The Rambo series is definitely one of those I remember watching as a kid and absolutely loving it! Rambo’s power and willingness to survive under the worst conditions were inspiring as a kid. I know those movies that after watching your mom had to give you a triple dose of Prozac so you you sleep and stop destroying the house. Just Kidding about the Prozac! Now, I didn’t know what to expect from a 60-year-old Rambo (Yes, Sylvester Stallone is 61!) but I have to say I was surprised. Be prepared for the violence because it is extreme. What’s shown in this movie is going on in Burma as I write. We don’t hear the story in the media. Stallone made this movie with Burmese people as actors and they were all at risk making this movie. Stallone still has it at 61 years. If you don’t like Rambo then don’t bother. Otherwise it’s highly entertaining!

Plot:
A group of American missionaries ask Rambo, who lives in seclusion in Thailand to help them get across the river to Burma to help the civilians there. They hope to make a change by doing humanitarian deeds to help the war victims. Rambo looks in disdain upon their request and tells them, “You’re not bringing weapons… you’re not changing anything!” Rambo is persuaded by a female missionary to help her and her teammates make the trek to help the civilians in Burma. Somehow the woman is able to reach the hardened soul of Rambo, and so he agrees to take the missionaries across the river to help the civilians in Burma.
The woman missionary and her teammates go MIA and get kidnapped and tortured, an American pastor hires mercenaries to go rescue the missionaries. Rambo accompanies them and then massacres the bad Burmese soldiers, using the biggest and baddest weapons. I’ll leave you to watch how this movie ends, but it is supposed to go full circle in terms of how Rambo begins in the First Blood.

Audio:
The featured audio is a DTS HD 7.1 Master Audio, so if you’ve got a full system of surround sound speakers they’ll get a workout. Hopefully you don’t have cranky neighbors! There’s plenty of action to go around, with a nice wide spread across the front speakers and pretty solid audio emanating from the rear effects speakers as well. If you’ve got a subwoofer, it’ll rumble in a number of places. No complaints here. An additional soundtrack option is the Dolby Digital EX 5.1 mix that’s used on the DVD, with subtitles in English (CC) and Spanish.

Video:
The 1080p picture is exceptionally clear, though not necessarily 3-dimensional looking. Black levels are strong, and I didn’t notice any compression artifacts. Some of the scenes aren’t overly laden with color, but that’s a reflection of the atmospheric lighting conditions more than anything. “Rambo” is presented in 2.35:1 aspect ratio, and it’s a pleasure watching in Blu-ray.

Extras:

The Blu-Ray edition of Rambo receives little in the way of exclusive features. Aside from picture-in-picture functionality, high-definition video and audio on all the featurettes, and a new image gallery, the content remain the same as the special edition DVD release. In that regard, the features include:

• Audio Commentary with Stallone
• Deleted Scenes
• Legacy of Despair: The Struggle in Burma
• It’s a Long Road: The Resurrection of an Icon
• A Score to Settle: The Music of Rambo
• The Art of War: Completing Rambo
• The Weaponry of Rambo
• A Hero’s Welcome: Release and Reception

The strange juxtaposition between 1980’s camp nostalgia and real-world, genocidal violence carries over from the film into the extras, but here it’s explained and framed by the incredibly articulate words of the filmmakers themselves. The audio commentary – as well as “Legacy of Despair” and “It’s a Long Road” – speak very honestly about the challenges of bringing the character back to screens and the search for a story with enough significance that the return wouldn’t seem like an attempt to simply cash in. In fact, Stallone offers up a few what-if narrative options that had been considered before finally setting on the Burmese conflict which fans will likely appreciate. For many, the look into the situation in Burma – while only scratching the surface – may in fact be wildly educational. The featurette does its best to clearly lay out the situation in some graphic detail, though it does become difficult at times to remain comfortable with the notion of using Burma as a plot device in an action film. But the setting does resonate with the themes of the character and even for those who can’t quite relate the two, it’s a global problem worth exploring.The other featurettes are pretty standard behind-the-scenes peeks at the various elements of the production – sound, editing, etc. – except that there’s a honesty at work here, especially on the part of Stallone, that makes the featurettes well worth watching. They’re short for the most part – five to ten minutes in length – but they’re both amusing and informative, a compliment which simply cannot be paid to most extras which fall into the same category. Finally, the deleted scenes consist mostly of character bits which, while interesting and worthwhile in their own right, were cut for fairly obvious reasons.Overall, Rambo offers a somewhat unexpectedly high-quality set of basic, everyday extras. There’s nothing groundbreaking here, but everything present is worth your attention.

