Its a ok tv series. You can do much worse.
Shame it got cancelled. I do not ever buy TV shows that get cancelled waste of money as its left incomplete.

I'm enjoying it so far and love Joss Whedon so looking forward to watching the rest of it. I just assumed there was some sort of resolution at the end before it was cancelled but if not I don't mind too much. Firefly as a tv series is enjoyable in its own right so that sort of thing doesn't bother me much.

I loved Buffy but never got into Firefly.

Dollhouse was pretty decent, although Fox are a bunch of wankers (pardon my French!). Cancelled The Sarah Connor Chronicles and kept Dollhouse, even though the ratings for DH were worse, all because Whedon is their golden boy. Then ended up cancelling DH anyway. FAIL.

'Golden boy' is probably a bit strong - they've never treated him brilliantly to be honest

Only word for it if they keep his tv show which is doing worse than another. Or perhaps Fox was just getting more revenue from ads during Dollhouse. They'd keep any old shit if they can make a buck from it.

Yeah,that could be it. They clearly don't respect him enough considering the way Angel and Firefly were dropped.

The Sarah Connor Chronicles, incidentally, is another show I need to watch properly. Saw most of the first season and enjoyed it but never followed through with it in the end.

The Sarah Connor Chronicles started to get quite good actually.
Neither it or Dollhouse were in the league of Lost, Supernatural, Game of Thrones, Homeland etc

I was really really surprised at just how good Homeland was! Its not sci fi or horror but for a action drama it was excellent and I cannot wait for Season 2!!

Deadly spawn on blu-ray arrived today. Confirmed my belief that some movies are better left to dvd. Its not a bad disc by any means It's just some low budget cult movies like this and maniac (especially ones shot on the cheap) don't warrent the hi-def treatment it shows up too many of the flaws previously masked on vhs and dvd. I think a lot of fans might be better served waiting for the arrow dvd.

I'm probably going to get a lot of disagreements over this but I would suggest some cult releaseing companies might be better avoiding the blu-ray format or at least being more selective about the titles, its a step too far for some films. :(

If that's the Millennium edition then it's been DNR-ed to death, resulting in a smeary waxy look.

And yes, I disagree with the point I've quoted in bold ; by the same token there'd be no point seeing cult films on 35mm on the big screen. Any cult film shot on film can look incredible on bluray even if it was 'shot on the cheap', as long as the transfer's been done correctly.

I just think a lot of fans get a bit too 'eager' to see everything on blu-ray. This film looked totally fine on dvd with upscale. I still suspect dvd is the best home for films like this.

It would look better on bluray though, if it had been transferred properly. I agree, a lot of low-budget cult stuff looks great on upscaled dvd. but it would still look better in HD.

The screenshots I saw of the Deadly Spawn had more detail in the dvd due to the smeary waxiness of the DNRed bluray transfer.

Again, sounds about right, still, i'm still unconvinced by the merits of blu-ray for everyfilm but i'll certainly give them a try. I still wonder if the wrong format came out on top as it would be interesting to see this stuff on hddvd!

Theoretically there shouldn't be a difference if the file size was small enough as it would have been the same encode on HD DVD probably.

Funny that, I heard the exact same argument back in the day that some films are best left on VHS as DVD shows up too much of the flaws in the film. If we all had that mindset, DVD would never have taken off and DVD would have been a relic of an unsuccessful past.

So, with all due respect, it's nonsense. Blu-ray doesn't even get close to the resolution of 35mm film, which is the original intended format for these cult movies. They weren't designed to be watched on small TV screens with low resolution, but were intended for theatrical projection, which I imagine showed up a hell of a lot more flaws than an HD presentation!

I particularly dislike this argument because it gives companies the impression that people don't want cult movies on BD, or that they're somehow not worthy to grace the BD format. Absolute rubbish. As a film fan I want the best presentation of my cult films, preferably on the Blu-ray format, as that's the best we have at present. If transferred and encoded properly, old films (even ones shot on the cheap, look at Evil Dead for one) can look stunning. Or do you think exploitation filmmakers were technically incompetent and deliberately shot badly photographed films? Maybe Raimi's early Dead films shouldn't be in HD because, well, you know, they're cheaply shot and only deserve a DVD release. Oh, and Arrow, stop restoring those cult films, they only deserve a DVD release. Fulci and Bava and Argento, well, they didn't really make good films (that IS the maintream opinion, just look up reviews from the 70's and 80's - in fact, I was reading an old genre mag that spent three pages trashing Argento and saying he'd essentially pissed away his career - this was in response to Suspiria or Deep Red, I forget which, and these were journalists who were supporting the genre industry) so don't give them the respect most people don't think they deserve.

