European Blu-ray sales have doubled in a year, according to figures for the first quarter of 2010 released by Digital Entertainment Group Europe.

The first section of this year saw Europe-wide disc sales leap by 94% as Blu-ray fans collectively forked out for over 8 million new discs. The previous year saw an increase of a similar amount, indicating that the growth of the discerning movie buff’s favourite format shows no sign of abating.

Things are looking up for Q2 of 2010, too, as high-profile releases such as Avatar continue to smash records.

However, Blu-ray is still lagging somewhat behind DVD in terms of overall sales performance, with the older format still outselling the HD discs by 10-1.

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Famous for it’s bloody portrayal of the D-Day landings in 1944, Spielberg’s classic has been a long time coming. Now it’s been released, glitch-free, and we’re left with  the inevitable questions:

Can Blu-ray work its magic once again? Can the violence get any more graphic? Can the explosions get any scarier? Can Tom Hanks’ stare get any more piercing?

The proof of the pudding, as they say, is in the eating…

Set on and just after D-Day in 1944, Saving Private Ryan chronicles the journey of a group of US Rangers as they embark on an unusual mission. Private James Francis Ryan (Matt Damon) is the last surviving member of a quartet of brothers, all of whom had been fighting overseas in the epic struggle that was the Second World War. When word reaches the US Department of War that three of the four brothers have perished, it is decided that the remaining brother should be pulled out of front line combat and brought home in order to spare his mother the tragedy of losing all four of her sons.

Tom Hanks plays Captain John Miller, the soldier charged with leading the squad of soldiers sent to find Ryan and bring him off the line safely. They journey from the bloody landings at Utah beach on D-Day itself through the chaos of wartime France, constantly questioning the usefulness of their assignment, given that the lives of eight men are being risked to save just one.

This film is famous for having probably the most exhausting opening 25 minutes of any movie ever made. Director Steven Spielberg creates a truly harrowing, awe inspiring representation of the near-disastrous landing by US troops on Utah beach on 6th June 1945. I remember reading somewhere once that when the sequence was shown to a group of WW2 vets, many of them were actually quite disturbed by the accuracy of his portrayal of the sheer chaos that surrounded that fateful event.

Like owning World War 2 in a box.

When I first saw this film in the cinema back in 1998 I remember feeling roughly the same way. It’s an ordeal watching Hanks and the other US troops battle their way over what was in reality only a few hundred yards, and Spielberg plays it out in what almost feels like real time. You come out of the end of that truly brilliant opening half hour feeling like you have just personally been there.

After that somewhat electrifying first chapter, the pace of Saving Private Ryan slows somewhat as the troops start to dig in, preparing for the onslaught ahead. The rest of the film plays out as a less frenetic, but certainly no less vivid, ensemble piece with likes of Edward Burns, Giovanni Ribisi and Tom Sizemore delivering admirable performances alongside the always reliable, and in this instance really quite superb, Hanks.

The sudden change of rhythm from crazy-ass explosion fest to contemplative morality tale does jar a little and the action is only really sporadic until the big showdown at the end. This comes as a little bit of a disappointment, especially when viewed from the other side of HBO’s (and Hanks’ and Spielberg’s) masterpiece Band Of Brothers, which arguably gets the action to drama balance almost exactly right.

Saving Private Ryan is also a rather long movie, weighing in at a chunky 169 minutes. There’s an argument that the stop-start nature of the film, its tendency to go from second to fifth gear and then back again frequently and rapidly, is actually another masterstroke on Spielberg and screenwriter Robert Rodat’s part, seeing as the business of going to war has, for the ordinary soldier, often been described as “long periods of boredom punctuated by moments of sheer terror”. Boredom’s a strong word for the calmer moments in this film, but it’s not exactly a smooth ride and you can’t help but feel that these pace issues could have been addressed, and that the film could have come in a good half hour shorter and been better for it.

Still, though, Saving Private Ryan is undeniably a classic piece of modern movie making for its scale, its ambition and its human drama.

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Paramount Home Entertainment has announced that they are recalling all copies of the special 2-disc blu-ray edition of ‘Saving Private Ryan’.