Watch Rambo’s Blu-ray trailer here! And purchase it here!

Popularity: 10% [?]

It has been confirmed by Peter Jackson during a chat session about his new film production “The Hobbit”. His exact words were: “We are working on a Blu-ray version of the with Warner Bros at the moment, not sure when it is due for release. It certainly won’t be this year.” It certainly doesn’t leave room for assumptions or misinterpretations, He was very clear that the Middle Earth is turning “Blu”, he just doesn’t know when… Definitely one of the best movies ever, this is very exciting! The only disappointing part is the extremely long wait. Hopefully, Warner will listen to the fans demanding and release it earlier. I can’t wait to see all those great battle scenes in hi-def. The Hobbit is probably hitting the theaters around 2011, we just hope Warner won’t try to hold The Lord of the Rings Blu-ray release to the same year just to help promote the new movie. That would be ludicrous!

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You can find the full chat session from www.wetanz.com here!

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Popularity: 13% [?]

Many people were disappointed when Paramount announced Blu-ray titles and Transformers was not on the list…

According to www.tvshowsondvd.com, this is a fact and the wait will end soon. An inside tip was received on the Blu-ray arrival and Transformers will be available on September 2nd! I find it odd that Paramount would announce all those titles in April but not Transformers and now, one month later, these news pop up on the net. I agree that sooner or later the movie will make its Blu debut since it is the only logic way. However, I am a bit skeptical on the release date until I see it coming from Paramount, which hopefully will be soon. The movie has already seen hi-def with the dead HD-DVD format and if the arrival to Blu-ray news is true the features and extras will be very similar. Bellow are the specs on the 2 Disc Special Edition HD-DVD:

Video Resolution/Codec

• 1080p/AVC MPEG-4

Aspect Ratio(s)

• 2.35:1

Audio Formats

• English Dolby Digital-Pus 5.1 Surround (1.5mbps)
• French Dolby Digital-Plus 5.1 Surround (640kbps)
• Spanish Dolby Digital-Plus 5.1 Surround (640kbps)

Subtitles

• English SDH
• French Subtitles
• Spanish Subtitles
• Portuguese-Brazilian Subtitles

Extras

• Audio Commentary
• Documentaries
• Featurette
• Still Gallery
• Theatrical Trailer
• Picture-in-Picture Commentary
• GPS Tracking
• Subtitle Fact Track
• Customizable Menus

Popularity: 13% [?]

Coming to Blu-ray this coming week the highly anticipated Sci-Fi thriller ‘V for Vendetta’! The movie has already been released on HD-DVD last year but this will be a first on Blu-ray. This is a movie that I really liked even though I never had the pleasure of reading the comic book before the movie. The Blu-ray will have have nice features and extras! It will include also more languages that you will ever need…
V for Vendetta starts off with a prologue to explain the relevance of the Guy Fawkes mask worn by V throughout the film and the significance of the date of the 5th of November. This is for the benefit of audiences who didn’t grow up in the UK and have no idea of who Guy Fawkes was and what his Gunpowder Plot was all about. The sequence is short but informative. From then on we move on to the start of the main story and here the film adheres close enough to the source material with a few changes to the Evey character but not enough to ruin the character. Caught after curfew and accosted by the ruling government’s secret police called Fingermen, Evey soon encounters V who saves her not just from imprisonment but rape.

