Arise of the Import

Well... this was unexpected.

GHOST IN THE SHELL: ARISE/攻殻機動隊 ARISE , a three part OVA series with the first episode seeing a Japanese DVD/Blu-ray release on July 26th, seems like the sort of spin-off that most people will probably like, yet nobody actually asked for. Major Motoko KUSANAGI is all but legendary in both the anime fandom and even the broader Science Fiction community - a smart, hard-as-nails and sexy of the future who dabbles in brain-hacking to keep a world safe in which the boundary between man and machine has meant anything for several generations. Mamoru OSHII's 1995 internationally co-produced animated film remains a landmark for one-of-a-kind visual splendor and fascinatingly relevant pre-internet introspection about the nature of the all but inevitable digital future, and Kenji KAMIYAMA's 2002 "Stand Alone Complex" TV series - and its 2004 direct sequel, "2nd Gig" - is every bit as good as its predocessor, if in a completely different format and style. GITS's original format, a free-form cyberpunk thriller written and rendered by Masamune SHIROW, is arguably the most cohesive version of the story proper, but it's safe to say that both of the visionaries behind the adaptations took everything positive about Shirow's world and only expanded upon it, focusing more on the questions he himself didn't feel fully comfortable answering and leaving the creator to literally fetishise the technology behind it all.

Oshii's feature length sequel, INNOCENCE, and Kamiyama's "SOLID STATE SOCIETY - a somewhat pretentious arthouse experiment and a feature-length TV movie meant to tie up loose ends, respectively - aren't anywhere near as good as the material that spawned them, but they're certainly interesting enough as works of visual art and social commentary when judged solely on their own merits. Perhaps the less said about the two "Compilation Movies" based on the TV series, the better; I can't say if they're bad or not, never having seen them, but I feel the relevancy of abridged versions of TV shows basically died with VHS, and the fact that these are the only versions of the show currently available on Blu-ray in North America remains a travesty.

Vacuum sealed latex catsuits were basically Shirow's idea of "Casual Friday".

By all counts, the footage released and the talent on display for ARISE looks pretty good. The only question left is... well, who the hell actually wanted a prequel in which we see a green and vulnerable Motoko learning the ropes with Security Section 9? Part of Motoko's appeal was that she was at the top of her game, a merciless and seasoned god on the battle-field with the smarts to back up every decision she made... her only real weakness was her curiosity, a philosophical quandary about the nature of who "she" really was as a human brain encased in a synthetic, immortal body. It's entirely possible that ARISE will be a worthy successor to the name, but it's fascinating that with all the (occasionally) interesting discussion of underwhelming and non-existent female heroes in the geek subculture, we're finally getting one of them literally being disempowered just to continue the series another 150 minutes... then again, our heroine is seemingly far less sexualized here than Shirow's borderline fetish-porn art design ever was, so whether or not this is an improvement from any cohesively feminist point of view is certainly up for further discussion.

Anyway, the real story here is that FUNimation is going to be selling imported Blu-rays for the first time. They've announced an allotment of 2,500 copies of the Limited Edition JP release of the first OVA, which is already English subtitled. The JP release is selling for a list price of 6,800 Yen/$71.70, so it's assumed that FUNi will be selling this import at roughly the same price. They've at least confirmed that, much like the Aniplex of America release of the Rurouni Kenshin OVAs, they'll include the Japanese first-press bonus packaging, which includes an o-sleeve slipcover, 35mm film strip and a [translated] booklet. FUNimation has at least made it explicitly clear that this is going to be released up-front as a collector's item, and a more typical bi-lingual release at (surely) a lower price point will come out later on.

Arise, my die-cut O-ringed beauty! 
...seriously, that is pretty damn cool.

While this is all technically uncharted territory, I seriously doubt this is going to become a regular thing with FUNimation. I wouldn't be surprised if the rights to this franchise are so draped in corporate Red Tape that Aniplex wasn't sure they'd even be able to release the series Stateside without the [unofficially defunct] Manga Entertainment company acting as the middle-man, and I similarly wouldn't be surprised if FUNimation was doing this solely as a way of "proving" to Bandai Visual that the majority of Americans just aren't ready to spend more than $60 on less than an hour of entertainment. I admit I don't have any direct access to who made these decisions or what they thought they meant, but if I had to guess I'd think that Bandai Visual Japan sees this as "Market Research" while FUNimation sees this as "Pleasing Everyone Possible" - both their constitutes in Japan for not cheaping the market with a simultaneous-but-cheaper North American release, as well as the small number of American fans who were willing to drop serious coin on a brand new GITS OVA to have it now, rather than wait a year or two and get it for half the price.

I hate to say it, but I'm going to sit this one out for the time being. I have my doubts that FUNimation's "limit" of 2,500 is going to sell out overnight, and even if it did there would be little to prevent me from importing the non-limited JP release, minus the pack-in goodies. Keep in mind that $70 gets you exactly one episode, which means the full 2.5 hour ARISE experience will cost a little over $200! There's plenty of anime titles I'd at least consider dropping that kind of cash for, but a three part OVA I've never seen, explaining the backstory I never asked for to a franchise I think has already peaked - twice?!

Sorry guys, but I'm happy to sit on the sidelines until FUNimation is ready to release this at a price point that doesn't make my wallet wither and curl up like a cold testicle. That said, I literally just threw $100 at FUNi a couple weeks ago, and fuck knows how much more I'll bleed for at Anime Expo next month. Make no mistake, I'm eager enough to see if this prequel pans out to be any good or not, I'm just not stoked at the idea of spending nearly the price of a goddamn 3DS to do it with.

Flowering Evil

In the seventh episode of The Flowers of Evil/惡の華, the currently airing adaptation of Shuzo OSHIMI's manga series of the same name, the show goes off the deep end by treating the teen-angst driven act of destruction as an almost religious experience. The sequence could easily the most beautiful thing I've seen in the last year, a moment out of time and space that neither looks like live action footage nor traditional animation, because... well, it's not quite either or. The entire series has been brought to life via rotoscoping, one of the oldest tricks in the animator's handbook, and while I myself had very mixed feelings about the process - particularly in the context of this show - the results that close episode 7 is one of the most awe-inspiring things I can remember. Without trying (or even needing to) explain how and why, anyone with a basic familiarity with animation should recognize how unusual and impressive this sequence is, and with it, for one glimmering moment in time, I felt all of my misgivings and disorientation with the show's unique visual style disappear. For the first time, I felt I finally understood what director Hiroshi NAGAHAMA saw in this unusual production method to begin with.

Episode 8 begins with a recap of the show's previous animated decadence... and then gives us a 6 minute scene in which two characters walk home at dawn. No dialog. No action. No deeper meaning that wasn't summed up in the first 30 seconds. I'm not exaggerating when I say "walking home in silence" compromised a third of the episode's content. Somewhere, David Lynch is holding his head in his hands and asking what the hell is going on, and he may or may not have even heard of the show. It's the single biggest act of professional trolling to the concept of animation actually being animated since the 24th broadcast episode of Neon Genesis Evangelion, and seeing as how that entire moment remained untouched even in the "final" presentation - the Evangelion: Death compilation movie - I've always interpreted that as the director willfully extending his middle finger in the middle of what was, up until that moment, a long-con experiment with animation styles paying off in what could be the single worst way possible. A friend of mine defended the sequence as a  perfectly sedate visual representation of what it's like to come down from a severe emotional high - can't say he doesn't have a point, but if that's the case, I'm still left chasing the dragon that ended episode 7.

