2008 is the year that Blu-ray won the format wars. If you're a movie buff, you've probably upgraded already. If you're a gamer, you might have a PS3. Even if you're a casual movie watcher, the sub-$200 price points on Blu-ray players are starting to look extremely attractive.
But once you buy the player, you'll need to stock up on films. That in mind, here are a couple of Blu-ray releases (not all from this year) worth picking up:
The Godfather: Coppola Restoration Gift Set - Even with a limp third installment, it's still the greatest trilogy of all time. The DVD box set, while nicely packaged, was criticized for its middling picture quality, but on Blu-ray, Coppola's masterpiece finally gets the visual treatment it deserves.
Blade Runner: Five Disc Collector's Edition - Ridley Scott's breathtaking dystopian vision is now more than 25 years old, but it's still the most stunning portrait of the future ever put on film. The recent restoration is among the best I've ever seen, and the alternate versions of the film are a must-have for obsessives.
Bottle Rocket: Criterion Collection - Wes Anderson's debut isn't the sort of film the demands Blu-ray's ultra high-quality picture, but it's a gem of a movie that deserves every bit of the care and attention to detail that went into the Criterion Collection's release.
Point Break - May be Keanu Reeves's finest moment, which isn't saying much, but the movie, which follows a surfer cop on the trail of thrill-junkie bank robbers, is a delightful romp anyway, and the Blu-ray transfer is surprisingly sharp.
Wall•E - The only thing better than a great film-to-digital transfer is a great digital-to-digital transfer, and Wall•E, in addition to being one of the year's most endearing movies, has one of the best.
The Adventures of Robin Hood - Errol Flynn's 1938 adventure is one of cinema's grandest, and it's also one of the best ways to show off Blu-ray's capacity for making old films look new.
Transformers - Michael Bay's ludicrous, juvenile giant-robot movie is an exercise in blockbuster purism, thunderously dumb and wondrously entertaining. If nothing else, it's a great way to show off a home-theater system.
The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford - Andrew Dominik's transfixing, melancholy depiction of the mythic outlaw was overlooked in 2007, but it's one of the most uniquely beautiful movies in recent memory.
The Dark Knight - Director Christopher Nolan shot several of the action setpieces in the IMAX format, and the difference in detail can only be seen on Blu-ray.
Mad Men: Season One - The greatest show on television? Maybe, maybe not. But it's certainly one of the most immaculately crafted. Stylized societal repression never looked this good.
I'll add some Box Sets I have Loved:
- The Complete Monty Python's Flying Circus,
- The Wire (yes, it really is the best show ever)
- The complete Twilight Zone
- A Bit of Fry and Laurie: Hugh Laurie before he was House, and Stephen Fry, who is even funnier than Hugh Laurie.
- Jeeves and Wooster, the complete set: Four years of BBC dramatisation of Jeeves and Wooster, with Laurie playing Bertie Wooster, and Stephen Fry playing the inimitable Jeeves
- The Horatio Hornblower Collector's Edition: The finest television movies ever made. Seriously.
- Alfred Hitchcock's Signature and Masterpiece collection box sets.
MM,
You're killing my "Austere Christmas 2008" plan! How am I supposed to be frugal when you keep recommending cool stuff for me to buy?
I had no idea you were a fan of the Horatio Hornblower movies. I loved those movies, except that last one where HH is bombarded by cosmic rays and starts to stretch.
Do you think poor Archie knew that Mr. Simpson was a Cylon?
Happy Holidays,
--Colin
Two uses of "inimitable" in a single blog post? What, is it the word of the day?
Eh
Blu-Ray isn't going to really take off IMHO. I'll be marginally more successful than the Laser-Disc, but it'll never have a chance to really replace DVDs before the next generation technology comes out with something new. Why? Because Blu-Ray just isn't *that* significant of a jump in quality for most people. Similar to Vista v XP, there isn't that much of a jump in quality for most people to justify upgrading to XP, the same concepts apply to Blu-Ray v DVDs
The big question is: will companies like Comcast be able to push high quality video on demand down their pipe in enough volume to suppress demand for Blu-Ray below its already anemic showing?
Now the remake of “3:10 to Yuma” with Christian Bale and Russel Crowe was an excellent movie. Ditto for Clint Eastwood’s “Unforgiven” (actually pretty much any Clint Eastwood western is worth multiple viewings).
I really liked "3:10 to Yuma" -- I thought it was quality stuff. Did anyone see "Appaloosa"? I haven't yet.
