What general film/series have you just seen.. marks out of 5

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saltysam
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Re: What general film/series have you just seen.. marks out of 5

Post by saltysam »

3 Days Of The Condor BD 3/5

Engrossing 70's conspiracy thriller starring Robert Redford.Excellent cast and well worth seeing though i felt the movie faltered a little towards the end.
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Re: What general film/series have you just seen.. marks out of 5

Post by HungFist »

The Perfume of the Lady in Black (Italy, 1974) – 3/5
Francesco Barilli only directed two feature films on his career. The Perfume of the Lady in Black, a mystery thriller influeced by Roman Polanski and Alfred Hitchcock, was the first of them. It follows a young woman who slowly loses her sence of reality when her past cames back haunting her. She’s either going insane, or someone is conspiring against her. The Perfume of the Lady in Black has one basic problem which I admit is not the fault of the film but the reviewer; I hate movies dealing with childhood traumas, hallucinations, and characters who embarrasss themselves in front of others. And yet, Barilli’s film is a good one. First and foremost, the visual output is impressive, even stunning at times. The director has amazing eye for aesthetics. Mirrors, colours and framing are used to a great effect. The storyline is mostly interesting and certainly suprising. However, without repeated viewings it’s difficult to say whether the story makes total sense, or if it’s even meant to. The entire film can be viewed as a metaphor for broken mind. Unlike most giallos The Perfume of the Lady in Black is not a graphic film, appart from the extremely strong climax. This one scene did mark Barilli’s career to some extent; for years he kept receiving screenplays influenced by the ending scene. Barilli was not interested, instead he became a painter later on – not surprising at all considering the extraordinary visual skill put into this film.

A couple of screencaps:
http://i7.photobucket.com/albums/y297/S ... erfume.jpg
http://i7.photobucket.com/albums/y297/S ... rfume1.jpg
http://i7.photobucket.com/albums/y297/S ... rfume2.jpg
http://i7.photobucket.com/albums/y297/S ... rfume3.jpg
http://i7.photobucket.com/albums/y297/S ... rfume4.jpg
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Re: What general film/series have you just seen.. marks out of 5

Post by saltysam »

The Damned United 3/5

Very good drama about legendary British manager's ill-fated 44 days in charge of Leeds United.A superb performance from Michael Sheen who seems to be able to play anyone uncannily well (Clough,Blair,Frost) and still find time to make Underworld sequels in between :clap: for an old fart football fan like me,who remembers this period well the film made captivating viewing.
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Re: What general film/series have you just seen.. marks out of 5

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Ignore this post
Last edited by grim_tales on 31 Aug 2009, 17:17, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: What general film/series have you just seen.. marks out of 5

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The Forbidden Kingdom: 3.5/5

I really rather enjoyed it :) Better than I thought it would be. There was a good, if brief fight between Jackie and Jet but I often thought the fights were too SFX like. Not enough real fighting :) Jet looks dumb in the Monkey King make up though :D
Some nice little references to other HK classics (the posters at the start of the movie, the film on TV) and also The Bride With White Hair and Come Drink With Me. :) The name of Liu Yifei's character, Golden Sparrow is a reference to Golden Swallow. Maybe she could be in a CDWM sequel? :D ;)
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Re: What general film/series have you just seen.. marks out of 5

Post by saltysam »

Kickboxer BD 3.5/5

Excellent actioner from Van Damme's golden era, despite it's cheesy rock soundtrack ;) heard the BD transfer wasn't up too much,i thought it was fine,crisp,colourful and clear,probably had some dnr applied but you'd have to be a real nitpicker to have any real complaints over this.stonking dts track.
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Re: What general film/series have you just seen.. marks out of 5

Post by grim_tales »

Forbidden Kingdom reminded me of Karate Kid for some reason.
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Re: What general film/series have you just seen.. marks out of 5

