Re: **Official Blu-Ray & HD-DVD Thread Part II**
Will that change your opinion on his reviews?
I feel like people have some sort of unconscious psyche that, as long as they have the title, their opinion holds a higher guard than somebody else. I mean obviously if it is their job to identify technological aspects of a piece of cinema and form sentences in a fluid stream of their extensive vocabulary on a web page, then they should know what they're talking about. But sometimes I see/hear things that they don't, and I'm not even talking about The Dark Knight (though after looking back, it seems a lot of reviewers noticed the EE, but because it's the coolest movie ever, they don't want to ding it for that when a potential re-release with this fix would deserve a higher score).
So in that regard, somebody that doesn't notice the constant crackle in the dialogue of Street Kings or the over-saturated look of 300 may be missing something because their eyes and ears may not be able to perceive what someone else's eyes can, and while their report may seem valuable as ever, they might not have gotten the whole picture. This is a "no offense" to Gears, but if he can't notice the EE, that's just that his eyes can't detect that. I never went looking for EE, I watched it without reading a single review. The first IMAX shot... brilliant. The first shot with Ramirez and Woerz however... there should have been a rather instantaneous difference between that and the first scene in the movie.
Now, where in that did I say the picture looks bad? It doesn't. It's just that it doesn't deserve a 5 because, what if a re-release (which is completely imaginable with the lack of Heath Ledger special features in this one) with this EE and DNR fix makes the image look better? What do you score that? You can't give it a 5.1. You can't knock down your score for the original BD release. What now? That's what I'm saying... this was not a reference video transfer and has room for improvement. 4.5 is a reasonable score.
I know I'm nitpicking, but if it wasn't for nitpicking in this world we wouldn't be where we are technologically, even with next-gen games. Getting a signature stance or sock color corrected is small, but hey, if it can be something to make it look better, why be against that? Just because I can't see the problem with the stance or sock color doesn't mean there isn't anything wrong with it. Same thing here. Besides, for a movie that reached nearly $1 billion in the box office, if it is anything short of the best looking and sounding Blu-ray in the world, there's something wrong with that.
So to answer your question... he has his own website where he reviews pre-released Blu-ray discs, and his reviews, from both a technological and editorial aspect, seem both sound and professional in my book. But in the end, it's what you see on screen. Not all BD's are created the same, and that's why we have ratings for their audio and video components. I like how people are titling me "movie critic" (with the quotations included) because they think that's suddenly what I'm passing myself off as because I am familiar with the term EE and what effects it has on a movie. I just feel sorry for myself because I am plagued with being able to see it when others can't. At least it makes things look better by comparison when it's not there.
Will that change your opinion on his reviews?
I feel like people have some sort of unconscious psyche that, as long as they have the title, their opinion holds a higher guard than somebody else. I mean obviously if it is their job to identify technological aspects of a piece of cinema and form sentences in a fluid stream of their extensive vocabulary on a web page, then they should know what they're talking about. But sometimes I see/hear things that they don't, and I'm not even talking about The Dark Knight (though after looking back, it seems a lot of reviewers noticed the EE, but because it's the coolest movie ever, they don't want to ding it for that when a potential re-release with this fix would deserve a higher score).
So in that regard, somebody that doesn't notice the constant crackle in the dialogue of Street Kings or the over-saturated look of 300 may be missing something because their eyes and ears may not be able to perceive what someone else's eyes can, and while their report may seem valuable as ever, they might not have gotten the whole picture. This is a "no offense" to Gears, but if he can't notice the EE, that's just that his eyes can't detect that. I never went looking for EE, I watched it without reading a single review. The first IMAX shot... brilliant. The first shot with Ramirez and Woerz however... there should have been a rather instantaneous difference between that and the first scene in the movie.
Now, where in that did I say the picture looks bad? It doesn't. It's just that it doesn't deserve a 5 because, what if a re-release (which is completely imaginable with the lack of Heath Ledger special features in this one) with this EE and DNR fix makes the image look better? What do you score that? You can't give it a 5.1. You can't knock down your score for the original BD release. What now? That's what I'm saying... this was not a reference video transfer and has room for improvement. 4.5 is a reasonable score.
I know I'm nitpicking, but if it wasn't for nitpicking in this world we wouldn't be where we are technologically, even with next-gen games. Getting a signature stance or sock color corrected is small, but hey, if it can be something to make it look better, why be against that? Just because I can't see the problem with the stance or sock color doesn't mean there isn't anything wrong with it. Same thing here. Besides, for a movie that reached nearly $1 billion in the box office, if it is anything short of the best looking and sounding Blu-ray in the world, there's something wrong with that.
So to answer your question... he has his own website where he reviews pre-released Blu-ray discs, and his reviews, from both a technological and editorial aspect, seem both sound and professional in my book. But in the end, it's what you see on screen. Not all BD's are created the same, and that's why we have ratings for their audio and video components. I like how people are titling me "movie critic" (with the quotations included) because they think that's suddenly what I'm passing myself off as because I am familiar with the term EE and what effects it has on a movie. I just feel sorry for myself because I am plagued with being able to see it when others can't. At least it makes things look better by comparison when it's not there.
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