First off, friends, I apologize for having been busy for the last several weeks. Job changes are part of it, my old TV dying is another, and the fact that the Christmas Season is full of video games for cheap  is only exacerbating the issue. Let's face it, Metal Gear Solid V: Ground Zeroes got a surprisingly great PC release, and there's no way that ISN'T going to eat at least a dozen or three hours of the next two weeks. Heh, "hour long" game my ass...

Rest assured, I plan on doing a number of BD "reviews" in the near(...?) future. I did, after all, just get AnimEigo's Bubblegum Crisis Collection, and I fully plan on exploring both the strengths and weaknesses of FUNimation's new Cowboy Bebop set - there's a lot to talk about there, so we'll get to that sometime early next year. Merry Christmas and everything else in the meantime, folks. I know, it sucks to have to wait to explore what did and didn't go right on releases like that, but hey, I've only had a chance to play the new Smash Bros., like, twice. We'll get there eventually.

But seeing as how I did get my hands on easily the most controversially broken Blu-ray to come out in 2014, I find myself with no choice but to do something of a proper write-up on Media Blasters' much-delayed mess that is the "International" version of Yasuomi Umetsu's picaresque action masterpiece, KITE/カイト. I've discussed how I feel about the OVA itself, the various international edits and its very unique and prominent place in the realm of ero-anime (or "hentai", if you prefer) as experimental pulp at least once, so I'll be focusing exclusively on the technical merits of Media Blasters' new Blu-ray only this time.

This is one of the most frustrating releases I can remember, because it's almost incredible. The vast majority of footage was clearly pulled from a new, high quality scan of what John Sirabella himself claimed to be the original camera negative, and with the 35mm footage looking as sharp and natural as it does, I'm inclined to believe him. Occasional specs crop up here and there, but nothing is ever particularly distracting on the 35mm sourced sequences. The contrast is high and the black levels rock solid, making it one of the best looking transfers of a 90s OVA available in HD. Heck, the bulk of the footage looks even better than the suspicious grainless and gamma-boosted transfer given to the Rurouni Kenshin: Trust and Betrayal BD import, which is one of the few older OVAs comparable to Kite on a lot of levels.

There's also an obvious comparison to make with Media Blasters' own Urotsukidoji: Legend of the Overfiend Blu-ray, which used a censored and well-worn 35mm theatrical print from the UK as the bulk of its source with some analogue SD footage to fill in the gaps. That release was an abomination, but it was almost consistently that way: The bulk of the footage looked heavily processed anyway, and while the results had obvious limitations there was at least a solid attempt to color-grade the SD upscale footage to match the rest of the new HD transfer. And since this was an actual 35mm print that was hacked up by the BBFC, there was a legitiamte excuse for the footage to have gone missing. Not, I must stress, that uncut prints didn't exist in the early 1990s and probably don't to this day... but that's neither here nor there, I suppose. Legend of the Overfiend was a middling 35mm transfer mixed with decently upscaled material, resulting in a disappointing release that - at the very least - tried to hide its still somewhat glaring flaws.

With Kite, the upscaled footage is not only exceptionally heinous - DVNRed into a smeared blob, not even a token attempt at color correction, aliased as hell, chock full of gross frame-blending artifacts and so on - but it's also frequent, and consistently on a full cut-for-cut basis. In other words, it never switches from 35mm to SD footage in the middle of a shot; this is typically how I myself work when I need to cobble different sources together, since getting framing and color and everything else to "Match" is next to impossible in the middle of a cut, but surprisingly easy when the camera cuts from one thing to another.

As for a potentially complete list of issues? That's what you guys really wanted, right? Well, here's what we've got. I can't promise it's 100% because trying to do this makes my heart sink, but hey, I'm trying! Goes without saying that I'm going to be floating Spoilers like a Game of Thrones book discussion sub, but good gravy, if you haven't seen Kite yet and you're somehow reading that, go fix that immediately!

Shots in BLACK are upscaled from SD sources, despite (presumably) being on the original negative in some capacity. This is the stuff that I honestly can't find any proper excuse to exist in the way that they do; in some cases, I'd rather they have compiled one usable frame from whatever film exists and just frozen it rather than switch to nigh-unwatchable, nearly VHS analogue garbage. But we've got so much more to discuss, I won't dwell on it.

Shots in RED are, for one reason or another, not on the camera negative and should be treated as "damned if you do, damned if you don't". We'll discuss these in detail, but the short of it is these were always going to be fucked in some capacity.

Shots in BLUE are... I'm not entirely what to call these. Basically, they're alternate shots that are pulled from the uncut camera negative, but that means they don't match the "International Version", which is what this Blu-ray is tyring to present. We'll discuss these in gory detail as needed. Basically, the footage is HD, but it's not the correct footage - not for the version of the OVA they're giving us, at least.

And as for the edits themselves, I'm trusting German censorship site Schnittberichte on the matter. If it's not entirely accurate... well, I'm done caring for now. Sorry, folks.

03:19 - The animated title sequence is upscaled. (10 seconds)

06:49 - Tracking shot of an escalator was trimmed down slightly in the International Version.
             It appears in its original length on the Blu-ray. (3 seconds longer) 

07:20 - In the International Version, Oburi passes by two people while on the escelator.
            On the Blu-ray/Uncut Version, he passes by three. (6 seconds longer)

16:28 - Young Sawa being molested by Akai has been slowed down to account for alternate takes.
             The missing alt. shot of adult Sawa is missing entirely.  (16 seconds, 3 cuts)

24:35 - The International version uses an alternate, forward-facing angle when Sawa is pushed.
             The Blu-ray uses the side-angle featured in the original OVA (episode 1) instead. (2 seconds)

24:40 - The grinning bodyguard falling to his doom was cut down slightly in the International Version.
             The Blu-ray plays the same length as the Uncut Version. (2 seconds longer)

25:19 - A young Sawa falls to her knees and begs Kanie to give her earings back. (1 second)

25:21 - Sawa stands up and begs for them back again. (2 seconds)

25:27 - Sawa hops up and tries to reach them as Kanie tosses them away. (2 seconds)

26:13 - The man shot by Sawa's exploding bullets twitches and bleeds out. (3 seconds)

26:57 - Sawa and the bodyguard fall from the skyscraper. (3 seconds)

27:12 - Sawa hangs on for dear life as the bodyguard shoots at her. (5 seconds)

27:35 - Sawa and the bodyguard freefall as he shoots upward at her. (4 seconds)

27:36 - Sawa and the bodyguard continue to fall from a different angle. (1 second)

27:38 - Sawa and the bodyguard slam through the bridge onto a car. (1 second)

27:39 - Sawa and the car fall through the bridge. (1 second)

27:50 - The truck falls through the street and explodes in the subway. (2 seconds)

28:15 - The explosion from the subway billows up into the street as Sawa goes flying. (2 seconds)

29:57 - Shot of "B. Willis" being interviewed through a two-way mirror. (4 seconds)

30:35 - Akai pulls his cigarette out of his mouth and beratws Sawa. (3 seconds)

30:57 - Akai tells Sawa she has another earring. (3 seconds)

31:36 - Sawa walks by a puddle. (6 seconds)

31:42 - Sawa waits to cross the street in the rain. (5 seconds)

33:00 - The shot of Akai reading a magazine has been looped/slowed down as Kanie speaks offscreen.
             The International Version has a shot of the "next" assassin in the background playing. (6 seconds)

34:59 - Subway car pulls into the station. (6 seconds)

35:24 - Subway car billows over with blue smoke. (1 second)

37:05 - The subway car explodes as people take cover. (2 seconds)

37:09 - The unnamed cop's head flings past the turnstile.  (2 seconds)

37:38 - Shot of Akai's shoes as he walks through the bathroom. (1 second)

38:01 - Show of Oburi's face as he chides Akai. (2 seconds)

38:13 - Oburi holds Akai at knife point as the lights flicker. (47 seconds, 6 cuts)

39:04 - Oburi runs out of the dark bathroom. (1 second)

39:06 - Oburi enters the hallway and turns around as he hears Akai. (1 second)

39:08 - Akai kicks Oburi while he's on the ground. (2 seconds)

39:11 - Akai kicks Oburi again. (1 second)

40:06 - Kanie shoots Sawa's gun out of her hand. Kanie chops her in the back of the neck. (2 seconds, 2 cuts)

40:26 - Freeze-frame and fade to black as Akai tells Sawa to thank him. (3 seconds)

40:29 - Kanie drags Oburi out the door. (1 second)

40:48 - Close-up of Akai explains that torture is his hobby. (7 seconds)

41:07 - Akai commends Sawa for standing up to him, same shot as before. (3 seconds)

42:53 - Slow pan down of the sewer with Sawa waiting in the shadows. (7 seconds)

43:10 - Sawa stands up. (4 seconds)

44:08 - Sawa unloads both pistols into Akai. Close up of her face, and him being shot. (3 seconds, 2 cuts)

45:25 - Sawa's cats wait for Oburi to return. (5 seconds)

So, by my current and - I admit, rough around the edges - count, that's about 2 minutes of upscaled footage that should, theoretically, have been on the OCN in one form or another. That's not including another 30 seconds or so of shots that wouldn't be on the negative anyway, but there's less than 3 minutes upscaled total, even at worst. Mind you, the Blu-ray only runs about 47 minutes...

The fact that these are all entire cuts missing - and that the entirety of the first episode was complete - leaves me to assume that there was damage to these particular scenes, but that they weren't "missing". If I had to guess, it would be that the footage was damaged - maybe frames were cut to use as promotional materials, maybe there was warping or massive scratches, who knows? At this point, Media Blasters and whatever uncredited film lab did the actual mastering work are the only people who have a clear idea of what these materials were. I can't claim to know better than anyone else, only theorize that with more judicious freeze-frames and maybe a few digital tricks, some of these seams could have been smoothed over better. Digital edits are annoying, we all know that, but they're nowhere near as bad as missing or upscaled footage.

Both the opening credits and the end credits have been re-generated at 1080p, in English. Considering the credits have always been video-generated kanji, I can't blame MB for doing this. The Green Bunny logo is also upscaled, because of course a Japanese cartoon porn distributor did that shit on interlaced video.

I'm going to call special attention to the scene that starts at 40:30 and ends at 41:35. Aside from the 10 seconds of upscaled footage exclusive to the "International" version, they loop two close-up shots of Sawa and Akai which, in the original version of the scene, only lasted about 15 seconds; the dialogue plays over a shot of Sawa and Akai in bed together in the Uncut Version missing entirely in the International Version. By the power of math, that means they re-used this footage about 3.5x times, but since it cuts back and fourth between Sawa and Akai, it's probably not quite as noticeable as it could have been.

Simply put, this scene looks weird, but not owning a copy of the International Version right now (seriously, why would I buy that?), I can't confirm one way or another how the edited version of the scene plays out; it is, however, bizarre watching not only the grain slow and freeze in place as they try to match Akai's dialogue, but you can see the same print damage - a small white scratch on Sawa's chin, and a black blob on Akai's shoulder - pop up again and again. Without a reference point on hand I can't tell if this is how the old, edited version was "supposed" to play out or not, but it looks like butt here either way thanks to the otherwise benign film scratches. Amusingly enough, random analogue noise might have made this scene look a bit less slapped-together otherwise.

There's also a handful of shots I can't really fault Media Blasters for not sourcing from the OCN, specifically because they don't exist on the OCN. The water effects on the puddle Sawa walks by are animated at 30fps, suggesting this was an edit done on video at the last minute. This is also true of the shot in which Sawa and the Bodyguard are free falling and he fires his pistol up towards her; the muzzle flashes are late-90s digital effects if I've ever seen them, and while it's difficult to say I wouldn't be surprised if the side of the blue building rushing up on the left was, too. Both episodes have video generated titles, too, so it's unsurprising to see that uprezzed for the Blu-ray. I can't think of anything else that looks like it was tweaked on video for the uncut version, but it may have something to do with the concurrent shots being upscaled immediately thereafter, too. Hard to really say without looking at the material and guessing what could have been done by duping a frame here or cutting a frame there. 30fps-to-24fps conversions are a bitch, and I can only fault Media Blasters so hard for any of them looking awful.

Similarly, there's a handful of "alternate" scenes that were animated specifically for the International Version, which - having been made two years after the fact, and presumably at the request of Media Blasters - were likely never stored with the original vaulted negatives. If this alternate footage has really disappeared, there isn't much that can be done now: Either you upscale the god-awful looking video masters, or you find wherever the 35mm materials for the "new" stuff was hidden away. There's also a handful of shots that were cut shorter by a second or two on the International Version for whatever reason; some of those play out the same length as they were created, and have been noted. I assume these were trimmed solely for pacing? I can say that the clearly-looped shot of Akai spacing out into his baseball magazine is to cover something of an unfortunate loss; in the original cut we see him sexually abusing a teenaged girl, and in the International Version we have a new shot entirely where the "third assassin" is playing with the presents he's brought for her.

So what, realistically, could Media Blasters have done in these scenarios? After all, the Rurouni Kenshin OVAs before this included upscaled SD footage, but... well, the SD footage was at least watchable by comparison, and since most of those scenes looked weird even on DVD, nobody expected the 30fps video effects to look pristine in HD anyway. By comparison, Media Blasters didn't even try to color correct everything to match; the title card should be red on black, and yet the uncorrected gamma and RGB leave the whole thing a gross, grubby dark green with a dark orange font on top. To try and fail is bad enough, but the upscaling on display here is so shockingly bad I'm not convinced they even tried.

Had it just been the title card and the handful of video edites sequences presented upscaled, I'd have been willing to give this a pass; they'd always look like shit, but what can you do? Under the circumstances of two minutes being upscaled when they should exist on the negatives, however, I wonder if this would have been the appropriate time to reach out to Umetsu and request that he oversee some drastic measures. No, really - for all the bullshit I've given John Sirabella and his company over the years, they have managed to cultivate a few notable business relationships, and in the case of the (utterly bizarre and disappointing, I admit...) KITE LIBERATOR Sirabella himself was the executive producer to Umetsu's sequel. Would it be unthinkable that he could have talked Umetsu into overseeing - or at the very least, approving - that these 2 minutes be re-animated from scratch? Yes, they would have looked weird and "off" from the rest of the film, even in they had tried to add some grain and blur filters to 'even out' the content the way Ghibli does to emulate 35, but if Media Blasters' insistence that the original camera negative is incomplete, I can't think of a more appropriate time to pull in a favor from a director who would likely be grateful that an American studio is putting in the efforts to preserve his work, while the Japanese studios that actually produced it seem to not care one way or another.

I'm okay with dated effects in films existing as they are. I'm not okay with the films themselves being incomplete, and licensors resorting to elements that were barely up to snuff for DVD. If your film elements are incomplete to the point where you can't release the whole movie, consider not going through with it. Literally nobody will be pleased with the results, and your sales are going to suck, regardless of what good intentions you had. In this case, the studio doing the restoration has the contacts and the incentive to do something to preserve the whole work in the best quality possible. I'm not saying Media Blasters should have re-animated the damaged footage, but... I'm not seeing any other better solutions here, either.

Well, there is one solution left:

To Media Blasters, and indeed any other licensor who's interested in taking this title further: Provide me with high quality footage of both the original NTSC Digibeta master of the "International Version" and the raw, complete scan of the "Uncut" Negative, and I'm just about willing, able, and crazy enough to restore this beautiful mess to the way it was meant to be seen. I love this film, and while I don't particularly love the Director's preferred version, if that's all we're going to get, it deserves to be re-created and restored to the best ability of the materials available. I'm not going to bother doing it just to amuse myself, because I don't care about the edited version: This wouldn't be for me. It would be for Umetsu. If you're ready to do this right, you guys can eMail me and we can discuss it from there. Check my profile, I'm not so hard to find.

Having watched the disc end to end, I'm left feeling exactly as I did when I first saw the screenshots: The Camera Negative sourced HD footage is incredible, the SD footage filling in the gaps is an abomination, and having finally sullied myself by watching at least a close approximation to the "Director's Edit", I find it to be a weaker film: Sawa appears to be willful and emotionally manipulative the whole way through without submitting to Akai's sexual abuse, and I maintain that for all the controversy that the "Cheese Pizza" inserts have caused over the years, none of them do quite as much to solidify the gruelling aesthetics as the two shots of a bloodied Oburi on the floor, being held at gunpoint; one in which he stares in shock at Sawa's abuse, and another in which he simply stares off into space, having accepted that nothing will ever change. Umetsu's most polished and expensive work is doubtlessly still Presence, a short in the Robot Carnival anthology about a man who creates a Cindi Lauper robot who falls in love with him, but Kite remains his most poignant, visceral and deeply affecting work. Castrating the literal pornographic sex scenes come with a loss in the bleak and hateful vibe that every part of the film is based around, and while I can understand Umetsu's preference on a thematic level I'm still no closer to agreeing with them.

If you can deal with 2 minutes of upscaled bullshit, the wrong alternate takes being used and this being the "R-15" cut, the Blu-ray's visuals are such a dramatic improvement over the DVD most of the time that it brings a damned tear to my eye. If you consider that a recommendation... well, that's as solid an opinion on such a flawed, bizarre and unfortunate release as I can sum up. The odds of any other studio releasing this title in a superior edition without being massive fans themselves seem slim to none, though perhaps some kind German licensor will go just crazy enough to re-cut this from the raw footage someday... not counting on it, mind you, but I'd so love to be wrong and see them do some absurdly expensive restoration of the uncut version, complete with as much of the trimmed footage as is possible to keep.

Alright, that's quite enough passive-aggressive fury over Media Blasters - how'd I do on my last Ground Zeroes run?


To think some assholes finish this entire game in 10 minutes... I can't tell if I fear or envy that level of autism. Ah, well. To the final two XOF patches!

Just a friendly reminder that 88 Films' have successfully funded their remaster of Zombi Holocaust for 7,500 pounds, and are trying to reach their stretch goal of 12,500 to restore the far superior BURIAL GROUNDS. They're currently at 11,808 pounds (or about $1,000 USD short) and there's 4 days left.

To put into perspective how goddamn hard I want the second goal to be reached, I donated 20 pounds early on for the initial campaign, and donated a second time this week in the hopes that we'll see the whole thing pass that threshold and get the second release finished. I've long thought that Zombi Holocaust was a pretty dull and disappointing experience, but I happen to think Burial Grounds is pretty goddamn awesome, a bizarre mash-up of 60s Spanish horror, 70s Italian erotica and some of the most charmingly terrible paper mache  monsters in cinematic history, with a soundtrack that's so off kilter I can't even decide what planet it's supposed to be from. I'd also remind you that the Media Blasters BD is such a mess it's missing frames at literally every single cut, while 88 Films is prepared to do a new scan of a vaulted, and complete, Interpositive.

Anyway, happy various holidays to all friends of the Kentai Blog. Probably won't be back until the New Year, but if any of you guys want to know what I want this year, I just want to see this goddamn flick get restored on Blu-ray. Plus if you kick in $40, you get a copy with an exclusive slipcover - so what's not to love?

UPDATE: We did it, boys and girls! New transfers for both ZOMBI HOLOCAUST and BURIAL GROUNDS are incoming for 2015!

I know, I've been quiet for a while. Been busy with a lot of stupidity which includes my old Samsung LCD getting super funky on the ol' back-lighting, necessitating that I put that multi-year warranty to good use on a replacement. The good news is I'm finally going with a supposed "Near Reference" Plasma panel in the Samsung PN51F8500... right as the tech itself is being phased out in favor of the cheaper-to-produce, and even more prone to image-retention OLED. Smooth. The IR doesn't bother me nearly as much as the ABL, though, so I'm not certain if this is simply an adjustment period for me, or if I'm ready to throw in the towel and just buy a goddamn projector in

But hey, that means I can get back to vidyah that isn't LAN co-op! Not that I typically mind, you understand, but jeez has Saints Row IV been a glitchy mess. A damned fun one, at least, when it isn't randomly crashing or refusing to trigger the next story event. It's not like the PC won't get a lot of use soon anyway, what with MGSV: Ground Zeroes finally getting a Steam release, which means I'll waste 20 hours on a 2 hour campaign finding all 9 of the nigh-microscopic XOF patches to unlock a hidden mini-game that's literally an in-joke that'll only make sense to people who are familiar with the Sega CD game Snatcher. Remember Snatcher? No, I don't either, but a buddy of mine absolutely loves that. Which reminds me I really need to play Policenauts, too.

Anyway, let's talk about Nintendo for a little while. I had planned to do this at some point anyway, pushed it back to deal with real-life shenanigans, but when I saw someone saying something so stupid I felt the need to point out how amazingly wrong they are, that bumped this subject up in the queue. Sad that I have to shuffle my blogging plans around because of idiots, but such is life...

Recently, executive producer/writer behind Feminist Frequency - the now (in)famous business-slash-NPO-slash-charity  of Anita Sarkeesian's "Tropes vs Women in Video Games" YouTube series I've made my thoughts quite clear on - spoke about the thematic value of the most obvious Amiibo-supporting title, Super Smash Bros. For Wii U and 3DS (or "SM4SH", as I'd like to think of it). At the risk of misrepresenting anyone, I'll simply repost what he had to say, along with pearls of wisdom cast before the gaming swine by Polygon's Ben Kuchera:

Now, loathe as I am to consider myself a "critic" of anything in particular - much less the tenuous socio-political implications that video games have on the broader culture, I'm going to point out that attributing this mindset to SSB as a franchise is... kind of a stretch. Now yes, you could try to make the argument - but it holds even less weight then Kuchera arguing that Tetris is "political" in any particularly notable way. And the fact that the latter is a guy who's quite literally paid by a media corporation to have an opinion and understanding about video games is enough to drive me to the brink sometimes.

Before we even get to Super Smash Bros., let's talk about Korobeiniki - or "The Tetris Song", as it's more or less thought of anywhere that isn't  Russia. It's a 19th century folk song, and has lyrics not present in the 8-bit game in which a pair of peddlers talk prices on wares, but in a way that's totally a thinly veiled conversation about when they're going to drop their furs and pack their sausage for the winter. It predates the Russian Revolution by a half-century, and was likely chosen because it's a commonly known and royalty free tune, like Old McDonald or Amazing Grace or whatever. Calling it "Soviet Inspired" is factually wrong in this context because Soviet =/= Russian, from a broader historical perspective.

As for the "Theme" of Tetris? Kuchera, stick that back up your pretentious ass. It's a block-matching puzzle game. It's literally shuffling blocks from one side of the screen to the other - hell, it has less of a theme than Pac-Man! It's like arguing that Tic-Tac-Toe or Hangman has a deeper "theme" when it's literally just scribbles on a notepad played between bored classmates. Does Kick the Can or Duck Duck Goose have a theme? No. But it's still a game. The only "theme" to be found in Tetris is whatever theme the viewer chooses to place upon it themselves. It was created as a sort of mathematical version of Tennis by a guy who worked for the Soviet government as a computer programmer - nothing more, and nothing less.


Nowadays, with video games consistently aping big-budged Hollywood movies, it's easy to assume that everything means something: Grand Theft Auto is a smug satire of the thug life, both aggrandizing and shitting all over the notion of the "made man". Tomb Raider was reborn as a tale of violent self-discovery and empowerment through suffering. Metal Gear Solid explores the facade of patriotism through the eyes of paranoia and jaded apathy towards anything but personal ideals. Now tell me, friends, what the fuck does Candy Crush Saga "mean"? It means fuck your free time and punch your credit card number into Facebook, because that's not a stupid idea. Sometimes a cigar is just a cigar. Tetris? That's just a cigar, folks. Yes, the fact that Americans were happy to consume a piece of Russian entertainment during the cold war is an interesting foot note, particularly in a market where stuff like "Rush'n Attack" was about the only representation of our Cold War enemies you'd typically see - but the game itself is so thoroughly simple and pure as an entertainment device - a "game" with no moral or purpose other than to amuse the player - that no level of self important douchebaggery is going to elevate it any further.

You want proof that the game itself has no actual political agenda? The iconic Church of Spilt Blood that appears on the title screen was never a part of the original 1984 game; that was actually added by US distributors Spectrum Holobyte for the IBM PC port, who thought that marketing it as "The Soviet Mind Game" was simply too bold an opportunity to pass up! American publishers found a way to make the game political, and that's far more fascinating than the fact that, derp, a Russian made game also has a Russian song playing on the title card. I bet those crazy red bastards even wrote the code notes with backward "R" that sounds like a "ja"...

If anything, the far more interesting story is the fact that the later-credited "co-designer" Vladimir Pokhilko, who formed his own Moscow based software company after the Iron Curtain fell, eventually crashed and burned his own business which drove him to such desperation he not only murdered his own family, but left the following note behind before killing himself:

So... yeah, you want to talk some crazy Tetris shit? It's out there, friends. Too bad Kuchera was too busy polishing his own e-peen over how damned clever it'd be to make connections that don't exist, instead of taking the five goddamn minutes it'd take anyone who knows how to fucking Wikipedia to come up with the far more interesting facts behind it.

I suppose I've shat on Kuchera's ignorance long enough. It's time to MOTHER FUCKING SMA--

Some of you may not know this, but the origins of this series actually came in the form Dragon King: The Fighting Game. HAL Laboratory creators SAKURAI Masahiro and IWATA Satoru spent their free time between other projects developing a prototype for a unique four-player sumo styled brawler, but the simple polygon structure of the N64's underpowered hardware left actual player characters kind of... underwhelming. Realizing a console-based fighting game needed some kind of hook, Sakurai suggested using Nintendo franchise regulars, and the game was released with both a low budget and little advertising. Basically, it was a fun little experiment that Nintendo thought was just finished enough to sell to the general public, though the higher-ups weren't quite sure why anyone would want to bodyslam Samus with Pikachu on top of Donkey Kong's house.

The game was what it was - a hobby of cobbled together assets that, somehow, gelled into a unique sumo-tournament... thing. The game became a massive hit solely through word of mouth. Realizing they had something unique on their hands, HAL Laboratory greenlit a sequel as a launch title for the Nintendo Game Cube, with Sakurai as the head of development. He's been watching over the franchise for 15 years now, getting as much love and hate for it as you can imagine, It does amuse me to no end that Sakurai's response to people complaining that their personal favorite characters wouldn't appear in the latest Smash game was "they're mostly children". Yep, Sakurai's response to Ridley fans hoping he'd be a playable reskin of Charizard was that they were babies. Have I mentioned how refreshing how it is that the majority of Japanese game developers seem to have absolutely zero fucks to give at any point?

Yes, the title is, technically, a fighting game* - but with the newest entry there's no actual story to pick apart. Zero over nothing. Old fans have their prior games to reference is they need to justify any of this nonsense, but the only narrative we're given in 2014 is "Nintendo mascots beat each other up, fight a pair of giant gloved hands, lather and repeat". The "conflict" doesn't mean anything because there's literally no context behind it. Why did Captain Falcon pommel Kirby into a bloody pulp? Is there some DEEPEST LORE connection between them that shows that Falcon's mother was eaten by the ravenous pink demon, and this conflict atop Final Destination will somehow quell the age-old vendetta he's been seething at for years, with his time as an F-Zero Champion being little more than a ruse to find a wormhole back to Dreamland?!

 No, because that would be stupid, even by Smash's non-canonical fuckin' around standards. Mind you, there is actually a story in this franchise - Subspace Emissary this, Tabuu that, blah blah blah - but the fact that neither the Wii U nor the 3DS version of the latest entry contained any reference to it proves it's inconsequential to the success of the game, and as the game's current sales are somewhere in the ballpark of 6.5 million copies, it would seem that gamers don't give a shit about the narrative either. No narrative in this context means no theme, either. Unless you want to argue that the unlockable Madoka Magica skins in Pangya Online somehow mean a simplistic moe golf game is actually about galactic entropy. (And if you really want to go down that road, let me make some popcorn first.)

Smash Bros. exists for the simple reason that Nintendo knows there's just enough nostalgia in the average gamer who grew up on Mario and Samus and Fox that the chance to play a low-time investment party game with other nostalgic young adults would basically give them a chance to print money.


The only "theme" being presented in Super Smash Bros. is that of raw, glorious capitalism. If there was any doubt, the very presence of the "Amiibo" toys should convince you otherwise. The competitive mode of the game consists of you, the player shuffling a small plastic toy around the game board, wagering more in-game money for additional rewards, and picking which other small plastic toys to fight next. I'm not exaggerating to make a point: That's the actual mechanic of the game. Shuffling small toys around on a game-board and gambling on your earnings. Honestly, the game couldn't be any more nakedly commercial in nature if it tried. "Violence solves conflicts?" Bitch, please. The only fleshed out theme Super Smash Brothers 4 has to offer is "Nintendo likes money. Please grab your ankles and prepare to have more of it sucked out of your wallet."

Costing $12.99 a piece, an Amiibo is a non-scale, 3" tall mini figurine with a microchip in the base. You tap the figure to the side of the Wii U's bizarre touchscreen controller, and it loads a custom version of that figure in the game. So, if you buy the little Mario, swiping it will give you access to a "Level 1 Figure Player". The FP is an AI that uses a move set you select, can use the power-ups you get from completing the main mission, and the more time you spent fighting either alongside or against it, the more the FP levels up - all the way to 50 - improving statistics and gaining new abilities all the while. Basically, the Amiibo plays as a memory card for a robotic friend you can either team up with, or beat the snot out of. It's a somewhat interesting use of the technology, and a bit less cruel in scope to the Skylanders or Disney Infinity toys, in which you literally have to buy the small plastic toy to unlock the full character in-game: Every single Smash character will, inevitably, have an Amiibo you can use to train and customize an AI version of them, but you don't actually need to buy the figure to play as said character - you just play it as the stock version, as you would in any prior entry. It's all just a bizarre way to extend the life of the game for people who happen to like Nintendo enough to buy mini-figures of the characters in the first place. It also lets you do 2-player co-op if you're such a sad sack you own a Wii U and no-one to play it with.

For reasons we'll discuss later, I picked up the Link Amiibo - not the stubby and adorable "Toon Link" from Wind Waker, but the more mature design based directly on Skyward Sword. God help me, I'm probably going to get more of them, but I started with the one figure that had confirmed unlockable content with a franchise game. I fear in the pit of my soul that this will become a pretty regular "thing" at one point or another, so if you happen to like a given franchise, you might want to consider picking them up for future use: Nintendo has straight up said that they intend to keep the most popular characters available at all times, but I'm sure the rights to Marth, Sonic and Mega Man will expire sooner or later, and it seems doubtful they'll bother keeping Animal Crossing or Xenoblade figures produced indefinitely.

There's been much talk about the quality of the toy itself, and while I have to point out that almost none of the mass-produced figures look anywhere near as nice as the prototypes shown off at E3 2014, the toys are... still decent, I guess. For the price anyway. $13 will get you one about one blind-box toys these days, and in that context, the quality is more or less up to snuff: The sculpt is accurate but has a slightly flat, chunky look to it that's more reminiscent of the cheap toys I bought in the late 90s than the sharper, more nuanced sculpts you'll find from companies like Good Smile, Bandai and Neca today. Typically though, those toys will cost you anywhere from $30 ~ 70. If we stick to the obvious (and fair) comparison if blind-box trading figures made in Japan, it looks perfectly average - not incredible, and not bad. But most toys that come with a piece of ramune flavored candy don't have a microchip in them that'll unlock new content, so again, you're basically getting what you pay for here.

The overall design has some fundamental flaws: The soft PVC parts can lead to Link's sword being bent inward, like he's leaping into combat with a particularly angular dildo flopping all over the place, and while the prototype had a thin transparent rod of plastic to support his dynamic leaping pose, the actual figure has a transparent yellow brick jutting out from his knee, almost like he's been frozen taking a massive 8-bit piss all over himself. The "leaping" pose also looks a bit more like "stumbling" when you look at it dead-on, but at least they tried to make it interesting. Seams between the separate pieces are pretty obvious, and while my toy in particular didn't have any major issues, I do know that the machine-printed eyes can sometimes be juuuust a little off-center, producing a horrifying wall-eyed abomination far more disturbing than Dark Link could ever hope to be.

Keep in mind that I'm an asshole who firmly believes that most of the Play Arts Kai toys aren't worth the $100 they sell for. If you already know what a Nendoroid Puchi is, you're not going to be impressed. If you're not already one of those pricks who imports overpriced Japanese toys that cost two and three times as much as their comparable American counterparts, you'll probably think he looks perfectly fine. Even coming from a place of snobbish nerd eye rolling, I have to admit that the minor details - such as a small peek at Link's chain mail through the armpit of the tunic, the Hylian crest on his shield, and the airbrushed folds on his hat - look better than I expected them to. He's still not as sharp as the prototype, but the attention to detail is impressive enough for a mass-produced toy that costs less than a base for a generic "fire" or "crushed rocks" figure base for a Bandai S.H. FiguArts toy.

No less important is the almost surprising level of chunky heft that the figure carries with it. See, I know I'm a 30 year old man who could, if he really wanted to, pay the $200 to get a "good" Link figure; that means I'm largely out of the target demographic for these toys, which was children. Not man-children like myself, but the kind of children you get into trouble for showing your penis to. Nintendo fans may often enough be written off as "Nintenyearolds", perpetual babies who continue to re-play the same franchises every 5 years on a new console with similar results, but the non-articulated PVC figure is just chunky and firm enough that I could hand this to a reasonably behaved 5 year old and not be terrified that he was going to crush it with his sticky little hand. Adult collectors who simply want high quality PVC figures of Little Mac and King Dedede might walk away disappointed, but this could well be many kids' first look at a fixed-pose Japanese style PVC figure, and with that in mind they're getting a pretty fair glimpse into what to expect, toy-wise. I've said this several times now, but I do consider Nintendo a toy maker rather than a "publisher" as I would a company like Square Enix or Ubisoft or what have you, and while I can't help but be let down slightly by the result compared to the superior prototypes, I admit they've given children - young and old, though I assume most of these are going towards 30 somethings who grew up with Mario and Samus - about as decent quality a stocking stuffer as we could have asked for.

These actually cost the same price in Japan, give or take the daily exchange rate, and as anyone who's bought anime and game merchandise over the years will tell you, the Japanese give you exactly what you pay for. You want a sexy looking Samus figure to tower over your adoable Amiibo? You're going to pay about $80, before shipping - well, more like $125 now that she's out of print. You want a poseable 1/6th scale Link with real cloth outfit and tons of accessories? $215 - if you were to get him for the full MSRP. I've long thought that Revoltech and Figma represent the sweet spot for me for most things - a fully articulated figure with tons of optional parts, clocking in at a not-quite 1/12th scale - but even then, the prices for those figures have been slowly creeping up closer and closer to the price of the larger, higher-quality, fixed pose PVC statues I oft adore, but can't justify the total cost for (much less the shelf space). The upcoming MGS2 style Solid Snake by Figma costs roughly $75 MSRP, and honestly, I don't know why: The rest of the toy lines I've been buying have already gone up by about 10-15%, but this is closer to a 35% increase. A licensing oddity, or a glimpse of things to come?

But anyway, only half the appeal of the Amiibo has anything to do with the toy itself. Within Smash Bros., the concept is kind of cool; it basically gives you a blank slate to customize a moveset and bonus stats using items collected in-game, and as you rank up and win matches with your little AI drone, they give you everything they win in the field as well. Neat, right? The toy lets you build a custom toadie, not unlike the "Pawn" system in Dragon's Dogma when you think about it.

How's it all work? Couldn't tell you. No, honestly, despite having bought Smash weeks ago I haven't had a chance to try out the Amiibo functionality. Just literally haven't had the time or energy to try, not with Ground Zeroes coming out on PC.

But I bought Link specifically for his HYRULE WARRIORS functionality, and that's - arguably - a far more noteworthy use of the tech anyway... and also, the use I fear is going to crop up in the future, to the point where I'm considering buying characters I'm less fond of just so a year from now I'm not
"forced" to over-pay for some stupid thing I want to unlock that I could have had for MSRP back when. But let's take a look, anyway:



Basically, the Amiibo here is a physical device to unlock new DLC - specifically, a new weapon for Link, in which you whip around like a maniac and grind moblins into a snortable rupee powder. While the game already has multiple characters, each weapon introduces an entirely new play style in any Dynasty Warriors game, and this is no exception, providing a moderately quick, but not overpowered mode of transportation designed to take out small clusters of enemies in no time. It's not quite as awkward as the Epona weapon from the first DLC pack, and it's a hell of a lot more fun than the Fairy Wand, but overall the new weapon is... amusing. Not game changing, not necessary or the Best Thing Ever, just a charming and fun little diversion if you happen to get sick of Link's OP as fuck 8-bit sword. It's not necessary in any way to feel like Hyrule Warriors was a complete experience, but it's a fun little bonus for Twilight Princess fans, and what is Hyrule Warriors if not the ultimate Legend of Zelda fanservice delivery system?

Part of me feels like I have to talk about Hyrule Warriors itself, since... well, that's the actual game. This is the add-on, and talking about hats without a discussion of Team Fortress 2 seems misguided, at best. At the same time, the game is such an absurd pastiche of two very specific franchises that I can't imagine anything I have to say would convince anyone to give it a shot one way or another: Either you are super into Hyrule Warriors, or you'll never get within twenty feet of it. Much like Re-Animator: The Musical or pork belly flavored ice cream, people that really, REALLY like both of the things on display are going to love it, and people who either dislike or aren't familiar with one (or both) of these things are just going to stare blankly, unsure what to make of it. The game system is a straight up clone of any given Dynasty Warriors, while the theme and universe on display is The Legend of Zelda. No more, and no less.

Dynasty Warriors games are a curious beast in that they plop you down on a massive map, square off areas that you have to conquer by destroying hundreds of opponents, and then drop bosses into the mix once you have a set number of blocks in the map on your side. You can build up meters for limited special moves that'll do massive damage, but you only have a few per match, so you have to pace yourself. Dodging, blocking and counter-attacking all have their ups and downs, and you have to shift how you play based on the enemies you're fighting, or the rules of the map at that time: It looks simple and perhaps a bit bland at first, but it's got enough variety that it never feels particularly boring or repetitive, unless you're re-playing a specific map over and over to get an "S" rank and unlock some specific goodies. Allies drop in once you've liberated key forts, but the AI is mostly useless; it's basically just you, and possibly a friend doing all the heavy lifting. Hyrule Warriors is one of the few games on the Wii U to use the gamepad screen for P1 and the TV for P2, so there's a unique, free-roam aspect that's more akin to playing a PC game in tandem over LAN rather than a classic "Split Screen" mode, as was the case on the Mobile Suit Gundam and Hokuto no Ken themed entries on the PS3. They're not the prettiest or the most polished games out there, but they're goddamn fun to grind at for an hour or two at a time, the aesthetics powering the less-than-stunning game engines are consistently very attractive, and the fact that most of these games have dozens of hours of content to unlock by re-playing maps under different conditions make them a hell of a bang for their buck. If you're into that sort of thing, of course.

The game quite literally mashes up stuff from every Zelda timeline out there with nary a concern for "Continuity": The core figures in every game have been given fresh new designs, and they come up with a universe-breaking excuse to feature characters from Twilight Princess, Ocarina of Time, and Skyward Sword in a way that almost makes sense. The story mode is pretty weak, but honestly, if you're playing a Dynasty Warriors game for the story you're probably new to the franchise anyway. They're simply massive, chaotic, and oddly cathartic grind-fests that offer new outfits and weapons for those who git gud, The myriad of cameos and throwbacks peppered throughout will delight fans well enough, but if you like Zelda games and don't care for Dynasty Warriors gameplay, you're going to be infuriated before things get too far in. Similarly, if you like Dynasty Warriors' mechanics but find Nintendo's take on Germanic Fantasy to be a bit dry or too silly to put any weight towards, odds are you won't really get why morons like me love the shit out of it to begin with. It's naked pandering, but it's done with care and finesse, so why fight it? If the game sounds amusing, just fucking buy it already. It had exactly one job - to be fun on some fundamental level for DW and LoZ fans alike - and it's done just that.

Wait, did I say "every" Zelda timeline? That's a lie. Majora's Mask characters and weapons are locked behind a DLC expansion, and the only references to Wind Waker is the presence of the titular wand, rather than any of the chibi-esque character designs featured in the beloved Game Cube game itself. There's also a distinct lack of representation from the Zelda handheld titles, which - while not my favorite entries -  have enough of a cult following I'm surprised they didn't work in a boss or two just for laughs. Tingle is absent as well, a surprising choice, but perhaps - much like the rest of Wind Waker - it was deemed too silly for the somewhat lean and angular visual style the new character designs were going for?

Anyway, the Spinner is an amusing aside, but it's a little disappointing that none of the other Legend of Zelda figures seem to do anything specific. Swiping Zelda or Sheik Amiibo figures - whom is, and this is a 15 year old spoiler incoming: Actually just Zelda disguised as a Middle Eastern Transexual Ninja** - will net you a new random weapon once a day worth 3 stars. Any other Amiibo will give you a weapon worth less than 3 stars. Anything below 4 stars is basically trash, so while I applaud them for doing something with the technology, it's a little disappointing all the same. It also uses the system's internal clock, allowing you to use each figure only once a day, so your plot to sit there for an entire weekend to get a hundred shit weapons and sell them for pocket change is probably far less useful than you'd hoped. I'm also told that the "Toon Link" figure will unlock the Spinner weapon, too, which is... surprising. Neat, even. Just a little odd.

Ganondorf's Amiibo isn't out yet, so I'm hoping we'll get at least one more new unlockable weapon in there before Koei-Tecmo are done making new downloadable shit for the game. It's done very well in the West for a Dynasty Warriors title (which usually tank outside of Japan anyway), but wasn't a smash hit in its home country, so I have no idea if Nintendo will try to milk one more sequel out of this or not. Nintendo's loss of traction after the Wii U failed to sell has given them a desperate mindset, willing to try anything to see what sticks, but I'm not sure if a moderately successful fanservice game is worth doing a sequel to in their eyes: For all the bitching people do about every Mario, Zelda, Metroid and Smash game being "the same exact thing", it's worth noting that Nintendo typically only creates one game per a system's life-cycle. There's literally been a new Assassins Creed every year the PS3 existed, but there was only one Metroid game on the Wii, only one (new) Zelda Game, and while even I admit that the "New! Super Mario Bros." franchise is getting to be a parody of the concept, there's still just one game on the Wii U, plus a massive DLC expansion that basically was a full-length sequel. There's enough Zelda fans out there to justify doing a sequel that focuses on Majora's Mask, Wind Waker and the various wacky handheld spinoffs - hell, Spirit Tracks was a game in which you build trains. Can you imagine summoning a goddamn train to pound Midna right in the-- wow. That sounded way more dirty than I'd intended. What I'm trying to say is I'd be down for a sequel. There's enough nonsense to pull a couple more fanservice clusterfucks out of it, and so long as they're as fun as this has, I'd have no complaints.


In short, Amiibo are kinda' goofy and childish and not the best thing ever... but, at least they remind me that the Wii U is, at its core, a toy. Toys are meant to be played with, and Nintendo offering you bonuses for literally buying more toys is a charming level of honesty I wish Sony and Microsoft had the humility to acknowledge. The PS4 and the Xbox One have tried to convince the world that they're movie players and social media tools and "turbo-charged" computers that just happen to have a couple exclusive games. It's been a year, and at this point neither system has anything that twists my nipples hard enough to even consider it. Hell, I'd rather buy a Vita - at least that's become the universal dumping ground for Weeb bullshit. Unless you're a massive Halo fan and want to literally re-buy all four of the last games,

But the Wii U? Sure, it's still an Xbox 360 with an iPad bolted into the controller, but it's also been ramping up exclusives left and right with first and second party developers to produce the one thing a video game console should have: decent games. This year alone we've had regular franchise mainstays like Donkey Kong Country, Mario Kart and Smash Brothers, on top unexpected exclusives like Bayonetta 2, The Wonderful 101 and... well, I'm still mad that they aren't going to translate that awesome looking Fatal Frame sequel. But we did just get a new Shantae game, so it's clear God hasn't totally given up on us, even if Sonic Boom was a thing that happened.

It's officially 2015, and we're going to get a new "main" Zelda game, a new Starfox game, a new bizarro shooter in the form of Splatoon, and we're still waiting for more details on new exclusives like Xenosaga and Shin Megami Tensei x Fire Emblem, and lord knows what else going on in HAL Laboratory and the like, and I have no regrets.

Nintendo makes toys. Toys are fun. Discussing video games is fun, too, but not as fun as actually having decent stuff to play. At this point, Nintendo is delivering good stuff left and right, and if part of the deal to unlock everything in a game means I buy a cheap plastic toy, eh, I can live with that.

See that? Nintendo made me feel so good about video games I didn't have to talk about Hatred! Crazy, right? I figure that'll last a week...

*The 4P battles, unusual and simplified move-sets, elements of platforming, randomized stage-hazards and weapon items have long placed this outside the realm of "typical" fighting games. I'd argue it's a new genre entirely - "competitive party brawler", maybe? - but the fact that the franchise was balanced enough to allow from professional level competitive play means that it's examined in the same circles as Street Fighter, Guilty Gear, Mortal Kombat and other "traditional" 2P VS fighting games.

So yes, technically, SSB is a fighting game. The same way that, technically, Twilight is a horror franchise, Afro Samurai is an anime franchise, and Michael Jackson was black.

** Sheik is, by far, best Husband. Don't argue because you know you've already lost, particularly if we're talking OoT when there was magic involved giving Zelda an actual masculine body.

Holy crap, ladies and gents, it's been a while, hasn't it? I must apologize for dropping off the face of this little corner of overlong glorified shitposting I call the Kentai Blog, but in my defense, I've been serving an epic run of jury duty (which ended today - huzzah!), got promoted with a host of new responsibilities I was in the process of learning, and I'm currently trying to figure out if the rental unit I'm in is worth the price versus the massive pain-in-the-ass that comes with moving. (It's not.) In short, shit be cray-cray, and I literally don't have time or energy to do much of the long-winded but sincere nonsense I'd like to throw up here on a semi-regular basis.

But hey, let's do something I can do in my sleep and talk about Takashi MIIKE - more specifically about the bizarre lack of earlier Miike films on Blu-ray. That'll make for a short, rage inducing post... unless, maybe, there's something worth talking about?


I must confess I'm at a bit of a loss as to how few Takashi Miike films have found their way to Blu-ray, especially here in North America. I know, I know, his heyday was without question that magical period from about 1998 to 2006, gaining noteriety with the Western world for his outlandish and gruesome, but almost always at least somewhat  satyrical excess-experiments like Ichi the Killer, Visitor Q, and  Yakuza Horror Theater Gozu. I love all of these films, but I'll admit I have a soft spot for his earlier movies as well, including the whimsical escapism of The Bird People in China, the mean-spirited excess of Fudoh: The New Generation, and the... well, the whatever the fuck it is you'd call MPD Psycho. If I had to go out on a limb and pick the last truly great Takashi Miike film, it'd probably be his "Oni El Topo" time and space rejecting tale of furious revenge, IZO, but I'd be lying if I said I didn't find even somewhat more mainstream efforts - like Yatterman, and Yakuza: Like A Dragon - to be thoroughly amusing, even if they lack the same level of analogue unpredictability and fury that made me fall in love with his work so long ago.

Asia has been fairly kind with Miike films on Blu-ray since about 2006, Sukiyaki Western Django being the first title I can personally remember getting released in HD (though, of course, the extensive bonus features are only available on the limited edition R2 DVD). North America has been substantially less kind - a handful of titles like the legitimately unexpected Zebraman 2, the under-appreciated teenaged tough-guy ballad Crows Zero, a truncated version of 13 Assassins, and somehow,  Hara-Kiri 3D: Death of a Samurai, which remains perhaps the only film in his catalog I have absolutely zero interest in ever seeing. (Seriously, why did that happen? And when is America going to make an equally tasteless 3D remake of Kramer vs Kramer next?)

Perhaps not all hope is lost - after all, Arrow Video announced that their first "Arrow USA" title will be none other than Happiness of the Katakuris! - but it's the one bright spot in a sea of DVD-only releases for one of the most prolific and fascinating film makers of the last decade. A pity, really. Miike's output has grown increasingly more family-friendly and "mainstream" by Japanese standards, making it that much less appealing to international licensors to begin with, even if it raises his profile at home. Stuff like Ninja Kids! never had a prayer or getting much interest outside of Japan, to say nothing of films like For Love's Sake and God's Puzzle. Even his fittingly tongue in cheek adaptation of the Pheonix Wright: Ace Attorney handheld games have never had a US release, Yatterman got a subtitled DVD only several years after it was released via Discotek, and anyone interested in seeing his brutal Lesson of the Evil will have to import an English-friendly Hong Hong Blu-ray. Without a doubt, the biggest hurdle here is getting anyone interested enough to prepare new HD masters; many Miike films never even had proper 16:9 DVD presentations, and when Discotek was going through a run of Miike films they never actually released D. O. A - FINAL, not because they couldn't get the rights to it, but because there were no high-enough quality materials available!


Honestly, the only notable BD release of a Miike catalog title we've seen stateside was AUDITION, the 1999 fusion of middle aged romance and flesh-crawling horror that helped to put Miike on the map outside of Japan, and remains perhaps his most accomplished and beloved film from a "serious" critical perspective. I'd personally argue that Visitor Q, Sukiyaki Western Django or Juvenile A: Big Bang Love were far more transgressive and "important" works, but Audition hit the sweet spot between arthouse polish and schlock-horror extravagance, so it's unsurprising that it's the film that ultimately gets all the affection that's less showered on by his notably more camp-heavy efforts. Besides, Visitor Q was shot on DV and it ain't going to look any better upscaled to 1080p than it already does on DVD.

The Shout Factory Blu-ray, unfortunately, wasn't very good; they were given access to a 35mm Internegative and carried out their own HD telecine, but didn't go out of their way to restore the film much from there. Dirt baked into the print is common, telecine judder occasionally borders towards the point of distraction, grain is heavier than it feels like it should despite middling compression keeping grain soft and clumpy, and perhaps most notably is the colors, which regularly veer far closer to the red and purple end of the spectrum than even prior DVD releases. Perhaps most notably, the Shout Factory BD is the only master I'm aware of that features cue marks at every reel change, suggesting prior DVD masters - such as the 16:9 PAL release by Tartan from about 12 or 13 years ago - were made from an fresh Interpositive, or at least were given more TLC during the telecine process, which wouldn't surprise me since Tartan released a shoddy looking disc the first time and then restored the film in a bid to convince consumers that they had, finally, found a basic set of standards. That said, the Blu-ray presentation remains the highest quality release out there, warts and all... it's just a shame that the only "classic" Miike film we've gotten to see in HD to this point was such a middling affair.

Ichi the Killer got a Blu-ray release. When I first saw it, I gave it the benefit of the doubt and assumed it was just a poor HD master. I've since come to the conclusion that it's actually an SD upscale, and can find literally nothing to refute this theory. This initial realization left me perhaps too critical of some of Media Blasters' legitimate (if regularly underwhelming) BD releases since, but... well, if Sirabella hadn't pulled a fast one on this, I probably wouldn't have been so quick to assume he'd done the same with Versus. I wish I could say the BD was the best presentation by default, but frankly, the Netherlands DVD has MORE DETAIL. As such I'd recommend the R1 DVD Special Edition for US buyers, used if possible, just because you shouldn't ever support trash of this magnitude.



It's with these exceptionally low expectations that a friend informed me that a German studio by the name of Mad Dimension (if I'm not mistaken, at least) had released Takashi Miike's clearly tongue-in-cheek "ultimate yakuza movie", D.O.A - DEAD OR ALIVE 犯罪者 in a Limited Edition BD + DVD Mediabook set. It includes German dubbing and subtitles, no English translations here, but the limitless power of The Internet means a few certain trackers are already hosting a custom English subtitled release for those who, like myself, don't speak a word of Deutsch beyond 'spaetzle' and 'schlampe'. So I spent the better part of a day getting my Nautical Freelance software in order - I've honestly been too goddamn busy to steal movies I already own, which feels like a weird thing to say - and, truth be told, expected a pretty crumby upscale of the 1999 Japanese Digibeta...

















Instead, the results are - while still pretty far from perfect - substantially better than I dreamed they would be. This is clearly a new, High Definition transfer of pre-print 35mm elements, which very much mirror the various DVD releases we've all seen to date; Dark club interiors are often oppressively so thanks to poor original lighting, certain entire scenes (such as the final showdown, or the heavily blue scene in which the gangsters visit their mother's grave) remain heavily photochemically graded, as they always have been, Resolution is somewhat muted by the soft photography and less-than-ideal HD telecine, but there's an added level of depth and clarity over prior SD masters none the less, and the coarse grain (which we'll talk about) never has any serious compression issues or digital artifacts - like banding or edge ringing - to complain about. "Sparkle" - that is, minor spots and scuffs on the print - is moderate in volume, but not particularly distracting.

So far this is sounding pretty good, but there's two issues that are constantly present on very different sides of the divide. It may sound like one existing would contradict the other, but, hear me out...

The HD telecine is heavy on chroma noise, with Aikawa Show's gray suit constantly infected with a sort of buzzing swarm of green and red shimmering, as are the darkened backstage scenes set at the strip club. I have no idea what Telecine hardware was used, but I know the fuzzy-yet-coarse results of a less than optimal device when I see it; I won't point fingers or take any wild guesses, suffice to say that the film elements themselves appear to be in decent-enough shape, which puts the presence of gross, irregular chroma artifacts like we're seeing here solely on the Telecine hardware. To put this another way, don't you hate it when you're watching a 35mm print and all the dark scenes have weird, rainbow-colored grain? No, you don't, because that's not a thing on celluloid - or at least not one I've ever seen, not even at the New Beverly's Tuesday Grindhouse Double Features. It's simply a limitation on the telecine hardware when the scanner picks up low-lit material and can't quite find a bead on what the color information should be, at which point it manifests as seemingly random chromatic spittle. It's basically the same thing we saw in the Media Blasters HD release of Burial Ground, it's just dramatically less pronounced - and thank fuck for that.

But that's not all! Despite the whole film having a heavy noise structure covering the image, there has been some... interesting noise removal applied. I say "interesting" because I don't quite get what's going on here. Some scenes - such as the shots on the police station roof - have been blasted of anything resembling grain. Others look like they weren't processed at all. Darker areas tend to be left alone, but brighter spots of the scene - particularly anything green or blue, such as police uniforms - tend to have a total lack of harsh noise, at the cost of some temporal smearing. I won't lie, the noise is so sharp and funky looking that the DVNR'ed footage might actually look better than the raw telecine... but the DVNR is applied so infrequently and to such specific frequencies that at times you can see flesh tones and white shirts smeared while the rest of the screen is crawling with heavy, coarse analogue artifacts. A perfect example is the shot of the guy in the green jacket holding the sword; his forehead and shoulders are smoothed clean, while the rest of the frame is positively crawling with video noise. It just looks weird once you see those frequency cut-offs, and as the image as a whole is still crawling from neck to tail in coarse video noise, it didn't really "fix" anything, it just made the divide between the more-smeared scenes and the more-noisy scenes that much more obvious.