Post by Markgway »

saltysam wrote:Kickboxer BD 3.5/5

Excellent actioner from Van Damme's golden era, despite it's cheesy rock soundtrack ;) heard the BD transfer wasn't up too much,i thought it was fine,crisp,colourful and clear,probably had some dnr applied but you'd have to be a real nitpicker to have any real complaints over this.stonking dts track.
Yeah, I'd heard that the picture wasn't so hot. Probably much better than any DVD though. Can't see any other company coming out with something better. No original stereo mix. I noticed they're selling this for $9.99 at Amazon.com (plus hefty postage).
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Re: What general film/series have you just seen.. marks out of 5

Post by saltysam »

Playusa had it listed for £9.99 delivered but never got any stock in,it's now vanished from their listings.i got it from amazon marketplace for around £11.that amazon price,around £10.50 with shipping seems to be the cheapest around currently.
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Re: What general film/series have you just seen.. marks out of 5

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Zombi 2 (Italy, 1979) – 3/5
Released one month after George A Romero’s Dawn of the Dead (or rather Dario Argento’s re-edited version of it, distributed as Zombi) Lucio Fulci’s first horror movie movie was marketed as a follow up. Of course it was a sequel by name only, and shot before anyone in Italy even knew about Romero’s film. But while the producers were mainly concerned about choosing a successful title, Fulci made a film that became a classic on its own right. The film follows a woman trying to find her missing father. The search finally takes her to a small Carribean island where voodoo is practiced and the dead walk. Already before the island episode Fulci has presented some classic gore scenes, such as the ”wooden stick piercing the eye” scene. There’s also the legendary zombie vs shark battle that makes little sense but is nevertheless a magnificent piece of movie history. Otherwise the first hour is uneven, featuring dull characters and uninteresting storyline. Probably due to budget limitations the action is saved to the last few reels. However, the long long wait is generously rewarded as the film’s final 20 minutes is atmospheric zombie cinema at its best. Fulci’s rotten and worm eaten zombies truly look like they’ve been six feet under for some time. Voodoo’s connection to the epidemic is left unclear; the screenplay seems to forget it once the flesh eating festival begins.

And never mind Beaver’s 1000th fucked up comparison. Appart from interlacing, Media Blasters and Blue Underground are nearly identical.

http://www.dvdbeaver.com/film/DVDCompare3/zombie.htm
http://www.senseofview.de/review/313/compare/woodoo/1
http://www.dvdtalk.com/reviews/13037/zo ... l-edition/
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Re: What general film/series have you just seen.. marks out of 5

Post by Markgway »

HungFist wrote:And never mind Beaver’s 1000th fucked up comparison. Appart from interlacing, Media Blasters and Blue Underground are nearly identical.
How did that happen? The two sets of caps look so different. They must've been tampered with then? The Beaver caps make the Blue Underground the winner for me.

Going by the second comp I'd say the Blue Underground is a smidgen sharper but otherwise the same.
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Re: What general film/series have you just seen.. marks out of 5

Post by HungFist »

Markgway wrote:How did that happen? The two sets of caps look so different. They must've been tampered with then?
The caps come from different contributors, and one of them is using powerdvds eagle's eye setting, or something similar. It's very common for beaver reviews. Without trying to look for fucked up beavers comparison, I must have ran into at least two dozen of them.

It can't be helped. The big boss Gary Tooze is one of the persons who has contributed incorrect caps. This Love Letter comparison is a good example. The R2J caps are correct. They come from Jeroen. The KR transfer is in fact identical, but not in Gary's caps. I've heard he was even told about this, but he refused to do anything. I have the KR disc myself and it's indeed the same as Jeroen's R2J caps.
Markgway wrote: The Beaver caps make the Blue Underground the winner for me.
Yep. I was going to buy BU disc and sacrifice all the extras, until I saw that German review. Thank god for that, because the MB 2 disc set has really good extras, including a 98 min documentary.

Some years ago when I still didn't know about Beaver's reliability I spent 40$ on Kids Return R2J. I already had the KR disc, but since in their review the CH bootleg caps, which should be identical to the R2J, are far superior to the KR caps, I decided to go for the R2J. But when I received the R2J, I realized it's identical the KR disc. And they are both identical to those CH caps. Of course if I had been a bit wiser, I would've compared my KR disc to their caps before ordering the R2J.

