DVD

Resistance is Futile

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There is no copy protectionI didn’t bother to mention it when Engadget broke the news over Christmas that HD-DVD’s vaunted copy protection system had been broken, since it appeared the protection itself remained intact, and only a few titles would be “liberated” by the hackery … but now, it looks like the wizards behind the HD-DVD crack have dented Blu-ray’s armor, too.

This isn’t terribly surprising, since both formats employ the same protection, called AACS, as their first battlement against duplication. But Blu-ray uses a second tier of encryption, BD+, that has yet to be hacked.

Oh, it’ll happen someday — everything gets hacked eventually — but right now it looks like another strike against the HD-DVD platform.

Especially when one sees something like this turn up online.

Ow.

Movies

Poised

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I expect I should like to thank the Academy ...The Academy Award nominations are announced on Tuesday, which means the studios are playing it safe this weekend — widening the runs of a couple of likely honorees (like “Pan’s Labyrinth” and “Letters from Iwo Jima”), and bringing back a few Golden Globe successes (like “The Last King of Scotland”, which roars back onto screens after Forest Whitaker’s Best Actor – Drama award, and “Babel”, which expands considerably in the wake of its Best Picture – Drama win).

Also, there’s the week’s requisite dead-zone genre picture; today, it’s “The Hitcher”, which didn’t screen for critics until last night and therefore avoids a slew of opening-day reviews that will call it unnecessary, superficial and silly. (Don’t worry, I’ll be using those terms on Monday.)

And then, tucked away in small runs, there are two very good little movies:

“13 Tzameti“: In Gela Babluani’s striking debut, a young man (the director’s brother George) sees an opportunity for a big score and winds up trapped in a terrifying nightmare. Don’t watch the trailer, don’t read any other reviews, don’t even look at the poster — just go down to the Royal, buy a ticket and strap yourself in.

“Venus“: Age has not dulled Peter O’Toole’s magnificent screen presence, and he makes the most of his sympathetic wobbliness in this only slightly trite drama about a decrepit actor who’s smitten with a comely — if rather obnoxious — young woman. Director Roger Michell packs the film with marvelous performances: There’s Vanessa Redgrave as O’Toole’s tolerant ex, Leslie Phillips and Richard Griffiths turn up as O’Toole’s fellow luvvies, and newcomer Jodie Whittaker very nearly steals the picture as his yawpy crush object.

Also opening this week is “This Film is Not Yet Rated”, which Rick reviewed for Metro and therefore slipped past me. But since Mongrel’s releasing the DVD in a couple of weeks, I expect I’ll see it soon enough.

DVD

Oy

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Bread ... good?This arrived via Purolator, promoting MGM’s upcoming “Fiddler on the Roof” SE.

It’s a challah. A fresh challah, specifically, from the Open Window bakery.

Look, I’ve got nothing against being the recipient of random baked goods — honestly, who could say the world wouldn’t be a better place if cupcakes fell out of the sky every now and then? — but I get this, and I think: Someone’s marketing department has too much money.

On the other hand, Kate now has toast for the weekend. So that’s something.

UPDATE: Hey, I’m not the only one who gets this stuff!

DVD

Nekkid at 1080p

Our flaws just make us hotterIt always comes down to porn.

Sony’s Blu-ray format may have a greater percentage of Hollywood studios on board — everyone but Universal, really, and that’s only a matter of time — but it appears the adult film industry has other plans.

According to Fleshbot, dirty-movie distributor Digital Playground has just switched its affiliation to Toshiba’s HD-DVD platform after initially releasing some titles to Blu-ray. (Another distributor, Wicked Pictures, sided with HD-DVD from the start.)

The decision makes some sense, since HD-DVD allows for combo discs with a standard DVD side — a good way for a company to hedge its bets as consumers move hesitantly into the high-def field — and it also avoids the inevitable bad publicity when some child finds Daddy’s grown-up movie in the family PS3.

It’ll be interesting to see how (or if) this affects HD-DVD player sales; personally, I have to wonder whether there’s really a demand for high-definition porn in the first place. I mean, the whole point of pornography is an idealized representation of sex … does that include being able to see Tera Patrick’s razor burn?

Of course, the format war is awfully close to being a moot issue: Engadget reports that LG’s high-def combo player will ship early next month.

Movies

Back to Normal

News, in tiny little bite-sized thingiesHome for twelve hours, and I’m already racing to catch up with myself — CTV NewsNet is having me on in the 10:30 AM block to discuss the Golden Globes, which means I have to get there in about fifteen minutes. So, well, check it out if you’ve got cable. In the Toronto area, Rogers subscribers can find it on channel 62.

And as far as the Globes … “Babel”? “Dreamgirls”? Really?

Movies

Eastbound and Down

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Sing John Denver and I'll slap youThe Palm Springs film festival, she is concluded, and we have our winners:

Best Foreign Language Film

Pan’s Labyrinth, directed by Guillermo del Toro

Best Actor

Mads Mikkelsen, “After the Wedding”

Best Actress

Blanca Lewin, “In Bed”

You can find more specific coverage, including my expanded review of “Pan’s Labyrinth”, as it goes up at the FIPRESCI site. Now, however, it is time to crawl into bed and get as much sleep as we can before the obscenely early wake-up call, and then it’s off to Toronto with the customary bagful of American candy.

(It turns out they still sell mint chocolate M&Ms at Christmas … just not in Canada. But now they’re really cheap!)

I am such a six-year-old sometimes. But a six-year-old who gives prizes.