Why did they even bother applying DVNR strictly to high-frequencies? Was it a way to get some wayward frequencies to behave before encoding, or perhaps a way to even out skin tones during color correction? I couldn't tell you for sure, but I wouldn't be surprised if that was the rational explanation. The transfer isn't ever unwatchable or cringe-worthy, but the inconsistent combination of smeared temporal areas on one scene and omnipresent video noise the next makes it hard to think of it as anything other than a wasted opportunity. Truth be told, I wouldn't be surprised if a consistently, and slightly less temporally-focused DVNR filter would have done  this rough 'round the edges some more favors than harm... then again, knowing me I'd have bitched about how waxy and soft the final results.

Do I recommend the transfer for the $30 it's selling for? Eh, it's a tough sell, but I've spent more for worse and I know it. Anyone who wants to get the original two disc set can find it HERE for about $30 before shipping - you'll have to speak either German or Japanese to get anything out of it, but if you're reading this site, I'm guessing you're also bright enough to use a software BD player that'll load external subtitles. It's not quite rocket science, after all.

I have little doubt that a 2K scan of the original negative would have yielded sharper, less gritty and more natural, filmic results, but in the interim the HD master we've got is - at worst - merely a B-/C+ affair. It's not an upscale, it's not inconsistent with prior DVD releases, and while it isn't great, it isn't a disaster, and as sad as that is, these days that's all I can hope for when it comes to a second-tier cult film from 15 years ago.

Here's hoping the even more outre sequels get the same - if not better! - treatment. And sooner, rather than later.

Months ago, I promised an anonymous reader that I'd write a proper addendum to my stance on the ever-present internet controversy known as #gamergate. I haven't done that yet. Mostly because trying to simply explain what Gamer Gate is - or at least, what it's become - over the last 6 months is an exhausting process. But we've reached that all important moment of mainstream saturation - as I write this, LAW AND ORDER: SPECIAL VICTIMS UNIT is set to air an episode dedicated to the scandal under the title "Intimidation Game" tonight, forcing  Ice T to not only explain what "SWATing" is, but do so with a straight face as he describes it as something that men only do to women - so I figure it's time to make myself clear, and wash my hands of ever talking about "gaming culture" on the Kentai Blog so I can actually talk about "Games" from time to time.

Plus, I've got a 102 fever, my ankle's sprained so hard it's double its usual size, and I'm packing to move across town so this is something I can do without pulling shit out of boxes to take screencaps. I may get back to writing video comparisons in March, then. Sorry friends, but trust me, I wish I had the strength to do that stuff right now...

The argument that Gamer Gate - sorry, but I refuse to type in #hashtag #bullshit whenever I can help it - is a misogynistic hate movement dedicated to running women out of gaming is, to be frank, ridiculous. For one thing, the only person supposedly "run out" of anything was Samantha Allen, who... came back a month later after complaining that nobody wanted to buy her articles on Anita Sarkeesian anyway. So if the goal here was to get those pesky women out of our many video games, we've clearly done a really, really bad job of it.


Despite all the media coverage being about women in gaming as developers and critics being harassed, threatened and so on, it's curious that recognizable women in the actual game industry - writers like Rihanna Pratchet (Square Enix's Tomb Raider), recently retired producer Jade Raymond (Ubisoft's Assassins Creed), and company executives like Bonnie Ross (343's Halo) - have seemingly never been the target of abuse, despite them having a profoundly more direct impact than a handful of independent developers that are - to be blunt - friggin' nobodies, even in their own tiny corner of the industry they inhabit.

It's also odd that a group supposedly dedicated to hating women would have so many female supporters - or any female supporters, really - such as Jennie Bharaj, CameraLady and LizzyF620 - the last of whom only withdrew any ongoing support because she was doxxed to the point of having the names of her children and the floor plan of her house publicized. This is to say nothing of female voices - such as feminist scholar Christina H. Sommers, and games journalist Liana K - who don't have anything to do with Gamer Gate themselves, but acknowledge that the root cause of the ongoing internet struggle comes from a place of frustration against an industry that's turned a blind eye to numerous problems for years now.

So yeah, that whole "Gamer Gate is a 4chan conspiracy to remove women from gaming" thing? A huge pile of bullshit. That said, It was easier for outsiders to buy than the truth - that a hundred thousand neckbearded manbaby /v/irgins would rise up against soft hobbyist news sites like Kotaku and Polygon - because the only people not willing to hold Zoe Quinn and Anita Sarkeesian up as martyrs for the advancement of video games were known right wing advocates, like the proudly pro-military Adam Baldwin  and unashamedly right-leaning journalist Milo Yiannpolous, neither of whim ever claimed to be gamers themselves and were interested in the story solely for the fallout it could otherwise cause the "Feminazi Menace", should the ugly truth behind their shenanigans get pulled into the daylight for all to see.


That said, gamers never asked for our representation to be people who had shrugged off gay marriage as a new tax fraud loophole, or had written at length about how transgenderism is a mental disease; they came to gamers when they smelled a chance to point out the grotesque hypocrisy present in "Third Wave" feminism, and having found that they were actually listening, gamers responded. The notion that Gamer Gate was some inherently Right Wing organization is about as laughable as its supposed Misogynist focus, but again, it's something I see crop up now and again, and I can't understand how people can do so little research that it's a myth that persists to this day.

The horrible irony being that most people - myself included - fall under the umbrella of believing in the tenants of Second Wave Equality Feminism - that is, believing that women should have the same basic rights as men. But because of the crazy bullshit that comes with the Third Wave, most people (again, myself included) don't see themselves as feminists, because that opens yourself to being compared to straight up psychos like Valerie Solanas. (Look her up if you don't already know who shot Andy Warhol.) "Egalitarian" means the same thing, and it doesn't have the baggage of too many crazy people attached to it. It's a semantics game, I know, but it's an important one, because to argue that any egalitarian isn't technically a feminist seems... disingenuous. They're certainly not a misogynist, at any rate.

Meanwhile, Joss Whedon, Will Weaton, Graham Linehan, Tim Schafer, Stephen Colbert, Patton Oswald - all the nerd icons you'd expect to be in your corner when this shit hit the proverbial fan and painted consumers sick and tired of being dicked around by the people in charge of trying to keep them informed of the very stuff these guys make a living producing! - swallowed the left leaning media's take without questioning it. I'll spare the individual point-by-point summary of who's said what, suffice to say that while I still love some of the work these guys produce, this whole experience has reminded me that meeting your heroes is always a terrible idea. (Unless your hero is Toshio MAEDA. That guy kicks ass!)

The saddest part is I almost don't blame them for making one statement decrying any related misogyny and moving on; it'd be commercial suicide to do anything else. Even if they had spent the necessary time reading up on this shit (which I doubt), it wouldn't help their bottom line. What really bothers me is seeing guys like Linehan - the guy who created Jen and Roy on The IT Crowd, a manipulative, hysterical female stereotype and a selfish, woman objectifying pig, respectively - talking like he actually cares about this sort of thing, instead of realizing that this is the next big moral panic and not wanting to be left behind when every sitcom is pushing positivity and he's still making fun of nerds (though the way things are going, we nerds have already peaked in the public eye). Seriously, Linehan? Next time you want to insult people over slut shaming, make sure the person in question didn't do it to themselves as a joke about all the shit people have been flinging at them. You, of all people, should know what self-deprecating humor is.




Gamer Gate is, and has always been in some capacity, an asymmetrical consumer revolt and a culture divide between the Authoritarian and the Libertarian - not the left and the right. The focus has been on questionable practices in the strictly insular industry of video game journalism, which is intertwined with game criticism as a default. For all the eye-rolling this honesty tends to get, those who have been keeping tabs have seen many websites update their ethics policies, clarify connections between writers and their subjects, disclosing affiliate links in "reviews" that serve largely as advertising, and in at least one particular case, apologize for grossly misrepresenting private matters. In short, there's a long way to go, but Gamer Gate has pushed for transparency and honesty with the websites its members read, and by and large these websites have been left with little choice but to acknowledge that there were issues to fix.

No, Gamer Gate hasn't instantly solved publishers fixing scores or developer bonuses being tied to Metacritic averages, but it has established that alternate voices in the industry exist, and now that the problems are laid bare they're finally getting heared: Tech Raptor, Games Nosh and Niche Gamer aren't as big and polished as the competition, but they have their place in this discussion, and the fact that they've done so without any major reader-shaming and censorship of controversial titles keeps them a positive force in my eyes. Niche Gamer in particular has a boner for what /v/ affectionately calls "Weeb Shit" - Japanese RPGs and games focusing on cute girls, in other words - and Tech Raptor has provided several exclusive interviews with various game developers on a wide variety of topics, as opposed to the usual canned press-release info most of the larger sites like to deal with. Don't spend enough time at Games Nosh to really get what they're about - but hey, I've only got so many hours in a day.

I'm also thrilled to see EuroGamer's recent change in policy abolishing scores in favor for a broader "Essential / Recommended / Avoid" award as needed, which means one of the most respected English language sites on the subject isn't contributing to the Metacritic bullshit that serves only to support publishers and fuck developers. And thank God for that, because I'd read Digital Foundry even if the rest of the site was recipes for fried baby. The Escapist continues to sit somewhere in the middle - full of minor ethical breaches itself and trying to distance itself from their own Bob Chipman's violent rants on the subject ("There are no bad tactics, only bad targets." - The man who defended Other M.) but they've allowed discussions to happen of their own accord, and that's something that probably would have nipped a lot of this insanity in the bud. Meanwhile, PC Gamer continues to trim any comments regarding the Anita Sarkeesian skin in Towerfall Ascension.





And what of the old guard? Joystiq is already confirmed to be jettisoned by AOL as dead weight, though some of their subsidiaries may come back via crowdfunding as independants, if all goes well for them. According to a piece by Clocked Gamingz, despite the Alexa traffic looking higher for Kotaku, Polygon and Gamasutra, the kick-rate has gone up dramatically with no long-term growth since September or so, when these sites would expect a massive uptick as reviews on the Christmas season's new hot titles trickle out anyway. Coupled with the fact that many of these sites have either lost advertisers, or are using less lucrative solutions - such as Google AdSense - that means they are, in no uncertain terms, making less money than they were before Gamer Gate, regardless of whatever higher total volume they may have on individual articles being linked from third parties. I'm of two minds on the "Burn It All Down" mindset we've seen up to this point; it's clear that most of these websites are comfortable with their business model, and I'm not comfortable supporting them. So in effect, I'm boycotting them - and even have to do a double take when I realize that Fan Gamer's awesome shirts are likely made by Polygon corporate... but, we all have to pick our own battles, I suppose.

Unfortunately, because of the perception that it was an anti-female movement, it's largest detractors are not game journalists themselves, but feminist activists. Anti-GG detractors, often noted by supports as "aGGros", often have curiously little to do with gaming. The majority of Gamer Gate's opposition are, curiously enough, non-gaming related websites and individuals who want to see the revolt stamped out. Why? Because the origins of the revolt - a sex scandal over a female developer sleeping with a journalist who covered her game, to say nothing of the mass censorship over the details which in turn led to the Streisand Effect kicking in - left a pretty foul taste in a lot of people's mouths. And I'm willing to bet the overwhelming majority who have written "gamers" off as dangerous sociopathic losers did so based on one or two articles published by the mainstream media, which have been horrible at covering this with any of the background or nuance that show a years-long tension between gamers and the media that literally profit off of the indentity they now want to shrug off in favor of a "new" market which, as far as I can tell, simply does not exist. Or, if it did, I imagine Brianna Wu wouldn't have so much trouble trying to sell Revolution 60 on Steam.




This abomination got $100,000 more on Kickstarter than Shovel Knight.There is no God and we're all going to die alone. Proof, right here.
I can actually understand the skepticism that hung over the initial #burgersandfries controversy for a lot of people, and when the mass of the discussion is happening on 4chan, it's not going to be pretty. But kicking it off of /v/ was perhaps the worst thing they could have done to keep it quiet, as forcing anonymous to find new avenues of discussion only brought the controversy to a dramatically wider audience. And, yes, some of the people who are supporting it do so to spite the proponents of "Social Justice" insofar as they see it as an outside force trying to domesticate a very specific subculture to the whims and expectations of an audience that doesn't much care for the medium they claim to want to "improve".

That's basically the core issue I take with both the gaming media, and the "Social Justice" brigade that champion them: They claim to want inclusivity, to want games to reach the next level as an art form, but the reality is they want games to match what they think meet those criteria, regardless of the consumers and creators already in the industry believe already has merit. When Grand Theft Auto V was pulled from store shelves in Australia over literal complains of misogyny, plenty of people defended the move as a sign of positively towards women in gaming. This is despite the fact that the game in no way encourages you to kill women - it's just an option a player can take part in if they so choose, the same as killing a hot dog vendor or a mime. If you play GTAV and only kill black guys, then yeah, the game could be a racism simulator... but that says more about the player than the actual game, doesn't it?

By the same token, while games like Killer Is Dead and Hyperdimension Neptunia are routinely scoffed at and derided for appealing to blatant heterosexual pandering, games like Mass Effect 3 and Dragon Age Inquisition are lauded for including homosexual scenes that are... pretty much the same goddamn thing. Pandering fanservice that doesn't actually affect the game's mechanics or story in any dramatic way. To be clear, I'm all for publishers serving fish and sausage for those who have their own preferences, but to argue that heterosexuality is inherently bad while homosexuality is inherently good only proves they're hypocrites uncomfortable with the thought of sex unless it's pushing a specific agenda. If you want to see just how willing to explore within the medium they are, try and find any positive articles about the dating-simulator/puzzle hybrid Hunie Pop that aren't from Tech Raptor or Niche Gamer. The Steam version doesn't even have any sex scenes, but the fact that the publishers themselves offer a patch to put them back in left plenty of familiar faces less than thrilled at the thought.



And so, all we have left to discuss the elephant in the room: Did Gamer Gate threaten, doxx and harass a handful of vocal critics including Zoe Quinn, Anita Sarkeesian and Brianna Wu? Well, the answer is "possibly". That's as far as it can go, because so far as I'm aware the actual people who have sent things that extend beyond typical online trolling - people who doxx, people who send death and rape threats, people who send child pornography and so on - are pretty small in number, since I can only think of a few people to get any such treatment. There's also no way to know if one prick was doing it to multiple people, since again, it's all anonymous burner accounts anyway. Heck, a Gamer Gate supporter found one of the guys who's been known to threaten Anita Sarkeesian - a South American game journalist named Guy Celebrando, who was literally making news stories for himself - but without Sarkeesian being willing to press charges and involve international police agencies, that's as far as it'll ever go. It's also difficult to keep track of this shit in part because, more often than not, those doxxes were done via eMail, which are impossible to verify from a third party position the way message boards and social media are. A truly deranged person could send themselves a threatening eMail, and short of the feds tracing the IP to the source, how would anyone know?

So would someone who truly despises Sarkeesian, Quinn and Wu also be a Gamer Gate member? I could see that. To argue that those people aren't members of Gamer Gate gets dangerously close to the No True Scotsman Fallacy, after all. But they could , just as easily, be third party trolls with no interest in gaming at all. It's already been confirmed that both the Gay Nigger Association of America and the Billy Waggoner Crew were paid by someone to stoke the fires on both sides, and when Sarkeesian's death threats were treated as front page news, it seems that Something Awful goons were patting each other on the back over the whole thing... not that anyone ever discusses this. Because people are fucking retarded.



And how do we know for sure that False Flags were going on? Because Camera Lady - one of the most important investigative members in this mess - is, herself, a GNAA member. She uses those connections to confirm information before giving it to the public, but that doesn't mean she isn't associated with a pack of professional scumbags. Take that knowledge for what it's worth. Also, Anonymous recently took down ISIS online recruitment system. That's not relevant, I just think it's really funny for some reason.

To try and put this into perspective,  one of the most recent pro-GG doxxes to happen - Lizzie - was on 8chan's Baphomet (/baph/) board. For those who don't want to literally trudge through Darkweb Troll Territory, something you may not know is that while Gamer Gate and Baphomet both have a home in 8chan, the demographics that visit them generally can't stand each other; Baphomet calls them moralfags, and GamerGate calls them loose canons (and also faggots - because y'know, 8chan).

So it makes sense for Baphomet to doxx Lizzie, right? Well... actually no, it doesn't. Baphomet hates Gamer Gate, but they've also more or less agreed to ignore GG as a means to avoid the mutually-assured destruction of 8chan, be it from outside sources of from within. What Baphomet does do is cause trouble to have fun. Doxxing and dogpiling people with a history of internet drama and "lolsuits"? They're fair game. Lizzie has nothing to offer to Baphomet, and as such her doxx was deleted as a False Flag - in other words, someone trying to make it look like the usual /baph/ crew, when it obviously was not. But much like the hashtag, anyone who posts on /baph/ is technically a member of Baphomet, so we're back to that No True Scotsman thing again...

But hey, fuck it, whatever: Let's just play Devil's Advocate and assume that all of those assholes doxxing and threatening and whatever really are hardcore dyed-in-the-wool Goober Gapers, or whatever dumbass thing the opposition wants to call them now. To that, let me direct you to Chris von  Csefalvay - an actual scientist who graduated Harvard, and typically uses his Super Power level brain to catalog white collar crime - has estimated that Gamer Gate has had no less than 150,000 unique, individual users discussing the hashtag between December 1st and 6th. Yes, that'll include trolls, people who disagree with it and a different mix of people than you'd have seen earlier on, but this isn't even the busiest period the tag has had, and it doesn't include those who are involved at the eMail campaign or 8chan/Reddit level who may not use Twitter. In other words it ain't perfect, but it's the metric we've got, so I'll take it.

Even if we round the actual numbers up, the dangerous sociopaths - the threats, the doxxes, the really ugly shit everyone is so upset about it on both sides - are an estimated less than one in ten-thousand. Meanwhile, most people in the mental health field assume that sociopaths make up roughly 1% of the population. In other words, by their behavior alone, Gamer Gate has proven themselves to be less crazy than humanity as a whole. Mr. Csefalvay also points out that while he's experienced death threats before, this is the first time he's ever has his wife threatened for the heinous crime of being tangentally related to a guy who did some research - and none of the people doing that are doing so in support of Gamer Gate. So hey, the guy who's doing hard science is being berated and threatened not by the supposed violent hate group, but by the people who's antagonism towards it would look like shitty behavior if it was proven not to be one. Imagine that!



But go ahead, ask Will Weaton about that. He'll tell you that nobody has been threatened, doxxed or harassed by Anti-Gamer Gate people. That just doesn't hold up under scrutiny, he said, before he had to withdraw his comment on the matter. I guess THIS is just one massive, elaborate hoax, then? I won't deny that 90% of that is harmless shitposting stupidity - which is true of anything on the internet - but it's amazing how the opposition to Gamer Gate, who are upset at what they see as a tribalist mentality against women, immediately drop all of that "inclusivity" talk and start talking shit to strangers they have no actual knowledge of, other than they want to talk about Gamer Gate in some capacity. One of the most beautiful ideas they've floated to point out this blatant hypocrisy was Operation Lonely Hearts, in which someone who made a heart-shaped twitter icon claimed to be for equality in gaming. Gamer Gate supporters said hey, so are we - so, they started using the icon to prove they were on the same side. The creator was furious, and those who disliked Gamer Gate abandoned the symbol, which they felt had been tainted. So you see? The opposition to Gamer Gate is about including everybody... unless they don't like you.

It's not like our opposition are composed of saints, either. Sarah Butts*. Randi Harper. Ian Miles Cheong. Google that shit and come back, if you like. Short version: Dog molester, meth addict and literal Nazi, respectively. The last one especially gets me because, dude, you're fucking Chinese, how does that even work? I try not to judge people on shitty personal behavior alone - we all have our vices, we all make mistakes, people can change and whatever - but... no. Fuck these people. I'm sorry, but you do not get to play moral guardian when you're fucking your family pets, blowing dudes for meth in a Burger King bathroom, and telling some Jewish kid he wished his grandparents died in the Holocaust. That's not including the countless anons who sent weapons to streamers telling them to kill themselves, SWATing attempts, and a laundry list of additional bullshit that's fallen far more heavily on Gamer Gate supports than it has its detractors by raw numbers. But who cares about those gross nerds, right? Fuck'n Goober Gapers, always hating anything with a vagina...

* No, that's clearly not Sarah's real name. But Zoe Quinn's real name isn't Zoe Quinn, either, so when in Rome?

This is the thing that's struck me as absurd for quite some time. Yes, the Holy Trinity of Professional Victims - Zoe Quinn, Brianna Wu, and Anita Sarkeesian - have had some pretty terrible things said about them. No, they didn't "deserve" to have their lives threatened. That's sick, regardless of how you feel about them as people or professionals. That said, they're the ultimate benefactors of this nonsense, and it amazes me that so few people outside of Gamer Gate seem to realize it. Every death threat may as well be a signed check lobbed a their heads - not that any of these San Francisco based trust fund babies actually need the cash getting dumped their way. Look, I'm a white male raised by two women and I'm currently living in California and an obsession with Asian film and food culture - I can certainly deal with a little expected societal guilt here and there. But good lord, the second I hear the words "privilege" coming from people who make five times as much as I do, it makes me want to puke into their freshly punched faces.


Do you guys at home realize that Feminist Frequency - the company (now a non-profit "educational" organization) for which Anita Sarkeesian is the figurehead - made over $440,000 last year? Or that out of that money, over $397,000 was strictly in donations? And that if their Tropes vs Women in Video Games budget is anything to go by, over 40% of that money goes back into Feminist Frequency's collective bank account as salary? And that every convert she creates leads to more converts wanting to throw money at a nice, smart lady who 4chan said mean things about?

This actually explains why after 3 years of shitty half-hour videos detailing the horrors of sexism in video games, there's extremely little in the ways of examples of female characters done right, or even examples as to how to "fix" these commonly used stereotypes while keeping the player engaged: She makes a fortune complaining, while acknowledging that things are better would put her out of a job.

...oh fuck me. This actually reminds me of an amazing quote from Metal Gear 2: Solid Snake...

And yet, this would imply that Anita Sarkeesian is capable of taking out The Boss in CQC - and I flatly reject that notion... unless, of course, The Phantom Pain pulls some crazy bullshit and solidifies my pet theory that "John" from Snake Eater, Portable Ops and Peace Walker is not the same man who was foiled at Outer Heaven, and later killed at Zanzibar Land. HOLY SHIT-- Could Sarkeesian be The Fake Big Boss?! Wait, wait, that's the fever talking. Big Boss is a fictional character. Anita Sarkeesian is an actual Social Justice Warlord. Goddamn it.

There's also the growing anecdotes to suggest that Jonathan McIntosh is actually writing all of that garbage and Sarkeesian is literally the flesh and blood sock puppet - but that'll either come to full, or won't. Whatever. Did I mention that Intel gave these jerkoffs $60,000 a year, for the next 5 years, just to wash away the association of being Gamer Gate's first major "victory" against GamaSutra? Because I'm still pretty fucking salty over that. Not that I'd ever buy an AMD these days, screw that, but... still. Goddamn it!

It isn't just Sarkeesian, either - though she's by far the most successful at it. Zoe Quinn talks about "hiding from Adam Baldwin" in Europe like some modern day Anne Frank, despite the fact that she was talking about that vacation months before Gamer Gate was a thing. I won't deny that some shitty people said some shitty things about her, but make no mistake, she's proven herself to be a compulsive liar willing to throw her close friends under the bus at the earliest opportunity, and the fact that anyone would support her knowing about The Fine Young Capitalists is still mind-boggling to be. She's since formed the Crash Override Network, an anti-harassment support group. What support did she give Lizzy when she was doxxed and her children were put in danger? Oh, right - she asked people to stop spamming her twitter and send eMails, instead, and seemed to do nothing else with that particular case. Stay classy, Quinn, and remember, online trolls are the real danger. How are you treating that boyfriend who's rich off of selling weapons to Israel, by the way? Better than the one you cheated on and psychologically tortured for months on end, I hope?

If you can't tell, I have a pretty low tolerance for self-made victims. I'd talk about how Brianna Wu clearly never left her home when she was in a "safe place" during her Gamer Gate threat-propelled exodus, but she's such a nothing at this point I don't even want to talk about her. I don't want to talk about any of this. It's such a glorious, depressing mess - like a tire fire made out of dreams... all I can do is remind myself that we beat back Jack Thompson, and he came back with a new name and the same tricks. And now here we are, convincing people that not all games are bad, and gamers aren't bad people, all over again.

I've always said the 90s sucked, and goddamn, the bullshit I had to listen to even when I was too young to understand half of it over how "video games = violence" pissed me off to no end. To see it resurrected with "video games = sexism" now is not only stupid, but it's infuriating watching those same dumbass tactics stick, in part because the industry that's supposed to support the consumer - the gamers - decided that they agreed with it. They cultivated it, they supported it, they never questioned it, and now it's set to backfire on them in the best way possible.

You notice how Polygon, Kotaku and pals haven't mentioned the SVU episode? Yeah. I think they finally realized that maybe pushing a bullshit snapshot of your audience as literal ISIS level cyber criminals wasn't such a good idea after all. Public perception of gamers has always been pretty fucking appalling. So now on top of fat, skill obsessed, socially inept virgins, we'll be jealous misogynists and SWATing, kidnapping criminal masterminds. I'm not one to take too much stock into that sort of thing - personally, I'd rather just play games - but watching this degrade over the last several months, watching them not only let it happen, but force it to, has been pretty goddamn sickening all the same.,

The subculture that gamers created rejected them, and the mainstream will only see us as subhumans, perhaps even worse than they always have been. What choice do we have? You want a culture war, corrupt journalists and Social Justice Warlords? You've taken 4chan. You've broken the trust we had in Tim Schafer. You've forced the hand of the great Nerd Monoculture - something that lumps film, comics, games, toys, and a dozen largely unrelated things into a way that makes branding and marketing simpler - to call us all sexist scum just to keep their careers safe. All you had to do was be honest and this would go away, and instead you looked down from your ivory towers and laughed at the petty gaming peasants wanting "transparency" and "unbiased criticism". To paraphrase The Great Humongous - all this killing, all this bloodshed, could have been avoided. You could have just walked away.

Look around you. The children are going to be taught that games are sexist patriarchal propaganda, your mom is going to assume that anyone who owns Call of Duty is a goddamn serial killer, and the industry itself has become such a bloated carnival of wasted opportunity and mismanaged budgets that the only thing that can happen is a market crash on par with Atari's heyday. This is not the end... this is just the end of the beginning, for the dark times that emulate that grotesque little spot where Doom and Night Trap were somehow considered controversial are coming back, and with the fresh mask of "feminism" being an excuse to remove the violence, dumb fucks might actually listen this time.

Honestly, what did you think would happen? And who do you think will be left standing when all we want are the products that enrich our lives to be better, and all you have to gain from it are ad revenue and minor celebrity?




Ugh, whatever. So long as The Phantom Pain still comes out this year, this industry can burn around me for all I care. The beauty of gaming is that there's such a vast and fascinating array of games from different decades, on different platforms, catering to new and emerging markets that you could spend the rest of your life just playing stuff that came out in the 1980s - and a lot of that is still good stuff, damn it.

But then something happened a few days ago. Something I can no longer ignore, and fills me with fury and dread over the mere thought:




What you can read HERE is a proposed lesson plan from the Anti Defamation League - "Is Gaming A Boys Club?" Women, Video Games and Sexism -  meant for Common Core curriculum use for 11th and 12th graders. It uses interviews with Anita Sarkeesian as sources without any further input from actual educators - or people who weren't literally hand writing analysts before jumping on to the Feminist Education. This is quite literally anti-gaming propaganda, and just to put a strawberry on the cake, it's literally an organization run by wealthy Jews. Odd that they would side with Feminist Frequency - producer and "co-writer" Jonathan McIntosh hasn't been subtle about how he feels about Israel, and Sarkeesian herself is Armenian, if I'm not mistaken - but whatever. The important thing is that the ADL actually wants Sarkeesian's harassment - and with it, the narrative that Gamer Gate was a direct response to her, as opposed to years of journalists supporting personal friends and agendas over transparency and the very consumers that made them professional bloggers for toys in the first place - and that pisses me right the fuck off. Like, shaking and sweating bullets pissed... or maybe that's just the fever talking. Probably a little of both.

I can't stress enough how crazy the following true statement is: There is a pro-Jewish organization that wants to force high school kids to write video game publishers about a stick-figure concept of feminism for school credit. This sounds like the punchline you'd find in some crappy Paint comic about the Happy Merchant, and yet it's actually happened. Fuck my life!

The only silver lining here is that the ADL is offering the material to whatever school is so far up its own crack it'd take it; it's not actually a part of Common Core, and with any luck the standards of public education are just barely good enough that they decide one woman's feels just isn't tangible enough to base an entire lesson plan around. But I don't really know what standards for Common Core is, being neither a student nor a parent myself, so for all I know Gamer Gate will be discussed in anthropology courses next to Suffrage and the Civil Rights Movement decades from now as major breaks in the political landscape.

So, what is the answer? How do we take back everything we've lost? I don't fuckin' know anymore. I think the best thing to do will be to get some sleep, watch Law and Order, have a few cheap laughs at my own expense from the end of a bottle of soju, and then decide what I should do. I've written a few eMails, kicked a few bucks to charity, but I'm not a Twitter Trench kind of guy and I only eMail advertisers when I think there's something specific that needs to be addressed. Am I a Gamer Gate supporter, insofar as I see their goals as a positive thing? You bet your ass. Am I the Leader of Gamer Gate, sending eMails and propoganda daily? Eh, not so much. But if I'm going to watch an honest to god Feminist-Jewish Propaganda piece convince children who never played video games to try and change them for a world view based on a manipulative opportunists ideal of what games could be in her own hands, you can bet your ass I need to spend more time doing something...

Sadly, that can wait until I move. Apartment hunting is like bureaucratic torture

Hard enough that the upcoming Japanese re-run of the original 1994 TV series are going to be from Toei's own HD Remaster. To the best of my knowledge Toei hasn't done an HD master for a vintage TV show since the Dragon Ball Kai project, and have been content to release legitimate classics like Slam Dunk and Saint Seiya on hastily upscaled Blu-ray, so this really is a surprise. Not to mention hopefully a sign of things to come, but I refuse to get my hopes up, since I have a sneaking suspicion that this was largely done at the behest of a certain international licensor who's had egg on their face for some time now over this particular series...

The fact that Viz has only ruined released the first 40 episodes of the original series fucked upscaled means that there's now a very real possibility that North America will get their hands on this same HD master, as well. They'll have to eat a big ol' pile of crow in the process, and probably have to spin their lies about the original film elements no longer existing like a goddamn PR centrifuge, but the potential for schadenfreude here could be so delectable that even people who don't care about the video quality could find something to love.

To every fan who called bullshit, to ANN's interview where Zac tried so hard to let them admit fault it hurt, and to every fan who was willing to support this show no matter what happens: Thank you. This existing gives Mrs. Kentai hope, and that's worth its weight in any precious metal you like.

How do you even begin to quantify what is and isn't "canon" in fan fiction, I wonder?

Don't worry friends, I'm not talking about 50 Shades of Gray - if I ever want to go down that road, we damn well know I have far more interesting BDSM themed films to talk about. No, I'm talking about The Protomen and the decade or so they've been pouring into what could be the most impressive piece of edgelord fan fiction since Dante wrote L'Inferno.

Back in 2005 the nine-piece group release The Protomen: Act I, a "classically" styled rock-opera depicting an alternate vision based, somewhat loosely, on the 200X continuity as featured in Capcom's classic 8-bit Mega Man franchise, particularly the events of the first three games, ending with Mega Man (Rock) and Proto Man (Blues) - two "sibling" machines - facing each other in combat. The new twist was that the whole thing was interpreted through a lens of an Orwellian Dystopia, with the villainous Dr. Wily playing the role of Big Brother, and the heroic Dr. Light playing out the role of a fallen social pariah - vilified by Wily's propaganda and playing the role of an honest to God terrorists who's second mechanical son walks through the flames of the unnamed city, unsure why the people refuse to take up arms and liberate themselves. It's not until he comes face to face with Wily's most dangerous machine - Light's first wayward son, and the martyred brother he always saw as his inspiration - that the reality of his eternal struggle is made clear, forcing Mega to kill Proto, and leaving the hero unconvinced that humanity is even worth saving as a result.

The whole thing is, as you can guess, just a bit silly. But it's delivered with such sincerity and a carefully measured mix of lyrical narrative, liner notes painting poetic vistas of the INGSOC interpretation of Wily's Robot City, distorted freedom rock and almost pained, bitter soliloquies from one of the NES' early attempts at moral ambiguities, it all hangs together in a way that it probably shouldn't. The Protomen: Act I may be fan fiction, but it's goddamn good fan fiction, experimenting with familiar pieces in ways that I simply couldn't have fathomed possible until I saw it for myself. The first album has some pretty basic continuity issues (is Dr. Light a southerner or isn't he?!), lacks enough context that it may not make a lot of sense to anyone who doesn't already know something about Capcom's all ages original franchise, and buries the finely tuned vocals and snarling guitars under so much faux-analogue distortion that, honestly, the 2013 remix of The Will of One is a dramatic improvement for simply letting the individual elements play out as they were recorded, without any additional "robotic" choppiness laid on top. It's a damn good tune, if you can forgive wearing its youthful heart on its sleeve. Being an unrepentant manchild with a fascination for games nearly as old as I am, this may as well have been crack for my soul.

But they weren't content just to be "that band that's like The Megas, but better". They spun the concept out into The Protomen Act II: The Father of Death, which is an ironically named album because the events actually take place before "Act I", serving as both an expanded foundation for the grim and violent reality they extrapolated from an all-ages game franchise, and allowing them to mash up a more or less original version of "Tom" and "Al", playing the story out as equal parts 1984 and Streets of Fire with the heroes being terrorized by what's best described as HAL from 2001 in a leather jacket. It also burrows deeper into the idea of heroes and triumph being relative, with Tom -unable to avenge the death of his lover Emily at the hands of the machines Albert himself corrupted - becoming a dangerous recluse in the forbidden areas outside of the town, who eventually lures a young man out to join in his fight to take down The Man, and the tower that controls the machines that have enslaved the world without anyone fully realizing how it had happened in the first place. In short, they turned him into two parts Nikola Tesla and one part Osama Bin Laden. It's fucking incredible as a concept and was produced by the guy who convinced the world that Meatloaf was a rock star, jettisoning the grungy mixes of Act I for a largely genuine-sounding fusion of Spanish inspired analogue rock and synth-powered adolescent fury, with each tune building closer and closer in tone to the inevitable sound of Act I until the closing track serves as a prophetic bridge into even the narrative itself.

Basically, The Protomen are to Fan Fiction what Passion of the Christ is to Snuff Films. It perhaps isn't quite the same thing, but goddamn, does it show how badly most other people are doing what they've always been trying to do.

With Act 1 having been released in 2005 and Act 2 having come out in 2009, that means faithfuls have been officially waiting a decade to see the grand finale. They've teased a few tracks, and we've even had a few spinoffs - like the positively decadent, 70s stage-musical level Built to Last on the MM25: Mega Man Rocks Anniversary Album - but their last two full albums have been nothing but cover tracks. 2012's A Night of Queen is, in and of itself, a lovely little tribute to one of the most iconic and influential artists of the 20th century. I like it, but as a friend who's been a die hard Freddie Mercury fan than I have pointed out, the arrangements are actually a little too close to the originals in most cases to be considered all that notable. They're quite good actually, but goddamn few artists out there are Queen level good, which makes very close approximations - no matter how impressive or sincere in their love for the material - seem ever so slightly redundant.

Their latest album - which is now available exclusively on cassette, vinyl or digital-only (no CD, goddamn them) - is one we've known was in the cards for some time. Called THE COVER UP: THE MOTION PICTURE SOUNDTRACK, it too is a fine of covers - though only one was from Queen's collection this time out. The goal was an admirable one - to take the sounds of the mid-1980s and compose the single most amazing movie soundtrack licensing would never have allowed - and to that end, it does a damn good job. One could argue that using songs already associated with intensely 80s films - Princes of the Universe, No Easy Way Out, and Danger Zone may as well be "the theme from..." their respective cinematic vehicles - was a bit of a cheap move, but I'd argue the substantially reworked nature of two of them more than make up for their somewhat shameless inclusion on the list. Hell, the Spicy Tex-Mex version of Rob Tepper's ultimate montage tune was what convinced me to nut up and buy the vinyl in the first place.

What was less expected what the question of exactly what the album means to the broader scope of The Protomen's decade long fusion of Mega Man and insanity. Four dialogue heavy tracks with seamless transitions from the music, as well as a distorted message at the end of the final tune all paint a curious picture that seems like it's part of the larger narrative... but it doesn't quite add up. Tom sounds like Michael Biehn instead of a young Johnny Cash, and there's a romantic subplot with a "fearless reporter" who's never given a name. There's also a question of what "it" was that Albert was so desperate to get back that it eclipsed whether or not Tom survived. So what the hell?



"The Soundtrack to the Motion Picture ." In other words, in the universe that The Protomen have crafted, there was a film detailing Tom being framed as Emily's killer, and that makes the title of "The Cover Up" all the more delicious, as it's basically telling us outright that Al had it banned. But is that all there is? Did the movie just make up some crazy reporter who fell in love with Tom, and moved beyond the Danger Zone to broadcast the truth to those who wander outside the reach of The Arm? Well, maybe - and some unspecified members of the band have reportedly said that the soundtrack is being released on cassette specifically under the notion that Joe, the ill-fated hero of Act II, found this tape in his father's belongings, and that the romanticized vision of what the world was like before Wily's totalitarian regime is what spurned him to rebellion in the first place. It's a really cute idea, to be honest, and if that's as far as it goes - a distorted, romanticized alternate take on the grim underbelly that formed The Father of Death - I'm pretty okay with that.

But it's just as possible that this stretch of Tom's life - the 18 years that occur in the musical interlude How The World Fell Unto Darkness - holds mysteries that have yet to be explored in full. It would be difficult for Act III to work in flashbacks to previous events and keep a forward momentum of any sort, but if the groundwork has already been explored in subtle, clever ways here, that means they can mention "The Reporter" and "The Truth" being revealed without it feeling like a dramatic ass-pull. To that end, the tracks themselves even work in subtle nods to when in the canon they're taking place:

- The end of track 6, "Last Stop", features the sound of sirens blaring and dogs barking in the distance as Tom pays his respects at Emily's grave. This is in direct reference to the track in Act II, 'The Hounds', in which Al confirms that he has no choice now but to betray light and continue on his own path to victory.

- At the end to "Calling in the Air Tonight", the song changes briefly to a progression of notes that marks the shift in Act II's 'When the World Fell Unto Darkness', signifying both Tom being run out of town, and Al rebuilding it in his image. This more or less confirms that the track is playing concurrently with Act II.

- Track 15, 'Silent Running (On Dangerous Ground)', is significant for two reasons. The first is that traditionally The Protomen would play their reworked piano intro as an introduction to 'Breaking Out', which occurs when Joe finally gets fed up of Wily's society and leaves to the forbidden areas outside the city's walls.

- No less important is the garbled message that the reporter gives, stating that "He saw it coming" - and "He's been gone for nearly 18 years and yet his dream is still alive". Could this be a pirate radio broadcast that our mysterious reporter has been making for some time, now that she knows the truth about Tom and Al? And could that distorted, intercepted message be the very static on the radio that brought Joe to Tom in the first place?

Even if we ignore what look to me to be blatant instances of drawing parallels between the two albums, the track list as it's organized would make some sense as a retelling of the events of Act II as-is, starting roughly with 'The Good Doctor' and ending shortly before 'Keep Quiet'. Let's examine the evidence, and by that, I mean let's sperg the fuck out over it for a few minutes:

- (Track 1) Pick Up - Emily is startled from her silence by an unexpected call that never answers. Clearly, eyes are on her, and she knows she has no choice but to run or risk her life by staying.

- (Track 2) Because Tonight - Tom surprises Emily with a romantic evening, prompting her to stay by her lover's side a while longer before she flees town. They've previously discussed where their souls promised to meet should they ever lose one another, so shit is about to go down and they know it. They're just trying to ignore it as long as they can.

- (Track 3) Princes of the Universe - An explicit, alternate take on 'The Good Doctor' in which Al convinces Tom that they hold the ultimate power in the universe; the power to change the world with the power of machines.

- (Track 4) Mr Roboto - Tom and Al give "birth" to the first artificially intelligent life form in their laboratory. 'Kilroy' breaking down could easily be Emily's death as described in 'The Father of Death'.

- (Track 5) No Easy Way Out - Tom, on the run from the cops and with no friends left to turn, grips with whether or not "giving in" to thoughts of suicide and allowing Al's sins to go unpunished is best for everyone.

- (Track 6/7) Last Stop/Calling In The Air Tonight - Tom visits Emily's grave, knowing he doesn't have it in him to join Emily yet. Knowing he has no further low to reach, he carries on...

At this point, it gets a little fuzzy, but let's assume this is still canon...

- (Track 8/9) I Drove All Night/Total Eclipse of the Heart - After knowing that something big has been discovered, Tom returns to the outskirts of the city to meet up with the unnamed reporter... and gets lucky. I'm flatly unable to find any reading of this track combo that isn't this. Which'll be really, really weird if my theory pans out in the long run.

- (Track 10/11) Hunted/The Trooper - After coming clean about Emily and confirming feelings for The Reporter, the two are attacked by The Trooper, likely the same "Mr. Roboto" twisted by Al's manipulation to be a violent servant.

- (Track 12) I Still Believe - After surviving their run-in with The Trooper, Tom realizes that it's never too late to change his own fate.

- (Track 13) Results - Revolver Ocelot Albert Wily is furious that The Trooper was unable to secure "it" during his last mission. Exactly what "It" might be, well...

- (Track 14) Danger Zone - Far from the prying eyes of Wily's City, Tom continues to experiment and perfect the design for weapons capable of undoing and destroying the sins he himself released.

- (Track 15) Silent Running (On Dangerous Grounds) - The Reporter continues to speak the truth to those who will listen, spreading propoganda among the people in the hopes that they will see Light as an inspiration and rise up against the corrupt, literal-iron fist of their Robot Masters.

This is all to be treated as conjecture - personal theory, no more and no less. But there's two very interesting questions that have so far gone unanswered, and likely either won't ever be clarified, or will be the basis for the twists that propel Act III, when - and perhaps if - that ever comes out.

The first question is who is this reporter risking her life by uncovering the truth of the violence, censorship and manipulation that put Wily in control of the city? The most obvious answer is that, in one form or another, this is The Protomen's version of Roll.

"Who is Roll?" - someone who stumbled onto this page expecting pornography or bootleg mix tapes by mistake must surely be asking themselves.  Well, the short(ish) version is that in Capcom's original "200X" continuity, Proto Man (aka Blues) was the first machine Dr. Light built that was capable of independent thought and reason - in short, an autonomous, mechanical human possessing human reasoning. Having created a working prototype, Dr. Light built two additional siblings - Mega Man ("Rock" in Nipponese-go) and Roll (...just, Roll) - as his lab assistant and his house keeper, respectively. Yes, Dr. Light supports keeping skirts in the kitchen and sweeping floors. Make of that what you will. The reason Proto defected was because there was a design flaw in which Proto's core would eventually expire, and trying to rebuild him would inevitably erase his consciousness - effectively, Proto was mortal, and went out to live his own life while he still could. Wily found him near expiration and modified the mechanical man to survive past his due date, at which point Proto swore allegiance to Wily for his help. The Protomen expanded on this idea and made it more a matter of Wily breaking and rebuilding Proto, letting his own doubt in humanity be the reason for his allegiance, but the broad strokes are more or less the same.

Roll is the third sibling to Light's mechanical family. With "Act I" centered around the feelings of betrayal over Light never having told Mega the truth behind what happened to Proto - much less the angst that "breaks" Mega once he's forced to kill the brother he never knew and always looked up to as a legend - the total lack of their mutual sister is a suspicious one, to say the least. Proto Man was actually introduced into the canon after Roll,

The second question raised is "What was Wily trying to recover?" The dialogue between Light and maybe-Roll imply that the two don't know each other, and it's entirely possible that in this interpretation of the story, Roll is actually Wilys creation - not Lights. If this guess is even remotely true, it brings up the possibility of Roll being in a replicant-esque existence, unaware that she herself is a machine, perhaps built to such a high standard that most people would never know to begin with - Roll by way of Maria, minus the fact that Maria was kind of an evil robotic psycho.

But again, at least some members of the band swear that The Cover Up is the "Hollywood" retelling of the real story as presented in Father of Death. With that in mind, it's possible that track 8 marks a break in continuity - that rather than Tom being arrested at Emily's grave, he got back in his car and escaped Wily's police entirely, going on the run with The Reporter. This would place everything that takes place up until the last track in a separate non-canonical timeline in which The State vs Thomas Light never happened, though more or less everything else that occurs through the album does. We all know that motion pictures "based on a true story" tend to take the headlines and fuck up everything in between, so could this be a clever meta-commentary on Hollywood's usual methods? Considering everything that's gone into this album existing in the first place, I wouldn't put it past them.

Regardless of what this record "means", I'm satisfied by its existence. I'd recommend to anyone out there who can appreciate just how gloriously silly and occasionally beautiful post-MTV movie soundtracks could be, and doesn't mind a badass cover of The Trooper replacing every instance of "The Russians" with "The Robots". That's how The Protomen Roll, and I wouldn't have it any other way.

While the details are still emerging as I write this, it's become clear that Hideo KOJIMA/小島 秀夫, the maverick auteur of one of gaming's most iconic franchises, is being retroactively Alan Smithee'd from the franchise that's helped to keep Konami successful and beloved for nearly 30 years now, even while he slaves away on its latest iteration. The implications of this are less damning than they easily could have been, but are terrifying in a few others that I've given more than a little thought to.


At this point details are still sparse and more will likely emerge over time, but this is what we do know:

On March 3th, Konami released an official Restructuring Notice that included a list of all of the executives at the company. Conspicuously absent is Hideo Kojima, who's been Konami Digital Entertainment's Vice President since 2011. It also mentioned the creation of a "Headquarters Controlled System",  which is a curious distinction as Konami is (at this point) a publisher that hires outside developers, rather than a unified publisher/developer. What that means is that rather than crediting individual teams who work on a game as their main developers - Kojima Productions, Platinum Games or whatever - they're going to promote everything as a Konami product, as if that were in any way a direct implication of its quality... which, is stupid. But whatever, fine, corporate shenanigans at their best, nothing to worry about.

March 4th was the day that the release date of the long-awaited METAL GEAR SOLID V: THE PHANTOM PAIN was announced. The fact that it was announced during the world-famous Game Design Conference (GDC) was not unusual; the fact that the presentation was a brief, pre-recorded video with Hideo Kojima given exclusively to IGN (and leaked a day early by NeoGAF) rather than a live presentation, however, was a bit out of character. The excitement and hype surrounding this bit of information - something fans had been eagerly waiting over a year for since they got their taste of Metal Gear Solid V: Ground Zeroes - managed to completely push the fact that Kojima was no longer a part of Konami under the radar.

March 19th was the day that all social media and official websites relating to Metal Gear - which had previously been handled exclusively by staff members of Kojima Productions - were switched to Konami run accounts, and all websites for information on the franchise were relinked to the official Konami Metal Gear site, which makes no mention of either Hideo Kojima or Kojima Productions, despite these labels having been a part of the franchise going back to Metal Gear Solid 2 nearly 15 years ago. Perhaps even more surprising was the fact that Kojima Productions LA had, overnight, been re-dubbed Konami Los Angeles Studio.

Notice that all art assets have been modified; up until last week, all of the packaging and marketing proudly held the banner "A Hideo Kojima Game", and in the case of all MGSV material, also bore the iconic Kojima Productions "FOX" logo. Well, they've so far forgotten to change any of that for MGO3, but otherwise it's pretty cut and dry; Konami wants us to think of Metal Gear as "A Konami Product" rather than."A Hideo Kojima Game". Spin that however you want, but that's just... cold.

Amazingly enough, Hideo Kojima himself has been completely silent on the matter. This is especially damning, as Kojima usually can't go 30 minutes without posting a photo of a cheese burger he's about to chomp into on his twitter feed. In fact, the last tweet from the socially augmented madman was back on the 16th, a candid screenshot from the Phantom Pain testing bunker, a photo of Big Boss boarding his chopper with the caption "Taking off". He's retweeted a few things since, but he's remained dead silent on the game's progress, which is in no way Kojima's standard procedure.

The 19th also begat a Gamespot exclusive interview with an as-of-yet-unnamed informant, who confirmed that while the Phantom Pain staff (including Kojima and other higher-up team members) were no longer members of the Konami company. They had been ousted after a failed power play, and were now on contract until the end of the year to deliver The Phantom Pain as promised, before being shown the door. He(/She?) also mentioned that Kojima and staff were only being given very limited opportunities to appear in public. In the week since, it's also been confirmed that Kojima Station - the not QUITE regular livestream in which Kojima fucks around with friends, dropping bits of new info alongside conversations about how excited he is for Christmas - has been cancelled until further notice.

March 20th marked the day that Konami more or less confirmed every rumor swirling around was true: While Kojima was allowed a brief assurance that he and his staff would be completing The Phantom Pain as planned, Konami made it clear that they were looking for a new staff to create a "New Metal Gear Series", making no mention of Kojima's involvement. The obvious implication here is that he is in no way involved, and as Konami - not Platinum Games - is reaching out to developers, it's clear that what we're getting isn't Metal Gear Rising 2... well, not yet, anyway.

And here we are, adrift in a world where the fate of The Phantom Pain - though perhaps not the future of Metal Gear itself - is as unsure as it's ever been.


Could it really be true? Has Hideo Kojima lived so long as Konami's hero that they now see him as the villain? It'd be an almost fitting behind-the-scenes drama for a franchise in which the series eventually shifted focus away from the heroic Solid Snake to his own dark father, Big Boss - and you'll find a handful of people out there who seem to support the idea that Kojima, ever the magician in misdirection and twist endings, is still just manipulating public perception to create controversy and conspiracy theories among the already fractured and on-edge "Gamer" culture, a group of dedicated and unpredictable consumers that - especially in this case - remain the thriving core audience for massive, time-consuming and punishing games like the Metal Gear series.

It certainly doesn't make bank the same way Call of Duty, Grand Theft Auto or even Candy Crush Saga might, but at over 40 million copies sold world wide and counting, Metal Gear remains a force to be reckoned with in its own right. With the hype for this having been officially started two long years ago, is this all just a desperate move for attention? Could Konami - and by extension, Kojima himself - merely be stoking the fires of controversy on purpose?


There's a surprisingly fair precedent for doubting the sincerity of this seemingly corporate catastrophe, too; let is not forget that the first glimpse of this game the world had was given by the non-existent Swedish lead developer Joaikim Mogren, who gave an exclusive interview with Geoff "Doritos Pope" Keighley in the weeks building up to GDC 2013, where the main staff of Kojima Productions - who had been pimping the awesome power of their new Fox Engine for several months - wound up going on stage wearing a rubber mask and unveiling that "Mogren" and Kojima were truly one in the same. The interviews building up to it are obviously staged and there's a bit of Kojima's own kooky sense of humor lurking within, but honestly, it was a decent gag, and I wouldn't be surprised if it Mogren, or Moby Dick Studios re-appears in The Phantom Pain as a little nod to Metal Gear's love of fourth-wall breaking stupidity.

This wasn't the first time Kojima's pulled some crazy covert shit, either: It's rumored that McFarlane Toys also lost the rights to make Metal Gear Solid merchandise specifically because their packaging and press-release spoiled the fact that Raiden - rather than Snake - was the main playable character in Metal Gear Solid 2: Sons of Liberty. There was also zero hints in the advertising build-up that Metal Gear Solid 3: Snake Eater would be a prequel - much less that it would star a "different" soldier code named 'Snake', who only through the events of the game would be given the title Big Boss, meaning you were uncovering the tragic backstory of the original game's lead villain the whole time.  Hideo Kojima himself has long established that he's a world class captain of the SS Ruse Cruise, and it's not unthinkable that the callous, somewhat disrespectful stripping of his title from both The Phantom Pain and even his previous work is all a small part of a larger con.

Think about it, the parables to Ground Zeroes - that is, the incredibly nuanced but way too expensive prologue to The Phantom Pain released exactly one year ago - are simply too ironic to ignore: Skullface erases the "XOF" insignia from his own choppers during the introductory cinematic. Big Boss'"Army Without Borders" is destroyed from within by those he trusted most, leaving his second in command to cry a line that feels like it was pulled from one of the best moments George Romero's Dawn of the Dead has to offer; "Give it back! It was ours! We built it, damn it!" Particularly for players who have spent the 30+ hours needed to finish Peace Walker and outfit Mother Base with a working, walking nuclear tank and a staff of 300 standing officers, this moment rings more true than it should.

Big Boss himself was so injured he wound up in a coma, where he was left dreaming for 9 long years, the world assuming him long dead... let's face it, if you assume Hideo Kojima himself is Big Boss, XOF Konami gutting the remains of Mother Base the Kojima Productions development team for his all powerful Metal Gear ZEKE Fox Engine, discarding everything else, and only offering him a hand after such abject humiliation and destruction when it would be mutually beneficial against The Patriots The AAA Console Game Industry... let's face it, the marketing writes itself. If this really is all some insanely close-to-the-vest viral marketing campaign, it'll likely end with leaked YouTube footage on August 31st of a mysterious man in a trench coat and wearing an eye patch, holding a hard disk containing the final code in his cold, mechanical hand, and whispering,  as the remains of his development team char on the deck of  an off-shore oil platform: "...will you rike it?"

Unfortunately, I don't believe that this is anything but a genuine instance of Konami killing their golden goose over an unexpected internal power-struggle. This is the same Konami that ten years ago fired Team Silent and continued riding the bloated, maggot-riddled corpse of Silent Hill into increasingly poor sequels and spinoffs that eventually bombed so hard, Konami gave the franchise to Kojima last year as a means to revive it. This is also the same Konami that took their unique and iconic Castlevania franchise and decided to make a second-tier God of War clone out of what little good will its remaining fanbase could muster. Basically, they're risking the trust of an audience that only cares about this being "A Hideo Kojima Game", and suggesting that the final product could have been compromised only after most of those dedicated fans have put in their $100 Limited Edition pre-orders in seems... well, in bad taste, if nothing else. I was willing to drop the $100 on top of a $60 PC purchase just to have all the nifty tat they were tossing in (most notably a Blu-ray documentary), but if they're going to clip Kojima's wings in the 11th hour? Fuck that noise. I'm not going to not buy it... but I'm not going to reward Konami for dicking the process around after 4 fruitful years, either.

