Bullets 'n' Babes

TAKEN

Can confirm that the subtitles on the Region A are present and correct.
That's the good news.

Here's the bad news:
The film was shot primarily in Super 35 (looking fine) with a selection of scenes (the Paris exteriors) shot in HD Video. Unfortunately the HD footage looks shit. Whilst the 35mm bulk is improved on BD, the HD stuff actually looks worse. Video doesn't have grain and so I can only presume excessive noise? Forgive my ignorance of tech terminology. Not only that but there's rather obvious horizontal lines over these scenes - imagine a TV picture sufering from interference.

Has ANYONE else noticed this? Not a single review I've read mentions it. Yet there it is on my disc clear as, erm, night. Best (or worst) example: Check out the scene between Liam Neeson and the Albanian interperter. It can't be a product defect because it ONLY affects the HD scenes. You might have a dodgy HD scene followed by a good film scene before it reverts back to another dodgy HD scene.... I just can't figure out what went wrong - or why no one has bitched about it before? I wish I could do screen caps.

I wonder if the Region B is the same?

Well my UK Taken looked perfect all the way thru, not quite sure what to say about that again like you being able to take snaps of HD discs is one thing I wish I could do.

Yeah can't say I noticed anything like that when I watched the Region B release the other night. Doubt I'll ever get hold of the Region A release either, as I found the film to be massively overrated.

You'll have to wait until Saltysam eventually gets a BD drive and ask him to take screengrabs, think he has it!

OK. Here's a few pics I took with a digital camera. Obviously the quality is not representative of the actual playback image but I think they show up the problems I've been referring to. LMK what you guys think.

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v313/ ... aken1B.jpg
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v313/ ... aken2B.jpg
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v313/ ... aken3B.jpg
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v313/ ... aken4B.jpg

You can't really tell from those grabs because of the blurring and I really didn't pay enough attention to the digital scenes when I was watching the Blu-ray. I'd say there's one of two possible causes for the problem though: Either Morel or someone else added fake grain to the digital scenes to integrate them into the film scenes, OR they couldn't light that location properly and therefore had to boost the gain on the camera, although I'm no expert on that process so dunno if it would create noise like that.

I know the images are blurred but they actually are that grainy.

Look at the 3rd cap for eg.

On the dude's jacket you can see horizontal lines of interference within the grain/noise.

Never seen anything like it on BD.

I think I see what you're referring to best in the 2nd grab, I can't say I recall seeing anything like that on the UK disc. I guess it's not outside the realms of possibility that your TV is causing that, when I reviewed the r2j DVD of The Mourning Forest for DVDTimes about 16months back someone got in touch with me saying that he was seeing strange patterns in the image on his LCD (I think), which I never spotted whenever I watched it.

It's a strange one.

The fact that only the HDV scenes are affected is what puzzles me.

Yeah definitely, and it would suggest the problem is inherent of the disc/negatives than your TV. It's a shame that you can't take screengrabs as a proper screenshot would reveal whether the problem is some form of banding, which is highly likely given it's digital video we're talking about here.

Do the US and UK BDs of The Bourne Identity contain the same theatrical cuts? I'm sure one of the DVDs was missing a scene in a farm house - is that right?

Are the credits and captions present and correct on the The Silence of the Lambs BDs? Again previous DVDs had various issues with missing credits and video generated captions.