After 12 Monkeys finally arrived this afternoon*, I realized the Cap'n never followed up on the whole "discs from elsewhere" story. Since I actually did try a few of them out, I can dish a little bit.
I ended up trying out 12 Monkeys from Germany, plus Fido and Slither from Canada. The prices were comparable, if maybe a little higher, than buying these things new, and I've had time to watch or sample all three. So let's take a look and suss out whether this is a great thing or a "buyer beware" situation.
12 Monkeys - of the three, this one poses the most "adjusting" problems. The film plays immediately, in German and (for some reason) with German subtitles turned on. You can change this easily by pressing the "audio" and "subtitles" buttons, or if you want to learn a little German, hit the menu button and work out which one is which. It's not actually that hard.
The movie itself looks great. I saw 12 Monkeys at the Imperial when it first ran, and while it's been thirteen years, this is probably the closest I've seen the film look to that experience. Improved clarity is quite handy with a film like 12 Monkeys; as anyone who watched "The Hamster Factor and Other Tales of 12 Monkeys" can attest, Terry Gilliam is big on detail in his films. Being able to make out the faces of the "scientists" interrogating Cole or what's written on the chalkboards during his "interview" at the asylum were marked changes from previous dvd versions. I was surprised at the level of detail both in the underground section and when Cole goes on his "expedition", or little things like the fibers on his robe in the madhouse.
So the movie looks great, it doesn't take much to switch simple language and subtitle shifts (or you can learn German! Plus!), so what are the downsides? For one, don't expect "The Hamster Factor" or the commentary track from the dvd, because you won't get them. This is just the movie, which in and of itself is really what you're looking for, but supplement junkies might grumble a bit and hope Universal doesn't chop up "Hamster" into U-Control when it comes out stateside.
Honestly, the big complaint I had was how long it took to get here. It took them three weeks to process the order and they finally shipped it last Monday. The disc arrived today, but this is the trade-off I suppose. Otherwise, if you're looking for 12 Monkeys in High Def and don't mind no extras, it's up to you if the price is right.
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Slither - a movie from the first Horror Fest that I'm rather fond of. Unlike 12 Monkeys, it does have everything on the dvd included, the Canadian rate exchange is roughly the same as prices here, and the disc itself is well put together. So where's the catch?
Cranford, you're perfectly welcome to say "I told you so", but the picture quality is not a radical leap from the dvd. Don't get me wrong: when I did the "play one scene from the BD and the DVD" I could tell the difference, but this isn't going to be the disc you pull out to show off your fancy tv. This may have more to do with the budget of the film or how it was shot, but Slither tends to go on the "soft" side in some scenes and doesn't exactly leap off the screen.
On the other hand, it does take away some of the smudginess I saw on the dvd, and I'm not regretting the upgrade. It's still Slither, and it looks as good and probably a little better. It's certainly a toss up and hinges entirely on your setup and preferences for upconverted vs BD.
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Fido - here's where things get a bit problematic. If there's any one disc where I wish I hadn't dropped the money, it'd be Fido. I still love the movie and there are upsides to this disc, the mastering of the disc is just awful.
To tease that out a little bit, I'll say that every now and then you'll see a dvd where the movie is going along pretty well and then you see something that just pulls you right out of the movie. Sometimes it's jagged edges on the screen or "combing" (horizontal lines that cut across the picture**, or sometimes the color bleeds or you get "halos" around characters.
Fido has... well I guess it might be what's called "ghosting". A character will be walking (usually in brightly lit scenes) and there's this digital blob behind the motion that lingers all the way through the scene. It's most evident when Timmy takes Fido to the park early in the film, when any and everything moving leaves this temporary smudge while it's onscreen. It's really distracting and makes it almost impossible to watch the movie.
That's a shame, because when that's not happening, the movie looks much better than it did on dvd. At times I was quite surprised how much detail you could make out on the zombies and the production design. The makeup job on Billy Connolly shines in brightly lit scenes, and since he's mostly stationary you can enjoy him without those infuriating smudges.
Still, this is a "Buyer Beware", and if Lionsgate doesn't address this, then there's no point buying it when the Blu Ray comes out here either. This kind of sloppy encoding to disc is inexcusable, especially with the added space of Blu Ray discs. Watch the movie, skip the BD.
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And there you have it: three cases of discs from outside the borders, each of which have ups and downs (some more than others). It was an interesting experiment but I think that before making any more investments like these I'll read as many reviews as humanly possible. That way I can avoid problems like Fido happening again.
To their credit, Fido and Slither arrived together less than a week after I ordered them. 12 Monkeys took a lot longer, but it was worth the wait in my opinion.
Oh well, live and learn. Now I'm off to start (and maybe finish) Punisher: War Zone. Any movie that inspires a comparison to The Story of Ricky because of violent content is a movie for me. Peace.
* I bought it shortly after the blog mentioning the Region loophole for Blu Rays.
** This was a BIG problem when Monty Python's Meaning of Life came out on dvd. I went through two returns of the disc before giving up and getting a refund until Universal fixed the mastering.
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