Just for the record, The Wizard of Oz on Blu-ray, is a dream breaker. You can see where everything is, where the sets begin and end, all the details and makeup, the whole works. I can barely make it out on the DVD, but the Blu-ray reveals it all. J.
How about 'he's an idiot of a director' instead? Look at his track record: he had Jerry Goldsmith for all of his three movies, something I don't think any other filmmaker had, and still they all suck. He had a lot of good actors in these three films (leguizamo, Tommie Lee Jones, Robert Downey) and plenty of competent ones (Kurt Russell, Wesley Snipes), PLUS good tech support ... and still, THREE incredibly sucky films. Did he not care about any of his 'big chances' or is it just that this guy should not be directing feature films? I'm not even that big a fan of him as editor, either. Most of the big films he cut are things I find wildly overrated, like THE OMEN and LETHAL WEAPON, INSANELY overrated, like CASINO ROYALE, or really lousy, like OUTLAND (Connery and Sicking were good, the miniatures were good, to hell with everything else) and TOMB RAIDER, or just seriously inconsistent, like SUPERMAN. For me, the genius editor of the last generation is probably Frank Uriosite, who salvaged something out of more disasters than Baird, and did terrific work on DIE HARD and the early US (read: good) Verhoeven flicks. This guy apparently did more than anybody to make RED PLANET releasable, and yet it doesn't even show up on IMDB as a credit (pretty smart on his part, come to think of it.)
I can't totally fault Stuart Baird's job on Star Trek: Nemesis. For all its narrative faults, the film looks amazing. As for Tomb Raider, that movie kicks ass! Much of that is due to its bouncy, rockin' soundtrack but just as much is due to its breakneck pacing. It's not a particularly deep film but I think it is one of the most purely fun action films ever made. Angelina Jolie & Daniel Craig deliver very charismatic performances.
I must be the only person who liked U.S. Marshalls, but I'd watch Tommy Lee Jones as Gerard in...well, anything.
My dad got this, and I borrowed the first couple of movies and noticed some weird FX goofs I've never noticed before. It seems strange no one noticed the saucer section is slightly transparent in the ship separation sequence on Generations. But the weirder FX goof is in First Contact, right at the beginning. When we pull back from Picard's eye, as we move back further and further, Picard's head begins sliding off his body, as if they cut and pasted his head onto his body in post-production. At one point, his head slides down so far it covers up his rank pips. Obviously, there must have been some reason for this. I could see them doing this if, say, they had Stewart in the wrong uniform for the scene and ended up having to fix it in post-production. But when the scene begins in close up, it looks as if Stewart is "whole." It isn't until the camera pulls back a ways that Picard's head begins to move very slightly. Odd. And kinda trippy when you slo-mo it.
Perhaps Stewart becomes a CGI figure at a certain point in the shot, and that's where the mistake crops up? I'm curious to see screenshots now.
Since I didn't own any of the Next-Gen movies until I saw the Blu-Ray pack, I decided to pick it up. I think it's great. Add me to the list of people who loved the Jonathan Frakes/Marina Sirtis commentary in Insurrection. I didn't care that Marina forgot a lot of things, I had as much fun listening to them as they did commentating. They must be really easy going people, or they know how to sneak the bubbly in. Or both.
They combined two different shots of Stewart for the eye and then further back, so maybe that is where your 'slide' comes in. Never noticed myself.
Agreed. The menus for the Special Collector's Edition DVDs were much better. I don't have a Blu-Ray player. However, FYE knocked $20 off the price of the new DVD box set of the Next Generation films. Add that to my 20% birthday discount, and I couldn't resist. The DVD version of the set doesn't include any trailers for any of the films (apart from the final threatrical trailer for the J.J. Abrams movie). Nor does it include any of the old commentary tracks, such as the excellent Brannon Braga/Ronald D. Moore commentaries. Instead, it's mostly commentaries from people who had little to nothing to do with the making of the film. The only thing I liked was the beginning of the Generations commentary, when Manny Coto is giving a shout out to Odyssey 5 (which David Carson directed the pilot of). As for the new bonus documentaries, most of them aren't very good. They're certainly nowhere near as comprehensive as what you'll find on the Special Collector's Edition DVDs. A few of them are kinda nice though. The villains one is really good, particularly getting to hear Nicholas Meyer's take on Dr. Soran. The multi-part Brent Spiner interview gives a new perspective on the man. "I Love the Star Trek Movies" is a total puff piece but a fun bit of mutual Trekkie nostalgia. Although, for a bonus feature on the Next Generation movies set, it's conspicuously lacking in Next Gen. movie moements (other than Captain Picard smashing the window in First Contact). Although Frakes & Sirtis were incapable of doing a compelling Insurrection commentary track, their documentary is pretty fun. They obviously have great chemistry (better chemistry IRL than on screen, I'd say). I love their pitch for a Riker & Troi sitcom. As for the new transfers of the film, they do look absolutely gorgeous, even on my crappy TV. But with one exception: Nemesis looks too light now. On my old DVD, it looks very black & moody. On the new one, it's too brightly lit, particularly in Shinzon's first scene. When he comes up to touch Troi's hair, we get a clear view of his face before the big reveal. On the old DVD, his face is completely obscured by darkness until he raises the lighting 4 levels. Not that it was such a great reveal to begin with. Everyone knew from the reviews going in that Shinzon was a clone of Captain Picard. Plus, I don't see such a definitive resemblance between Tom Hardy & Patrick Stewart. I'm able to suspend my disbelief for the movie but that particular moment I don't think reads very well. Let's face it, despite the prosthetic nose & chin they've put onto Hardy, he still doesn't look much like Stewart. That's why they shaved his head, because baldness is Stewart's most prominent feature. Still, WTF is up with that drastic lighting difference? Which would seem odd because it's not as if Frakes, Burton, Mulgrew, Picardo, & Krige aren't already, you know, IN the movies we've bought on the set.
I've been working my way through the TNG Blu-rays. They're great but it's distracting to watch with increased picture quality. I don't own a full 1080p set up yet... but even on my TV, the first thing I picked up on is quite how kind VHS and DVD treated these films. You can see the age spots on Patrick Stewart's head as far back as Generations! He doesn't look any different in Nemesis. Which kind of makes a mockery of those critics who knocked the last film for featuring a Picard that apparently looked "too old and worn out". Wow. Were they asleep through the previous pictures or something? That rant aside, these are nice and I'm noticing all sorts of detail that I never really spotted before. The colours in Generations are rich beyond belief and it's almost TOS level compared to the darkness of First Contact and Nemesis.
One thing I've always enjoyed about 'Generations' was the use of color. I wished TNG had the budget to look that good on TV.