Tag Archives: Blu-ray

An Early Christmas

So I spent today setting up my christmas present from my sweetie-wife.
My wife and id usually do not engage in trying to figure out the perfect gift for each other and instead buy gifts from each other’s wish lists.
A few months ago I had commented in the $99 walmart special audio system I owned couldn’t keep up with the high end data and audio coming off the PS# when it played blu-rays. My sweetie-wife offered to buy em a new sound system for Christmas. I did the research, found an affordable system that met my needs, and gave her the information.
This week Fry’s had it on sale for a very good price so my sweetie bought it and I set it up today.
It is a Sony STR Dh 700. I am very happy with the sound I am getting out of this system. (I also had two speakers that some former owner of the condo left behind when he moved out.)

The most frustrating aspect of the set-up was the speaker connections for the front speakers. I had never seen anything like these and my sweetie-wife and I puzzled over it for a few moments before figuring out how to connect the wires in.

Then I allowed the systems to self balance itself. (It has a very nice auto-diagnostic routine to figure out where the speakers are and how to balance them.) After that I went through each component of our entertainment system and made sure all the outputs were the highest quality.

Man this sounds great. I put in blu-rays and got blown away by the quality, but even older DVD with mono soundtracks – like Destination Moon — sounded great.

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Sunday Night Movie: Gojira

gojira_cover For those who are horribly Americanized, the film I watched Sunday Night was the original 1954 Godzilla movie. In Japan the films was titled Gojira, but a new name was selected when the film was re-edited and brought to the United States.

When the film came to America it was decided by the distribution company that the best chance for a wider audience and more money was to add an American character to the film. Scenes were trimmed or outright deleted in order to make room for the story of US Reporter Steve Martin and his coverage of the fantastic monster rising from the depths of the Pacific Ocean.

If you have not seen the original film you really should. It is a much more complex and thoughtful piece than the American edit and far more than the daikaiju that followed in Gojira’s massive wake.

I picked up a copy of the original film on blu-ray and the quality is generally good. The film has some scratches and imperfections, the kind you typically see in an older film without the benefits of extensive restoration. It is also true that many of the shots in the film were never pristine. The quality of the film stock and the equipment in Japan at the time severely limited their capability in special effects. What they did achieve in this film, with a limited budget and very limited time is astounding.

In this version of the film there is a much more direct metaphor made between Gojira and nuclear weapons and war in general. The devastation brought by the atomic bombs is directly mentioned, something omitted from the American release.

Also in this version there is stronger character story and few things are resolved without pain and confusion on the the part of the characters.

If you have never seen this film — and seeing the 1956 American release does NOT count — you should.

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Blu-ray Review: G.I. Joe: The Rise of Cobra

G.I.JOE Part of my Thanksgiving Day was watching the G.I. Joe: The Rise Of Cobra blu-ray with the audio commentary turned on. I have now gone through all the features of the blu-ray and so here are my quick impressions.

The film transfer is a good one. The image and sound seem very much like the theater experience. The film works a little less well on the small screen than it did on the big screen, but not so much so that it felt flawed. This sort of over-the-top action cartonny movie really succeeds best when you can be totally immersed in the visuals and the sounds to carry you past the impossible action.

The special feature on the blu-ray felt sparse to me. There are two documentaries on this disc, each under 30 min in length. One generalized feature and one on the visual effects. Really I expect more from my blu-rays and wish that they had thought a little more on the special features.

The audio commentary was interesting and informative. The two biggest surprises to me from the commentary track were about the kid-ninjas. (Stormshadow and  Snake Eyes  as children) Turns out the fight scene really was done by two twelve-year old boys. Both were champions in martial arts. It really is an impressive fight sequence.

The second was that the film maker really did think about the ‘falling ice’ problems in the third act. It seems that their justification for the sequence is that there is so much infrastructure built into the ice that when it is separated from the main ice pack it’s now too heavy to float. Okay — I could buy that, but it needed a little more explanation in the film itself.

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