That inconsistency, far more than the style itself, is what keeps me increasingly fascinated - and frustrated - with The Flowers of Evil. Mrs. Kentai calls the show awful, and I don't think that's entirely fair. Meanwhile the staff of Anime News Network gave the first episode almost universal praise, and I don't think that's quite right either. No, the show represents something unusual - something new, perhaps? - and there are absolutely properties and experiences in this show that make it stand out from basically every other piece of animation created up until this moment in history. That's a good thing. The problem is as much as I'm fascinated by the results - and the reason behind them in the first place - I'm not convinced the choice works as often as it fails. And it's that very real sense of frustration that's kept me from saying anything up until now about it: For the first time in years, I'm staring a piece of art in the face right as it's unfolding, and I'm so incredibly torn about how I feel I was afraid I'd say something I'd regret.

Rotoscoping - that is, tracing live action footage to create a more "lifelike" piece of animation - is typically used to heighten reality in situations of obvious unreality; originally created by Max Fleischer in 1915, it served as the backbone for the now iconic Paramount Superman cartoons, and was - arguably - put to its best use by its creator in the 1939 Gulliver's Travels cartoon, which combined exaggerated cartoon caricature with a fully "realistic" character. It was a really interesting use of the technology, but I'd be lying if I said I had more than vaguely fond childhood memories of the film proper, and only remember it now for the painfully awful upscaled Blu-ray, which represents one of the single most dishonest uses of the words "High Definition".

The most fascinating examples of rotoscoped animation I'm aware of, however, are Ralph Bakshi's late 70s productions, with my personal favorite - Fire and Ice - using rotoscoped animation to bring a level of nuance and surreal life to impossibly idealized fantasy archetypes designed by modern illustration master Frank Frazetta. Bakshi's first film to use the technique to its fullest was American Pop, an experimental film driven by the history of America's love of Rock 'n' Roll, and a film in which the actions of its cast work towards a final goal of being exciting and larger than life. American Pop might be unique, even in Bakshi's canon, but the rotoscoping was used specifically to boil down the swagger and over the top personality that its passionate cast of musicians are meant to embody. In Bakshi's case, rotosocping was a way to bring the nuance of reality to the realm of fantasy, be it the polished work found in the utterly mesmerizing Weathertop battle sequence of Lord of the Rings, or the kinda-shitty, often jarringly low-tech tinted tracing of  the organ player in Wizards.

Particularly in the latter case, the rotoscoping was used solely as a means to cut-costs on what was quickly becoming an out of control production, but Bakshi recognized the unique, bizarre charms of the process and deemed it worth turning into an artform in its own right. Rotoscoping popped up in a number of pieces of experimental 80s animation, including the borderline legendary armor-donning sequence in the Taarna short that ends Heavy Metal, and the raucous, over the top punk rock vitality featured in the "Born to Raise Hell" musical number of Rock and Rule. Sometimes single shots of rotoscoping will pop up in otherwise traditional animation - including one of the strangest moments in Robot Carnival's "Red Neck and Chicken Man" segment, itself an ode to both Disney's Night on Bald Mountain and The Headless Horseman. Speaking of Disney, some of the running loops in 101 Dalmations were rotoscoped too, because fuck man, dogs are complicated!

In all of these cases, the technique was used to take the "real" movement of a human being and transpose it into a larger than life exaggeration - the point wasn't quite to mimic humanity, but to take the animation representation of it to new artistic heights. Granted, some people who spend more time mulling over animation theory than myself are ready to argue that rotoscoping is a cheap, lazy method to "fake" animation - even motion capture used by films created entirely out of CG renders can be considered rotoscoped, in a sense. It certainly rubbed Pixar the wrong way hard enough that, after the 2007 oscar nominations it was up against used the technique, they released their next film (Ratatouille) with the disclaimer "100% Pure Animation - No Motion Capture!" in place of the typical live action equivalent of no animals being harmed and blah-blah look I love animals and ASPCA's all right, but unless we're watching APOCALYPSE NOW! again I feel like we've reached that point where we can probably just assume that all animals on camera are being treated better than their human counterparts. Unless Von Trier's involved, I guess.

To trace all this back to The Flowers of Evil, the TV series is taking those same tools honed by Bakshi and his contemporaries and doing something utterly drastic with them: Nagahama is using the creepy, Uncanny Valley qualities of the medium and turning it against its own audience. As I'm sure I've covered before (but can't remember when, so fuck it) the Uncanny Valley is a scientifically sound phenomenon where the closer to reality an artificial figure becomes - be it a CG render in a video game, a drawing traced from a photograph, or just an ordinary replicant come to murder your soul while you sleep with its unblinking eyes - the more those very subtle nuances that separate it from being a "real" person begin to freak us right the fuck out. Basically, it's the reason Real Dolls are more unsettling that GI Joe's - yeah, there's also that whole "lubricated orifices" wildcard to consider, but simply put, the fact that the former is meant to look realistic means we consciously realize how it doesn't. Comparatively speaking, a 12 inch figure with swivel joints and felt glued to his face just looks quaint and exaggerated.

On the off chance you've yet to see an episode of The Flowers of Evil, the show... looks like this:

Considering how amazingly... normal the original source manga looked, this fusion of 2D abstraction and unsettlingly real sense of perspective and body language are about the most traumatizing thing you'll see from Japan this side of Kanashimi no Belladonna. This being The Internet, most everyone who would have otherwise fallen into the target demographic for this bizarre anomoly took this as a personal offense and immediately got on YouTube to tell everyone how terrible the show was, even if they'd only seen a single screencap. I won't fault any of these people for this gut reaction, because I felt it too; even consciously knowing I was looking at something constructed to make me feel that way, I watched the entire first episode with one brow cocked and a grimmace on my face, wondering how the guy who directed Mushi-Shi and Detroit Metal City - two wildly different, but equally fascinating styles of traditional animation - could have made something so damned ugly!

And yet... that's kind of the whole point, I think. Shows in which attractive 2D characters deal with the trials and tribulations of secondary school are a dime a dozen, stretching into every potential demographic and genre possible - light drama, tragedy porn, zany sitcoms and everything in between. With this in mind, the omnipresence of "cute kids in school do something insubstantial for 20 minutes" card explains why The Flowers of Evil took such a drastic choice in its presentation; The Flowers of Evil isn't one of "those" shows. And I don't say that as a total dismissal, either - hell, I liked K-On!, and I thought School Days was an absolutely brilliant deconstruction of the idealized high school life. And if you didn't laugh at any point watching Azumanga Daioh!, you probably don't have a soul. Seriously dude, go to a doctor and have that shit checked.

The Flowers of Evil is either pushing those audiences away, or kicking them in the pills and daring them to keep watching, depending on how you want to view director Nagahama's intentionally unattractive style. The air of grim filth continues into the rusting, rotten background pallets and often minimalist sound design that's not too dissimilar to the average methodically paced live action Japanese arthouse drama. With a few (intentionally) uncharacteristic visual flourishes in episode 5, the Flowers of Evil TV series eschews as many of the fantastic and vibrant explosions of fun in its contemporaries, and it does it specifically to make you fell slightly worse about yourself. The slug-like pacing, asymmetrical character designs, and the groaning instrumental soundtrack all work together to create a thoroughly unpleasant, emotionally desolate atmosphere. It's all the grungy, dour symbolism of FLCL's soul crushing town, but without any of the whimsy that Gainax infused to make their return to adolescent frustrations somewhat palatable.

The most natural comparison one could make is probably A Scanner Darkly. Personally I expect others to make that connection, it seems obvious at first even, but reject it. Yes, both use rotoscoping as a way to unnerve and disorient the audience, but A Scanner Darkly itself is a science fiction story in which the very boundaries between reality and paranoia are constantly thrown into question.The Flowers of Evil is undeniably a story tied to the rejection of normalicy and psychopathic dissonance, but the universe this story takes place in is very much our own. It even gives us a specific place where it all happens (though not until much later on), quelling in part any question as to if this tale is set in "our" world or some fictionalized parody of reality.

