Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon / Curse of the Golden Flower / House of Flying Daggers ‘Trilogy’ Blu-ray Disc Review

By brenden ⋅ July 26, 2009 ⋅ Post a comment

Both of Zhang Yimou’s films, Curse of the Golden Flower and House of Flying Daggers were previously released on Blu-ray disc. In fact, Daggers was one of the earliest Blu-ray discs on the market and it shows. It sports a fairly soft, low bitrate transfer and comes off looking like a mildly souped-up DVD. Too bad, really. I think the cinematography might have sold most people on the film of its own merits. Curse, on the other hand, is simply stunning. Beautiful transfer highlighting gorgeous photography by Daggers DP, Xiaoding Zhao. Wonderful story. Fantastic action sequences. Wonderful performances across the board. Wow. I really can’t say enough about the film. But then, you’re probably not reading this review to check out my opinions on old Blu-ray releases, right?

So, let’s get to the new stuff. The reason that most people will be picking up the box set. Ang Lee’s brilliant Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon. …Continued…

Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon Blu-ray Released Individually in UK. Early Review reveals Inaccurate Subtitles

By brenden ⋅ June 24, 2009 ⋅ One comment

As The Blu-ray Blog reported earlier, if you live in North America and you want to own Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon on Blu-ray, you’ll have to buy Sony’s weird “Trilogy” box-set. If you live in the UK, however (or if you’re into importing your discs from, say, Amazon.co.uk) you’re in luck. You Ang Lee and martial arts fans can get Crouching Tiger in an individual release, available July 6th!

DVDActive got themselves a copy of the UK disc and gave it a pretty glowing review: …Continued…

Live-action Dragonball Evolution Prepares to Assault Your Senses on Blu-ray

By brenden ⋅ May 27, 2009 ⋅ Post a comment

I remember a time, years ago, when I considered checking out the animated Dragonball series. A lot of my friends were going on about how amazing it was and how, if I was any kind of real anime fan I would sit my ass down and watch all the episodes from the beginning. Luckily for me, I didn’t end up becoming a fan (read: too lazy to get through it all) and therefore harbour no ill-will toward Fox’s much-maligned live-action adaptation, Dragonball Evolution, outside of the criminally poor-use of Chow Yun Fat in yet another of Hollywood’s mass-market martial-arts film (I guess I should really take that up with his agent or manager - ARE YOU LISTENING GUYS? HARD BOILED? THE KILLER? A BETTER TOMORROW? BRING THE REAL CHOW BACK!!)