When DVD was just picking up momentum, I spoke to loads of guys online who wouldn't forsake their VHS tapes as DVD made them look too 'clean' and no longer felt like grubby little exploitation films. Go figure. Now we're seeing the same thing again with BD.

Sorry....rant over.... :D

Ah, thank you for saying that - you summed up my point better than I ever could in my 3 or so sentences earlier :)

And just to back it up my post above, here's some posts and articles whereby people are saying VHS is better...

DVD Versus VHS: The Surprising Truth

Are some horror movies better to watch on VHS than DVD? - BLOODY-DISGUSTING

Are DVDs really better than VHS ? - Yahoo! Answers

My favourite quote from that last page is this...

We should go back to VHS then, since they're hard for old or disabled people to handle... :rolleyes:

And yes, I do consider saying that exploitation/horror films should remain on DVD and not make the transition to BD as silly as saying we should go back to VHS because....well....you know, old people and those with disabilities...

:lol:

My favourite is this..

More things get edited out in the Dvd version compared to the Vhs one.

There's some crazy quotes in some of those links, as old as they are!


I think we'd all agree that increasing advances in audio/visual technology are overall A Good Thing, as long as care is taken to preserve the integrity of the original 35mm film.

Basically, 35mm projection is best but the highest digital reproductions of Home Cinema will come close to competing with it. VHS nostalgia is just that, nostalgia. It has its place but it doesn't come close to replicating what the director would want the film to look like.

There are still people who refuse to upgrade from VHS :crazy:

Blue Underground recently sent me a batch of their latest Blus to review. I was blown away by the Zombie and Django ones! Still have to watch their upgrades of The Crazies and Machine Gun McCain :)

Blue Underground's 'Zombie' Blu-Ray is the 'ultimate' for Fulci fanatics. - Boston Movie | Examiner.com

Django! Blue Underground releases a classic Spaghetti Western in high definition - Boston Movie | Examiner.com

On a pinky violence kick, so ordered up Lady Snowblood Terrifying Girls High School and Female Prisoner Scorpion from Amazon! Yessa! :cool:

Great pick-ups! :thumb:

quote from ted A bohus regarding the deadly spawn...

" The elite entertainment blu-ray release of this film is about the best you can get. it's only as good as the material available. The deadly spawn was shot in 16mm and we probably used over a dozen film stocks and i'm sure some were outdated. We stole, er, borrowed stock from film schools, old refridgerators or anywhere we could get it cheap, or free. So the color imperfections and grain you see is from the pre-print material."

Basically according to mr bohus, this is the best its going to look. Well clearly the material wasnt there to warrent a blu-ray release!

I think some people are twisting my arguments, in some cases outright distorting it. I'm NOT against cult films coming to blu-ray (nor was I against the upgrade dvd, i was one of the early uptakers of the format.) It's just theres occasions (like this) where a film simply isn't served by getting a blu-ray release. Its like the weird notion put forward of sticking code reds back catalouge out on blu-ray, something that would be very expensive to do, offer very minor improvements at best to the movies and probably alienate all the fans who already forked out a ton of cash to buy the dvd's. All i'm saying is it probably pays to be a little bit more discerning which titles get the blu-ray treatment based on the materials available. Evil dead and texas chainsaw both look great on blu-ray and both were 16mm movies, it seems apparent however the materials were there to warrent the upgrade. With deadly spawn and lustigs maniac i'll probably go back to watching those movies on dvd with upscale.

oh and argento did piss his career away. Stendahl syndrome, phantom of the opera, trauma et al were rubbish, though I think sleepless holds up somewhat. :lol:

I'm sorry but I disagree with that. Admittedly I've only seen screenshots but the bluray looks worse than the dvd. And thats silly. It's not to do with the source material, it's to do with the way it's been treated. I understand that some films might not be worth the bluray upgrade due to the quality of the materials but the difference between the dvd and bluray of The Deadly Spawn has to be down to the way the materials have been treated, not the materials themselves. They may have used the best copies of the film and over a dozen film stocks but they digitally ruined it and gave it a smeary, waxy look.

VHS vs DVD vs Bluray, there's only one way to settle this......FIGHT!!!!!!
Attachment 44978

I can't quite agree with this. You see, if a BD looks worse than its DVD counterpart, then something went horribly wrong when transferring the film for BD. You see, an SD trasnfer is still compressed to put it on DVD, so even an uncompressed DVD should look better than the version on the DVD. Now add in some extra resolution that BD affords and you should have a significant upgrade over the DVD. Like I say, even an uncompressed SD transfer will look better. Upscaling a DVD can't add in detail that simply isn't there to begin with, so whilst it's a sharper picture, the stored image remains exactly the same. All BDs should look better than their DVD counterparts - and if they don't, then someone encoded/transferred the film shoddily.

