Cyberclogs

Well not too much to report of late although I have been buying a few HD DVD movie titles of late, namely the likes of Batman Begins, which is really impressive on HD DVD (looks great!) and others such as Enter the Dragon (also impressive, whooaaaaaaaaaaaaa! Bruce Lee impression over), Mission Impossible 3 (which possibly has one of the best transfers I've seen on HD DVD so far).

So far I've been pretty impressed with High-Def especially as it finally shows off what my LG Lcd TV looks like at its best as opposed to the slightly warm and fuzzy images I get through the scart socket on my TV. There are plenty more to come such as Total Recall, Deer Hunter, The Island, Mulholland Drive, Red Dragon, The Thing, and the Prestige which I'll mention a bit more about next. Must admit though Blu-Ray does have something of an advantage on "new" releases as it seems have its grip on the movie studios such as Touchstone, Fox, Columbia, Sony, etc, it would be a shame to see HD DVD fall short on the format war so soon and even better to see HD DVD succeed so well where DVD did before it.

So I saw The Prestige on DVD finally there on Friday night and I quite enjoyed it although it is directed with a fairly typical amount of melancholic seriousness as we've come to expect from Christopher Nolan (he's sort of the creative filmic equivalent of Thom Yorke in terms of direction, great films but plenty of down moments). But the cast were pretty strong in the film, Christian Bale affected a pretty convincing cockney accent as a master magician (better than Dick Van Dyke at any rate!) with Hugh Jackman competing against him as a rival magician in town, and even better was Scarlett Johansson who's accent was far greater, also Michael Caine was still the definitive cockney. What sets the Prestige up as a good and interesting film for me was the momentum it maintains in keeping you guessing what really happens at the end of the film (much in the same style of the brilliant Memento, ermm except that was in reverse). And when its ending is revealed it really is surprising and quite brilliant, even better than anything M Night Shyamalan could conjure up. In fact Christopher Priest who wrote the novel of the Prestige saw the film and said "Holy shit! I wish I'd thought of that!" at certain moments throughout the film. Just shows you film makers can still surprise you.