Movies

Playing the Away Game

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Hey, is that Ryan Phillippe? I love that guy!Sure, I’m on the other side of the continent, but the world keeps turning, and there are plenty of movies opening this week.

“Arthur and the Invisibles“: The ascent of one-note child actor Freddie Highmore may finally be thwarted with the release Luc Besson’s messy, spastic kid’s film, in which Highmore discovers a magical world of computer-generated elves in his grandparents’ backyard, or something. Creepy auteurist note: The love interest voiced by Madonna is a dead ringer for Milla Jovovich in Besson’s “The Fifth Element”. Eew.

“Fired!“: A personal documentary from actor Annabelle Gurwitch, who got fired from a Woody Allen play and turned them lemons into lemonade (and a profitable franchise; there’s also a “Fired!” book and a stage show). At the Royal through Monday; tonight’s screening also serves as a book launch.

“Letters from Iwo Jima“: Clint Eastwood’s bookend to “Flags of Our Fathers” has an intimacy and a focus that eluded its predecessor, suggesting that this is the movie Eastwood wanted to make all along, and the other was just a contractual obligation. Moody and slow and heartbreaking, and beautiful to regard … it’s got “boffo box office” written all over it!

“Miss Potter“: Beatrix Potter spent her days playing with her imaginary friends and telling her stuffy parents she didn’t need to marry. Charming fantasist or unmedicated schizophrenic? Chris Noonan’s fluffy, pointless costume drama is hell-bent on selling us the former interpretation, with Renee Zellweger bustling about while Ewan McGregor and Emily Watson look on admiringly.

“Stomp the Yard“: What would happen if you threw “Footloose”, “Rize” and “You Got Served” into a blender? Finally, we have an answer to the question that’s haunted America for years …

Catching “Primeval” today or tomorrow … did you know it’s about a crocodile? Because it is.

Movies, Pointless Personal Digressions

Street Party

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I am my own paparazzoThe movies are screened. The deliberations are over. It’s time to experience Palm Springs proper-like.

Which means that this morning, I accompanied fellow juror Gregory Valens to breakfast at the International House of Pancakes, which was something he’d wanted to do ever since we arrived.

Ah, IHOP. One forgets the allure of the unlimited buttermilk pancakes and the never-empty coffee urn. But one quickly remembers the strawberry syrup, which looks and pours like some sort of synthetic plasma.

After that, we rejoined the rest of our party for an afternoon at wrangler Ken’s house in nearby Palm Desert, where we were treated to some very nice red wine (cultivated, as it turned out, by his son).

And in the evening, Ken accompanied me and Gregory in a wander through Palm Springs’ weekly street festival. Called the VillageFest, it covers about six city blocks with a very entertaining mixture of artisans, entertainers, produce vendors and concession stands — roasted corn, handmade fudge, fresh dates, exquisite Belgian hot chocolate.

Best of all, there were dogs, lots of dogs — all of them wandering along the asphalt, instead of the sidewalk, sharing furtive looks, like they knew they were getting away with something.

I’m off to another party in half an hour (it’s a hard life, this jury duty), and then I’ll hopefully get a good night’s sleep before Kate arrives tomorrow, the better to put the “vacation” back into “working vacation”.

That’ll be nice, too.

Pointless Personal Digressions

Dust and Awe

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Rock! Rock! Rock! Rock!We’re out the other side of our movie gauntlet, and to celebrate our having survived the pounding of the last few days, our jury wrangler — whose name, incidentally, is Ken Dorf, and who has demonstrated himself to be a very accommodating and infinitely patient host — drove us out to Joshua Tree National Park this afternoon.

Wow.

It was my first trip into real desert, and it was spectacular. I can’t really convey the scale of it, or the eerie sense that everything I was looking at had been exactingly composed. Don’t get freaked out; this was hardly a religious awakening, just that human impulse to impose order on an alien sight, the way the mind organizes random shapes into recognizable anatomy. Still, it was a very strange feeling.

We spent a lot of time gawking at the immensity of it all, then taking pictures of everything we could. I found the cholla cactus particularly fascinating; puffy and bright with color, it’s like a hostile desert plant designed by Muppets. (Perhaps unsurprisingly, it’s commonly known as the “teddybear” cactus.)

Then there was the vast rock field, part of something called a “contact zone” — which, if I understood the brochure correctly, is the result of an 85-million-year-old belch of magma somewhere beneath the planet’s surface that slowly worked its way up to become part of the landscape, cooling into granite on the way.

And now dopes like me get to walk all over it, looking for bobcats. Didn’t see any, though.

DVD

Oh, It’s On

What do you say, baby? Feel like making up?Just in case you think I’ve been shirking my duties as a DVD enthusiast while I’m away in Palm Springs, here’s some interesting news from CES: Warner Home Video announced that it’ll be shipping its dual-format high-definition DVDs in the second half of this year.

Not a dual-format player, mind you, but a dual-format disc — one that contains both Blu-ray and HD-DVD versions of a given movie. They’re calling it THD, for “Total High Def”, and it’s an elegant compromise in the format war, since anyone who’s already picked a side no longer has to worry about his format of choice going extinct … but it’s no dual-format player.

Fortunately, this is. Kinda clunky-looking, though, and pretty obviously constructed around this DVD-ROM drive. It’s also a little pricey at $1200 USD; I’m thinking we might want to wait for the inevitable Chinese unit, which will surely arrive within a few months and compensate for its inelegance with a far smaller price tag.

One more Engadget story: Blu-ray has called “Mission Accomplished” on the whole format war. I think that might be a little premature, but it does seem to me that HD-DVD is lagging pretty far behind in studio support these days.

My other other gig.