The Headliners (Review)
This year's Isle of Wight Festival seemed unusual to me, in that the tickets only sold out a week before the event, the headline acts where announced in dribs and drabs over a long period of time, and the final act was someone who most of my generation and below have only really read tiny things about. Despite threats of bad weather forecasts prior to the actual event, the sun even came out,...

The Verbatim Rapier V1 gaming mouse (Review)
I've spent the last few weeks checking out the new Verbatim Rapier V1 gaming mouse. Using and abusing it in everything from everyday tasks such as web browsing, to more demanding work such as Adobe Photoshop, from jumping around the Ogrimmar bank courtesy of World of Warcraft, to getting myself shot in the back via Counterstrike: Source. On sale from Maplin this coming December, the Rapier V1...

Review of AnyDVD 4.3 (Review)
Back in the early days of DVD-ROM drives, everything was protected using the easily defeatable RPC1, and some models where even region free if you installed updated firmware from the manufacturer`s website. Then Region Protection Code 2 entered the scene, and mostly rained on our freedom parade, locking the majority of new drives despite the presence of some useful utilities to patch them....

Review of Living Dead At Manchester Morgue, The (Review)
Introduction I`ve seen a few zombie films, and lets face it the 70s were full of zombie films. So when this one came along digitally remastered and nobody else was keen to sit through it, probably because they thought it was another second rate thrash metal group in another abysmal live performance, I thought I`d do the samaritan thing and watch it meself. Like a lot of films in this genre all...

Review of Pokemon: The Movie 2000 (Review)
Introduction After the poor full frame treatment that the original Pokemon: The Movie received, fans of the series were beginning to think that Pokemon: The Movie 2000 was destined for the same fate. For whilst the original was announced as coming with an anamorphic transfer, it actually turned up filling the screen instead. Obviously fearful of a repeat error, the latest film was declared to be...

Review of Madonna: The Ultimate Collection Box Set (Review)
Introduction Madonna: The Ultimate Collection is a 2-disc set comprising of The Immaculate Collection and The Video Collection 93-99. Interestingly, each disc is marked for all regions bar 1, so should play in almost every territory bar the US and Canada. I wouldn`t say I`ve ever been much of a Madonna fan, although recently she`s certainly become worth listening too. I only own two albums,...

Review of Madonna: Music (DVD Single) (Review)
Introduction I could fill this with Ali-G quotes but really this is a Madonna disc so I won`t. Suffice to say, what we have here is a DVD single if you like, featuring two marginally different cuts of Madonna`s first single from her new album Music. Forgive me if I don`t go into too much detail here, its only a liddle disc you know. Video This is quite a nice looking full frame...

Review of Last Broadcast, The (Review)
Introduction Before we all heard nothing but Blair Witch this and that, there was a documentary based film which claimed to look behind a set of murders. When the team of a low budget cable access show attempt a live broadcast in the Pine Barrens of New Jersey where the legendary Jersey Devil lives, all are reported missing presumed dead, bar one, who was later convicted of their murder. Ooer...

Review of Hard Rain (Review)
Introduction I`ve always disliked Christian Slater, its nothing personal I just can`t stand all his acting roles to date. Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves started it, and no performance I saw since then really did anything to help. So when I sat down to watch what appeared to be an action thriller set entirely in water, having a good time was furthest from my mind. Oh how wrong I was... Video...

Review of Abyss, The: Special Edition (Review)
Introduction Everyone should have heard of The Abyss, it was Cameron`s famous follow up to his hugely successful Aliens action film. Appearing in the mid-eighties, it featured the first of some major ground breaking special effects by Industrial Light & Magic which would be closely followed by Terminator 2 (another Cameron film not surprisingly) and the CGI filled summer blockbusters we...

Review of Lifeforce (Review)
Introduction I`d never heard of this film before a friend lent it to me. "The alien is a bit of a looker" was his basic description, so despite knowing better after having seen Species in the past, I watched it anyway. The basic plot involves vampires from space sucking the Lifeforce from poor little earthlings, choosing England and more specifically London as their main point of attack. Don`t...

Review of Dolby Digital: We`ve Got the Whole World Listening (Review)
Introduction Many of you who visit the cinema regularly will have come across the Dolby Digital trailers that prequel many movies presented in this sound format. For a while some of these have been available on a demo disc which became popular enough for Dolby Laboratories to sell via their online website. A few weeks ago the company released a brand new disc due to popular demand. Aimed as...

Review of Space Ace (Review)
Introduction If you`ve never heard of this game, its the third in a series of classic 80`s Laserdisc arcade conversions. The other two were Dragons Lair and Dragons Lair 2, the reviews of which cover far more of the background details than those I`ll mention here. Once again the gameplay is the same, only where as before you controlled the success or failure of Dirk the Daring, now its the...