Right from the start the one thing McTeigue and The Wachowski Brothers got dead-on was casting Hugo Weaving as the title character. Voice silky, velvety and sonorous, Weaving infuses V with an otherworldly, theatrical personality. Whether V was speaking phrases from Shakespeare, philosophers or pop culture icons, the voice gave a character who doesn’t show his face from behind the eternally-smiling Guy Fawkes mask real life. Once V and Evey are thrown in together by the happenstance of that nightly encounter their fates became intertwined. Natalie Portman plays the reluctant witness to V’s acts of terrorism, murders and destruction in the beginning, but a poignant and emotionally powerful sequence to start the second half of the film soon brings Evey’s character not much towards V’s way of doing things, but to understanding just why he’s doing them. This sequence became the emotional punch of the whole film and is literally lifted word for word from the graphic novel. I heard more than just a few people sobbing in the theater as the scenes and story unfolded.

The rest of the cast seemed like a who’s who of the British acting community. From Stephen Rea’s stubborn and dogged Chief Inspector Finch whose quest to find V leads him to finding clues about his government’s past actions that he’d rather have not found. Then there’s Stephen Fry’s flamboyant TV show host who becomes Evey’s only other ally whose secret longings have been forbidden by the government, but who’s awakened by V’s actions to go through with his own form of rebellion. Then there’s John Hurt as High Chancellor Adam Sutler who’s seen chewing up the scenery with his Hitler-like performance through Big Brother video conferences (an ironic bit of casting since John Hurt also played Winston Smith in the film adaptation of the Orwell classic 1984). I really couldn’t find any of the supporting players as having done a bad job in their performances. Even Hurt’s Sutler may seemed over-the-top to some but his performance just showed how much of a hatemonger Sutler and in the end his Norsefire party really were in order to stay in power.

The story itself,had some changes made to it. Some of these changes angered Moore and probably anger his more die-hard fans. They trimmed some of the side stories and tertiary characters from the story and concentrated on V, Evey and Inspector Finch’s pursuit of both and the truth. This adaptation is much closer to how Peter Jackson adapted The Lord of the Rings. But then Moore is also an avowed perfectionist and only a perfect adaptation would do.

Another thing about V for Vendetta that will surely talked about a lot will be the images used in the film. Not just images and symbols looking so much like Nazi icons, but images from the current events sweeping the globe that has been shown time and time again in the news and written about in magazines and newspapers. The film shows people bound and hooded like prisoners from Abu Ghraib. The reason of the war on terror used time and time again by Sutler to justify why England and its people need him and his group to protect them by any means necessary. V for Vendetta seems like a timely film for our current times. Even with the conclusion of the film finally accomplishing what Guy Fawkes failed to do that night of November 5th some 400 plus years ago, V for Vendetta doesn’t give all the answers to all the questions it raises. For some I’m sure this would be something that’ll frustrate them. So much of people who go to watch thought-provoking films want their questions answered as clearly as possible and all of them. V for Vendetta doesn’t answer them but gives the audience enough information to try and work it out themselves.

It is a film that is sure to polarize the extreme left and right of the political pundits and commentators. But as a piece of thought-provoking and even as a politically subversive film, V for Vendetta does it job well. It is not a perfect film by any respect, but the story and message it tries to convey in addition to its value as a piece of entertainment mor than makes up for its flaws. V for Vendetta more than continues the current crop of seriously done comic book fillm adaptations (Batman Begins, X2, Sin City, and A History of Violence) but it also shows that Alan Moore’s work can be adapted well to the screen when given to the right people. It may not be perfect and it may not make Alan Moore happy, but it comes close.

Synopsis

Set against the futuristic landscape of totalitarian Britain, V For Vendetta tells the story of a mild-mannered young woman named Evey (Natalie Portman) who is rescued from a life-and-death situation by a masked man (Hugo Weaving) known only as “V.” Incomparably charismatic and ferociously skilled in the art of combat and deception, V ignites a revolution when he urges his fellow citizens to rise up against tyranny and oppression. As Evey uncovers the truth about V’s mysterious background, she also discovers the truth about herself - and emerges as his unlikely ally in the culmination of his plan to bring freedom and justice back to a society fraught with cruelty and corruption.

