Tuesday, January 8, 2008
Member since:
October 2007
October 2007
First let me start off by saying that "Sunshine" is not a great movie IMO. The fact that critics and reviewers liked it better than I just means that it's a bit better than the usual crap that's put out in the name of sci-fi movies lately. The visual effects were great, the audio even better, and the transfer was not bad. But when the entire premise of the movie has us to believe that far into the future humankind has not yet been able to master the art of flying probes around our solar system without humans to pilot them (when we started doing that in the 1960's), it just ruins it for me. It's difficult to let go of any disbelief and get into it when the entire premise is just so darn silly.
But silly can be fun (like the Starship Troopers), and this wasn't that fun either. The first half or so was mildly entertaining, but then it went downhill rather suddenly. Hidefdigest says this is a "thinking person's film", but there is nothing provocative or philosophical in the least about this movie, unless I'm missing something large. And yes I got the obvious thing about death and religion. Except in relation to the style of effects and the fact there was a computer voice, mentioning this movie and 2001 in the same sentence is blasphemy.
Non of the characters are developed in any way. In fact, we have two of them fighting and conflicting a lot, but there's no background or logic into why they do it. I personally found it rather shallow in character interaction and the normal "in your face" Hollywood style movie regardless of what the critics say.
That all being said, the camera work is nothing but beautiful. You could pause this movie in almost any part, and the framing and style is pure art. This along with the transfer quality and audio (you gotta hear these surround effects!) made it worthwhile.
Okay, now my first Blu-ray Picture-In-Picture experience. Thumbs down. They have like about 6 or 7 sequences where the PiP can be turned on, and the audio of the main track is off. The framing of the PiP is rather lame too, but at least it isn't shown as a perfect square. This was pretty primitive to what I've seen on HD DVD IME for example, but as a first attempt at least it worked flawlessly and didn't seem to have any bugs. I expect this feature to get better with future titles. It better!
Edit: I got the primary sound track working it seems during PiP while fooling around with the "real time audio mixing" option thingy. Not incredibly user-friendly. You'll wonder what the heck this option is even after reading the lengthy explanation.
[Post edited by Skyhawk on Jan 8, 2008]
But silly can be fun (like the Starship Troopers), and this wasn't that fun either. The first half or so was mildly entertaining, but then it went downhill rather suddenly. Hidefdigest says this is a "thinking person's film", but there is nothing provocative or philosophical in the least about this movie, unless I'm missing something large. And yes I got the obvious thing about death and religion. Except in relation to the style of effects and the fact there was a computer voice, mentioning this movie and 2001 in the same sentence is blasphemy.
Non of the characters are developed in any way. In fact, we have two of them fighting and conflicting a lot, but there's no background or logic into why they do it. I personally found it rather shallow in character interaction and the normal "in your face" Hollywood style movie regardless of what the critics say.
That all being said, the camera work is nothing but beautiful. You could pause this movie in almost any part, and the framing and style is pure art. This along with the transfer quality and audio (you gotta hear these surround effects!) made it worthwhile.
Okay, now my first Blu-ray Picture-In-Picture experience. Thumbs down. They have like about 6 or 7 sequences where the PiP can be turned on, and the audio of the main track is off. The framing of the PiP is rather lame too, but at least it isn't shown as a perfect square. This was pretty primitive to what I've seen on HD DVD IME for example, but as a first attempt at least it worked flawlessly and didn't seem to have any bugs. I expect this feature to get better with future titles. It better!
Edit: I got the primary sound track working it seems during PiP while fooling around with the "real time audio mixing" option thingy. Not incredibly user-friendly. You'll wonder what the heck this option is even after reading the lengthy explanation.
[Post edited by Skyhawk on Jan 8, 2008]