A Scene by the Sea is apparently the same. Btw, there's a very funny mistake in the third capture set. See the well in the first cap? It's not on any of the other caps. That's because these caps are several second appart. The camera is following the characters so the island on the background remains in the same place no matter who far they walk. There's several of these scenes, always shot from the same angle. From what I recall, the all caps are from the same scene, but there's a possibility it's not even the same scene.

I think Criterion's Vengeance is Mine caps were also proven to be completely wrong.

EDIT: I'm not saying Beaver is worthless. But you really have to use your own judgement. If the caps look boosted, they very well may be. You may end up buying expensive R2J's instead of 10$ HK or KR discs if you blindly assume their comparisons are accurate.
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Re: What general film/series have you just seen.. marks out of 5

Post by romerojpg »

Yeah I stopped taking any word that Beaver said as fact many a year ago, same goes for DVDCOMPARE.
Nice ideas on both sites and they do a fine bit of work, but NEVER base your buying on them sites alone.
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Re: What general film/series have you just seen.. marks out of 5

Post by Shingster »

Haha, I think every Japanese film fan has a similar DVDBeaver horror story! I got burnt by their Love Leter comparison, bought the r2j because it was clearly better than the r3k in their grabs and when a m8 got his r3k and matched it to my r2j I was fucking speecheless. Needless to say that's the last time I've ever put much stock in DVDBeaver and the opinions of that monumentally incompetent "reviewer" Gary Tooze.
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Re: What general film/series have you just seen.. marks out of 5

Post by grim_tales »

I use DVDCompare to give me an idea of whether films are uncut or not :)
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Re: What general film/series have you just seen.. marks out of 5

Post by Markgway »

Not really into JP or SK films so I didn't realise the situation at Beaver was as bad as that. Do the US comps contain similar fuck-ups?
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Re: What general film/series have you just seen.. marks out of 5

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Markgway wrote:Not really into JP or SK films so I didn't realise the situation at Beaver was as bad as that. Do the US comps contain similar fuck-ups?
I'm not sure, but I would assume so.

After all, these are the people who have been using digital camera for Blu-Ray "screencaptures" and even comparisons....
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Re: What general film/series have you just seen.. marks out of 5

Post by Shingster »

The majority of their caps are presumably trustworthy, but when Tooze is the one doing the frame capturing it really is a lottery.
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Re: What general film/series have you just seen.. marks out of 5

Post by romerojpg »

grim_tales wrote:I use DVDCompare to give me an idea of whether films are uncut or not :)
I would not even trust them for that, they have got many Uncut discs listed wrong also in the past and specs etc...
Always best to double check everything elsewhere on a forum with people who acctually own a disc.
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Re: What general film/series have you just seen.. marks out of 5

Post by gasteropod »

So why don't you correct the mistakes then Romero? It's a collaborative site, I contributed lots to it in the past.
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Re: What general film/series have you just seen.. marks out of 5

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gasteropod wrote:So why don't you correct the mistakes then Romero? It's a collaborative site, I contributed lots to it in the past.
I would be on all day correcting mistakes on the net.
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Re: What general film/series have you just seen.. marks out of 5

Post by grim_tales »

Lazy Romero.
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Re: What general film/series have you just seen.. marks out of 5

Post by romerojpg »

What a stupid thing to say.
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Re: What general film/series have you just seen.. marks out of 5

Post by grim_tales »

Why? Gas is right. You moan about the "mistakes" DVD Compare makes but say you can't be bothered submitting revisions. is that not laziness?
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Re: What general film/series have you just seen.. marks out of 5

Post by romerojpg »

Bollocks.
I dont use the site and I dont care about it as they cost me cash in the past with wrong info.

I have better things to do that correct some muppets mistakes, of which there will be thousands.

Why dont you do it for everyone then, if not you are lazy.
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