Discs and downloads

After a year in which we’ve been inundated with superhero movies, all of which have been, to a greater or lesser extent, better than expected, we finally come to Hancock. On paper, it has the edge over all its rivals - it isn’t hampered by an original comicbook source, and it  has two charismatic leads in Will Smith and Charlize Theron.

In practice, however, it’s a confused film that squanders its early comedic promise with an abrupt shift in tone and a nonsensical plot twist.

Home cinema fans will find something to enjoy in Hancock. The effects are sharp and detailed and the Dolby 5.1 TrueHD soundtrack has such breadth and clarity that even a city-wrecking superhero fight in the middle of a thunderstorm remains clear and decipherable. You can find out if the effects and audio are enough to save the film by watching The Leisure Lab’s Hancock review.

It’s long been the dream of game developers to create a game that feels like a playable movie, and in Dead Space, EA has succeeded. Albeit, it’s the sort of movie that involves an awful lot of trudging backwards and forwards doing menial labour whilst thinking about your missing girlfriend. If that sounds a little too close to a mundane piece of Belgian cinema verite, don’t worry, the manual labour is carried in out in order to fix a spaceship and escape from an army of shrieking homicidal mutants.

Essentially, Dead Space is a terrifying first person shooter that merges elements of Aliens and Event Horizon with a clever design that does away with screen furniture in order to help fully immerse you in the game. Instead of health bars and ammo counters, all the game info is displayed within the game graphics, and there are no menus to hide in when things get tricky. Add to that some excellent zero-gravity sections and an incredible soundtrack full of howling anguished aliens and you’ve got an outstanding sci-fi horror game. You can watch our full Dead Space review on The Leisure Lab.

While we’re on the subject howling anguish, The Leisure Lab also has a Snow Patrol album review, and on their latest record, A Hundred Million Suns the mope-rockers are far less melancholy than you’d expect.

If Batman Begins was a surprisingly dark and serious take on the Batman mythos, then its all-conquering sequel, The Dark Knight, sees director Christopher Nolan heading into even grimmer territory to produce an excellent and unpredictable blockbuster enlivened by an astounding final performance from Heath Ledger.

Available on its own, as part of a Blu-ray double pack with Batman Begins, or on two or four disc DVD set, there are plenty of ways to enjoy The Dark Knight, but in light of the film’s use of IMAX footage for several scenes and the incredibly detailed sound design that subtly underpins the Joker’s appearances, we’d opt for the Blu-ray edition with it’s Dolby True HD soundtrack and mixed aspect ratios of 2.35:1 and 1.44:1. Visit The Leisure Lab for a full review of The Dark Knight.

The average age of gamers is rising, and as we grow up, we're demanding grown-up games. We want rounded characters, meaningful themes, inventive cinematography and incredible surround sound. In these days of HD equipped, Blu-ray capable consoles, why shouldn’t our games be as immersive as our movies?

To answer that question, The Leisure Lab’s reviewers have fired up their consoles and risked irretrievably broken relationships in order to play through their collections and bring you the Top 5 Games that can challenge Hollywood - our pick of the most cinematic games of all time. And before you ask, no, the Hot Coffee mod didn’t make the cut.

Age may have caught up with Harrison Ford, but in this fourth Indiana Jones movie he turns his advancing years into a virtue. Sadly, the same can’t be said for Steven Spielberg and George Lucas, who direct and produce this rather disappointing sequel.

To give credit where it’s due, Kingdom of the Crystal Skull can be watched as a solid, enjoyable adventure movie without any complaints, it’s only when you think of it as part of the Indiana Jones series that it starts to seem a little bit lacklustre. Yes, it has a hapless hero, teeming insects, an international quest, baddies and betrayals, but that just increases the sense that Kingdom of the Crystal Skull has been made to tick all the boxes on an Indiana Jones checklist, without attaining the exciting heights of its predecessors.