That said, the unpleasant atmosphere is... kind of inconsistent. As others far more experienced in these areas have already pointed out, one of the biggest problems with this unique rotoscoped "look" is that, on medium and (especially) far shots, characters become all but indiscernible with essentially no recognizable features. For a show with a distinctly pointed focus on characterization - for all intents and purposes, there's exactly three lead personalities and their development is the only thing the show has to offer - literally turning your protagonist into an indistinct blob isn't helping to make your point. The fact that Nakamura has a different hair color than the other two characters almost feels like it's cheating, but - to be fair, that was true in the manga as well, and its' reasonably neutral, cute art style doesn't have any of the problems with consistency its adaptation does.

Another oddity was the fact that the first two episodes of the TV series feature Kasuga actually reading poems by Baudelaire himself. It's an interesting idea, using Kasuga's inspiration to fuse with the original material... but it stops suddenly and never re-appears, despite his continued lionization of Baudelaire. I don't mind an adaptation bringing relevant art into the fray, but to start it and then not go back to the idea feels like a bit of a cop-out... or maybe Baudelaire isn't nearly as relevant to this new original work's story as its own hero seems to think it is?

If this were the only issue with the show's presentation I wouldn't be so upset with it, but the above cap was chosen for a reason: That intentionally chosen screenshot above is from the rage-inducing scene that opens episode 8, and is literally six minutes straight of scrawled, vaguely humanoid blobs walking hand in hand in total silence as the sun rises. As another professional in this area is quick to point out, the very nature of rotoscoping is boiling "real" action down to its base elements in a way that's simpler and thus faster for the brain to interpret, and while this pacing might seem more natural in a live action drama, seeing it rotoscoped with that same methodical, slow-as-a-slug pacing sometimes on material that's literally a single background for several seconds at a time, just feels cheap and ugly by comparison. Pacing in film is an art, not a science, and I won't claim that what's done here is wrong, but the fact that I'm willing to compare it to the now legendary dick-move of animation trolling committed nearly 20 years ago in Evangelion should say something about how unusual it is.

I won't pretend I know Baudelaire from a hole in my ass - the reading in the first two episodes of his  poetry is the first I've heard of it, and knowing how I tend to hate older romance-language translation cadence I'll probably never get much else out of it anyway - but if there's one thing I'm all too familiar with, it's the hopelessness of adolescence, and how latching onto something that sounds world-shattering and smartly adult can change your whole outlook on the world. Suddenly life isn't a coursing cesspool of raging hormones, emotional retardation and intellectual boredom; you become something better, something more intelligent and worthwhile that the sacks of worthless meat around you. You become - through no lack of having anything else to compare yourself to - an individual. You wrap yourself in that knowledge, in that fascination, that fetish only you know about and you use it to convince yourself you're better, that you'll leave this aching, disgusting world of ordinary people and become something better than your own life. This is an almost universal reaction because it's as much societal as it is chemical. The wishy-washy definition of what decisions are and aren't acceptable for adolescents to make are a bitch like that.


As a teen, you're more often than not pretentious asshole who doesn't actually know shit about shit, and to whom the act of growing up and accepting that you aren't what you think you are is the most grotesque, painful, and humiliating thing you'll ever know. It's unfortunate, but also totally natural - perhaps even unavoidable. Most people who watched the first episode of The Flowers of Evil didn't know this yet, but the whole damn show is about tearing those illusions down to ashes and bones, showing you how uninteresting and common Kasuga - and by way of the way we interpret stories, the viewer, really is. The Flowers of Evil is amazing because it's about facing all the pain, all the frustration, and all the hopelessness that entails, with the likelihood of a happy ending - or even justified catharsis - being so remote that the show might as well come with a bottle of anti-depressants. It isn't pretty, and the show is designed from the ground on up to make that material as aesthetically ugly as humanly possible.

Truth be told, there's another reason I love it, and that's the delicious way in which it's completely destroyed the typical tropes of  late 90s/early 00s ero-anime tropes, particularly those cemented by the Pink Pineapple/Elf "Oyaji Trilogy" that began with Isaku. The following paragraph is going to contain some spoilers, since I can't actually explain what about this show I like properly without using an actual example. If you haven't seen episode 7 yet, consider skipping this next bit, and come back when the text returns to normal:

Just before the scene that so enamoured me, there's a wonderful exchange between the blackmailer Nakamura - who wants the antihero Kasuga to remove his mask and show the whole world the dark monster lurking within him - in which she reveals the only way to atone for his "sin" is to own it, and expose himself as the heinous, perverted shit-worm that they both know he is. Kasuga breaks down and begs her to just let him go back to his normal, awkward, uninteresting life... and and Nakamura loses hope. She - and I'm paraphrasing, to a degree at least - looks Kasuga in the eye and tells him "I was wrong about you. You just wanted sex... like everyone else. What a disappointment."

To clarify this, Nakamura isn't anti-sex, not exactly - she was eager to hear from both sides after he went to Saeki's house to (she assumed) fuck her brains out, and hope to piece together another side of Kasuga's true self, whatever that may be. She's just against the coddling, simplistic desires that drive everyone around her to be satisfied with normal, shallow happiness - something she herself is unable to feel due to traumas never fully explained, and thus rejects as being anything but a manufactured fantasy. Her torture and abuse - almost all of it emotional in nature - is to draw out whatever true deviant lurks beneath the bland face of a normal young teenager; sex itself isn't perverse, it's normal, thus sex itself means nothing to her. It literally took the rhythm and escalating gratuity perfected by Shuusaku - basically, the pornographic equivalent to a shitty slasher movie - and made it about everything but sex. Some people see this as a cop-out. I see it as a work of the original author's understanding of those underlying universal themes, which - in turn - were used to create shows like Shuusaku in the first place.

She wanted to see something violent. Something depraved. Something shocking. She thought it all meant something... and it's this realization that Kasuga can't run from his own desires that catalyses the beautiful, transformative release that affirmed my love for this unusual series, and fully reveals the core idea of The Flowers of Evil: That only by accepting those unpleasant realities we hide from ourselves will we ever be free to feel anything beyond the trite realities of puppy love and undefined teen angst. It's certainly a simplified, fatalistic notion - but it's one Nakamura firmly believes in, and even now as I draw ever closer to my third decade alive, it's not one I'm entirely convinced is without merit.

I'd go on - I'd love to talk about why I think Nakamura is so drawn to Kasuga - but that would be spoiling volumes of the manga not yet available through official channels, and at this rate, the TV series will never get to that moment of clarity anyway. As of this writing, episode 10 has aired and been simulcast on Crunchy Roll, with 13 episodes promised in total. (Sentai Filmworks has already announced the North American home video/digital rights, but there's no firm date set beyond "2013", and no confirmation of a Blu-ray either.) Without getting into major spoiler territory, I'll say that the first 33 chapters of the original Flowers of Evil manga tell a beautiful tragedy from start to finish; the fact that the author keeps going, however, is a tragedy unto itself, at least if everything up through chapter 45 is any indication. At the glacial pace the anime adaptation has chosen, there's simply no way it'll get to the end of Kasuga and Nakamura's story proper - we'll get to a big, shocking moment I'm sure - the adaptation would be a bit of a waste if it didn't get there - but not to the end itself.

I'm slightly sad knowing that the show's refusal to create anything marketable, no pop singles, no "cute" character designs to make figures from, nothing that would convince anyone but the most die-hard of manga fans [or wholly atypical anime fans] to spend exorbitant amounts on merchandise and super-expensive import Blu-rays... in short, there's no way in hell we're getting a second season. Much like Shigurui, we're going to get a literal adaptation of part of the story, and that's all we're going to get. Maybe once the TV series is over we'll have a chance to go over what might have been, to say nothing of what will happen in the 11th hour [which is, all things considered, where most of the show's "HOLY SHI-" moments are going to be found].