Wall-E was one chapter in a series I like to call "American Misanthropy", we have The Happening, The Day the Earth Stood Still, An Inconvenient Truth, and the upcoming 2012 as further testaments to our perverse fixation with humanity self hatred. And yes, I know - Wall-E had vindicating moments in the end and such, but the overall spirit is one that I find to be a repellent and tired one: consumerism = bad, America = fat lazy etc., insert Bush reference somewhere, rinse, repeat. It is nearly impossible to find a film that touts prosperity and technology as positive things and regressive pastoral romanticism as negative, and I find that disheartening. I feel we are in a moment of cinematic lethargy, when the philosophical zeitgeist seems to be nothing more than a secularized version of Puritan scolding. Sure, it is often gussied up as environmental precautionary narrative, but look past the literal and consider the fact that as a culture our mythology might have changed its symbols, but the themes remain the same. We can see that for what it is, or we can scurry around in a panic to switch out our lightbulbs and buy local.
Blu-Ray isn't going to really take off IMHO. I'll be marginally more successful than the Laser-Disc, but it'll never have a chance to really replace DVDs before the next generation technology comes out with something new.
It won't "take off" because it's an evolution of existing DVDs. however, over the next seven years or so, most US houselhold will have to replace at least one television. Most of those new TVs will be HD-capable. Once you have an HDTV, even if you don't immediately buy a Blu-ray player, you will when you replace your existing DVD player, also within a few years. Since there's an install base of literally billions of DVDs already out there, the only way Blu-ray won't become ubiquitous is if some new technology comes along that's so cheap consumers decide to throw away those billions of DVDs rather than spend $200 (or less) on a new player. The chance of that happening within the next 10 years is about the same as that of hell freezing over unless the US government steps in to massively subsidize improvements in broadband capacity.
I do hate to be pendantic, but Jeeves and Wooster was produced for Granada Television and originally screened on ITV.
Sorry...as a huge Wodehouse fan, Fry and Laurie fan and a regular reader of this blog, I would be remiss if I didn't speak up.
Great recommendations, though.
I'm a bit surprised that his guide includes a classic like Flynn's Robin Hood but then a modern western. I have no BD player yet, but one of the first discs I'll buy is the classic How the West Was Won. All reviews put it as one of the most beautiful HD transfers to date and it even includes a new presentation format (smilebox) that better recreates the magesty of Cinerama--that some of us are too young to have enjoyed.
I don't object to bloggers using the Amazon Affiliates program, but shouldn't this flurry of "gift guides" somewhere include the disclosure that the blogger personally earns a 4% to 8% commission on everything the readers buy (not just the linked items) when we click through from these blog entries to Amazon.com?
Here's a movie to add to your DVD/Blue Ray collection, if you don't have it: Heat
Megan - Will you be playing Secret Santa for strangers this year? If so, I'll gladly provide my vital stats. A Blade Runner, the finally a Criterion Collection release of Bottle Rocket, Alfred Hitchcock, and wonderfully horrible action movies recommending libertarian could do wonders for my media collection. (I already have the five disc Blade Runner collection and a lot of the Hitchcock movies on Criterion, FYI.)
How the West Was Won really is a great movie, but a better one is Once Upon a Time in the West.
Hi,
Many opinions here. I will throw in an essay!!
If Blu Ray does not take off there will only be one reason: Consumer reluctance in investing in new technology they don't really need. Films are not a necessity and for most people DVDs are adequate.
(You CAN watch ordinary DVDs on Blu Ray players, nearly every model is backwardly compatible, and it would make very little sense for developers to not add that functionality since there are more DVD users out there than Blu Ray, so if they can keep those consumers happy!!). There has been at least one person on this Forum who has said that Blu Ray is not a significant leap from DVD, a comment that cannot be qualified in any way. Have you seen The Dark Knight running on a 60 inch HD screen in 1080p? It completely outclasses the grainy and pixelated DVD. The colours are neither bright, nor is the small detail evident. Recent movies such as Speed Racer, Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull, as well as Wall E show how great films can look. New Technology will take years to come about. Why? Simply because even the largest single DVD is about 8GB in size. At present, there are two Blu Ray disc sizes, 25GB and 50GB. Even the 25GB version of a movie has twice the information as a dual layer DVD, and on the 50Gb disc, on which a typical blockbuster movie would be released, there is 5 times as much space dedicated to picture and sound. The picture holds its integrity when it is projected or shown on a very large screen and that is not the case with DVDs. From a technical standpoint, Blu Ray represents a significant leap from DVD, and it is not evolution of DVD. It is, by design, a disc, to retain familiarity, but it uses different, higher quality Video Codecs than the native Mpeg 2 on DVD. Java navigation makes it possible for bonus materials to be seamlessly integrated into the film, and BD live adds real interactivity online. These things are simply not possible with DVD, and never will be due to the inherent limitations of the technology. On Wall E for instance, there are some arcade style video games that can be played. Never has DVD offered real games (other than clicking on options which play preconfigured video sequences).