Watch the trailer here!

Specs

Bonus View (Profile 1.1)

Video Resolution/Codec

• 1080p/VC-1
• 480p/i/MPEG-2 (Supplements Only)

Aspect Ratio(s)

• 2.40:1

Audio Formats

• English Dolby TrueHD 5.1 Surround (48kHz/16-bit)
• English Dolby Digital 5.1 Surround (640kbps)
• French (Parisian) Dolby Digital 5.1 Surround (640kbps)
• French (Quebec) Dolby Digital 5.1 Surround Dolby Digital 5.1 Surround (640kbps)
• Spanish Dolby Digital 5.1 Surround (640kbps)
• German Dolby Digital 5.1 Surround (640kbps)
• Italian Dolby Digital 5.1 Surround (640kbps)
• Japanese Dolby Digital 5.1 Surround (640kbps)

Subtitles/Captions

• English Subtitles
• Dutch Subtitles
• Finnish Subtitles
• Norwegian Subtitles
• Portuguese Subtitles
• French Subtitles
• Spanish Subtitles
• German Subtitles
• Italian Subtitles
• Japanese Subtitles
• Danish Subtitles

Supplements

• Featurettes
• Short Film
• Theatrical Trailer

Exclusive HD Content

• Picture-in-Picture

Popularity: 14% [?]

To be released on May 27, 2008, Enemy Territory: Quake Wars is the newest game of the very well known series-Quake. The latest game of the “saga” comes nearly twelve years after the first Quake release in 1996. This is a follow-up to Wolfenstein: Enemy Territory but of course situated on the Quake universe. The story is a prequel to Quake II, focusing on the war between the humans Global Defense Force (GDF) and the invading alien Strogg forces. Both races have their own mix of toys which is completely unique to them. Humans have certain classes, vehicles, and weapons to choose from that the Strogg don’t, and vice-versa. When in combat, the game will offer you military-style objective. This time, the fight will take you through several locations throughout Earth and across several continents, fighting for control and supremacy. Set in the Quake universe in the year 2065, this team- and mission-based multiplayer game has distinct classes, vehicles and weapons, letting players decide how they want to play the game.

The game has a new mapping technique technology called MegaTexture developed by id Software. It is used along with Id Tech 4 to eliminate common texture bugs and glitches found in previous games. The technology allows maps to be totally unique, without any repeated terrain tiles. Battlefields can be rendered to the horizon without any fogging, with over a square mile of terrain at inch-level detail, while also providing terrain-type detail that defines such factors as bullet hit effects, vehicle traction, sound effects, and so on. The PS3 version of ET:QW has a noticeable improvement in both bot AI as well as their ability to interact with a human player. Whether you’re practicing your maneuvers in the single-player campaign or using bots to fill in empty multiplayer slots, they feel more like actual teammates rather than cannon-fodder filler this time around.

The great thing about this game is you can first try it with a free PC demo and if you like it you can buy it. So basically you have nothing to lose!

Popularity: 9% [?]

The Golden Compass film is based on a trilogy novel by Philip Pullman and is directed by Chris Weitz. The leading act is the smart and intelligent looking Dakota Blue Richards who plays 12 year old Lyra, an orphan. In the movie are also Nicole Kidman, Eva green, and Daniel Craig who also do a good job. There has been a lot of talk on whether Philip Pullman’s books promote child atheism or an anti-Catholic sentiment and it seems like the movie was tone down quite a bit. This movie was merely an introductory adventure, meant to immerse viewers in Pullman’s richly complicated fantasy universe. Unfortunately the film was so condensed that it became incoherent to people who did not read the book, which is the great majority.

The story concerns Lyra, an orphan living in a fantastical parallel universe in which a dogmatic theocracy called the Magisterium threatens to dominate the world. When Lyra’s friend is kidnapped, she travels to the far North in an attempt to rescue him and rejoin her uncle.