Having said that, Ford makes his 64 years work for him, portraying an Indy who can no longer brawl his way out of tight spots, and the film itself has plenty of great shots, not to mention  a few of cinematographer Janusz Kaminski’s trademark burnt-out whites. On top of that, the soundtrack is particularly beefy, with everything from the Paramount sting to the tongue-in-cheek Wilhelm scream sounding like they’ve been given special attention. The impending Blu-ray release will offer a lossless Dolby TrueHD 5.1 audio track that will make the most of the stirring John Williams score. You can watch our full review at The Leisure Lab.

Quantum of Solace is the latest Bond tie-in game to try and step out of the shadow of the N64 classic Goldeneye, and the first that has a chance of succeeding. Using the superb Call of Duty 4 engine, Quantum of Solace has a solid foundation upon which to build its excellent merger of first and third person perspectives and solid combat.

It’s not without a few drawbacks mind you. The AI is prone to the occasional daft mistake, the graphics are solid but not spectacular and the story mode is extremely short. The multiplayer mode offers nothing new or unique either, but most of its familiarity comes from the use of the Call of Duty engine, which can hardly be called a failing.

These are minor flaws at worst, however, and Quantum of Solace overshadows them with an excellent cover-based combat system reminiscent of Gears of War, and a variety of challenges from hacking to third-person stealth sequences. In all, it’s the first Bond game since Goldeneye that deserves to be mentioned in the same breath as its fabled forebear.

You can watch our full review and gameplay footage at The Leisure Lab.

It's been a week of extremes on The Leisure Lab, where we’ve discovered that a lossless 5.1 DTS-HD soundtrack isn’t enough to save the The Happening, a film where the scariest noise is that of Mark Wahlberg staring down the camera and explaining the plot to himself.

If this week's viewing has been laughably poor, it has at least been balanced by the stellar gaming achievements of LittleBigPlanet, a graphically inventive and musically awesome platform game for the PS3 that combines endlessly enjoyable gameplay with engaging characters and music.

You can watch our full reviews of both on The Leisure Lab.

Pro Evolution Soccer 2009 maintains its status as the football sim for the hardened gamer, having finally found the right balance between complexity and playability.

PES 2009 challenges you with a clever AI that quickly counters the repetitive efforts of one-move-wonders, and stifles any attempt to depend on a single tried-and-tested strategy. Rather than let you limp off the pitch like a fullback with dodgy cartilage, PES then evens the odds by offering you an array of nuanced moves that give you variety of ways to break down those troublesome defences.

Graphically, PES2009 remains inferior to its major rival, FIFA, but it offers complex, challenging gameplay that’s free from contrivance and makes you feel like you’ve earned every goal. Watch our full review at The Leisure Lab.

Wanted puts a twist on the standard zero-to-hero plotline by having white collar Wesley Gibson inducted into a fraternity of assassins who can’t honestly claim that their actions are justified by anything more concrete than fate.

It's an interesting idea, but rather than spend a great deal of time wrestling with this moral conundrum, Wanted devotes itself primarily to delivering vast amounts of  eye-candy, in the form of car chases, train crashes and  Angelina Jolie.

It’s a film of spectacle rather than substance, but it features excellent performances from Jame McAvoy and Angelina Jolie, and the set pieces will have you gawping at the screen.

You can watch our full review at The Leisure Lab.

The Brothers In Arms series is best known for taking the tired old WWII first-person shooter and reinvigorating it by adding squad tactics. Sure, it slowed the games down to a glacial pace, but having to sneak, suppress and flank your opponents added a degree of realism and tension that made the rest of the genre’s run-and-gun approach feel cartoonish.

The latest instalment in the series, Hell’s Highway, adds to the realism in a variety of of small ways. On the gameplay front the inclusion of varying degrees of destructible cover that wilts under a hail of bullets simultaneously increases the difficulty and broadens your options, as do the new Bazooka and Machine Gun units.

The story adds a bleak element that sees your character buckling with shellshock, and cinematically the game adds some extremely messy kill-shots, although you can turn them off if you find them troubling or tasteless.

