Traffic HD DVD

[Pecker]

Having never seen 'Traffic' before I was extremely disappointed with just about every aspect of this disc.

I thought the film was poor - I don't know how it won Best Film Oscar. It didn't so much tell a story (or stories), more than meandered through several character's dubiously interlocking lives.

Fair enough if you come up with a nice slice-of-life drama, but it fails worse there than it does as a story.

Or fair enough if it has some sort of message, but it doesn't. It doesn't even succeed in saying "We can't give a clear message".

Steven Soderbergh's vision is expressed in using radically different shooting styles for each story. This is quite commendable, if a little ham-fisted. But in High Definition you're left with quite jarring changes in PQ where you're left watching the mountains (dunes?) of grain in some scenes when it arrives.

Perhaps this is merely a problem of high def viewing being so relatively new, and the viewer (me?) studying at the PQ a little too much.

SQ is good, but undramatic.

All-in-all, not a waste of 148 minutes of my life, but a disappointment.

Two high def films watched this weeken, two disappointments.

BAH HUMBUG!

Steve W

[bosque]

Don't want to be a jonah but there was a lot of controversy on a US board about the Traffic HD-DVD not being a proper hidef transfer but converted from SD. As you only have this version you can't compare it to the SD version, but that put me off buying what would otherwise have been a must-have disc. IMHO the film is very good but different strokes etc. There's a good Criterion SD version as well with some interesting extras and a commentary track from Soderberg and the writer who are pretty critical about some of the movie's looser plot elements.

[domtheone]

Ditto about the pic quality of the disc.

I believe the UK/Euro disc is said to be better.

Thought the film was superb myself

[Pecker]

I'm sure it was high def, as the 'good' bits (not deliberately grainy) were far better than even the best upscaled SD.

It's just that the changes were jarring.

A good experiment, but it just didn't work for me.

Steve W

[ramalho]

I remind that this section is reserved for comments about the quality of the disc and not of the movie itself.You should post this in another part of the forum.

[MJeeves]

Yes. Apparently the US disc is "dodgy". i.e. NOT "proper" hi-def.

[Pecker]

Originally Posted by ramalho

I remind that this section is reserved for comments about the quality of the disc and not of the movie itself.You should post this in another part of the forum.

Is that right, mods? I wasn't aware of that.

Steve W

[Garrett]

Originally Posted by Pecker

Is that right, mods? I wasn't aware of that.

Steve W

Yes and no if you purely want to talk about the movie this is not the forum, if you want to post about the disc and make a side note on the film I see no reason why not. See if Greg agrees with me?


PS I saw the TV seires it was based on and enjoyed it, I recorded the film off TV and half way though I had to stop, need a tape one day and decided to record over the top of it.

[Greg]

Originally Posted by Garrett

Yes and no if you purely want to talk about the movie this is not the forum, if you want to post about the disc and make a side note on the film I see no reason why not. See if Greg agrees with me?

Yes, I was about to post a reply to ramalho. Whilst strictly true I have no problem with a thread discussing quality of a particular DVD, then developing into discussion of the film itself. They go hand in hand really.

It would just be too untidy to have threads where you can only discuss the quality of the disc and threads where you can only discuss the movie itself. So I have no problems with this thread.

[Pecker]

Thanks mods. Thanks also to ramalho for the heads up, as I wasn't aware there was a problem even with just reviews here.

One final point, I think I only paid £11 or £12 for the disc, which I think is pretty good vfm. I've criticised the film, but it wasn't a waste of time.

Thinking back to the early days of £15-£20 SD DVDs, which would look far worse on my PJ, this was a good deal.

Steve W