In short, The Flowers of Evil is a triumph more for its ghastly reflection of dark, youthful ignorance than it is for its stilted animation or occasionally awkward pacing, but in a frustrating way both of those flaws solely exist to prop up the ugly, honest fascination of self-loathing and distorted notions of romanticism the story has to deliver. If the idea interests you but the art style keeps it at arms length - something I myself struggled with for a while - I'd not hesitate to recommend the manga, which is available up to volume 6 through Vertical in North America, with volume 7 due in October. All of the self-hatred, none of the awkward sliding-scale in art quality and pacing frustrations. Whatever medium you choose, buckle up... it likely going to be both much better, and less fun than you're expecting it to be.

EDIT: Fixed a few paragraphs for clarity, accuracy and spelling... I so need an editor.

Steel Demons

Goddamn it, Don...

So, here's the deal: Our old pals Don May and Jerry Chandler purchased the rights to release Lamberto Bava's DEMONS/Demoni and DEMONS 2/Demoni 2, on Blu-ray through Synapse Films. For the time being they're only selling these two films as Limited Edition steelbook DVD+BD sets through their own website, and while they acknowledge that they might do a non-limited release later they currently aren't promising jack shit. They're planning to ship the finished product "by November", but promise they'll send them out as soon as they're ready, which - if Intruder was any indicator - may well be several weeks, maybe even a few months in advance.

It's not a typical pre-order, however. For one thing, they charge you NOW, now when the product is actually going to ship. Kind of unusual and... honestly, a bit of a dick move I think. Not sure if this is part of the grand plot to pre-pay Scanavo for the access to their delicious Steelbook technology or what, but it's something you can't exactly plan for - you either pay now, or pray it isn't sold out later. The other brow-raiser is the price tag: Each steelbook is $39.95 plus $6 shipping, which makes the whole set just under $92. For reference, anyone who pre-ordered the Arrow Video steelbook from last year literally paid less than half the price Don is asking for both films after the standard Amazon discount.

That said, not only is the packaging unique - both sides feature some amazing artwork, one an "all new" take by award winning horror specialist Wes Benscoter, the other a 'clean' version of the original poster art -  but the Blu-rays themselves stand to deliver an improved presentation when compared to Arrow Video's frustrating attempts. Both will be presented on BD-50s with, presumably, moderate-to-high bitrates encodes, and the first film will feature both the "American" dub as featured on the Arrow Video BD, as well as the "European" dub (which had been featured on every prior DVD release I'm aware of). The English audio on Arrow's release was "blah" at best, and their excuse for not including the alternate dub was even worse; even members of their notoriously positive Cult Labs forum poked holes in their defense saying that it's "impossible" to sync an alternate track to a new print by one of the members doing it himself in less than half an hour.

The press release promises 'all new' HD transfers, but as we've already established talking with Don May himself, it's the same initial 2K scan Arrow Video created with Cinetecca di Bologna plus some additional color-correction. That said, I've got no qualms with that approach; Arrow Video's final transfers had 99 problems, but their scan of the OCN [Original Camera Negative] ain't one.

The discs also have a host of brand new, and - for now, at least - exclusive bonus material in the form of five new interviews each, including director Lamberto Bava, producer Dario Argento, genre writer/director staple Luigi Cozzi, composer Simon Bowsell and several others. You guys know me, I'm starting to think we've reached the point where there's not many new stories left to tell about 25 year old genre films, but I certainly can't blame Synapse for trying to fill these discs to the gills for those who never tire of heaving these people reminisce on their most beloved works. I don't think I've actually watched more than a curious minute or two of any of the bonus features on the Arrow Video set yet, so as you can imagine the presence of new extras leaves me nonplussed more than anything. Truth be told I'm surprised there's no new commentary or any material with the first film's co-star Garetta Garetta, who was more than happy to show up for the 35mm screening I saw at the New Beverly not long ago, but I can't say their inclusion would have nudged my wanting this one way or the other either.

Oh yes, you also get a replica ticket with the first set. Not quite as cool as the Japanese DVD box set including a mini-replica of the Black Sunday mask, I admit, but it was a nice little gesture to make that bitter price tag go down just a bit smoother.

Honestly... I'm not sure what to do. The tins look pretty great. I do love the first film, and Arrow Video's release - while a marked improvement over the Anchor Bay DVDs in several areas - are a mess when it comes to color grading, compression and the English audio track which was, arguably I suppose, the "original" language track. Owning several Synapse releases, I have no doubt that these will be the "Ultimate Edition" presentations I've been longing for since I first laid eyes on Arrow's middling transfer work. I don't intend for this to be any sort of popularity contest, but simply put, Don's work basically speaks for itself. If you own Frankenhooker, The Dorm That Dripped Blood, Fairy in a Cage - heck, even that awesome 42nd Street Forever Blu-ray! - you already know that their work is consistently good, and that Synapse is more than capable of producing the finest presentation of the Demons films we're likely to ever see. Sick as I am of double-dipping films in general, much less from Blu-ray to Blu-ray, I want these sets, and damn the expense!

But still, $46 a piece? Christ, that makes even Twilight Time's $35 shipped price tag on titles like Christine seem pretty fair, and at least with those damnable things you aren't sitting there wondering if your somewhat sizeable price tag is going to be replaced a few months later by a reasonably-priced mass market version.

All we know for sure is that over 1/3 (or about 1,000 each) of these sets has already been bought by the public, and if these last more than a week I'll be shocked. Already I'm struggling to pull the trigger for one each - particularly when I remember what a damned slog Demons 2 is! - but the thought of doubling down and trying to flip a second set is borderline heart-breaking.

Burning For You

Before we get into the filthy specifics, let me first say that I'm thrilled to have THE BURNING on Blu-ray. As I've expressed before - many, many times I'm sure - while this was neither the earliest nor biggest grossing example of the early 1980s phenomenon that became known world wide as the "Slasher Movie", it might very well be one of the most perfect examples of what about them movie goers found so goddamn appealing in the first place. Released in the summer of 1981as the very first feature film to be published by the Weinstein Brothers' new company "Miramax", it's a totally shameless knock-off of the rampant success founded largely by Friday the 13th the previous year. The story of a deranged, disfigured madman picking off hapless summer campers - a trope so old the film itself even showcases one of the silly "campfire tales" that inspired it - was infused with the very real urban legends of a local killer in New Jersey at the period, which the locals nicknamed "Cropsey".

In a way, the fact that it sounds indistinguishable from any number of early 80s horror films is likely its secret weapon; it's difficult to name any especially great performances, despite being the first film to have a major role filled by either Jason Alexander and Holly Hunter. British born directed Tony Maylam (who's other credits largely consists of documentaries and TV shows) never worked in genre film again, and while the film is shot and paced competently enough, the slow-burn act building and teasing towards Cropsey's bloody acts of misguided vengeance is - in retrospect, at the very least - quite by the numbers. The real draw of the film is the combination of brutality and misanthropy that stains each and every bloody set piece, in which both Tom Savini's extreme but not yet parody minded gore and Rick "Yes" Wakeman's pulsating electronic score combine to create a wholly unsettling and gruesome experience.

While the "Raft Murder" is unquestionably the film's pinnacle of excess, it's a much more subtle moment about 6 minutes in that sets the stage for why this film works in a way that so many other, similar Friday the 13th imitators do not; as Cropsey walks the desolate streets upon his release from the hospital, the words of the doctor who took care of him - "I'm so sorry the skin grafts didn't take." - run through his mind, a mantra that almost justifies his bitter, spite driven spree of senseless violence. Our young hero is also somewhat atypical for the genre: Not only is he a teenaged boy, totally ignoring the "Final Girl" trope that was already somewhat the norm in slasher films, but he's also a depressed, awkward creep who spies on girls in the shower and arguably deserves the ribbing his bunk-mates give him. Even the adult hero who barges in on Cropsey's dilapidated hideout has a sin of his own to shoulder, but there's no cleart moment of him accepting responsibility or asking forgiveness. It also - more than any other slasher film I can think of (with the possible exception of the generally headier Sleepaway Camp) - deals in the taboo of murdering children. Yes, fine, it's a little hard to swallow that Jason Alexander's  furry gut would appear on a 16 year old, but the cast still combines older and younger actors with reckless abandon, and makes it very clear - explicitly, in the raft sequence - that the counselors are just as ripe for the picking as the campers themselves.