To put this into perspective, some Konami employees have already changed their Linked In profiles to reflect being on contract. If this really is some kind of over the top con, we're talking Moon Landing Conspiracy levels of devotion to it.


At this point, all we really know is that - by choice or not - Konami is finally ready to create a Metal Gear game without Kojima's involvement. True, Kojima acted merely as producer - rather than writer/director - on both Metal Gear Solid: Portable Ops and Metal Gear Rising: Revengeance, with a questionable position of "co-director" on the oft-forgotten Metal Gear Solid: Ghost Babel - but none of these have set a particularly comforting precedent for the franchise being remotely the same without him acting as the mastermind behind it all.  And look, I love me some Revengeance, but I admit it's the same sort of love I feel for something like The Texas Chainsaw Massacre Part 2 or Paul Verhoeven's Starship Troopers, a grotesque and glorious parody of what it's based on.

What will Metal Gear become without Kojima to watch over it, even as a producer? Will the franchise spin out into an endless cycle of empty, regular expansions? I don't think most people would label never-ending franchises with annual updates like Dynasty Warriors, Battlefield or Assassins Creed particularly bad, just that they're... not especially good, either. They're simply average. Disposable. Safe. They settle into a comfortable rut of re-using the same engines and same basic assets for a generation or so, polishing up some new effects and gimmicks to keep the coat of paint fresh, even if the hardware pumping under it is fundamentally the same thing it's been for a decade. It looks like even the Dark Souls franchise will slowly be joining this list, though ironically it seems everyone out there adores Bloodbourne, which appears to be DaS3 in literally everything but name. I won't spoil their fun, but I do wonder if it really is that good, or if they're just excited to have something that isn't garbage on the PS4?

With the supposed ease the Fox Engine beings to game design, and the massive catalog of assets and mechanics both Ground Zeroes and The Phantom Pain have already used, it wouldn't be that difficult to churn out a new Metal Gear on a two-year schedule.  Odds are, those games wouldn't be "bad", either. Just... predictable. Lacking nuance. Dull, in other words. The one thing no sane person could ever call Metal Gear, even at its worst.


I'm struggling to think of a franchise so streamlined that it doesn't suffer under re-use after a decade or two, so the fact that we've had nearly 30 years of consistently good to fantastic games under one banner is, in and of itself, pretty fucking impressive. Once The Phantom Pain comes out this September we'll officially have 10 Hideo Kojima produced and directed Metal Gear games, and all of them are unto themselves impressive, original, and highly polished projects. Yes, even Guns of the Patriots up there, which - even at its worst - was at least a beautiful, twisted and utterly fascinating train wreck.

Making the need to take control and silence the creator even more shocking - at a glance, anyway - is the fact that Konami really has no other cards to play in the mainstream video game market. That said, Japan has been embracing mobile time-wasters and expensive, subscription-server arcade games for years that are typically never even a blip on the Western market, and it's my understanding that Konami has diversified into buying out spas in Japan, to the point where the company brass probably doesn't even need to release big-budget console games to earn their salary. This explains why they've let Silent Hill and Castlevania, two massive titles with decades of history, slump as badly as they have. Konami doesn't need them to operate, but it'd be financially irresponsible of them not to try before they've killed the goodwill of the franchise as a whole.

With that in mind, I can hazard a guess at what happened. With The Phantom Pain nearing its end and Kojima shifting focus towards Silent Hills, it's likely that Konami approached him to handle the inevitable Metal Gear VI, making full use of their very expensive and time consuming development of the Fox Engine to make some real damn money on a regular basis. Either he refused - he has, after all, been saying "This will be my last Metal Gear" for over a decade now - or he offered to do so in exchange for a deal Konami was simply not interested in.


Either way, it seems likely enough that "A Hideo Kojima Game" being removed from all marketing materials forward is some sort of punishment, a show that Konami is serious about continuing the story of Snake with or without him; there's simply no advantage to removing that marketing line from the package proper, especially when Hideo Kojima is one of the very few rock stars left in game development. There's certainly a handful of names that sell projects on their own - Peter Molyneux and David Cage, Suda "51" Goichi and Hidetaka "Swery" Suehiro, Ken Levine and Cliff Bleszinsky, the list goes on - but even then, I don't think any of these people who have earned the rights to call themselves trend-setters and conceptual risk takers get their name featured nearly as prominently as Hideo Kojima. About the only other guys out there you'll find this sort of name-brand recognition is Mr. Shitface Tim Schafer and Keiji INAFUNE, but both of these men gambled their star power on kickstarter dream projects and... well, let's just say that neither of them have gone well.

It's possible that Hideo Kojima could attempt the same. Heck, maybe he'd even get a good game made if he did. But I don't think he's fallen so hard that he has to pan-handle his own nostalgic fanbase to get a new franchise off the ground.


But let's not pretend that being "The Metal Gear Guy" isn't about the biggest fucking gold star you could put on your resume as a game designer. Even his misfires are spectacular and gorgeous to watch fall on their overblown asses, and when he gets it right - by which I mean Snake Eater, above all else - there's just nothing else like it. The return to Big Boss without the limitations of the PSP mean that The Phantom Pain has the possibility to be the revolutionary epic Kojima's been spending 28 long years building towards, and I can only hope that the results were worth waiting for.. especially since I'm basically going to take a week off work when the game comes out to try and finish the main campaign before I stumble across spoilers. I swear to God, I'll stab a bitch if they tell me who Venom Snake "really" is. It ain't Big Boss - at least, not the Big Boss we've seen in Snake Eater and Peace Walker. Of that, I'm more or less certain... but we're getting off track.

My point is that Hideo Kojima will be just fine, with or without Konami. If Sony's smart, they'll offer him complete creative control for a PS4 exclusive so they'll finally have a top selling game, instead of a system that's shifted 20 million consoles to be used, primarily, as a Netflix hub for some goddamn reason. I'm also sure the notable team members at Kojima Productions - concept artists like Yoji Shinkawa, level designers like Jordan Amaro, and so on - will either be folded back into Konami to make Silent Hills using the engine they're already experienced with, or they'll probably find decent work making damn near anything else.

To be honest, this might be a blessing in disguise. Kojima's been saying he wanted to walk away from Metal Gear since MGS2 over a decade ago, and he only keeps getting drawn back in because the staff he's chosen to succeed him always inevitably fail when they try to carry on his unique style. (Case in point, Peace Walker is basically just the "Kojima Approved" remake of Portable Ops.) Kojima may be The Metal Gear Guy, but he's also the guy who made Snatcher, Policenauts, and convinced Konami to let his pals make Zone Of [The] Enders - he's got a hell of a talent, and while I'm glad he's wasted a ton of it making Metal Gear incredible, he's clearly ready for a change of scenery. I was curious to see what he'd do when handed the keys to Silent Hill, but I'm no less excited to see whatever idea he's been pushing off for the last decade and change, just to make sure Snake's legacy remains as Solid as... I'm, sorry. I wasn't even trying for the pun at first.

Hideo Kojima will be just fine without Metal Gear... but is Metal Gear fine without Hideo Kojima? My feeling is that depends solely on how they decide to handle the franchise going forward without him. It makes me cringe typing this, but if Konami is smart, they'll do something drastic... they'll reboot Metal Gear entirely. Don't make "Metal Gear Solid Origins: The Boss" or "Metal Gear Rising: How Did Raiden Become A Cyborg Anyway?" I say don't even try to spin Kojima's confusing tapestry of fetishism and madness; even he can't keep track of what's what, and he's been using and abusing dramatic retcon's for the last 20 years so often, it'd make even DC Comics blush. Metal Gear Solid is an incredible series, but it's so volatile and insane that there's nothing left to explore. The only thing that hasn't been given proper closure was that whole "Oh yeah, Raiden became a break-dancing Cyborg and stole a super-baby being raised by The Patriots" thing that happened between MGS2 and MGS4, and that was going to get covered in detail... until it somehow became Metal Gear Rising: Revengeance instead. Proving that even when Kojima hands his staff the only interesting idea left unexplored in his own mythology, they shrug and decide to turn it into a brilliantly fun, but incredibly weird parody of the franchise.

No. It makes me wince to say this, but there's only one answer. "MgS: Metal Gear Solid". Strip everything down to most basic elements. Re-cast everyone from the ground up. Re-write continuity until it almost makes sense, and leave wiggle-room for adding new characters and scenarios. Create an entirely new franchise on the core idea of a single man infiltrating an enemy base to take down their walking nuclear tank - hell, if you want to avoid the inevitable comparisons to Solid Snake, make a game that doesn't star a guy named "Snake" at all. The people who are upset that Kojima are gone are going to abandon the franchise, because they know no matter who took his place, the core insanity that makes a Hideo Kojima Game what it is will be sorely lacking. So try to cultivate a new audience. Find someone who'd be up for a wacky Japanese version of Splinter Cell, but doesn't have to know the difference between Solid Snake and Solidus Snake to get into it. Yes, you'll make enemies. Yes, it's entirely possible that the fan reaction will be just as violently negative as it was for DmC: Devil May Cry... and that's why I hesitate to suggest this is the only net gain available in the first place. If there's one thing the Devil May Cry reboot proved, it's that you really CAN fuck up a franchise to amazingly badly that you'll just convince the fans you once had to re-buy special editions of the original games instead.



But what other realistic choice do you have? Metal Gear is such a gloriously convoluted mess that there's not much left to be re-arranged and expanded. There's been talk for a year now about how Phantom Pain will finally "close the loop", and if the game doesn't continue through the end credits featuring Solid Snake's infiltration of Outer Heaven - perhaps re-worked a little to include the highlights from Zanzibarland, boiling MG and MG2:SS into a single story? - just as a safe-guard to prevent anyone else from "finishing" Kojima's legacy once and for all, I'll be a little shocked. Seems like a bit of a no-brainer to me, and if that's the big twist from a gameplay perspective, it'd make sense why David Hayter has been so coy about speaking about it other than saying "I'm not in it, seriously, go talk to Konami!" Why anyone would have wanted him back as the lead after the cringe worthy forced-gravel bullshit we got in Peace Walker is beyond me, anyway.


So where do we stand in all of this? I can tell you where it's left me, personally: Before Konami started pulling shit like removing the creator's name from his own work, I was willing to buy two copies of the game; one on PC to actually play, and one on PS4 with the 1:2 scale Venom Snake arm, making-of documentary I'm sure I can steal a copy of 24 hours after the game is released, and a bunch of DLC I can't actually use since I refuse to buy a PS4 until it has five or more exclusives worth playing. (But I digress.) I'd have considered the $300 Japanese Limited Edition with the 1:1 arm, but they   Konami's dicking around lost them $100 from me, though they haven't quite lost the $30 I was going to give Kaiyodo for the Soviet Soldier Mini-Recoltech figure Venom Snake can CQC the crap out of. Yeah, it's far more disappointing that the only other character they're willing to reveal at this point via not-horribly-overpriced merchandise is just so much canon fodder, but c'mon, this is a glorified accessory pack, who doesn't want Big Boss carting around a LAW in toy form?


That said, I am slightly worried about The Phantom Pain being finished without any major interference by Konami. This sort of climate - power struggles before big releases, dead silence on the part of the creator - are the sort of things that tend to happen when everything is about to go horribly wrong. Maybe the politics in Phantom Pain were a little too real, and would have prevented the game's release in a major new market (like China). Maybe the fact that you could do something taboo in the world of video games - killing child soldiers, perhaps? - ruffled too many feathers. Kojima's joked for a few years that the things he wants to do are so controversial that he doubted Konami would let him go all the way, and with his original plans for a much darker and meaner MGS4 having been nipped in the bud - most notably the game's second proposed ending with "Old" Solid Snake blowing his own brains out in the Arlington Memorial Cemetery - it's not unthinkable that something drastic happened behind the scenes on what's going to be, by far, the darkest chapter in this series to date. Then again, this is literally Metal Gear's Revenge of the Sith, that crucial turning point in which the hero becomes the villain... what would anyone expect but pain, misery and madness? Then again, this is a dankest affair in which you can fulton wild livestock and build a zoo on Mother Base. So how you'll want to feel about this very open-ended sounding military fantasy is entirely up to you.

Will The Phantom Pain be exactly what Hideo Kojima wanted it to be? Honestly, I have no idea. Konami forcing one of the industry's most candid developers this side of Hideki KAMIYA to shut his spoiler-hole is a warning I can't take lightly, and the fact that they're already preparing to set up the sequel without him being involved so much as a producer leaves a sour taste in my mouth. But at the same time, Kojima is still calling the shots, and while Ground Zeroes was - if only by its very nature - not as satisfying as one would hope, it certainly suggests that much bigger and better things are just on the horizon. I refuse to believe that Phantom Pain won't fill a very specific hole in my heart, if for no other reason that the premise behind it - watching Snake become Big Boss, from a disillusioned man of honor to a war hungry madman willing to sacrifice anything to satisfy his nihilistic ideals - is simply too strong and pull to not work, even if it's been compromised.

In short, I'm still buying the fucking thing and I'd recommend anyone who's willing to put the time and effort into it to do the same. Not for Konami. Not to support Metal Gear. But because it's "A Hideo Kojima Game", and I want anyone within earshot to know that I'll try whatever that glorious, trendy, burger loving madman does. I hope that The Phantom Pain really does "close the circle" of Metal Gear and tell a single, continuous story that starts in 1964 with The Virtuous Mission and ends in 2014 with Naked Sin. I hope that Kojima - and Konami - go the distance to draw those lines deep in the sand and tell the story of a fallen hero living long enough to succumb to madness, desperation and destruction as his only resolve. I hope the game is, in a word, pretty good. But I hope more than anything that good continues out from it, that whatever transpired wasn't so draining and terrible that we never see another Hideo Kojima Game, and that Konami has the foresight to see that Metal Gear is a strong enough brand that they can maintain it - and not neglect or abuse it, as so many corporate entities are quick to do.

There's always room for Hideo, is what I'm saying.

So. This is... unexpected. After a thoroughly frustrating Media Blasters Blu-ray release of A-KITE, it seems that Japanese distributors Green Bunny are crafting their own "Special Edition BLU-RAY" to coincide with the release of that bizarro live-action Samuel L. Jackson movie everyone thought would never happen. It's going to include a reversible cover, postcard and a making-of special for the live action film, if for some reason you're still interested after Jackson gave his hilarious interview talking about a graphic novel it's based on that doesn't even exist.

Here's the kicker, though: This "Special Edition" is listing the same 60 minute runtime as the "Uncut" Special Edition Japan DVD, and it's being handled exclusively in the 18+ category of all shops stocking it. In other words, the Japanese Blu-ray is - or at least it should be - the explicit, UNCUT version released in Japan before Umetsu worked with Media Blasters to make the "R-15" International version that haunts us to this day. Why they would release the explicit child-rape filled version to piggyback on the thoroughly Hollywood remake, I have no idea, but trust me, I am in no way complaining.

Yes, being a Japanese release it's going to be censored to avoid obscenity laws. That said, I've always been far more concerned with Sawa's face and body language in the infamous "lolicon" sequences, so while an annoyance by default, I can't say a pixelated version of this would be a deal breaker for anyone who 'gets' why the uncut version is the only one worth watching. And no, I personally don't give a fuck if Umetsu himself argues otherwise. (See "The Nerds v George Lucas" for further proof that Death Of The Author can be a good thing.)

Will the release be complete? Will be be partially - or even fully - upscaled? I... honestly have no fucking idea. But for the $50 it'll cost me to find out, it's a risk I find myself with no choice but to take. I'll let you all know as soon as I have it in my hot little hands, too.

Incidentally, another 18+ Blu-ray release for MEZZO FORTE is coming out later this month. You can see it bragging about "Renewed Mosaics" on the cover, suggesting that not only will be feature all the giant floppy dongs you know and love from Umetsu's early career, but that they'll have tighter and less-intrusive pixels than ever before. Nice.


Frankly, I have no strong opinion on the "uncut" version of Mezzo Forte one way or the other. I like the random, well-animated and amusing-in-context hardcore inserts, but I admit they don't really add anything important to the character development or even world-building, as is sometimes the case. They are, like the gratuitous violence and meticulous animation, merely additional fetishism in a work that's already overflowing with it. They work with the rest of the OVA in a way they easily could have failed miserably to, but they aren't actually vital to it. Which is more than I can say for Sawa and Akai's relationship in Kite.

Anyway, at $50 shipped I'm going to check out Kite first. Wish me luck, friends!

I seriously don't have the energy for this bullshit right now, so consider this a brief PSA:

* The Japanese import for A-KITE is an upscale. Like, entirely upscaled from the same shit composite master as the Media Blasters "Uncut" DVD, despite HD masters existing for about 90% of it. They also watermarked the pillarbox bars and even blurred out various jokes in the background of the animation because FUCK YOU, THAT'S WHY.

This is the first order for a Blu-ray I've ever cancelled, and I can only thank Buster D for having taken a bullet on this one and sparing my credit card about $50. I'm hoping he'll post screencaps we can all point and laugh at, but I'm not eating that cost knowing it's a joke.

* The first episode of SAILOR MOON ('95 original series) HD broadcast is an upscale. Yeah, sure, it's a notably better upscale than the Viz Media failed attempt, but that means they've simply crammed 10 pounds of suck in a 5 pound bag this time around. Much like every other TV show that isn't Fist of the North Star, Toei doesn't care, and you can't throw enough money at them to convince them to.

Eat an entire bag of dicks, Toei. Preferably room temperature so they're nice and chewy.

* The just-released ESCAPE FROM NEW YORK: SPECIAL EDITION Blu-ray from Shout Factory is somehow softer than the HDCAM sourced MGM Blu-ray, despite being from the same exact film elements. The only reason it's "brighter" is because the contrast has been boosted, fucking up skin tones in the process, and there's supposedly telecine judder, which shouldn't even be a thing if the film was scanned, frame by frame, as opposed to given a real-time telecine.

We may have to revisit this when I can compare both side by side just to make sure the samples kicking around aren't totally borked, but in the meantime know that if you already own the MGM Special Edition DVD and the old Blu-ray, you're not missing much.

The saddest part here? This is literally all news to me because - *gasp!* - I've actually been working on a write-up for the last week and haven't had time to sift over other bullshit.

In short, fuck all y'all, home video industry. Now I remember why I waste all my money on games, comics and tiny statues. I'll have a "real" write-up done within the week to remind us that sometimes we can have nice things, but in the meantime just... don't fucking buy any of these things. Please, don't let this become the new normal. I'd rather the industry burn to cinders than see this somehow be acceptable.

Fuck this nonsense. I clearly need booze, a PS3 controller, a warmed sex toy and/or some candy that tastes of rice and nothing. I'll take any of the two.

It is with nothing but thanks and respects to old timey nerd Buster D that I present a quick, dirty, and thoroughly devastating comparison between the Media Blasters and Green Bunny BDs for Yasuomi UMETSU's ever-controversy generating 1998 anime masterpiece, A-KITE.

Images for the MB Blu-ray were taken using Media Player Classic Home Cinema's screenshot option, because they're not exact frames and honestly, I don't really give a fuck. This isn't the usual critical piece I'm fond of, it's just an excuse to point and laugh to hide the fact that I'm drowning in bitter, bitter tears.




















I know I talked briefly about this last time, but holy poop on a stick, whoever did the color grading for the HD transfer needs a proper pimp-slapping. Flesh tones are alright, and I'm not suggesting the old LD master was "better" overall, but why the fuck did they turn the gamma down to nothing? It's practically a black hole now, despite - as you can see - thorough attention paid to the dark and often moody backgrounds. "Black" needs special care in animation, since making sure outlines hit IRE 0 won't necessarily be "correct" - there's too many variables in paint and lighting to assume that, and turning everything down results in... well, in overly dark and "off" looking transfers like this. I suspect the reds are pushing way outside of color-safe zones, too, but I'm far too lazy to confirm at this point. There's so many other things wrong that complaining about Blu-ray limitations just feels like pissing on a corpse after you've stolen its watch.

And the next two shots are from the "explicit" scenes not included on the Media Blasters BD, just to prove the Japanese release - while far from uncensored - is, at least, the complete 18+ version.



It's really... it's really something, isn't it? The American BD may be a disaster on every level, but at least somebody seemingly tried to assemble a high quality composite of the best elements available. The Japanese BD is the laziest sort of abomination, an eyesore that's more censored than ever before... and yet, when it comes time to compare the Japanese BD to the upscaled scenes on the North American release, it's still the better of the two. It's like having to choose between a fresh shit and a dried turd, truly.

If it wasn't for the combination of pixelation-censorship and bizarre blurred-self censorship, I'd say the Japanese BD was the best version available, if only by default. Sadly, it seems the Media Blasters "Kite Uncut" DVD from a decade ago is still the winner, despite being a badly compressed release pulled from what I can only assume is a noisy-ass Betacam SP dupe master. The JP release has some gnarly analogue noise of its own, but at least it didn't turn into pixelated mayonaise with a nice high-bitrate AVC encode, I guess.

I'm fucking done with the internet for the next couple days. Was hoping to have a feature on a less sorrow-inducing release finished by now, but hey, I go where I'm needed, like a rounin with the superpower to shitpost and complain at the speed of spite. I hope all of you have more fun seeing this than I did, 'cause man, all I feel right now is sick.

As Bob Murawski himself was has pointed out, the Grindhouse Releasing Blu-ray release of Lucio Fulci's  THE BEYOND/...E tu Vivrai nel Terrore! L'aldilà is a release several years in the making. There's a lot to talk about this time around, and it's been a damn long while since I've gone blow-by-blow on a comparison for a title so in need of one, so let's get the history out of the way as soon as possible.

Odds are there's little I could possibly say about the film that hasn't been said already; for better or worse, Quentin Tarantino re-introduced the film to American audiences - who back then only knew it as an edited feature known as "7 Doors of Death" - at the end of the 1990s by doing theatrical runs of Grindhouse Releasing's restored, uncensored director's cut in a joint venture with Rolling Thunder Pictures. Grindhouse Releasing teamed up with Anchor Bay to release a restored DVD in 2000, with various re-releases in the years that followed, all based on the same telecine materials. It has seen numerous DVD releases in Europe and Asia with varying degrees of quality, but by all reasonable accounts it seems that Grindhouse and Anchor Bay were responsible for the definitive SD presentation some15 years ago.

UK distributors Arrow Video released the title on Blu-ray in 2011, but the initial release was criticized from top to bottom, and rightly so: The opening titles, always meant to be a golden-sepia the color of a faded photograph, were presented in stark black-and-white. The English audio would slip in and out of sync, and some shots - even one of the film's most iconic gore set pieces! -  were repeated to fill in the gaps. The feature and numerous HD bonus features were all crammed onto a single-layer disc, despite the packaging promising a BD-50. The whole thing was such a mess that Arrow Video eventually offered replacements, and while it did correct some of the color grading issues and gave consumers the promised dual-layer presentation, it also came with added DVNR, and didn't fix any of the audio flubs in the process. It was a modest improvement, to be sure, but to say both discs are somewhat disappointing would be perfectly reasonable.

Grindhouse Releasing has done some really impressive work with rarely-seen on video titles like The Swimmer, An American Hippie In Israel and Carnage... but, for Cannibal Holocaust, they seemed content to use a dated, middling quality transfer, the bulk of which is likely older than Grindhouse's DVD dating back several years now. Company head Bob Murawski has also stated in no uncertain terms that both Fulci's Cat in the Brain and Juan Piquer Simon's Pieces would be new 4K scans... but there was no mention of the materials or the scanning processed being used for The Beyond, which was also true of Cannibal Holocaust, and served as something of a red flag for me.

Bob has also said that, while he intends to release all of the titles he currently holds the rights to on Blu-ray in the coming year or so, he's also said that he's not interested in acquiring any new titles going forward, effectively ending the company's 19 year run. This business was always a pet project between professional film editor Bob Murawski and the now-late Sage Stallone, and with one-half of the company's leading men no longer in the picture, I can't help but think Murawski's honesty is honorable enough.

It was with this in mind that I kept my expectations firmly in check. Grindhouse Releasing has a 35mm print they play on a somewhat regular basis, but with the Arrow transfer having supposedly have been made from the original negative, there would likely be some advantages to using what HD source was waiting in Europe. I also seem to remember the Anchor Bay DVD proudly proclaiming that the title was "Mastered in High Definition", but I know from experience that not only is that claim rarely bullet-proof on older titles, but it's entirely possible that ancient HD masters are little better than a proper SD master minted a few years later on better equipment.

It's with disappointed that I acknowledge that Grindhouse used the pre-existing 2011 master... but the good news is that the results are at least somewhat better than expected.































All screenshots were taken by ripping the entire disc to my HDD, decoding the main video M2TS file with DGAVCDec loading the resulting DGA proxy file into AVISynth, loading said script into VirtualDub,  using the "snapshot source frame" option, dumping the raw bitmap data into MS Paint (because why the fuck not?), and then exporting a 1920:1080 PNG. In other words, these screenshots are 100% identical to the disc. No hardware acceleration here, folks!


There's been rumor swirling around that the Arrow Video presentation was cut by about 8 seconds - I've never seen details of where those cuts are supposed to be, but decided there'd be a pretty quick way to figure out if there was any truth to it. To simplify the process, I cut off the "Grindhouse Releasing Presents" title card on the US release and edited my scripts so that both transfers started on exactly the same frame, using the position of the flames on the hotel in the opening shot as a reference point. In other words, both films are starting at the same frame, no question 'bout it.

Having done this, I jumped to the final hard cut of the film - that is, the shot from our heroes starring into the titular Beyond before the optical effects kick in. At this point we get a total runtime of 1:25:42.095 for the Arrow Video BD, and 1:25:46.600 on the Grindhouse Releasing BD. So, in theory, if the Arrow Video release was cut it would be missing a bit less than 4 seconds, not the 8 rumored... right?

Well, to be safe I did another test: Despite starting these two samples at the exact same frame, the first frame of "full color" (the Book of Eibon bursting into flames) kicks in on the Arrow Video BD at 0:06:59.711, while it shows up in the Grindhouse presentation at 0:06:58.75 - meaning the opening sequence of the Arrow Video master is slightly longer, which makes very little sense if the Arrow Video master is the shorter of the two!

(Having made my point, going forward I'll only reference the on-disc timecodes forward, just to make it easy to play along at home.)

Honestly, I don't notice any obvious jump-cuts or looped frames in the opening, so I can only assume this is the result of Arrow Video having tried - in vain, I know - to edit the raw footage of the Italian negative to match the English audio materials, rather than edit the audio materials themselves to match the English dub, as any more sensible studio would have fone. This is also the only conceivable explanation as to why the Arrow Video version re-plays nearly a second of Joe the Plumber getting his eye torn out of its socket at  00:18:25 on the Arrow Re-release (00:18:43 on the Grindhouse disc). So there's no "missing scenes" or anything of that nature on the Arrow Video release, just little trims and looped shots here and there that ultimately add up to a whole lot of nothing, but might annoy those who have watched the film countless times before.

In short, both prints are slightly different, but in all but one case those differences are so goddamn slight I can't even spot most of them, nor will I be able to figure them out without wasting hours on end counting frames. With the general funkiness of Arrow's presentation being well known, I think it's safe to say that while neither release is "cut", the Grindhouse presentation is the more accurate of the two. If anyone else has noticed any oddities - on either version - I'm more than happy to update this section, but for the time being I'm willing to chalk less than 4 seconds up to what would have been Arrow's usual incompetence circa 2011. Now, I'd say Grindhouse and Arrow are equals... my, how times change.


When Arrow Video announced the rights to The Beyond in early 2011, they claimed that it would be a new transfer from the camera negative, a common enough promise from Italian genre licensors, and one I typically think there's at least some truth to. Unfortunately, Arrow's initial BD was a mess with boosted shadows, wonky color grading and terrible compression. When fans reailized that the package promised a dual-layered BD-50 and the actual release was a single layer BD-25, Arrow finally admitted fault and promised to fix the prior mistakes. The second release was an improvement, to be sure, but it was still pretty disappointing in the long run.

Grindhouse's presentation is a single-layer disc that clocks in at about 24.8 gigs, packing the single layer nearly to bursting, and boasts an average bitrate of 23,158 kb/s. Some may call foul on the average not being maxed out, but in terms of actual visible compression issues, I have no real complaints; there's little in the way of banding and grain structure maintains a surprisingly coarse texture from start to finish, which is more than we can say for the Arrow presentation, which clocks in at an even higher 27,999 kb/s. Remember kids, it's not all about the raw number of blocks with AVC - it's how you use those blocks to avoid visible artifacting. To put this another way, while a higher bitrate rarely makes a transfer look worse, I'm not convinced that this particular master would look magically different at even 30,000 kb/s. As always, Grindhouse Releasing has done a fine job compression difficult source material, and while part of me feels that BD-50 should be standard on all commercial releases running over an hour, if more BD-25s looked like this, I doubt I'd feel that way to begin with.


But the technical merits of an encode don't mean squat if the master it's supporting is crap, and that's where the Grindhouse release falls just a little flatter than I had hoped. While it's not been confirmed which film lab in Italy did the telecine work - it doesn't really look like LVR's usual output and I'd expect better from Technicolor Rome or Cinetecca, so perhaps it was Agustus Color? - it's no doubt the result of a CRT scanner, which has a certain... let's call it "quality" that I'm not a fan of. For lack of a clearer way to explain it, CRT scanners produce a noisy image without a lot of fine detail; it does (or it can) look like a "grainy" image, but having seen 35mm prints of vintage films like this, even theatrical prints looked softer and more nuanced than, say, the shot of David Warbeck in his car from up above.

The biggest question, of course, is "why"? Why use CRT scanners, when more modern CCD based alternatives exist? Well, there was a time when CCD scanners were expensive, unproven technology and CRTs were both familiar and readily available, so it'd make sense for a film lab looking to upgrade to HD ten or fifteen years ago to stick with the tech they already knew how to work with. Another issue is the very nature of the beast; having had the good fortune to speak to a colorist on the issue a few years ago, he told me that some film makers actually like the diffuse, noisy quality of CRT scanners, saying they felt that other options appeared "too soft" and compared the difference in texture and contrast captured by the different technologies to the difference between people who prefer CD over vinyl. I may not entirely agree with that assessment, but knowing everyone has their own fetishes, I can see why people who love the idea of "film grain" and have been looking at CRT scans for years would come to that conclusion.

In fact, the reason CCD has replaced most CRT scanners has less to do with the actual quality, and more to do with the fact that CRT scanners are goddamn expensive to upkeep! Not only are their separate tube pieces for each of the 'guns' - for red, green, and blue respectively - but they need to be kept replaced and properly aligned, which could lead to one gun having worn out and producing funky results, which would (at minimum!) require an expensive visit from a technician to minimize the difference. By comparison, CCD scanners basically have a single flash bulb that can be replaced with a screwdriver. No fuss, no unpredictable behavior, just clean scans all day, every day.

There's also a difference between a "scan" and a "telecine". They can occur on the same hardware, but the latter is a real-time affair that basically plays the film out like a projector and converts every frame to tape as it goes through. The results can be very nice indeed, but because of the constantly moving nature of the process, the results will never be quite as high quality as a proper scan, which lays the print flat and does a slow-exposure to make sure every detail is captured in the highest quality possible. How much of an impact that makes, however, depends on a lot of things, and some of those differences only matter if you're doing extensive color correction or damage repair anyway. So before anyone assumes I simply hand-waive this stuff off as broken out of the gate; not all CRT scans are inherently bad, and not all CCD scans are inherently good. We've made great leaps in technology for the latter in recent years, and poor color grading or heavy processing can take a superior scan and still make a worse final product.

That said, I'm a firm believer that CCD is "better" in every way that's worth noting, but that's just, like, my opinion, man.

So why bring it up at all? Well, it so happens that numerous Italian genre films were all being made on the same piece of hardware - the Cintel DSX, if I remember - and they ranged from "noisy but okay" to "utter, absolute shite". So yes, we're dealing with a less than ideal HD master minted no less than 4 years ago. But that out of the way how bad is it? If we were to compare this to the usual suspects - that is, other Italian genre releases - it's on the better end of the list. No, it's nowhere near as good as Arrow Video's 2K restoration of Fulci's own Zombi 2,  Argento's 4 Flies on Gray Velvet, Synapse's corrected presentation of Demons or Midnight Legacy's proof of concept Alien 2: On Earth, but it stands head and shoulders over the vast majority of transfers from Blue Underground and LVR, which - for a damned long time - were about the only point of comparison we had to draw from.

To compare this to Grindhouse's own output, it's certainly better and more natural looking than the majority of Cannibal Holocaust, but it's also not as good as any of their other titles. To make a broader comparison, it's certainly no worse than The New York Ripper or Bird with Crystal Plumage, and if you thought the Blue Underground presentations of those were "good enough", as I myself do for the most part, you'll likely have no complaints. It's worlds better than garbage like Arrow's sand-blasted initial release of Tenebrae or Blue Underground's smudgy City of the Living Dead, and if you're looking for the best video presentation of The Beyond to date, this is it still by a country mile. The odds of some crazy new 4K scan beating this for several years are slim, to say the least.

Another consideration worth exploring is the way in which it was shot. As with the majority of Lucio Fulci's films it was shot using the Techniscope process, which - in plain English - is a 2-perf format that uses half as much film as a typical 4-perf anamorphic process. It's basically the Italian version of Super35, and as such had to be blown up to 4-perf for distribution, which means it has roughly half the vertical resolution of a 'proper' 4-perf anamorphic film. However, techniscope used spherical lenses which have tighter control over deep focus and none of the typical anamorphic distortion issues, so while the process is certainly "cheaper" than typical Hollywood alternatives, it isn't by default any "worse", particularly not in terms of Blu-ray where resolution is locked to 1920:804 for a constant 2.39:1 image. Don't get me wrong, I do love anamorphic photography, but I do want to dispel any nonsense about The Beyond, or indeed any of these lovely 1970s and 1980s Italian Techniscope films being "too cheap" to look good. Remember, Robinson Curusoe on Mars was shot using Techniscope and it was still high enough quality that Criterion scanned a 35mm IP at 4K and got an incredible looking Blu-ray out of it. And that was shot in the 60s. So everyone can shut up about "cheap" grainly film stock, unless you're actually discussing how it changed photo-chemically in the mid-1980s, and how it was less "cheap" and more "it had to be exposed completely differently for the same results, so it looked super grainy until DPs figured out how to work with it".

For those unaware, the credits are presented in Italian. This isn't a complaint so much as a clarification, though I am suspicious of the full title - that is, "...E tu Vivrai nel Terrore! L'aldilà", or '...And You Will Live In Terror! The Beyond' - was ever used theatrically in the 80s. They look like genuine optical titles, at least, so if they're fake at least they've done an above-average job of it.

Perhaps the most damning artifact on display is actually not the diffuse grain structure, but the edge-sharpening halos that were likely applied during telecine; Grindhouse cropped the edges of the matte bars out to hide the most obvious offenders, but door jams, signs, actors in bright sunlight and other high-contrast edges still have a funky, warped false-contour that gives the cheap illusion of a "sharper picture". I'd call it edge enhancement, but it seems to have been applied more to horizontal surfaces than vertical, so it looks 'different' than you may expect. Thankfully the lab used a "smart" algorithm that only targets consistent, hard edges, and doesn't simply contour the grain/noise as so many lesser filters tend to.

While Arrow was content to use a DVNR algorithm to blur and smooth over the more obnoxious layer of diffuse noise, Grindhouse seems to have left everything exactly as-is, favoring gritty fidelity over plasticine consistency. Fulci's usual affinity for soft-focus, gauzy photography is kept to only specific scenes here, so the film doesn't fall apart on Arrow's release nearly as often as it could have if it were, say, The Psychic. Grindhouse is the real winner in this regard, though sadly, that means you can finally see just how icky the underlying image could be on the raw scan.
Another major improvement over Arrow is in dirt and scratch removal. If fact, you can see small black and white specs on most of these screenshots on the Arrow presentation missing completely from the Grindhouse release. This is the sort of filtering that doesn't stand out, because they've done a fine job of it; an A/B comparison between the source and the finished product is like night and day, but simply watching the Grindhouse disc gives you the impression that the negative was simply clean to begin with. There's still a small level of "sparkle" - small white blobs and minor scratches that dance around from time to time, particularly on sudden movement - but it's never particularly distracting, and may be one of the more impressively naturalistic restorations of a "cheaper" catalog title in recent memory. Anyone expecting a Fulci film from 1981 to look sparkling clean was a fool, anyway.

The largest improvement, however, might just be color grading. The Arrow transfer often leans towards yellow midtones, boosted gamma and a bright, day-lit look, even during scenes that were clearly supposed to be day-for-night shots. The Grindhouse transfer is "darker" broadly speaking, but it's not simply darker as a matter of course; whole scenes have been adjusted separately for a desired "look" that appears to be in line with the Grindhouse 35mm elements we've seen on DVD and various theatrical road-shows over the last decade and a half, and while I don't know for sure if Sergio Salvati had any direct input on those transfers, he did give an interview in Blackest Heart Media's graphic novel adaptation confirming that the opening titles were supposed to be the color of a faded color photograph, not the simplistic black-and-white grading of the initial Arrow Video transfer*, which leaves me to assume that Grindhouse has a far closer idea of what the film is probably "supposed" to look like. I prefer the grading by a wide margin, at the very least, and I can't imagine anyone who sees the shot of David Warbeck walking away from a hospital with its lights on in the middle of the afternoon would assume this is somehow the way the scene is supposed to look.


Okay, so this is the big bug-bear we've got to poke around with harder than expected. As you all know by now, I'm not much of an "audio guy". I can listen to a track and tell you if it's shit, if it's out of sync, if it's been filtered hard, but... I'm not the guy to ask if it's warm or cool. Or if it's within R128 spec. I mean I can probably guess if it's "okay" or "shit", but the finer points after that are so much gobbledygook to me.

...huh. I guess that's what talking to me about video issues must feel like for other people.

Anyway, there's been a lot of discussions, accusations and questions swirling around the "original mono" track. The 5.1 mix is actually not in dispute - it sounds more or less exactly as expected, a higher fidelity copy of the Dolby track from the old Anchor Bay DVD, and that's not a bad thing. As is often the case the 5.1 version has been subjected to a wide range of audio filtering, meaning there's very little hiss, but a certain 'underwater' quality that muffles and warps the sound as a side-effect. This is audio based noise reduction, and is - give or take - the aural equivalent to pasty, smeared left-overs after a video grain removal pass has gone terribly wrong.

I'll also give that 5.1 mix due credit - whoever did the mix paid close attention to the action on screen: The stereo panning at about 00:11:27 on the Grindhouse disc as the camera whips around to show the hotel buzzer slowly centered is perfection, and the scene at 00:09:38 where the contractor is bleeding out on the hotel couch only lets the sounds coming from the off-screen doorway emanate from the left side of the sound field. Most 5.1 mixes of old mono films aren't just pointless, they're actively lazy, letting the dialogue play out as mono and the music play out as stereo, with little attention paid beyond an explosion here or an echo there. Grindhouse's 5.1 mix has always been top notch, and neither Arrow nor Grindhouse have anything to feel ashamed of for it on Blu-ray.

The mono track on the Grindhouse disc, however, has gotten a bit of criticism for "pops" and other distortions in the high-end. Blu-ray.com member Irongod2112 has LISTED several instances, and on my trusty pair of MDR-V600 that's all but fallen apart from years of impure love, I can confirm that they're all here. The audio just sort of 'blips' out on the high end, not a full blown dropout but a distortion that covers much of the soundwave none the less.

Again, this isn't really my ream of expertise, so I'm more than willing to discuss this with anyone who feels they're more qualified to go over why these distortions exist - and how they could have been fixed without temporal digital processing/tedious looping that might not sound much better - I'm all ears.
What I don't agree with, however, is the notion that these are so dramatic that they're worth replacing the disc for. Much like the gritty scanner noise and occasional filmic scars that flow through the video presentation, these pops - while technically fixable, I have no doubt - are merely a broader sign of how little the original mono track has been molested. Minor distortions, especially on the high end, are to be expected of a post-dubbed Italian mix from this era. Remember that phrase I used earlier, "gritty fidelity over plasticine consistency"? That's exactly what we're dealing with on the sound side, as well. The original mono mix has been transferred in the best condition it can without getting a massive, rounded face-lift to remove minor flutters, clicks and inconsistencies that have always marred the masters, prior versions were simply so bereft of their analogue noise that you'd never have noticed before. An ideal spot to compare the mono track to the 5.1 mix might be 00:26:03, as Joe's wife and daughter walk down the silent hallway of the hospital; the mono track may have an omnipresent hiss in the high ends here, but the sound effects of the shoes clapping on the hard floor are notably more distinct as a result - the 5.1 remix may be completely clean of all analogue distortions, but the "thud" of the closing door at the end of the shot is positively hollow by comparison. When it cuts back from the hospital to the inside of the mortuary at 00:27:42, the mono track murmurs with subtle mechanical life, while the heavily filtered remix has been so cautiously scrubbed of hiss that it sounds very sterile.

The difference between them could easily be compared to a smoothed over CD remaster and a vintage vinyl recording. and I, personally, think the option of having both - a carefully restored and active 5.1 mix, as well as an accurate, organic presentation of the legit theatrical mix - is the absolute best case scenario anyone could ask for. One need only compare it to the "restored" mono track on the Arrow Video release - which sounds as clean and filtered as the 5.1 mix, but without any of the added "depth", or whatever proper audiophile terminology I'm looking for, of the "raw" Grindhouse track.

As is often enough the case, the Italian track doesn't sound quite as nice as the English mix - neither the 5.1 mix nor the English mono - coming across as somewhat flat and tinny by comparison, despite being just as full of analogue distortions as its English cousin. If I had to guess I'd say this was the optical track from a vaulted Italian print, while the English track is likely a newly transferred archival master - something magnetic, presumably? In any case, the film was shot primarily with actors speaking English, so unless you speak Italian I can't imagine the track being anything but a brief curiosity.

One other thing to note; the mono mix is fucking LOUD compared to the 5.1 mix, which may in part be why its distortions are so obvious. If I had to guess, I'd say this was down to the 5.1 mix having been made specifically for theatrical distribution using Dolby Digital as a codec, which is typically set to have a dialnorm rating of -27db... or, about 4db softer than a "reference" studio master. For a quick example of how drastically different the volume can be, jump to 00:52:19 as the pipe-cleaner spiders start eating the hapless bastard's face; the high pitched squealing and nails-on-chalkboard screeching are practically toe-curling on the mono track, but have a somewhat muffled quality on the remix by direct comparison.

Whether you want the original mono mix or the 5.1 surround remix, you're getting the best presentation here you could ask for. Much like the video presentation, it's not perfect, but it's damned good.


Afraid I'll leave other reviewers to talk about this; suffice to say the overwhelming majority of the healthy selection of commentaries, interviews, image galleries and trailers from Grindhouse's previous DVD release have made the jump here, which was already several hours worth of content. I'm disappointed that the "full color" version of the original title sequence - hidden on the first disc as one of many, many easter eggs - is the old SD version from the DVD rather than the "raw" scan of the camera negative they showed off on their facebook page a while back, but hey, at least it's there in some form.

Fulci films are always a tough one to do extras for because the somewhat infamously petulant director passed away in 1996, before his work - along with several other prominent Italian directors of the 1970s and 80s who's work was often written off as cheap schlock - would be reappraised by an audience with a greater understanding of the trends, limitations, and unique style that makes the works of directors like Fulci, Martino, Margharetti and Castellari so fascianting to this day, even if most of their works were shrugged off at the time as cheap Hollywood knock-offs. They were, make no mistake, but so many of them - particularly a large number of Fulci's own films - managed to be far more than the sum of their parts. At the time a lot of wounds and rivalries were still fresh, so it took a few years without Fulci for those who knew him best to say anything particularly nice about him. A pity, perhaps, but it's slowly changed in the nearly 20 years since he left this mortal coil, with perhaps the most notable example being the two-part epic PAURA: LUCIO FULCI REMEMBERED, the raw footage of which - I do suspect - makes up a substantial runtime of what we're about to discuss.

It's with this in mind that I'm stunned to find an entire second disc of interviews, which - looking at the runtimes alone - appear to clock in at over 4 hours, with the lion's share of them being recent, HD affairs. Jesus Christ, I don't know if I should laugh or cry! As you can imagine a lot of these interviews have little to do with The Beyond specifically and are more long-form anecdotes about his career, but honestly, if any Fulciphile can sit through this and walk away somehow unsatisfied... shit, I don't even know what to tell you.

I don't usually make a big stink about packaging, but Grindhouse has always produced very handsome presentations and this is certainly no exception. Housed in a clear, Criterion Collection style double case, the set includes a 10 page booklet and a glow-in-the-dark embossed slipcover. The original soundtrack is included in a thin cardboard sleeve, and there's an additional thin bit of cardboard in the slipcase to keep everything from getting crushed in transit. It's one of the nicest packages I've seen in quite some time, and I can only assume later pressings will likely forego the fantastic Fabio Frizzi OST and the slipcase. The former was absolutely a deal-closer for me; with all due respect to the latter, Grindhouse's "original" artwork has always been my least favorite for the film, and I'm just a little sad that we don't get the bizarre American 7 DOORS OF DEATH poster as a reverse-sleeve image. (At least the booklet has the Italian poster art.) But I've always adored Frizzi's score for this, and indeed the rest of the Fulci zombie-themed films that were all expansions of his new theme for the 70s re-release of the original Godzilla.

While I had trouble recommending Grindhouse's Cannibal Holocaust BD to all but the most dedicated fans, this one seems a no-brainer: There's no better presentation out there, and it's full to bursting with bonus content and limited goodies. Highly recommended for fans, even if - like me - you purchased the Grindhouse disc 5 years ago. One could argue that the UK release has its own unique interviews, but Grindhouse interviewed most of the same people anew, so the only real defense for the UK import left was that limited window-box packaging, which has been replaced since by a more expensive steelbook.

Look, I don't know what to think anymore, but this past week or so has been really, really interesting for casual digging...

Loathe as I am to give NeoGaf credit for pretty much goddamn near anything, the jack-booted cesspooldid come up with a clever observation about the as-of-yet unnamed doctor featured heavily in the previews for Hideo Kojima's upcoming I-desperately-hope Magnum Opus METAL GEAR SOLID V: THE PHANTOM PAIN. A game which, despite the behind-the-scenes insanity we've only been seeing snapshots of here and there, I'm still going to continue to hope can deliver on the hype I've felt building since Ground Zeroes came out over a year ago, because if it doesn't, I'm going to be physically unable to feel hype for pretty much anything. I'm getting old, guys. I can only hype for so goddamn long!

What did they find, you ask? Well, they found that whatever doctor introduces Venom Snake back to the land of the living after his supposed 9 year coma looks an awful lot like to apparent real-life neurosurgeon Sergio Canavero, who's been in the world news for the last two years or so over the fact that he claims to be the guy who's cracked the code of one of medical science's biggest check-mates: The Full Body Transplant, which is to say the act of severing a living person's head and transferring it to an entirely new donor body. Go ahead, google his ass - the guy's been talking about it for about two years now, and while we've had some luck (scientifically speaking) connecting animals' severed heads onto new bodies, we've never been able to reconnect the actual nerves, meaning they're literally a Futurama head attached to a limp, worthless flesh jar. But this guy? This guy figured it all out, and swears we'll see a human head transplanted onto a new body within the next few years.

But what about that whole "The Phantom Pain includes his apparently unlicensed likeness" claim - a matter Canavero himself has said he'll have to bring up with his lawyer? What, you don't believe that they're basically identical twins separated in the Super Baby womb?





Sure, sure, the nose is a little different and the real deal has more hollow cheeks, but he looks a heck of a lot more like Canavero than Ian Moore, the actor  Granted, the resemblance alone isn't all that big a coincidence; thin, middle aged, shaven-head men with some silver fox facial hair are a dime a dozen in the world, right? When asked if he had any knowledge of this, Canavero replied to questions - in Italian, mind - by saying "I will notify my attourney. Thanks for the heads up." No confirmation on if he put on a pair of sun glasses and was immediately greeted with a bitchin' guitar riff and a wailing hair metal singer.

Realistically, Kojima probably just saw a a photo of the guy, being Kojima, and told Shinkawa "Hey, draw that head-transplant guy. That'd be cool." Nothing to see here, DLC pass is $35 on top of pre-order bonuses, mobile game integration coming soon. Forget it and chalk it up to a weird coincidence, right?



Well, that's just the thing... it gets so much weirder. The first major paper on the subject he's discussing - namely, a method to attach a still living head onto a donor body - was submitted for publication March 29th, 2013. The title of the research paper is, and I quote, HEAVEN: The Head Anastomasis Venture Project Outline For The First Human Head Transplantation With Spinal Linkage (GEMINI).

Pretty wild, right? What's even wilder is the fact that Hideo Kojima's GDC announcement for Metal Gear Solid V even existing was a mere two days before.



You all remember that, right? When Kojima got on stage as "Joakin Mogren" - an angram of "Kojima NM Ogre" - and removed his own head? Anyone who remembers the "Teaser" building up to this knows how much time and effort Kojima puts into his charming, Puckish little pranks, leading people on and pretending that 'The Phantom Pain' was an original project rather than the "missing link" between the Peace Walker Incident (canon-circa 1974) and the 1995 Outer Heaven Uprising (canon-circa 1995).

But hey, even IF this wasn't mere chance, it probably doesn't mean anything important. In fact, with a core theme of the game being loss and Big Boss himself being short a limb - with poor Kaz short more than that! - he probably read Canavero's 2007 book about neurological disorders as part of his research into the matter, thought Sergio was a pretty cool guy, and couldn't help but slip him in when he wrote the outline. DLC Season Pass is $35, don't let the pre-order hit you on the way out, right?



So who is this guy, really? On September 20th 2014, Dr. Canavero gave a brief explanation of his concept at a Ted x Talk. Pretty cool, right? Well, there's a couple things that only raise further questions; for one, the Ted x Talk is taking place in Cyprus - and there's a map of Cyprus in the "hospital escape" portion of The Phantom Pain, implying it's the same location. Okay, okay, maybe that's just a weird coincidence too... but it's even weirder than the name of this TED x Talk was called "TEDxLimassol". Re-arrange the letters like a mad man with some glue and scizors and what do you get?


Crazy! Or, y'know, it would be if Limassol wasn't the biggest damned city in Cyprus. It is kind of funny that the animated logo that opens the whole thing - white text at the bottom, red text at the top, with two symbols looking a bit like a broken "V" no less! - but presumably Canavero himself didn't make the damned logo, so it's probably just a hilarious, amazing coincidence that some video editor intern picked fonts that match the established Metal Gear Solid V logo design.


What's even crazier is that TEDx Talks typically have a sponsor. For the TEDxLimassol event, the partner was none other than Wargaming, a Cyprus-based video game developer known for World of Tanks, among other decidedly straight-forward military simulators. That's cool and all, but the borderline Sci-Fi medical miracle stuff that Dr. Canavero is up to doesn't really apply to their usual bread and butter. Had this been Square Enix with a plan to tie this guy's research into a Deus Ex themed charity or something, okay, THAT would make sense, but the World of Tanks guys? Just seems a little unexpected.

Oh yeah, totally not a big deal, did I mention that the hospital room from The Phantom Pain that features 'The Doctor' also has a map of Cyprus on the wall? Meaning that if Hideo Kojima was "inserting" the real-life Dr. Canavero into The Phantom Pain, he did so by showing him not only two days before he'd published a new research paper, but predicted the exact locale he would give his TED x Talk in a year and a half before it was scheduled?

I know, right? That's... actually that's starting to make me incredibly uncomfortable.



But the connections only get more absurd from there, as not only is there an actual mad doctor willing to try unproven head-transplant techniques running around - seriously, most of the "legitimate" news stories made about him so far have been quick to point out that most other neurosurgeons working in the field clearly think he's a Human Centipede level maniac - but he's already found a volunteer for the extremely experimental process.

To be more specific, he's found a young man by the name of Valeri Spiridonov, and has expressed clear interest in performing this very expensive and so-far untested surgery on a willing patient.



To be fair, that guy clearly has a severe physical problem, and if you're interested in helping him fly out to meet with Dr. Canavero, you can toss some cash his way on Indie Go Go. He suffers from the muscle-wasting Werdnig-Hoffman Disease, and while he knows there's zero guarantees, he's still willing to risk death to dramatically improve his quality of life. He's a brave soul, and goddamn, I wish him luck.

The only thing that causes me to pause and flex a brow is the fact that Spiridonov's profession is also that of game development, with his resume dating back to about August of 2012... or, roughly when development on Metal Gear Solid V would have been underway? A game that actively needs a staff who speaks fluent Russian due to its heavy focus on the Societ-Afghan conflict of the 1980s? No, that's... I mean that's clearly just yet another bizarre, inexplicable coincidence...

Perhaps just a bit less bizarre are actual texts by the good Doctor himself, which all sound plausible enough, in a I-don't-know-shit-about-neurons sort of way. Most recently, Dr, Canavero has published an updated paper on his procedure - The Gemini Spinal Cord Fusion Protocol: Reloaded - which, admittedly, sounds like the title of the best Chuck Norris movie never made.

He'a also published a book quite recently - "Head Transplantations and the Quest for Immortality". This was followed - very curiously - by the dramatically differently themed "Immortal: Why Consciousness is Not in the Brain", which would... actually seem to contradict some of the tenants of his argument that transplanting a human head on a working body is, itself, a form of immortality.

Again, haven't read the book, but it's not that "Genetic Memory" stuff, is it? Implying that 'memory' exists in DNA itself? Because that... I mean, particularly in the context of Metal Gear, that would be... that... I don't... where to... ugh, fuck it, let's move on.



Alright, neat! We get a couple hundred pages to thumb through over a lazy weekend as you tranq fresh experiment-fodder and toss them into your windowless van... but let's take a quick rundown of those chapters, yes?

Now I admit, I haven't read the book. Real life surprises are currently curb-stomping my bank account, so spending $60 on a hunch ain't happening right now. But thumbing through what little exists for free, the jist I'm getting from it is that once head transplants are viable, the second step is to clone fresh, inert bodies - "slugs", to borrow terminology from The Venture Bros. - and use them as home grown organ donors. That's the idea, right? If someone actually spent money on these things and can correct me - or even add to the crazy - I am all ears.

The thing is, you can use stem cells to re-create most organs without needing to go through the whole song and dance with making a clone, and even if you could, to the best of my knowledge we haven't actually figured out how to manipulate genes to artificially age a clone body. You'd basically be making a baby back-up, waiting 20 or 30 years, and then decapitating it. Say what you will about the ethics and legality of a full body transplant, but there's no way cloning in conjunction with this shit would be remotely LEGAL. I know he's a scientists and scientists write crazy "what if?" papers all the time, but this is so far outside the realm of sanity that... well, it really does sound like modern day Frankenstein level shit.