The Stendhal Syndrome is one of his three or so best films, in my book. Trauma is pretty decent too.

I still reckon that in ten or twenty years a lot of people will have changed their tune over many of his post-Opera films...


Anyhow - the Blu-Ray of Destroy All Monsters? Buy it. It's Region A though.

The article I was reading was written in '76/'77, I don't think many of us would have said he'd made a bad film up until that point. But my point was at the time of release, lots of people, genre journalists included, thought that Argento's films were rubbish. That is the mainstream opinion. I've shown friends some top tier Argento and they all thought they were rubbish and inaccessible. So that is the mainstream consensus. When I told a couple of friends I'd upgraded some of them to BD, they said they couldn't see the point of putting films like that on BD. Would any of us agree with that? No, of course not. But people in the mainstream would.

You only have to read the thread on bluray.com about Blue Underground to see the many, many comments by people saying these films shouldn't grace the format and that they couldn't possibly offer any upgrade over the DVDs. Because, well, you know they're old films and they can't possibly look good in HD. Agree with that too? No, of course not. But your comments about how some films should remain DVD-only is the thin end of that wedge. You're only a step away from what these people are saying about BU and the like.

In the case of Deadly Spawn, there's been quite a hectic thread over at blu-ray.com with Don May Jr and Ted Bohus participating as well. The Synapse DVD went back to the 16mm negative and by all accounts looks better. This new transfer isn't. Don May Jr has basically offered a Synapse BD release but using the original negative to make sure it's done properly. Considering he did an amazing job on Texas Chain Saw Massacre from 16mm, I'd be more than inclined to give it to him.

My new arrivals for the last week ...

http://i1127.photobucket.com/albums/...12Z0Y9QGHL.jpg

http://i1127.photobucket.com/albums/...500_AA300_.jpg

http://i1127.photobucket.com/albums/...1X31BY3NYL.jpg

http://i1127.photobucket.com/albums/...1JATXFVJGL.jpg

http://i1127.photobucket.com/albums/...1Ct3tItkFL.jpg

http://i1127.photobucket.com/albums/...1B8SJQQMZL.jpg

http://i1127.photobucket.com/albums/...500_AA300_.jpg

http://i1127.photobucket.com/albums/...1l7uzbzSjL.jpg

http://i1127.photobucket.com/albums/...1SxnzF2hWL.jpg

http://i1127.photobucket.com/albums/...0_AA300_-1.jpg

http://i1127.photobucket.com/albums/...1RHCCM8P7L.jpg

http://i1127.photobucket.com/albums/...500_AA300_.jpg

Anatomie 2 comes on a cool red disc!

I also picked up the Enter The Dragon BD in ASDA yesterday. Watched it last night, and it looked great! :pop2:

I've been on an Arrow buying spree this past month...

On DVD: Deadly Outlaw Rekka, Kentucky Fried Movie, Pervert.
On BLU: Battle Royale, Frankenhooker, Obsession.

Also, after reading that Caligula was being replaced by an 'Unlimited Edition', I picked up the current version while I still could...

And, although I already had the DVD releases, the thought that maybe some or all of them, might also eventually be replaced by 'Unlimited Editions' too, I also bought the following on Blu Ray...
Bay of Blood, The Beyond, City of the Living Dead, Deep Red, Inferno, Phenomena, Tenebrae, Vamp.

I've also bought on dvd...
Blade in the Dark, Case of the Bloody Iris, Seven Deaths in the Cats Eye, Short Night of Glass Dolls, Stagefright, Grace, Thankskilling!.

Thankskilling is hilarious! Great purchase mate.

It sure is. The turkey's got some great lines...
One of the best bits though, has to be when he's disguised as the sheriff and although he's quite obviously a turkey, nobody, not even the sheriffs daughter notices! Great stuff!

The chest buster parody is a classic to.
"Gobble-Gobble Mother ****er!"

Just got this for £5 from Amazon!

http://thehut.pantherssl.com/design-...70/Rubber1.jpg

cheers, mate! :)

Picked this up for £6.00 from CEX today.

http://i53.photobucket.com/albums/g72/taj-hob/13.jpg

As I haven't been collecting the Masters Of Cinema steelbooks, but getting the standard versions, I did the same with Repo Man..... But the cover has pissed me off with the placement of the BBFC logo. With all the black space at the left hand side of the cover, they saw fit to put it on the other side, with part of it on the pic of Emilio Estevez. F*****g brain dead!, I tell you.

http://img.tapatalk.com/5c020f34-8db2-255b.jpg

Grindhouse trailer classics 3 and rab c.nesbitt series nine arrived today.Got sand sharks on its way to :eek: