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July 1, 2008 Blu-ray Wins: Buy a PS3 and Watch These FilmsThat Blu-ray has beaten HD DVD is old news. But if you were one of the smart folks who sat on the sidelines while the formats fought it out, there’s no longer any reason to wait. The only thing that will usurp Blu-ray is high-definition downloading, and the Internet is going to need much wider pipes before everyone can start doing that. I’ve already talked about the benefits of using a Sony PlayStation 3 for playing Blu-ray Discs, but I want to repeat the most important one: that sleek black box contains massive computing power, and when Sony wants to upgrade the way a PS3 works, they send the new software down the digital highway. Voilŕ! You have an up-to-date Blu-ray player. But enough about the player. Let’s talk about some things to watch. I offer 6.5 recommendations here, ranging from gritty sci-fi to historic fiction to romantic musicals. They all look gorgeous, sound incredible, and are good enough that you’ll want to watch them more than once.
I love romances. I sit and cry through Garden State or Zelary (a highly recommended Czech film), or chuckle through Almost Famous or Moulin Rouge. But I was as captivated by Juno (2007) as I’ve been by only one other romantic film I’ve seen in the last six years. Twenty-year-old actress Ellen Page burns the character of Juno MacGuff into your mind, and does so with humanity, humor, and grace. Page was in the running for the Best Actress Oscar, but faced the superhuman performance of the eventual winner, Marion Cotillard, who played Edith Piaf in La Vie en Rose. However, I find myself spending a lot more time contemplating Juno than I do Edith. Juno contains no big effects and no CG, but the film’s look and its delicate sound work perfectly together.
I’m cheating with my last choice, the "0.5" recommendation, but I can’t help myself. Once (2006) -- available only on DVD, not Blu-ray -- is the other romance, besides Juno, that has seized my soul. A musical in which there is hardly any dialogue, Once is a small, independent Irish film (total cost $150,000) about the tentative first steps toward love taken by a street musician playing for tips and a Czech immigrant who loves to play the piano. Glen Hansard, of the Irish band The Frames, plays the busker, and 18-year-old Markéta Irglová plays the immigrant. While there are laughs and hopefulness, this is a drama that keeps the viewer guessing right to the end. Hansard is a major star in the making -- his emotions ring true, showing in small moments as well as big -- and anyone who doesn’t immediately fall in love with Irglová needs a heart transplant. Their music -- the two actors wrote most of it themselves -- is powerful and gorgeous. Working with so little financial backing, writer-director John Carney has kept Once simple and direct, letting the actors and the story carry the weight. I hadn’t seen anything in years that grabbed my heart harder. Don’t miss it. And even though it’s an SD DVD, you can still watch it on your new Sony PS3. . . . Wes Marshall
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Let’s start
with the already iconic Blade Runner (1982). For a film that has been
tortured into four or five versions, that was made before computer graphics, when
miniatures and models ruled, and with purposely rough graphics, the beauty of this Blu-ray
release is stunning. I’ve seen every version of Blade Runner in a big-screen
movie house, and it has never looked or sounded this good. There are two reasons for the
improved picture. First, they transferred the film to digital using 4000 lines of
resolution, carefully cleaning it up frame by frame, digitally repairing any problems.
Second, director Ridley Scott supervised some new effects that would make the miniatures
look crisper: look at the building sides with the advertisements running, and the approach
to the Tyrell Corporation’s Mayan temple of an office building. The sound gets a nice
polishing, too: Vangelis’s music never sounded so moody.
Batman
Begins (2005) is the best film of the series. All the backstory about Bruce
Wayne/Batman (Christian Bale) expands his character into a living human being instead of a
cartoon (ŕ la Michael Keaton, Val Kilmer, and George Clooney), and the early battle
sequences, in which Wayne learns the martial arts, are some of director Christopher
Nolan’s best work. Even more important, if more subtle, is how Nolan gets everyone to
play his or her role as if filming a historical biography. There are no ironic winks or
silliness to indicate that no one is taking the movie very seriously. Instead, we meet
three-dimensional people who respond to each other with genuine human emotions. Sonically,
the Blu-ray has everything from shattering sounds to delicate tinkles; and the picture,
which Nolan frequently chooses to make obtuse and translucent, still comes out with superb
detail. 