Even if it is all legit research and theorizing, is it not strange that he'd write a book about cloning yourself to make numerous "backups" and then write another book, published just two weeks earlier, suggesting that the consciousness is not stored in the human brain? Wouldn't these two works not completely contradict each other, despite being published at virtually the same time? Granted I'm extrapolating a lot here, and I don't have the cash to be buying books on a tinfoil-hat level theory to find out for myself, but... I'unno, guys. Pumping two books focusing on those related but contradictory themes at the exact same time seems a bit much to be mere coincidence...

Which is why the references to "Heaven", "Frontiers", and "Gemini" are all a head-scratcher. Metal Gear Solid introduced the idea of gene manipulation to initiate premature aging in MGS2: The Sons of Liberty, and even introduced the idea of (effectively) a full body transplant for the final scene of MGS4: Guns of the Patriots. It's also intensely curious that "Gemini" and "Clone" would be repeated themes in the work of Dr. Canavero, as the two most prominent characters in Metal Gear Solid are none other than Solid Snake and Liquid Snake - "Gemini" themselves, and both slightly imperfect clones of Big Boss himself.

"Heaven" and "Frontiers" are instant red flags as well, as MGS: Peace Walker introduced Big Boss'Militaires Sans Frontieres ("Army Without Borders") group in a fictional Costa Rica circa 1974, and the fortified South African military city-state the original 8-bit Metal Gear takes place in was known as Outer Heaven, a name later resurrected by Ocelot in MGS4, as well. To be fair, both Peace Walker and Portable Ops inevitably refer to Big Boss' army as 'Outer Heaven' - directly or otherwise - but man, if there's one thing Metal Gear loves, it's a good retcon!


So let's get real for a second here. There's basically three possibilities here, none of them completely outside the realm of possibility;

1)  Dr. Sergio Canavero is an actual neuroscientist who, through no fault of his own, may have inspired one of the world's most beloved video game directors - and may simply be pulling naming conventions and locations for his ground-breaking work as a matter of sheer coincidence. It's not impossible, no, but it'd be DAMNED difficult to hand-waive the bizarre and, frankly, inexplicable connections to various game developers.

2) Dr. Sergio Canavero is an actual neuroscientist who, for reasons that are not yet clear, is working with Konami Entertainment and/or Hideo Kojima to take the whole fucking world on an epic practical joke that - assuming he IS a legitimate medical voice - would completely shatter his credibility for the rest of his career. This is the most obvious answer to this set of crazy circumstances, but it requires a level of suspension of disbelief I'm having a bit of trouble swallowing, as somebody by the same name published a very real book on the phenomena of Phantom Pain back in 2007.

3) Dr. Sergio Canavero is just an actor who's otherwise performing the same role as the second option, punking the entire medical world just to sell a game to an audience on the premise of a modern miracle being total bullshit. It's possible that Sergio Canavero was a legitimate neuroscientist, and this person is actually just an impostor... which would be particularly interesting, considering one of the

You might think 2 and especially 3 are completely insane, but... let's talk about Hideo Kojima for a second. I, like most people, only skimmed the interactive novella included in MGS2 - In the Darkness of Shadow Moses: The Unofficial Truth, which is literally an entire account of the original game as written by Natasha Romaneko. Konami paid someone to write an entire paranoia-fueled and partially inaccurate summary of their original game, complete with references to fake New York Times articles, just to sell the idea that the world of MGS2 was our own, complete with sleazy best sellers leaking half-truths from every page.



You may also remember that the final twist in MGS2 was the fact that the list of "The Patriots" turned out to be a ruse itself; the names were true, but the members themselves were long dead, simply people who had taken the preservation of their nation and culture seriously enough that their works and methodology was later converted into an AI system that would represent their combined will.

You may also remember that the whole fucking point of MGS2 - from a narrative point of view, rather than a thematic one - is the revelation of the "S3 Plan". Without delving too deeply, the short version of the S3 Plan was that it was an experiment to measure how easily the public's perception of 'the truth' could be manipulated by the media. This is the core narrative twist of the game - yes, it "means" something else entirely via the magic of context and post-modernism, but it's still a concept he's clearly thought a lot about.

With that firmly in mind, it presents a possible fourth option:

4) Sergio Canavero was a legitimate neurosurgeon, and for reasons yet unknown, a third party - like, say, an actor working with Kojima - has taken his identity and is carrying out mad science in his name.



At this point, Hideo Kojima is doing one of two things: He's either engineering a massive lie so over the top the mainstream media is blissfully unaware of the viral marketing campaign they're covering as scientific breakthrough, or Kojima's insanity has become so omnipotent that it's causing ripples of crazy to spill out into the real world. There's no other options, and honestly, the latter is such a terrifying thought I'm going to hope it's the former.

The bigger question is would Konami really go through with all of this? Admitting a "New Metal Gear" is in the works, implicitly without Hideo Kojima? Silencing his social media presence, and restricting every piece of public communication since his demotion to a contracted designer to a single pre-recorded release date announcement? Risking the standing of their stock, and their already shaky reputation with one of the most dedicated fanbases in the entire industry? I could see Kojima masterminding this elaborate head-transplant as a ruse, but I can't see his corporate buddies being too keen on it... which, in turn, leaves me to wonder that IF this was a stunt he'd orchestrated, if it's what got him canned in the first place?



Think about it. None of this bizarre shit even came to light until after Kojima was quietly given the boot from the VP position in March, but by God, are they taking his "No Media Presence" gag-order seriously. Despite Hideo Kojima having won a combined three Famitsu Awards  - one for Ground Zeroes, another for P.T., and a sort of lifetime achievement award for the 1998 Metal Gear Solid - neither he, nor any representatives from Konami were present at the event to take the awards. Again, if this is all real, that's fucking harsh. Famitsu remains THE video game review publication for Japanese audiences, and Konami has seen it fit to let him go twice before - once in 2005 for MGS3: Subsistence, and again in 2011 for MGS: Peace Walker. Had Kojima been allowed to release a video statement with the expected "I'm hard at work on Phantom Pain, but thanks guys!" sort of fluff I wouldn't think twice about it, but not allowing anyone from Konami to show up and grovel for all the honoru bestowed upon them is, quite frankly, a little weird to see from a Japanese corporation. Either Kojima's really in the dog house double, or... or what, I wonder?

Let's assume Canavero is really a puppet of The Patriots Kojima. Is Konami really publicly humiliating him by denying him entry to the Famitsu Awards only to make the Canavero stuff seem that much more legit? If they caught wind of Kojima telling his comrades to start actual charity fraud and his "actors" threatened to sue Konami, wouldn't there be some carefully worded but clearly very butt-hurt statement released hours later, as was the case with Kojima's apparent firing? The behavior of Konami isn't just erratic in the face of controversy, at this point it's positively insane!

Just to spite anything resembling clarity, Kojima - who's seemingly been granted very limited access to his English and Japanese twitter accounts - showed this photo, only to take the image off his feed an hour or two later:



In any case, Canavero's official response - in a phone call to Kotaku, which I'll let you find for yourself, because Gawker and its subsidiaries can get fucked as far as I'm concerned - has been that he plans to sue Konami and use the money for his HEAVEN research. Oddly he couldn't be reached at his work in Turin, but he was available on Skype, where he insisted he'd be on Italian television soon to talk about the Japanese corporation primed to make a fortune based on his research.

He obviously doesn't have much of a case - like I said, bald white guys in scrubs aren't exactly a unique commodity in the modern world, and this could likely be waved aside as parody  - but if that really is the final blow to this story, I'm okay with it. Real life emulates video games emulating 1984 emulating what they thought future technology would be at the time? Beautiful.

If, however, this turns out to be something more... well, goddamn, Kojima. The ruse cruise hasn't even pulled into the port, and we're all still on board. If he just played not only Metal Gear fans but medical science itself like a damn fiddle, I say Kojima's officially surpassed trolling from an artform into pure cosmic energy.

...oh, what's that? The guy who got a hold of Canavero for Kotaku has a "big reveal" to share with the world? Fuck it. I'll let you guys figure out the answers to these burning questions on your own.

Before I get to my main point, it's worth noting that Discotek Media is releasing Yoshiaki KAWAJIRI's 2000 film, VAMPIRE HUNTER D: BLOODLUST, on bilingual DVD and Blu-ray sometime later this year. I have only three words, to be honest: About, fucking, time. The R1 DVD has some truly deplorable compression issues that are impossible to ignore, and while I won't claim that there isn't some sensible argument to be made for the English version being the "original" dialogue track in this case, the Japanese dub is far superior in this instance, and as a fan of Kawajiri the thought of not at least having the option to watch one of his films in Japanese seems weird, at the very least. So yes, put me down as someone excited to finally replace the 15 year old Urban Vision DVD I can't tell you how long I waited to get my grubby mitts on, so long ago...

Which is surprising since, to be honest, I don't even like the movie much.

Don't get me wrong, I have an immense level of respect for the technical skill that went into its creation, and having been a film I got to follow the long, somewhat murky production behind I find the circumstances that birthed it to be worth the subject of their own documentary alone. At the same time, I'm a firm believer that this is one of Kawajiri's single weakest films*, because while Yoshiaki "The Ninja Scroll Guy" Kawajiri is an exceptional talent in terms of distinctly Japanese aestheticism and stretching sparse, sometimes downright minimalist techniques into larger than life epics, he's also a surprisingly good film maker in a broader, more general sense. His films often have a great sense of pacing and escalation, heroes and villains "read" instantly by body language, music powers action scenes as much as the visuals behind them and common, dreary settings turn nightmarish in the blink of an eye with equal parts John Carpenter and Dario Argento, staging the end of the world as a synth-powered candy colored apocalypse and copious non-consensual couplings, time and time again.

* Let's be honest, no matter how you slice this one it's a toss-up between this and his HIGHLANDER feature. That was cheaply animated, shockingly stupid stupid and an utter waste of a great premise - HIGHLANDER 3000 - as the fantastic and exciting opening scene suggests... but at least that felt like a single, cohesive story. It's far less ambitious and far less interesting to look at, but goddamn it, at least it's a real movie and not a feature-length demo reel!

And what is Bloodlust, exactly? It's a big, ugly, confused mess. The pacing is a mess, it switches genres every reel, the morally gray cast isn't interesting enough for their philosophies to say much of anything, "D" is basically a footnote in his own movie,  the villainess feels tacked on because she is, the most iconic set pieces were lifted verbatim from Coppola, I could go on for days here... it's just not a very good movie no matter how I slice it. It takes too long to setup the central conflict, and once it does there's no sense of urgency, no real threat beyond a bunch of characters you don't care threatening to kill other characters we feel equally nothing for. The only other feature length anime I can think of that's a bigger, bolder and ultimately even dumber mess is Steamboy, but even that I can more readily forgive, since by the time I'd seen it the whole world had shat so thoroughly on it I expected it to be 125 minutes of Adolf Hitler sneering at the viewer or something,

Bloodlust is a collection of really cool stand-alone scenes that, in no way, add up to a competent or interesting movie. But goddamn, it's still some of the most meticulously produced masturbatory animation I've ever had the pleasure of drooling over. If you ever wanted a traditionally animated demo disc, this is one of the best titles you could whip out as background noise.

So far, Discotek has done some fantastic BD releases, so I'm not especially worried about this one. Take note, however, that it appears the Samurai Pizza Cats (English version) is going to get an "SD Blu-ray" release, effectively the DVD MPEG video files plopped onto a single disc instead of a chunky DVD set. I... guess that's fair enough for a show with no proper film materials to go back to, but it sets a troubling precedent. After Viz (and Toei's!) general fucking around with Sailor Moon, proving that upscaled garbage really is "good enough" in 2015 for vintage anime, I honestly don't know what to expect anymore...


But Bloodlust is the footnote here. For those unaware, when I was about 8 years old, my father - whom I hadn't lived with in some time - found a VHS of something he'd recorded he wanted to show me. He had meant to record Heavy Metal, but got the time it started wrong and wound up getting to "Adult Japanese Cartoons" by mistake, but he figured I'd like them all the same.

One of them was Vampire Hunter D. The other was Robot Carnival. To say these two films had a profound effect on me would be an understatement, and have largely led me down the road of the socially awkward codec-obsessed goony-beard sociopath you see before you today. Mind you, my father also watched Creepshow, The Toxic Avenger and The Rocky Horror Picture Show with me when I was far younger than that, so... yep, that's actually starting to explain a lot of things in hindsight.

Here's what little we know: Sentai Filmworks, one of many shell companies that formed after AD Vision had to scatter its ashes to the heartless sea to avoid Japanese parent companies leverating unpaid promises against it, is going to release the original 1985 OVA on Blu-ray come August 25th. They've promised - and I quote - that the feature has been "remastered in High Definition from the original elements". Word on the street (unconfirmed as it may be) is that they're likely using the same master as Italian distributor Yamato Video, who released - by far - the best looking 1.33:1 OAR transfer of the film I've ever seen... even if it isn't exactly perfect. And it dawned on me that despite having posted a few caps of Doris in the shower as a bit of a joke, I never did do a proper comparison between it and its most obvious competition for Best VHD85 DVD Ever.

That said, the Italian DVD was released in 2003. Odds of them doing an expensive HD remaster seem a bit slim to me, and even if they had, it's uncertain how high quality an HD master from so long ago will look under the microscope today. It's entirely possible that what Sentai Filmworks is trying to say is that they've done a new transfer from whatever 35mm elements Yamato Video themselves have in storage, but without further confirmation, your guess is as good as mine. The lack of PAL speedup and superior compression alone would make a Blu-ray appealing, even if it were a crap upscale... but let's not even entertain that thought too loudly. I've been hurt too many times as of late.

There is, of course, one other fascinating DVD release of Vampire Hunter D floating around Europe. German distributor OVA Films made their own restored version back in 2004, and it's... frustrating. Deeply, intensely frustrating. I could explain why, but it would be far easier just to show you. Since any my prior plans on this matter are now completely irrelevant - I'm a different man with a different path than I was 5 years ago, crazy as that is to realize now - I'm going to dump a handful of comparisons so those curious can simply judge for themselves which of the PAL masters they prefer. Sadly, both the Sony Japan and Urban Vision USA DVDs aren't worth the plastic they were pressed on, so I'll ignore them for the time being...






























































As you can see, the OVA Films 16:9 transfer consistently has a bit more info on the left side of the frame than Yamato Video's 4:3 transfer, but the Yamato Video has substantially more info on the top and bottom. Do note, however, that you can regularly see the inside frame of the camera in the bottom-right of the Yamato print, suggesting that their telecine is "off" somewhat in terms of framing; there's probably a bit more headroom on whatever 35mm print they were given access to, and I'll be damned if I believe the Italian transfer was pin-registered, meaning that getting a consistent, stable scan was likely low on the list of priorities being checked off in whatever lab they brought it to. And hey, let's face it, we've covered how less-than-perfect Italian film labs can be at the Kentai Blog more than once... that's not to say they did a terrible job, particularly for the time, just that I wonder what could be done today that wasn't in 2003.

Having recently re-watched the two of these transfers for this comparison, I can say that while the Italian Yamato Video version is (almost) framed correctly, the cinematic blocking has always been a touch claustrophobic. As you can see the German OVA Films transfer may be consistently center-cropped, but... good lord, is it a mess. Look at the moon, missing both the top and bottom of the fucking sphere. Look at that horse-drawn carriage being cut cleanly in half, despite being the focus of the shot. Look at Doris' chin just disappearing as she spits out a curse in one of the most dramatic bits of spite in the picture, or even the first shot of the film showing Count Lee's castle raising up from seemingly nothing; everything just looks off, and that's because this film was never designed to be shown this way. Reframing 1.33 to 1.78 is no less destructive to image composition that the inverse, and while I can forgive a carefully weighted crop as much as the next guy, this was a set it and forget it affair; if they had taken the time and effort to do a proper "tilt-and-scan" transfer and stretch certain shots (such as the moon) to preserve the frame maybe, MAYBE this could have worked... but, ultimately the OVA Films master simply is what it is.

Don't get me wrong, some scenes look perfectly fine matted to 16:9 - some of the sweeping landscapes arguably look better, and yes this is how a theoretical 35mm showing would have looked if Sony Music Entertainment had ever made good on their promise to push a wider release - but in much the same way that director Toyoo ASHIDA's iconic Fist of the North Star movie has never looked correct matter beyond the full 1.33:1 frame, neither has his earlier Vampire Hunter D. This was technically produced for the home video market anyway, so while I'd be willing to accept that director Ashida paid lip-service to the idea that a theatrical version would be matted, it's clearly not something he himself ever actually accounted for, and if so there's no reason to distort the image any more than it has to be.

It's truly a shame, since the German transfer is otherwise superior in pretty much every way. The Italian version regularly has small bits of debris clinging to the print, the the OVA Films transfer has a much more natural level of film grain, compared to the sludgy and temporally filtered Yamato master. Compression is also better on the German release, though as you can imagine both are pretty underwhelming in the age of Blu-ray with high-bitrate AVC producing some of the most film-like images humanly possible at reasonable file sizes. Flesh tones and blue daylit skies consistently look more natural on OVA Films' transfer as well, though if the German color grading had one major flaw it wouldn't be the slightly boosted by comparison contrast, it would be the curiously green tinged shadows. Darkness plays a very important role in the art design here, and while I can't say the OVA Films version is "wrong", it's not inaccurate to say that pushing darker images towards blue is typically the 'natural' way to create shadows during color grading. I have no doubt that the low end could have been shifted away from green while keeping flesh tones close to their current state, but again, the OVA Films DVD is over a decade old now. The fact that it's held up for this long as well as it has is actually pretty impressive.

To be fair to Yamato Video, the transfer only looks especially "dark" in direct comparison: Full screen those caps and you'll find a natural, healthy level of contrast that simply adheres to the film's overall aesthetics and production methods of the time. OVA Films' flesh tones are glowing by comparison, but having at one point been so used to the painfully ugly Urban Vision DVD, I can't say either grade grinds my gears all that hard. The OVA Films transfer looks "brighter", but its more natural appearance is largely down to the midrange grade rather than the boosted contrast; I'm not too fussed about the boosting myself, but once you've seen it, it's a little hard to ignore it on daylight scenes.

It's also worth noting that neither transfer seems to have tried to account for the numerous inconsistencies already present on the negative. Optical shots - such as D's arm regenerating its own flesh after he fights off the Jaguar Boy in the basement of the castle - have always been either too dark or too bright, depending on how they were exposed, and neither transfer seems to have put much effort into getting any major consistency between flubs or limitations in the lighting. Having done it myself for a professional DVD release (using far, far worse materials than this) I can promise you that it can be done, but it's tedious, painstaking work, and if you're charging by the hour, no independent studio is going to throw down a fortune for it. Pity, since while I have some hopes that Sentai's transfer will be the best yet, I have little faith that any of the original inconsistencies will be fixed in the process.

A far harder to spot oddity is the presence of film grain - more specifically, the consistency thereof. The Yamato DVD doesn't appear to have much in the way of overt grain scrubbing, since once or twice a second the film has a properly defined grain structure; more likely their compression method was simply crap and leaned towards smoothing "noise", which means that the I-frames are all nice and crisp, while everything between them has a gross, diffuse macroblocking pattern over them. How obvious (and annoying) this will be depends on how obvious MPEG funkiness is to the individual viewer; I'd be willing to bet 3 out of 4 viewers would never second guess why backgrounds "pulse" from sharp to soft, but it drives me bananas. The OVA Films transfer is still limited by the simple realities of PAL MPEG-2 streams on a 9 gig disc, but the overall consistency is substantially higher, leaving the film with a fairly natural, high quality coating of 35mm grain from start to finish.

If only the OVA Films transfer wasn't fucking matted, I wouldn't need a Blu-ray half as badly as I do...


There is one more bit of surprise news about Sentai Filmworks' re-release, though... and man, is it a shock to the system for me. They're including a brand new English dub, and the Streamline Pictures version of the film I've known and loved for over 20 years will not be included.

Look, you guys know me by now. You know that I'm a firm believer that while dubs can, in and of themselves, be a polished and - at times - even worthwhile production in their own right, film is a medium of culture. In a sense I could see the argument that the English "reversions" of titles like Godzilla: King of the Monsters or Shogun Assassins are essentially uniquely American films, cobbled together from the fever-dream level scraps of misunderstood Japanese pop-culture of the time. I can even see the good in dubs for giving audiences who may never have had access to these films otherwise a chance to revel in the shared consciousness of film that envelops the entire world in different, fascinating ways.

Not all Hollywood films are the same, obviously, but English is the language of Hollywood, and it doesn't matter if you're talking Cecil B. DeMille or John Waters, dubbing a film changes its presentation away from the way it was meant to be consumed. Subtitles are no substitute for a native understanding of the language, no, but they're a far closer emulation to getting to experience the film as it was created than a dub could ever be. I won't bother arguing over the notion that Patrick Steward's presence in Ghibli dubs makes the films better; Patrick Steward makes EVERYTHING better, and I'll not hear anyone argue otherwise. But that still doesn't mean I'm not lunging for the language menu on my Nausicaa Blu-ray to play the damned thing in its original audio. Why wouldn't I? It's a friggin' Japanese movie, made by a Japanese crew, for a Japanese audience. I'd be confused if it wasn't in Japanese. I'd no sooner watch Nausicaa dubbed in English than I would Tiger Mask dubbed in Italian, or Urotsukidoji dubbed in Cantonese - and yes, I'm using these examples because I've done all three, because they happened to be the versions available to me at the time.

"But what about Roger Ebert?" some of you are probably thinking. "He said ALL cartoons are dubbed, so it shouldn't matter!" I've given Roger a lot of shit for the way he treated a wide swath of genre films I myself am quite fond of, and in hindsight I've given him a lot more hell than he ever deserved; Ebert was a smart, sincere guy who's personal taste happened to not sit where mine did, and there's nothing wrong with that. But arguing dubbing doesn't matter, just because the audio is syncronized in post?  Utter horse shit!  Did the booming, terror-inducing casting of James Earl Jones not matter in Star Wars, just because he was dubbed in later? Do the over the top performances of Mark Hammil and Tim Curry not matter in their cartoon voice overs, despite them being - by far - more varied and fascinating than anything they've ever done with the rest of their body? Hell, if dubbing doesn't matter for animated films, does that mean everything Walt Disney ever made would be improved by replacing the entire cast with a drunken Dave Chapelle? I understand he was trying to come up with a "Gotcha!" argument for everyone whinging about the Ghibli dubs they thought would be poorly produced and as awkward as previous attempts, but the argument is so wrong-hearted that it always makes me just a little sick. The cast is important in any film, even if they're just voices coming out of cheap looped mouth-flaps. Hell, both Bob's Burgers and Archer are fantastic comedies, and the only reason they work is because of the exceptionally talented staff behind the mics giving limited animation


It's with that in mind you may be surprised - confused, even? - to find that I'm... a little upset about the Streamline dub's inclusion. The dub isn't even particularly good - it's, okay, for the era, but it's nowhere near as presentable or even polished as the English dubs for Wicked City, Robot Carnival or Golgo 13: The Professional, and the combination of smarmy one-liners and even blatant mistranslations - such as the now infamous "dunpeal" - make the dub just a big enough mess that it's literally difficult to understand certain plot points if you already know a lot about Slavic horror mythology.

Credit where it's due, Michael McConnohie's D (serving double-duty as his own left hand) and Barbara Goodson as Doris aren't half bad, but the fake old country accents for the vampires was a poor, cheesy direction to go on. I can appreciate the smarmy snark Kerrigan Mahan put into "Reigansay", I'm not convinced it really works. The script itself is unexceptional, only occasionally cringe-inducing, and sits comfortably in the middle of primitive "adult" attempts at dubbing anime from the very start of Streamline's rise to power of presenting anime as imported cultural commodities, rather than a cheap slot-filler for syndication and possibly simplified toy marketing. It's simply a product of its time.

So why would I care either way? Because that English dub is as much a part of its cultural footprint in America as anything else about it. In the same way that the AIP dubs for numerous Godzilla films became the defacto presentation Americans would recognize for an entire generation, and anyone who's not revising an old friend they saw on the Sci-Fi Channel's Saturday Anime is probably interested in it from a historical perspective - at which point they'll presumably just watch the damned thing in Japanese anyway! Dubbing a 30+ year old cultural artifact just doesn't make a lot of sense, and as Discotek Media has proven, those who have an affinity for vintage Japanese animation are more forgiving than those who's tastes run just a bit more modern.

It's with all of this in mind that I can only assume that the Japanese end who control the rights - Sony, if I'm not mistaken - probably don't want the Streamline dub included for one reason or another. To make a long story short, MGM now technically owns all of Orion Home Pictures, who - in turn - technically own Streamline Pictures. A very similar chain of technicalities has prevented Toho from using those classic AIP dubs of Godzilla, not because there would be legal trouble, but because there could be, and God help you trying to convince a middle aged Japanese salaryman you know more about international copyright law than his co-workers who said it could be an issue do.

It's also entirely possible that someone on the Japanese end, someone important like a producer, simply hates the English dub. That he dislikes the casting or thinks that Americans won't like it for some reason. But as most Japanese don't speak English to begin with - and as such their opinion on dubs is usually somewhere in the ballpark of "Wow, it sounds like a real Hollywood movie. Neat!" - I have my doubts this is anything but paranoia that a series of company mergers has someone high up in the food chain nervous that, somehow, MGM would sue them for allowing "their" content to be released on video literally 20 years after whatever contracts MGM once technically inherited had already lapsed.


About the only time I can picture vintage English dubs being a legal issue are those rare instances where the crew behind them got a little too creative for their own good. One frustrating example is the Manga UK dub of Space Adventure Cobra, in which the original enka soundtrack was replaced with a soundtrack by Swiss synth-pop group Yello, who's best known work is the "Ooooh Yeaaaah" song featured in Ferris Beller's Day Off. Instances like this, frustrating as they are, at least make a degree of sense - these were often done when contact between Japan and the rest of the world was done either by fax or by phone, and back then you could simply fudge the details confident that they couldn't google-translate the eMail into something comprehensible enough that they'd stomp down your awesome in with Yello's manager. There's also the occasional and unexpected issue - such as some old dubs having been recorded at PAL speed which make releasing them on modern equipment at 24 frames per second impossible without making the actors sound... well, "weird", if nothing else. I don't know for sure if this is why we got two separate dubs of Ghost in the Shell 2: Innocence, but if I had to guess, it's the only reason that makes any real sense.

Now that said, I can at least understand Sentai's desire here. Vampire Hunter D is a bonafide classic, one of the emergent OVAs testing the waters for a contemporary young-adult market for science fiction and fantasy animation that would eventually spiral into the sprawling and unpredictable otaku culture we have today. It may not be as big and flashy as some of its contemporaries, but the fusion of brisk spaghetti western storytelling and Hammer Films inspired gothic aesthetic were moulded into a perfectly tense, vibrantly unique film that feels just a little too mean to be for kids, a little too dumb to be for adults, and a little too smart for anyone who's already looking down their nose at being anything in between. It's a time capsule that's as fun and charming as it ever has been, and while the original Japanese version is absolutely the version that should be given priority... well, shit. This may be the first custom BD I've made in well over a year.

Rest assured I'll pick up the Blu-ray, match the above screenshots and give my thoughs on the matter. But knowing that the Streamline dub isn't just not included, but will never be available again makes a very small, strange part of myself very sad. For the first time, I almost understand why some people are so willing to watch Robotech: The Macross Saga when they have a perfectly good copy of Super Dimensional Fortress Macross sitting right there...

...oh my fucking God, what just happened?! What did I say?! WHO AM I?!


It's official, friends. I've lived long enough on this very corner of the web to see myself become the dub-saving villain. In this gloriously bleak moment I feel nothing but disgust and disdain for my own capacity to feel things - namely love, nostalgia, and whatever that realization is when you realize you're hitting on a girl and you aren't sure if she's old enough to drink yet, but you really hope she is, because she ain't giving you the time of day sober. Wait,  is there a word for that? I bet German has a word for it...

Come back next time when I talk about, fuck it. I'unno. The preservation of VCD, or a review of the Cannibal Ferox LP or something no less disgustingly autistic. I know I have tickets to see Mad Max: Fury Road in the morning, but I guess shots to wash the taste of childhood memories out of my conscious mind are the way tonight's going to go regardless.

Make no mistake, MAD MAX: FURY ROAD is fucking great. As a raw, unfiltered, pure car-chase centric action film it ranks among the best ever made. As George Miller's three-decades in waiting return to form, it's the absolutely breathtaking final form of the Ozploitation road movie... And yet, somehow, it's a little strange that I'm left with no conclusion other than "it might have been slightly better if Mad Max wasn't even in it".

That's not to trash on the film. I love it. But there's so many niggling little questions I have that I'd rather talk about the stuff that bugs me than talk about the good stuff. Because, frankly, if I were to do that I'd just be doing this, anyway:


At this point there's not much to be said about George Miller's original Mel Gibson trilogy that hasn't already been said. The 1979 original Mad Max is a likable enough slice of pre-apocalyptic mayhem in which Mel Gibson takes on a roving biker gang that gets too close to their anarchistic ways, and loses everything in the process. The final scene in the original is as nasty as it's ever been, and the entire scene involving the ultimate tragedy that befalls him is positively gut-wrenching to watch, knowing it's already over and being forced to watch a man see that everything's been taken from him. Produced for $350,000 with actual Hells Angels performing the stunts (and being paid with beer!), the film was such a massive success that it was the single largest budget-to-box-office ratio until being dethroned about 25 years later by The Blair Witch Project.



The franchise pièce de résistance, however, is the 1981 sequel Mad Max 2 - released in the US as The Road Warrior, probably just so Warner could spite AIP by not having to acknowledge their copyrights in North America. While the first film had already been inspired by 1970s post-apocalyptic films like A Boy and his Dog and The Omega Man, the sequel to a movie about law and order breaking down took cold war paranoia to its logical conclusion, giving Max a life wandering through a grim, wild world in which a man could get run down for a shotgun shell or a tank of "guzzoline".  Few other action films have been as influential, despite this film itself being largely a nod to Spaghetti Westerns of the 1960s, coming full circle as Indians and Mexicans are transformed into rag-wearing maniacs and muscle-bound and deformed BDSM punks. The film is bigger, louder, and meaner than its predecessor, and does a fine job standing on its own two feet as a unique story with only hints of who "Max" really is. And it works beautifully as a result.

The franchise was such a phenomenon that international distributor for the sequel, Warner Brothers, decide to up the scale and produce a Hollywood style third picture shortly after The Road Warrior. Unfortunately, Miller's long time friend and producer - Byron Kennedy - died during pre-production, which pushed the schedule back signifigantly, to the point where Miller himself only shot the film's big action sequences, leaving the B-unit to fill in the dramatic beats on their own. The final result is Mad Max: Beyond Thunderdome, a film that's simultaneously bigger and emptier than The Road Warrior in every way. The first 30 minutes are a visual treat - Max wandering into an oasis city lit only in high contrast nightmares, getting in a fight in a gladiatorial blood sport, and refusing to finish off his enemy... and then, without warning, we see him tied to a horse with an oversized papier-mâché Mardi Gras head and he's saved by a bunch of naked kids out in the desert, who he then decides to protect when he realizes how out of their depths against the remnants of the modern world they are. Apparently this was originally written as a riff on Lord of the Flies, and it shows; I wouldn't fault anyone for falling in love with the post-nuke absurdity of Tina Turner in a hunred-pound chainmail cocktail dress and a foot-tall blonde wig, but I just feel nothing for it after the 30 minute mark... then again, I haven't tried to re-watch it in a decade and a half. Maybe a refresher is in order.



It's worth noting that while George Miller's actual franchise has laid inert for many years, it was also responsible for dozens of imitators, knock-offs and even films that took only the elements they liked and layered everything else on from there (see my own beloved Fist of the North Star). It's also the series that launched Mel Gibson's career, giving an almost accidental movie star fame and fortune, giving him free reign until he made the greatest snuff film of all time, said some shit about the Jews, and now merely shows up as smarmy cameos in Robert Rodriguez parodies and movies involving puppets and mental illness. I know the whole world has had fun shitting all over Gibson - myself included - but no matter how shitty he was to his ex-wife or how much he's basically just /pol/ incarnate, I can never hate what he did in these three films. Hell, even with everything else in Thunderdome going goddamn haywire around him, he's still just... Max.

And that's where - despite the overwhelmingly positive reaction that Fury Road has (rightly) been given, being the second highest rated action film of all time on Rotten Tomatoes, second only to... Oh come on, you have to be kidding! - I think a lot of the film's few naysayers are getting their nostalgic panties in a twist on principle more than anything. For better or worse, the hero we're introduced to at the opening of Fury Road calls himself Max, a cop, hell he even drops the term "Road Warrior" to draw all the connections humanly possible... and yet, the character Tom Hardy plays isn't Mel Gibson's Max Rockatansky. He can't be. Not if continuity matters, at least.

While it's true that George Miller has played fast and loose with continuity in this franchise, he made damn sure that Gibson wore a contact lens with a dilated pupil in both the last third of Road Warrior and all of Thunderdome to remind viewers of how hard he ate shit when his Interceptor was finally totaled. Gibson's urge to be a man of action may have left it less obvious at times, but the Mad Max of the 1980s sequels walks with a limp. He's also gone gray in the temples despite Gibson himself only being about 25 years old when they shot Road Warrior. Hardy is actually 37 - over a decade older than Gibson ever was when playing the character - but he's such an overpowering presence he looks younger than Gibson's gimped, wandering shell of a man. Probably the most confusing angle here is that the opening of Fury Road shows Max driving his Interceptor, which as I've just pointed out, got totaled in The Road Warrior... but he loses it in the opening here, so it can't be a prequel, either!

Tom Hardy shares the jacket, gun and leg brace of Rockatansky, but his own tragic tale - shown to be long after the fall of civilization, and involving an 8 years old or so girl who calls him "Papa" and an old black man who claims he 'let him die' - speak to a tale of sadness that in no way lines up with the original Mad Max, or even the bloody misfortunes that follow in The Road Warrior. In effect, Tom Hardy is playing an entirely new character - a funnier, more smarmy one at that... who happens to have a five-second rapid-fire montage of footage from the original three movies.



In short, Tom Hardy is Mad Max... if only in a non-literal, mythological reinterpretation sort of way. He's got the iconic gear, the silent demeanor, the Man With No Name vibe behind all of his decisions... but he isn't quite Mel Gibson's character. This is best explained as being a pseudo-sequel, the same way that Superman Returns is clearly supposed to take place after Richard Donner's two Superman films but doesn't ever quite line up in a way that really makes sense. The more regularly assumed comparison is James Bond who's played by a new actor every decade or so, but in both cases these "sequels" are being made by an entirely new staff, with only the broadest connections being maintained for marketing purposes. George Miller is the only guy to ever make a Mad Max movie, so if he says that Tom Hardy's Max is the same Max, I can still look at him cock-eyed and call him a liar... but, he's right by default. It's his character, and as much as I love trying to twist the wires of continuity until everything clicks into place, this is one of those cases where it just isn't going to work.

George Miller's fucking with you, people old enough to have remembered when any of the original films came out. If you can accept that Mad Max is a concept - a mythological character to be interpreted however the era needs him, not unlike a superhero who's origin changes every decade or two - then you can probably just shrug off whatever baggage Gibson's presence brings to the table. What's far more galling, though, is the fact that... well, I know you can argue that this was true of all the prior films, this is by far the Mad Max film with the least input by the guy named "Max".

See, Max plays the narrator in the opening, and as the audience we're introduced to the War Dogs and their oasis-town of The Citadel through his own blinkered and at times terrified point of view. From there, the film slowly drifts away from Max himself, exploring the culture - the topography, the religion, the cultish mentality crossed with technological deception that keeps the omnipotent Immortan Joe (Hugh Keyas-Byrne) in control of a starving, deformed and miserable village who, in turn, provide willing young men to join the fanatical, kamikaze-Viking culture that keeps everyone from being raided by their enemies, one blessing of fresh water at a time. It's in this truly impressive location that we first meet one of Joe's lieutenants - Imperator Furiosa (Charlize Theron) - who's taking the massive and heavily armed "War Rig" on a supply run... but once she leaves and Immortan Joe's harem has disappeared, they realize they've been betrayed, as Furiosa has actually taken his Five Wives and is headed for parts unknown. They launch an assault on Furiosa, and one of the sickly mutants - War Dog Nux (Nicholas Hoult) - brings Max along for his ride to glory... as his literal blood-bag. Nuclear radiation has been hell on these kids, so they transfuse healthy blood to keep themselves from dropping dead in the dirt.



Saying much beyond this would be a bit pointless; I've already given away the "twist" which anyone who's going to watch it will figure out 20 minutes in, and the rest of the whole bloody movie is a massive car chase to try and take them back. I'm not exaggerating when I say that; there are breaks to change scenery and confirm newly arisen questions, but the two hour film is primarily focused on the roughly 24 hour period in which Immortan Joe loses "his" women, and launches an attack to return them, with Max caught in the middle of it all as a confused, exhausted, and generally pissed off bystander. Furiosa actually does almost all of the lifting in terms of the plot, with Max content to follow her into the gaping jaws of probable death only because turning around to face Immortan Joe's army is certain death, so he likes his chances with the iron-handed warrior just a little more. There's no greater good, no just cause, just survival in its most raw and uncomfortable terms.

And what a glorious day it is for a chase; with Miller himself having promised "90% practical" car chases, explosions and fight scenes, the result is a clearly blocked orgy of cars flipping over in the dirt, getting lit on fire, smashing through cliffs and crushing steel and chrome like it's nobody's business. I can't stress enough how amazingly straight forward and clearly blocked the carnage is, and while you could argue that other films have better moments of finely-plotted engine smashing, you'd be hard pressed to ever challenge the sheer volume on display here. The dedication to practical effects mean only a handful of sequences look fake, because - carefully erased safety harnesses and potential background details aside - they aren't fake. The film simply beats the shit out of its vehicles in a nine year old's wildest sandbox fantasy come to life, with the most obvious instance of its dedication to badassery being the Doof Wagon, a towering Frankenstein of amplifiers and drum kits stapled to an engine with the centerpiece being a guy on an elastic with a flaming guitar, strumming sick licks as Immortan's company charges into battle. It's so gloriously absurd it's fucking beautiful.



And then it spends the next 2 hours tearing those fantasy cars down to their skeletons and setting them on fire. In a way it's actually a contradiction of prior films - scarcity of things like fuel, ammunition and water made wasteland survival rely more on stripped down dune buggies and even traveling on foot - but the name of the game for Immortan Joe's society is extravagance and opulence. It's less a contradiction to prior films than an inversion - a trio cults so obsessed with appearance as omnipotent warlords of boundless wealth, they toss aside live bullets and tanks of gas like it means nothing. It changes the dynamic, sure, but anyone who thinks the basic reality of The Road Warrior being as "small" as it could be was anything but the limitations of resources is kidding themselves. If The Road Warrior was the gritty, dingy, unwashed reality of the nuclear apocalypse, this is the overblown metal concert interpretation of the same universe; a pageant of blood and twisted metal cranked up to 11. I can sympathize with those who wanted a smaller, dingier take, but I refuse to complain with what we actually have before us. Particularly not in light of how the last Hollywood Mad Max production went.
So where's the problem, then? If an action movie has all the action, who gives a shit about anything else? This is the mindset that's led to the film having a "98% Fresh" ranking, after all, and I won't deny that it gets the job done and then some. And yet.. well, there's that whole thing about the title, namely "Mad Max: Fury Road". This is absolutely Furiosa's show, and while Max has a few cool moments to himself, he's hardly the typical hero. He isn't a smarmy anti-hero, or even begrudging ally; he's just kinda' there from start to finish. He has even less dialogue than I'm willing to bet he has in any of the prior films, and while Hardy's body language and presence fill in the gaps his mostly mute performance leave behind, he's ultimately such a small cog of the larger machine that it's... odd, that Furiosa herself has more or less the same characterization.

Sure, Furiosa is doing what she does as a means of redemption - paying her dues for whatever sins have put her in good graces with a violent sociopath who proclaims that his unborn children are his "property" - but... that's about it. We learn a little bit about her origins, we see how she reacts to the situation she dives headlong into, and that's it. Her character is defined by her actions - a rare feat in an action film, I admit - but that's really all she has! By the end of the film we actually know more about Furiosa than we do Max, and that isn't saying a lot. It's well handled, I thought, and I applaud Miller for trying to find a way to naturally establish growing trust without making it feel forced or stupid, but it's almost entirely through handing each other weapons. Yes, that's an awesome way to do character development... but, there's the whole problem. They develop into the same fucking character, at least if we're going to view this from a pseudo-mythological point of view, which is the only lens Miller's left me to work with.

While Max and Furiosa's personalities do differ to a notable degree, their role in the actual story don't. The original film had Max playing off his family and friends on the force, giving him a pretty wide net to cast in terms of dramatic range. In The Road Warrior, Max spent much of the film next to a bumbling prisoner-slash-sidekick - a man who was clever but not tough, and could help the tough but not clever Max out of a jam when his well of macho grit finally ran dry. Thunderdome is an abomination, but it was the equivalent of dropping a homeless veteran into an orphanage that's about to be bulldozed by wasteland kitsch Tina Turner. Contrast produces reaction and drives compelling characters to say - and do - compelling things. Unto themselves, both Furiosa and Max are badass loners that could carry a movie like this without a problem... but now they have to carry each other, making the Five Wives even more useless from a characterization standpoint, to the point where they may as well be exposition-spouting macguffin's for the first hour of the film (though, thankfully, they eventually get their time to shine). The reactions all make sense, and that's more than I can say for the overwhelming majority of action films in which a man and a woman have to talk to each other like grown-ups, but they don't amount to a whole lot in the end.

That said, I can't praise the film enough for not even entertaining the thought of a bullshit romance between them; it's clear that neither Max nor Furiosa have time for that shit, and had the film tried to imply that the two were even thinking about porking, it would have become a farce in no time. God, how I wish more films had the balls to reach a solid conclusion and not end with a kiss. Pacific Rim stumbled here in the 11th hour, but at least the lead's quizzical "So, uh... do we fuck now? I'm not sure what the right response here is..." look was closer than I expected. Not that Fury Road didn't find two characters to make cheesy goo-goo eyes at each other. Eh, it's cute enough I'll allow it.

That's not to say that Furiosa isn't textured or nuanced or whatever - again, every aspect of this film's universe was plotted and constructed with a distinct reason, with the subtle implication that Furiosa's mechanical hand may be a literal "Mechanic's Hand", unfettered by the scalding heat of an engine for emergency repair in the middle of a war - but in the end, there's only one character we can tell more about than her:

Immortan Joe. The bad guy. Miller's own White Darth Vader has, by far, the most clear and understandable character motivations; as brutal and destructive as the War Boys society may be, he wants his legacy to live on in a world where nuclear fallout have caused his own genetics to betray him. It doesn't justify sexual slavery by any stretch, obviously, but at least his obsession with his Five Wives is driven by the need to carry on his legacy, rather than simple, violent sexual gratification, as was the case with The Humongous' men. He's afraid of his own frailty, of being unable to pass his legacy down to a generation of strong, healthy men who might keep his society operational when he inevitably dies. The guy's a maniac, obviously, but he's not quite a cardboard cartoon villain.

And that's before we even get into the fact that the actor playing him - Hugh Keyas-Byrne - was the same guy who played Toecutter in the original Mad Max! There's nothing specific to connect the two, mind you - if anything, Bruce Spence appearing as two completely separate characters in The Road Warrior and Beyond Thunderdome suggests that Miller doesn't care about a massive over-arcing continuity... which, again, explains why Max has both a new origin story and flashbacks from previous films. But the implication that Toecutter did survive smacking face-first into an 18-wheeler at full speed, only to survive on into the new world in a portable iron lung - and for his obsession with healthy children to be an extension of  - survival after facing death in the eye at the hands of Max himself is... interesting. Probably not even intentional, but a fascinating possibility in a film that refuses to draw any objective clarity.

And yet, there's a few other things about the whole film that feel "off", for lack of a better way to sum it up properly. Little things, all of them, but just big enough that it got me thinking all the same. Max opens the film with narration, but doesn't close it, having effectively handed the whole film off to Furiosa by the second act anyway. There's a scene that's so drawn out and sappy I'd be shocked if they hadn't shot an alternate take where they die. The film's action set pieces are all phenomenal, but there's very little in the way of actual gore and virtually no nudity; much like Terminator 2 or The Man with the Iron Fists, the whole thing feels like it was gunning for a PG-13, missed the mark by about an inch and then just shrugged and didn't bother to try again. Heck, the one scene of Max being a badass on his own terms - without Furiosa or the Wives involved - is resolved completely off-screen; a great way to show his character's reaction to certain doom, perhaps, but a sort of frustrating cock-tease to anyone who expected the film to have a one-on-one brawl between Max and a wasteland scavenger. This isn't even on par with complaints I've seen for the Nolan Batman movies, since ultimately Bruce Wayne is, undeniably, the focus of all three films; this would be more like if Kick-Ass spent the first half hour with the title character, realized that Nick Cage and Chloe Grace-Mortez were far more interesting, and then spent the rest of the flick from Hit Girl's perspective until the end credits rolled.

I'd have been okay with that, even, but structurally, it just doesn't make much sense, and with the year and a half this thing spent in post-production I wouldn't be surprised if nervous Warner executives and test audiences coaxed the film into a slightly new direction. I won't state anything until the dust settles, but I wouldn't be at all surprised if the year and a half this movie spent in post-production jettisoned a lot of little things and added some other little things that shifted the film into something Warner felt a little more comfortable with. The results are still fine - not every studio executive suggesting a new direction is a Blade Runner level abomination, after all - but I'll be very, very curious to see if any deleted footage winds up on the Blu-ray come the end of the year.

One of the most interesting suggestions I've seen is that Fury Road is a great action movie, but a poor Mad Max movie. I'm of the mind that Fury Road is ten times a better Mad Max movie than Beyond Thunderdome, but all the same I can't dismiss the notion out of hand. How attached you are to Mel Gibson's character will directly impact how much you find yourself liking this film, and while I'd have been perfectly fine with Max having been dropped entirely to give Furiosa more room as a character, leaving them to work in tandem at essentially the same simplified role in a streamlined story perhaps made both of them a bit less defined as a result. It's ultimately not a deal breaker, but it's the sort of thing that creeps up on me more as time goes on as feeling not quite right. Not bad, or poor, just... weird. I love Fury Road, but it feels weird sometimes, that's all.

And then... Well, there's this whole discussion...


For the two or three people on planet Earth who may be blissfully unaware, there's been no shortage of articles praising Fury Road for being a "Feminist Action Movie". As far as I can tell there were 25+ articles effectively rebuking a single self-described MRA for saying he refused to pay for the film... which kinda' shows you how manufactured and hollow these reactions to identity politics tends to be. But as I've said before, I am fascinated by the notion of critical theory, even if most people who try to apply it are just dipshits pushing their own fetishes on everything, so I was morbidly curious to see how this film stacked up as a supposed feminist-subversion of macho action movies.

Mind you, we have to do this in a moment in time when "feminist critique in media" boils down to hundreds of irate fans spamming Twitter and Live Journal because HBO's Game of Thrones - a show literally made or rape, murder, head crushing, incest, torture and sexual mutilation - had the audacity to show a main character getting raped. Off-screen. By a villain. For a show that ends its first episode with a brother-sister couple fucking and then pushing a child out of a window hoping to kill him, it's positively tasteful. There's a very odd undercurrent of those wanting progressive media to actually desire a sanitized, safe version of art that couldn't possibly offend anyone, regardless of the context or meaning behind it; the flip-side of the same coin conservatives have used for decades to hide sex and violence from children. So the question for me wasn't "Is Mad Max a feminist film?" - because hey, that means nothing without a little more context. The question was "Is Mad Max a cowardly, neutered attempt to pander to sheltered social media feminists?" - because man, that could really suck.

It's pretty much impossible to talk about this aspect without explicitly SPOILINGcertain plot twists that extend well beyond the first reel, so I'll let you know when it's safe to come back... let's mark the naughty paragraphs in red, just to avoid any unfortunate accidents, shall we?

The "new-media" surrounding the film has been trumpeting this as a "subversive feminist statement" for a while, and while I appreciate that some people are excited by that fact, I find it gloriously ironic that the audience most eager to lap up surface-level acknowledgments of a group of freed sex slaves standing against a literal social-patriarchy with the phrase "We are not things!" are the very same audience who will likely leave the theater with a case of the vapors over how the film doesn't hesitate to kill pregnant women, show the villains cheer on that her unborn child was male, and pull back the curtains on the fertile hope of the Vuvalini society as being little more than a violent band of old women who live in a dust pit in the middle of nowhere, clinging to the basic concept of fertility like sad spinsters who will never have another child. Anyone who expected this film to present heroic women as infallible nurturers are going to be disappointed, and anyone who argues that "Trigger Warnings" should be mandatory for scenes of violence against women are going to be pissed to the very core at how little plot armor the film affords anyone, male or otherwise.

This is a burning-rubber and adrenaline fueled action film through and through, with perhaps a single moment of smarmy moralizing so trumped-up and symbolic that you'd probably have a better chance arguing that Friday the 13th franchise is a morally conservative propaganda film, since most of the victims of Jason Vorhees' blade are either smoking pot or having sex. (Except for Part 2, in which he kills the boy in a wheelchair. I love Part 2.) Mind you, the person giving that moralizing - while holding a "War Boy" by the throat and telling him how the world having ended is his fault by proxy - is also proven to be largely sheltered and ignorant of the world around her, so while she's technically right, we're hardly supposed to see her blind anger as nuanced wisdom. The film also makes the wise choice to side-step any misandry, suggesting that the War Boys are just as much victims as the Wives themselves are; human flesh promised to a cult leader, with death being the only form of advancement for a lower-class who just accepts that their lives are limited and worth nothing save for the blood that they draw.

The core theme of the film is, as if anyone had to worry about it, not some ironic-misandry drivel like #killallmen*, but a somewhat more simple one: Those With Absolute Power Are Corrupted And Blind To Their Own Wickedness. It's not a stretch to say that if we were to go back to stone age tribalism, many societies would quickly devolve into something similar to The Citadel. Anyone who'd argue otherwise would have to be so woefully unversed in history that they probably think Genghis Khan is a Mortal Kombat villain.

* If #killallwomen would be seen a horrible, sexist concept - and let's face it, it would be - why is #killallmen different? Because men are expected to take it on the chin, thus further establishing that men and women are inherently "different"? Irony, is that you? I'm not offended by it or anything that pussified, I just can't help but laugh at how backwards it all feels when I see it. And keep drinking "male tears", by the way. It means "semen" in Spanish, you goddamn idiots.

There's also the odd fact that Furiosa didn't bother to try and save the thicker, dark skinned "Milkmaid" slaves. They weren't planning to go back for them, so... yeah. Feminism is only for healthy and privileged young women, you saw it yourself. If anyone wants to talk about how progressive and smart and super into women's rights this movie is, remind them that the only women the story felt were worth saving were the young, naive and pretty women who hadn't yet had babies. It actually doesn't undermine the point of the story, don't get me wrong - I like to imagine that Furiosa herself had something to do with capturing or bartering for these girls, and thus they're "her" responsibility in a way the older slaves aren't - but it's a fun, shallow diversion to drop on someone not prepared for it.

The film is deeply feminist at a conceptual level, you'd have to be blind not to see that. But it's a violent, take-no-prisoners approach adhering more to the macho action-fantasy that's far more in line with other already popular and acclaimed "feminist action films" like Kill Bill and Aliens or even (dare I say it?) the rape-revenge films of yore like I Spit on Your Grave and Ms. 45. It doesn't drag its women through the muck like those films did, but the realization that salvation can only be found in violence, is one and the same. One of my favorite scenes in the whole film is when one of Joe's wives sighs at the realization that the Many Mothers aren't the peaceful midwives they'd hoped for. The film sees the victimized sex slaves dropping their Victoria's Secret bandage lingerie in favor of picking up guns and marching to war against a massive wave of stronger and better equipped men, simply establishing that violence, courage and vengeance aren't an inherently masculine value in the world of Fury Road.

You want to change the world? You need to pick up a gun. George Miller knows it, and if this film can show young women that action - not sympathy - are what'll change the lingering reality of sex slavery and victim abuse, shit, I'm all for it. 


So why was there so much buzz about how feminism relates to Fury Road? Why did the click-bait prone new-media concoct an entire bullshit story about an army of MRA-sympathizing cavemen refusing to see their favoritest, manliest franchise ever over so much estrogen getting in their high-octane? What possible angle is there to push, even?

Well, it's mostly because Eve Ensler, best known as the writer of The Vagina Monologues, was brought on set to work with the actors playing Immortan Joe's harem. Not just because she's a feminist of note, but specifically because she's worked with victims of sexual abuse for decades and George Miller wanted believable reactions to how different personalities in an abusive but symbiotic relationship would react to suddenly being both free and alone. That's basically it. I've even tried to see some people spin Ensler off as a rape-apologist due to the above mentioned play featuring The Little Coochie Snorcher That Could, but as this story was itself based on the testimony of one of the 200 women interviewed in the process of making the work, it's less Ensler herself advocating for underage lesbian rape and more her being willing to present an anonymous girl's life as she saw it. If you're looking for a feminist who actually molests children, you're probably thinking of Lena Dunham... but, thankfully, that's wholly irrelevant to anything I've said here. (I'd never deny that Roman Polanski is an incredibly fucking talented director, so it'd be hypocritical of me to shit on an artist for poor personal choices, anyway.)

And why wouldn't Warner Brothers push that fact in the current market? Eve Ensler, writer of the single most provocative and iconic pieces of feminist theater in the 1990s, had a hand in Mad Max! We're going through a curious time where the markets for "nerdy" things - comics, video games, and yes, sci-fi/action movies - have sold about as well as they're going to within the demographics that already like them, and seeing how much money young women are willing to spend on stuff like The Hunger Games, Twilight and Doctor Who has the Hollywood machine drooling at the thought of catering to BOTH demographics at the same time. This is why we're getting a Wonder Woman movie, even though they can't find a director who seems particularly interested in it. This is why The Mary Sue writes grumbling articles about there being no Black Widow merchandise, despite the fact that The Avengers primary audience always has been - and will always be - adolescent boys who care far less about "the girl" because they don't have pubes yet... and, frankly, she's not nearly as interesting as the robot, the green dude, or the alien who shoots lightning. This is why we're getting an all female reboot of Ghost Busters. Because they know men nostalgic for their 80s childhood will see anything with the red-lined logo, leaving that sweet, sweet female market to entice. Somehow.



What's funny is that I - and I'm willing to wager pretty much any reasonable human being alive - have no real argument against notion that an all girl action movie could be incredible. It's all a question of casting, direction and sincerity, a combination the all but expected sausage parties fuck up all the time. Hell, one of the greatest "Hard R" action films of the last decade - the almost completely ignored Punisher: War Zone, suggesting that the third time really is the charm for Frank Castle - was directed by a woman! Why the fuck do more people not mention Lexi Alexander when they talk about women in film? Scratch that, acutally - why the fuck is Lexi Alexander not making more ass-kicking action movies?!