Apparently there’s a significant audio glitch somewhere on the disc which Technicolor, the people responsible for the transfer, failed to notice at the pre-release quality control stage.

The recall applies to all copies in the US, UK and Benelux regions. Quite how this problem slipped through the net on such a long awaited, high profile BR transfer is anyone’s guess.

The full press release from Paramount reads as follows:

Paramount Home Entertainment today announced that it is recalling the Sapphire Series Blu-ray edition of Saving Private Ryan recently released in North America, the United Kingdom and the Benelux countries due to an audio synch error that occurred during Technicolor’s authoring process. Although Technicolor employs comprehensive quality control measures, in this instance the issue was not detected prior to replication.

“Technicolor has been a valuable partner to Paramount Home Entertainment, and both Paramount and Technicolor are committed to providing the highest quality product to consumers,” said Dennis Maguire, President, Paramount Pictures Home Entertainment Worldwide. “Our Sapphire Series was created to present our greatest films with the finest picture and sound quality available. Saving Private Ryan is a five time Academy Award® winning film including Best Director from one of America’s most acclaimed filmmakers so we are recalling this edition to ensure that every Blu-ray disc honors Steven Spielberg’s vision.”

Technicolor has set up the following toll-free numbers for consumers who have already purchased the Saving Private Ryan Sapphire Series Blu-ray, which provides details on how they can receive a replacement copy—US and Canada: 888-370-8621, UK: 08000-852-613. Consumers can also return the Blu-ray to the stores where they purchased the product to receive a replacement. Technicolor expects to have replacement discs available at retail no later than Tuesday, May 18.

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A low budget indie from South Africa produced by a New Zealander known for his high-budget antics, District 9 was the under-the-radar hit of 2009.

Now it’s arrived on Blu-ray, and it seems to have lost none of its off-beat charms along the way.

For the past 25 years a large spaceship has hovered ominously over the city of Johannesburg, South Africa. Arriving unheralded, in the first few months after the ship’s appearance the government simply watched and waited for something to happen, nervous of the idea of ‘first contact’ with an unknown alien species. Then they hacked their way in to the ship to discover a collection of malnourished, disease-ridden insect-like life forms huddled in fear deep within its bowels. These creatures were rounded up and placed in a large area on the borders of the city as the government of Johannesburg figured out what to do next. And there they have stayed ever since, living in abject squalor and poverty, their shantytown home known to all as ‘District 9’.

Fast forward to 2008, and Wikus Van Der Merwe (Sharlto Copley) is an eager young bureaucrat working for MNU, a private company charged with the task of moving the alien population of District 9 to a more ‘habitable’ camp some miles outside of Johannesburg. Relations between humans and aliens have been degenerating steadily for a quarter of a century; distrust, disgust and ignorance stirring the already heavily churning melting pot of these new slums. The aliens don’t help themselves, of course. These are no Avatar-esque, misunderstood enlightened beings. They are intergalactic scum of the earth, trading in prostitution, mixing with Nigerian gangs, and obsessing over cat food, to which they have developed an addiction comparable to a human crack habit.

Wikus, a largely unremarkable man keen to please his father-in-law who is a high ranking MNU officer, is placed in charge of clearing the slums ready for the move. The movie opens with us following him through the corrugated iron shacks and asbestos huts, blindly filling out forms and mistreating the alien populace, or ‘prawns’ as they a pejoratively called. While clearing one such hovel, Wikus is comes into contact with a mysterious biological liquid, which slowly starts to change his physiology.

More prawns than a Chinese takeaway.

His body changing fast, Wikus suddenly goes from hunter to hunted as it becomes apparent that he is the first human to possess the ability to operate extremely sophisticated prawn weaponry, making him a valuable commodity to both his government and MNU, as well as a source of great interest to the human gangs inhabiting and exploiting District 9.

