Obviously i don't know where you live, but aren't you anywhere near the equivalent of an HMV etc?

They reopened a HMV the next town over from me but its complete rubbish no horror blu rays what so ever. After that its in Dublin so thats too far to just take a casual trip. I head up about four times a year and stock up :jollysanta:

Could you get them to order you a copy in?

They were less than helpful last time i was up there looking at me like i just pissed in their corn flakes.

Give them a ring. You never know.

I know Tesco's are the same,im gonna try crunchy nut next time.

Maybe its just my face that makes people react that way :xmaslol:

How much roughly would it cost to send a DVD from England or Wales to Ireland?

Around £1.26 by first class post.

A couple of years back i tried to post two books to England they tried to charge me €30. Not the same as a dvd/blu ray granted but €30 :xmastongue:

If you have anything to trade that I might like, I am happy to trade my ZFE2 with you.

Sorry people, just put on Zombi 3 and respectfully have to disagree about the quality. I don't think it's bad at all. When I hear people talking about awful Italian blu-ray transfers, I think of Arrow's initial Tenebrae release. This is nothing like that. But we're all entitled to our opinions, even if i'm right and you're wrong. I'm joking with that last sentence there! :D

I've only had a quick flick through Zombi 3 and it looks fine to me too. Was the scan actually done in Italy or was it done elsewhere, because it's an alternative negative they used.

Not sure where it was done. As mentioned earlier about other transfers, I would agree about other films with the colours "popping". Doesn't really happen here, and some scenes look pretty soft, but I wouldn't say it looks bad.

Couldn't the softness be inherent of eighties film stock and the shooting locations? A good example of softness and humid locations is Predator, it's always looked soft compared to more studio bound eighties films.

On the plus side Hitch Hike looks pretty good.

On the commentary for Die Hard, John McTiernan complains about the film stock used for Predator - that it wasn't able to capture the clarity he was looking for.

I was thinking that too.

The 88 Films Thread
 

Predator was actually grainy as hell. He must've hated it. I bet he loved the dnr'd to hell Ultimate Hunter Edition blu-ray!

One of the poorest video transfers ever. Some scenes it looks like Carl Weathers is melting and bubbling.

Predator is a real unfortunate film in my opinion. In some ways it looks better on vhs.

The crazy thing is that people went apeshit over the original blu-ray, which retained the very grainy look of the original cheap film stock, and Fox went a complete 180 with the special edition and turned it into a reject from Madame Tussaudes.

I think that's when people were confused as to what Blu-Ray was offering. DVD sold itself as having a clear picture (as opposed to VHS digital noise). When Blu-Ray popped up, people were expecting the same thing, only cleaner and better. It's just that Blu-Ray was more about capturing film in the truest form possible. Thankfully, people have awoken to that today.

I just stuck with the original Predator Blu-Ray. It lacks the extras but I still have the DVD. My only real gripe with the original Blu-Ray is that the colours are very drab. There's like a brownish tone to everything. Thankfully, the detail is there.

I'm not big on grain myself, but the Ultimate Hunter Edition does go too far, i don't personally think its as bad as many say but there are times when the characters look like CGI. The first 15 mins or so are the worst.

Where are people complaining about Zombie 3?

I stuck it on and thought it looked f***** ace. Possibly one of the best looking of their Italian Line.
Italian films of the late 80's and 90's all looked soft focus. I enjoy the films from this era, check out Sodoma's ghost, touch of death... all soft looking. For me the Blu-ray really does represent 88's best efforts. I checked on Amazon and no one there seems to be unhappy.
Perhaps it's Blu-rage? ? (copyright stephen) If so those fellas are never happy.

A couple of people here. And it's cool, everyone is entitled to their opinions. I just didn't think it looked as bad as people thought. The "blu-rage" people actually thought it looked ok (surprising, I know!).

More genuinely surprised, I've seen this film more times than is healthy for a human being, I still have the Shriek show DVD purely for the commentary. The 88 release really makes it look as good as its going to get. The later era stuff should always look better than stuff from the 70's onwards. Even Vipco's releases looked decent and they stuck out whatever was handed to them.

And 88 have just announced that they'll be releasing blu-rays of Trancers III and Puppet Master 4 & 5 :)

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Very good news. Think I'll order them direct to show there's a market. Hopefully we'll get all the puppet master titles eventually... :xmasbanana:

Excellent news!

I think it was Camera Obscura who said the other year when they first started releasing titles on blu that a lot of Italian films look better in SD than they ever will in HD. For a HD master to look amazing there are a lot of things that need to be right, the negative has to be in decent order to begin with, but if the actual film was shot with bad lighting and on grainy stock it's never going to look fantastic. Unless of course people prefer a DNR'd look and boosting.

great news on Trancers 3 will defintiely pick that one up, the decision then lies if parts 4 and 5 are released as I thought those 2 were particularly awful compared to the rest of the series

Only ever seen the first two Trancers. Definately pick them all up though.

e.g. any film afflicted with scanner noise.

Yeah, some of the earlier stuff was never properly archived and you end up with things like Arrows nightmare city where the Negs are pretty damaged. I remember reading about the job Camera obscura had to do on short night of the glass dolls and it sounded really painstaking.

Personally, I would rather that they just scan the film, damage and all. Yes, clean up some of the dirt and fix the contrasts, but don't worry or spend too much on the rest. The damaged negative for Nightmare City looked miles better than the cleaned-up version. There's a lot more detail, and the colours look way more natural.

The damaged negative is what Arrow cleaned up.

No Christmas sale at 88 Films?

What, you mean when they reduce stuff to around £12 that everyone can buy from Amazon and HMV at £8.99 throughout the year anyway? ;)

A few months ago, their DVD's and Blu-Rays were £3 and £5 in Fopp

Why not make the same deal available to all of those who couldn't make it to the shops then?

I think that was an exclusive deal with Fopp. I can't see them repeating that on their site unfortunately.