But what really fascinates me is less the unsubtle pandering nature of it all - "pandering" itself isn't bad, lest the entire notion of gratifying entertainment ceases to exist - but the broader knowledge that it's not going to fucking work, no matter how hard they push the discussion. Different demographics want different things, which occasionally overlap into both categories, of course - but just because you put the things those demographics want in your products doesn't mean said demographic will start caring about it. Let's say men like transforming robot sidekicks - it's probably not a 100% ratio, but I'm willing to bet that's a thing people with Y chromosomes dig. You could put transforming robot sidekicks into trashy romance novels as a way to encourage a wider male reader base, but odds are the overwhelming majority of readers are still going to be female. Similarly you can put badass women in your movie, even make the core concept of the film about liberating slightly less badass women... and the majority of the people who are going to show up to see a Mad Max movie are still going to be people who would have shown up to see a Mad Max movie if zero women had been in it to begin with. Not because Mad Max fans are uncultured heathens who instinctively hate anything with a vagina, but because they're here for the spectacle of the bombed-out remains of society slaughtering each other in a wanton orgy of explosions, not the possibility of gender politics in a hyperbolic apocalyptic fantasy setting. The fact that we can have both is just gravy, really. Meaty, chunky feminist gravy. There's a sentence I have to find a way to use more often...

To put that idea into perspective, Fury Road has a 98% Fresh on Rotten Tomatoes. It's literally the highest rated action movie ever made, because fuck you Rotten Tomatoes, Fritz Lang's Metropolis is an action movie the same way 2001: A Space Odyssey is a goddamn hermaphrodite scat-porno. Literally the greatest action film of all time. So how much sweet, sweet dosh did it make catering to both masculine action junkies and the Mary Sue demographic? We're a week in as I write this, and it's currently sitting at... $63 Million domestic, with international sales bumping that up to $128 Million. The production budget was an estimated $150 Million, and that never includes advertising and promotion, of which this film is getting a metric ton's worth. It was actually beaten at the box office by Pitch Perfect 2, a film that cost an estimated nothing. So clearly you can milk young women for a massive profit. You just have to make it into a movie about singing and being comfortable with your fat and sassy self, instead of freeing slaves after World War 3.

Not that anyone expected this to pull in numbers like Age of Ultron, but goddamn it, this is why we can't have nice things...

There's undeniably a feminist bend to the film, but it's wholly justified by the narrative that drives it, and doesn't try to preach much to an audience that just wants to watch cars smash up real good. Much like the undertones of Norse mythology and the idea of separate societies working together, each with their own visibly unique culture, greetings and fascinations - it's simply a part of the fabric that makes up the whole experience. It's not even a "big idea" filtered into the film as an after thought; it's part of the core, and a means to propel the story forward. It's not as on the nose as any of Neil Blomkamp's films have been, at the very least... then again, I've had punches in the face that were more subtle than a Neil Blomkamp flick, so that's not entirely a fair comparison.

I actually feel kinda' guilty writing that much about the flick, because... goddamn, there shouldn't have to be that many asterisks and questions and clarifications for a film that, when you boil it down to the bone, is basically 2 straight hours of gloriously executed desert-burning carnage. The film isn't as bloody or laser-efficient as The Road Warrior was before it, but times have changed since 1982, and George Miller has adapted with it. Budgets, expectations, even audience sophistication in some specific respects have all evolved, and having seen plenty of decent directors try to repeat their glory days unchanged, I find it refreshing to see Miller use his legacy as a backbone to try something a little different. It's by far the biggest and most gloriously crafted Mad Max film, and is by a wide margin the best action film in recent memory. I'd have to watch them both again before making any insane claims like it being "better" than The Road Warrior, but the fact that I'm suggesting that's even on the table should tell you everything you need to know.

Fury Road is good. Damn good. Just a little weird around the edges.

I'm still here, friends. Just because I'm "busy" and have a "life" doesn't mean you can ever fully escape my rambling stupidity!

A couple recent releases from the UK based cult film distributor 88 Films have finally come out, and it's compelled me to say a few words about the releases themselves, the label distributing them, and  the context they've established in surprisingly clear terms. The how behind it is a little more complex than usual, so let's break it all down...

THE REMASTER CAMPAIGN

As most of you likely know, I contributed to an Indie Go Go campaign wherein 88 Films wanted crowd-fund a restoration of ZOMBIE HOLOCAUST from the original camera negative. As most of you who know me are aware, I don't actually like Zombie Holocaust much - but up until that point, the best release we'd gotten was the Media Blasters Blu-ray, which was rife with grotesque scratch repair artifacts, muddled color grading that made the film look like it was shot completely in the dark, and  super-funky CRT scanner noise masking legitimate detail, courtesy of the somewhat infamous Roman film lab LVR Video and Post. They've been responsible for most of the HD transfers released by Blue Underground and Arrow Video before the latter's dramatic turn-around in 2013, and the former... basically vanishing for a year and a half, presumably while Bill Lustig looked at the market conditions and decided to take a hiatus from trying to squeeze blood from a stone.

I've written a lot about how poorly LVR has handled the vast catalogue of Italian exploitation and thriller films of the 70s and 80s, and how Media Blasters managed to make them even worse, if only out of incompetence rather than malice. All in all it's felt kinda' shitty to be a fan of Italian trash film on Blu-ray, since not only did Arrow Video and Blue Underground mostly pull back once their cache of A-tier Fulci and Argento titles had been finished, but most of the titles we got looked like crap anyway. 88 Films drawing a line in the sand and promising a second-chance for the titles that Media Blasters/Shriek Show had treated less than well was an encouraging first step, and as 88 Films' releases of Full Moon and Troma films are regularly superior to their North American equivalents, I felt satisfied that I could trust them with my $35 for a restored copy of Zombie Holocaust.

Later on, the campaign was updated to include a new stretch goal to restore BURIAL GROUND in the same manner - and that's a garbage film I actually do quite like. Needless to say I did what had to be done, and put in a second pledge.

THE ITALIAN COLLECTION

It's thus with incredibly mixed feelings that I decided, despite loving the film to its cheap, stupid core, that I decided not to pre-order ANTHROPOPHAGOUS: THE BEAST for the seemingly fair price of £19.99. It's worth pointing out that this title was not part of the remaster initiative, which is why I was hesitant to throw a little more than $31 down before I knew what I was getting into. While short on directly-related bonus features the 88 Films release does include 42nd Street Memories, a feature-length documentary about the beloved "grindhouse" run of 1970s exploitation double-features, and pre-orders are set to include a slipcase and postcards, which is a decent enough bonus. And anyone who pre-ordered straight from the 88 Films website - the only store currently offering it - got the above slipcase, replicating the old UK "Video Nasty" cover about as closely as humanly possible.

Sadly, all of that means little to me when the final product looks... well... like THIS. Basically, it looks like every other low-quality CRT scan that LVR has applied noise reduction to in order to get OCD twats, like myself, to shut up about all that ugly scanner noise. Sadly, this isn't at all unexpected, as their earlier release of Antonio Bido's THE BLOODSTAINED SHADOW was also a LESS THAN STELLAR. The latter didn't receive any obvious degraining, and if I had to guess I'd lean towards that being due to D'amaot's penchant for shooting on 16mm, which naturally lends itself to a grainier image than a scan of a 35mm stock. That means there's some basic limitations to how good the negative for this D'amato flick will ever look, sure, but for all the bizarre and often easy-to-fix at a production level problems, the Media Blasters BD release of Beyond the Darkness had, at least scanner noise and DNR weren't among them!



Doubtless some of you are thinking, wait a second, if the dated CRT scanner is producing excess noise, shouldn't noise-removal be a good thing? Arguably it can be an improvement, though of course you'll risk sludgy smearing and temporal warping, which I find to be more distracting in motion than even heavy noise (though, admittedly, a "smooth" transfer tends to look better in still frames). The problem is that "removing" the noise generated during a film scan doesn't bring back the detail that was obscured, nor does it produce a consistent, stable image underneath. It's basically swapping analogue static video for digital video vaseline, and I'm a firm believer that farming the film scan to a different lab with better equipment will allow you to avoid both ends of this unfortunate spectrum,

In short, 88 Films - bless their low budget and schlock loving hearts - already know that these masters are crap, and they're dumping them on us regardless. They even talk about how the masters "LOOK GREAT!" on the Face Place, but if you're looking to official social media for an HD transfer's objective worth, you're doing it wrong anyway.

Part of me feels hurt by this; I've never been a big fan of the "It's Okay When We Do It!" mentality, and by specifically raising the bar set by Media Blasters' rather crumby treatment of those two Spaghetti Gut-Munchers, seeing them pump out the exact same crap of their own accord at the very same time is... well, it just shakes whatever confidence I had in them, to be honest. I'm not angry anymore - hell, I'm not even surprised when I see a new Italian cult film in HD and immediately wince at the coarse grid of CRT grit floating on top of a fuzzy, washed-out image. I'm just sad at this point. I and people like me fought for better, and a handful of people in this industry dug their heels in and refused to compromise... so why is this, years later, still somehow the norm?

THE SAD REALITY

The reality, of course, is that they don't bother, because, well... nobody cares. Even if you look at the successful Indie Go Go campaign, less than 300 people actually contributed to make this new master happen, and quite a few of them paid dramatically more than the $31.25 or so asking price on principle. Less than 300 people cared enough to throw money at 88 Films to do two new transfers of iconic splatter trash-films, and I can tell you from personal experience that both I, and a friend of mine, contributed to this project solely on principle, not because we actually liked the film!

Certainly there are plenty more who were waiting to see the results with the intent to grab it for about half that price from Amazon UK - and those cheeky fuckers still get the "limited" slipcover, for what it's worth - but if you can't even convince 300 people to pay MSRP to guarantee a dramatically improved release, that's proof that Blu-ray is only continuing to contract to the point of irrelevancy, even to one of the most dedicated audiences out there; genre fanatics who own multiple copies of the same film because they're never satisfied that the presentation is "perfect enough"... than again, most hardcore horror fans were probably satisfied with a DVD copy or two in their own language and a half-dozen VHS and LD copies cluttering up their closets. I don't want to say that horror in by its very nature a nostalgia driven market, but... well, perhaps that's another discussion entirely. I wouldn't be surprised if many of the niche labels are gone or just empty husks about two years from now, with obvious exceptions being Shout Factory, Arrow Video, Vinegar Syndrome and studios that own their own content like Troma and Full Moon - though if they'll continue doing BD releases at all with the gradual take-over of streaming in 5 years is anyone's guess these days.

Just as importantly, having worked with a handful of licensors over the last decade, I know how... well, frankly, how shitty some of these outfits can be to work with. You want to license a title for Blu-ray from an Italian film studio? Great! It's entirely possible that they've already made HD masters. Why did they do that? Because they knew the title you wanted was popular and they wanted to have a master on hand. But what if you don't like the film lab, or you thought the work was poor? Well, it's entirely possible that this film lab has a 20+ year history with the guy who runs the film lab, and you'd not only be taking business away from the guy who's storing their negatives, but you're basically pissing on a professional friendship that goes back to a time when the Italian film industry actually made both of them money.

Remember when people flipped out about Fright Night and Enemy Mine being limited to 3,000 copies each? Say what you will about 25 year old horror and science fiction films, but those were mainstream Hollywood titles with surprisingly high scalper-potential. Zombie Holocaust is a real cult film, and it can't even get 300 fucking pre-orders! Those 275 copies just don't pay the goddamn bills, and honestly, while I'm frustrated by the lack of quality coming out of 88 Films, I'm slowly coming to terms with the fact that based on the numbers we ourselves can see, the future of Italian cult films are middling-quality LVR CRT scans, or nothing at all. When I believed the market cared even the slightest bit, I dug my heels in and demanded better... now that we can see how few in number we are, all I can do is pray we get more transfers like the start of Blue Underground's run and less like the newer, digitally processed stuff that only added as many problems as they tried to fix.

Besides. 88 Films assured us all that there are worse film labs in Italy. The thought sends shivers down my spine... and makes me wonder who was responsible for the abomination that was the MB master for Burial Ground, a title I (incorrectly) attributed to them when it first came out. The number of labs left standing in Rome - good and bad alike - shrink with every passing year, and I have to wonder if LVR isn't the bottom of the barrel, good gravy, who is?

ZOMBIE HOLOCAUST

While I'm still waiting for the fuzzy-helmed clowns at Royal Fail to get me my goddamn package, screenshots of the 88 Films restoration of Zombie Holocaust are, at least, ENCOURAGING. Keep in mind that like Lucio Fulci'City of the Living Dead, this was for some inexplicable reason shot on Techniscope two-perf at a hard-matted 1.85 ratio, which means the OCN is effectively a 35mm camera using a 16mm frame's worth of resolution. Sounds pointless, I know, but if it's good enough for Lucio goddamn Fulci, I guess it's good enough for Mario Girolami, too.

Without a copy on hand to poke at, I'm surprised to hear people talking about plenty of scratches and instances of dirt that were untouched, despite Pinewood Studios having reportedly done the restoration work. Whether this is just a little "sparkle" around the edges or a full-blown Grindhouse Experience, I don't yet know, but truth be told I'd much rather have a raw, filthy and damaged presentation than one that's been so digitally manipulated it looks like the prior MEDIA BLASTERS RELEASE. Of course there's nothing preventing it from being scanned properly and having damage removed on a case-by-case basis, but such is the fate of cheap Italian splatter films, I guess...

I may do a longer write-up on Zombie Holocaust at some point, but honestly, my utter lack of enthusiasm for the flick itself leaves that sounding more like a chore than anything. Don't get me wrong, I "get" the love the film has for mashing up three disparate genres at once - undead zombies, mad scientists, and blood thirsty jungle savages - but everything about the film just feels a bit more dull than it ought to. Aside from Donald O'Brien giving a sweaty, over-the-top performance the flick doesn't deserve and one incredible gag in which Ian McCulloch basically liquefies a zombie's head with a boat motor, there's just nothing to recommend here beyond the conceptual novelty. If  you really want to experience Zombie Holocaust, watch Deodato's Last Cannibal World back-to-back with Fulci's Zombi 2. Your sense of taste will thank you later.

It's been said that a single line of dialogue disappeared during the restoration. Pity, that, but I don't expect it to be fixed, and if that's the only thing truly wrong with  the presentation, I'll live. That said, this is  why I wish labels like this would hire actual fans to QC  their work; true, everyone can make mistakes - I myself didn't catch the fucked up opening credits for Re-Animator on the German restoration, for example - but if you're willing to give two or three known fine-tooth-comb types advance copies for the chance to throw your hands up in the air and shout "Oh YEAH? Well ZombieFan92 didn't spot anything wrong, so it MUST be a minor issue!" would probably go a long way in satisfying some of those complaints, if only on a conceptual level.

Hardly something worth bitching about now, I know, but I'm always disappointed that the re-cut American version "Doctor Butcher M.D. - Medical Deviate" has never gotten a new modern transfer, Unlike a lot of US edits that simply removed footage or swapped the order of scenes around, Doctor Butcher is TRULY ITS OWN THING, and at this point I'd almost be satisfied with somebody hiding the entire VHS rip on a Blu-ray just to see what the heck it was.

BURIAL GROUND

Where things get a little more confusing is the situation with Andrea Bianchi's BURIAL GROUND/La Notti del Terrore. Unlike Zombie Holocaust I actually do like this cinematic turd, and I was furious with what a mess Media Blasters' prior attempt to restore the film for Blu-ray turned out to be.

88 Films initially said that they had located the film's original negative and interpositive, as well as a 35mm release print. They did a telecine on the print, though I... don't know why, unless they planned to release a beat-up "Grindhouse Print" on the disc as a bonus. I'd be thrilled, sure, but actual release prints are always multiple generations away from the negative and tend to be in the worst shape of any available elements, so starting from there for a high quality, archival copy was probably a bad idea to start with.

88 Films had their lab made a test scan of the IP, but were quickly left found wanting. They then tried a new scan of the negative... but realized why the Media Blasters BD was such a mess. The entire film was stored on 16mm A/B rolls with undercuts, meaning that the shots were never really edited on 16mm, but blown up to 35mm for editing purposes. Going back to the original negatives reveales plenty of extended footage never meant to be in the film at all, as well as frames marked out with a big scratched-in "X" signifying they didn't need the cut after that point. In short, restoring from the OCN would include re-editing the entire film from scratch! It's certainly doable - hell, I've done it myself from SD materials for certain content - but it's time consuming and expensive, for a project they likely had hoped would be a done-deal.

While Facebook-sized 1600:900 JPGs aren't quite the most ideal 1:1 source one could hope for, they're better than nothing. With that in mind, here's an idea of what 88 Films has to work with:




None of them are "pretty", aesthetically speaking, but at the very least this vindicates my prior theory that the massive amounts of chroma noise on the MB Blu-ray was the result of a telecine device either not being designed for, or properly set up for, 16mm OCN content. The world of telecine and scanner hardware is vast, infinite to an outsider like myself, but at the same time it's not so impossible that I can't spot bullshit when I see it. I'd keep harping on Media Blasters utter lack of care and foresight into their own catalog, but with them not even having held an announcement panel at Anime Expo this year, I'd feel a bit like putting the spurs to a horse that's been rotting for weeks now.

I'm also shocked how poor the IP looks - they're struck straight from the negative, so in theory they have all the positive traits of being a "Generation 1" source without any of the irregularities of the OCN - keep in mind that quite often optical effects like fades or day-for-night shots are applied to the IP itself, rather than the OCN, so scanning straight from the negative may not actually yield the same results as a vintage print of those instructions weren't followed to the letter. Having watched stellar DVD transfers where people are turning on lanterns and trying to get to sleep in the middle of the day, I can assure you it happens more often than it should. If I had to guess, I wouldn't be surprised if the Interpositive was a 35mm blow-up, which alone can lead to problems with focus and clarity. It's the reason that the HD transfers for films like Lustig's Maniac and Bill Hinzman's Flesh Eater looked far wonkier than I expected on their HD debut, and while it's unfortunate to imagine this being as good as those films will ever look, without a proper 16mm negative to source a new transfer from, that's all she wrote.

So what'll become of Burial Ground? At this point, only 88 Films knows for sure, and it's possible they themselves aren't sure anymore. I can confirm that they've reached out to people who know this film like the back of their hand to be sure the bizarre example of hundreds of individual frames missing from the Media Blasters BD won't be repeated, but they did this information before they realized what a mess the original negative was. I know, personally, what I'd like to see them do... but I don't know what impact that would have on their budget, and if they're willing to take a loss on this title to do the "right thing" and hope their next release actually turns a profit to compensate.

This is pretty much why I haven't said a lot about cult-films on Blu-ray in the last year. Between this and Toei Animation being willing to re-upscale one of their major flagship titles of the 90s, it's clear that we lost. The video market only cares as much as they can squeeze a potential remake out of it, or profit off of the lead's recent death, or if they can buy out an entire film catalog for pennies on the dollar to the original owners don't have to have someone on payroll to piece out the "good" titles one by one to a mere three or four potential licensors. The future is looking grim, friends... but, it was nice watching it all burn to nothing with you.

Ah well. Gotta' get dressed and check out a 35mm print of BURIAL GROUND and NIGHTMARE CITY at The Egyptian. Just because I can't have a pristine HD copy doesn't mean I can't watch a filthy, faded, butchered print in the dark with total strangers!

We've talked about the 1985 version of VAMPIRE HUNTER D enough over the years, so let's just get down to business.


Sentai Filmworks' Blu-ray marks  the first ever HD release of my beloved horror-western, and while details are sparse Sentai promises, and I quote, "this Special Edition has been Digitall Remastered in High Definition from the original materials". If I had to guess I'd assume we're looking at an above-average quality telecine of a vaulted interpositive with some fairly mild digital manipulation, but you know what they say about assuming things; in any case, the materials on display are quite comparable to the Italian PAL DVD release by Yamato Video dating back nearly a decade, and as that's been our "reference" transfer ever since, that's not necessarily a bad thing.

Heck, they might even be the same exact 35mm print, as both the Yamato Video and the Sentai Blu-ray start off with a Toho Film Company logo - this is absent from most other prints used for video transfers as the film was originally produced by Epic / Sony Music Entertainment, who released on DVD in Japan circa 2001 to cash-in on the Yoshiaki KAWAJIRI directed psuedosequel Vampire Hunter D: Boodlust, and seemingly sold it to Toho at some point in the next decade and a half or so. This may seem bizarre - and trust me, I know at least one licensor besides Sentai was trying to court this title only to be stopped by one issue or another (we'll get to the most likely one shortly) - but keep in mind the mere fact that Japanese "Production Committees" are a fairly recent phenomena only underscores how little thought went into keeping these assets organized for international release.

First, the good: Before getting into the niggles brief, Vampire Hunter D never has, and likely never will, look any better on home video. I have a feeling that the late director Toyoo ASHIDA would be proud if he could have seen the final form of his labors. Framed properly - if just a bit tighter than most prior releases - at 1.33:1, this new HD master presents the film looking largely consistent with the Italian and Japanese home video versions, though with improved resolution, less print damage, and a wealth of color fidelity never seen in any prior release - not even the matted OVA Films DVD from Germany compares in terms of detail and overall image quality. If you have one of the superior PAL DVD releases, this is still a massive improvement in every way, but if like so many fans you've only seen the American and Japanese DVDs, this may as well be a revelation. The Urban Vision DVD in particular was a noisy black hole of nothing for long stretches in Count Lee's castle and moonlit duels, and finally getting to see what the shit is going on when D gets thrown to the catacombs is reason enough to celebrate.

Color grading is always going to be tricky for this one, due largely to the low-contrast nature of the film itself. I assume because they knew the target market would be rental VHS, the film features several scenes - including the lengthy opening - in which the backdrop is effectively a large, sweeping monochrome plate with partially animated characters peeking out of the shadows. Before you assume I'm just being pretentious, and Christ know I could be when waxing poetic about Ashida, the same clever monochrome minimalism would be improved by Yoshiaki KAWAJIRI's Wicked City a few years later, and the color pallet - mostly stark gray, black and blue - was confirmed by the director himself to be tailored specifically to the known weaknesses of VHS and Laserdisc. Scenes set in daylight were always a bit drab and cold looking on video, and having seen the comparably pumped-up German transfer, I can see why some would find it more appealing that way. But the majority of the film happens at night, and over-exposing those lengthy battle scenes just reveal a large swath of shadows and nothing, which leaves me to believe that the slightly dim color grade shown here is "accurate", even if it makes the film look a bit dull compared to the vibrant excess of similar 80s OVAs.

That said, Vampire Hunter D has always been a little rough around the edges, and this new transfer - glorious as it may be - hasn't changed the fact that the limited budget has always left it looking a bit like a sow's ear. Judder, flicker, staining and animation errors - always a part of the film since the day it was shot - are relatively frequent, as are odd and occasionally twitchy animation errors that fans of newer, all digital titles may be unhappy with. While I have little doubt all of these issues could have been massaged with heavy digital manipulation, I have no complaints; it looks like a low-budget video from 1985 given a modern HD transfer, and goddamn, that's all I've ever wanted. At the very least there are no cue-marks at reel changes, obvious vertical scratches, photochemical staining or similar marks of a print left in anything but proper storage. It's as cheap and raw as it's ever been, but in the best way possible. I don't doubt that a proper pin-registered and stabilized scan of the original 35mm negative may have yielded more stable results, I'm more than pleased with the overall retention of the film's inert limitations.

Sadly, the scene of Count Lee's face being crushed by his own castle - represented by wet paint between 2 animation cels being pulled apart in the camera - is not present. To this day I'm not sure why the Japanese home video master minted in 1985 has this sequence slipped in, but it's a fun, bizarre oddity I'm begrudgingly willing to live without.


The less stellar news, however, is that the transfer looks to have been digitally processed to some degree. Having seen abominations released by Disney and Q-TEC I'm not going to bitch and moan too hard about this one, but there's an odd level of... let's call it textural inconsistency? Oranges, yellows and greens have a fine layer of soft, relatively natural looking grain, while blues and grays have a very broad, almost defocused layer of noise, and red... well, red is basically fucking grainless. Film stocks play an important role in each color having a certain texture, I know, but a total lack of visible celluloid structure on D's cloak? Bullshit. That's some grain management going on, and there's nothing anyone could say to convince me otherwise.

That said, it's at least an attempt at grain management, not removal. In hindsight, the inconsistent but largely still semi-present grain structure isn't too different from the DVNR applied to the "Miyazaki Collection" release of Nausicaa. keeping in mind that, as a full frame 1.33:1 transfer, Vampire Hunter D would actually have about 30% more resolution (and thus less grain) than a 1.85:1 transfer from the same stock. I'd say the level of grain is comparable to other marginally processed 1.33:1 transfers like Ninja Scroll or Rurouni Kenshin Tsuioku-Hen/Samurai X: Trust and Betrayal, but as both of those transfers had notably less in the way of flickering, splices, film judder and other production mishaps, the 'grainless' look just sort of blends into the otherwise polished presentation. D's rough edges and occasionally ugly, flat key frames make the smoother, less textured appearance stand out just a bit more by comparison: Vampire Hunter D has always been a rough looking film in its own charming way, and removing the texture, while hardly a deal breaker, doesn't really help its aesthetic in any way, either.

I don't use numbers to summarize complex opinions - it, sadly, undermines actual reading and critical thought. In summation the transfer is above average but not exceptional, unto itself, but an essential and much needed upgrade for a film with a long and rather dour history up until this point, especially in North America.


First off, this is perhaps the most pleasant surprise: The Japanese track is, by far, the best audio presentation the film has ever had. Not only that, but I suspect it's the first ever genuine presentation of the Japanese Dolby stereo mix promised on the original Japanese advertisements, but - for one reason or another - were always presented as weak and muddy sounding track. I don't have the R2 Japan DVD handy, but as far as I could tell the track was dual-mono with an above-average level of flutter and other analogue distortions, rather than a genuine stereo track. For the example that convinced me I wasn't crazy, listen to D enter the front door from the left side of the sound-stage at 00:54:22. It's not the most dynamic stereo track in the history of animation, but it's by far the best sounding presentation of this particular film I've found... and trust me, I've looked.

Just to confirm I'm not insane, another easy to spot example is during the end credits of TM Network's "Your Song" - at 01:18:06, the music skips back and fourth between the left and right ear before settling back in the center for the Engrish line 'Why do you go forward, why do I go backward?' a few seconds later. If, like me, you're just enough of a possibly gay 80s pop fan to have actually listened to TM Network recreationally, you'll know this is exactly how the song is "supposed" to sound.

Why has every other release? If I had to guess it's because stereo audio wasn't quite common in theaters until the late-1980s in the United States, with Japan trailing somewhat behind until the advent of cheaper digital decoders in the late 90s. It's common place for Japanese films made before the DVD era to have a finished mono mix placed on the master prints themselves as optical tracks. Optical audio, sadly, is a bit trash from an archival standpoint with limited fidelity by nature, with original magnetic tape being the preferred materials where available. The German and Italian DVD transfers both credit their Japanese mix as "original mono", so it's not much of a stretch to assume that they sourced their Japanese audio from the sound-on-film present on whatever archival print was used for their respective transfers. Even the original North American Laserdisc specifies "Stereo English" and "Mono Japanese", for what it's worth.

Newly translated English subtitles are included, and at a glance appear to be a marked improvement over Urban Vision's generally serviceable translation from 2000. I've only spot-checked a few scenes, but so far, it's A-OK. Wonder how close it got to that custom track I prepped shortly after the first novel got translated...

The German DVD went out of its way to include a new 5.1 remix, but being sourced from the same crumby mono materials as everything else, it was more of a mono track that echoes slightly louder in the right side from time to time and has a wildly out-of-whack LFE mix that makes even standard dialogue thump like a friggin' DMX album. I applaud them for trying, I guess, but with them only able to echo the mono mix there's actually more directionality in the proper stereo mix on this new Blu-ray.


It's a rare day indeed when a 30 year old Japanese dub has higher fidelity than a brand new English localization, but what is this Blu-ray if not a short trip to crazy town? Sadly, the Streamline dub is nowhere to be found, and in its place is a newly produced dub courtesy of Sentai Filmworks. I can't say for sure, but I wouldn't be shocked if the exclusion of the Streamline dub was, itself, at the request of Toho; having tried to deal with the paranoid legal branches of film licensors, I can say without hesitation you'd be shocked at what you'll be told you can't include, no matter how little sense it makes.

To put all of this into perspective, Streamline Pictures was sold off to Orion Home Entertainment. Orion Pictures was bought out by MGM. Streamline Pictures themselves only owned temporary distribution rights to the Japanese films they purchased; the dubs produced by them are considered ancillary works, and in more or less any court case would go back to whomever owns the international rights to the film. I know for a fact that archival film and audio materials for the various Streamline titles were auctioned off from closed film lots after MGM's bankruptcy in 2010, meaning that at this point, about all MGM really owns are the logos for Streamline Pictures...

Unfortunately, when you try to explain this to a Japanese corporation they see "MGM owns the company that dubbed the film", and they don't want to even risk MGM noticing them. This is a crying shame, but as Toho has had more or less the same reaction to the AIP produced Godzilla dubs - to say nothing of the Roger Corman produced "Godzilla 1985" - and is the reason why the "classic" dubs have more or less disappeared from the market from the 1990s onward.  This doesn't explain why the bonus features have gone missing, of course, but I'd assume that Epic/Sony Records didn't bother to keep close tabs on this before being folded into CBS/Sony Music Entertainment in the late 80s.

Amusingly enough, the premix materials they based this on were made in mono, with all of those exciting directional cues I've never heard before on the English track becoming a dull and central thump that turns the TM Network song into an indistinct, echoing mess; this explains why the music is so low and muddy compared to the Japanese track, too. The quality of the English voices themselves are fine, but I... will refrain from commenting on the dub much beyond that. I finally understand how old school Kaiju fans felt about having "new" dubs of their childhood shat out by Toho, and while I agree that both are ultimately rather silly, and arguing that one is ultimately inferior to the other feels a bit like spitting in the wind... it's also somehow very, very unpleasant to sit through the new dub. If you want an opinion on the Sentai dub, ask someone without 20 years of familiarity and nostalgia with the Streamline version, 'cause my bitch ass is biased as it's going to get. What I can tell you is the Texan accents are laid on thick, Rei sounds like a poor man's Ralph Fiennes wearing David Bowie as a suit, Larmica's voice is shrill and cringe-inducing to a Japanese-emulating perfection, and Witchie's laugh is even more out of sync with her animation than I'd imagined possible. If you guys can sit through this thing in its entirety, you're stronger than I am.

To be fair, the translation of the Streamline localization was always a heinous mess, but at least everyone involved had the good sense to play it as a somewhat hammy Hammer Films inspired melodrama; the new dub appears to try and emulate the Japanese voices to an almost painful fault, lacking any of the nuance and humor in the Streamline translation, which seemingly realized you can only take a boomerang chucking mutant David Bowie running himself through to mortally wound a combination of Marvel's Blade and The Man With No Name so seriously before it all starts to fall apart. The original Japanese version has its own sense of humor, muted as it may be by comparison. Say what you will about Carl Macek's lack of respect for the original Japanese language; at least the man produced dubs that felt natural for the material it was given. And hey, the new Sentai dub actually uses the word "Dhampir", so that's more than the 'official' Bloodlust English dub managed.


Sentai's new Blu-ray comes on a BD-25, with the main feature clocking in at 14.5 gigs with an average bitrate of just under 20,000 kb/s. Both audio tracks are presented as DTS-HD Master Audio stereo at 24-bit sample rates. Due to the use of mild DVNR I honestly doubt cranking the video bitrate would have made a worth-while difference; you can make out some mild blocking during high-motion shots, but with much of the grain having already been smoothed over to a soft dither, the compression artifacts are more or less negligible. The whole thing is packaged in a standard semi-transparent blue case with familiar Amano YOSHITAKA key art, and a somewhat updated version of the original Japanese logo.

Also of note, the entire Japanese credits sequence has been left intact, with English credits added at the end. Kudos to Sentai for that being their standard operating procedure for features, minor as it may seem. The Streamline version included English credits over the final scene of D riding off into the sunset, which was always so long and oddly silent that I'm surprised the Japanese version didn't do the same; then again I'm suspicious that the original script called for a 60 minute film and the production was later requested to stretch itself out to a feature length, which would explain the lengthy, silent scenes of D riding to, and from his mission.in an otherwise quite aggressively paced film after the intentionally methodical opening.

Aside from Sentai propaganda, the sole bonus feature present is an HD presentation of the original Japanese trailer. It's worth watching just to see numerous alternate cuts that were changed for the final film, and the hissing soundtrack and odd blue cast to the whole thing are a cheeky reminder as to how much better the film looks to any prior incarnation. Sadly, the 10 minute making-of from the Japanese laserdisc - which was included on the Urban Vision DVD - is nowhere to be found. This is a surprisingly decent piece for what's basically just an EPK, interviewing the original actors (and editing inappropriate footage to the conversation), and letting the director give his philosophy on how to approach what was, at the time, an entirely new format.

I hardly expected it, but the only other noteworthy bonus feature is the fascinating Jonathan Clements commentary track from the Manga UK DVD. Pity none of those made the leap, but everything else on the Urban Vision DVD was propoganda for the upcoming Bloodlust film, so the "special edition" status of the 2000 DVD was a bit more of an exaggeration than I'm sure they'd like to let on in retrospect.


While it took a damn long time to get here, I think I'm finally satisfied enough with a Japanese language presentation of VAMPIRE HUNTER D that I can move on with my life. The lack of the Streamline dub and Making-Of featurette from the Japanese Laserdisc is a frustration pair of omissions, but what can you do?

Fans of the film shouldn't think twice; pay the damn $25 and move on with your life. It's probably never going to get better than this.


Because Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain comes out in 15 minutes. If I ever post again, expect it to be long after I've completed the game... and "completed" can mean a lot of things in this context, even before you get to rankings. Yes, I know just a little too much, and yet not enough to spoil the fun. Maybe I'll revisit this in a month or two, we'll see just how upset I am over the revelation that Punished Snake kills Dumbledore.

For what it's worth, I've seen the caps of VAMPIRE HUNTER D: BLOOSLUST and I'm convinced this - much like GHOST IN THE SHELL and THE END OF EVANGELION - is very much a victim of its own original production methods. Soft, weak contrast and grainy as shit? Sounds like a 90 minute AVID to 35mm-out project to me! Justin Sevakis has noted that he actually tried to done down some of the washed-out and grubby look, which means the only way this film would look dramatically better is if someone gave it a proper shot-by-shot color grading, which it's clear the Japanese side wasn't willing to do. To be frank, I can hardly blame Discotek for not hiring some crazy asshole to fix a disc that was already knee-capped by not being allowed to include the Japanese audio. This fucking movie will never catch a break.

WELL... THAT WAS BULLSHIT.

Warning: I must be off my meds again. This shit's gonna' get real angry, rambly and up its own ass in the vaguely-analytical side of narrative. We might talk about the "game" part another day, once I've cleansed myself of anger and sorrow, but... well, Phantom Pain has a lot to answer for in the story department, and that oddly enough has an adverse effect on the gameplay itself as a result. Like I said, we may revisit this if I end up actually caring enough to come back to it.



Despite two and a half years of hype from that jaw-dropping "Red Band" E3 trailer, METAL GEAR SOLID V: THE PHANTOM PAIN fails to deliver on the heavy promises that series creator, director, and 28 year franchise auteur Hideo KOJIMA had promised as far back as 2010. Despite rave reviews and sales topping 3 million copies sold in the first week, long term fans of the franchise have been pretty vocal with their frustrations and disappointments, not the least of which has seen websites like Eurogamer and Polygon publish soft-addenda articles, standing by their "9.9/10""Game Of All Time""It's Literally Better Than Sex On The Third Realm Of Consciousness" scores, while simultaneously acknowledging that something is seriously wrong. The argument that Hideo Kojima himself hasn't been given the time or NDA release to explain what "really" happened is as solid an argument as you're going to get at this point, but with Kojima having stood by this as his final game and his magnum opus for the last year, it's... well, it's fascinating to see where it all went wrong, but that doesn't actually make the game I paid $60 - plus $20 and change for the prologue, METAL GEAR SOLID V: GROUND ZEROES - any more complete or satisfying.

I'm honestly not mad anymore about it. I was for about a weekend. At this point, I'm just disappointed on two levels - one, that Kojima could have fallen so hard in a mere decade between METAL GEAR SOLID 3: SNAKE EATER and this abomination, and on the other, that whatever might have been salvaged from the flaming wreck of what's clearly a compromised and bashed-together narrative might have been "okay" were it not for the public-yet-mysterious breakup that happened behind the scenes between Kojima and the game's publisher, Konami. Japanese business culture suggests we'll never actually know what went down behind the scenes, but based on what little we can piece together of our own accord, it probabl goes something like this;

Kojima, who had served as Vice President of their console game division for the last 5 years, has been effectively obsessing over Metal Gear Solid V as his big going away blast. Konami in those last 5 years have been pulling away from console game production to focus on mobile development, casino games and non-video game investments like health clubs. After tallying up the money spent since the production on the Fox Engine started in 2010, Konami's top brass pushed Kojima to release the game in whatever state it was in; not wanting to compromise the entirety of it, they split the game into a "Prologue" and a "Full Game" to meet the launch of the PS4 and show off the power of the Fox Engine. Whatever was going on behind the scenes was only making Konami worry even more, which prompted Kojima to make a stand and refuse to compromise by setting a date on a project that wasn't even close to being ready. CEO Satoshi SAKAMOTO clearly wasn't amused, at which point Kojima was basically fired from his position as VP, but was kept on contract for another year to finish the sprawling project for a release date Konami themselves set - after all, if this is the state it's in now, one can guess that had Kojima and his team bailed outright, the retail release could be dramatically worse. Kojima Productions has already been disbanded, and Kojima will leave the company at the end of 2015, with this... "game" being the last project he'll work on under the banner of the ol' UUDDLRLRBAS.

Yeah, this is mostly guesswork and reading between the lines. But until either side is willing to make more than vague assurances that "Kojima is still supporting Phantom Pain, we'll see you next METAL GEAR!", that's about all we can really do.

It's not a bad game, mind you. My 150-and-counting hours with it should attest to that without issue. The general world design, stealth mechanics, gunplay and seemingly endless ways to trick, misdirect, confuse, fuck with, and straight up murder a billion Soviet and Central African PF soldiers is truly a joy to play with, and while I won't lie and pretend the game has endless variety or a lack of filler - any game this big is going to get a bit repetitive if you're digging your heels in for 100% - the fact that the game keeps track of your playstyle and then shifts the AI strategies and equipment to compensate, effectively modifying the difficulty to match you, speaks to the brilliant core of one of the finest game design crews in the industry today. As a living, breathing, beautiful piece of interactive technology, MGSV:TPP is second to none, and it's basically locked in a three-way tie by default with FALLOUT 4 and THE WITCHER 3: WILD HUNT as inevitable "Game Of The Year" status, though as all three of these games have dramatically different aesthetics, mechanics, concepts and goals, picking any of them will ultimately come down to the gamer's own personal preferences anyway.

That said... wow, Phantom Pain is a mess. I started writing a long-form piece, but find doing so mostly irrelevant, since George "Super Bunnyhop" Weidman covers about 90% of my biggest concerns in the following 35 minute(!) academically minded review... it should go without saying that, not only does the video itself, but the rest of this post is going to spoil not only all of the secrets that Metal Gear Solid V holds, but by extension the ending to pretty much all Metal Gear games in the seemingly endless and sprawling franchise that built up to it. It's impossible to even try to discuss what went wrong without just diving into the gory details, and so I'm going to roll up my sleeves, stick both hands deep in there, and hope the guilt from what I find doesn't drive me to madness...



METAL GEAR SOLID V:DISSOCIATIVE DISORDER
While I do think Weidman's points are almost entirely valid, I'll confess there's a few things that bugged me either more, or less, than they did him - but that's to be expected from a franchise that finds appeal and love  for a hundred different reasons at once. Case in point, while I adore the polished and seemingly bottomless gameplay -  and was more than willing to keep going after 150 hours, until the code decided I could eat a back of dicks for daring to test of a fucking internet rumor was true - somehow the game still feels... well, not only incomplete, but wholly lacking in obvious thematic and narrative structure. Such basic and simple beats in storytelling that I'm, quite frankly, shocked that Hideo Kojima was capable of missing them. Meticulous, overwrought melodrama propelled by reactions the players are naturally drawn to take part in is kind of Kojima's "thing" so the problems on display seem to be two fold; not only is a big chunk of the narrative simply not present, but the remains of what wasn't jettisoned were hastily re-arranged in a rough, skeletal manner that gives the vague appearance of closure without actually closing anything.

While Weidman does a damn fine job explaining the biggest leaps of faith in Kojima's final chapter in what's easily the medium's most important and unique attempt at serialized story telling - drawing as much from American superhero comic continuities as it does American-pop action cinema, Japanese science fiction absurdity and random scientific texts digested, understood, and then promptly disregarded for maximum dramatic effect  - there's a few things he didn't touch on that have left me with no choice but to consider their odd and, in some cases, galling absences that I'm sure are largely being overlooked less because they aren't an issue, and more because... well, when the publisher sells you the first act separately and then cuts half of the third act completely, it's easy for the smaller things to fall through the cracks, I guess.

I can't stress this enough, but MASSIVE SPOILERS FOLLOW. Not only will this ruin any surprise the game might have had, but odds are it won't make much sense unless you've already played it - and most (if not all) of the games in the series before it, anyway.

I feel like I shouldn't have to explain that, but y'know. If you wanted to be surprised by any Metal Gear game, don't read any more. Also, if you haven't played the actual games, odds are none of this will make sense anyway. "Explain Metal Gear" is such an impossible feat it's a meme unto itself. Hell, I've played through METAL GEAR SOLID 4: GUNS OF THE PATRIOTS and even I'm not convinced I have a clue what's going on.



One of the more intriguing things that the trailers hinted at - well, one of those intriguing things that are actually in the finished game, anyway - is the reappearance of Paz Ortega Andrade, aka Pacifica Oceana, a double agent who infiltrated Militaires Sans Frontieres at the start of the "Peace Walker Incident" in 1974, and eventually took control of Metal Gear Zeke with the intent to bring it to her true master, Major Zero. In meta context it's clear that Paz was an excuse for Kojima to include a cute blond "teenage" girl on Mother Base without it feeling as inappropriate as it should have - let's face it, METAL GEAR SOLID: PEACE WALKER was, despite decent gameplay, largely waifu bait PSP bullshit, there's no other excuse for Cécile Cosima Caminades to exist - but, narrative wise, it was about right; Big Boss wouldn't trust a Soviet scientist, but if he came bearing a literal symbol of war-torn atrocity to distract him, why would Boss suspect the cute kid who just wants to sunbathe and play with the base kitten of being the real mole? (Not that she was the "real" mole, but... well, Miller's complicated relationship with Cipher is irrelevant for the time being.)

While a number of small oddities always cast the canon status of Ground Zeroes into doubt - Chico freaking out and not recognizing Snake for no real reason, captive MSF agents being shown Skull Face's horrifying visage but not being able to remember it, Miller playing dumb about knowing that Paz was a Cipher infiltrator, the bizarre lack of Big Boss' typical banter or affinity for cardboard box loving - a pet theory of mine was that the Camp Omega mission was real in some capacity, but that the mission we saw was "wrong" in some fundamental way; maybe the whole thing was a propaganda film produced by Cipher. Or maybe this was Chico's incomplete, PTSD-worsened recollection of the events. Or even in the context of Phantom Pain, perhaps this is the hypno-therapy "memory" of Venom Snake, itself both incomplete and based on second-hand testimony of how the events went down by the limited survivors of MSF. Any of these explanations would have been enough to explain why Paz - despite having had two bombs inserted into her body, with organs removed to make room(!) - could have "died" during the events of Ground Zeroes, but come back in The Phantom Pain, looking essentially the same but still bearing the large "V" shaped scar.

"V", as we later learn, was a code name given to Big Boss' body double, a plan that wasn't even put into motion until after the events of Ground Zeroes took place. In other words, the shape of the scar itself was a meta-textual hint that Ground Zeroes wasn't what we thought it was. Simply put, there's too many unexplained coincidences for Ground Zeroes to be anything BUT a fantasy... or, more accurately, a nightmare.

Phantom Pain warms us up to the idea that Ground Zeroes went down differently than we (the player - ie; Venom Snake) remember it, and send us on a quest to find not only the surviving MSF soldiers who haven't completely lost their minds, but return with photos of happier times, each photo giving us a pleasant visit with Paz... who's stuck in a temporal loop of recessive memory and amnesia, waiting for Peace Day, which will clearly never come. Once you collect all 10 photos, the final photo is waiting outside of Paz' room... and once you give it to her, she tears herself apart in a bizarre moment of body horror, with Venom Snake waking up on an unfinished platform, grasping at a ghostly butterfly that was never really there. Comparisons made to Silent Hill are perfectly valid here, and more importantly, even the final tape Paz "gives" you establishes that she's gone, and nothing you can do will bring him back.





In a sense, this might be the one instance of Venom Snake getting some legitimate character development that isn't him silently reacting to Miller and Ocelot railroading him on a quest for revenge he seems oddly distant to; Venom Snake was an MSF medic before Mother Base was razed by XOF, and the guilt he felt for failing to save Paz haunted him, even with his memories having mostly been erased through a combination of brain damage and hypnosis. It's the only time in the finished game that Venom Snake is shown to react to anything resembling guilt or the effects of PTSD, and while it's heavy handed... it works. You feel awful realizing that Paz is just a phantom of Peace Walker's distant memory, and seeing the one cute, good natured thing on Mother Base turn out to be a lie only justifies the distant, cold tone that flows through characters like Miller and Emmerich.

So where does the paradox kick in? The biggest issue is that Ocelot and Miller INTRODUCE Paz to Snake. Ocelot has been known to experiment with hypnotherapy to trick himself from revealing his true goal in MGS4, and it's implied in "Episode 46" (we'll get back to that later) that he's doing the same here. Could Ocelot have planted those seeds in his subconscious, knowing that Venom would react? Maybe. I guess. I mean that's a stretch, even for Metal Gear, but this is the guy who hypnotized himself to believe he was possessed by the soul of Big Boss' dead clone by grafting an arm onto his body, so sure, fuck it, whatever. The issue is that Miller is a patsy in all of this - he was never brain washed, and if Paz were really alive, he'd demand answers.

This leaves us with two possibilities, neither of which make a lot of sense:

1) Miller and Ocelot were never in the non-existent room with Snake. The whole thing was a hallucination on the part of a man suffering from memory loss, PTSD and mental conditioning. This is the most likely answer, I admit... but it opens up a whole new can of worms, which we'll get into momentarily.

2) Paz was real, and this was all meant to tie back into content removed during production that would allow you to bring her memories back full circle, at which point Paz would join your Mother Base crew. It isn't as good a fit, thematically speaking, but it's what I'm willing to wager was the original plan. Otherwise why bother having Ocelot or Miller there in the first place? Let Venom figure it out on his own terms.

If we assume "1", that leaves us with the notion of an unreliable narrator... and holy shit, does that open up the flood gates in regards to Quiet.



So holding aside all of the carefully crafted controversy bullshit surrounding Quiet... ah, who am I kidding. I'm being an analytical crazy person, may as well talk about some vidya tiddies while I'm at it. Truth be told, I like Quiet, and not just because she is to boners what MSG is to Chinese food; not necessary and it makes you feel a little upset at yourself when you get it, but it's still always always a welcome addition. I actually find she's the only original character in the game to have a decent story arc or a satisfying sense of character, which in a franchise mostly remembered for its iconic bosses and supporting characters... kind of sums up what a failure Phantom Pain was as a narrative experience, if not a sandbox game.

Quiet is a badass, the blatant sexualization only becomes borderline parody if you choose to spend time with her and get your Buddy Level up to 100% (meaning you're the creep, you rascal you!), and while I admit the camera zooming in on her bazongas which are bare because of nanomachines parasites and crisped up lungs is over the top - even by Kojima's standards - it's about the only time this fucking mess remembers that it's a Metal Gear game, and it's supposed to be doing cuh-rayzee and eye-roll inducing bullshit. Was it clumsy and awkward? Yeah, more often than not. But if the rest of the game is going to take itself so fucking po-faced, fuck it, I'll let this be awkward.

Let the sort of people who are legit mad over this shit get triggered into a coma. Maybe they'll finally stop bitching about George Kamitani being good at drawing sexy girls, moaning that nobody bought a mediocre game with a largely wasted memory-rewind function, and stop blindly donating to Kickstarter charlatans who are literally giving speeches at the UN about how arguing with subjective criticism is not only harassment, but that legal measures should be taken to stop them, while quoting 15 year old reports that call Pokemon "Satanic" and argue that violent action games turns young boys into "killing zombies". I fucking wish I was joking about any of this.

Anyway. The bigger issue here isn't the fact that Quiet can't speak, or doesn't wear pants: It's actually a small detail that took me a while to put my finger on. During Chapter 45, Quiet speaks English to save Big Boss - releasing the English Parasite and rendering her a danger to Mother Base and the entire English speaking world as a result - and then she wanders into the desert, never to be seen in the game again. Much like Aerith in Final Fantasy VII or Magus in Chrono Trigger, once she's gone, she's fucking gone. Considering this is end-of-game stuff, it means that clearing out the remaining Side-Ops without your sniper backup is going to be a bitch, so you'll feel the sting through gameplay as much as you will cut scenes. Much like the whole Paz "twist", it's actually a nice touch and is one of the few successful times the game communicates the loss that Venom - and, by proxy, the player - must feel despite having rebuilt Mother Base from scratch.

But what was that small detail? The simple fact that once Quiet leaves, the photo of her in the ACC (Air Command Center - or "Pequod") disappears. Keep in mind that every other photo, including those of Huey Emmerich - a literal traitor who's responsible for the deaths of countless Outer Heaven soldiers in two separate bases - remain where they were. That's odd, isn't it? That Boss would take down the photos of his best sniper and even potential love interest, but would keep the scumbag who knowingly rebuilt a nuclear death machine so a bunch of crazy kids could steal it, and mutated a parasite on Mother Base with the intent to sell it back to your enemies, forcing you to kill your own men - and then tries to make you feel bad about it? What kind of sick, self-hating sociopath would keep photos of THAT dingle berry and ditch the pictures of the sexy lady who could kill an entire platoon in 10 seconds flat?

The logical explanation is so simple, it's literally all over her face:



Butterflies in Metal Gear lore were tied specifically to the Peace Walker incident. For those who don't remember, Peace Walker was a story in which Big Boss - a man who was given that title for killing The Boss, and rejected it for the guilt and shame he felt having had to pull the trigger on his own mentor - and the excuse he uses for being in South America is that he's looking for something; a blue morpho butterfly. This all ties back to MGS3: Snake Eater, when - after losing his eyes to Volgin's torture - Naked Snake tries to "catch" a butterfly, realizing that losing his eye has permanently fucked his depth perception. Even his eye was a minor loss.

Tying this all together, the last photo you get for the Paz storyline is... wait for it... the elusive blue morpho. See a pattern emerging?

When Quiet is angry and ready to get her blood on, the skin on her face changes tone, and a butterfly "appears" on her face, like adorable war paint. The only way to prevent Chapter 45 from appearing in your Missions List - and thus, Quiet from leaving Mother Base - is to customize your PF's emblem using the butterfly as your centerpiece. All of Quiet's weapons are named after butterflies. You get the point, I'm sure. Quiet has replaced The Boss as that elusive force that drives Snake to his inevitable fate, and if Paz and The Boss are anything to go by, butterflies are something you can't catch...  far more than the Skulls, they are truly "those who don't exist".

So what the fuck is up with the scene where Miller is torturing Quiet, much to Ocelot's chagrin? This is such a clear, important moment that I'd say it's impossible for it to be non-canon... but the Paz Paradox complicates this, doesn't it? Either Venom is an unreliable narrator and everything he witnesses is open to debate as being "real", or what we see is what we get, and both Miller and Ocelot were capable of seeing Paz's phantom, too. In short, the Paz Paradox makes Quiet's very existence a potential figment of Venom Snake's retrofitted memory, and if she really WAS a fantasy, that actually explains the leering camera and the fact that despite not appearing to be an ethnic Navajo, she's able to speak it fluently with Code Talker; these logical leaps are literally made for you, the player, not for the literal, contextual narrative.

I hate to play that pretentious game in a narrative as clearly compromised as this - but obvious problems with the game aside, it's not an entirely unfair question. Metal Gear Solid 2 was literally a game *ABOUT* the pointlessness of sequels, and spent its entire final act  breaking the fourth wall asking the player if wasting their life away playing simulations and letting your "real" life pass you by until you have nothing else to show the world you existed. Metal Gear Solid V seems to be a direct inversion to this confrontational and somewhat pointed commentary - the game lets you quite literally make yourself in Big Boss' image, with the legend telling you in the game's final cut scene that you are as much responsible for his legacy as he is - but the fact that the game even has that obvious, tangible layer of memetic commentary means we can't rule the use of well-established symbols from the series out as trying to tell us something bigger.

In short, either Paz was supposed to be real or Quiet wasn't. Nothing in the game contradicts this notion, and until Kojima's NDA's break and he's allowed to tell us what the fuck happened behind the scenes between Konami and Kojima Productions, I'm unwilling to consider this oddity anything but intentional.



Now before going further, we have to talk about the "cut" content and the messy implications that it leaves us with.

Rumor and speculation is still largely what we have to go on, but one thing is clear; a decent chunk of the footage shown off in the various pre-release trailers released by Konami starting in 2013 are simply not present in the game. Off the top of my head:

* Venom Snake wanders through a burned out village full of child soldiers, and later is shown falling to his knees and crying out in anguish. The village with charred corpses is in the game, but it's not actually a set piece.

* A scene at Masa Village in the trailer shows a fully grown soldier training the child soldiers how to use automatic weapons. Again, this is present in theory, but much like the "burned village" its presence is hardly worth noting in actuality.

* Boss covered in blood and standing in front of a wall of fire, his face slowly growing sad, is one of the most iconic shots in the "Nuclear" trailer. It's also nowhere in the finished game.

* Several POW's are shown being mocked, waterboarded, and executed at Camp Omega, an area that you were supposed to return to in Phantom Pain if you owned the prologue. Never happened.

There's also various "alternate" takes of Big Boss in the chopper from Ground Zeroes, as well as two extended versions of the "Hallway Walk" from the Diamond Dogs quarantine platform (including some amazing body-horror animation). With no more Camp Omega missions to speak of now, it's hard to say if this was hinting at something bigger or if they just re-framed/tweaked the final footage. I'm trying to give Kojima the benefit of the doubt here - I know "cut" content often finds its way into marketing materials since it's all edited and finalized long after they've sold it - but the overall lack of anything even resembling the tone on display here is what confounds me so much.