Even though the blu-ray version has more features than the DVD, we feel it lacked on special features. With such a rich fantasy universe behind it the studio could have done a much better job bringing more information about the story since the movie itself left too much out! Disc one of this two-disc BD set has two main bonus items: a regular audio commentary with director Chris Weitz and a “visually enhanced commentary.” The “enhanced” version puts little picture inserts into the proceedings, picture-in-picture, to spice up presentation and provide more visual information about the filmmaking. Things on disc one conclude with twenty scene selections.

Disc two contains the bulk of the extras, divided into two main sections. A succession of documentaries makes up the first section. These start with “The Novel: Author Philip Pullman and the Consequences of Curiosity,” nineteen minutes with the writer and other filmmakers. Next is “The Adaptation of Writer-Director Chris Weitz,” sixteen minutes on the getting the script right, followed by “Finding Lyra Belacqua: Introducing Dakota Blue Richards,” fifteen minutes on the casting of the young star. Not all content is in HD!

Check out the movie trailer here or purchase it from Amazon here!

Specs

• 2-Disc Set BD

Video

• 1080p/VC-1

Aspect Ratio(s)

• 16×9 widescreen - 2.35:1

Audio

• English DTS-HD Lossless Master Audio 7.1 Surround
• English DTS 2.0 Stereo (Supplements only)
• English SDH
• Spanish Subtitles

Supplements

• Theatrical Trailers
• Disc One:
  • Feature film
  • Visually enhanced commentary by director Chris Weitz
• Disc Two:
  • Documentaries:
  • “The Novel”
  • “The Adaptation”
  • “Finding Lyra Belacqua”
  • “Daemons”
  • “The Alethiometer”
  • “Production Design”
  • “Costumes”
  • “Oxford”
  • “Armoured Bears”
  • “Music”
  • “The Launch”
  • Poster gallery
  • Theatrical and teaser trailers
  • Galleries
  • Slipcover
  • Insert of collectible memorabilia

Popularity: 14% [?]

Warner has announced the specs on the upcoming blu-ray 10,000 B.C. This is a relatively new movie that was just recently on theaters but Warner has already set its release date on blu-ray for June 24th, 2008. The blu-ray version will include two exclusive extras: “A Wild and Wooly Ride” and “Inspiring an Epic”. From director Roland Emmerich, who worked on “Independence Day,” “The Day After Tomorrow”, comes a sweeping odyssey into a mythical age of prophesies and gods, when spirits rule the land and mighty mammoths shake the earth.

Synopsis

In a remote mountain tribe, the young hunter D’Leh (Steven Strait) has found his heart’s passion – the beautiful Evolet (Camilla Belle). But when a band of mysterious warlords raid his village and kidnap Evolet, D’Leh leads a small group of hunters to pursue the warlords to the end of the world to save her. As they venture into unknown lands for the first time, the group discovers there are civilizations beyond their own and that mankind’s reach is far greater than they ever knew. At each encounter the group is joined by other tribes who have been attacked by the slave raiders, turning D’Leh’s once-small band into an army. Driven by destiny, the unlikely warriors must battle prehistoric predators while braving the harshest elements. At their heroic journey’s end, they uncover a lost civilization and learn their ultimate fate lies in an empire beyond imagination, where great pyramids reach into the skies……

Watch the trailer here!

With several historical inaccuracies such as: Eighteen foot long sabre tooth tigers and mastodons did not exist in Mesopotamia and northeast Africa at the time depicted; Horses did not become domesticated by man until about 4000 years after the setting of this movie; And Chilli Peppers did not leave the Americas until Portuguese sailors brought them to Europe on the 17th century. But all this is fine as the real objective of the movie is not relate facts but entertain its viewers. That, the movie certainly does!

Specs

Video Resolution/Codec

• 1080p/VC-1

Audio Formats

• English Dolby TrueHD 5.1 Surround
• French Dolby Digital 5.1 Surround
• Spanish Dolby Digital 5.1 Surround

Subtitles/Captions

• English SDH
• French Subtitles
• Spanish Subtitles

Supplements

• Deleted Scenes
• Theatrical Trailer

Exclusive HD Content

• Featurettes

Popularity: 22% [?]

