A layman's lesson in anamorphic transfers: Red Cliff DVDs

Just wanted to share my experience renting the DVDs to John Woo's excellent Red Cliff bilogy. It is also a good opportunity to make known the importance of anamorphic DVDs.

Back to Red Cliff: The movies are not really sequels, but two parts of an entire storyline. The movies were shown separately in the cinemas, and were also released in two separate DVDs.

Red Cliff was a big hit in Asia, so it was a surprised to discover how poorly conceived one of the DVDs were.

The subject in scrutiny is DVD Part I, which was not an anamorphic transfer, meaning that the the video was recorded as a 4:3 fullscreen video (a near perfect square, like what you see on free TV). This isn't an issue if the video was cropped to fit a fullscreen TV, but they used the widescreen format (a rectangle, like in the cinemas) and "squeezed" it into fullscreen. This means that on a classic, square TV, you will see the two black bars on the top and bottom of the screen instead of a video that fills the entire screen. Not much problem there. But on a widescreen TV, the picture looks overstretched width-wise. Worse, the black bars eats up screen and data space, reducing the picture quality of the actual video presentation. If you are not familiar with anamorphic transfers, there's a bit of a technical explanation to it, but essentially it's a recording technique that efficiently retains video quality of movies shot in widescreen format on DVDs. Most good original DVDs would indicate whether it's an anamorphic transfer at the back of their covers. Red Cliff Part I DVD is not anamorphic, thus the video quality is glaringly low on a hi-definition LCD.

Red Cliff Part 2 DVD is anamorphic, though, and the picture fits my LCD correctly. Picture quality is a lot better than Part I DVD, but then I noticed that the video seemed to have fine, horizontal "black stripes". I was about to blame the DVD again, until I read this article about video interlacing and progressive scan. Nevertheless, the video quality is still not to my satisfaction when compared to other original DVDs I owned.

Bottom line: Don't buy Red Cliff Part I DVD (unless they release an anamorphic version), but Part II is ok, though you may see some interlacing issues if your player or TV isn't "progressive". Chim... The Red Cliff Blu-Rays are a better bet, but no comments on those until I finally get them.

All the Red Cliff discs in Singapore are currently distributed by Scorpio East.

Review: Kick-Ass

Fight like a little girl

Kick-Ass is a parody of superhero movies, particularly Spider-man. But unlike other spoofs, Kick-Ass is a notch better than the rest of its ilk, with cleverer jokes and no cartoon-illogic, anvil-dropping nonsenses, if I remembered correctly. Without a PG-rating restrain, the movie gets to spice things up with some gratuitous violence and darkly, morbid humour. Still, the movie was a few steps short of greatness because of the way it unevenly handles two different storylines that don't seem to gel all that well together.

The two main reasons to watch Kick-Ass are Hit Girl (Chloe Moretz) and Big Daddy (Nicolas Cage). They are the most compelling characters in the movie, and a strange mix of realism and exaggeration of some of your favourite comic book heroes. They are a bizarre and unhealthy father-and-daughter vigilante team where one of their crimefighting training involves the dad shooting his ten-year-old daughter in the chest with a gun. They do the most ass-kicking in the movie, especially the ten-year-old. Imagine O-Ren Ishii from Kill Bill during her prepubescent years.

Less interesting is the titular character, Kick-Ass (Aaron Johnson). Although he is the more realistic character, his storyline takes a too-obvious jab at Spider-man, from the Tobey Maguire-like voiceovers to the rooftop-jumping trials. Such smugness somehow doesn't really fit the realistic tone the movie was obviously aiming for. His story shows how completely stupid it is for a completely average guy to try and become a costumed hero. For a character named Kick-Ass, Kick-Ass spends more time getting his ass kicked than kicking asses.

As I said before, the two really doesn't mix when one is more fantastical while the other plays it real. Maybe it would have worked better if it is a story about an average dude who tries to be a superhero in a superhero world and not the real world. Or if the director or writer just removed some of the snide remarks about superhero cliches, which doesn't help when the movie actually plays to the cliches later on. Another idea is to relegate Kick-Ass' character to a supporting role and reduce his screen time. I had the same indifferent feeling when I was watching Watchmen, which later warmed me over on Blu-Ray. Perhaps I will like Kick-Ass more after a few home viewings. Right now, it's just a high Average for me.