This is also ignoring a veritable TON of "missing" dialogue tracks still hidden in the game data, such as Code Talker and Huey Emmerich singing birthday songs and additional dialogue from Skull Face implying that you could have potentially fucked with him during the now infamously awkward jeep ride, and even some straight up goofy bullshit like The Suth screaming "Yer' FIARD!!" and "CONSECUTIVE! C! Q! C!!!" Whether the implementation was cut as a conscious decision or due to a lack of time and resources, or they're just hanging out for some hilarity in MGO3 is really anyone's guess, but it's bizarre to see what should have been absolutely basic things, like menu sounds, somehow dropped for no concrete reason...

While I have little doubt that "Chapter 1: Revenge" was mostly finished - it has an actual arc, a journey unto itself, a couple of twists and turns along the way - it's still kind of a nasty mess. Those 30 Episodes (plus the hour-long "prologue" - which I loved, by the way, even if it ran just a little too long) have quite a bit of filler content and some big leaps in logic, but overall they feel like a complete, cohesive, if slightly underwhelming piece of entertainment. Phantom Pain Chapter 1 is still weak as far as stories go, ranking somewhere between "smarter than Peace Walker but not as substantial as Guns of the Patriots" - both of which are on the lower end of the Metal Gear writing cycle, as I'm sure we'd all agree -  but it's self-contained enough that if this is what I'd gotten, no more and no less... I'd sigh, shrug, and think, fuck it, at least I had fun right?

The problem is that after the credits roll we get a preview for "Chapter 2: Race". This is where the game doubles down on feeling rushed and broken and becomes a literal work-in-progress; the "19" missions presented in Chapter 2 are actually 6 new story missions, a dozen "Hard Mode" repeats of missions from Chapter 1, and a 'remix' of the prologue, which is as much an interactive cut-scene as it is anything else. It feels like a sampling of unfinished demo tracks rather than a full album, and while both Huey and Quiet get something resembling closure and resolution to their individual stories, Eli, The Third Child, Metal Gear Sahelanthropus, Code Talker and The Boss (in the form of the reconstructed Peace Walker AI Pod) simply do not. Zero and Strangelove appear in the form of audio tapes, but their loss is such an insult that I... honestly wish they hadn't been, to a large degree.

Exactly how much of the game was jettisoned during production is still up in the air, but the literal final boss battle - Eli piloting Metal Gear Sahelanthropus in the English Parasite infected island dubbed "Kingdom of the Flies" - was the narrative finale the game was begging for. The actual battle with Sahelanthropus in Afghanistan is pretty fucking underwhelming, and letting Eli fight his "Father" - while forcing Diamond Dogs to drop napalm on, and I can't stress this enough, an island full of live children - was exactly the big, dramatic gut punch that this whole storyline had been building up to. It was the next, logical extension after "Shining Lights" - arguably the one truly good thing about Chapter 2 - in which, having already had no choice but to put down his own men, Venom Snake has to extend that same nihilistic realism to the very people he tried to save from a life that was much like his own.

THE PHANTOM FINALE

You can argue how much content and what context is missing, but make no mistake; the fact that the "Premium Edition" of the game comes with an 18 minute(!) summation of the "Phantom Chapter" is proof that Kojima wanted us all to see how the game was supposed to end, knowing this is all bullshit...



THE PHANTOM CHAPTER:KINGDOM OF THE FLIES
Imagine, for a moment, if RETURN OF THE JEDI featured the first half of the film exactly as-is, up until the explanation that HOLY SHIT YOU GUYS, THERE'S A DEATH STAR 2: SITH BOOGOLO... but then we never get to see it. Nor do we ever get to Endor. No speeder bikes, no Ewok religious idols, no Lando Calrissen  and Wedge Antilles bromancing up until the big ass cathartic explosion - literally none of that happens. Instead we just abruptly cut to Luke Skywalker on the Star Destroyer without ever getting back to the sub Rebel Alliance has a fucking Death Star to blow to smithereens. That total lack of closure, of anything resembling a grand finale is the only way I can begin to describe how this game ends, and any excuse to shrug all of this off as intentional - as giving the player a "Phantom Pain" by not fulfilling their basic desires for cohesive storytelling - is just wrapping themselves in needless layers of pretension and hopes of hidden meanings to excuse a fundamental failure to deliver a finished product.

To continue the torturous analogy, maybe a couple scenes get swapped around in the middle, so we still see Yoda die, we still get clarification that Leia is Luke's sister - you know, clarity for a few of the less important subplots - but instead of the catharsis the film actually ends on between Luke Skywalker surpassing his father and the Rebel Alliance working together to destroy the ultimate death machine, it just cuts from Palpatine taunting Luke to that whole "I am a jedi, like my father before me!" line with no final Vader duel... and then, hey, rolls credits. No redemption for Darth Vader, no thrilling escape as the Death Star implodes, no getting shitfaced and making poor decisions with mongoloid teddy bears; nothing. It reaches the thematic conclusion of heroism, but the narrative just... stops. There is no actual resolution at all. That's what The Phantom Pain does. It's fucking INFURIATING, and while you can talk for hours about all of the ideas that didn't make it into Metal Gear games going back to the first MGS, all of those games were at least organized to minimize these losses. MGS2 ends on a giant "WTF?!", sure, but even that was a carefully weighted risk that tied up the actual meta-narrative as much as was necessary. MGSV? Shit is as unfinished as it gets. It's like a movie just missing the final reel with the credits awkwardly pasted back in. It's fucking sad.

Not trailer related, I know, but it's also worth noting that the endless cut scenes showing off Battle Gear were intended to culminate in him being Phantom Pain's equivalent to Metal Gear Zeke - a customizable and upgradeable mech that, unlike Zeke, you were meant to take out into the field. All the time hyping this four-legged floating abomination turns out to be a tiny logo to send on "Dispatch Missions", which you can't even watch unfold via cutout figures like in Peace Walker. I honestly can't think of a more underwhelming waste for a literal flying tank. Kojima swears this was cut "because it made the game too easy", but considering the Chicken Hat and "A Rank or Lower" items still exist, I'm calling bullshit. It was cut because it didn't work yet, and they figured jettisoning the fun so they could try and cobble what little of Chapter 2 was in a usable state seemed like the lesser of two evils when the Konami Crunch left them with no more wiggle room to delay the game another month, let alone the year it likely would have taken them.
So what is that end credits freeze-frame in this already painful analogy? It's "Episode 46", The Truth: The Man Who Sold The World. A twist that's only a surprise if you're not a tinfoil hat wearing asshole who looked up interpretations about every seemingly relevant David Bowie song a year before the game came out. (Spoiler: The song is about doppelgangers. Flamboyant, pansexual doppelgangers...)

So let's get this out of the way: I don't mind the big twist about Venom Snake being Khan a body double cooked up by Zero as a way for the "original" Big Boss to slip through the world, undetected. It actually explains how Frank Jaeger could be imprisoned by "Big Boss" in Outer Heaven and still be on Big Boss' side in Zanzibar Land three years later. It also explains how Big Boss could be the leader of Fox Hound during Operation Intrude N313 while simultaneously running Outer Heaven without anyone being the wiser. It raises further questions, of course, but it's just clever enough that it fixes the continuity between the 1987 Metal Gear and the 1990 sequel, Metal Gear 2: Solid Snake, so it's... better than the twist we got at the end of Peace Walker, at the very least, and it was seemingly tailored to make Big Boss' endless speech at the end of Metal Gear Sold 4: Guns of the Patriots leave not only an ironic, bitter aftertaste, but makes his insinuation that "sometimes people can be used to play certain roles" all the more insidious.

What I DON'T like is how pointless and jarring the presentation all is. It's clear that the "big twist" was in the cards since Ground Zeroes has Kiefer Sutherland also playing the medic, who's face was very, very carefully hidden from view. This is all fine. The only issue I have is that, it just... appears. Out of nowhere. Done all the "Important" Side Ops? Cool, congrats, here's the true, super-secret ending for no fucking reason. PTSD and hallucinations were once promised to be a big part of the game, and are even a key component in the prologue, but they barely appear in practice otherwise. Could this have, I dunno, been tied to a bigger story mission that cuts back and fourth between a repeat of the fucking hour long prologue? The fact that this happens at "Chapter 46" - and isn't even treated as a 'Final Mission' is telling of how randomly this was pushed back into the unfinished Chapter 2 mold with little regard for how it all fit together with the rest of the game. Kojima admits there is no end by the very checklist you select missions from... I can't tell if that's incredibly honest or douchey. Maybe it's both.

But my biggest question is... well, why? Why now? What brought on Venom to remember that "Vic Boss" is really just Ishmael? The game has no narrative, or even thematic explanation; they've simply run out of game for you to play otherwise and already took Quiet away without really warning you about it, so fuck it, here kid. Have your big, shocking twist ending 4chan figured out a year prior. You've earned it... somehow, maybe, I guess...

Not to use Tumblr's favorite word in vain or anything, but couldn't this all be triggered at Mother Base by someone - maybe even Ocelot, the lovable rascal - playing "The Man Who Sold the World"? It literally opens the game, and stimuli - such as music, smells and sensations - are known factors in triggering things like flashbacks in PTSD patients, which the Paz Paradox suggests Venom likely is.

Shit, if there was no narrative explanation anyway, couldn't it have been worked into the mechanics? Maybe you got the tape after all of the other missions and then just listening to it on the iDroid actually triggers a cut scene? Could we do literally anything to make me feel like I'm part of the experience instead of just watching it unfold in the background while I wait for it to be ready for more actual gameplay? Imagine if the game opens with the Midge Ure cover and "The Truth" is only revealed if you hear the Bowie original... oh, what could have been...

Making this insanely important epilogue fit back into the broader game structure would have helped my good will by a bunch, and the fact that once you finish it, the game just kinda' shrugs and dumps a dozen unexplained, effectively impossible-to-be-real tapes in your lap. It's not all about Miller making a fast food resturaunt at Mother Base, either (which, by the way, is the best fucking thing ABOUT the game): It's stuff about Zero, Skull Face and Paz, long, rambling monologues hastily explaining all the deep seated lore away like it realized it had a bunch of scenes to show but just started reading the full script verbatim as a radio play and hoped that'd be "good enough" to satisfy... anyone. It just smacks of this all having been shuffled back into the game at the 11th hour hoping to salvage something resembling closure.

It doesn't work. The last reel is gone in this movie, and they've simply cut the build-up to it, hoping we wouldn't notice.



Another thing that's been irking me for a while is the fact that the Diamond Dogs logo, which hasn't changed since the initial Yoji Shinkawa art for Big Boss, feature none other than a Rhodesian Ridgeback. Data mining suggest that the brief appearance these pups make in Ground Zeroes - barking at Skull Face as he walks to Chico's cell - would have been a part of a larger gameplay mechanic, but like so many things it was removed before the game could be finished. Guard dogs were a feature in both Metal Gear on the MSX and MGS3: Snake Eater, so not having them in MGSV - particularly when they could have changed the whole dynamic of bringing DD, or in how enemies can track you during an alert status - is really a shame. There's even a QTE for tossing off wolves, so it doesn't seem like including them would have been that much more work... but I'm getting away from my point, which was narrative rather than mechanical.

Why is the Rhodesian Ridgeback important? Because Kojima stated, when the game had just been confirmed to be Metal Gear Gear Solid V, that race, culture and language - all as separate concepts - would be the driving theme behind The Phantom Pain, specifically quoting "Race and Revenge" as the game's two core themes. The last third of the game are under the banner "Chapter 2: Race", but "race" itself - skin color, the one thing that embracing a new culture can't change until a few generations of breeding happen - never actually factors in to anything.

Rhodesia is now Zimbabwe, a country to the north of South Africa, but one that up until 1980 had a very similar British founded "White Government" that, despite only making up about 3% of the country's population, treated the native black citizens as a second class, enforcing apartheid laws that literally prevented blacks from entering "White Areas". The country was embroiled in some pretty nasty combat through the 70s and 80s, culminating in Zimbabwe declaring independence from their previous government that had ruled since the 1930s. Meanwhile, South Africa maintained their forced racial segregation and generally shitty treatment of black citizens until 1994, presumably due to South Africa having a nearly 9% white populace, plus a similar number of what the official government calls "coloured" - which, basically, implies that they're not anglo-white, but aren't necessarily african-native in origin, either. (How much things have actually improved in South Africa since, I can't say, and is getting off track anyhow. Learning about South Africa from Die Antwoord is about as useful as learning about Japan through Tsukamoto Shinya: Awesome, yes, but not especially useful.)

Plus, Sahelanthropus has a skull painted on its big, ugly head. The fucking obvious "final battle" after Skull Face escapes with Sahelanthropus would be chasing him down to an armored fortress on the South African border with the defeated Sahelanthropus' mechanical head as the keep's centerpiece. Throw a couple more skulls up and the "founding" of Outer Heaven comes full circle. But that's not the issue... well, it is ultimately, but it's not why I think it got mangled and re-written so heavily during production, at the very least.

I think a certain word is really blame. Ironic, considering the context of it all...

YOU WILL BE ASHAMED

OF YOUR WORDS AND DEEDS

Back when this was still "PROJECT OGRE" in 2010, Hideo Kojima promised us that his next game would deal with "taboo subjects", going as far as to say that if he messed up the way he handled them, he may have to leave the industry permanently. When he unveiled Quiet in 2013 and met nothing but scoffing and charges of sexism in the English language gaming press, he assured us that Quiet was the anthisesis of uncovered female heroines, and that when we knew the secrets behind her exposure, we would "be ashamed of our words and deeds". The Quiet thing was pretty goofy, no matter how you slice it - but that quote was alongside numerous promises that race was still a key component, and that the game would challenge its audience in new and thought provoking ways. Ironically, METAL GEAR SOLID V: GROUND ZEROES - despite having numerous burning questions that will seemingly never be answered - did a good job of doing exactly what he promised. Phantom Pain, well... I feel the game was courting something dangerous. Something profound. Something that very few games have ever touched on, and when they do it's usually a clunky, over-wrought version of it, like Spec Ops: The Line or The Last of Us. Something that makes YOU, the player, feel not only guilty, but justified in something some that, all things considered, makes you kind of a shitty person.

For what it's worth, I personally don't know shit beyond the absolute basics about apartheid Africa. Heck, most of why I know about it came directly from me being fascinated by Neil Blombkamp's sci-fi treatment of the concept in District 9. This isn't all meant to be getting into the political implications I'm largely unfamiliar with, merely point out that - much like the Jewish Holocaust - there's a lot of fertile ground for using it in a fictional context to draw attention and parallels to current events.

Ground Zeroes had the stones to use a fictional "black site" to openly show how brutal and unjustified the real-life events at Camp X-ray in Guantanamo Bay and Abu Ghraib Prison in Iraq from the last decade have been, and while admittedly fictionalizing these events with the convoluted plot of a story of a cloned super soldier who fights nuclear bomb launching robots is probably not the most "mature" way to handle it, at least there was a legitimate attempt to focus on torture and giving the military limitless power over "non-combatants".

Phantom Pain stands on the edge of apartheid down to its very core, and refuses to directly acknowledge any part of racism in Africa despite that supposedly being the whole fucking theme of the game. If you're paying attention, you'll note that every victim of Skull Face's experiments in Angola-Zaire is black, poor, skinny and absolutely miserable. Skull Face himself seems to show no direct distaste for human ethnicity - merely their nationality, the fact that they're so willing to conqueror and manipulate those around them on unfair terms. Skull Face doesn't give a shit about blacks... but I'm willing to bet a lot of those predominantly white PF groups do, or at least the people hiring them. I wouldn't be shocked if one of the earlier focuses in the story was on Skull Face being backed by someone - likely someone not even in the game, at this point - who was willing to fund XOF's research on the premise that he develop Kikongo Parasites, and similar parasites that would specifically wipe out local tribal groups that they held responsible for the violence through Rhodesia and surrounding areas. Skull Face isn't racist, but with even Ocelot calling these parasites "Ethnic Cleansers" - and the obvious parallels between Code Talker's childhood to ongoing ethnic homogenization - it feels like a game that's never had trouble courting controversy is trying so hard to say it without saying it that it's painful.

So let me say it, Kojima: At one point your English script had some white asshole say something like "But who cares if we kill all the niggers?" This freaked someone high up in the chain at Konami the fuck out - perhaps not without reason, considering how absurdly PC the American and general English language media has become over the last several years - and this subplot got scrapped. Nothing else even begins to make sense, and considering everything *ELSE* we know got cut, suddenly removing a bunch of cut scenes from the early missions in Africa starts to hold a more intriguing implication. For one thing, this is a shame, since - while I'm of the personal opinion that hating anyone for their ethnicity, gender and religious or political beliefs over their behavior and personality is fucking stupid - tribalism and distrust of the "other" is very much a part of human nature, and an evolutionary necessity at that. People who grow up around what they see as their own kind are inherently suspicious, wary, fearful or angry as what they as something wholly separate, be those lines around race, language, class, even sex or political affiliation.

Sports are seen as a catharsis for so many people because it lets one group's "tean" go to battle with the other's, which - in centuries prior - would likely have just been an outright skirmish. Kojima clearly wanted to touch on some dark subject matter in this project, but after Ground Zeroes - by far the darkest chapter in Metal Gear history - he seemed content to cut any and all controversial elements that weren't Quiet's massive bewbs, leaving a game that feels like it's just on the edge of striking a nerve... and then never does. For fuck's sake, even The Last of Us felt more like a taboo breaker than this.

But there's a second reason this drives me crazy, and that's the fact that Rhodesia is - again - just north of South Africa. Why is South Africa important? Because that's where Outer Heaven is located! The logical conclusion here would have been Venom Snake invading a massive XOF stronghold on the Zimbabwe/South African border, conquering the shit out of it, and replacing one of their flags or something with the Diamond Dogs emblem. That's all it would have taken to make it clear that Phantom Pain really had come full circle with the founding of Outer Heaven, particularly with the novel version of MGS4 - which is more of a "rewrite" than a typical novelization, keep in mind - implying that Big Boss returned to Groznyj Grad in the late 80s to found Zanzibar Land in the ruins of Volgin's old stomping grounds. This would have legitimately brought the founding of Big Boss' empire full circle, but instead the game seemingly forgets its own continuity and just says, fuck it, Diamond Dogs in the Seychelles = Outer Heaven in South Africa eventually. 'Cause why the hell not.

HERE'S TO YOU,

CHICO AND BOSS

It's interesting that we didn't hear about Jim Piddock - the English voice of Major "Cipher" Zero - turning down the role until December of 2014. They had seemingly finished with Kiefer Sutherland, Robert Atkin Downes and the rest of the "main" English cast in 2013, yet the character who supposedly set up the entire "V" plan wasn't even contacted until the game would have, theoretically, been wrapping up production? Similarly the first implication that Strangelove - who winds up killed off screen, and in the final game only exists as a voice recording monologue in Chapter 2 - was a tweet from the Japanese actress, Yumi KIKUCHI, in July of 2014.

In and of itself, this isn't such a big deal; Chapter 2 may be a bloody mess, but with Skull Face having been virtually a tape-only presence in Ground Zeroes, it's hard to say if this was always by design or out of desperation once larger sections of the game had to be abandoned. In any case, the whole Strangelove subplot is just... bizarre. Huey was a lovable goofball in Peace Walker - effectively just Otacon in a wheelchair, when you get down to it - so while Phantom Pain's promise to show men becoming demons was ultimately fulfilled... it was by the one character who had every reason to not be a bastard. Ground Zeroes presented Huey as a twitchy liar who sold MSF out to Skull Face, but with a throw-away like about Strangelove having "left" not long before the XOF invasion, it seemed like they were setting it all up that Huey traded Big Boss' army for Strangelove's life. A crime of passion where the needs of one were seen as justifying the loss of many. In more focused and sensible hands, Huey's betrayal of Outer Heaven would have been tragic, romantic, even...

And in Phantom Pain he freaks out when she takes Hal away as he becomes Gendou IKARI 2.0, locks her away in The Boss' AI pod, and lets her starve to death like a dog. They discover her corpse which slumps out of the pod in a cassette tape. What the actual fuck, Kojima?! There's no way this was as it was written, and the more I think about it, the more I question if Huey's "betrayal" was scrapped and re-written entirely in the 11th hour. The whole thing just feels "off", and it's such a disappointing end to one of the more interesting Peace Walker characters I can't help but wonder if this was all ultimately done - if only in part - just to spite Konami's chance to use her in later games.

 Even holding aside how shitty a treatment this subplot is to both characters, it's also a total squandering of the fact that - beyond all rational expectations - THE BOSS LIVES! ...well, her AI pod - which, as Peace Walker established, isn't quite the same as the real thing - is still there, still remembers "Jack", and no matter how you slice it, could have been a valuable asset to the Diamond Dogs. They use her as a witness, and then just kinda'... forget she exists. If you wander around the RD platform she simply sits there, repeating bits and pieces of her final moments forever... locked in a living, infinite hell. Thanks, Venom! To be fair he does talk to the pod exactly once in the hidden "Final Ending" that's still locked behind the FOB stupidity that sounds like more fun than it actually is - but that's such a pointless after thought it actually makes Venom's character even more confusing than if they'd left it out entirely.

Hey, does anyone else remember how Kojima went to Normandy as part of the game's "location scouting"? Wouldn't that have been amazing, to see The Boss kicking ass with the Cobra Unit on D-Day through mind-jacking into the fucking AI pod? Wouldn't that have given us an actual justification to bring "The Boss" back - to see her legend, her gospel, renewed through the tragedy of seeing The Joy being an absolute fucking beast on the battle field, killing nazi's with The Sorrow and a big ol' Ocelot filled belly? Goddamn the thought of that game existing makes my dick hard... and instead she plays a bit part on a shitty episode of Law and Order.

Fuck. This. Game. But in the end, the biggest disappointment for me is, of all things, Chico. Hilarious, right? We were like a a budget extension away from VR Missions with the mother fucking Cobra Unit, and THIS is the final straw...

Don't get me wrong, nobody actually liked that annoying little shit - Ground Zeroes seemed designed solely to torture and humiliate the little bastard, and with the fact that he had a headphone jack embedded in his chest (which he could evidently listen to...?) was never explained in any way, shape or form still drives me nuts, since there's a LOT of weird and frankly interesting looking experiments going on at Camp Omega which all amount to fuck-all in the end. His Achilles tendons were destroyed, but with Phantom Pain's very title having an obsession with loss and irreconcilable damage to the self, what better character to explore this notion with did this franchise have but Chico? He never had a childhood that was free of the battlefield, and being forced to beat and even rape the girl he loved, and then still being coaxed into betraying MSF to spare them both further humiliation, puts him in the "damaged beyond fucking repair" category.

If the goal of Phantom Pain was to explore PTSD in any sort of meaningful way, to show the harrowing and miserable lives that veterans and even non-combatants have to suffer for the unbroken chain of perpetual violence. Forget Skull Face, ignore Miller, if there was ever a fucking case study for Metal Gear being an anti-war story, the 14 year old boy who was tortured, crippled, forced to engage in sexual assault to save both of them further violence and in the end sold his comrades out anyway was THE story to run with. Yes, I know a small, crippled, 20-something year old brown boy impersonating a 50ish Big Boss would have been a bit of a stretch, but goddamn, even that would have been a more fitting and interesting twist than "Big Boss is just some random brainwashed medic. Too bad those crazy kids Big Boss tried to save died or some shit".

For a year and change now I've been reminding self-important arseholes who are ready to write off Ground Zeroes as sadistic, misogynistic trash to wait until the actual fucking story was finished before pointing and making Invasion of the Body Snatcher noises as the "Women in Refrigerators" page on TVTropes. Metal Gear had a habit of not really killing characters, and considering this was the fourth mainline game to star the final boss who was killed in the original game, I had no doubt that even if Paz was gone, Chico's guilt and self-loathing would ultimately be a driving force behind Phantom Pain's raison d'être... and in the end, it's not even treated background noise. More time is spent trying to explain what the Boss' AI pod is, despite that having already gotten closure in Peace Walker.

It's really depressing when I pick this all apart and realize that despite Peace Walker being, by far, the weakest prior story for a mainline Metal Gear after the original, even that seems to understand what themes and character arcs and developments are. Peace Walker may have been Metal Gear Lite, but Phantom Pain is a bunch of sticky notes randomly shuffled together into a convoluted skeleton with no meat to speak of.

WITH QUIET DIGNITY

That's the real fuck'n rub here for me. Because at the end of the day, exactly one character in this game had a character arc, had personality, was likable through and through... and it was the one character Kojima just made to troll the whole goddamn world with.



Quiet's story is a tragedy presented as a farce: She gets barbecued by "Ishmael" in the opening, has parasites injected into her skin to replace her lungs and digestive track, survives getting her brains blown out by "Ahab" but assumes he's the former, follows him to Mother Base ready to release vengeance through her voice... and in the end, she sacrifices herself to save Venom, not only releasing the curse of the English Parasite forcing her to wander the desert alone, lest she infect the world, but is never able to come to terms with her feelings for the man who convinced her to become a gun. Not for honor, but for love. It's poetic... in a brain-dead kind of way.

It's annoying that so much focus has been put on her awesome baps because at the end of the day, she's the only character in here I wanted to spend time with. She assists you in the field, she's treated like dirt by your supposed friends, she betrays her commanding officer because she starts falling for Big Boss, same as the rest of us. Other than the whole "silent" gimmick, she fits right into the series, and the whole "dur hur paruhsites make no sense 'cause THE END" shit needs to stop. Like, now. You guys know the old man still had lungs, right? Working, not-charred like jerky lungs? That's why he fucking snores. The fact that Naked Snake gets the ability to use sunlight when wearing The End's camo snuggy doesn't suggest that Quiet could wear the same, rather it suggests that The End's clothing - rather than his entire body - was filled with the chlorophyllic parasites. And that just opens up a whole bunch of new potential retcons, doesn't it? But nah, let's all be snarky and joke about a hundred year old man in nylons instead instead of actually paying attention to the pseudo-science.

These guys also realize that Quiet's roughly as dressed as Big Boss in Naked Camo, right? And that wearing this gives you ZERO tactical advantage over putting on a shirt, right? But nah, there's no way this optional outfit is Metal Gear sneaking in a little dash of manservice, gotta be part of that adolescent male power fantasy...



What's funny is that Quiet wouldn't have been so out of place in any other Metal Gear game. Metal Gear 2 had a Soviet spy who was also a figure skater who didn't realize that she was dating Frank goddamn Jaeger, because "Frank Hunter" was such a clever fucking alias. Metal Gear Solid 2 had The Fortune, a forlorn girl in a one-piece bathing suit and combat boots who couldn't get shot to end her life, and I mean that oddly literally. Metal Gear Solid 4 had the Beauty and Beast unit, and they...


Yeah. If a line was ever crossed into "...well, this is fucked up", it was the Beauty and Beast Corps. They moan seductively as you tranq them, they crawl and straddle you if you whip out the camera, and every single one of them is about as naked as you can get with a second skin of latex. They all have horrifying, tragic backstories, and the fact that they react to extreme trauma by wanting to grind on what appears to be a 70 year old Snake is... unsettling. It's not the sexuality itself, which is just silly, it's the direct connection to trauma, torture and violence that makes it so off-putting.

But that's kind of the whole point, isn't it? That you can choose to be an asshole and act like it's a Playboy shoot is entirely up to you. When I played through the boss battles I fought them for real using deadly weapons, and frankly, the battle with Laughing Octopus (above) is such a weird John Carpenter-esque nightmare that if you're getting off to this, you're probably a bad person with fetishes that make people regret looking underneath your bed.

Not that I'm not a bad person myself, or think that being a "bad person" is anything to take too seriously when we're talking the realms of fantasy. I have literally argued with people over the definition of "rape porn" because they think movies or books or what have you with graphic depictions rape - regardless of presentation and goal of the work in question - is instantly 'porn' or a celebration of sexual assault. As a dedicated connoisseur of rape porn I find that notion offensive! There's a wide range between the rape comedies of the Hong Kong CAT III period and the brutality of my favorite Chinese Cartoon Girls which are, in no uncertain terms, made exclusively to beat off to. If you want to use the words "rape porn" and don't know what Legend of the Overfiend, Raped by an Angel or Thriller: A Cruel Picture are, you really have no business talking about a varied subject you clearly know nothing about, much less projecting your personal turn-offs on a work you'd otherwise have no interest in. And there's the rub, I think. Art - or entertainment, media, whatever you think movies and games and such are - are allowed to offend and make viewers uncomfortable, if that's the story and the tone the creator wants to make.

I guess if your argument is "overt and non-story centered sexualization is stupid", I can't completely argue against it. I happen to think light-hearted, eye-rolling fanservice can be fun. Sometimes it's so bad it's just cringe-worthy. Quiet straddles the line (giggidy), but when it all comes to a head (goo) it's just... dumb. It's not offensive. It's not even creepy. It's just stupid, and considering the one line from the game everyone remembers is a guy named Skull Face screaming "WHOOOOO?!" at the top of his lungs, meh, at that point I can't get too worked up over it. Metal Gear is a franchise about how ugly bipedal robots that launch nuclear weapons are the height of technological warfare and a human clone with advanced aging has to stop an AI cluster's plot to control the trigger of every major manufacturer's weapon through the use of nanomachines, who fights a different old man who only brainwashed himself to think he was possessed by the spirit of a different dead clone to try and stop a machine that's taken down by an 8 year old girl who stole the plot from Independence Day, and also there's a cyborg ninja with robo-high heels who fights a hairy chested bisexual vampire with hyperspeed boots and a 90 minute cut scene in which two old men who barely know each other dump anghsty philosophy on each other in a graveyard I SWEAR I HAVE MADE NONE OF THIS SHIT UP.

In other words, "stupid" is nothing new to Metal Gear. Either you're used to it, or you already went back to Mobile Suit Gundam and/or Splinter Cell.

If your argument is "KOJIMA IS BETTER THAN THIS!" and "PREVIOUS GAMES WEREN'T THIS DISGUSTING!" and "THINK OF THE CHILDREN WOMEN WHO FACE ENOUGH PUSH BACK FROM THOSE EVIL MISOGYNISTS GAMERS", well...







...you clearly haven't been paying attention for the last decade or two. Inappropriate and questionable sexual tension is part of the charm at this point, and to Kojima's credit, he's about half as liable to undress and objectify men as he is women. Bitch all you want, games media and pals, but Kojima himself stated that Raiden was specifically designed to appeal to a female audience that wasn't fold of Solid Snake, and if you decide that Big Boss is more into ruffling around Kaz' banana hammock than Paz' frilly things, hey, that's all up to you.

Is Quiet stupid, particularly the way she shoves her ass into the camera for no real reason? Of course. She is. Is she reduced to a sex object by the camera? Every chance it gets. And does that undermine her character? Nah. Not unless being crammed up Snake's ass has made him a sex-fantasy object, too. For a game where words are in short supply - both thematic and literally - Quiet's actions are almost universally stunning, If you're arguing that a character's looks are ultimately the deciding factor in how seriously you take them, you're being honest and I can respect that, but unless you constantly bitch about how non-functional the average Final Fantasy or Dynasty Warriors costume is, I also think you're just being a touch ridiculous about it.

Hell, a friend of mine - who's no prude - grumbled about the "dancing in the rain" scene. I reminded him that he adores Berserk, and the only real difference is that in Berserk the two of them didn't actually want to stuff each other's gully holes, which makes the whole scene even dumber in a sense. Not that you shouldn't love Berserk, but for fuck's sake, will I be happy when I never have to hear about Quiet's tiddies again. I'd much rather hear how she was the despised yet sweet natured badass the Diamond Dogs deserved, not the martyred matron they seemingly all needed.

Besides, the fact that the one time anything remotely sexual happens to her is A) an act of violence, and B) ends with her absolutely DESTROYING that little fucker's junk says all you need to know about Kojima's view of the world; ain't no crime rubber necking, but keep those hands where she can see them, boys. If that's too much for you to handle, fuck it, I really don't know what to tell you.

Metal Gear is fucking dumb and yet over-explains every part of its dumbness. That's why people like it. If this is news to you, I'unno what to say, dude.

IDENTITY CRISIS:
WHAT IF I'M A LIE?

If the plot were a mess but the characters themselves were engaging, this may have saved to some degree. Metal Gear Solid 4: Guns of the Patriots is a flaming trainwreck of an overall narrative, trying like mad to explain away the intentionally broken meta-narrative of METAL GEAR SOLID 2: SONS OF LIBERTY, but at least its dedication to giving all the characters their moment in the sun makes it feel... alive, by comparison. Even when MGS4 sucks, it's at least dedicated to fleshing out and walling in the rich and well-rounded characters the series had been building up to that point. By the end of it all, I find "Liquid Ocelot" just as likable and even sincere in his dedication to The Boss' will as Solid Snake is to defeating The Patriots; two sides of the same coin, violently barreling towards the same goal, despite never fully realizing it. It's sad, it's brilliant, and it's just dumb enough that I can keep rolling with it... even when we get to shit like this.


...yeah, MGS4 is pretty retarded. But somehow it's still more likable than Phantom Pain. And a big part of that is because by and large, nobody in this game has any real personality.

You remember Revolver Ocelot? The guy who convinced himself he was Liquid Snake and grafted the dead fucker's arm onto his body and then hypnotized himself into believing it was true? The guy who was shown to be an absolute nut even as a kid, twirling pistols like an old Western hero and dedicating hours of the day to creating increasingly convoluted hand gestures and mewling like a cat? Yeah. Ocelot was a fucking madman, and when he became the default antagonist of MGS2 and MGS4, he owned it. Ocelot is a back-stabbing sociopath who'd sacrifice everything to let Big Boss' interpretation of The Boss' Will come to fruition, but he was always a spastic crazy person getting there.

So who the fuck is the southern drawl cowboy played by Nolan goddamn North? 'Cause he sure as shit isn't Ocelot. He's a dull textbook of in-world information spouting off 2 minute chunks of backstory at the drop of a hat - his presence in the Paz introductions being the scene that clinched it for me; Ocelot is not the same character he's been in every other incarnation. It's not "a new take", it's "some other asshole they named Ocelot". Phantom Pain is trying so goddamn hard to emulate a po-faced Tom Clancy narrative that Ocelot simply doesn't fit within its fabric, so he's been modulated into a generic... nothing.

Benedict "Kazuhira" Miller comes off only slightly better; Robert Atkin-Downes plays his role as the bitter, vengeance driven general straight to the hilt, and I absolutely respect every ounce he poured into a role that steals every scene he appears in. Unfortunately, Generic Ocelot and you-know-who kneecap virtually every attempt Miller has at finally succumbing to the darkness that consumes him; Ocelot tortures as a necessary evil, but he's so blase about the whole thing you'd think he was simply doing it to shut Miller up. Miller, meanwhile, gets veto'd at every step of the way, being denied not only satisfaction against Skull Face, but Huey as well.

I mean, yeah, Huey winds up getting cuckolded to death by his own son. Still doesn't make up for the bullshit "punishment" he got. Miller should have cut his legs off and kept them as a trophy. Literally anything would have been better than that.

And that all filters back to the biggest void in the game: Venom Snake. I understand it, memetically speaking; Phantom Pain posits the realization that Big Boss' legend wouldn't exist without gamers being desperate and hungry for more, to see how the lovably autistic Naked Snake fell from grace as the greatest hero of all time to become the blood thirsty madman of the Outer Heaven Uprising. By making "us" Big Boss, Kojima finally rejects the fourth-wall breaking rejection of war games as anything but a waste of time in MGS2 and lets us have our power fantasy. We become Big Boss, the feared mercenary who gave birth to the War Economy. Feared by the general public, loathed by the "real" puppet masters, and beloved by those who's lives begin and end on the blood stained battle field, Phantom Pain is the ultimate realization of Peace Walker's knowing commentary of Big Boss'"downfall" being the logical conclusion of his journey towards what he always saw as The Boss' will; the monster who's sole purpose is to perpetuate violence and retaliation as a means to an end, giving every group who feels wronged or that they deserve more than they have the manpower to take lives... not for life, not for honor, but for you. Big Boss' descent into violence and villainy is your own military simulator. Always has been, and it was at the endgame of Peace Walker - when Mother Base's theme changed from the yellow of peace to the red of combat - that Kojima made everything as clear as he possibly could. Hell, the final speech in Peace Walker - the first time Big Boss says "Outer Heaven"* - has far more nuance and understanding of the morally ambiguous position that Big Boss and Mother Base hold than the entirety of the Phantom Pain.

* Yeah, yeah, he mentions "Outer Heaven" in passing METAL GEAR SOLID: PORTABLE OPS, despite presumably using Gene's money to fund The Patriots, which is why he has to start from zero (hehe... I miss laughter...) after leaving Cipher. Actually wait, is Portable Ops even canon at this point? Screw it, can I just ignore how dumb that Null stuff is and then pretend Portable Ops is The Phantom Pain?

So what "missing link" does Phantom Pain ultimately cover? It can't do much, because Kiefer Sutherland's silent, stoic take on Big Boss is almost completely devoid of personality, other than always being merciful and just and fucking perfect at every step. Huey betrays us a second time and forces you, the player, to murder your own troops... your judgment is to put him on a life raft with food and water and let him figure it out. You're hired to kill child soldiers by a warlord who wants them silenced; you take the injured kids back to Mother Base and open a fucking day care. The player can "Go Nuclear" by building nuclear warheads and even  growing a massive oni horn if he kills people and animals on a regular basis, but so fucking what? I hate to go full anon, but let's face it:

Big Boss Did Nothing Wrong. And that's bullshit. "Kaz, I'm already a demon." What? NO. No Venom, you're NOT! Even if we consider everything you did in Portable Ops and Peace Walker to be morally questionable (and it so is), what has he done? What honest thing has Venom Snake done to show the sort of self-loathing he shows when he rescues Kaz? Every line Venom gets seems to come out of nowhere - and that's when it comes out at all...

I don't want to get into the failings of Chapter 1 because, as weak as it was, I can live with it. It's only when you introduce the avalanche of unfinished, poorly executed and nonsensical clusterfuck of Chapter 2 that it all goes wrong, but the jeep ride with Skull Face sums up the impotence and misfires of MGSV almost perfectly. You create a bookend moment with the Ground Zeroes opening while Skull Face gives his evil villainous monologue, Big Boss sitting in silence and fidgeting like a hobo on the bus, and then once the villain has said his piece and you expect a quip, a threat, a question - for the hero to say literally fucking anything - instead, we get... well, just fucking look at it...




Such a list for theme songs...
We get 2 minutes of awkward silence while Donna Burke's amazing theme song echoes softly in the distance, like an impotent firework farting musical brilliance along the ground where no one can see them. It's painful. If one moment in The Phantom Pain can sum up why the strong, silent approach was a horrible idea, and how low Hideo Kojima has fallen as an interactive storyteller, this sequence speaks louder than words ever could. And I LIKED the fucking ladder scene in Snake Eater! At least that served as an act break, and was a reprive of a theme that we already liked, not as stretching for time minutes before the final battle and blowing the Donna Burke load all over the sheets before you ever got your boxers off.

If there was a single moment where my minor doubts and frustrations turned to blackened, seething fury, Chapter 30 was it. A pity, too. Skull Face may have been a goddamn Saturday morning cartoon villain in the end, but White George Takei was more fun than anything around him. Had THIS cornball in a ten gallon hat had been the final boss of Peace Walker, maybe that game would have been the finale I always wanted and never realized.

DID YOU LIKE IT?

The saddest part in all of this is I'm starting to piece together what a desperate, angry act of bridge-burning Chapter 2 really becomes. Zero's put into a coma by the late 70s thanks to Skull Face's parasites. Paz, Chico and Strangelove are dead. Huey is a filthy traitor. The Boss is reduced to a broken record. Miller is a crippled, bitter husk. Ocelot is boring. Skull Face is killed in the least satisfying manner possible by an annoying little shit. Quiet's gone. Volgin's lust for revenge extinguished... Eli and Baby Mantis are MIA, but the Collector's Edition spoils what'll inevitably happen next, and anything that isn't properly explained in the game itself (ie: EVERYTHING) is either given an over-long audio cassette, or is brushed off as unimportant.

I'm not even going to dignify the fact that "Parasites" are the new "Nanomachines" and that, much like Midichlorians, they've retconned them back into things that were well presented enough that nobody who knows how to have fun even questioned it. Oh, that guy shoots hornets? Oh. Okay, sure. Moving on. Fucking parasites, man...

All of this was pieced together on the fly, but there's a single theme running through it all:


You really want a game starring a bitter, unlikable Miller? How about that back-stabber, Huey? You could do a "Real Big Boss" game if you wanted to, fulfill all those hopes and dreams of seeing a loli-Sniper Wolf and a young Decoy Octopus, I guess, but who really gives a shit after Quiet effectively replaced her in all but name?  Venom Snake is a blank slate, but we know what he does from here; there's only so many more convoluted shenanigans Konami can cram him into, and the plot is so convoluted and full of retcons and contradictions that the far simpler answer would just be to hit the reset button. Arguably that's long overdue anyway, but Kojima spent so much time carpet bombing his own continuity that I can't help but think some of those little details - Strangelove and Chico dead, Huey being a scumbag, Code Talker being fucking useless, Quiet running off and being infested with deadly parasites besides - that a bit part of it was Kojima giving his employers as little opportunity to continue into METAL GEAR SOLID 666: OUTER HEAVEN RISING as was humanly possible.

That won't stop them, of course. Metal Gear Solid 6 will exist, and odds are it'll suck. But after the heartbreak of watching The Phantom Pain unfold and implode on itself form 60 to 0 in about 6 chapters flat, I don't know that it could be any more crushing. Phantom Pain had the potential to show the darker side of a man fans considered a hero, to really dig deep and wallow in the pain and misery that Big Boss' bloody revolution ultimately boiled down to. Ground Zeroes seemed ready and willing to walk down that path, but something - compromise, cowardice, maybe a little of both - ultimately keep this from being anything it needed to be to have a lasting impact.

Did I like it, Kojima? No, I fear I did not. I never thought I'd look at Peace Walker and think, man, the series probably should have quit while it was ahead, but that's where I'm at with this. It's a sad, wasted potential that only makes the rest of the Metal Gear universe worse by extension, and has for the first time in about a decade left me so furious that I want to write a fucking outline for the obvious conclusion that the teasers and promotional footage promised us, rather than the lies and misdirections we've been fed this whole time. I have no doubt that were Konami still in the business of actually focusing on console games this would have been less... broken, but the damage is already done, and there's no behind the scenes drama that can convince me that massive problems with the narrative are directly at the behest of Hideo Kojima itself.





It's 1:30 in the morning. I have to get up for work in 5 hours. I've re-written parts of this more times than I can count, and if I don't hit "post" now I'll probably revise it another dozen times and add another five sub-sections referencing other reviews that hit points I've only touched on. I'm sure this write-up is as big a mess as the game it's brutalizing, but this is less a "review" and more a "purging", for my own sake. To put this all into perspective, I'm playing the Mad Max game to forget The Phantom Pain exists, even though the gameplay of the latter is infinitely more appealing than the former.

I don't understand what's happened. I just know this is almost as crushing and disgusting a feeling as The Phantom Menace was about 16 years ago. It's not that bad, no, but it's as big a wasted potential, with the Outer Heaven Uprising being the one last piece of the puzzle worth exploring only for this game to reference it for literally about 30 seconds in a fucking reflection of a mirror. Again, I kinda' like the ruse, but... how is THAT the focus of the game. with zero actual build-up?!

Realistically, in terms of "how mad am I", it's Prometheus levels. There's some admirable qualities and I could probably appreciate it if I wasn't already a fanboy, but I'm too close for this to be anything but rage fuel. But if these aren't made for fanboys, who the fuck are they for? Who else would put up with this bullshit, much less actually enjoy it?!


Well... at least we can still mod the game, I guess. Here's hoping some bitter ex-Konami employee leaks the ever loving fuck out of the Fox Engine so someone can produce better closure than Kojima Productions was allowed to, in whatever form that takes.

Long live the man who sold the world... and may the memory of his phantom fade into obscurity.

While I don't think I'd ever peg A LIZARD IN A WOMAN'S SKIN/Una Lucertola con la Pelle di Donna as my favorite Lucio Fulci film, I would hold it up as one of his more interesting and polished films before he descended into the sticky pop-madness he'd become so famous for largely in hindsight; despite being yet another "animal" themed whodunnit in the wake of Dario Argento's Bird with the Crystal Plumage, the soundtrack, location, and even the way it's shot are all an interesting contrast to the more familiar spaghetti-thrillers of the period. It's a little nastier, a little more dreamlike than many of the period Italian murder-mysteries I've seen - which, admittedly, is but a taste of a veritable banquet. I can probably name between 15 and 20 giallo I've actually seen, but Italy was cranking these films out to the tune of over two-dozen a year at the height of their popularity in the early 70s, and with the concept so firmly entrenched into the country's cinematic landscape we're still seeing throwbacks like the short Yellow from 2012, and the feature-length The Strange Color of Your Body's Tears as recently as 2013.

Regardless of where it may sit in the pantheon of its contemporaries,  A Lizard in a Woman's Skin remains a comforting reminder that Fulci was more than capable of simultaneously logical and increasingly dreamlike films, in which the substance was just as high a priority as the style; the film's combination of schizophrenia and psychedelic drugs not only give Fulci an excuse to go for broke, but it allows him to use the uncertain state of the heroine's mind to let those increasingly surreal and dangerous images build with the audience experiencing, first hand, that her heroine's own sense of self and reality are falling apart before her eyes. It never gets close to the heights of violent and nonsensical insanity that would cement the director's fame in the next decade's "Trilogy of Death" - three films I absolutely adore, but admit are accidental masterpieces, the result of an angry, petulant artist throwing whatever dumb idea he could come up with at the screen and not particularly caring what stuck - but this was absolutely a precursor to the mounting visual representation of fear and dread that Fulci would gradually allow to consume his films whole.

It also serves as a fascinating counterpoint to Fulci's follow-up, Don't Torture a Duckling/Non si Sevizia un Paperino. A Lizard in a Woman's Skin is, at its core, an examination of morally upstanding blue-bloods in the lap of luxury being threatened by the hedonistic ways of the hippie, while Duckling is about small town simple folk needing to face the realization that they themselves are more than capable of causing their own destruction. Florida Bolkan stars in both, playing mirror opposite characters in films that stylistically couldn't be any less alike, and the contrast between the two makes both films somewhat better as a result. I won't get into why Duckling has a lot to say - to even hint at the central theme of the story would be to betray its ending to anyone who hasn't already seen it - but suffice to say I'm excited knowing that a BETTER THAN EXPECTED Blu-ray release of this is already out in Austria... too bad the only current release is an absurdly over-priced "Leatherbook" collector's edition that was priced at over $100.

Speaking of overpriced European imports, a combination of unexpected bills and a bad sense of timing, I completely missed my window to get the French Limited Edition via label Le Chat Qui Fume, so for the time being we'll just have to take Michael MacKenzie's word* on the European presentation being decent, but flawed in a number of ways. He does a good job of summing up the surprisingly complex myriad of DVD releases - I think the only one I've kept around is the Optimum UK release, which is both the best looking and most complete SD release we'll likely ever see - and while minor differences have already cropped up, it seems the bulk of the Optimum DVD, Mondo Macabro BD, and French BD are all sourced from the same HD transfer crafted by Studio Canal.

Mondo Macabro has gotten into the habit of doing a "Limited Edition" of 999 copies through their own Big Cartel store front for pre-order, to be replaced by a wide release once that's sold out. A LIZARD IN A WOMAN'S SKIN was no different, and while the disc contents will be identical between the two, the now sold-out LE gives you two reversible alternate covers to choose from, an opaque red plastic case and an 8 page booklet featuring an essay by Troy Howarth, author of Splintered Visions: Lucio Fulci and his Films. Each copy is individually numbered, too. It's a nice incentive to buy straight from the source, but as the Amazon price is about $10 cheaper and contains unique artwork not found in the Limited Edition in any capacity, I won't fault anyone for waiting it out for the wide release version. Especially not if they're waiting for reviews, as I was tempted to do but didn't, because God knows I hate having money.


If for some reason this is your first visit to my little corner of Internet Hell, I'm not really into "reviews" in the traditional sense. If you want someone to tell you the transfer is "very good 8/10" and go into how much fun the bonus features are... that's not really what I do. I do somewhat more in-depth analytic musings of the transfers, effectively looking for problems, because Blu-ray is (good lord) a decade old. I shouldn't need to be the guy who points out when IRE levels are fucked up or when to junk a 15 year old film scanner, but hey, somebody's gotta' be hated by all the labels he loves so that they might learn...

Mondo Macabro have opted for a BD-25 at an average bitrate of about 22,992 kb/s (ie: 23 mb/s). I mention this largely as a footnote, though - I'm sure nobody would complain about a higher bitrate, but as we've seen for years now when it comes to raw bandwidth on H264, "bigger" doesn't instantly mean "better", and there's really nothing to complain about in terms of banding, macroblocking or any other common compression woes. Don't get me wrong, I'm a firm believer in keeping bitrates high as more of a safety-net than anything, but this is a perfectly acceptable transfer as-is, and from the looks of things, it's better than the

To be fair, I found exactly one scene with visible compression artifacts but the combination of being dark, having several optical effects, and those macroblocks being in the darkest areas that most reasonably-close-to-calibrated displays will crush out entirely leaves them so minor I won't even point out where they are. Leave a comment with the timecode I'm talking about and I'll owe you a cookie or something.

Both the original English and Italian audio options are available as 16-bit PCM mono tracks - calling either a "dub" would be a bit of a misnomer, so the option to watch either-or is nice - with a third audio commentary as a 192kb Dolby Stereo mix. Clear, white English subtitles are available for both the Italian dub (which are often quite different from the English track) and a secondary track to subtitle a scene that was seemingly new dubbed into English at 00:26:35 - anyone with more than a passing familiarity with gialli will likely know what they're getting into. Another scene at 00:31:18 is in Italian and NOT subtitled - though the dialogue is clearly inconsequential, and curiously, the music and effects present here are completely different from the Optimum DVD version of the scene.

The English track sounds surprisingly good, with only a low level hiss during silent sequences; the Italian track isn't bad, but it's clearly been filtered to compensate for unwanted analog noise, leaving the track sounding slightly thin and metallic by comparison.

From a technical presentation, there's really nothing to complain about... but what about from an archival standpoint? Mondo Macabro is the first to present the "complete" version of this film in HD, but at what cost does that preservation bring to a high-fidelity presentation?

David "lyris" MacKenzie has done the mastering for this title, and he's not been shy on the Blu-ray.com forums that over a minute's worth of uspcaled footage had to be used to present the most complete version of the film available. We've seen this a handful of times in cult HD releases, most notably the various European iterations of Dario Argento's Four Flies on Gray Velvet - a process that was done so poorly in the Shameless UK that a German label Koch Media later did an entirely new scan of the scenes they could, and re-upscaled the scenes they couldn't from scratch. I'm very happy to report that the Mondo Macabro presentation - compromised as it may occasionally be - has much more in common with the latter than it does the former.

The Mondo Macabro transfer runs 01:43:57 in total, and makes a proud claim on the package to be the longest version of the film available. The fact that this is being used as a selling point when the French Blu-ray is known to be missing footage, however, isn't exactly a comforting direction for this conversation to start from. It's entirely possible, I suppose, that I've missed some additional sequences, but the following 3 scenes upscaled from what appears to be a PAL Digibeta source:


All in all,that's about 68 seconds of footage, and roughly in line with David's prior warning of what to expect. It likely goes without saying that several scenes typically cut from prior prints - such as the scene of Strindberg putting her fingers under her skirt before it cuts to the aformentioned shot of Sorrel cracking nuts - are retained in their entirety, in HD, where applicable.

It's unfortunate, but this all ties back to the observations that Michael made about the French Blu-ray being incomplete, which leaves me with no other option but to assume that there simply is no HD version of this footage available. An oddity, to be sure, but having heard second-hand accounts from film labs that would cut a few seconds here or there because of an audio issue or a bad splice they didn't want to freeze-frame around, it's not exactly shocking either.

Do I wish Mondo Macabro would have found another solution - presumably paid to do a new HD telecine for these 68 seconds? You bet your ass I do! Particularly since the SD footage was clearly culled so recently there's little reason to assume that the 35mm element itself isn't still within reach. But it's entirely possible the licensor doesn't want them to disturb the film materials again, and it's even more likely that the cost involved to do so would far outweigh any potential additional sales this particular title would generate in the first place. Lucio Fulci's best known for movies like Zombi 2 and The Beyond - by comparison his gialli are mostly a footnote to careers like Bava and Argento, films that are generally liked by aficionados but have never been a huge commercial success, to the point where Bill Lustig all but guaranteed he'd never bother purchasing the rights to Don't Torture a Duckling in HD. The only reason that fans are so willing to buy this particular film on DVD multiple times is because each release has been such a fascinating clusterfuck in the first place, and I'd wager that most fans who put up with murky, VHS-quality copies to see something even resembling an "uncut" version before will put up with this compromise without much complaint.

It's frustrating, sure, but compared to having the footage simply missing, jump cuts and? It's a compromise I can live with. At the very least it's clear every effort was made to keep the footage looking as close to the HD master as possible, and kud to all involved for doing a job so good, even I don' thave much in the way of suggesting ways to improve it:






I don't have any real insider information here, honestly - I'm simply going to guess that the source used here is the same decent-enough PAL Digibeta the Optimum UK DVD was made from, likely with some additional color correction and filtering to make it match as closely as it's ever going to. Ultimately it's disappointing, but the difference in quality is subtle enough that I suspect a lot of less obsessive fans won't even notice. To put this another way, if "grain structure", "edge ringing" and "chroma subsampling" aren't things you tend to worry too much about, odds are you'll be more than satisfied with the whole transfer.

And it's a shame I've spent so much time talking about this 68 seconds, because most of the other hundred-plus minutes look pretty damn good! Insofar as a low-budget Italian thriller shot on location from the early 70s will ever look, of course. The print used could well be the OCN for all I know, it's certainly in fine shape with nothing to bitch about in terms of scratches, flicker, staining and so on, and while I have no doubt an intensely expensive and carefully corrected 4K master could theoretically yield superior results, I rarely found myself wondering what could be, and instead being surprisingly content with what is now.


One slight annoyance is the presence of some funky chroma scaling issues. Notice the solid white gap between Leo Genn's shoulder and the red curtain behind him, or the almost electric outline of the flower in his lapel;  reds in particular have a slightly diffuse, blotchy look I initially thought was the result of DVNR processing, but the more I see, the more I think the conversion from 4:4:4 color to 4:2:2 went slightly awry and introduced some ugly sharpening artifacts that make the otherwise subdued color information look a bit wonky around the edges. It's a very minor problem, mind - more an academic curiosity than something I'd actually ever get my panties in a twist over.