On the surface a straight forward sci-fi action flick, ‘District 9’ is an incredibly complex film. It’s primarily a journey of change for its central character, as Wikus learns the truth about these weird intergalactic creatures, and the implications of their mistreatment by himself and the rest of his race. But it’s also a comment on racial tensions in the real world, with particular reference to apartheid South Africa and the development of race relations in that country since apartheid ended. There are also other parallels, with references to the Nazis’ treatment of Jews (the new ‘home’ for the prawns is eventually referred to by Wikus as “a concentration camp, really”), the prevalence of gang culture and the unchecked power of large, private corporate organisations.

Where this film is at its most powerful, though, is on the simplest level. It’s an original, exciting, interesting story told superbly via the medium of both cinematic and pseudo-documentary styles. The idea of setting an alien-based movie in a run down, backward, technologically and socially deprived area of the world works very well. Images of run down townships full of filth and depravity inhabited by large, gangly insectoid life-forms who build disgusting egg nests inside ramshackle huts are simultaneously at odds with each other and in stark, shocking contrast. Add to that the beautifully underplayed, semi-improvised performances from Copley and the rest of the cast, and you get a startlingly original, grimy, gritty, realistic piece of political sci-fi.

There’s not many movies can be described in that way and be deemed a huge success creatively, but District 9 is certainly one of them.

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Simultaneously it was announced that Avatar notched up a total of 6.7 million sales on DVD and Blu-ray in North America in 4 days.

According to Steven Leighton, Senior Vice President, TCFHE Northern Europe and Asia, “The incredible day one sales figures illustrate the urgency that fans of all ages have to return to the world of Pandora and more significantly, experience Pandora in high-definition.”

Special features not included.

However, the current Avatar Blu-ray release, though no doubt a big draw for all BR junkies, does not include a 3D version, which isn’t slated until November. This means that Avatar will not, contrary to what we all might expect, be among the first wave of 3D Blu-ray releases, with Cloudy With A Chance Of Meatballs and Monsters Vs. Aliens likely to hit the shelves first.

Looks like we’re all going to have to wait a little longer for the full Pandora experience.

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109 minutes of profanity-laced hilarity

In The Loop is basically a film version of the BBC television show The Thick of It. I’m sure any British readers out there already realize this, and conversely, I’m sure practically no American readers know this. If the television series is anywhere near the quality of this film, I’ll be a happy man once I track it down.

In The Loop is a scathingly, brilliantly hilarious political satire that pretty much never stops with its one-liners and vitriolic arguments.

It’s pretty obvious early on — or from any of the trailers — that In The Loop is poking fun at the lead-up to the invasion of Iraq. There are people on both sides that want to go to war and vice versa, and they are all entwined in a web of confusion and absurdity.

The events of the movie are kickstarted when British minister Simon Foster (played by Tom Hollander) says that war is “unforeseeable” in a radio interview, and the media runs with it, as Simon is berated and emasculated by his superior Malcolm Tucker (Peter Capaldi). Simon doesn’t quite realize the storm he’s created until he is confronted in the street by reporters and provides yet another soundbite that is blasted over the airwaves. It just seems that every time he opens his mouth, things only get worse.

Starting on the day of the “unforeseeable” quote, Toby Wright (Chris Addison) becomes Simon’s assistant throughout the entire affair, shuttling between meetings in both the UK and America. He manages to do damage of his own, accidentally leaking information to the press and also destroying his romantic relationship back home in probably the most embarrassing fashion imaginable. Simon and Toby make for an immensely amusing disaster of a team.

There's a lot of this in the film.

Meanwhile, the two Americans they work with, the US Assistant Secretary of State Karen Clarke (Mimi Kennedy) and her assistant Liza (Anna Chlumsky), seem on the ball and mostly treat the two Brits as the bumbling — if well-intentioned — idiots they are. They work together with Gen. George Miller (James Gandolfini) to try to stop the seemingly unstoppable march to war. They are mostly up against another Assistant Sec. of State, Linton Barwick (David Rasche), who is naturally the most unlikeable character in the film. I think you can guess how it turns out.

The star of the film is undoubtedly Capaldi, who seems to be ripping someone apart in every other scene. Every time he opens his mouth, a geyser of expletives shoots out, hitting whoever happens to be around square in the face. You may think *he* would be the most unlikeable character, but it’s hard to hate someone who is capable of effortlessly eviscerating anyone within shouting distance. There’s a reason why the film was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Original Screenplay — and that reason is that insults have never been piled on top of each other so well outside of a David Mamet film.

