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28 Days Later (Blu-ray)

28 Days Later (Blu-ray)


Fox

// R // October 9, 2007 // Region A

Slant Price: $39.98
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Review article by

Daniel Hirshleifer

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posted November 4, 2007 |

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The Movie:

Danny Boyle has been a restless wanderer wholly the cinematic landscape. He takes a genre, leaves his get ahead, and moves on just as at once as he came in. He's a top-notch guy, and he's as compliant to the genres he chooses as they are to him. Several of his films have behove touchstones for modern cinema, including

Sand bar Pressing

,

Trainspotting

, and now

28 Days Later

, Boyle's take on zombie perturbation flicks, and in precisely the character-driven pieces by George Romero.

As the film opens, a team of eco-terrorists break into a medical research facility, only to find dozens of monkeys. Some are in cages, some are strapped to tables, and one is forced to watch endless videos of horrible atrocities. The terrorists, aghast at what they see, start freeing the simians, only to discover that they are are infected with a disease. This disease, called Rage, quickly takes hold of the intruders and they set out upon an unsuspecting world, ready to wreak havoc and destruction.

28 days later…a lone man, let's call him Jim (Cillian Murphy), awakens in a hospital bed. He's confused, he's disoriented, and he can't figure out why nobody will answer when he calls out. Gathering his wits about him, he stumbles out into London's streets, now empty and looking like they've undergone some terrible calamity. There's trash all over the place, overturned double decker buses, and Jim cannot find another living soul. That all changes when he wanders into a church, only to find the priest and all of his parish are still there…and they're hungry.

Jim soon discovers the hard way that in less than a month, Rage wiped out all the major population centers in England. He does happen to come across a few other survivors, and they band together in an attempt to survive. But when you've got an entire nation of blood crazed Rage carriers on your tail, no place is safe for too long. And in a world where mankind faces extinction, how much value does humanity retain?

28 Days Later

was Danny Boyle's brilliant re-invention of the zombie genre. Much has been made of the fact that Boyle made the decision to have his zombies run, where traditionally they shambled. It is important to note, however, that these are not traditional zombies. They are living humans, infected with a virus. The outcome of the infection has many of the same qualities as a zombie outbreak, but these are not reanimated corpses. That's the technical explanation for why they act more lively than their zombie counterparts. But more than that, the importance of this distinction lies in the film's overall emotional pitch. Rage is similar to AIDS, a blood borne pathogen that kills. But in this case, the destruction has been externalized, turned outwards back on the society that created it.

Looked at in this light,

28 Days Later

is positively frightening. Not only is there the visceral threat of a horde of faceless maniacs out to kill you, but there's the more amorphous dread of what they represent. When Cillian Murphy fights for his life, there's the awareness that the struggle is bigger than man against man. It's man against nature, man against the world. If an epidemic of such massive proportions were to in fact break out, how would we handle it? If anyone were vulnerable, regardless of race, creed, sexual orientation, or even geographic location, are our societies sufficiently stable enough to hold up against such an onslaught?

This is also examined in the film. Aside from the visually arresting scenes of Jim wandering a thoroughly desolate London (shot with such effective economy and simplicity that the filmmakers behind

I Am Legend

really could have benefited by following Boyle's example), later in the film he comes across a compound run by soldiers. Using their battle experience, they've been able to isolate their little patch of land from the surrounding chaos. Being a military outfit, though, they aren't one for communal living, and their regiment is harshly ruled over by Major Henry West (Christopher Eccleston). West himself has abandoned his discipline. After all, if you're one of a handful of people alone in a world that threatens to destroy each and every one of you, why not fill your nights with food and drink?

Things don't stay simple, though, as West becomes drunk with power, forcing Jim to choose between his empathy and his survival. Again, even during the most intense and horrifying sequences, Boyle layers on another level of meaning. There is a certain attraction to West's way of life. And with nothing resembling normality outside the compound, what incentive is there to hold on to the old notions of morality or ethics? The world has changed to the point where such concepts may not even matter anymore. Or, perhaps, because of the changes that have occurred, they are more valuable than ever before.

It's this density of content that makes

28 Days Later

such an engaging film. You can enjoy it as a zombie flick, but there's so much there to discover as you watch. Unlike other genre pictures, such as the flaccid

Dawn of the Dead

remake,

28 Days Later

is actually trying to say something. The best horror films use the monsters as a means to an end, and Boyle ably follows in the footsteps of the masters, while still making a picture that is undeniably his own.