There is no identifiable moral compass in the world of The Burning, and it casts Cropsey's rampage in an unsteady light; Cropsey is no more a villain than he is the ultimate incarnation of his surroundings, dealing out a crimson torrent of spite, menace and violence back to a world that punished him, even though we never learn for sure if he deserved or not. In short, The Burning might not be the single most ambitious or technically polished of its ilk - I'd argue that later fare like Maniac, Sleepaway Camp and Stage Fright are better made and more interesting stories, even if they're slightly desonstructionist (and in some cases, campy) in tone, but The Burning still stands tall and proud beside its 1981 brothers My Bloody Valentine, The Prowler, and yes, even Friday the 13th Part 2 as a take-no-prisoners exercise in shameless, wanton misanthropy.

MGM has had financial difficulties for years now, and even filed for restructure-bankruptcy in 2010. They wound up releasing a number of titles on Blu-ray as far back as 2007 through 20th Century Fox while the dust settled, focusing on tent-pole franchises like the Bond films and genre-friendly cult films like Robocop and Return of the Living Dead. The genre titles eventually slowed to a crawl, and after a trio of horror films last October including The Texas Chainsaw Massacre Part 2, Killer Klowns From Outer Space and Jeepers Creepers, the announcements for genre films from MGM basically dried up completely. Oh sure, their Euro branches occasionally drops a surprise announcement - you can pick up both Breakin' flicks and two out of three of the Sho Kosugi Ninja movies in Germany, for some reason - but MGM US was done with that shit. Thankfully it was only a few more months until Shout Factory's horror centric label Scream Factory announced a number of MGM licenses, including Night of the Comet, The Howling, The Fog, and of course today's sample..

THE BURNING is one of the "Scream Factory Collector's Edition" titles, and comes packaged as a DVD + Blu-ray combo in a cardboard slipcover featuring newly commissioned artwork, and a reversible cover on the actual case with the vintage one-sheet key art underneath. Packaging is usually the least important aspect of a Blu-ray, but I find myself really enjoying the slightly surreal imagery of Cropsey's maw flowing with blood. It's one of Scream Factory's best efforts yet, and Nathan Thomas Miller - a regular staple of Horror Hound magazine - was a great choice for this title. You can see more of his work HERE, if the mood strikes you.

The transfer looks like the same uncut, 1.85:1 master the MGM DVD from 2007 was sourced from. This is, thankfully, more an observation rather than a complaint. Color is bright and vibrant on the sun baked summer camp scenes that dominate the first act, inky black but seemingly not crushed on the numerous night time shots, and while there is some minor judder and an almost regular minute "sparkle" of both black and white dust specs and subtle color flicker, there's really nothing to complain about; The Burning looks undeniably like organic celluloid, warts and all, and having seen the frustrating and inconsistent results a half-assed digital clean-up session can grant, we should be thrilled for it. Grain is beautifully resolved on top of the film's naturally soft focus, and the original mono soundtrack has never sounded better than it does here. Having seen a vintage, beautiful 35mm UK print back in October, I can confirm that this is not only exactly how The Burning is supposed to look - murky day-for-night scenes included - but that it's simply never looked better. Fans familiar with this nasty little exploitation film should be overjoyed, and newcomers alike have nothing to hold out for.

CAPS AHOY!

Audio is similarly presented as it always was, in a crisp, hiss free mono track presented as lossless DTS-HD MA 2.0. The fidelity couldn't be better for what it is, and while Wakeman's throbbing, bass heavy score might well have benefited from a remix more than many of the film's American contemporaries, I'll never be anything but thankful when I get the original audio mix, front and center.

To be fair, it's obviously not quite on par with the 4K restoration MGM showed on Rosemary's Baby last year in tandem with Criterion Collection, and the fact that it was pulled from an IP means it lacks a certain level of fidelity you'd find going back to the negative. The Burning could look marginally better if someone was willing to drop the massive expense on doing even a 2K scan of the negative, but I don't honestly expect this to happen, and the results we have now are certainly good enough that I'm not going to spend much more time wondering what could have been. In an alternate dimension where a film like this would sell 30,000 copies, then yes, maybe The Burning could have been a little nicer. In the real world, where a natural, unmolested transfer of a catalog transfer is about the best you can hope for, we got exactly what we were due. With this in mind the disc isn't quite up to the bar set by OCN transfers like Something Weird's Blood Feast, Arrow Video's Zombie Flesh Eaters, Midnight Legacy's Alien 2 and the "R-Rated" footage on Lionsgate's release of My Bloody Valentine, but the results are still far above average, and anyone with realistic expectations should be more than pleased.

The old MGM DVD's biggest blessing was inarguably the fact that it was the North American premier of the uncut version of the film (originally trimmed of its most famous sequence to avoid an "X" rating), but they did the film right enough by including the original trailer, just shy of 8 minutes of Tom Savini's personal behind-the-scenes home movies, and a feature commentary with director Tony Maylam plus a selection of production stills. All of these materials are ported over for the new Blu-ray release, as are the following brand new features:

CAST COMMENTARY - Shelly Bruce and Bonnie Deroski share memories of shooting the film.

HD PHOTO GALLERIES - Special Effects (2:25), Promotional Photos (3:05)

BLOOD 'N' FIRE MEMORIES (18:02) - Gore God Tom Savini talks about the special effects.

SLASH & CUT (12:05) - Editor Jack Shoulder talks about the raft scene, among others things.

CROPSEY SPEAKS (11:20) - Actor Lou David talks about his role as the film's memorable killer.

SUMMER CAMP NIGHTMARE (06:46) - Actress Leah Ayres speaks, 'cause why not?

With nothing in the way of extended workprints, canned sequels or bitter producer-director battles to argue over, the bonus content is limited to the nuts 'n' bolts making-of of the film, and I personally have no complaints. The stand-out here is, of course, Savini talking at length about how they made the still impressive practical gore effects, his dissatisfaction with Cropsey's (in my eyes, amazing!) head appliance, and jokes the whole way through about what a bright idea it was to bail on the Friday the 13th sequel because he thought making Jason Vorhees the "real" killer in the follow up was a terrible idea. Notably missing is any material from Elastigirl and George Castanza, but christ, anyone who expected them to give an interview about their non-central roles in a thirty-plus year old horror film that probably cost less than a million dollars was kidding themselves anyway. Amusingly enough, the trailer appears to have been carefully re-cut from the HD master, meaning the unique title shot and credits slate at the end is upscaled from SD. Savini's old behind-the-scenes footage have been upscaled to 1080i as well, though nobody with a working pair of eyes would ever mistake it for anything but consumer grade VHS.

Overall, Scream Factory's presentation of THE BURNING is great stuff, and I'm quite satisfied with my pre-order. Fans of vintage splatter who might be unfamiliar with this exceptional little flick should pick it up immediately, and anyone with a kinship to the film is only torturing themselves by not owning it.

Phantasm Pains

A couple weeks ago, I had some pretty unkind things to say about the Caps-A-Holic PHANTASM II Comparison, which left many people to wonder - myself included - if the fuzzy Scream Factory Blu-ray might have merely been a worked-over upscale of the older Anchor Bay UK master. As is my policy, I try not to assume the worst... but Shout Factory's releasing a massive number of Jackie Chan titles pulled from the same Digibeta upscales that have seen the rounds in Hong Kong, and I tend to get much less trusting when that shit starts to look even remotely acceptable.