Many peoples’ waiting is over now that the blu-ray game, Gran Turismo 5: Prologue, arrived to store shelves last week. This game is a “lite” version of Gran Turismo 5, it is like a taster for the full Gran Turismo 5 experience to arrive late 2009. Also, let’s make it clear that this is not a “Demo”, it is a full game that gives gamers a chance to experiment with most features of the upcoming GT5. The first Gran Turismo game was released 10 years ago for Playstation 1 and gave us a perspective on what race games could be, GT5 is the first game of the franchise for Playstation 3 and shows us some of the power this console has in storage. The game can be purchased in two different ways: on our beloved blu-ray disc on stores or on the Playstation online store as a download. They are not exactly the same! The Blu-ray disc version will come with some extras such as an additional HD behind the scenes featurette of the GT franchise called Beyond the Apex. The game has 70 cars from worldwide car manufacturers, half a dozen tracks, drift mode, new interior dash view, and online racing with up to 16 players. Read the full story

Popularity: 14% [?]

Now that Universal Studios Home Entertainment has shared their future plans for blu-ray, they announced they will be bringing the Emmy and Golden Globe nominated ‘Heroes’ to blu-ray. This is not the first time the “world saviors” will be introduced to high definition. In August last year ‘Heroes: Season One‘ was released on HD-DVD but with the death of the red format, it will be re-released along with ‘Heroes:Season Two‘ on blu-ray on August 26th. Of course this release date was no accident because the new blu-rays will hit stores just days before the three-hour premiere of the third season on September 15, 2008 on NBC starts. Details and specs have not yet been disclosed but as soon as they are we will update this post with more information, we do however expect ‘Heroes:Season One’ to have the same extras and featurettes as its first HD-DVD release.

Popularity: 12% [?]

On June 10th Warner brings ‘Natural Born Killers‘ back to life. One of the those “Love it or Hate it” films, it was originally released in 94 and considered among the most controversial films ever made. This Oliver Stone movie shows a completely distorted view of reality. The famous director seems to have outdone himself on this movie. Not only is Natural Born Killers a visual masterpiece with great outdoors and indoors shots. It is also an insane, bloody and brilliant satire that makes you think about the power of media when the story glorifies crazy murderers.

While there is definitely a strong social statement, the story is too erratic and scattered to be completely coherent. Visually however, Natural Born Killers is stunning. It is intensely colorful, unflinchingly violent and innovative in its cinematography. It will be exciting seeing it on HD after so many years! This movie is not for most, but if you decide to try it out, be warned: It is not for the faint of heart, and not for the weak of stomach. Apparently, the Blu-ray version will not have the unrated four minutes of censored footage that was previously released on DVD, it will have only the 118 minutes theatrical version.

Synopsis:

Delivery boy Mickey Knox (Woody Harrelson) falls in love with his customer Mallory Wilson (Juliette Lewis). He soon helps her kill her abusive father (Rodney Dangerfield) and enabling mother (Edie McClurg), beginning their macabre journey down Route 66. Their M.O.: every few miles, they attack everyone within their site, invariably leaving only one person alive to tell the tale. The two are made famous by unscrupulous reporter Wayne Gale (Robert Downey Jr.), as they run all across the country, pursued by the equally sadistic Jack Scagnetti (Tom Sizemore). Just before the trial, a ratings-whoring interview by the same reporter who made them famous leads to pandemonium, not just within the prison itself, but nationwide.

Specs

• BD-50 Dual-Layer Disc

Video Resolution/Codec

• 1080p/VC-1

Aspect Ratio

• 1.85:1

Audio Formats

• English Dolby TrueHD 5.1 Surround

Subtitles/Captions

• English SDH
• French Subtitles
• Spanish Subtitles

Extras

• Audio Commentary with Oliver Stone
• Deleted Scenes
• Alternate Ending
• Charlie Rose interview with Oliver Stone
• Theatrical Trailer
• Exclusive packaging with 42-page book featuring rare photos and press materials plus Oliver Stone’s all-new thought-provoking essay on the film

Popularity: 17% [?]