At this time, a 50GB movie, if downloaded would cripple most people's broadband, and downloading high definition content will take ages, and require huge hard discs to store any downloaded material. If you have a 50GB uncompressed movie, how many could you store on a typical hard drive today? Except for Blu Rays, how many disc based systems will let you burn off the excess on a 25gb or 50gb disc? If you split all the video files on ten different DVDs, you can hardly watch the original source file until you combine all the information. If you download huge files, even burning them on discs will be a time consuming and expensive process, especially if you want to retain the uncompressed quality. If you compress it, you are not getting High Definition content because it would no longer have the level of information that made the picture lossless. Even on a ten terabyte hard drive (one terabyte being one thousand Gigabyte's), you could only store about forty Blu Ray movies, and many people will have other uses for their PCs too, so it won't make sense to use up all that space. Terbayte drives have only recently emerged on the market, and I can't see people building large collections of films of Blu Ray quality unless there is a seismic or exponential growth in the storage capacity available to most people (200 - 300 Terabytes and whatever comes next - the next byte, whatever it is). I think your average bit torrent uni kid, with an XP PC would have to wait several thousand years before they could afford one of those high capacity drives. After all working in book shops or doing paper rounds is never going to make these content stealing losers rich. Yes, I know that Xbox offers HD movies, but the term HD is general, and not all equipment/content advertised as such shares the same standards. In fact, the Xbox movies that are downloadable are not in real High Definition anyway, since they are encoded in the 740p(?), which is DVD or standard definition, and there is no question on numerous technological forums that the Xbox 360 HD movie downloads cannot compete with Blu Ray, which easily wipes the floor with their content. Think about it. The files themselves are smaller than what is on Blu Ray. Therefore, you could hardly be getting the same quality content on Xbox Live, and it is quite likely Microsoft would commission a Blu Ray drive at some point, anyway just to keep those people happy who would prefer to watch films in higher resolutions. I am not a Sony fan, in fact I thought HD DVD (now defunct) was superior, and I still think Batman Begins looks a lot better on HD DVD than on Blu Ray, but it never took off since everyone seemed to think that Blu Ray would be the clear winner because of its inclusion in Sony's PlayStation 3. You don't have to like Sony, but simply because you hate them, it does not mean the merits of the technology should be disregarded. Sure, not all of us want it, or can afford it. It is hardly necessary. If Blu Ray's look better, it doesn't mean it mean that the increase in quality will diminish the competence of DVDs, which are still very impressive, and an upgrade is not necessary for most people, since they are not too fussed. However, for those who do like the technology, have seen it run in optimised conditions, there is no question of its superiority over any home video format available today. Before I go, I would also like to comment that the person who said Blu Ray will only last as long as something superior is introduced is correct, but it may take years for that to happen. For something better to be introduced, storage capacity will be an issue, and if it is hard disc, or flash memory based, it would take longer than it took Blu Ray to appear after DVD. It would take longer for people to keep upgrading memory until they have enough space to store large collections. At this time, most people I know have well over 200 DVDs, and for the same number of Blu Ray quality discs, a very large capacity Hard Disc Drive would be necessary. People aren't going to waste ten terabytes of space just to store two hundred full HD (Blu Ray Quality) movies. You do the math, and accept it - an iPod is convenient, but it is not the greatest music player ever - compressed music sounds crap (at least when compared to uncompressed files). It is not the same thing. I find it funny that people actually pay the same, if not more to buy DRM'd, mega compressed music from iTunes than buy a CD. Same thing for movies, yes, it's great to have your whole collection on a tiny electronic slab, but then it won't be the same great quality that disc based media affords. There is a trade off with everything, and yes sometimes it is marketing guff, but at other times it isn't and with Blu Ray, the difference is significant, but only when you use the right equipment and see the picture on a very big screen. That's where the quality of DVD falters and that is when you can see what an increase in picture density brings.
"The Dark Knight - Director Christopher Nolan shot several of the action setpieces in the IMAX format, and the difference in detail can only be seen on Blu-ray"
If there's a detectable difference in quality (versus lighting, grade, etc etc) I'd be very surprised if you could see it on Blu-Ray.
A 4k (3996x2160) scan of a 35mm print won't look any different to 12k-16k(?) scan of an IMAX print when scaled down to 1920x1080 HD res. Finer grain maybe, a slight development mismatch owing to the different stocks perhaps, but not anything you could call a marked improvement.
