What are you watching?

[John Gargo Senior Member Find all posts View Profile Close John Gargo]

Of Unknown Origin (1983) - Peter Weller chews the scenery (and smashes it to pieces with a spiked bat) in this underrated psycho-drama that pits a materialist yuppie vs. a slimy and troublesome rat. A real oddball film, but a fun one!

[Ian Jane Administrator Find all posts View Profile Close Ian Jane]

The Resident - Hillary Swank moves into a rad apartment where he creepy landlord watches her masturbate and uses her toothbrush while Christopher Lee skulks around and looks creepy.

[Ian Jane Administrator Find all posts View Profile Close Ian Jane]

The Last Gun / 4 Dollars Of Revenge double feature - there's a reason these spaghetti westerns aren't better known, and that reason is that they're not very good.

[Ian Jane Administrator Find all posts View Profile Close Ian Jane]

Last night I also watched some porn with Rene Bond.

Sounds of Sex - Rene gives good blowjobs and narrates this one in which we learn about different goofy sexual fantasies. Originally titled Teenage Fantasies but starring no teenagers, it's not bad except for the scene where a creepy old man alerts us to the secrets of picking up young girls (SPOILER: they like it when you stick a full inch of tongue up their bumholes!).

City Woman - I'd seen this one before. A few working girls have different fantasies involving hunky guys, water beds, a three way and getting it on in the park. Rene's fantasy involves a weird bit where she 'sees' the artist who made a painting through his work and then lets him put paint on her bum. Then she makes bum prints on the canvas and bones him.

Show And Tell Hotel - This one made me feel kinda dirty. Rene and some dude wander around a hotel and peek in on people. They see ugly lesbians use creepy toys on each other and then screw.

[Mike T Guest Find all posts View Profile Close Mike T]

Not to race too far OT, but it looks like Pang Ho Cheung's Dream Home has been released in yet another compromised version, this time in the UK:

Dream Home UK vs. German comparison @ Movie Censorship

Although fully uncut, the image has been formatted to 16:9 1.78 from its original 2.35 theatrical ratio...and the disc's in plain old vanilla stereo. Though the HK DVD featured a funny ratio (around 2.1:1) and was slightly cut (with the cut footage supplied as "deleted scenes" on both BD and DVD), at least it had DTS-ES and Dolby EX audio (can't confirm whether or not the BD had lossless audio or not).

Thus, it looks like it's up to whoever has it for release in the US to maybe, at least, give the damn film a decent home video release!

[Ian Jane Administrator Find all posts View Profile Close Ian Jane]

So is the UK release zoomed in then? Or opened up? If it's opened up that might not be as big a deal.

Last night - The Last Dinosaur: Richard Boone wears an ascot and sunglasses and goes on safari with a weird looking photographer chick and a Masai hunter named Boonta below the Earth's surface to bag himself a T-Rex.

It's pretty much the greatest movie ever made.

[Mike T Guest Find all posts View Profile Close Mike T]

So is the UK release zoomed in then? Or opened up? If it's opened up that might not be as big a deal.

Not sure. The film was shot HD, so maybe it's been opened up? But from the screenshots of Josie stabbing the naked guy, centre framing looks similar to the HK DVD, which indicates it may have been zoomed. I'll check when I'm feeling better, as the last week really hasn't been the best for the most part... :(

Anyway...stereo! What's up with that? The film was post-synched in Dolby digital (5.1), so I have no idea why these companies continue to keep down-converting 5.1 or 6.1 audio to stereo all the time on Asian releases, or for that matter offering Dolby 2.0 tracks at all when the film was (usually) intended as, or was, 5.1 in post.

[Ian Jane Administrator Find all posts View Profile Close Ian Jane]

Yeah, that's a weird step backwards for sure.

[Mike T Guest Find all posts View Profile Close Mike T]

Yeah, that's a weird step backwards for sure.

It sure is an odd one! For some ridiculous reason there's this perception out there amongst "fans" and dsitributors alike that most of the Asian territories never made the transition to surround or digital formats for their film soundtracks, as well as still operate in the dark ages of shooting "wild" (without sound to post-dubbed).