Curious, I got a hold of the disc myself, and had many things to say... but the list is basically "Wow, this really sucks!", with one of my main complaints being a seriously nasty case of waxy DVNR. And in my defense, everything I saw with my own two eyes - the ultimate test, according to anyone who distrusts screenshots - was horrid.

As I may or may not have mentioned, the computer that I typically use to watch movies on recently got a clean install of a brand new OS - huzzah, it's 2013 and I'm finally running a 64-bit version of Windows! (This install is named "AMON".) This, naturally, includes a hundred installations just to get back to doing the things I do every day, like bitching incessantly about vigorously discussing DVD/Blu-ray transfers, and stealing downloading movies  porn. (Or did I have that second one right the first time?)

It also, incidentally, involved reinstalling video card drivers. The short version of where this is going is the current version of the drivers I need to power the hardware I've still got had different default settings between the previous and current installs I'd made. The result? Well, Blu-ray playback used my GPU - which is normal, and preferable for most applications. Most of the time I take screenshots using an AVISynth script reading a DGA file, so the Media Player Classic Home Cinema decode I use to watch movies never really enters into it. But, of course, the one day I look at something and decide to call it a puddle of piss, I'm not using AVISynth, mostly because I don't have my old filters back yet... you see where this is going?

Short version: My initial reaction to Scream Factory's PHANTASM II Blu-ray was one based on a heavily filtered playback due to some shenanigans going on behind the scenes of my video card. It was a dumb mistake, one I'm not liable to repeat again now that my install seems nice and stable, and it made me dump a ration of shit on a disc that didn't entirely deserve it. With that in mind, I can only offer Scream Factory, Cliff MacMillan, and anyone who actually cares what I have to say a sheepish apology...

...or, I can talk about the disc again! Think of it as a Restored Review, mastered in 2K from the original hand-scribbled notes I keep next to my monitor. It's not, but it's probably more fun if you assume it is.

First order of business, some proper screenshots:

Without going into full speed ahead review mode - I've got a dinner date with the wife, and I've already half-written a proper write-up on another disc from these guys I hope to post before the long weekend is over - the Shout Factory BD is "mostly okay". It's probably ten times nicer than what I saw the first time I popped this sucker into my computer, in any event. The image typically has a fairly neutral coating of grain that's adequately resolved, but Caps-A-Holic's comparison still shows that the leap from PAL's limited 576p to 1080p isn't nearly as great as I'd expect for a well-shot feature film from a director with more than a little experience. The color grading also still leans towards a ruddy, contrasty hue that doesn't look particularly natural, though it does paint many of the outdoor scenes in a faux-sunset look that I could easily see Coscarelli finding appealing, and turning off that Auto Contrast bullshit helped skin from looking like it was always ready to burst into flames (as opposed to doing that only where appropriate). It's fair to assume that what we're seeing is a slightly tweaked Universal catalog transfer from the better half of a decade ago, and while it's really no great shakes, I'd have been far less willing to assume Shout Factory was hustling me with an upscale if I'd seen the original transfer unmolested to start with. Mea culpa on that one, Shout Factory. If nothing else, this still looks quite a bit better than Image's fuzzy release RE-ANIMATOR or the sludgy DVNR nightmare that was THE WIZARD OF GORE.

That said... it's still a pretty "whatever" presentation, transfer wise. It's not bad, it's just not particularly good either. The blacks look crushed and gamma is weak, meaning the multitude of dark scenes are basically black holes with characters struggling to creep out of a dark pit of nothing. The print itself also judders around like the optical printer smoked a fat bag of crack before doing its thing, and is likely the result of a less than ideal 35mm source print getting a real-time HD telecine, which doesn't really having anything in the way of print stabilization. Mild trailing from (thankfully subtle) DVNR likely dating back to the master's creation hit a number of the brighter scenes, and try as I might, I still can't figure out what the hell that dancing digital static just below the 1.85:1 matte bar is supposed to b. All of this sounds like niggling, and it is really, but when all you can do is niggle about this being "eh" and that being "meh" and the other thing being "not terrible", what you're looking at is a mediocre transfer.

Look, let's be honest for a second here: Do I honestly think PHANTASM II is ever going to look better? Sadly, no. I honestly think it could look pretty impressive if Shout Factory had gone back to the 35mm OCN and done a proper 2K scan, getting those dark scenes graded properly and removing the constant tittering on what should clearly be more or less static shots, but it just isn't going to happen in this marketplace. Shout Factory got what they got, shrugged, did as much clean-up work as they could do without investing in a new scan and moved on to the next title. If you like this movie, the 35mm sourced workprint footage alone is worth the $20 it's selling for. If you're on the fence and want a strong transfer to sell you on the upgrade... I dunno' what to say. The disc is what it is, and while Shout Factory can - and has - done much better work, it isn't as bad as I'd initially feared.

There we go, I feel much better. Let's meet back here in a couple days and talk about another Scream Factory Collector's Edition, yeah?

Part Man, Part Borg: MANBORG DVD vs BLU-RAY

Sadly, it's not for sale (yet?), but THIS GUY apparently made it.

Go bug him about it - maybe he's working with Alamo Drafthouse?

Canadian genre-collective Astron-6's approach to no-budget, intentionally kitschy, and utterly guerrilla film making is the very definition of "Critic Proof". While I thought their first feature length schlock-epic to get a distribution deal, the Troma funded and distributed FATHER'S DAY, stretched the premise so thin it basically broke an hour in, I had nothing but respect for the absolute balls-out sense of humor and total dedication to tongue-in-cheek style over anything even resembling substance. Father's Day was a bad movie to be sure, but it clearly knew and absolutely reveled in the fact that it was a bad movie. I might not have been won over by their foray into literal Troma Films territory - particularly not after Jason Eisener's all but perfect HOBO WITH A SHOTGUN kind of closed the book on ever needing to revisit candy-colored 1980s splatter-movies - but everything about it convinced me that Astron-6 was just a little self-control away from something resembling, for lack of a better term, an Anti-Masterpiece.

MANBORG: OFFICIAL TRAILER

Technically Astron-6's first feature-length production, the 62 minute long 2011 feature MANBORG, which saw its first wide North American video release just one week ago, might be the Cinematic Anti-Masterpiece of the decade thus far. Shot, animated and rendered over the course of three years on an estimated budget of $1,000 Canadian entirely on green-screen, the result is like a hallucinatory fueled nightmare of 1980s Science Fiction as rendered by a Sega CD that runs on nostalgia and lulz. Stop motion machines, rubbery monsters, hover boards, neon lights, explosive violence, fake Aussie accents, Future Audio Casettes, full sized actors turned midget via forced perspective, arena free-for-alls, and zombie Nazi's from Hell litter the screen for just over an hour, hitting on a hundred great genre tropes and exiting stage left before the film can be anything but a mind-blowingly fun piece of stupidity steeped in two parts love and one part detached irony. This is the 21st century all-digital midway point between the legitimate masterworks of a young Peter Jackson and the hilariously inept schlock of Andreas Schnass in his prime. Director and general auteur Steven Kotansky clearly has a great grasp of post-production and physical effects, he just isn't afraid to waste it on goofball trash, which I think is a positive trait for a young group of amateurs who clearly love this material enough to ape its stylings and weaknesses to a beautiful fault, while still seeing what it is that made these sorts of films so appealing twenty and thirty years ago.

Talking about the actual movie itself is a waste of brain cells (and is sure to ruin some of the fun!), but what's most fascinating to me (and probably nobody else) is the fact that it's, basically, a schlocky remake of Kazuaki KIRIYA's 2004 CASSHERN movie. No, really! A young soldier on the front lines of Mankind's last great war is brought back to life by mad science in an effort to take down our new overlords, and in the end he's forced to accept that only the indomitable human spirit - something our hero is no longer convinced he still has - can save us all. I've just described both of these movies perfectly, and that's about all that really needs to be said, since the fun in both of these films is watching it unfold in the least predictable and most overtly memorable way possible.