You can see the game and watch our full review at The Leisure Lab.

If you’ve ever lamented the fact that blockbuster movies just don’t grab you the way they used to, then Iron Man is the film to restore your faith in the genre.

For starters, the special effects are genuinely special. The titular armour is all gloss and highlights and looks surprisingly real even in unforgiving Blu-ray quality, and when it takes its first supersonic surround sound flight you can’t help but sit up and take notice.

On top of that, the whole film is shot through with droll humour, sending itself up so frequently that you’re charmed into suspending your disbelief even when the film builds to its climax-42 year old Robert Downey Jr battling to save the world from The Big Lebowski.

You can watch our full review at The Leisure Lab.

Disney’s foray into game development brings us Pure, a quad-biking game that lets you race through gorgeously rendered, realistic environments whilst performing some decidedly unrealistic stunts.

The game is a treat for your eyes and it's the type of racer that favours action and excitement over pernickety engine modifications and authentic physics, but it’s not entirely free of failings. You can watch our full review at The Leisure Lab.

The grumpy green shape of The Incredible Hulk is the first of the summer comic book blockbusters to make the jump to DVD and Blu-ray on October 13th.

After Ang Lee’s thoughtful but surprisingly placid Hulk in 2003, Director Louis Leterrier clearly wants to get back to the more traditional ‘Hulk Smash’ take on the character, and has built his film around a series of escalating confrontations.

It’s fair to say that the film flags a little between those scenes, but all the ingredients of a Hulk movie are here: hunted scientists, fanatical soldiers, and a big green monster that smashes up a lot of tanks. When all those ingredients come to the boil in the film’s final CGI set-piece you can’t help but sit up in your seat and take notice.

You can see our full review at The Leisure Lab.

Proudly displaying an array of early-eighties musical influences The Metro's debut album, More Money Less Grief, frequently risks being dismissed as derivative. Hints of The Libertines, Squeeze, Sham 69 and the odd touch of Ska all make More Money Less Grief sound strangely familiar.

Fortunately, their brand of abrupt guitar stabs are infectiously enjoyable, and whilst their teenage posturing and urchin-like delivery can get on your nerves, there are hints all over the album that The Metros will mature into a band with the wit to match their musical talents.

You can hear our full review and samples of the album at The Leisure Lab.

Almost 24 hours on and i'm still smiling. That's the grin-inducing effect of watching the first two James Bond films - Dr No and From Russia With Love - on Blu-ray.

The films are due out on October 20th, along with a seemingly random initial collection of other Bonds on Blu-ray - including Live and Let Die, Thunderball, Live and Let Die, For Your Eyes Only and Die Another Day. 

 

They'll be followed on October 31st by the cinema release of the new 007 outing - Quantum of Solace - and then the rest of the Bond back-catalogue, all fully restored and remastered for the Blu-ray format.  Expect a full Blu-ray boxset in due course - no doubt at a size and price that'll have your eyes watering just like Bond's did when Le Chiffre was applying his testicular torture...

Can Blu-rays of old movies ever look good?

But back to the Blu-rays in question: the first two James Bond movies, released in 1962 and 1963 respectively. Surely such old films aren't fit for the HD age?

Wrong.  Good old 35mm movie film is actually higher-definition than digital HD formats, able to show more detail and with a wider dynamic range. How else would it be able to fill huge cinema screens?

However, film is a fragile medium, which can scratch, fade and even go mouldy.  Even the Bond films – which have been meticulously stored in the MGM archives – needed a freshen-up for their HD debut.

And so successful is that makeover that the new Blu-ray titles may look better than the public has ever seen them.

Bond gets a two-year Blu-ray makeover

I spoke to Mike Inchalik, chief operating officer at Lowry Digital, whose team of technicians have spent the last two years painstakingly remastering and restoring the 20 pre-Casino Royale Bonds, frame by frame.

He says: “these Blu-rays will look better than you’ve ever seen Bond – even in the cinema – because we’ve gone right back to the camera negatives and original prints. There’s colour and detail no-one’s seen since the day they were shot: some of these films are 40 years old, but they look like they were shot yesterday”.