Some cool taglines from the movie:
With no power comes no responsibility.
I can't fly/read your mind/be invisible/see through walls. But I can kick your ass.
Whenever Hit Girl swears.

Review: Clash of the Titans

The 2010 remake of the thirtysomething's childhood favourite tries to be grittier and Gladiator, but succeeds only marginally. Clearly wanting to separate itself from the original's childish leanings, the remake blatantly snubs Bubo the mechanical owl in its strive towards seriousness and "realism" (if that's even possible for a fantasy fest like this one.)

Still, the remake's story is actually weaker than the original. At least the motivations of the hero and other characters in the original were straightforward: kill the good/bad guy, get the girl, win the day. When you have a hero that just wants to kill the bad guy for revenge, doesn't give two poops about the girl, and couldn't care less about winning the day, it makes you wonder why he even bothers with the Kraken deadline. I'm sure if he taunts Hades long enough, the evil god would eventually show up for the hero to kick his ass. I mean, it worked pretty well for those Argos soldiers who smashed down Zeus' statue, though they were sorely lacking in contingency planning.

The action definitely benefits from a CGI facelift. Well, mostly. I enjoyed its version of the Kraken finale, which was able to convey the monster's immense and frightening scale through low-position camera angles, and did the job far better than Kraken 1981. The new Pegasus the winged horse is the most impressive special effect I've ever seen! The movement of its CGI wings are just so seamless and real, and it's impossible to tell where the CGI ends and the real horse begins. If someone tells me that what I saw wasn't even a real horse to begin with, I will take my 3D modelling course certificate and shove it up an orifice. Sadly, Clash of the Titans 2010 failed miserably in the Medusa sequence, which was easily the best scene in the 1981 movie. The original Medusa was a genuine Grade A uncompromising badass movie monster, while 2010 Medusa kept reminding me of The Mummy Returns' (2001) crappy CGI Scorpion King.

I thought Sam Worthington did a pretty good job with a lacking material, though he was much better in Terminator Salvation. Was surprised to see Ralph Fiennes, Danny Huston and Pete Postlethwaite, and Bond alums Gemma Arterton (Quantum of Solace) and Mads Mikkelsen (Casino Royale). The cast was put to ample use in a men-on-a-mission type of storyline, though it needed a little more humour and feeling of camaraderie.

Overall: Average actioner. The original wins by nostalgia and Medusa.

P.S.: I heard they haphazardly put in the 3-D effects at the last minute (upon hearing word of Avatar's success) and the end result was a murky, headache-inducing mess. Thus, I sensibly did not order the upsize, and opted for the regular.

The price you pay for original?

Caveat emptor... let the buyer beware! According to the Sunday Straits, video stores have been unwittingly peddling pirated wares forged by the Jack Sparrows of the movie industry, whose scanning and Photoshop skills have shown marked improvements.

However, this is not the first time poop like this has happened. Many ages ago, a video store with a name that rhymes with "taser" brought in purportedly original VCDs of Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers and Return of the King from Thailand, mere weeks after the theatrical release. Took a while before anyone noticed the aquatic stench, including yours truly, who was at the time just too elated to have the opportunity to revisit Middle Earth at such short notice. The company was slapped with a million-dollar fine for its efforts; unfortunately I can't seem to track down the original news article about this fiasco. Hopefully, the evidences of my gullibility, as pictured on the left, would suffice.



Anyway, the article suggests that we should all become digital artwork analysts and look out for slightly "pixellated" graphics, in order to guard ourselves from these fakes. We know how busy the officials are, catching those pesky teen downloaders and fining holiday-ers who bought the same fake DVDs abroad; we must do our part to protect the billion-dollar movie industry from losing millions. Actually, there is an easier and quicker way to spot a dodgy DVD - if an English movie has big Chinese titles on its cover, avoid buying it. This will reduce your chances of making a bogus buy by about maybe 99, 100%?


Left picture: The Maltese Falcon DVD, a made in Taiwan variant (with an all-English cover art) sold at Suntec Carrefour for a measly S$6.99...

Err... Then again, maybe not.

Subtitles: An Opened Mind is Advised