Probably the only complaints I can think of are the subplot that has Steve Coogan complaining to Simon about a wall that is about to fall and possibly crush his mom and perhaps that the movie just kinda of ends. But the former is still pretty funny and the latter — well, I wasn’t really watching the film for a twist or tidy, meaningful ending. I think it works fine and shows that politics just go on. And go on as dysfunctional as they’ve always been.

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Even the cover looks indie.

Parenthesis in the title. Zooey Deschanel dressing up in silly clothing. The two main characters sharing a love of The Smiths. A musical number complete with a bit of hand-drawn animation. Could a movie get any more indie?

Perhaps surprisingly, you don’t need to be a hipster to enjoy this film.

You also know from the start that the movie is non-linear, which was probably the best way to spruce up the fairly humdrum relationship. The film touches on key events that both initiate and destroy the relationship, usually skipping back and forth between good and bad. I say humdrum because looking back, it’s not the most original or interesting course of events, but the story is told in a way that is consistently entertaining. Although, some people who have just suffered a tough breakup might not feel the same way.

The film is anchored by a great performance by Joseph Gordon-Levitt as the naive young Tom who, the minute he sees Summer (Deschanel), knows she’s the one. As the relationship develops, he never understands why she doesn’t feel same about him as he does about her, even though she stated from the beginning she wasn’t looking for something serious. Deschanel does her job of looking pretty and being — arguably — a bitch. It’s all about perspective!

This doesn't actually happen!

The small supporting cast does a pretty great job, from Tom’s friend McKenzie asking Tom what the hell is wrong with him, to Tom’s little sister dispensing advice as if she were an experienced 40-year-old woman. Between the sister character in particular and the musical dance scene in the middle of the movie, there’s a bit of light-heartedness that tempers the ultimate crushing of Tom’s soul.

Those unrealistic, and possibly too cutesy, components of the film allowed me to handle the final word of the script a bit better than some other people I’ve come across. Sure, roll your eyes, but it fits well enough. You’ll see what I’m talking about.

But even with those parts, the film manages to stay true to its emotional roots, and that’s the most important thing, isn’t it? Tom’s bewilderment and broken heart really do hit home. It’s about him learning from his first love and heartbreak. It’s about his growth coming out of that world of hurt. And it’s told in a way that is clever, energetic, and heartfelt.

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So much cooler than the iPad.

Paramount has announced that Minority Report — the Steven Spielberg-directed, Tom Cruise-driven sci-fi thriller — will be available on Blu-ray on April 20th.

Spielberg’s Philip K. Dick adaptation will be a two-disc package, featuring a video transfer from a true 4K master created last year. It’ll be presented in 1080p high definition with English 5.1 DTS-HD Master Audio, French 5.1 Dolby Digital and Spanish 2.0 Dolby Digital with English, English SDH, French and Spanish subtitles.

The Blu-ray package certainly looks like it’s going to be worth the upgrade, as in addition to the previous released extras presented in standard definition (except for HD trailers), there will be plenty of new special features presented in high-definition.

The full rundown of new supplements includes: The Future According to Steven Spielberg; Inside The World of Precrime; Phillip K. Dick, Steven Spielberg and Minority Report; Minority Report: Future Realized; Minority Report: Props of the Future; Highlights from Minority Report: From the Set; Minority Report: Commercials of the Future; Previz Sequences. All presented in HD.

It’s been listed at $29.99, so one can safely assume it’ll be going for 20 bucks on Amazon and Best Buy (at least on release week).

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Better than a Pink Floyd album!

It’s a big ball of cheese in the sky.

What would happen, wondered first-time feature director Duncan Jones, if Aretha Franklin lived on it? She’d probably eat it all, he quickly concluded. So he put Sam Rockwell up there instead. You know, just to see what would happen.

As it turns out, the result was really quite something.

Sam Rockwell plays Sam Bell, an astronaut working in about as remote a place as you can imagine – a tiny, one-man mining outpost on the dark side of the moon.