Review of Dragon`s Lair II: Time Warp (Review)
Introduction There is no point covering old ground twice, so if you have no idea what Dragons Lair 2: Time Warp is all about, this is the sequel to the classic arcade Laserdisc machine. If you want background information it might be a good idea to go and read the Dragons Lair review. I don`t recall ever seeing this in the arcades or on a computer conversion, so this one was entirely new to...

Review of Dragon`s Lair (Review)
Introduction Way back in the early 80`s when arcades where just beginning to mature away from the simple sprites of Pacman to more complicated games such as Tron, a machine turned up which left an imprint in the minds of everyone who saw it. This was an arcade classic called Dragons Lair, based entirely around the concept of playing full motion footage off a laserdisc player. It was also rather...

Review of Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels: The Director`s Cut (Review)
Video If you thought The Matrix used slow motion and freeze frames to great effect, you ain`t seen nothing yet. This is a visual feast of clever camera work, frozen images accompanied by narration, blurs, clever editing, you name it Lock, Stock does it. All with a brown cast I might add, giving everything the muddy underworld look. This being the Directors Cut, you would expect lots of...

Review of Deep Blue Sea (Review)
Video Director Renny Harlin repeatedly spouts during the various featurettes that he challenges anyone to pick out the CGI sharks from the animatronic versions. They are good, but they aren`t that good. Amazingly, whereas in Jurassic Park the CGI looked far better than the real puppets, Deep Blue Sea is quite the reverse. The animatronic sharks are just incredibly powerful and realistic,...

Review of South Park: Bigger, Longer & Uncut (Review)
Video The first unusual thing about this movie is that whilst rendered using expensive 3D technology, it looks like hand animated paper cutouts. The other unusual thing, is it actually contains some stunning 3D graphics intermixed with the very same cutouts. I didn`t see this at the cinema, really not expecting the big screen to add anything to the experience, and to be truthful it doesn`t....

Review of Austin Powers: The Spy Who Shagged Me (Review)
Video Picture quality is great on this disc, I didn`t notice a single problem throughout. The colours are very vibrant, courtesy of the decent transfer and sixties clothing. Even the out takes and trailers, usually the first to suffer from a quick rushed transfer, are excellent. Its great to see time spent on encoding supplementary material. The special effects are often very funny, despite...

Review of Tron (Review)
Video If you haven`t ever caught this film on the box, or didn`t see it when you were a kid then you`ll have very little idea what its about. Basically, we are talking little computer people here, living out their world in a miniature circuit board of light. When modern films stand up and claim they used X minutes of CGI footage and you sound amazed, bear in mind that 3/4 of this film is almost...

Review of Evil Dead, The: Collector`s Edition (Review)
Video This film was originally shot on 16mm film, its full-frame and presented in the glorious aspect ratio the director intended. Its also very old and looks very cheap. But its a ground breaking but low budget horror film, and these sort of visuals are par for the course. The special effects range from pretty convincing in the odd place to totally OTT and extremely cheesy, this is half the...

Review of Blair Witch Project, The: Special Edition (Review)
Video This is one hard movie to discuss video quality with, since it is entirely shot on 16mm black & white film stock and 8mm camcorder cassettes. The choice of medium is of course fundamental to the presentation of the film, it could not really be taken any other way and maintain its impact, so lets move quickly on. Basically what you get here is shakey camcorder camera work intercut...

Review of Dracula (a.k.a. Bram Stoker`s Dracula) (Review)
Video Quality of this transfer is good, dark scenes of which there is many are nice and contrasty. The layer change could have been at a fractionally better moment, but then it could also have been at plenty of worse ones. Visual wise, there are many nice fades and cuts, clever overlays, lavish sets, some nasty looking vampires, oh and a fair bit of blood. Everything is very, very dark and...

Review of Hellraiser (Review)
Video Special effects good, video transfer bad. That just about sums it all up, as this has to be the worst disc for picture quality I`ve seen so far. Yes it does come with both pan`n`scan and anamorphic versions, and no the compression isn`t any relation to the problem. We are talking crappy master here, there is so many specs and scratches on the print it makes the R1 of Bladerunner seem in...

Review of Exorcist, The: 25th Anniversary (Review)
Video This is a digitally remastered version, and yes the picture is excellent. There are moments of graininess due to the age of the original print no doubt, but we are definitely looking at a fine piece of restoration here. This is a cleverly made film, visuals are always used to great effect whether its special effects or camera angles and lighting. Since CGI was clearly not an option back...

Review of Twister (Review)
Video Another very good anamorphic transfer by Warner, images are sharp and with very little grain. The dark scenes have very good contrast, as do the sunny ones. With the film not being that old itself, you really shouldn`t expect any less. Right, forget about the acting, this is a special effects movie if you didn`t realise already. And the tornados are nothing short of breathtaking. Huge...

