Too Early for Blu-ray?

[Starmax]

Not All BluRays Same

Simple test: rent all four BR Rambo "First Blood" movies (all available on BluRay - and a perfect genre to be showcased by BR). The first three, made during the 1980s, look and sound virtually identical to their DVD counterparts on my system. The most recent one (IV) made in 2008, is much more visually sumptuous than the previous three...richer colors, more detailed close-up information, and subtle grades of dark greens, browns and blacks you would find in a jungle setting. The benefits in audio improvements were even more obvious (the sound of individual raindrops splattering on banana leaves heard in surround channels, explosions loaded with shrapnel actually hitting objects and rattling around). This movie is worthy of the BluRay name, while the first three barely have a flipper out of the primordial DVD swamp. I would think the overall advancements in movie making would naturally translate into added BR bennies.

 

[poutanen]

Simple test: rent all four BR Rambo "First Blood" movies (all available on BluRay - and a perfect genre to be showcased by BR). The first three, made during the 1980s, look and sound virtually identical to their DVD counterparts on my system. The most recent one (IV) made in 2008, is much more visually sumptuous than the previous three...richer colors, more detailed close-up information, and subtle grades of dark greens, browns and blacks you would find in a jungle setting. The benefits in audio improvements were even more obvious (the sound of individual raindrops splattering on banana leaves heard in surround channels, explosions loaded with shrapnel actually hitting objects and rattling around). This movie is worthy of the BluRay name, while the first three barely have a flipper out of the primordial DVD swamp. I would think the overall advancements in movie making would naturally translate into added BR bennies.

This probably has more to do with lazy studios/production than anything. They probably took the DVD digtal version and upscaled it and "enhanced" it for BR for the first three. Not sure what happened for the last one, but if you take a film shot on film and convert to BR, you should be able to get much higher resolution than DVD.

I'd like to see Apocalypse Now on BluRay! I think it'd make a good translation...

 

[Starmax]

Yeah, me too, expect I thought Apocalypse Now Redux should have used a lot less duxs, like giving quaaludes to a snail...it went on waaaay to long. Another trilogy I can't wait for in BR is Jurassic Park. Is it out yet? I haven't see anything but DVD.

 

[lsiberian]

Simple test: rent all four BR Rambo "First Blood" movies (all available on BluRay - and a perfect genre to be showcased by BR). The first three, made during the 1980s, look and sound virtually identical to their DVD counterparts on my system. The most recent one (IV) made in 2008, is much more visually sumptuous than the previous three...richer colors, more detailed close-up information, and subtle grades of dark greens, browns and blacks you would find in a jungle setting. The benefits in audio improvements were even more obvious (the sound of individual raindrops splattering on banana leaves heard in surround channels, explosions loaded with shrapnel actually hitting objects and rattling around). This movie is worthy of the BluRay name, while the first three barely have a flipper out of the primordial DVD swamp. I would think the overall advancements in movie making would naturally translate into added BR bennies.

Yeah the new one had very good sound effects. That rain was so well done.

The movie brought back memories of being in those jungles.

 

[Starmax]

Mel Gibson and BluRay

I hate to admit this, because Mel Gibson is a bigot, sadist, confused religious zealot and all-round hypocrite. But the man knows how to make a movie. Not his pornographic, son-o-god snuff flick "the Passion of the Christ." Mel should be ashamed of himself for making that, and if you watched it and were emotionally moved, you should also be ashamed to be exploited in such a cynically manipulative way. But I was blown-away by his Apocalypto on BluRay. Yes, it's another morality play, but in a Clint Eastwood, revenge of the righteous kind of way. He can make us identify with a small, obscure South American rain forest indian tribe who are as alien to us as Louisiana's governor, Bobby Jindal, and yet we still care. We want them to survive all the brutality heaped upon them. As far as take away lessons, I would hope not many would quibble (Pol Pot, Stalin, Hitler, Mao, George Bush, you all need to watch this again): Sacrificing people to appease your hallucinatory gods only whets their appetite.

 

[poutanen]

Yeah, me too, expect I thought Apocalypse Now Redux should have used a lot less duxs, like giving quaaludes to a snail...it went on waaaay to long. Another trilogy I can't wait for in BR is Jurassic Park. Is it out yet? I haven't see anything but DVD.

Yeah I thought Redux was out to lunch. It was cool to see the extra scenes once, like Kilgore looking for his surfboard... but the whole plantation scene was wacked. Smoking opium with the chick?!?! Or whatever they were smoking... it made it way too long.

Some of the dark scenes at the end would be interesting to see in a bluray conversion...

 

[dschill]

Bluray owns....ive gotten mine from Amazon for good rates.