28 Days Later

is tense, exciting, vicious, and thought-provoking. It's a zombie picture with a rare amount of intelligence and depth. Simply brilliant.

The Blu-ray Disc:

The Image:



28 Days Later

is an exceedingly bizarre candidate for release on a high definition format. The film was shot with DV cams, which are of such low resolution that they would not benefit from a high definition transfer. To make matters worse, in the editing process, Danny Boyle purposely degraded the picture even further, leaving only the film's denouement untouched (and the only portion actually shot on celluloid, for that matter). So why choose this title for release this early in the format's life, especially coming from Fox, who actually stopped production on all of their Blu-ray discs in order to wait for BD+ to become active. My guess is that this release was mostly done as a tie-in for the film's sequel,

28 Weeks Later

, and less as a tent pole release for the format.

The AVC-encoded 1.85:1 1080p transfer looks as good as the source material will allow. That is to say, it doesn't look very good at all. As I mentioned, the film is meant to look like worse than standard definition, and it does. Slapping it on a high capacity disc in 1080p isn't going to change that. If you want to get more precise, the movie clearly shows its digital video roots, with a harshness that one doesn't get from film. Stairstepping and artifacts are commonplace. The image is soft, dirty, lacking in detail, and fuzzy. The final sequence, shot on film, is cleaner, with much better detail, color reproduction, and clarity.

Of course, the obvious caveat is that Danny Boyle purposely made

28 Days Later

look this way, and thus that is how it should appear on home video, regardless of the format. And I wholeheartedly agree. In this case, my description of the image is not an attack, but simply a stating of facts. The transfer itself is fine in that is accurately reflects the director's intentions. I am still giving it a low star rating because no matter which way you slice it, this is not a film that will show off your high def television.

The Audio:


Fox continues the somewhat bewildering trend of offering only a DTS-HD MA 5.1 track (of which almost none of the existing players can take advantage), which means that all I could do was hear the lossy core that my PS3 was able to extract. I personally found the mix on

28 Days Later

to be in its own way as harsh as the image. That's not to say it sounds bad, however. Dialogue is well equalized and the bass track is almost always active, and very noticeable. The sound goes a long way towards helping the effectiveness of the more tense scenes. But I found that quite often, sound placement felt off, and I'm not sure if it was intentional or not. I did see the film back in the theaters and don't recall the mix being so oddly lopsided. I could certainly see Boyle doing it on purpose, to keep the audience off balance and nervous.

The Supplements:

• 
  Commentary with Director Danny Boyle and Writer Alex Garland:
  
  Boyle and Garland sit down together for a decent commentary track. The two play off each other, often expanding on each other's comments or using them as a springboard for their next subject. To me the most interesting moments came when they discussed how they achieved all the shots of London devoid of people (
  
  "We just blocked off the streets,"
  
  Boyle admits), but the entire track is of high quality.
• 
  Deleted Scenes with optional commentary:
  
  Almost ten minutes worth of deleted scenes, all with optional commentary available. The scenes themselves are less interesting than the commentaries, which steer clear of the "we ran out of time" kind of comments.

The Conclusion:




28 Days Later

is one of Danny Boyle's strongest films, and his most hyper charged since

Trainspotting

. What sets this movie apart from the host of zombie flicks invading our cineplexes is the level of reflection and contemplation that Boyle and writer Alex Garland impart to the material, raising it to a much higher level. HD nuts should note that the picture in

28 Days Later

looks awful on purpose, and this is about as far as you can get from demo material. However, fans of the film will relish the improved fidelity of the DTS-HD MA soundtrack and the inclusion of all the special features from the DVD. While the image isn't going to win any awards, this film and its extras are just too good to pass up.

Recommended.

Daniel Hirshleifer is the High Definition Editor for DVD Talk.

Strong material has been wasted by bumbling filmmaking in Like Water in the course of Chocolate. Sixth emphasize by Mexican actor-director Alfonso Arau (known to times a deliver audiences for roles in The Wild Bunch and Romancing the Stone) suffers from an in-your-face sound out to direction, with the thorough news told mostly in closeup. The film screams to opened up to northern Mexico’s exhaustive aspect and the broader notions of story line.