If you
haven’t yet joined the ranks of Patrick O’Brian fans, I recommend you read all
21 (yikes!) of his Aubrey and Maturin novels before watching Master and Commander:
The Far Side of the World (2003). Russell Crowe and Paul Bettany do such a
splendid job of playing, respectively, Captain Jack Aubrey and Dr. Stephen Maturin, that
if you read the books after watching this film, you’ll always visualize these
actors. Given the film’s title, you’d think it was based on the first and tenth
books of the series, but its story is assembled from incidents found in four of the
novels. Writer-director Peter Weir and screenwriter John Collee had to make a few changes
to make it all fit, including leaving out Maturin’s dueling skills and most of his
death-defying work as a spy; and while Crowe could pass for Aubrey, Bettany looks nothing
like Maturin as O’Brian describes him. The film captures only a small portion of the
books’ excitement, but that’s still plenty. The quality of the picture is
superb, whether in the ship’s dark sleeping quarters or atop a mast on the sunny open
sea, and the sound is a system tester, especially the scene in which the French ship Acheron
attacks Aubrey’s HMS Surprise. But read O’Brian’s novels first. They
constitute a towering achievement of English literature that should be taught in every
school in English-speaking countries.
When I pick up my Fender
Stratocaster, I don’t dream of being Jimi Hendrix, Eric Clapton, Eric Johnson, or
even Jeff Beck. I dream of being David Gilmour. The reason is Gilmour’s melodic
invention, his singing tone, and his absolute refusal to play too many notes. Listen to
him create his solos on Remember That Night: Live at the Royal Albert Hall (2007):
he can rip off cascades of 64th notes if he wants to, but instead he chooses to keep it
melodic. This is Gilmour’s best-sounding, best-looking DVD yet, and that
includes both his solo videos and those he’s made with his band, Pink Floyd. Listen,
too, to his introduction to "On an Island," or his lap-steel solo on "The
Blue," my vote for his most beautiful composition. You can play many of those notes
using a similar guitar and similar effects, and it will sound completely different --
it’s all in the fingers. Anyone who plays guitar, or who even wants to play guitar,
will get a master class by watching Gilmour.
Across the Universe
(2007), another romance, couldn’t be more different. First, its musical
soundtrack consists entirely of Beatles songs, and director Julie Taymor and her writers
have pulled off the seemingly impossible in making us completely rethink the meanings of
their lyrics. They twist Lennon-McCartney’s and Harrison’s structures of verse
and chorus, and change the songs’ rhythms and dynamics, to accomplish something that
has eluded 90% of other artists who have covered Beatles songs: they make you forget the
originals. Taymor has achieved acclaim on Broadway and in opera for her phantasmagorical
production designs, most famously for her staging of the Broadway version of Disney’s
The Lion King -- but that show was only a sampling of her talents. If all
Taymor had done was the section with Selma Hayek set to "Happiness Is a Warm
Gun," and the ending "Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds," I would call Across
the Universe a masterpiece -- and there’s so much more. This is also the
best-looking and -sounding Blu-ray I’ve yet seen. It’s true demo material, and I
predict that, in January, we’ll be seeing clips from it in half the rooms at the 2009
Consumer Electronics Show. Sharp colors, great soundstaging, accurate sounds -- Across
the Universe has got everything. Watch for funny cameos by Joe Cocker, Bono, and Eddie
Izzard. And for those who love big, soulful voices, Dana Fuchs, who plays Sadie, is major
star material. Look out, Joss and Amy. 