There is a lengthy oddity though - from about 01:05:37 to 01:08:20, starting with a shot of a cardboard cutout of Strindberg's body on her bed and ending just before Bolkan walks out of her father's office in black, the image quality takes a pretty notable hit; heavier grain, more frequent scratches, density flicker and an odd loss in color fidelity that makes the faces in the crime scene look somewhat sickly and jaundiced. It's pretty clear that for one reason or another the negative was simply unavailable for this footage, and a lower quality dupe element had to be used in its place. Considering how rough the film has looked in the past on DVD, I can't bitch too hard - the slightly funky color timing in the first half of this elemental substitution looked much the same on the Optimum DVD, so I can only assume this has far more to do with physical film limitations than any sudden loss in technical competence.

Also worth noting; there's an odd jump cut at 01:08:20 just after the line "If something doesn't happen, I..." The Optimum DVD is identical, and if there is an extra scene that's supposed to follow here, I've not seen it on any of the various English or Italian language prints floating around. I can only guess this was a last-minute editorial decision that was never properly smoothed over circa 1971.

There's a number of smaller scenes that look similarly rough - for example, a close-up of the reflection in Bolkan's eye at 00:47:29, as well as numerous shots in the following scene of Bolkan speaking at the jail - but looking them over a second time I can only suspect that these scenes involving difficult-to-film reflection effects were simply optically printed to the negative, making the color oddities and grain a natural part of their creation. Whether or not dated optical effects "should" be manipulated with cautious grain removal to make them match the rest of the film is very much a personal call; personally, I'd rather they not bother and let the rough edges show than try to sand them off and potentially do more damage.

Now I'm just nit-picking, but at around 00:08:29 there's a bit of an odd instance of blended frames during the split-screen shot of the swinging party at Strindberg's flat set against Bolkan's more understated dinner... the nature of opticals make such things hard to judge, but could this be a stray deinterlacing artifact? It's not uncommon for European Telecine work to be finished at 1080i 25fps, but not knowing the history of these materials like the back of my hand I can only guess.


Another annoying niggle I'll be damned to not mention; the English credits appear to be over-matted to about 1.95, which have actually cut the original copyright information in half. Yes, I've seen actual prints projected in much the same way. Yes, I rolled my eyes and growled under my breath there, too.

The bonus features are quite impressive, culling the best material from essentially every previous release and including a host of new material, too. The only obvious missing piece is the inclusion of the old US print called SCHIZOID for American audiences, which was notable for some bizarre optically printed "dream wave" censorship, along with having . I'd never recommend anyone watch the English cut over the complete composite version offered here - I merely recommend it as a fascinating curiosity, the same way that I'd recommend anyone with a sincere interest in the Lone Wolf and Cub series try watching SHOGUN ASSASSINS, if only once.

At the end of the day, I'm slightly frustrated, but mostly satisfied. Mondo Macabro has been pretty honest about what we're getting, they've done the best they can with a title that's had a long and difficult history on home video, and with this never having been a big hit in Germany I can't see this having a repeat of Four Flies on Gray Velvet; the release is what it is, and knowing what it is, I can say it's absolutely worth the price. It eclipses every prior DVD release in every way possible, and a compromise between an incomplete and a consistently high-quality presentation was made in what I can only describe as the best option available. It's not quite perfect, but the odds of this film getting a better release in the forseeable future look slim, to put it kindly.

If you want to support Mondo Macabro's fine work, pick it up through their BIG CARTEL. My copy is in the 700s, but as far as I can tell they still have a handful available, proving how every single sale really does count for niche titles like this. I don't get any referral money so don't click it on my account, I just think this release is as good as expected, and think anyone interested in it should buy straight from the source. If you're cheap, I get it - Amazon is taking pre-orders for 02/09, which is a fair breath between the initial LE and the wide release. Screw Amazon, Diabolik DVD is notably cheaper even if you have Prime.

And yes, friends... It's good to be back.

* Foot Note: A pity that him moving on to do QC work for Arrow Video will ultimately nullify his spot as one of the handful of reviewers I trust out there; he was a hard man to please, and his penchant for finding quantization problems on discs I'd call "perfect" are admirable, if not potential signs of the OCD.

Still, I can't blame anyone for not wanting to (directly or otherwise) trash talk their own competition, and it's a big part of why - even after all of these years - I still post under the pseudonym "Kentai"... frankly, whatever input I can offer seems less and less useful as labels have become either self-sufficient every step of the way, or willing to release whatever crap they're handed the competition won't touch, with very little in-between. At this point I'm mostly writing this out just to appease my morbid curiosity. And totally not to justify the $28 I've spent on a movie I've bought on DVD at least three times.

For those who might not pay as close attention to these sorts of things as I used to, a quick heads-up; Don and Jerry over at Synapse Films are now taking pre-orders for their Limited Edition of Dario Argento's violent, clever and strikingly shot 1982 giallo, TENEBRAE. The release date is "officially" the 23rd of this month, but seeing as how they're literally waiting for the manufactured copies to arrive, it may get to you even sooner. (And since I rarely have a reason to pimp his stuff, kudos to Synapse for giving the coveted cover work to Silver Ferox Design!)

If you kept up with the Demons releases from a year or two back, you know the drill; it's $46 shipped, you get a nice steelbook with a DVD and a Blu-ray (plus a remastered CD this time), and most importantly, dozens of man-hours have been put into taking the best elements available and fixing what - in this case - both Arrow Video and Wild Side did not. It seems the now-infamous scratch removal artifacts that plagued the European BD releases have been repaired(!), and Don May himself has given the entire master a shot-by-shot color grade. Mercifully this is a film that's never had the intense controversy surrounding its home video presentation it as, say, Suspiria or The Bird with the Crystal Plumage, but it's got such a unique and difficult to handle "look" by design that the varience of all prior releases have only raised further questions. I have little doubt that however the

The new release also boasts some interesting bonus features, including a seamless branching option to see the now-virtually unseen English language insert shots from "Unsane", along with the feature length Yellow Fever: The Rise and Fall of the Giallo documentary, plus a handful of other goodies that are a bit less over the top. Good stuff overall. I was a bit disappointed the entire "Unsane" print wasn't included as a bonus, but Synapse has since explained that the American 35mm prints were uncut (MPAA trims aside), while the 90 minute VHS release was seemingly just butchered to use a cheaper T-90 cassette. At that point, fuck it, just make it complete and move on.

Again, if you remember the Demons releases, this also likely means that a substantially discounted but bare-bones Blu-ray is sure to follow in a half-year's time despite Synapse "having no current plans". I can't fault Synapse for wanting to play both sides of the market here, and seeing as how they've yet to sell out of either Demons tin, they probably made the right choice giving those as many sales as humanly possible. This is very likely to be the best 1080p presentation this 34 year old thriller's going to get, so if - like myself - you want to be done buying and comparing releases of this fucking movie once and for all, consider the price more a peace of mind tax than anything.

To be honest, it's not my favorite Argento flick. It's good - damn good, at times - but it had the nasty habit of being made after both Profondo Rosso and  Suspiria, but before Argento would lose his mind in an experimental way as he would in Phenomena and Opera, only to lose his absolute shit in the years that follow, but... let's not get into all that. Not now, at any rate. In the end Tenebrae is one of those films you can show "normal" people to explain why you like Italian thrillers and this one is expensive and well produced enough that they can see the appeal without having to forgive the usual shortcomings of the cheaply-made and fetishized entries that make up the bulk of any genre's outings. It is what Princess Mononoke is to Japanese Animation, or what Jackie Chan is to Hong Kong movies in general; it's actually pretty damn good, but it's such entry-level stuff that's been over-analyzed to the point of parody that actually talking about it now seems pointless. Yes, the crane shot remains as jaw-dropping as ever, and yes, Argento casting doubt on his own motives as an artist is a clever touch, and yes, parts of the soundtrack are amazing... anything else to add?

No? We're good? Cool, let's just buy it and move on for a couple years.

With a certain Dario Argento superfan no longer offering commentary on non-Arrow Video transfers, you can bet your ass I'll probably say something once this sucker comes in, if only on principle. Odds are it'll be a lot of good things with Synapse's track record, but hey, we'll just have to wait and see!

No release date or pre-order yet, but supposedly Synapse is authoring Phenomena as you read this. That's the Argento film most desperately in need of careful repair work (aside from Suspiria, which Synapse is also working on), so while I expect the Synapse Tenebrae Limited Edition to be quite good, I don't think it'll be too full of surprised either.

Phenomena? I'm sure we'll have plenty to talk about once Labyrinth's darker cousin comes out to play. Code Red is also working on a new 2K scan for Opera, go figure. But screw that, one fourty dollar domestic Argento Blu-ray at a time, please!

Alright, let's cut the bullshit; there's nothing more to say about Dario Argento's celebrated 1982 post-modern thriller TENEBRAE that hasn't been said a hundred times by people far smarter than myself. Let's skip to why anyone's interested in me talking about this flick.

I could go on for a thousand or two words, trying to explain the subtle difference between the European "Wild Side" master and the new Synapse corrected version... but why not just sum up the difference in a pair of screenshots?





...and now for the thousand or two words. Damn, I never make this easy on myself, do I?

For those unaware of the full sitiation, the following screenshot is the worst instance of automatic digital scratch repair (DSR) artifacts to be found on the various instances of fast-motion through the film, with this particular gaffe - around 00:37:38 on the Synapse disc - being, by far, the absolute worst offender, but as the booklet proudly gives timecodes for, there's plenty of other, less galling instances throughout that have been manually repaired, effectively by using the clone-brush in Photoshop and averaging out the data manually, as opposed to letting Skynet flip its shit at the slightest bit of confusion.

For those who may not be aware, scratch repair filters basically try to calculate drastic, high-contrast shifts in color over a small area of the frame, and when they identify a high contrast "blip" they assume it's either a stain, dirt or similar, and fill it in with an 'average' of the frame before and after. This removes thousands of instances of small nics and stains and scratches, normally without any major, obvious consequence aside from a slight softening of the image... but it also has the potential to fuck shit up when it can't tell the difference between a hand savaging an envelope and a large emulsion stain. These sorts of artifacts are actually not that uncommon in industry-standard HD masters, but most of the worst are "fixed" - either by creating a garbage matte from the unprocessed source, or simply shoopin' dat woop' - before the consumers ever see anything quite that nasty.

Unfortunately, anyone expecting a perfect presentation absolutely free of DSR artifacts might be setting their hopes a bit too high; the problems are baked in, and often very subtle, resulting in small details distorting or smearing straight out of existence. While it's difficult to find a way to do this that doesn't feel like it's shitting all over the label releasing the title, this could well be an educational moment for many of you, so let me direct your attention to some minor details that struck me as fairly standard examples of DSR artifacts:


In this shot, the bobbing, spiral phone cord is getting marked out as a scratch and has a random chunk smudged into oblivion, a little below the countertop to her right. As you can see, the scratch repair filter is actually trying to fill the cord in with the pattern of the drapes behind her, which is pretty normal behavior when an object like a cable is bobbing around in front of a static background.


This shot is substantially less obvious, but pay attention to the glasses; despite Anthony Francoise being shown to wear tortise-shell specs, the frames have basically become transparent jelly in the handful of frames in which they move along in his hand, only to return to their normal color once he stops moving. His hand is a smeared mess, too - and while it's true that motion blur is always a factor, the fact that his fingers have formed a sort of deformed flipper is a pretty common issue when DSR is set way too high, as it clearly was during the original telecine.


And here's another, perhaps more "obvious" example if we pay attention to Dario Nicolodi's fingertips; the averaging has left a ghostlike impression in the background where her hand only lingered for a single frame, but kept the fleshy color from the frames where the overall "average" was consistently the same color. The artifact is subtle, particularly since her arm is moving the whole shot, but if you've been dealing with this shit as long as I have, becomes somewhat unmistakable.

I want to stress that this isn't meant to rain all over Synapse's parade. The artifacts were baked in at the source level, and while I'd rather have a certain level of scuffs and stains over digital artifacts, the fact is most highly-praised and celebrated HD transfers have some level of minor digital wonkiness due to automated processing that most people - myself included, depending on how severe it is - simply shrug off as normal motion blur or peculiarities of the original camera and film stock.While I admit, a fresh scan from an archival 35mm element would have been preferable to patching over the digital problems that already exist, the presentation is still much improved over the prior version, which was already a HUMONGOUS STEP UP from the virtually unwatchable 2011 Arrow release, which - once and for all - proved that my bitching and moaning about all those weird, noisy transfers coming out of Rome weren't just me expecting too much from limited film elements. Depressingly enough, the far superior French release is actually older than that awful initial Arrow Video master, but since Wild Side was mostly re-releasing Argento movies to DVD at the time I didn't know about it until several months later. Still, having long insisted that something was seriously wrong with the HD masters coming out of Rome, it was nice to finally be validated... even if it took Arrow and LVR shitting out that wet-sandpaper textured 1080p abortion to convince the world that, y'know, maybe I had at least half a clue what I was talking about.

Ah, memories...

Going between that initial gnarly LVR master and the imperfect-but-pretty-damn-good Wild Side transfer, you can likely understand how easy it was to forgive the fairly minor sharpening artifacts that appear as edge-ringing on the 2010 HD master; yes it's there, and it's a shame, but it's such a minor point of contention compared to the initial Arrow HD master I honestly couldn't be arsed to give a fuck then, and several years later I feel as apathetic towards its presence now as I did the first time I laid eyes on it. The only way to downplay the sharpening is to try to blur edges away using spatial interpolation, and while you can get away with that on a crumby looking LD transfer of relatively simple content - say, 16mm sourced animation? - it would likely be a disaster on a source like this. Like the scratch repair gaffes they're just in it for the long haul, and similarly their presence is a minor point or two off of the whole, rather than anything to be especially grouchy over.

I briefly considered doing a full A/B comparison between the 2010 Wild Side Video release from France - which was, after all, the original presentation of the HD master all 3 versions are based on - but knowing that the Arrow Remastered transfer is essentially the exact same thing with a lower (and I assume, correct) gamma... there's not much sense in taking the time. The CAPS-A-HOLIC COMPARISON between the two tells you everything you need to know, namely that the Synapse transfer has warmer mid-tones resulting in brighter, more realistic skin tones, but the highs lean more towards a cool blue that leaves what were once white, clipped highlights looking slightly minty fresh. Generally daylit scenes look totally natural on the Synapse grade, though as you can see, interiors are a bit of a gamble, depending on how dramatic the original lighting was.

It's clear that effort and consideration has been put into adjusting the overall tone of the Synapse release, but the fact is it looks better in some ways and worse in others. Both seem more or less consistent with the vast majority of restored home video presentations and with Argento's demand for an over-exposed film in which the titular "Shadows" are an ironic absentee, and with each having its ups' and downs' I'm not confident to say the grading is conclusively "better" than the other. If I had a gun to my head I'd say I prefer the fuller reds of the US release, but it's literally a case of personal aesthetic preference, not mathematical or even historical accuracy.


Perhaps the most interesting part of this disc is that, despite being based on the Wild Side transfer, it does also include the alternate "English Inserts" - and it does this via Seamless Branching, which is a feature we rarely see on Blu-ray discs. See, while the film was shot almost entirely in English to start with, various close-ups of the Tenebrae novel itself, the notes the killer leaves for Peter, and even the meticulous book-keeping the killer does of his victims were shot in close-ups in both English and Italian. It's similar to the alternate takes Kubrick did for the "All Work And No Play..." pages in The Shining, I suppose, but with Tenebrae taking place primarily in Rome, it does raise some questions as to why the killer would have English language newspapers in the first place...

The French and UK transfers only present the Italian credits, presumably since the transfer was pulled entirely from the Italian OCN. The Synapse release actually used an archival 35mm print to transfer the English titles and text inserts from, and the quality - perhaps largely due to 35mm opticals always looking a bit ropey anyway - match the rest of the film pretty much seamlessly. Perhaps the most interesting example is at 00:51:55, when Laura Wendel starts reading the newspaper clippings about the murders; the image is only slightly soft and with a bit more debris than the main feature.

While the inclusion of the English inserts are certainly a cool little bonus - and one I don't think have seen a home video release since the Israeli VHS release some 30 years ago, at that! - I'm not gonna' lie. I'd have been way more into seeing the "English" version as its own transfer, warts and all. As far as I know the English "UNSANE" prints still had Italian credits and were mostly complete, sans a few trims to the overt violence to satisfy the MPAA. Oddly, the American prints were cut by another 10 minutes - not by the film distributors, but by Fox Hills Video, who decided that trimming the film would let them get away with releasing a T-30 tape in "EP" mode.

That said, Synapse loses a point for not including the Kim Wilde song Take Me Tonight as the default end theme on the English version. Yes, I've listened to the Argento commentary - yes, I know he hated it. But if you can look me in the eye and tell me that Kim Wilde doing the theme song wouldn't have made this film so amazingly 1982 it hurts... I just don't know that we can get along at that point.

With that in mind, sure, I can forgive Synapse for skipping on the American VHS edition entirely, but... to have an archival 35mm print, do telecine work, and then not transfer the entire print? Synapse could have called this "The Grindhouse Presentation", done literally no work at all, and idiots like me would have been thrilled. Shockingly enough, we are getting the Americanized version of "Creepers" in their next hefty-priced Argento themed steelbook, so I wonder what the deciding factor here was? Cost for a new telecine rather than just having select reels scanned? Bandwidth concerns? What's the deal with not giving fans who have been wallowing in thrilling resotrations the chance to now let them wallow in the scratchy, poorly-graded reality of yester-year? Especially with a film with an intentional a look as Tenebrae, I'd love to know how a "real" vintage 35mm print holds up to the 20 years or so of creator-approved restored prints held up back in the day.



I find myself torn on how to feel about this one. On the one hand I won't deny that the Synapse BD is hands down the best visual representation of the film, with the most interesting special features, a newly remastered CD soundtrack, and a shiny limited edition Steelbook. The presentation is absolutely top-notch, and as sicj the $50 or so asking price isn't outrageous - certainly not compared to some of the more insanely expensive giallo BDs out there... but is it worth the hefty asking price when the Arrow Remastered edition - "Region B" lock aside - can be had for about a third what this'll set you back? Money is no object, and blah-blah-blah... but fuck me, even I can tell when I'm making a bad decision. And that's where I find myself hitting a brick wall on actually recommending this release to all but the absolute die-hard fans.

While I certainly cringed at the price tag attached to the one-two assault that was Demons and (especially for) Demons 2, I felt they were absolutely worth every penny. The UK transfers for those two films were abysmal, and with the Japanese release being nearly as expensive as Synapse's offering - and with only a slight improvement to Arrow's grubby presentation - the Synapse release was an absolute no-brainer. For fans of that glorious thrill ride and its lesser sequel, the upgrade was effectively mandatory. And I have no doubt that once Phenomena is up for grabs, the Synapse presentation will again be like night and day between the current HD offerings on the market.

Here, however, the differences - however appreciated they are - are all fairly minor, even on a side-by-side comparison. That one shot of Peter's hand is a hell of a lot better... but I can't in good conscience say that fix is worth the price of two typical Synapse BDs, much less three from many of their competitors. Pity this'll be by far the low-point with the definitive edition of Phenomena and their 4K remaster of Suspiria being next in the line-up, but they can't all be worth the premium, I guess...

If the Yellow Fever documentary interest you, if you don't already own the Simonetti soundtrack, the price tag is absolutely worth it. If not, I'm tempted to say stick with the prior Arrow Remastered release - or, if you just want the best looking presentation and can't swallow the cost, just wait 6 months for Synapse to inevitably change their tune from there being "no plans" for a non-limited edition to there being an Amazon pre-order for less than $15.

Regardless of what I have to say about the following Blu-ray release, if you care about any of these films, take a look at the campaign and consider contributing. I plan to myself, and if you legitimately want to see more vintage Italian exploitation films released on Blu-ray, you probably should too.

The day has come, friends - I've finally gotten my copy of the 88 Films Blu-ray of Andrea Bianchi's BURIAL GROUND/La Notti Del Terrore - a month late due to a forwarding address apparently having been expired, but hey, who's counting!

For those who don't know, 88 Films secured the rights during, and offered a restoration as a bonus stretch goal to their Zombie Holocaust remaster campaign through Indie Go Go. They were quiet on the subject for a little while, and the reasons behind it became clear when they decided to release a random sampling of A/B/C comparisons of "tests" they were doing with the available materials. You can see them HERE ON FACEBOOK, if that's your jam; the short version was they were left four options, each a little more pleasant than the last.


* Media Blasters' effectively useless HDCAM master, which is such a mess I've written extensively on it - to summarize, massive chroma noise from a poor scan, frames missing at literally every single cut resulting in a notably shorter runtime, and outtakes have randomly been inserted back into the film incorrectly - and that's on top of it having been delayed for nearly a year! (In short, this was the Eurohorror release so shockingly bad that Media Blasters never even bothered to do another one.)


* The only known surviving English language 35mm "Grindhouse Print" which - while more or less complete - looks just as blown out, faded and filthy as you'd expect. We'll talk about that later, rest assured...


* A 16mm Internegative - presumably the same film source that all DVD masters in the last 20 years have been made from, which is badly out of focus.


* The original 16mm camera negative, which - while the very best material available -  evidently required a ton of work to restore every individual cut of the original film to its proper place.

Now, I have a theory, as imperfect as it all is; Media Blasters' transfer claimed to be from the "Original Negative", as does 88 Films' remaster. 88 Films even went as far as to provide some context for the fact that the negative they were offered involved "Undercuts" - in other words, the original 16mm A/B rolls where the editor marked the end of the shot by marking the first frame he didn't want with a big "X" scratched into the print itself... but, before we get into the nitty gritty of the transfers themselves, I can say (with one dubious exception) that every single frame is here.

Which means that either the Media Blasters transfer was made from some other film source entirely - maybe a 16mm reversal-negative with warped splices? - or else they really did go back to the same negatives, and were so shockingly sloppy re-creating the finished negative that they managed to lose frames completely at random because whatever film lab did the work was literally just that amazingly terrible.

None of it really adds up either way, and I've reached out to 88 Films for clarification, but they're taking their time in getting back to me. Without wanting to throw either party under the bus, I'll leave the details and explanations given by their respective parties as they are for now, and will happily update this if anyone's willing to come to light with more details.

So! Confusion and potential behind the scenes drama aside - how is the presentation?


Much like the uncut version of Just Before Dawn that Code Red released a few years ago, this is a gloriously nasty source print that's been given absolutely minimal preservation efforts; for this transfer each and every scratch, scuff, stain, pop and blob of dirt has been retained in its untouched form.

How does one even qualify a transfer like this, I wonder? While I've seen some truly impressive transfers derived from 35mm release prints, this has gone out of its way to not correct any color grading mishaps, to not process out any of the tinny hiss - to call it "raw" would be an understatement, and considering what a cheap little slice of exploitation this particular title is, I would imagine that anyone who legitimately has an affinity for it - particularly anyone who was lucky enough to own an original VHS copy before the various DVD releases, or even see an equally-grotesque 35mm transfer at a revival showing (both of which I myself am guilty of) - won't feel their black, shriveled hearts grow three sizes just spending a few minutes wallowing in this unfiltered stretch of nostalgia.










From a technical standpoint... I really have no complaints. The 15.76 Mb/s bitrate is adequate enough to keep the fuzzy grain structure from looking like AVC soup, and the very rough-and-tumble nature of the whole makes the usual expected problems sort of blend into the constant grimy insanity of the content itself.

The Grindhouse Version ain't pretty. It's exactly as it should be. It's kind of ironic that despite being an ass-ugly source print, there's really no technical complaint to be had.


Here's where it gets a little more complex... but, the good news is that I can emphatically say that the title has never, and may never, look better than it does right now. Whatever quibbles and misgivings I have for the transfer as a whole are absolutely drowned out by the fact that, in the pantheon of low-budget and schlocky Italian horror films to have been brought to Blu-ray, this is far from the worst. It's not perfect, which is a shame, but what can I say? If the $35 I paid as part of the Indie GoGo campaign led to this, I'll live with it.

First of all, the restored version - one oddity I'll explain later aside - appears to be complete. The Media Blasters' release before it lost frames at each individual cut, an issue that is mysteriously not an issue on this virtually-complete presentation. This alone is worthy of praise, considering another Italian zombie trash classic - Hell of the Living Dead - has suffered the same fate in High Definition as the previous Burial Ground master before it.

There's little in the way of notable debris, scratches or damage in general to complain about - there's minor scuffs and dust that hasn't been completely scrubbed away, though it's never to the point of distraction. The original 1.66 framing of the Super-16 negative is preserved in full. The English titles have been sourced from what look like 35mm archival elements, and while I would have liked to see the Italian titles, even just as an extra, I have no complaint over "Burial Ground" being the on-screen title rather than "La Notti Del Terrore".

What 88 Films promises is a 2K scan of the "Original Italian 16mm Negative" has a slightly muted, drab look when compared to other releases I'm familiar with - no contrast boosting here, that's for damn sure! - but daylight scenes have a fairly natural, golden hue and the juicy gore on display is a healthy crimson, with the poorly lit fleshtones tending towards a natural - if slightly sickly - hue. Black levels are quite solid, and overall the restores presentation's clarity and definition is dramatically better than the fuzzy, uneven blobs of high-contrast film grain hovering on top of the Grindhouse Transfer.

The English audio has been transferred in its original mono at 24-bits, as has the original Italian audio. They both sound fairly clear without any obvious hiss, flutter or other analog distortions, though it's obvious the English track has been given a pass of digital noise reduction, while the Italian track is more prone to clearer highs and slightly more distinct separation between music and dialogue - though it tends to hiss and crackle a bit more as a result. The slightly more "raw" Italian track sounds slightly more appealing, and I don't think any of these actors spoke a word of English on set anyway - but neither is really a disappointment.


What needs to be discussed is... well, the general texture of the transfer. Make no mistake, the Media Blasters master was a horrendous abortion of constant, distracting chroma noise that in no way represented the original film elements - 16mm or otherwise. For that reason alone, this release wins hands down - I had intended to do a full 1:1 comparison with that eyesore, but at some point I must have had a stroke of pure sanity and seem to have either sold it, given it away or burned it in a toilet fire.

But is what we have here actually good? I tend to think it's ultimately on the upper-end of the transfers Blue Underground and Arrow Video were releasing early on, before it became en-vogue for them to the scans themselves from scratch; there's noise floating on top of a soft and somewhat smudgy image, a minor-to-moderate level of DVNR that comes and goes (but is especially heavy during the opening zombie attack), and it has that unfortunate, tell-tale artifact of fast-moving objects like swinging weapons having sharp, defined grain while the rest of the image looks somewhat smoothed over.

Perhaps the best comparison I can make is the 2K remaster of Lucio Fulci's Zombie 2... that is, the LVR/Blue Underground remaster, not the superior Arrow Video transfer sold as Zombie Flesh Eaters. If you were fine with that, you'll probably love this. If, like me, you found the Blue Underground release of that lacking... well, you're not exactly in for a treat.













To get a clearer idea of what I'm talking about, open both the "Grindhouse" and "Restored" sceenshots 7 and 11 in different tabs. Notice how "off" the grain looks on moving faces? And notice how despite the numerous other problems on the Grindhouse version, the grain looks... y'know, normal?

[Kentai Films Protip: When you have an especially noisy scan, don't use temporal DVNR! The result always warps during fast motion, and with old CRT scanners the issue is less the presence of noise itself, and more that it seems to exist outside of the underying celluloid image. A far better method is to gently apply a spherical blur until the noise loses its "sharp" look and blends back into the film image proper. No, it's not replacement for a scan with better quality optics, but helps you avoid... whatever it is we should call what we're looking at today. No chroma smearing, no irregular grain patterns - just subtle a softness no one would ever suspect without a direct comparison.]

Do keep in mind that - while I stand by by BU Zombie comparison on all technical merits - the budget and artistic intent behind this film is... well, it was minimal, to put it bluntly. Comparing Lucio Fulci's camerawork, light staging, editing and artistic direction to Andrea Bianchi is like comparing Baz Luhrmann to Christopher Nolan. The 16mm negative stock, terrible on-set lighting, and frantically moving whip-pans all lean me toward wanting to forgive 88 Films' clearly well-intentioned transfer, but... I've got to be honest here. It's just not that good. It pains me saying that, too, but it's just not very good at all.

My opinion was a lot more positive the day the disc arrived, when I could wallow and revel in a stable, watchable HD transfer of archival materials, but the more time I spent looking over different scenes with different intensities of grain management and faded, sickly color that leaves skin an odd, almost gray mass of nothing, the less enthused I became with it. It's never anywhere near as miserable as the 2011 Blu-ray, and it's still a substantial step-up from any SD presentation, but one need only compare the two transfers present on this very disc to know that something just isn't right on what should, in every way imaginable, be the superior presentation.

Had this come out through Shout Factory or NSM Records, pretty much anywhere else that didn't have the fanfare surrounding the restoration itself? I'd just shrug, say "Well, it's better than a bunch of other shitty Euro Horror discs on the market." As someone who paid to see both this and Zombi Holocaust restored... I'm honestly not sure how I feel. Disappointed, maybe, but even that's giving these flaws a little more attention than they probably deserve. I'd bet money this was carried out on the same Cintel hardware LVR has had chugging along for a decade, and it's unfortunate that no matter how hard the staff of any lab might try, they can't magically make garbage hardware they spent a quarter-million dollars on magically "good" - instead they listen to complaints, and adjust their internall processes accordingly, even if the ultimate end result is "add noise reduction so clients don't complain about video noise". It's panning water, not plugging the leak, but that's the situation we tend to find ourselves in...

But high personal standards aside, let's face it - Burial Ground getting a mulligan at all was a goddamn miracle, and if this is as good as it's gonna' get... well, I don't have to praise it to the heavens, but I can say that I've seen, and own, far worse. I'm happy I have this release. I don't mind that I paid $35 to fund it. I just hope this isn't seen as the high watermark when 88 Films themselves have released better looking transfers from other licencors, as they've proven they're capable of much more when their HD tape masters start from a better place than this.



As far as original "Expert Commentary" goes we get a feature length commentary by John Martin, and a 27 minute video interview with Mikel Coven*. I've not watched either, and to be honest, I don't know if I will any time soon - not that I doubt they're amusing and chock full of interesting information, I just don't have the energy to watch another 2 hours' worth of Italian schlock bonus features right now.

Ported from the Media Blasters release are the films' trailer under the title NIGHTS OF TERROR - not only is it poorly upscaled, but it appears to be a PAL-to-NTSC conversion, deinterlaced, and upscaled to 1080i 29.97. Brilliant.

There's also 10 minutes or so of Deleted Scenes presented as-discovered, without sound, which run the gamut of being amusing to erotic to kind of dull, as is often the case. Frustratingly, the Media Blasters incorrectly re-inserted a few of these outtakes at around 00:25:41 on the 88 Films Restored Version. Footage that was supposed to be included in the film proper is still included in the Deleted Scenes reel, but the outtakes that are presented as part of the feature on the Media Blasters Blu-ray - including some additional exploding lightbulbs and a longer scene of two lovers flirting and kissing by the fountain - are nowhere to be found. A minor loss, but a slightly frustrating one all the same.

While the initial print-run comes with an "O-Sleeve" style slipcase, all releases also come with a booklet featuring new writing by Calum Waddell (who also moderates the commentary). Finally, the package includes a collectible postcard featuring the original Italian poster art, as well as a two-sided cover with both classic American and Italian designs. All of this has a sort of bleeding, super-saturated look to it, but there was clearly some effort put into the design, and as a fan of the oft-insane posters for vintage trash films the attention to providing multiple options is deeply appreciated.

*Fun Fact: The interview is interspersed with what looks like the super-noisy footage from the Media Blasters BD.


This is an interesting case. In short, the version on display per the Negative Restoration appears to be the exact same version released on every DVD going back to the Japan Shock release:

At around 00:42:45, James slams the shutters closed after tossing the lifeless body of the maid to the zombies below. In the Restored transfer, he begins to turn towards the camera, and there's a jump-cut to the bloody hands of zombies picking at the corpse below. The music has a jump cut as well, though with the weird, grinding soundtrack over this film it's a little more difficult to tell than normal.


If you go to roughly a minute earlier on the Grindhouse print (due to the truncated title sequence), you'll find that this shot actually runs about 6~7 seconds longer; James leans his head against the shutter, clearly horrified by what he's just done, before it smash-cuts back to a close-up of entrails being clawed at:


This specific oddity confuses me. If this was pulled from the original camera negative, the footage would still be there as it was on the Media Blasters HD master - though I suppose it's not unthinkable that the English language 16mm IP that was used for the audio was missing this short sequence, and the raw footage was trimmed to match - rather than the Italian audio being used to fill in the gap, which would have been preferable? One could easily argue that MB never touched the negative - they did, after all, claim to be "working from the negative" on Buio Omega, only to later reveal what they meant was they had a new IP made from said negative - but the fact that Media Blasters unearthed about 10 minutes of never-before-seen footage implies they had some poor sap digging through the archives for the earliest-generation material available.

And yet, the same old footage known to be MIA from the 16mm IP is - once again - trimmed from the 88 Films transfer. Is this master really from the original camera negative, or perhaps a 16mm back-up negative used in place of the unusable OCN the licensors are now treating as one if the same? If not, what the hell did Media Blasters use for their 2011 masters? Don't misunderstand the tin-foil, I want to trust everyone involved here, but as the similar confusion over exactly what materials were used between both Blue Underground and Arrow Video's competing 2K restorations of Zombi 2 have established, either one side is lying... or both are being lied to.

If 88 Films wants to clarify any of this, I'd love to know and will happily update the write-up. I'm not angry, as the scene was (to be fair) a largely inessential reaction shot and it's included on the disc in one form or another. I'm just... confused. And I don't like being confused.


If you own any prior DVD copy and want a notable HD upgrade? Yes. If you own the Media Blasters HD transfer and want a proper, effectively-complete version of the film? Absolutely. If you like having raw, un-restored 35mm "Grindhouse" transfers to ogle in High Definition, as I occasionally do? Hell Yes! If you just want a cheaply made movie looking fantastic on principle? I'd recommend you move on.

All that said, I still plan on contributing a wad of cash to the current Italian Collection Restoration Project. I'm not blown away buy the results here, but I'd still rather see Aenigma and Buio Omega brought up to this standard than to languish in the inferior presentations we currently have at our disposal. It's all a matter of degrees at this point, and even at its worst, Burial Ground commits the cardinal sin of being no-better than average.

I guess if that's the best future I can hope for, I'm fine with it. We live in a time where Michal Mann approved Blu-ray transfers have SD inserts, because at this point sales on physical media are so weak and "old" B-movies do so poorly that nobody fucking cares - not even guys like me. If you need further proof, take a look at the Indiegogo Campaign and realize that despite over 20,000 pounds having been raised, that's still less than 500 backers in total.

Five years ago, when I was adamant that we could - that we should do better, there was still reason to have hope. These days, if a release isn't appalling... that's pretty much yer' lot going forward. If "Average For An Italian Exploitation Film" quality is all we have a chance for, I'd rather take it than not at this point.

Just do me a favor and keep including those chewed-up Grindhouse Prints, won't you? If I can't have a proper looking "perfect" restoration at least let me torture my monitor and headphones with the ugliest, most organic presentation possible as an alternative!

DISCLAIMER: Remember friends, ALWAYS make sure you're signed into the right Google account when combining previous identities into a shiny new one.

As deeply frustrated as I've been at the glacial pace director Hideaki ANNO has taken with the "Renewal of Evangelion" project, I'm not without sympathy; good films take time to create, and love them or loathe them, the new Evangelion films have some of the most spectacular traditional animation the world has to offer. With three out of four films having been released in 2007, 2009 and 2012 - in Japan, anyway - it seemed reasonable that he would spend the next three to four years finishing off the reboot of what's easily his most beloved and viable franchise. In other words, we're due for the final chapter, and at long last Neon Genesis Evangelion can be put to rest alongside Aim for the Top! Gunbuster as "Complete". Which, incidentally, is still more than we can say for the Evangelion manga.


Things are never quite that simple, though, are they? After a commercial and critical success was found in Gareth Edwards' Legendary Pictures' produced 2014 Godzilla film - a serious, heavy film that seemed to be made to wash away the perceived sins of the self-aware 1998 Roland Emmerich film of the same name - Toho Studios admitted their biggest star ever was coming out of retirement for a 2016 release. What wasn't revealed until several months later was that none other than Hideaki ANNO had teamed up with Shinji HIGUCHI - best known as the director of practical effects for the trilogy of 90s Gamera films, but most recently the director of the live action Attack on Titan films - to direct a full on reboot of the Gojira monster, with Anno himself in full control of the film.

The "International" title given to the project was Godzilla Resurgence, but in typical weeb fashion, literally no-one called it anything but "Shin Godzilla", until FUNimation Films announced they were using the original Japanese title as-is. It's worth noting that the title itself, シン・ゴジラ, is written in simplified, phonetic katakana; this isn't because the film is aimed at children, but because the meaning of "Shin" in the context of a title could mean a lot of things: New, True, and Holy all use the same phonetic reading Anno chose, and the fact that it isn't directly clarified appears to be completely intentional.

Yes, I'm still salty that we're probably not going to see Evangelion 4.444: We Do [Not] Know When To Quit until at least 2018 as a result. But to say my curiosity on the new monster movie  we were getting was piqued would be an understatement...


It's no secret that Anno has always been a fan of kaiju films, or even that Evangelion's core development process revolved around trying to equate the fanciful, physically impossible nature of giant monsters into a somewhat more scientifically grounded existence, and it could be easily argued that the EVA units themselves are some of the most iconic giant monsters in Japan's long and colorful history of animation. The film is in many ways a thematic successor to the action sequences he brought to life in Evangelion over 20 years ago, and it's only fair to acknowledge that one thing likely lead directly back to the other.

It's also worth noting - without delving too far into spoiler territory, of course - that Anno's film isn't "just" another monster mash. While the Toho films are now rightly regarded as silly camp catering to a young audience with over-the-top costumes and silly practical effects, it's worth remembering that the original 1954 film, directed by Ishiro HONDA, is about as serious and grim as a 1950's B-movie about a nuclear dinosaur was ever going to get. Godzilla was such a popular character he became something of a superhero through the 60s - to the point where even the somewhat dour, mostly monochrome Hollywood reboot gave him a grotesque, dangerous insect nemesis, just to cast him as the "good guy" to the audience.

The original film was substantially more nihilistic, suggesting the appearance of Gojira itself was the direct result of the continued testing of the hydrogen bomb in Japanese waters, and the combination of his blistered skin, atomic breath and destructive presence that turns Tokyo into a literal sea of fire all give the original film an obvious, allegorical bend to the monster being a not-too-subtle reference to the atomic bombings that forever altered Japan's culture, politics and identity.

I bring all of this up because unlike every other single Toho produced Godzilla film... this is a total reboot of the concept. This is the first time Godzilla has been seen by the world, effectively allowing Anno to reinstate Godzilla as the force of nihilistic destruction he was initially envisioned as. And if you think Anno's obsession with literal, biblical apocalypses isn't going to factor into his presentation of Godzilla, you might want to stick with Gareth Edwards and his reptilian bear.

Not being a press critic, I was happy to go to a limited theatrical screening of Shin Godzilla on opening night... but how does the film hold up? As always, I'll warn you when MAJOR SPOILERS are coming, though between the combination of familiar framework and very unexpected execution, I'd argue that the less you know going in, the better.

For those who's only live action point of reference is Anno's live action Cutie Honey movie, you can relax; Shin Godzilla has some of the same inappropriate and self-aware humor that defined what was essentially a parody of the Go Nagai character, but Shin Godzilla ultimately has far too much reverence and understanding of what makes a Godzilla movie tick to not get it mostly right. That said, the almost purely political nature of the story places it closer to something like Doctor Strangelove than Pacific Rim, which I can see either confusing or annoying plenty of viewers who just wanted to see a Japanese dude in a rubber suit stomping all over Tokyo for some kitschy fun. Anno's film is a lot of positive things, but taking cues from both the original 1954 Ishiro HONDA film and his own literally apocalyptic fascinations, he crafts a narrative that's more about compromising for the inevitable rather than preventing it, told from the point of view of exasperated and confused people who can't afford to be idealistic. But I suppose anyone who knows what Evangelion or Gunbuster is and expected a "normal" kaiju movie is just being silly.


It's not a monster movie so much as a disaster movie with a political lens, with the rampaging titan of the title being the disaster itself - Godzilla becomes a none too subtle allegory for Anno's - and indeed, a large subset of Japan's - frustration with their own governmental role, showing politicians moving from room to room during a live emergency strictly on protocol,  and assuring the people everything's going to be okay and their top scientists - who in reality made an off handed thought - that there's no way the unidentified creature can come up on land... only for one of his aide's to come up and whisper in his ear that yeah, he's already on land. The images of flooded streets and ruined buildings are a none too subtle reminder of the Tohoku 3/11 tsunami a little over five years ago, and as if to quell any doubt that Anno's taking a jab at the real-world politics criticized savagely for taking too long to do anything helpful, he even has the Prime Minister don a rescue worker uniform while staying perfectly safe in his office and giving press conferences. The real tragedy is that while the film acknowledges that Japan's current bureaucracy is too bloated and complex to efficiently deal with an emergency situation, it still tries to treat those elected officials as people who are simply out of their depth, rather than full on Kubrickian parodies of political agendas.

One thing that works surprisingly well about the film is that - unlike its' 2014 cousin, in which we're robbed of Breaking Bad far too early to spend most of the film with Kick-Ass - there is no hero here. No self insert for the audience to feel like they're part of the action. The film ultimately focuses slightly-more on Hiroki HASEGAWA, the Deputy Chief Cabinet Secretary - a particularly fancy way to say "note taker for the clusterfuck", really - who's not quite old enough for his obvious intelligence to get respected, or his solution-oriented mindset to cut through the red tape surrounding him on all sides. Yutaka TAKENOUCHI plays the Prime Minister's Aide, ultimately being the filter from the politics to the audience as much as to our DCC Secretary; he knows it's a ridiculous and infuriating song and dance to get the many to lean in one direction, but he also knows the weight of the bureaucracy will crush itself with a little law and order, leaving him to whisper in the old man's ear about what's what, and ultimately - arguably - wields the ultimate power in most situations.



Scientists, soldiers and politicians all share the ultimate course of the battlefield, and it becomes clear the reak schism is not between those who want lure him away versus destroy him outright, but between the young upstarts who just want to find a solution and the elders of the previous generation who are so used to dragging their feet and protecting their positions of limited power, they can't adapt when a real emergency creeps up behind them. How much of any of this will be interesting may well be tired to how little the average non-Japanese viewer knows about Japanese politics - of which, admittedly, my interest is mild at best. Anno's script has been accused of being right leaning, and while that's not entirely untrue, Japan has been a fascinating case study for some time: "Post-War never ends" one character laments, disgusted at Japan's lack of military autonomy in the case of their absolute worst-case scenario, their reliance on other nations for capital and the fact that a handful of young, innovate people will be holding up the cowardly old fogies, potentially for the rest of their lives; It ain't subtle, but it seems reasonable, and the characters are all just aware of their position enough to give it a little levity to keep it from feeling too dire.

Let's not kid ourselves, there's some obvious nationalism going on, to say nothing of the pot-shots taken at Korea, Russia and the States - with the American presence being filled in largely by the lovely Satomi ISHIHARA, who plays Kayaco Anne Peterson, the Japanese Special Envoy to the President of the United States. There's been some rumblings for the film being "right wing", but I don't really see it; if anything the old guard explains that without being open to globalization and allegiances with old enemies in times of crisis, we're all apt to crush ourselves under a lack of capital and resources. Pride in your homeland isn't worth much if it's reduced to a smoking crater. Even the holy rhetoric enacted by Emperor Hideko TOJO is criticized outright, which is the sort of thing you wouldn't expect from blatant pro-military traditionalist propaganda; if anything, I suspect that most American critics who are also aware of Japan's place in the political landscape simply lean left themselves, and are surprised when the film throws ideas from both sides of the aisle in a desperate attempt not to placate any one audience, but to face facts: Japanese Bureaucracy doesn't always work, and nobody has a simple way fix it completely.

Back to Peterson, her role is somewhat more interesting than I expected - a native born American in personality and ambition, but Japanese in both ancestry and culture - which leaves her conflicted as shit starts to edge toward the fan and leaves her torn between the love of her grandmother's country, and her own political gain. I figured I'd hate her the moment I saw her, but in the end she's kind of endearing... unfortunately, her obviously phonetic Engrish is terrible. I mean it's understandable, which is better than some Japanese actors I've watched spew nonsense syllable salad, but an American, who lives in America, in politics? Are you kidding me?

Yeah, I know. It's a nitpick nobody but native English speakers (who are hardly the target audience) are going to be annoyed by, but... it's still pretty bad.


It'd also be unfair to talk about a Hideaki Anno film without mentioning the presentation; the film's cast is constantly moving, being expanded and shuffled from place to place as new details come to light, which means that subtitles are almost always on-screen in Japanese, giving the viewer some new nugget of context. Camerawork get more frenetic as plans come together, or the audience is only allowed to peek out from dense legal text explaining why the plan won't get approved in the first place; for a film in which the majority of the run time are guys in suits grumbling back and fourth over how absurd their suggestions are due to walls of red tape and a lack of resources on hand, the presentation is about as dynamic and engaging as it was ever going to get. It's not as memorable looking as Cutie Honey, sadly, but I try to picture the monster of this film being "2.5D" as Honey herself was and... then I just don't know how to feel anymore.

The soundtrack, composed largely by Shiro SAGISU, is also as eclectic and beautiful as you'd expect, with the operatic original tracks - including "Persecution of the Masses" and "Who Will Know", tracks that can only be described as operatic. It goes another direction, too, which we'll get into shortly, but all of the original pieces - even those fans of Anno will be intimately familiar with - are fantastic. Anno knows how to use a full surround stage to great effect, and if for no other reason, I'd say see this in a theater just to hear how amazing things are when things start to go downhill for humanity.

In short, Shin Godzilla offers fans a very polished and absolutely unexpected reboot of one of cinema's most iconic antiheroes. I don't think everyone will love it, nor perhaps should they, but Anno seems to have crafted an intense and one-of-a-kind film that's best described as a political thriller with a grotesque sense of humor over its' walking disaster. Yes, it's a dialogue heavy movie less about characters than about ever changing conflict, but considering how much everyone and their mother hated the "dumb action" focused Roland Emmerich movie, this may well be the ideal alternative. It's a fine film, and one that's going to be hotly debated and derided by long time fans of the iconic monster - and not without reason.

To be fair a lot of people hated Emmerich for screwing with Godzilla himself, and hey, about that...


Anno has been making kaiju movies in the form of giant robot anime since the 1980s, so I had little doubt he'd figure out how to make this work. What I DIDN'T expect was for Godzilla, the iconic King of the Monsters, to make his first full appearance as the "Monster A Form" - a bloated muppet impression of a moray eel with stubby legs and pulsating and bleeding gills, dragging his googly-eyed face along the city streets like a literal fish out of water who's had about two drinks too many. 

Dubbed "Kamata-kun" - evidently a pun I don't follow on the legendary Yamata no Orochi, an eight-headed serpent referenced later in the film (subtitled as "Hydra" by the official English translation) - it's infuriatingly stupid watching that gore-spewing amphibious turkey terrorize the populace... and I fucking loved it! Plenty of people won't, and while I know the decision was done to be divisive, I just can't comprehend why we expected any different. It's such an inversion of expectations, such a dick move to pull on such an iconic design that it was built solely to incite fury and confusion, and as far as trolling the audience goes, it may well have set the gold standard. The fact that this absurd fever dream of an introduction is set to the powerful operatic score only enhances how gloriously stupid it all is.

Of course, Shin Godzilla doesn't stay this way for long; after realizing that upward mobility and forearms are required for traversing the world of man, he simply reaches a point where his entire body starts to ripple and instantly mutates into a newer, larger, more mobile form. I'm actually a bit disappointed how brief the Tyrannosaurus shape is on screen for, but the mere sight of him changing the shape and even mass of his body at will is such an unexpected and bizarre sight, I'm fine with the execution overall. There's also something to be said about Godzilla transforming from an awkward sea creature, to a literal dinosaur, to a humanoid monster that uses nuclear firepower as its' final and most horrifying form. I won't lie, I'd have been thrilled to see a few additional "in-between" forms just to satisfy my transforming monster lust, but what we have is a largely logical blueprint... and besides, the subtle shift we get in the third act - to say nothing of the surprise waiting for us in the final shot of the film - suggest other directors less concerned with proving their concept a lot of  room to play with going forward.





Whatever misgivings fans may have had for the goofy looking first form, or the fleeting images of the second I'm almost surprised were given action figures, the majority of the film features the almost zombified "Shin Godzilla" we've seen in posters and trailers, and I find myself with decidedly mixed feelings about the whole thing. On the one hand, the design is imposing, unsettling - a literal and gruesome monster the likes of which Lovecraft would wake up in the middle of the night screaming over, and then try to figure out how to make it the product of the Jews later on. On the one hand, watching Shin Gojira, God Incarnate, emerge on land for the first time is exactly what fans who weren't impressed by the Legendary Pictures' Hollywood-style reboot were waiting over a decade for. It's pure, unfiltered fanservice, and it's exactly what fans who know the difference between the Showa, Heisei and Millennium films wanted...

And yet, after Kamata-kun's clumsy, casually blood-spewing and laughter-inducing drunken rampage, watching his march like a wind-up toy across towards Tokyo just feels too... sterile. His tiny unblinking eyes, shockingly stiff body language, and complete lack of vocalizations make him look like a massive robot rather than the clever evolving beast we were introduced to prior (and will see again later). Mansai NOMURA provided the CGI motion capture, but here it looks like it's simply a statue being wheeled along a track, only his tail allowed to show the slightest amount of character, despite Nomura giving the beast a certain consistent level of curious personality and grouchy determination in every other scene the film has to offer. 



Further adding to this sensation of rickety awkwardness is the literal recycling of - at times - 50+ year old mono recordings of Akira IFUKUBE tracks from the Showa era films. They certainly hit the right notes for nostalgic Showa era fans, but they also feel so afraid to go off-model from such a transparent, literal return to form it manages to have even less personality than the original 1954 monster. Rumor has it that Anno was intending to remaster the tracks in stereo for the film, but "difficulties" prevented it, and in the end they simply went with the decades old mono mixes as-is. For a guy who gets new compositions of public-domain classical music for his cartoon about kids shitting themselves with existential fear in robot cockpits, this just seems lazy.

And then it dawned on me: The time before this, we saw Godzilla fully evolve from a wiggling eel into a tyrannosaurus-piranha hybrid, and then he... just, sauntered off. And then when we see him again, he's taken on the "classic" Godzilla form, with no real indication that he had a distinct need to evolve any further, despite his constant exploration of his body in every other scene in the film being the result of him experiencing a threat or hardship, and using his biology to find a solution to it. In that case, why show an interim form at all if the only reason to do so is to prove that he can evolve in real-time? Wouldn't something more drastic - or even some gradual steps in between the "Final Form" on his way to the center of Tokyo - make far more sense from both a pacing and storytelling standpoint?





For those totally lost, the original Neon Genesis Evangelion TV series - which started as a fairly "normal", if overly dramatic and "realistic" take on classic mecha shows like Mazinger Z and Space Runway Ideon - became a social phenomenon when it took an almost Twin Peaks-esque turn in the second half, becoming a fusion of existentialist self-flagellation, overlapping religious iconography, and extreme violence.  The hints of these elements are there in plain sight the whole time, they just ramp up from "Oh, that was unusual" to "NO SERIOUSLY, WHAT THE HELL IS EVEN GOING ON?!" via a sort of frog-in-boiling-water nature. Once the weird hits you, it's far too late to save yourself, and you'll find yourself reading up on the Seraphic Tree and Arthur Schopenhauer just to have a baseline understanding of what's going on. Mercifully, Shin Godzilla never goes that far... but I'm bringing all of that up for a reason.

See, the TV series was simply too big to ignore, and the blatantly offensive content - such as giant monsters literally eating each others' hearts, staining the entire countryside in blood while teenagers screamed and begged for them to stop - became such a big deal that while broadcasters had previously let Gainax deliver the finished video masters just hours before broadcast, they now required a 24 hour window to preview everything. Anyone who knows anything about anime production knows that this shit is always polished and fixed at the last possible second - seriously, go watch Shiro Bako for an idea of what animation production actually looks like, and keep in mind that the lack of technology to quickly fix fuck-ups in the 90s made this even harder - that when push came to shove, Evangelion became a clusterfuck of limited animation, off-screen dramatic, events and - in the final two episodes - one of the most surreal and desperate visions of the apocalypse ever crafted.

The finale was so controversial, yet the series so popular, ultimately a Director's Cut of the final 6 episodes was released on home video, ending with an entire theatrical movie - The End of Evangelion - effectively remaking those controversial final episodes from scratch and splicing them back into the "Complete Version" as episodic experiences alongside the, arguably, more cerebral minimalist finale... but, that's another story.



The above sequence with the tiny man in the giant hand? It's actually a minute long freeze-frame as Ode to Joy fades to nothing. In short, when his hands are tied, you can generally tell by the obvious level of pure spite on-screen. And, of course, it's also entirely possible Anno is just an aging pretentious hack and I'm giving him far too much credit... but if it that entire was the result of a little bit of both, I wouldn't be too shocked.

It's also worth noting that the effects crew themselves talked about a "Tadpole" creature that seemingly matches the description of the completely unseen figure lurking beneath the water the whole first act. I could forgive the loss of a "Form Zero" for the sake of getting to the good stuff - by which I totally mean Kamata-kun! - but the literal non-entity of a Tadpole 'Zilla, and the momentary glimpse of a T-Rex Zilla are such oddities that they can't help but give me pause.

With the above in mind, I'm now truly honestly curious if there was an entire reel's worth or so of content jettisoned during production with the "Monster B Form", as having his armored shell before he's been attacked by human weapons doesn't actually make a lot of sense in the context they went out of their way to build about his powerset... but, I guess we'll probably never know. Toho is incredibly protective of their most famous star, and Anno isn't known for talking shit after a project finishes, so the fleeting presence of the red, birdlike monstrosity that goes literally nowhere before scurrying off-screen feels like a last-minute change somewhere along the project, with the trailer-friendly zombified march of the final form likely being more in line with what Toho was expecting of the project the whole time.