Title can more aptly be translated as ‘boiling mad,’ since it refers to anger at the boiling point, like water for hot chocolate. Screenplay was penned by Arau’s wife, Laura Esquivel, based on her delightful bestseller combining ‘magic realism’ romance and recipe book.

Historical pic opens in the early 1900s on a large estate near the Texas border with the birth of the youngest of three sisters. Unfortunately, Tita (Lumi Cavazos) is part of a family tradition where the youngest daughter is denied matrimony in order to care for her mother in her old age. When Pedro Muzquiz (Marco Leonardi) comes to ask for Tita’s hand, he’s offered Tita’s elder sister Rosaura, and he accepts so that he can be close to Tita, who is the cook at the hacienda.

The film chronicles this sweeping, lifelong romance between an impossible love consummated only through the meals Tita prepares. She pours so much love into her quail-with-rose-petal dish that everyone at the table has an orgasm, and one of her sisters even catches on fire.

Art direction is beautiful, although denied scope, while rich cinematography is misused throughout.

[Version reviewed was director's original 144-min. cut, preemed at the 1992 Guadalajara fest. Pic was subsequently released in Mexico at 114 mins. and in the U.S. at 106 mins.]

Reviewed by Dennis Schwartz

This beautifully crafted (despite the use of a static camera), sincere
and superbly acted old-fashioned “father knows best” family drama made
during the war years was a very popular and acclaimed film in Japan. It’s
directed by the great Yasujiro Ozu (”The Record of a Tenement Gentleman”/”Late
Autumn”/”Equinox Flower”), who offers his wisdom about a close father-son
relationship that is special; it’s tautly written by Ozu, Tadao Ikeda and
Takao Yanai. Perhaps it’s Ozu’s most Buddhist, didactic, Japanese and patriarchal
film, that only seems hampered because there’s some war propaganda about
doing one’s duty for country that makes its way into the theme in the film’s
second part. 

Dedicated and respected junior high school math teacher in a backwater
town, Shuhei Horikawa (Chishu Ryu), a widower with a ten year old son named
Ryohei (Haruhiko Tsuda), resigns after a student drowns in a boating accident
during a school trip to Tokyo to visit traditional revered spots such as
the Imperial Palace and the Great Buddha statue in Kamakura. Since Horikawa
was in charge, he feels responsible for the child’s death even though no
one blames him. The principled Horikawa returns to his seacoast hometown
of Ueda and when his son reaches the age of a junior high school student,
he sends him to a paid boarding school and visits his dorm once a week.
The father states that education is the best way to get ahead and he will
do for his son what his deceased father did for him. Set on sending his
son to college, the father relocates to Tokyo to get a better paying salaryman’s
job in a factory and thereby ensure that he has enough money to finance
his son’s education–which is viewed as more important than their separation.
Some fifteen years go by with the father and son seeing each other sparingly
for brief visits but enjoying immensely each visit that they have. The
now 25-year-old Ryohei (Shuji Sano) graduates college and becomes a chemistry
teacher in a junior high school in Akita. They spend a few days together
in a spa, where they go fishing. Later Ryohei visits dad in Tokyo, where
dad has risen to a more prestigious office job, while he takes his physical
for the military draft. Horikawa and fellow junior high school teacher
Hirata (Takeshi Sakamoto), now also living in Japan, have a festive reunion
with a group of appreciative former students. Soon after, Horikawa is taken
ill and dies. His last wish is that Hirata’s sweet and beautiful 21-year-old
daughter Fumiko (Mitsuko Mito) look after his son. The last scene has Fumiko
and Ryohei travelling back to Akita by train as a married couple, with
the obediant son bearing his father’s ashes. 

Ozu’s familiar motifs are present: such as the parent who self-sacrifices
for his child, the train as a reminder of going home for both father and
son and the two fishing scenes that bonds the father and son in a natural
sporting way–showing how they are at one with nature and themselves (a
familiar Buddhist theme). This simple relationship film is perfectly realized
and its austere telling relates to the war years where the Japanese people
were encouraged to accept their deprivations as a kind of necessary purification
for the greater good of society. It also plays along as a spiritual exercise,
a toughening of the soul and need for commitment to do the best one can
do in whatever endeavor one does (sacrifice and responsibility now becomes
the film’s theme). The father’s stongest belief is “Without schooling you
can’t become somebody.” When his son grows up and gets that schooling,
the message shifts and becomes “do one’s appointed job, no matter how lowly
or grim it is, or how backwater a place you are situated in. A good man
has to serve his country in the best and worst times.” It should be pointed
out that Ozu makes no direct reference to the war, but just throws it out
that one should act responsibly as a general statement. The film does not
question paternal authority, which is no problem here because the father
is such a decent person, but in his postwar films Ozu questions if father
is always right and if duty sometimes comes with too high a price to pay. 