It's a pretty narrow-minded viewset; as an example, Hong Kong were post-synching in Dolby stereo since the beginning of the nineties, with two of the earliest films in that format being The Bride with White Hair (1993) and Once Upon a Time in China II (1992). God of Gamblers Returns (1994) was one of the first released with a Dolby SRD soundtrack, and The Phantom Lover (1995) was the first with a DTS soundtrack.

The strangest thing I ever saw done by a distributor to appease audiophile "purists", was what Celestial Pictures did with their release of Johnnie To's Lifeline (1997) on DVD. The disc had a DTS and DD5.1 soundtrack, as well as the "original theatrical mono" soundtrack. In that instance, the monaural soundtrack was produced from surround elements to appease international idiots who wouldn't accept that the film had been released theatrically with a Dolby SRD soundtrack. Thus, the disc had an extra audio track present to hog space that could have gone towards the video image, that really wasn't necessary as it was in format (mono) that had never existed prior to the film's home video release.

You'd be surprised how many "specialist" Asian labels, or DVD releases, have occured in the UK that ONLY offered a 2.0 soundtrack where the film's release standard was 5.1 or higher.

I might as well admit it: Asian cinema is the arse-end of things when it comes to Western releases of their films on home video formats.

[Mike T Guest Find all posts View Profile Close Mike T]

Black Mask (1996) -- I hadn't seen this for years and you know why? There was an export English dub that threw away approx. 15m of the film, the HK DVD was sourced from the cut threatrical print, and the new US version was similarly truncated as the export dub and had lousy hip-hop shite added. So I took a gamble on the recently re-released version, on DVD, that originates from Fortune Star and is distributed by Kam & Ronson in HK. You know what? I wish I had an all-region BD player because if the DVD is anything to go by, this new edition is as close as we're going to get to the original uncut version of the film. It runs 99m06s and almost all of the violence cut from the HK print...has miraculously reappeared in this new version! Not all, mind you, as a couple of scenes are a few seconds shy of the gory excess I saw in '97, but just about every other violent scene has been restored. If you live in Region A land and were ever a fan of this film, I'd recommend picking up the new BD (as the DVD is interlaced). :thomason:

[Ian Jane Administrator Find all posts View Profile Close Ian Jane]

Black Swan - I need to think on this one before I hammer out a review. I liked aspects of it but had some issues with it. Overall it was good and Portman was excellent in it - but I think Aronofsky would be a better filmmaker if he weren't so heavy handed sometimes. I loved the visuals though. More positives than negatives here I think.

The Dorm That Dripped Blood - seeing this in a proper presentation made me appreciate it more than I have in the past. It's a fun slasher with some cool ideas and an interesting mix of talent in front of and behind the camera.

[Ian Jane Administrator Find all posts View Profile Close Ian Jane]

If you live in Region A land and were ever a fan of this film, I'd recommend picking up the new BD (as the DVD is interlaced). :thomason:

This is going on the next DDD House order I believe. I love this movie but only have the lousy US Artisan release, which is garbage.

[John Gargo Senior Member Find all posts View Profile Close John Gargo]

Black Swan - I need to think on this one before I hammer out a review. I liked aspects of it but had some issues with it. Overall it was good and Portman was excellent in it - but I think Aronofsky would be a better filmmaker if he weren't so heavy handed sometimes. I loved the visuals though. More positives than negatives here I think.

Yeah, but Aronofsky without the heavy-handedness would be like Jess Franco without the zooms or DePalma without the crazy tracking shots. :)

Maximum Overdrive - Great for the first 15 minutes... then incredibly boring for the last 75.

[Ian Jane Administrator Find all posts View Profile Close Ian Jane]

Last night:

Paranormal Activity 2 - I'm gonna elaborate on this one in the thread Tolch started a while back.

Embodiment Of Evil - Coffin Joe is awesome.

[Todd Jordan Smut is good. Find all posts View Profile Close Todd Jordan]

I just watched some Chris Jericho documentary. My wife likes him. Probably because he reminds her so much of me. It was ok, he seems like a nice guy, but I really can't stand wrestling. Not anymore anyway. I liked it when I was a kid though.