Having said that, I still think Blu-Ray has a good chance: Digital Rights Management makes the intangible nature of download on demand repugnant to most movie buffs.
mark wrote:
I used to feel the same way until I saw the Blu-Ray version of Spider-Man 3 on a high end plasma display at the Sony Store. I was seriously impressed with the quality of the image, it blew DVD away and was almost three dimensional. Blu-Ray has a lot going for it now that the format war between HD-DVD and Blu-Ray is over. Aside from the obvious issues of superior image quality there is also the fact that every Blu-Ray player out there is compatible with your existing DVD library and most of the Blu-Ray players have good upsampling hardware to improve DVD playback to the theoretical maximums of the DVD standard. I doubt that people are going to rush out and replace their entire DVD library with Blu-Ray discs as they replaced their VHS libraries when DVD came out but as more and more large screen HD sets are sold the limitations of DVD will become clearer and clearer at the same time as the price differentials between DVD and Blu-Ray hardware and software continue to narrow.
As far as comparing upgrading from DVD to Blu-Ray and upgrading from XP to Vista, well, it's a lousy comparison. I work in IT and the reason that we're not upgrading to Vista is that for the majority of users, i.e., businesses, Vista is inferior to Windows XP. It is an actual step backwards.
Blade Runnner? Scott ruined a perfectly good book.
As I mentioned on another blog post, I watch all my movies on an 8-1/2 foot wide projection system, and if everything else is set up correctly, a 480x720 anamorphic resolution (which is what most conventional DVDs are) looks FANTASTIC.
Now, if the 480p DVD is good enough for my gigantic 119" screen, what could anybody possibly gain by re-buying their movies in Blu-Ray to watch on their 50" HDTV sets? Especially when they've got them hanging over the fireplace at the other end of a large living room?
Also, I like transferring my DVD's to the hard drive of my computer, so I can cue them up in seconds, easily transfer them to my iPhone or laptop, etc. A DVD "rip" fills about 5 GB of storage space on average, and most movies can be extracted into a very good-looking 800 MB file. With today's storage costs, that's not at all unreasonable.
With Blu-Ray, not only are there fewer free software tools for making such an extraction, but once you do you've got a MASSIVE file on your hands. It's almost not worth the hassle.
Little plastic disks are becoming obsolete anyway, for both movies and music. By the time Blu-Ray starts to "catch on", most of us will be acquiring all of our entertainment over the net anyway.
"Blade Runnner? Scott ruined a perfectly good book."
No, he didn't. He expanded on a pretty good short story.
The novel is an adaptation of the film.
Oh, and if you liked Hornblower, you might like the Sharpe's Rifles series even more.
BluRay = SACD part 2 (Electric Boogaloo). SACDs could sound much better than regular CDs, and were an "evolution" of existing CDs. And they went nowhere. Same will happen with BluRay. Sure you can tell the difference, but in the end people won't care enough. And as Tara pointed out, the real future lies in digital distribution.
That's not true. The original novel (not short story) "Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?" was published in 1968. Blade Runner came out in 1982. There are pretty significant differences between the two, but the basic plot and characters are the same.
The novel is fantastic, BTW. I love the movie, but I think I like the novel even better.
In the end, How many people own 60" HDTVs? And beyond that, how many people watch them at the proper viewing distance? Toss in a question, How many people are going to be comfortable purchasing a 60+" HDTV right now, let alone replacing their entire DVD collection of movies with Blu-Ray Movies that cost significantly more? And when you add in the fun and games of the current economy, I just can't see Blu-Ray making inroads.
As far as the XP v Vista comparison, Part of the problem with Vista is that the machine does some things better, but the gains are insignificant to the other costs. Same concept applies to Blu-Ray, only A very tiny percentage of people will even notice the difference between Blu-Ray and DVDs. The rest are going to be content to wait until something better comes along.
Look guys, Blue ray looks gorgeous on my Sony Bravia 40" 1080p - probably better on a 60" but my room's not huge - I dont watch through binoculars. Dark Knight absolutely transfixed me for two hours - there is so much visual "information" flowing if you have a mind to appreciate it, its exhausting and brilliant.
Upgrade with good surround sound and its completely immersive experience. The idea "its not that different" from DVD is toffee. x5 information IS different.
I started with a 1mp camera in 2001 and now have a 12mp camera, and after christmas a Canon EOS5D mkII 21mp - I can look at the resolution on screen and and it is VASTLY superior.
Go Blu-ray go. They are scanning every frame on a video transfer from film to blu-ray at x4 more than the resolution required for 1920 x 1080p blu-ray - but that technology is years away. I want it now. Blu-ray is a huge step forward and good probably for three years. Then buy into the next. This is a all only a three investment.
Why do people say "price point" when they mean "price"?
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Comment Guy
Is there a technology to make Blade Runner not boring as hell? Or eliminate that horrible Tangerine Dream soundtrack?
All I can say is people were saying much the same thing 9 years ago when I first got a dvd player. They all said VHS was fine and DVD was a fad. In right set up with the right equipment. Blu ray will blow your socks off.