The 38-year-old Chishu Ryu, an Ozu favorite, gives one of cinema’s
greatest performance. He might be the father a lot of us wish we had; and,
the timeless filmmaking of Ozu might still allow him to be viewed as one
of the best directors in his or any generation.

IT'S THE PIED PIPER,
CHARLIE BROWN




IT'S THE PIED PIPER, CHARLIE
BROWN

($20) was the final Peanuts animated special that was produced
in the past the passing of the comic strip?s prized creator Charles M. Schulz.
This charming Peanuts adventure is adapted from the classic story, although
it has been modernized and tailored to fit Schulz?s characters. In this
presentation, the small community in which the Peanuts unite lives is defeat with
soccer playing, river-dancing mice. The municipal politicians are unable to
rid the town of its rodent population and they find themselves at their
common sense?s betwixt. Offering a discovery steps the Pied Piper (Snoopy), who promises
to get rid of the mice in consideration for a year?s supply of dog food. The
politicians readily agree to the proposition, and with the aid of his
trusty concertina, Snoopy leads the mice inaccurate of town. However, when he
tries to amass his payment, Snoopy discovers the literal nature of the
politicians, who immediately try to weasel out on the deal. Of surely,
our hero does have method for getting even.

IT'S THE PIED PIPER, CHARLIE
BROWN

is simple Peanuts fun, with a number of amusing moments that
are unnamed to keep the kiddies entertained.
Paramount Expert in Entertainment
has made
IT'S THE PIED PIPER, CHARLIE BROWN
available on DVD in
a very nice looking smack motion pictures presentation. Since this is a stamp untrained
production, the image is lave, crisp and very colorful. There are no
flaws in the picture, nor any signs of chromatic distortion. Digital compression
artifacts are virtually non-existent on this DVD.
The Dolby Digital 2 channel
soundtrack is welcoming sounding, but doesn?t outdo the standards of a
television mix. Underscoring is placed upon dialogue reproduction, which is
clear and fully comprehensible. The music is nicely recorded and is reproduced
with proper fidelity. English subtitles are provided on the DVD.
Through the interactive menus,
joined has access to the standard scene range and set up features. As
supplement, the DVD includes a retrospective interview with Peanuts creator
Charles M. Schulz.
IT'S THE PIED PIPER, CHARLIE
BROWN

is another fine Peanuts DVD that is worth picking up for the
kids, and with the inclusion of the Schulz appraise, it is something
that long yet fans will want to hold onto.

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Using Jane Austen’s ‘Pride and Prejudice’ as the inspiration fitting for a Bollywood movie is so pronounced you wonder why no-one’s tried it before. The concerns of a twenty-commencement-century family in small-town India and Austen’s nineteenth-century characters are remarkably be like: a mother’s dream drives her daughters towards early betrothment; wherewithal and status impend to compensate for the importance of warmth or compatibility; group loyalty is pitched against haler judgement. These perennial intrigues spend time at on the friction between an arrogant but fit bachelor (Martin Henderson) and the more sympathetic character of his quick-

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witted potential bride (Aishwarya Rai).

But cinema-goers expecting a conventional British costume drama will be in respecting a flabbergast. Chadha (‘Bend It Congenial Beckham’) has given Austen’s tale a Bollywood makeover: from the squirting fountains of the ‘wet sari’ scene to the truancy of screen kisses, Bollywood configuration has been appropriated, and the devise stretched across three continents. Although some aspects of a Bollywood production can grate – the obvious dubbing of voices over with an east-meets-west soundtrack, the extra ham acting, the bumbling editing – it’s both surprising and funny. The principal sweet tooth is that the ‘romance’ of the two lead characters is unconvincing; they are so new (a feisty feminist and a fumbling chauvinist) that their eventual chemistry seems hoax. Up till they both manage to overcome their pride, and prejudices, to arrive at a euphoric ending. So it’s Jane Austen – but it’s also Bollywood.