The films had previously been remastered for DVD, but Blu-ray is such a big step up in terms of detail-visibility that the Lowry team had to start from scratch – literally, in the case of Dr. No.

“Blu-ray is a very discriminating format, so you have to make sure the films are up to it,” explains Inchalik. “Dr No was a pretty low-budget movie, and it shows in places. There were lots of ‘gate-hairs’, scratches and problems with principle photography that we had to take out”.

Subsequent, bigger-budget Bonds had different problems. “More money meant more effects and faster edits, which mean more restoration work for us: every time you cut into the film negative it can make the image look softer, or introduce ‘noise’.” Inchalik says many frames of the films have been rebuilt to match the original image.

 

Dr No - only the plot seems familiar!

When I popped Dr No into the disc tray of my Blu-ray player, Inchlik's claims were fresh in my mind. Could it really look as good as he said?

Oh yes - and some!  Not only did I see so many details in the movie i've never noticed before - from the atmospheric backgrounds of the opening casino scene to the lived-in look of M's office to the true terror on Dent's face as Dr No bawls him out - but I heard so much more, too.

The disc features corking DTS 5.1 HD Master Audio sound that kicks in with force from Maurice Binder's iconic title sequence onwards. Every gunshot, scuffle and explosion rips into your room, while dialogue is crisp and clear.

It seemed like a whole new film, brimming with life and oozing early-sixties retro appeal - thanks to the details on everything from cars to clothing to make-up that are suddenly apparent.

Yes, there are parts that still look a little grainy - one suspects, for example, that the shots of the Pan Am planes landing are shoddy stock material - and it's undeniably film-like, without the clinical insight that some more modern, digital originals have.

But this is a big step up from what's been previously available - even the most recently remastered, Ultimate Edition DVDs can't get close to this level of detail, sonically or visually, while if the last time you watched Bond was on a Bank Holiday Monday TV showing, you'll be stupified by the increase in quality.

 

From Russia With Love - was it a stunt bum?

With the sound of the James Bond theme still ringing in our ears, out came Dr No and into the Blu-ray player went 007's second movie outing - From Russia With Love.

Again, it wasn't too long before the high-definition glory impressed: the sights and sounds of 1960s Istanbul; the nuances of expression you hadn't picked up before; even the product placement (yes, it was even going on back then!) seems more obvious because you can easily pick out the brands.

The brief glimpse of nudity - as Tatiana slips into Bond's bed - has long been talked about, but in HD there really is no doubt that Daniela Bianchi (or a stunt double) is naked. Maybe not the most cultured argument for Blu-ray, but certainly a tantalising bonus for many, i'm sure (the reverse is true of Sean Connery's hitherto imperceptible back hair, revealed in the previous scene).

As with Dr No, there are still some grainy scenes, but otherwise the Lowry team - and their DTS sonic siblings - has done an incredible job making From Russia With Love look as fresh and exciting as it was in 1963 - back when it was the last film President Kennedy saw (in a private White House screening) before flying off on his one-way trip to Dallas.

Add excellent menus and a host of extras we haven't yet had the chance to check out (of which more in subsequent reviews) and these are Blu-rays that are definitely on my pre-order list.

It's just a shame - though obvious studio tactics (thanks, Fox!) - that the collection isn't all available at once, as I have a horrible feeling i'll be buying boxsets in chunks, then an 'ultimate' boxset will come out i'll pine for.

Incidentally, I'd expect the second wave of Bond Blu-rays to emerge around the same time Quantum of Solace makes its Blu-ray debut - by Easter 2009.

Next up on our Bond Blu-ray viewing schedule is Live and Let Die - we'll let you know how high-definition deals with Roger Moore's 'special' safari trouser suits, Jane Seymour's 'creative' make-up and all the snakes, creole and chaos of Baron Samedi and chums.

All together now: "When you were young, and your heart was an open book..."