Now, that having been said, every complaint here is nullified, instantly, by the time Godzilla gets to central Tokyo. Watching this monolithic beast suddenly lose its' stoic cool after being nearly a statue for so long has a certain inherent shock to it, and what follows is the most amazing instance of city destruction porn I may have ever witnessed. It's breathtaking, technicolor beauty and satisfyingly massive scale is the stuff that you could make love to, and the fact that it begins with Godzilla, breaking his own fucking face, just to make his trademark atomic breath physically possible is exactly why I was fascinated at the thought of Anno picking up the reigns in the first place. The obvious body horror, physicality of the chemical changes, and final otherwordly beauty are the sort of creative images that nobody else on the planet delivers quite like Anno, and Higuchi brought them to life in a way nobody else could have realized.

After this jaw-dropping scene, however, the film shifts gears back to the offices of the Prime Minister and quickly finds itself back in the hands of the floundering politicians; brave, clever, and desperate to find a solution before the rest of the world finds one for them... yeah, that stuff's still pretty good. But it didn't make me nearly as erect as watching Anno's vision of Tokyo turned into a sea of a flames.

Aside from the real-world military hardware (which is pretty damn satisfying to watch!), it's never photo realistic or cutting edge as far as the effects go, and anyone who expects that from a Japanese Godzilla film is so amazingly far off the mark I'm not entirely sure why they're watching this to begin with. Gareth Edwards - for all of his tedious second act filler trying to convince us its' human drama - has already crafted the ultimate, "realistic" Godzilla, and I'm surprised how intrigued I am by Legendary's similar upcoming treatment of Kong: Skull Island. For Anno and Toho to even try to top that would have been a fool's errand, so instead we get bug-eyed turkeys smashing their face into shit. I'm fine with this, and I think once the obvious reality of what the movie was always going to be sets in, most of the people grumpy about it now will come to the same conclusion eventually.

And as for the final, unsettling shot of the film... hoo, boy. I can't wait for what's an obvious visual metaphor of Godzilla trying to achieve his final, perfect form to be misinterpreted for the next 10 years! Though damn it all, I AM curious if the sequels will pick it up from there and go batshit crazy with what it implies...

ANNO'S ATTENTION TO MADNESS

(IN CONCLUSION...)

That said, for all the things that frustrated me about the above mentioned monster-porn build up, there was a handful of shots - curious, high up, almost introspective shots of the monster - one of which shows it rearing, which is features in many of the film's trailers. It's clear to me this particular shot was the giant mechanical puppet - it was too big to be a "suit" in any traditional sense of the word, and is closer to the stunt-suit used for various shots in the original 1954 film. Those shots bothered, not because "they're not CGI and you can tell" (even though you can), but because... well, Shin Godzilla's face was an entirely different shape than the CGI model. It was longer, had larger eyes - I suppose it was a bit more crocidillian whereas the "normal" CG model was more humanoid. Something about this bothered me, and it took a conversation with the better half to pin down where the issue was...


With all the attention to detail in the figures and so on, why are the proportions of his head a different shape in the actual movie? How would they not catch that?

> Wait. The original Godzilla had two different suits, didn't it?

Well sure. The prototype was turned into the fire breathing head, and it had a longer snout and bigger eyes and...!!!

> What's your problem.

OH MY GOD!! ANNO REPLICATED THE INCONSISTENT CHARACTER DESIGN...

> Yeah. That's what I said.

競女!!!!!!!!

...I mean, it could be a coincidence that Hideaki "Evangelion" Anno - known for layers of subtle foreshadowing, obscure external references, and generally being a mischevious bastard - accidentally replicated the same mistakes as the film he's effectively remaking... but if that's a coincidence, it proves Anno's a hundred times better at this shit than anyone's giving him credit for. Even if it's completely by accident.

Whether Shin Godzilla's greatness - and curious flaws - is the result of cautious, intentional craftsmanship or accidental genius are ultimately irrelevant. It did the impossible and justified both Legendary and Toho producing fully independent and tonally opposite Godzilla, for different (if oft overlapping) audiences, and there's something gloriously fun about that. If you can see this in an American theater before October 18th, I'd recommend it... the sheer scale of the massive, explosive elements are worth seeing on the biggest screen possible, even if you'll also be able to tell exactly when Anno cribbed some shitty YouTube stock footage.

No clue, friends. But that aside, we've got some good news!

For those who may not be aware, Italian label Nightmare Factory is releasing several editions of their all new 4K restoration of DAWN OF THE DEAD. Yes, this release is reported to be Region B locked, and yes, rumor has it that the "restored" transfers will all have forced Italian subtitles - but I'll just have to find out when my copy arrives, won't I?

What you need to know is this: The 4K restoration is the first new transfer minted for Romero's 1978 classic since the Rubenstein Company started their 3D conversion back in 2008, which has so far only been shown in a handful of theatrical screenings. For better or worse, the new Italian handled restoration is based on the 118 minute European cut - "Dario Argento Presents Zombie", if you know the film's convoluted and multinational history - but with Rubenstein having funneled a fortune into a 3D version literally nobody asked for, and reportedly holding the home video rights hostage until he's able to make his money back on a fat license fee, this is probably the only viable alternative we're going to see. If you're a Dawn of the Dead fan and you're craving a state-of-the-art 4K release... this is pretty much the only game in town for the foreseeable future.

For those who aren't exactly fluent in Italiano - and that includes myself - here's what the 4-disc edition contains in a nutshell:

• - Restored HD version (2016 4K master) of the 118 minute European cut of the film
• - HD version (2013 master) of the 127 minute American Theatrical cut of the film
• - HD version (2013 master) of the 133 minute Extended Workprint
• - Bonus BD with 2.5 hours of new content plus vintage trailers
• - 5 postcards designed by fans of the film
• - Booklet

I won't get too in-depth on the bonus features here since... well, it's a safe bet that 90% of them will be in Italian with no English subtitles. The 18 minute interview with Tom Savini will likely be in English, as may the 8 minute introduction by Nicolas Winding Refen (who seems to have gotten the ball rolling in this 4K Remaster project) but I'll be shocked if anything featuring Dario Argento, Claudio Simonetti and so on features any English dialog or subtitles of note. That said, if you already own any of the exhaustive, absurdly special-features packed DVD or Blu-ray releases from the last 12 years and you still need more, I... don't know what you're expecting to find... I'unno, maybe that 8 minute restoration featurette will show some cool Before/After footage?

The 6-disc edition contains all of the above, but adds two very enticing extra discs into the mix:
You should also know that there's reportedly a fairly major issue with the 4K Restored Blu-ray which I can only describe as "I-frame pulsing". Basically, every I-frame (once a second or so) is much sharper, and noisier, than the B-frames and P-frames that follow, which have something of a softer, more diffuse look. It's not even that the softness is the problem - it's the inconsistency in the middle of a scene to suddenly "pulse" a sharper frame after and to be followed by a string of more neutral, blurred frames. If you're an autistic crazy person who knows what GOP structure is, you'll instantly know (and probably hate) what you're gonna' see in this set... but, it's impossible to know how bad these things are via stills, so I'll just have to report back when I see it myself in motion.

For those so inclined to import - and can deal with the combination of region lock frustrations and possible forced subtitle shenanigans that always crop up on titles like this - the 4-Disc HD Edition can be had for about $36, and when I pulled the trigger on the 6-Disc 4K Edition it was for just over $50 - and that's with standard shipping included! I'm not getting a dime should you follow those links, I just want the world to know that this exists, and that while there's already talk of some compression annoyances, it's still going to blow the similarly themed Japanese box set out of the water - and that damn thing still sells for about $120!

There's also a 2-disc DVD for those who just straight up hate quality. I have little doubt a non-limited edition of the European remaster will be released next year for a lower price - likely without the American and Extended cuts, of course - but for the sheer volume of content you're actually getting in this particular package, it'd be a little crazy to hold out for something better.

Sadly, no. But having weighed this one out for weeks, I'd rather take the time to explain why I won't be doing it - and why nobody but those with way too much money to burn should bother, either.

This is primarily because I haven't personally made the jump to "4K"/UHD, and while I've been horrendously tempted to pick up an Xbox One S just to review the 4K disc at 1080p... that would be rather pointless on a lot of levels. As such, I'll be doing a write-up on the BDs, which - considering how many things are wrong with all the HD versions of this film - should still be plenty fascinating to dig through on its' own, anyway.

This is a good time to rant about the current state of UHD, though: To be blunt, the display hardware - while absolutely mouth watering on its' own - simply isn't ready for anyone who actually understands what these displays are (and aren't!) capable of doing. I've been tempted to spend a small fortune on an overpriced OLED and lord it over all of my friends as they huddle around their sad, pathetic, peasant-LED's for warmth... but try as I might, I just can't convince myself it's worth it. Not yet, anyway.

Consider the following a primer of sorts for anyone who's about to take the plunge on a new display. My advice is "wait" - but if you're still dead set on being that guy, I completely understand. At least know what the hell you're getting into.


Thankfully, "4K Resolution" itself is pretty straight forward* - double the pixels in width, and height, meaning 3840:2160 UHD has exactly four times the resolution of 1920:1080 HD. The standard also allows for up to 59.94fps, meaning that James Cameron's fantasy of people wanting high refresh rates outside of video games and pornography could be a thing... if, y'know, anyone wants to actually produce content that isn't garbage dramas shot interlaced. (Or Hobbits. I guess.)

* Other than the fact that "4K" is referencing horizontal resolution while "1080p" was referencing horizontal, which literally makes fuck-all sense. Also, 4K spec is 4096 wide, the same way that 2K is 2048 wide, meaning that not only is "4K UHD" not by definition 4K resolution, but that "2K" should be "2K HD" - unfortunately people assume that 2K is inherently better than HD as a result, when pointing out "2K SCAN" vs "HD TELECINE" has more to do with how the image was captured and restored, rather than the actual resolution thereof. Because fuck TV marketing.

UHD-BD has some interesting quirks as a format; not only are discs available in single-layer 50 GB, dual-layer 66 GB and triple-decker 100 GB, but each of those discs has its' own maximum bandwidth limit - 82 Mb/s, 108 Mb/s, and 128 Mb/s respectively! Audio has largely been Dolby Atmos encoded, which is basically a 5.1 mix with metadata to "shift" the individual sounds around a grid of tiny satellite speakers; It's actually pretty cool tech, but completely impractical outside of an actual movie theater with a massive array of speakers installed to cover a wide area. Video - the part that interests me the most, I admit - is now handled by 10-bit HEVC, which - having done some preliminary test encodes myself - I can confirm it holds an almost shocking level of efficiency improvements over Blu-ray's most common codec, AVC, and suspect that in most cases, 100 GB is more than enough for an excellent, reference-quality end-user transfer.

Yes, of course, word is that there are already a handful of UHD-BD's with visible compression issues, and I'm sure that bitrate starved Netflix and Hulu streams will always be disappointing when it comes to grain structure - but if you didn't expect that, you didn't pay much attention to the launch of DVD, Blu-ray, or Netflix HD, did you? There are still some minor disappointments in the spec sheets - video is still subsampled to 4:2:0, and for another there's still "Limited" and "Full" color spaces to confuse and annoy everyone who can instantly tell the difference between PC and TV levels - but honestly, chroma bumped up to a full 1920:1080 is probably enough to satisfy even my crazy self.

But by far, the most promising part of this whole process is the introduction of HDR - or High Dynamic Range. In super-simplistic terms, it means two things; expanded color space, and higher peak luminances (whites). The actual colorspace for Rec. 2020 expands red notably to include those glowing, fire-engine-light reds that Rec. 709 HDTV colorspace simply was never designed to acknowledge, to say nothing of the other-worldly greens that... ironically, nobody's ever seen before in a movie. Seriously, the technology to produce them on a digital screen didn't even until recently exist, so unless you insisted on the most amazingly fabulous bright-ass neon green pride float to ever burst info flames in NoHo live, you've probably never seen colors quite like what 2020 is capable of producing once you hit those outer reaches of the gamut.


It's worth noting that for these colors to even exist as a spectrum of light the human eye can see, there has to be a lot of light being pushed out by the display - considerably more light than we've ever had on consumer or even public exhibition screens until quite recently.

So... where's the problem? Kentai's down for 10-bit color, and this Deep Color stuff is pretty rad, right? Mo' Reds, Mo' Greens, and screens so bright you'll go blind - what's not to love?! Well... there's a couple things really chaffing my HDR boner, and if you've looked into it as long as I have you'll feel thoroughly cuckolded by the mistress of Rec. 2020 yourself.

To put this another way; have you ever looked at a movie and went, man, this scene is visually stunning - but if only there were deeper, more vivid greens? Well... I mean, maybe you have.  But to Rec. 709's credit, it's basically covered the overwhelming majority of the blue spectrum humans are capable of seeing, and while red can certainly be improved, the only major gains we get are in the side of the color spectrum that we associate with... golf courses. Dramatic lighting tends to be white, blue or red, and while higher color fidelity will lead to greater visual contrast in some titles and subtle improvements on things like color banding for pretty much everything, this is very much a subtle refinement in 95% of real-world uses.

Arguably, though, Rec. 2020 is a bit less important than DCI-P3, which was a color space specifically made to capture every possible color range of 35mm film. Well, more relevant as far as movies are concerned, anyway - I'm thinking of the obnoxiously saturated colors in games like the DOOM reboot and salivating at what might be with a new HDR profile...

Many titles in the initial batch of UHD-BDs - The Martian, Mad Max: Fury Road, and so on - were all, seemingly at least, re-graded from scratch specifically to show off how vibrant and pretty and magical this new format was. Stuff released by Sony... wasn't. Pineapple Express was hardly the sort of title I expected from the first wave, but a decent one to show that even with all the expanded color in the world, a movie shot with a drab, overcast visual style is always going to be a drab, overcast movie. I imagine the world will be surprised to see that the inevitable UHD-BD release of Caddyshack doesn't glow like the primary heavy hues of an X-rated Ralph Bakshi cartoon, but these are things that people will slowly figure out on their own.

They were all HDR enhanced transfers, make no mistake, and there's a difference in just how vibrant those titles can get in terms of red and green and particularly highlights on the bright end of the grayscale, but the difference is subtle refinements and increased fidelity in things like traffic lights and grass lawns - not show stopping crazy neon explosions. I have little doubt that young and enterprising film makers will make full use of these new expanded colors over time, but for now, this is basically just additional chroma headroom for your favorite movies; nice to have, sure, but the odds of you noticing a huge difference, even during an A/B comparison, aren't that bloody likely.

Even if we assume that P3 is more important than 2020, there isn't yet a consumer level device capable of displaying that entire range of color yet anyway. Even when properly calibrated and setup, there will be a point of roll-off where the brightest green simply stops short of the full range of signal. The main reason for this is - assuming the hardware all down the chain is capable of accepting the full signal to begin with - to generate a wider color gamut, you need to produce a brighter peak white to carry the wavelength the color exists in.

TV manufacturers love to talk about wide color and High Dynamic Range and all the amazing stuff their new models can do that the competition can't - yet they're always oddly hesitant to talk about the actual cd/m2 rating -or number of "Nits" produced - because they know even the high-end OLED and LCD screens out there fall damn short of the recommendations by a wide margin. Simply put, if you're watching an SDR screen calibrated to the industry standard of 100 Nits, the brightest, deepest blue is only going to be 7 Nits and be pretty fucking dull - but if you're watching on a high quality OLED screen with a maximum output of 800 Nits, you suddenly have 56 different stops of blue to play with before maxing out. So it's not just the brightest, peak blue - it's all the subtle gradations between the light baby blue of the sky of early morning, and the deep hues of midnight that'll have a new level of depth to them.

For the time being, any OLED TV labeled HDR has to have a maximum output of 800 Nits, while any LCD with the label has to output 1,200 Nits - but even that's only on miniscule highlights, where a full screen of white is notably dimmer for both. The reason they have different scales is because OLED can actually turn individual pixels off, giving it greater perceived contrast than LCD, even with a lower light output. That said, both technology are fudging this stuff - OLED have the Automatic Brightness Limiters the same as Plasma, which means that while a small reflection can have a crazy high light output, a full fade-to-white will be substantially lower, and you can watch the whole screen dim as large, bright colored objects come into frame. LCD uses local-area based dimming, which... well, kinda' sucks, but in a completely different way.

In both cases, however, they all pale to a reference Dolby grading monitor that outputs a terrifying 4,000 Nits! We're likely not going to see that for home use until we come up with some crazy new technology to power it, sadly, but mentioning the word "Dolby" brings up the other big stinker in this new tech:

Without delving into I-could-be-compromising-NDA's-here territory, I don't mind saying that my day job consists of a lot of transcoding-server-based wizardry that'd come off as mundane and even disappointing to most readers - developing templates to convert one kind of file into another, automating broadcast friendly audio normalization to different international specs, dumb stuff like that. But the 4K content rollout happening right now has left me to be the front line in telling clients who want to get their feet wet what we can and can't give them, and holy hell, has it been equal parts enlightening and infuriating to follow.

The short version is that because each TV has different color and light capabilities, they've developed what they call "PQ" - or Perceptual Quantization - to make sure every display is capable of displaying the movie as closely as possible to what the graded master was intended to be shown at. In other words, the source media is always encoded as Rec. 2020, but a metadata setting tells the TV what levels it was graded at - so if the movie was graded on a 3,000 cd/m2 (or "3,000 Nits") monitor and your TV can only handle 1,200 Nits, it'll actually shrink the color gamut/dynamic range by 60% so that you keep as much of the color as possible without resorting to clipping and blowing things out of proportion. This includes values for absolute red, green and blue data as well, which means the chroma and luma of the signal are scaled to the appropriate points separately - which means if your TV can't handle the maximum brightness but it can handle the maximum red, it's not going to compromise one for the other.

It's actually a really, really cool idea, and having seen demos of it in action, I can say that PQ is a damn fine thing. Now, my understanding of HDR is that even if the color never falls outside of Rec. 709 (or P3), the contrast between black and white is effectively infinite, and only limited by the display itself. This, admittedly, makes the lack of HDR enhancement on the DotD 4K release something of a missed opportunity, but considering both how niche this title is nearly 40 years later, and how experimental the hardware is, I can almost forgive seasoned professionals not familiar with HDR for not bothering to dive into the new format incorrectly, and instead focusing on delivering the best quality SDR presentation they know how to... particularly when you factor in that, even with current HDR content, the average brightness between an HDR and SDR output is typically comparable - it's just got a lot more dynamic range, which lets you not clip highlights and crush shadows while still staying within the realistic 500~1,000 cd/m2 light output of the average consumer TV.

The bigger problem is that there's different kinds of HDR Metadata. The two most common right now are HDR10, and Dolby Vision - the former has fixed coordinates, meaning the whole movie has a max output for each color from start to finish, while the latter is a dynamic solution, meaning each scene can be tweaked individually to compensate for low lighting - say, making sure a camp fire is displayed properly alongside the following scene taking place on an overcast afternoon. Adjusting PQ on a shot-per-shot is great, particularly when it comes to downscaling HDR content back to SDR - something you could easily do via algorithmic automation on a Dolby Vision master since it would scale everything right down to the Rec. 709 limit, but would require plenty of hand-holding on an HDR10 source to avoid crushed shadow detail and clipped highlights.

So what's the industry standard? There... really isn't one - and certainly not a permanent one. Oh sure, the Society of Motion Picture abd Television Engineers (SMPTE) put their stamp of approval on HDR10, but Netflix is 100% behind Dolby Vision, which requires hardware on the display that knows how to handle the dynamic metadata outside of apps. Samsung knows that Dolby Vision's dynamic properties are here to stay, so they're currently working on an open-source dynamic equivalent to Dolby's equivalent,.. but whether it'll require all new hardware or be shunned due to partnerships with Dolby is anyone's guess. (There's also rumor that HDR10 Metadata is limited to 1,000 Nits, but having seen it for myself I can tell you that's certainly not true. It is limited to 10-bit, however, while Dolby Vision is up to 12-bit.)

That's before we even talk about Hybrid Log Gamma, a really clever method to make HDR content backward-compatible with SDR hardware without any Metadata at all - it just outputs a fixed (pair of) gamma curves, and trusts that the device it's being fed to is calibrated somewhere in the ballpark of "correct". The downside is that it features no PQ, which means all levels have to be fixed on a static 1,000 Nit scale. That doesn't sound terrible at first, since most displays on the market are only hitting about 800~1,100 Nits anyway, but as it's only being used for what could charitably be called experimental broadcasts in Europe for the time being it's all kind of a moot point... for now.

Odds are there would be more support for it if the only thing that used it wasn't VP9, but word is H265 will be implementing HLG profiles for 2017, so buckle up kids - this shit's just getting started.

Even with all the exciting changes in perceptual contrast and color gamut... there's also the limitation of the resolution itself. Namely the fact that most Hollywood movies finished over the last 15 years or so are limited to 2K resolution.

Let me clarify that for a second: Despite professionals slowly but surely moving towards digital photography as a more cost-effective and (arguably) flexible atlernative to celluloid, movies are still - by and large, at least - shot on 35mm film. These days, 35mm is typically scanned in at 4K and then edited on a digital image sequence called a DI - or "Digital Intermediate". Despite confusing naming conventions surrounding it, 2K 1.78 is exactly the same resolution as 1080p HD - 1920:1080 - and since virtually all 2K sources will ultimately be seen on Blu-ray or HD streaming anyway, the difference between 2K and HD is really negligible, at best.

The only reason it's been sononymous with "Better Than HD" for some time is because of the difference between an HD Telecine - that is a real-time transfer of 35mm to HD video - and a 2K scan to uncompressed DPX image files, which are then graded and assembled on a 2K DI. In short, the "scan" part of the "2K Scan" is the important distinction - not the resolution itself.

Things get more complicated when you talk about a modern movie - something like, say, The Martian. While more or less every shot of Matt Damon was shot on 35mm film, it was then scanned into a digital file, and placed on a DI for digital effects matting, and even for grading and general clean-up on shots filmed entirely on-set. Those scans may well have been scanned at 4K, but the DI itself - which gets differing resolutions from different cameras, post houses and so on - is at 2K. Even if the 2K DI was kept (which may or may not be the case), all of the color grading and effects compositing was done at 2K resolution, meaning the ultimate digital file that represents the final output of the movie is limited to 2K.

"But wait!" I hear some of you thinking. "Isn't THE MARTAIN already out on UHD-BD?" It sure is! But the dirty little secret is that Fox didn't actually re-create the entire movie in 4K. They simply went back to that same 2K DI source and upscaled it by 4X to produce a faux-UHD master. To be fair, upscaling HD to UHD is a much less butt-ugly process than upscaling SD to HD... but it still isn't "really" 4K. And that's what about half of the supposedly "4K" UHD titles kicking around in the market right now are. Crazy, right?

Dead. Fuck'n. Serious.

But it's hard to blame them in some cases, I admit. MAD MAX: FURY ROAD - another early "4K" home video release - was shot entirely on Arri Alexa cameras at 2.8K resolution (2880:1620), and then scaled down to a 2K DI. So even if the 4K transfer was re-rendered from scratch, the resolution shot on location was never full 4K resolution to start with.

It's understandable that all-digital movies would be limited to 2K, but why the limitation on 35mm sourced films? The short answer is "3D". Unless a movie was actually shot using 3D cameras, you're basically having people manually trace and rotoscope individual objects in post to add depth, and that means you need multiple layers of the same footage. And since this is a process done effectively at the last minute, and is also the way most Hollywood blockbusters make guaranteed extra money at the box office, it's seen as a necessary evil... even by directors like Guillermo del Toro and Zack Snyder, who are about as open in their disgust for the process as they're allowed to be before the producers give them a talking-to about shitting on the profit margins.

So why not just use 4K DI's? The short answer is that it's just not feasible to do it for all projects on the sort of turn-around time expected of a feature film - and it will have a sizable impact on budget, even if it's a fraction of the overall cost. It comes down to raw resources, and if you're a Hollywood producer who's trying to maximize profits, and the tech guy in the office says that 2K work is a lot cheaper than 4K work, odds are that's the first thing that's getting axed. This is why despite Sony scanning everything at 4K to get the most out of the raw scan possible, we get full 4K restorations of Taxi Driver but a title like Fright Night is scaled down to 2K for further clean-up and grading - the higher resolution scanning is baked into the cost of having the hardware to do it, but taking the time and bandwidth to continue working in 4K adds up pretty quick. As an example, a feature length 2K master of a 90 minute film will take up about 1.5 TB of disk space alone! A 4K DI has four times the resolution, and yes, will take up four times that space, to say nothing of the added strain on whatever network is forced to decode that much raw bullshit at any given time.

For better or worse, I spend every day dealing with network latency, side-eyeing mismatched source content and queueing up transcodes for both production and delivery purposes on a server that was effectively built to handle HD material in real-time. Think of it this way: Even when all you're doing is jamming cuts of meat down a conveyor belt into a meat grinder, suddenly cramming four times as much meat into the same sized pipes is gonna' cause all sorts of panic you, and the rest of your team, simply aren't ready for. You've got three seasons of SD content? Beautiful, spread the cheeks on that thing and go to town. You've got THREE 4K source files?! We're basically fucked the rest of the day, and anything not-4K-related that you expect to get out the door by 5 is going to require a very special request.

Even if your goal is simply to take the finished master and convert it to 3D, keep in mind that conversion is effectively rotoscoping, and multiple people are going to be working on the same title at the same time, and the bandwidth required to hit the same 6TB file from multiple workstations is ridiculous. It can be done - native 4K DI's for titles ranging from The Smurfs 2 to Elysium are proof enough - but if 3D is part of the picture, it's barely worth the expense, and allows you to farm work out to multiple, less insanely equipped sub-studios. There is, technically, "4K 3D IMAX" in select theaters... which are always, without exception, upscaled from the 2K 3D masters even if a 4K master for the "Flat" version exists.

The process of rendering a full length movie is often simply too data-intensive (ie: "too expensive") to justify doing at resolutions beyond 2K. The market for higher-quality 3D is already negligible, and quite frankly, the overwhelming majority of consumers are so clueless they wouldn't know the difference between 720p and 2K - forget HD and UHD. Hollywood caters to the lowest denominator with the biggest payout... which happens to be 2K 3D. The saddest part of this reality is that while I'm not thrilled at the idea of purchasing a 2K DI sourced movie in "upscaled 4K", the added benefits to H265 compression, PQ contrast and HDR color are enough to get me to at least consider buying the more expensive version, even if I don't have a fucking display that'd know what to do with any of it yet. The fact that virtually all UHD-BDs released so far include a "Restored in 4K" Blu-ray copy only makes that jump a little easier to swallow.

In short, 2K DI was easy to convert to 3D, which means nobody wants to invest in 4K DI. Weak.


Anything finished on 35mm can be re-scanned at 4K. Otherwise I'd be warning you about Dawn of the Dead rather than throwing fitty bones at it. But realistically, the leap between 2K resolution and 4K resolution is probably going to be quite a bit more subtle in most cases. Most sane people don't sit within 6 feet of a 55" TV, and the real-world gains in resolution are going to be pretty subtle. If anything, the most obvious improvements will come from the variable block-sizes and 10-bit refinement of H265 as a codec... but neither of those things actually needed higher resolution to begin with. Much like "2K" vs "HD", the difference has more to do with the mastering process than the actual output resolution. 4K is better, make no mistake, but it's also not why most 4K masters are a dramatic improvement on dated HD scans on its' own. That's why the "Remastered in 4K" versions of Ghostbusters and Sam Raimi's Spider-Man looked so much better than the prior Blu-ray releases, even at 1080p resolution.

Don't get me wrong, you should buy 4K restorations of classic films if you have the money to taste. But the market is going to be even smaller than Blu-ray has already become, and I have a feeling the titles we see are going to be titles that the guys running the labels know will sell, and titles they happen to love personally. Dawn of the Dead is something of an outlier, and I fully expect the majority of 4K movies to be trash nobody would ever actually want to watch outside of penance.


I may talk about the PS4 Pro in another post. Short version is it isn't really 4K, just clever upscaling and some supersampling for any schmucks buying this for playback at 1080p (complete with frame-drops not featured on the base hardware!), but for $400, it's "close enough" to UHD resolution.
Holding aside the Metadata and Display Gamut nonsense, one of the few times where that crazy expanded colorspace really would be an amazing boon would be video games. Digital creations aren't limited by 35mm exposure, in-camera sensors or available local lighting, and the thought of the boiling reds and alien greens in something like, say, the 2016 DOOM reboot with enhanced grayscale and color fidelity could be absolutely brilliant if done properly - and a handful of PS4 and Xbox One games already have full HDR support, even on the older-model consoles, though of course as displaying HDR samples on SDR monitors is pretty much impossible there aren't many useful A/B comparisons floating around yet...

The issue, however, is how HDTV's handle those signals. Most displays process incoming footage in different ways - upscaling, deinterlacing, color correction and so on - and in the case of movies, it... doesn't really matter. In virtually all cases movies are shot, edited and shown at 23.98fps and play at a locked framerate from start to finish. No problems there. Anyone who plays games - well, anyone who plays shooters, rhythm games, anything where instantly reacting to game stimuli is required - will know that reflexes are important... but also rendered completely fucking moot if your display has any major input lag.

Back in the days of NTSC CRT, there was no delay to speak of - the input was virtually instantaneous to the analog connection - but HDTV's and now, UHD displays, require time to properly process whatever signal they're being fed. Most game consoles and anyone gaming on PC that isn't using a specialty designed high framerate monitor is locked to 60fps (well, 59.94Hz if you wanna get technical) which means there's exactly 16.66ms between each frame. Theoretically. Slowdown and frame-pacing are a thing, but let's ignore that for the time being and just say that a great TV will give you one frame of delay, while an average TV will give you about two frames worth. And, yes, video game mechanics themselves are slower now than they were a decade ago to account for this phenomenon, if you can believe it.

Yes, you do. And all of that is irrelevant when discussing delay, because it's based on actual milliseconds going into the display. Desktop style monitors typically have ~15ms delay these days, even on cheap garbage monitors, but you're never gonna' get that sweet, sweet HDR profile for Deus Ex: Mankind Divided on a 1440p screen that runs 144hz, now are ya?

And yes, I've recently upgraded to a GTX 1080. Feels good to play 2160p, even if it's currently being scaled down a 1080p. What is aliasing, again?

When you buy a TV and you know you're going to play games on it, you probably set it to "Game" or even "PC" input. Why? Because that disables plenty of the internal processing and lets you get data in as fast as humanly possible. ~33ms is typically as good as a large display is going to get, and is fairly playable at anything that isn't a competitive shooter or fighting game - but anything after that is going to introduce an obvious delay that could be annoying at best, and unplayable at worst. The only monitors with better response times tend to be smaller desktop monitors that forego a lot of the basic conveniences of "TVs" - nothing wrong with that, but if you're sitting 2 feet away, you probably don't want a 55" UHD monitor to start with. (Well, I do. But I also want a three foot erection that breathes fire, so grain of salt there.)

With all that in mind, let's remember that UHD with HDR is not only feeding four times the resolution and an expanded gamut over the same connection as an HD master, but it's also got to equate the HDR metadata so the image is displayed properly. In other words, HDR was designed to be used for movies more than games, and the hardware implementation reflected that... at the expense of games being actually playable. While plenty of TVs have had firmware updates to speed up response times, plenty of sets still have over 60ms of response time - or about  a 4 frame delay - while Sony's current Bravia line - the one marketed as the "Perfect Match" for the PS4 Pro, no less! - has over 100ms of lag on UHD with HDR enabled. In other words, it's fucking unplayable.

To be fair, a lot of current models have had firmware updates that dramatically cut down on input lag once proper diagnostics by third parties. For the love of Pete, always check Rtings.com, though I assume the first generation or two of HDR sets (which'll probably be really cheap if you can find them kicking around) are never going to be updated, largely because people who do play games don't dive in when it's crazy expensive and can burn-in like a mother. Ask anyone

Even so, the fact that this wasn't even a consideration is shocking to me. Truly, if there's one thing I want out of a $1,500~5,000 TV, it's for my natural shitty skill at vidya to be exponentially amplified by a full tenth of a second. I need to respawn in every room six times on Ultra Violence anyway, so the last thing I need is to have the game trailing behind my obvious lack of skill.


Light output needs to improve before the colorspace is ever going to reach P3 levels (with "100% Rec. 2020" being science goddamn fiction for the foreseeable future), and unfortunately edge-lit LEDs - the cheap, lightweight garbage people love to waste money on - aren't capable of that to begin with. Despite being incredibly pretty, OLED isn't as bright as a full on baclit LED (yet). As the tech improves and the price comes down, it'll start to be feasible to have both full-P3 and at least 1,200 Nits - which, from any sane perspective, should have always been the bare minimum for "HDR". Instead it's being used as a gimmick to separate the cheap 4K sets from the expensive 4K sets, which is fucking deplorable.

There's nothing wrong with a 4K SDR monitor, and I've considered getting one myself - but the HDR monitors that are available right now are so bare minimum, it kinda' makes me want to have no part of this shitshow until the 2017 models have locked horns long enough to get at least a 100% P3/1,200 Nit standard. Maybe by then the HDR Metadata will have been figured out, too - though I wouldn't get my hopes up on Streaming and Disc having a single, unified standard, much as that would make
every consumer's life a lot easier.

Unless you get a crazy good deal on something really, really good, I say save your money for another year. The tech has to mature, and it's only going to get cheaper anyway, and unlike Blu-ray and the PS3 a decade ago, the Xbox One S just... isn't an appealing enough console to justify getting as a cheap media player with games. Not for someone with no love for Halo and Gears of War, at least.

As for the Dawn of the Dead box, we'll have to talk about that another day.

Midnight Factory's 6-disc Blu-ray/UHD-HD collection for DAWN OF THE DEAD is an extremely frustrating package, all in all. On the one hand it's simply the best presentation of the film that's ever existed... on the other, it's a huge mess in its' own right, and if you're waiting for clarification on if it's worth the asking price, it really does depend on what you've expected out of it.


As has been stated elsewhere, the presentation of the George A. Romero approved "Theatrical Cut" and the "Extended Cut" are a 1:1 match with the audio and video files found on the substantially more expensive Japanese box set released by Happinet in 2013. The M2TS files are literally the same here - copy pasta, all the way down. Both transfers are pulled from the same 35mm elements, with the Extended Cut being the 'source' and trimmed down to match the length and audio mix of the Theatrical Cut. The only new additions to these discs are Italian forced-subtitles, and a Region "B" lock.

Mind you, the entire 6-disc Midnight Factory box set under scrutiny here costs about the same price as just the Extended Edition Japanese Blu-ray, so if you're clever enough with a BD-ROM to bypass the forced subtitles it may well be worth it to go for all the way. On the other hand, if you only want the Extended Cut and could care about the European Cut, that release doesn't have forced Italian subtitles. So invest accordingly.


Not something I usually talk much about, but for a $50~ import with a half-dozen discs, I guess I may as well...


Despite this being a hefty 6-disc set, the whole collection is contained in a single, somewhat opaque blue case the same height and depth, but double the width, of a standard BD keepcase. The case has two flaps - one for each side of the case - each holding 2 discs, with one disc in the front and rear of the case proper for a total of 6. To call it "complex" would be an understatement, though I assume the 4-disc edition comes missing a flap, and is likely less of a pain in the ass to deal with.

The Italian language booklet (seemingly containing a new essay, and interviews with Dario Argento and George Romero) covers the 4K UHD, and the Post Cards - kept in a small, sealed plastic bag, just the way I like it - flop somewhere around in the middle, which means you'll be attacked by them every time you open the case. It's kind of a shit-show to be honest, and none of this is helped by the fact that the case itself is chunky and only likes to close when it seems to want to close when it feels like it. Not gonna' lie, I've had worse, but this may be the most cumbersome piece of "Deluxe" packaging since that equally ridiculous fat-case for Dust Devil on DVD nearly a decade ago.

The only real upside is the fact that - much like Arrow Video's old "Special Edition" Slipcases! - the case has a total of 4 poster art pieces you can swap around as you like - the iconic American, Italian, Spanish and Pre-Release posters are all given a full panel. The art itself is decent quality, amazing historical stuff, and... kind of pointless, considering you don't have a window to show any of it off from. Goddamn, Midnight Factory, get your shit together on this thing!  Instead it's wrapped in a thin, glossy cardboard slip the International Post loves to ding up as much as humanly possible - but it's that weird Refen themed art, so, fuck it, I can't convince myself to be as upset as I was at the less-serious damage on my copy of the Anchor Bay Ultimate Edition.

If you're a packaging fetishist and you're more patient than I am, I say wait until the inevitable German port of the same content in a Mediabook, or 3D Steelbook, or a Leather Bound Zombie Skin Edition - pretty much anything would be less excruciating to deal with than this goddamn thing. I don't ask for much from a box set, just functionality, and somehow this has come up just short enough to annoy the crap out of me.

But we all know I'm ripping these to my hard drive to fuss with them anyway - and may have gotten so sick of waiting I grabbed a Nautical Freelance Copy to start this review. Moot point, but hey, full disclosures and all that...



As expected, while the bonus features with Tom Savini and Nicolas Winding Refen feature English audio and Italian subtitles, the rest of the interviews with Dario Argento, Claudio Simonetti, the LVR restoration crew, and the archival interviews with Alfredo Cuomo and Claudio Argento are in Italian with no translation. If you're surprised by this, you probably haven't imported many Italian DVDs.

Archival interviews and trailers are all SD PAL, and as such will likely not play on most North American displays. Not much to see here unless you speak Italiano, which - considering the countless hours of bonus material already available in English - is really no skin off my nose. I was hoping the Restoration featurette would show some cool before/after samples, but unless you really want to see a graded vs ungraded shot, that's as good as it's going to get.

The Open Matte transfer is arguably the HD highlight of this collection, and is - for all intents and purposes - identical to the 1.85:1 transfer aside from having all that sweet, sweet headroom. It's a little bizarre knowing that the 1.85:1 area on the center-right of the scan has been cleaned of dirt and scratches while the rest of the transfer hasn't, but as the 35mm Master Positive has been kept in relatively good shape over the last nearly-40-years, there isn't a whole lot to complain about that can't be equally leveled at the "Final" 1.85:1 master.




Before we talk about the new master - the good, the bad, and everything in between - it's worth noting why this was such a big deal. This is hardly the first time Dawn of the Dead has been given a new, high-resolution transfer, but it's never quite gotten the attention and care it so desperately asked for...

In 2004, Anchor Bay restored the American Theatrical cut of the film to what was - at the time, certainly - one of the most impressive presentations of a 70s horror film outside of the big studio wheelhouse. Scenes were corrected on a shot-by-shot basis to get consistent, rock-solid black levels and somewhat neutral skin tones, despite highlights often having a too warm (and sometimes blatantly brown) cast. Sadly, as this was still the era of DVD where heavy film grain led to terrible, clumpy compression, heavy DVNR that led to blatant ghosting and edge-filtering to prevent the whole film from looking "soft" as a result led to an unnatural, digitally processed look that's hard to look past. Going forward, this will be known as the "Divimax Master".

Perhaps only adding to the confusion were reports that the Arrow Video Blu-ray - which also included the two "Alternate" cuts on PAL DVD - was regularly cited as being 'higher quality' than the Anchor Bay transfer. This is certainly a matter of taste, but the biggest difference between the two was that Anchor Bay later applied an additional pass of scratch-removal tools, which did their job (somewhat) but also caused the usual high-frequency detail loss that comes with the territory. The master itself is exactly the same otherwise, and sadly, most of the damage was done during the initial creation of the master over a decade ago.

The Extended Edition of Dawn of the Dead was first released on Blu-ray by Happinet Japan in 2013. I suspect the Happinet transfer is actually the restoration that served as the foundation for Dawn of the Dead 3D, a conversion project that was first announced as in production all the way back in 2007! That would, at the very least, explain why the new transfer is so distractedly bright... hmm... either way, this will be the "Extended Master" when comparisons are unavoidable.

The Happinet release also included a "New Master" for the shorter American Theatrical cut - in reality it was the same exact scan as the Extended master re-cut to the soundtrack of the George A. Romero approved 1979 Theatrical Cut, since the former was effectively just an unpolished, longer cut of the latter anyway. As such I'll refer to the 2013 Theatrical Master and the 2013 Extended Remaster as if they were one and the same, because... well, they are.

Since we're being slightly pedantic anyway, I'll point out that while Elite erroneously released the 'Extended' version on Laserdisc in the 90s as the "Director's Cut", Romero has since clarified that he willingly trimmed the extra 7 minutes or so of footage and that he considered the 127 minute "Theatrical Cut" his personal prefered version of the film. Romero seemingly had no direct involvement in the creation of the 118 minute "ZOMBIE" cut released in most of Europe.

Presumably Alfredo Cuomo and Claudio Argento hold the master positive that makes up "ZOMBIE", the Dario Argento approved 118 minute version that serves as the leaner, meaner, less satyrical answer to Romero's more pensive and playful take on the zombie apocalypse. I like Zombie just fine - I'm not convinced it's the "best" version of the film, no, but I'm also convinced that each version has their own strengths, and Zombie is no different - though for better or worse, the elements appear to be no better or worse than the 35mm CRI that's seemingly served as the basis for every new home video transfer of the film dating back to the mid-90s.

Foot Note: Anchor Bay possibly created a new 35mm print in the late 90s, but the inclusion of "extra" scenes on their initial video releases - which were later removed for the 25th Anniversary Edition DVD - suggest they either have been cleaning that old girl up for decades, or perhaps struck a low-contrast print from the same vintage CRI. The connecting thread is the moire whorl patterns that aren't present on the ZOMBIE elements, and thus can't be on the camera negative. Take a look at Danny's Dawn of the Dead Collector's Blog for some fascinating info on this seemingly rock-solid theory. 


First the good news: The promise of an all new, high quality 4K scan of the "Zombie" Master Positive print have been delivered exactly as promised - by which I mean it's not an upscale or anything like that. The Japanese "4K Remaster" of The Crow has proven that this isn't always the case on overpriced imports.

It's clear that efforts have been made to maintain the overall integrity of the element at a scan level, from the correctly centered 1.85:1 aspect ratio to the carefully regulated highlights and a level of consistency between shots for things like fluorescent lighting and time of day that no print of Dawn of the Dead prior has ever seen. In many ways it may indeed the best, most natural looking version of the film ever released... but that doesn't mean it's a particularly attractive presentation on its' own. Romero's principle of substance over style means the original lighting and focus on the film was never particularly great to start with, and anyone expecting Dawn of the Dead to be a crisp, glowing film for the 21st century is probably not someone particularly familiar with the film to begin with. It's always been an underexposed, inconsistent, grimy looking little movie and while there's a few problems with the presentation, it's clear the overall project did everything it could to preserve the occasionally underwhelming world George Romero and DP Michael Gornick created.

When I first looked over the 4K European Remastered 1.85 disc, my heart sank a little. Shadows were an indistinct gray, flesh tones had a dull, washed-out look compared to every prior print worth mentioning, and while the appearance of visible on-set lighting was no longer a big, hot colored blob of light, I found myself struggling to call what we have an "improvement" - from any raw, aesthetic standpoints, at least. I suspected that there was an incorrect gamut conversion at first: Outside of the optical titles none of the unexposed areas of the print are ever "black", and while the new 4K sourced BD looks perfectly serviceable during well lit exteriors, the vast majority of the while film looks very... pale, to put it kindly.

It wasn't until I looked the whole thing over with a histogram that it started to make sense - even if I find myself frustrated with the result. While the Extended HD Master released in 2013 seemingly favored midtones over highlights or shadow details - getting a consistently vibrant, natural looking color pallet at the cost of virtually every lamp and light fixture being blown out into a glowing vortex. In short, the Extended HD Master pushed the exposure to increase contrast, and with it find some sensible looking midtones at the cost of making very bright scenes way too bright, and very dark scenes a little on the thin side. There was a little clipping on things like the mall lighting in the 2004 Divimax transfer as well, but nothing outside the margins of error (or good taste).

By comparison, the new 4K transfer seems to have preserved the highlights perfectly, with the brightest scenes consistently topping out at IRE 100, just as they should, with the muddled midtones and weak black levels the natural result of leaving things as they are. The result - while technically sound and perfectly respectful to the source material... still strikes me as very underwhelming, from any aesthetic point of view at least. The cool cats at CAPS-A-HOLIC have made many of the things I'd otherwise write completely irrelevant (huzzah!), but all the same, their comparisons can be a bit limited and may not always tell the full story, as might be the case here, so I've included a bunch of purty pictures for your personal pleasure.

I've tried to get a wide variety of examples so that anyone on the fence about taking the plunge can make the right call.






















But so what if Kentai thinks the movie doesn't "look" attractive - low contrast is good, right? It brings out more detail than a high contrast transfer which will only crush shadows and boost highlights! This is actually all a good thing and he's just being grumpy because it doesn't look the way he wants it to... honestly, I was worried that was the case for about a week, but something just didn't feel right, and I think I've finally put my finger on it. See, going lower-contrast will usually yield more shadow detail, that hasn't been the case here. The shadows on the 4K Remaster are oddly vague and murky, and actually have even less information hiding in the shadows than either of the competing HD masters. I was expecting a hundred shades of gray, but there's no shades to speak of - just the same damn off-gray!

To give you a quick, simple example of how completely different all three masters are - and to give an excuse to use the scene where Tom Savini calls Ken Foree "Chocolate Man" - here's a quick frame-match between all 3 major Blu-ray releases. Obviously, how close to calibrated your monitor is will have a huge impact, but you can at least see the big issue for yourselves.




As you can see, both the Divimax and Extended masters show what I'm assuming to be a round smoke detector and a sprinkler to the right of the grate... but the European 4K remaster has only the vaguest hint of the former, and no visible instance of the latter at all! The shadows are simply a murky haze of nothing, and seeing the "actual" black 1.85 matte bars against it only makes the weaknesses around shadow detail within the new transfer that much easier to spot.

That said, the blue cast on the European transfer is one of those "intentional" changes that works - another example is the dark blue shot of the mall exterior, which plays off previous shots of the dark night sky, playing their arrival up as the true "Dawn" in the film's title. It's not in the original, but it's a clever enough touch I'll happily take it. It's little things like this that show me that far too much time and effort was put into this new transfer for the issue to simply be that the people working with the master didn't know what they were doing: Even if it's only in a small way, the work making Dawn of the Dead consistent from shot to shot and scene to scene elevates the film into a more cohesive, structured whole than it ever has been, and it's given me a newfound respect for how much care and effort can go into work I still may not, ultimately, be all that happy with.

Only adding further fuel to my personal speculation fire is the Open-matte transfer, shows countless instances of small black debris on the print registering as "true black", while completely unexposed areas of the original film are the same milky gray color as the finished 1.85:1 transfer. I can't say anyone treating only optically printed debris as "true black" (because no light passes through them) is wrong, since that's what a 35mm print looks like on projection, too... and yet, even in that context, these seem to vary between "looks pretty normal" to "what the heck am I even looking at"?












Some of these instances - such as Peter and Roger emerging from the doorway - look... fairly okay, I guess? The screen is an almost consistent fade to optical-black (ie: "this is as dark as the prior element is getting on this print"), and I can believe that's how the scan is 'supposed' to look... but then again, the shot of Roger fighting a zombie in the truck cab is just gnarly and washed out, far as I'm concerned. Compare it to a similar (not frame accurate) example from the Divimax HD master - or even the Extended HD master! - and despair at how flat and sad it all looks:






So... Is the grading just poor, or is there more at play than meets the eye?

In the end, I can only guess that the different 35mm elements themselves are the limiting factor here, and the new color grade only reveals those weaknesses. After all, the prior HD master was struck from the same 35mm elements and the results were VERY SIMILAR as far as contrast and shadow detail goes - but when you factor in how piss-poor so many other elements of the previous masters were, it was easy enough to chalk those up to the mastering process rather than the elements themselves. If that's the case - if the black levels on the low contrast 35mm IP elements simply don't exist - I can't blindly call the transfer poor. Sometimes, a cigar is just a cigar, and as disappointing as the black levels are here, I feel that far too much care has been spent elsewhere for this to have been anything but a known compromise.

I will say - if my hunch is anywhere close to correct - that I would have handled it a bit differently... but that's the beauty of being an arm-chair critic, isn't it?


If this were the only issue I'd do my best to look past it, but the compression is frustrating as well. The good news is that the artifacts aren't as blatantly ugly could be, but they're better described as an issue of consistency, rather than overall quality. The phrase "I-Frame Pulsing" has been used to describe the issue, and it's not a bad one because it does sum up the issue... but in terminology that means bugger all to anyone who's never actually encoded video before. So forgive me for giving a primer on this, but it's actually relevant to understanding where things may well have gone wrong.

Most of the video compression algorithms we use to this day - MPEG-1, MPEG-2, AVC, and now HEVC - are based around the notion that a sequence of frames have commonality that can be exploited and replicated between frames with minimal changes. These smaller segments compressed together are called Group Of Pictures - or a "GOP". While I sure didn't vote for them to be the defacto standard to Make Video Quality Great Again, the way their trickle-down compression works goes something like this:

I-Frames have the least level of compression, and are thus easiest to decode. They're also the largest frames in the GOP as a result. I-frame only videos are typically used for broadcasting and editing purposes for these very reasons, but have to have a dramatically higher bitrate to match quality with "Long GOP" compression as a result.

P-Frames reference the previous frames in the GOP, sequentially, until the next I-Frame is hit. These are smaller, but are slower to decode since they're ultimately referencing previous macroblocks. They're handy enough, and easier to read for certain applications without playback funkiness (ie: Media Servers), but if you're going down this road you may as well go all the way in.

B-Frames are even smaller at similar quality levels, but they work by pulling blocks from the frames both ahead and behind, making them an absolute beast to play back on weaker hardware, and more or less impossible to get to function outside of standard forward playback without hitches.

A typical MPEG-2 GOP may look something like "IBBBPBBBPBBB", at which point another I-Frame gets punched in and the pattern repeats. AVC is a bit more flexible in that it can have GOP sizes from 1 to 250 frames without playback taking a hit, but smaller GOP sizes lead to higher quality, and as a way to avoid decoding issues Blu-ray specifically demands a 24-frame max GOP for standard progressive content.

Still with me after all that nerd shit? Cool! So, what happens when your bitrate is adequate and your I-Frames look great, but your B-Frames and P-Frames aren't encoded to the same standard - either because you did a one-pass encode that doesn't properly allocate the bits where they need to go, or because your multipass algorithms are straight up crap? It means that some frames are nice and crisp and sharp and look like your high quality master, and then the next several frames - while perhaps not terrible - are substantially softer, more diffused, and uneven looking compared to the I-Frames. In other words, the good frames "pulse" in and out, while the bulk of the transfer is the fuzzier, blotchier B/P-Frames that aren't anywhere near to the same standard.

In properly encoded two-pass content, the difference in overall clarity between an I-Frame and a B/P-Frame should be undetectable, but that sure as shit isn't the case here. Here's a pair of frames from the same seconds which perfectly illustrates the problem:





You see the huge gap in the quality of the grain structure? This, my friends, is what poor temporal compression looks like; not single instances of compression creeping up on a specific frame, but regular intervals of the source video being preserved and then smoothed over or turning blotchy, and then the crisp, accurate texture is back again before you can even blink. It's an abstract kind of Hell, to be sure, but as someone who's job requires assessing visual quality on a wide range of source materials, this is the kind of shit I just can't unsee. It's possible the more sane among you will see the artifact, shrug, and then move on with your day... but if so, you're not one to care what I have to say about compression to begin with, are ya'?

The above screenshots are from the "Restoration" themed featurette, and are slightly worse than the main feature - but as what we're talking about is a temporal effect, and thus impossible to show properly in stills, I'm using a more-obvious-than-normal instance to give you the idea of what to look for in the main transfers. Sadly, both the 4K Remastered 1.85 OAR and the 4K Remastered 1.33 Open-Matte transfer have this issue - don't have the hardware to watch the 4K UHD disc yet, so no comment on that one.

The encoding - fascinating as the reason behind it might be - just isn't particuarly good. I've seen far worse on releases that were highly reviewed, so I imagine this'll annoy those who are already prone to snort and shake their heads at the quality of "grain structure", and that most others will be perfectly happy that they see any grain at all - much less plenty of it on brightly lit footage. The transfer may be far from ideal, but compared to the smeared, waxy texture of the 2004 Divimax HD master, it's still a pretty dramatic step forward for a film that's never been able to catch a break on Blu-ray.

THE DISCS ARE TRUE 24FPS,

NOT THE USUAL 23.98FPS

ENGLISH AUDIO

Both the 1.85:1 and Open-Matte presentations feature an English 5.1 remix and the original mono mix encoded as lossless DTS-HD Master Audio. Sadly, they also feature forced subtitles... assuming you aren't using an HTPC and some AACS cracking software. Hint-hint.

The English 5.1 remix - which sounds more or less identical to the Dolby True HD 5.1 mix on the Japanese BD - is about as goofy as you'd expect; sound effects are too loud as dialog is too quiet, foley echoes and trails when it clearly shouldn't, and the concept of directionality is optional, at best. The high end cuts out suddenly, and there's some odd humming in certain scenes with a lot of ambient noises which, I can only guess, is a residual artifact of the hiss removal DNR. It manages to be simultaneously bass heavy and tinny, and the fact that I had to turn my player volume all the way up to comfortably hear the dialog is nothing short of terrifying.

In short, like every 5.1 English remix of Dawn of the Dead, it sucks... and you've either made peace with it, or you'll go with the original mix. As you'd imagine, I went with the latter.

The original mono track sounds... dated, like it was pulled from a finished 35mm optical track (and likely was!), but under the circumstances I've no real complaints with the overall fidelity or volume of the mix. Unlike the Japanese release, the mono track seems to remain consistently in sync with the image and is presented as lossless. Like the visual presentation, it's not stunning, but once you know what you're getting into there's not much to complain about either.

The saddest part? Listen to the restored Italian 5.1 track for all of 15 seconds. It's fucking amazing - clear, nuanced, pans like it should, the whole nine. Listening to the English 5.1 track leaves me wondering why anyone bothers to waste time remixing 70s low-budget movies, but listening to the Italian track - in short, morbidly curious bursts - makes me wonder what could be if Rubenstein ever goes digging in the vaults and Dawn of the Dead is given the proper remix it deserves.

IS IT WORTH BUYING?

This is far from the only BD release of the 4K Remastered European version of Dawn of the Dead we're going to see over the next few years, and the combination of region locking, forced subtitles, middling compression and a shoddy limited edition package all make this an incredibly rough purchase to recommend to anyone who isn't a huge fan of the European cut to begin with. The transfer is underwhelming, the audio competent, the bonus features are mostly useless if you don't speak Italian, and even the limited edition box is a swing and a miss. I feel bad saying that, knowing how much work and dedication clearly went into the preservation of one of the most unique horror films of the 70s... but the finished disc just ain't that good.

Unless you absolutely need the 4K UHD-BD and the Open-Matte transfer, I'd say hold off for now and see what the rest of the world starts doing with the same materials. It can always be worse, sure - but at least it might be more English friendly or region free in the process!

Happy Holidays, friends.

See you all in the new year!