The difference, of course, is that Casshern is a long, stuffy, pretentious attempt at humanizing the face of humanity through machines by way of turning humanity's last battle into a glittering fashion shoot that, momentarily, remembers it was supposed to be based on an anime about punch-fucking soviet machines, Manborg goes the opposite direction and just thought it'd be awesome if one of the bad guys from Star Trek: The Next Generation teamed up with Mortal Kombat: The Guy and Illiterate Australian and Hot Sister In A Shit Wig to beat up stop-motion demons on motorcycles in The Thunderdome. Without trying to sound condescending, the film's actual plot and execution look similar to what an energetic four year old with a box of unrelated action figures might come up with after downing his first espresso: It's full of its own logic that escapes everyone around him, but it's so damned compelling and full of explosions and things that make you try not to lulz all over yourself, all you can do is pick up a Thundercat and a Pokemon and join him.

Logic, continuity, and any concept of film criticism are all irrelevant here. Seriously, just look at this fucking box art and tell me what the ghost of Roger Ebert would say that wouldn't just be a noise you'd try to translate back into various question marks and exasperated hand-signals.

"What the hell am I supposed to... wait, you can actually hear me?!"

- Anonymous Ghost Review

MANBORG is exactly what you think it is, and if you can see the trailer and not instantly know if you'll love it or hate it... there's really nothing I can say to sway you either way. So, much to my chagrin, I actually bought this on DVD. For $10 I'm not about to bitch, it's just a bit surprising that Dark Sky would skip on even offering this title in HD! WVG Media in Germany has already released the film as MANBORG: RETTER DER ZUKUNFT ("Savior of the Future!") - leaving American fans high and dry for a 1080p release to go with their Father's Day limited edition combo pack. Thankfully, the wonder of The Internets allowed me to get my hands on the German import Blu-ray from WVG Media... that said, the results may surprise you. They sure surprised the hell out of me.

Let's start with the home team, so to speak. Dark Sky presents the film on an NTSC DVD with Dolby Digital stereo audio and optional English subtitles. The word "competent" springs to mind; there's really nothing special these days about any NTSC DVD with the threat of an 1080p Blu-ray looming over its shoulder, but the SD release looks perfectly fine for a DVD, if not particularly awe-inspiring. As is typically the case it's been low-pass filtered, which blurs color and leaves ringing on high contrast edges, but I'd be willing to bet the number of DVD releases without this encoding "process" can be counted on fingers and toes. While the disc is technically interlaced, there is no visible interlacing, and every 5th frame is repeated (rather than being a 24fps file that plays back at 30fps due to flagging) -obviously, it hasn't done anything to help the compression, but it's not deal breaker. Just a technical oddity most people will probably never  notice.

Half the cover promises that you can reverse it.

Only in the Father Land...

WVG's German import Blu-ray release sends off some red flags with mention on the box of it being a 1080i transfer - and a 1080i 25fps "PAL HD" one, at that. Another oddity is that while the German disc has a runtime of 62 minutes, the Dark Sky release has a runtime of 72! What the hell, right? Well, before we get into the technical disparities, we have to talk about the presentation itself. The German BD features just the film - it starts with the Raven Banner logo, plays Manborg proper, and once the film's over... well, the film's over and the disc goes back to the main menu.

The US release begins with a mock-VHS notice to "Stay tuned after the feature for upcoming titles!" slate, then you get the movie proper... and afterwards, you're treated to a 6 minute short called BIO-COP, a faux-Grindhouse style trailer for a movie that... well, I don't want to spoil the whole joke, but suffice to say BIO-COP is so great it kind of justifies picking up the R1 DVD all by itself. It's that fucking good. The other 3 or 4 minutes or so boil down to a bi-lingual English/French anti-piracy warning that starts out again feeling like a VHS relic, and quickly turns into a ridiculously long-winded tongue in cheek jab at how - and why - these laws exist exist in the first place.

In short, Manborg itself is identical in content in both Germany and North America, but the R1 DVD is the full fledged "VHS experience", and - considering the already ridiculous, intentionally silly nature of the feature - seems to be exactly how Astron-6 would want you to see it.

UPDATE: Thanks to spannick, who sent me THIS German language comparison between the German Blu-ray and the American DVD, which - as far as I know - didn't exist when most of this was written. As far as I can tell, the German Blu-ray/DVD release is the unedited 2011 version, while the American DVD is actually a brand new 2013 "Director's Cut" of the film with about 104 seconds of new material edited into it, even aside from BIO-COP and the Faux-VHS "Experience" material book-ending the DVD I did immediately recognize. Most of it is "Blink And You'll Miss It" easter egg fun - head explosions, complicated future doors, a Jumbo-Tron introduction, silly crap like that - but it does make me feel just a bit sheepish for assuming the two were exactly the same as opposted to almost the same.

Bonus features also differ, though both releases cover quite a bit of common ground. The US and German versions each feature a Behind the Scenes short, Deleted Scenes, Outtakes, and original trailers in NTSC and PAL, respectively. The US release ups the ante pretty quick by including two feature commentaries with the director (one solo and one with his co-horts), a Visual Effects Reel and Stop Motion Reel, a number of short interviews with the crew behind the film, a Film Premier Q and A Panel, and finally another short film, "Fantasy Beyond", which is a fun distraction for about 8 minutes to anyone with a forgiving boner towards low-budget claymation.

So! About that German Blu-ray, since - as nice as all those R1 bonus features sound - the transfer fidelity is really what I'm most interested in. For one thing, the German disc includes both English and German 5.1 DTS-HD Master Audio, which trounces the US release's Dolby Stereo track kind of by default. But why on earth is the transfer 1080i25? For that matter, does an HD master for a micro-budget schlock film shot in 2009 even exist? Well... the answer's complicated, so let me use screenshots to try and fill in the gaps.

REGION 1 DVD TOP, REGION B BLU-RAY BOTTOM

Alright, this establishes - just as a base line - that the German release WAS pulled from a 1080i HD master. The test is clearly sharper and cleaner on the Blu-ray cap, and this becomes substantially more dramatic on the ED credits. So the knee-jerk reaction would be - based on this comparison, at any rate - to import the Blu-ray, right? Sharper! Cleaner! HD, MOTHER FUCKERS!

Well... let's look a few more caps before y'all bum-rush Amazon Germany.

Well that... kinda looks like ass, doesn't it? You're probably thinking that's just a weird one off, but I'm sad to say that the German BD appears to be a 1080i30 > 1080i25 standards conversion. In other words, it's a High Definition NTSC to PAL conversion, with all the frame blending, interlacing and other related problems we expect from its SD counterparts. Oh, boy!

You'd think that if nothing else, the higher bandwidth of the "Faux HD" version would avoid compression and have better grain retention than its SD counterpart. You would be very wrong. As this comparison shows, the BD's blended, ghosted framerate conversion have oblitherated any hope of keeping resolution on any part of the screen that's in motion. The BD does have stronger resolution on totally static areas - like the opening titles! - but in every other way, it's either equal to, or even worse than, its American DVD counterpart.