Review of Matrix, The (Review)
Video Woah, this film is visually stunning, and features some groundbreaking special effects and camera work. How to discuss it all without giving too much of the plot away could prove very difficult but I`ll try me best. The main eye candy here is based around a concept called Bullet Time, which is the seemless splicing of live footage and computer generated sequences which range from panning...

Review of Titanic (Review)
Video The one thing which has plagued Titanic films over the years has been problems over size. No matter what anyone tells you, size matters, if the biggest ocean liner ever made is going to sink dramatically you sure as hell want to believe it. With a clever mixture of model shots, CGI and live action, this movie does a very good job at convincing you your looking at the real thing. It`s not...

Review of Die Hard 2 (Review)
Video As with Die Hard, this film is just crying out for an anamorphic print, considering its large aspect ratio. Contrast can be a bit low in places, and there is a definite brownish tinge to the image, colour saturation isnt great either. But its watchable, although it could be a lot better. As for the special effects, they are very good, especially those involving great big jumbo jets...

Review of Die Hard (Review)
Video This film is crying out for an anamorphic print, and unfortunately it doesn`t have one. For what little of the screen is used, quality is good, contrast is nice, colours are fine. But these days we really shouldn`t expect anything less, and I hope to see a time when these get a re-release in a true anamorphic format. Effects wise, everything is mainly stuff being blown up, including most...

Review of Ronin (Review)
Video Most of this film has been shot functionally, except of course the car chases and other stunts. These have been given the gold star treatment by director John Frankenheimer, the fast cutting beautifully compliments the action without compromising continuity. The transfer is very good, just as well considering much of the film is shot at night. You can also jump for joy, this is...

Review of Peacemaker, The (Review)
Video Trains crashing, helecopters buzzing around, missiles, explosions, gunfire and car chases. All of this is in Peacemaker and more, all done to the point where they look realistic. Having scene some recent James Bond movies try all of the above and fall short due to poor model work, its nice to see how it should be done. Basically, the special effects are great and believable. The transfer...

Review of Aliens: Special Edition (Review)
Video This is a SciFi action film if you didn`t know, and its really rather dark and claustrophobic. Even the planet LV-426 at the center of Aliens story line is pretty dark during the day. Its predecessor was pretty much the same, but even that had a few brightly lit rooms, these are noticeably missing from Aliens. Atmosphere is in abundance, tension is built up slowly and carefuly, but sod all...

Review of Evil Dead 2 (Review)
Video The image quality of this disc isnt bad, very little grain and good sharpness/contrast, especially when you consider the overly dark lighting and the fact very little of this film isn`t shot in a bleak way. I`ve seen this movie on TV, and VHS, neither of those matched the quality of this disc. It aint the best in the world, but is definitely the best print of the film I`ve ever come across....

Review of Mask, The (Review)
Video This disc contains a good transfer, with nice contrast on both well lit and dark scenes. Colour saturation is very good, which considering the bright CGI effects is just as well. Its just a shame that we aren`t looking at an anamorphic print here, such a waste, but if you like your movies cut and cropped there is a pan`n`scan version on the reverse side. There are 31 nice chapter spots to...

Review of Tomorrow Never Dies: (James Bond) (Review)
Video Picture quality is very good, nice and sharp, and very little grain. Layer change position is fine, nice number of chapters to skip through the movie with, and its anamorphic! As for special effects and other eye candy, this is a bond movie, so the usual pyrotechnics abound. However whilst stuff filmed live is up to the usual high standard, the models look a bit weak. This isn`t as bad...

Review of GoldenEye (Review)
Video Image quality is good, as is contrast and colour saturation, although at times some scenes did suffer from slight grainyness though whether this is related to the original print or encoding I`d be hard pressed to say. It is an acceptable transfer anyway, with no major distractions tucked away. And yay, it`s anamorphic too! Effects wise, bond films usually consist of gunfire, explosions...

Review of Blues Brothers: Collector`s Edition, The (Review)
Video The quality of the transfer to DvD is good, although it does show some of the films age. The restored scenes don`t look any different in quality to the rest, and are nicely blended despite having been on the cutting room floor for 18 years. As its a comedy, there aren`t exactly a lot of taxing scenes like many a special effect laden movie, but what is there clearly hasn`t suffered from many...

Review of Ghostbusters: Collector`s Edition (Review)
Video For a print dating back to the mid-eighties, this digitally remastered edition is of a very high quality. Admittedly there is the odd speck of dust or scratch every now and again, but these are easily forgiven and certainly do not intrude into whatever is going on at the time. Colours aren`t as bright and vivid as they could have been, but then very little in the film looks like it was...

Review of Antz: Collector`s Series (Review)
Video The transfer of this disc is excellent, in fact despite the short running time of 83 minutes, there is still a layer change (well placed) due to the very high bitrate used in the encoding. Colours are nice and vibrant, contrast is great even in the dark scenes under the ant hill. Inside everything is cleverly hued, with browns and mauves used together with nice lighting effects. Once the...