanish-dubbed track.)


By the way, Music Direct lists the SACD for Couldn't Stand the Weather as available now, with Amazon listing it as available May 31 (for $5 less, on the U.S. site.) I ordered it from Amazon. Not to get my hopes up, but that appears that they may get them all out relatively quickly.

Amazon also had an SACD boxed set of all of CCR's albums listed at around $250. Ouch. As fun as that would be, that is a mite steep.

Amazon.ca has the same listing for the latest Vaughan disc. I will have to place my order. I like CCR, but $250 is a bit steep.

The CCR discs look like a new remaster, too. Shame. I know that you do not care for Neil Young, but I felt the same way about his Blu-Ray anthology. That had his first four albums remastered as Blu-Ray audio, with tons of ofther stuff (ten discs total) but the price was just too steep. I would have liked to see how Blu-Ray worked for pure audio delivery. It should be at least as good as DVD-Audio.

Judging by specs alone, Blu-ray Audio and DVD-Audio should sound nearly identical. I have not been able to do a direct comparison, but I did pick up Divermenti on Blu-ray, which includes an SACD as well. The Blu-ray sounds wonderful and is clearly a step up of from the CD layer on the SACD, which sounds a bit muted and compressed by comparison. I played the SACD layer later on another machine and in a different environment, so I can't say how the SACD compares to Blu-ray, but when I switched back and forth between the SACD and CD layers, I favoured the SACD layer. Based on the Divermenti disc, both SACD and Blu-ray beat Red Book CD.

Neil Young has been a big supporter of Blu-ray Audio, so if you like his music, it is probably a worthwhile set to pick up. I imagine quite a bit of care went into the anthology.

Regarding his music: I don't mind his playing, but his voice ruins it for me because he does not sing in key.

One must be forgiving with rock. It is more about the heart than the voice.

Young has always been a proponent of high-quality audio. There are remastered CDs for those albums (working from the same masters used for the Blu-Rays.) I may have to pick those up instead.

The mastering is generally more important than the format, assuming we are not talking low-resolution, so that would be a fair compromise.

I would like to audition them, though.

Are the CDs available individually or just as a box set? It is easier to gamble when you are only committing to one disc.

The Blu-Ray is only a set. The CDs are individual.

Well then. As you keep telling me: "It is only money."

I will let you know if I still say that after I get the bill for my car repairs.

Ouch. Something major?

Battery, leaky aluminum rim, and leaky gasket somwhere in the coolant system. They could not find the bill when I picked up the car, so I am still not sure what it cost. I am going back to pay tomorrow.

Hopefully the total is not too bad. Or, better yet, perhaps they won't find the bill.

We took it to the place where we purchased it. The owner is always generous, often too much so. Not that we say "no," mind you.