As you can see, while the BD may have the slight advantage in compression, most of that effort is wasted on the fact that MANBORG appears to have been created almost exclusively from low-quality digital elements already rife with compression artifacts, banding, aliasing, chroma issues and other digital debauchery that I'd all but expect from a film made for what is, as I understand it, about the price of a McDonalds dinner for a family of five in Canada. Fuck it, let's do one more quick comparison and call this a day:

It's pretty safe to say that, with the odd exception of the graphic overlays for the opening and ending titles, MANBORG was shot on SD video. If it was shot in HD, I hate to tell them this, but there's literally no difference between the upscaled R1 DVD and the 1080i HD Blu-ray in terms of detail on any of the live action footage,  stop motion animation or CG VFX. Calling the Manborg BD an "Upscale" isn't quite true because, basically, it was a legit HD master created almost exclusively from SD materials, the same way a 35mm negative might be made from raw 16mm blow-ups. Does that make sense? And when you get down to it, should we consider the difference in the material's favor? The credits would be crisper on Blu-ray, but otherwise everything would pretty much look identical to what we have now, minor gains in compression and colorspace aside.

Having pulled the DVD transfer apart in AVISynth, I'm convinced a 1080p 24 HD master could be created based on whatever Astron-6 has in their possession. It wouldn't look good, exactly, but it could certainly be an improvement over the shoddy German presentation, who's sole positive attribute is lossless 5.1 audio - so, until a "perfect" release exists, we're caught between an SD rock and an HD hard place. I almost never say this, but under the circumstances I'd recommend anyone interested in the film pick up the Dark Sky DVD over the WMG Blu-ray; the "HD" transfer is really more problematic than it is an improvement over the DVD release, and the wealth of R1 exclusive bonus features outweigh anything I'd have to say about the German audio bump. Plus, it's ten fucking dollars. What else were you gonna do with that cash?

I can't defend the film any more than I can criticize it; Sometimes, a movie just is what it is, and it so happens that this one is glorious at being everything it wants to be and absolutely nothing else. I fully expect some of you to think I must wear a hockey helmet for recommending MANBORG, but it's cut from the same tongue in cheek cloth as the similarly fantastic FARCRY 3: BLOOD DRAGON, which was basically the best $15 I've spent in at least a year. While I'm sad that on the last comparison I made with an Astron-6 feature I'd say "get the other one", this time, I'd say get both. Totally worth the combined $25.

Burning My Last Bridges

Just a week ago, I gave Scream Factory's Phantasm II SE Blu-ray a sound cock-lashing. To be fair, however, Shout Factory kinda' deserved it; that HD master is older than some of you probably reading this, and while I applaud them for creating a mountain of relevant bonus features, a crappy transfer is still a crappy transfer.

Was it actually upscaled? No, I'll give the devil his due and say that, while horrifically crumby, it was indeed an HD master, one that Universal must have minted at least a decade ago. Between the massive pasty DVNR and the total lack of anything resembling focus or image stablility, it may as well have been a DVD with lossless audio.

Because this is probably the only key art left I haven't thrown up yet.

That said, I am a reasonable man, and reasonable men pre-order the shit out of discs when the caps don't look terrible. THE BURNING is making the review circuit as we speak, with both HIGH DEF DIGEST and BLU-RAY.COM posting very enticing 1080p samples. I've thrown my $20 at Scream Factory for he privelage, and having spent more than that to see a vintage 35mm UK print at a local theater last October (which was promised "uncut" but was still missing two shots of the Raft Murder... *grumble-grumble*), I have no doubt that the quality of the BD presentation is going to be the best viewing I've ever had.

Scream Factory has done plenty of decent to fine work with HALLOWEEN III and FROM BEYOND. By all counts, they've done an equally great job with films that even they probably didn't care too much about (DEATH VALLEY says "hey"). When I say Phantasm II sucks monkey shit, I'm not doing it to troll or because I want unwashed neckbeards to call me one. It's because it actually sucks. It's entirely possible to hate a particular release from a label that happens to release the titles you want and still not hold a grudge or vendetta against them for everything else. As if I had enough energy left to start another holy war after burying what was left of Media Blaster's credibility... *ahem!*

Fun Fact: This should surprise no one, but just so we're clear, I don't get free shit. I don't even make money on Amazon links, or web traffic, or... anything. When I write about a disc, it's me wasting my own free time I could be spending playing video games or having sex with my wife or eating something covered in chocolate or, whatever, with no tangible reward. I do it because I care. Or I care enough to bitch about it. Whatever dude, you decide what to make of my own sense of self-worth.

The point is most people who say "This looks fantastic!" are, directly or not, getting freebies and/or kick-backs to do it. That doesn't make them bad people or their opinions invalid, but it does put pressure on them to look on the brighter side of things, particularly when we're talking about a relationship where one shitty review can screw them out of every concurrent title from that same studio. I'm not trying to get all high and mighty with what I do when I make poop jokes over an old HDCAM master, or suggest that home video review is a sham or anything overtly nefarious here - I just want there to be a little context into why I can sit here and bitch about a title looking "meh" and focusing on what went wrong - or more importantly, why it went wrong - even when the consensus might be that the disc is decent, if not perfect. I'm not paid to look on the bright side because, frankly, I'm not paid at all.

So, before anyone else decides they need to call me a dick-punch for... I dunno, having moderately high standards, I guess? The fact is I actually like Scream Factory. I think they usually do a fine job with the titles they pick up, and I'm legitimately excited that they're giving obscure and, at times, downright forgotten films their restored High Definition due, even if I don't want the majority of them personally. Their compression isn't the best in the industry, I admit, but it's not terrible either - Severin's current MPEG2 output is notably worse, as is pretty much anything 1080i Sentai's crapping out. The real problem is when they're handed a crappy master, they release a crappy product, because they don't see the need to make a new one from scratch - not when you can boost color and remove scratches for a fraction of the price, anyway!

It's sad that they won't pay to make a new transfer when the materials are actually that bad, but... well, what the fuck else are we going to expect? I'm sure the biggest Scream Factory titles hasn't sold more than a couple thousand copies on Blu-ray and DVD combined, and if the people who actually love Phantasm II are happy with the shitty transfer we saw, clearly the core demographic will take anything over nothing at all. I get it. It's sad, but that's exactly where the market is right now.

Oh, while we're on the subject of Scream Factory and it's sliding scale of greatness, SWAMP THING is coming soon and it's going to be the less tit-filled "Wes Craven Approved" USA Version, not the extended European version. I'd probably be more upset if... well y'know, if it wasn't fucking Wes Craven's Swamp Thing movie, a flick that's only particularly notable for the failed revival of the tie-in comics having led whackadoo Alan Moore to dump his unfiltered creativity in what DC saw as a corpse floating in the water, revitalizing the entire industry purely by accident. It was also the book that Rick Vetich got his ass fired for, and in a fit or rage he published The Brat Pack on his own, just to spite DC. You should really read that, world. Brat Pack is fuck'n awesome.

Where the fuck is this movie, Hollywood superhero machine?

Still, if jiggly bits are a deal breaker, save your money. If nothing else the footage should be included as a bonus feature, but I'm sure they're trying to keep that "PG" rating on the box without needing to plaster a bunch of "BONUS FEATURES CONTAIN UNRATED MATERIAL!!" boxes every which way. Arrow Video's also got this on tap, but there's so far no word on if they'll include all the mammaries either.

EDIT [5/17]: Dang! I've been informed by Arrow Video that they do not currently own the rights to SWAMP THING, which I can only chalk up to having mentally folded Shout's Factory's announcement into Arrow's own recent massive title list - sorry for that, guys! And, while I've got that on my mind, wow, I excited to see DERANGED uncut on BD!

Also, NINJA III: THE DOMINATION. Yeah. There's really nothing more to add, except holy shit, Ninja 3? On Blu-ray? In North America!? Sweet. Now, why the other two Sho Kosugi Ninja flicks - not to mention the goddamn BREAKIN' movies! - are currently only available on BD in Germany, I couldn't even begin to tell you.

But whatever. The Burning. The Mother Fucking BURNING comes out next week. Put your pre-orders in now, and pick up whatever Scream Factory titles you've been putting off up until now... odds are that's as good as that flick's ever going to get, regardless of which end of the spectrum that disc is on.