He’s been there for 3 years, away from his wife and child, entirely alone except for his robotic assistant GERTY (Kevin Spacey) and his own thoughts. His only communication with his home planet comes via pre-recorded satellite messages, received sporadically via a faulty comms link-up.

A pretty bleak way to earn a living. Let’s hope the money’s good.

And so our lonely protagonist spends his days coordinating and maintaining the ‘helium 3’ mining harvesters which scour the vast surface of the moon. It is on one such day, barely two weeks away from his trip home, while out repairing a fault on one of these machines, that Sam meets with an accident and only barely survives.

Waking up dazed back at the mining outpost, things take a rather bizarre turn as he discovers that he is no longer totally alone. He finds a perfect double version of himself, a doppelganger, if you will, inhabiting the station with him. Spooky.

Cool as the dark side of the moon.

It seems to me that what we have here is a science fiction movie. Not a film set in space with aliens and warp-drives and lasers and magic bloody powers. An actual work of science fiction. By this I mean (and I’m more than prepared to state that I am by no means an authority here) a film that imagines a future existence which actually raises questions about mankind and, for want of a better, less poncey expression, ‘the human condition’. Sam’s isolated existence, the necessity of his job for Earth’s survival (for ‘helium 3’ is a new, super-green source of energy), the way in which he is treated by his employers, not to mention the film’s big plot revelations, are all used to great effect by director Duncan Jones to provide us with some fascinating and actually quite intimidating existential and moral posers.

Besides the deeply philosophical script, there’s one other aspect of this film which really makes it stand out, and that’s the absolutely superb turn put on by Sam Rockwell. Considering that this is a man who has spent significant parts of his recent career lending his voice to a talking guinea pig (‘G-Force’), and whose only other sci-fi output of note is as a two-headed narcissistic space pirate (‘Hitchhiker’s Guide To The Galaxy’), the sheer scale and subtlety of his performance here is pretty mindblowing.

Rockwell is on screen for almost the entire length of the movie (97 minutes), and has to spend an awful lot of that time acting opposite ‘himself’. Not an easy task, but one which Rockwell seems to have no trouble tackling, creating an entirely believable two-hander entirely on his own, backed up ably by a suitably spooky-voiced, HAL-like Kevin Spacey as GERTY, his robotic assistant-slash-butler.

Simply put, ‘Moon’ is a superb film. Eerie, contemplative and minimalist, it’s a real “thinker”, and if you’re anything like me you’ll be contemplating your own navel for days after watching it.

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3D glasses not included

CES — the largest consumer electronics tradeshow in the world — has kicked off its 2010 edition and 3D seems to be one the hottest technologies on the floor. There have been 3D HDTV announcements and DirecTV jumping into the 3D fray, but what we care about here is the Blu-ray news. Every major Blu-ray player manufacturer showed off a new model capable of 3D, which at this point it looks like most people will break in with an Avatar Blu-ray disc.

Sony showed off their BDP-S770, which in addition to 3D will have built-in WiFi, and iPhone/iPod Touch app for remote utilization, and a bunch of streaming options including Amazon, Netflix, Youtube and Pandora, among others. It’s due to hit stores this summer.

Panasonic’s 3D Blu-ray player will be the DMP-BDT350, a player featuring VIERA CAST, which means it’ll be able to stream the same stuff as Sony’s player. But you’ll have to hook it up to your network through the USB port. Maybe the 96kHz surround re-master and 1080p upconverting will make up for the lack of built-in WiFi. Expect it on shelves sometime in the spring.

Samsung’s top-of-the-line 3D player will be the BD-C6900, but next to nothing is known about it other than it’ll be compatible with Samsung’s existing 3D displays.

Even Toshiba, the company behind some other disc format you might have heard about, announced a 3D Blu-Ray player in the BDX3000. It’ll have built-in WiFi, some streaming capabilities such as Netflix and Pandora, and should hit sometime in Q3.

Oh, and you PS3 owners out there? Don’t worry, your multi-functional Blu-ray player is ready to go. Sony announced it’ll play 3D BRDs on their upcoming 3D Bravias.

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