The Holiday (2006)

The launch of titles on HD-DVD in the UK has been pretty pathetic, and it's only the strong batch of US releases on what is a region-free format that have kept HD-DVD alive. Typically all we've had officially released in the UK are some of the more mediocre US releases, selling at grossly inflated prices months after they've been available from import companies at a far cheaper price. It's small wonder that Blu-Ray sales are outnumbering HD-DVD by a factor of several to one with the release strategy the film companies 'supporting' HD-DVD have adopted for the format.

So when we get an HD-DVD day-and-date release with the standard definition DVD release it's time to sit up and take notice, even if the genre (romantic comedy) is hardly one that's going to benefit from the increased resolution the format gives (unless you count more visible evidence that Cameron Diaz is getting older as a benefit!) and seems an odd choice to have made as a result.

Rom-coms are not known for their subtlety, or believability, but The Holiday takes the levels of ridiculousness to new depths. In the world of The Holiday a junior journalist can afford a chocolate box thatched cottage in the countryside (and happily commute to London each day), editors in Hollywood can afford Beverly Hills mansions with every conceivable gimmick installed, Jude Law can't get a date, snow will fall on Christmas Day despite there having been a blazing hot sun on Christmas Eve, a retired Hollywood writer can have a well-attended awards event held exclusively for him at just hours notice over the Christmas vacation, Kate Winslet can happily fall for chubby, double-chinned Jack Black, and... well you get the drift! This is fairy tale nonsense for those fantasists who still believe in the tooth fairy and Father Christmas!

The basic premise of the film is that 'a change of address can change your life'!Iris (Kate Winslet) is a junior journalist at The Telegraph in London. She's been wasting years of her life infatuated with senior journalist Jasper (Rufus Sewell), a cartoon character sleaze-ball, who sleeps with her when convenient, but shocks her by announcing at the staff Christmas party that he has become engaged to another co-worker.

Meanwhile in Los Angeles, the ball-busting workaholic Amanda (Cameron Diaz) finds her live-in musician boyfriend has been sleeping around while she's been putting all her efforts into building up her career as an editor of trailers for big Hollywood movies. After ditching the boyfriend she decides she needs a break to get away and nurse her wounds, and just happens to do so at the same time that Iris is looking for somewhere to go for Christmas. So the two women swap homes and (of course!) find true love on the other side of the Atlantic from the one they've been inhabiting all their lives.

In the crazy fantasy world that is The Holiday Iris has a widowed, unfeasibly good-looking brother (Jude Law with two impossibly cute daughters who just happens to stumble in on Amanda on her first miserable day in her holiday cottage. I think you can guess where this is going to go!

Back in Los Angeles Iris makes friends with a film composer (Jack Black) who just happens to get dumped by his girlfriend around the time Iris is getting ready to return to London. I wonder how that will affect their friendship! (Not!)

It seems somehow appropriate that this film should be released over Easter, because it induces exactly the same sickly nauseous feelings you get when you've eaten too many Easter eggs. I know rom-coms are meant to be light, fluffy 'feel good' films but The Holiday is saccharine-sweet 'comedy' featuring ridiculously honourable characters and pantomime villain ex-boyfriends that take the genres to new lows in any kind of believability. You not only need to turn your brain off before diving into this film, but ideally should have had it removed too.

If you're looking for the direction to improve a squirmingly awful script you're on a sticky wicket too. This is a film that believes having two women sending each other endless emails, reading them out word for word as they appear on screen, and doing this for minutes at a time, can pass as 'entertainment'. Even when the script tries to introduce a few genuine gags (the Hollywood trailer voice-over criticising her behaviour that Amanda hears, and the spoof trailer for a brain-dead Hollywood blockbuster have potential) the director throws away the opportunity to get a few good belly-laughs by repeating the rather weak joke far too often. Subtle, this isn't, and the director seems to have forgotten the most important rule of any rom-com: NEVER have your film run for more than 90 minutes. This 'epic' clocks in at well over 2 hours!

The film does have a few redeeming features: the picture quality is excellend, and it has an excellent main cast.

Kate Winslet is never less than charming, so much so that one ALMOST falls for the situation her character finds herself in. Cameron Diaz is fine at playing her usual manic 'cooky blonde' self. Jude Law doesn't have to do much except look pretty, but the real surprise is Jack Black who, arguably for the first time in his life, tones his performance down so that one doesn't get the impression he's doing a tiresome stand-up comic routine that's been shoe-horned inappropriately into the film. If only all this were enough. Admittedly the film looks good, but with a budget of $85 million (sheesh! For a rom-com??!!!!) it damned well should!

If the film is disappointing, and overly predictable, so are the extra's: there aren't any! Not one! Not even so much as a short five minute Making of featurette. I'd go into a rant about rip-off false advertising for what the HD-DVD format was going to give us, but having sat through two hours of the film, I really didn't feel I could face any more, and the lack of any additional material is actually a distinct advantage, earning the DVD an extra point from me!

If 'chick flicks' are your thing then this might be worth a rental. But for the vast majority of us this is a time-waster of a movie with no depth, no personality, no value and absolutely no basis in any kind of reality. My advice is to avoid it and look for something else!

The Good Shepherd (2007)

Robert de Niro's second film (as director), The Good Shepherd is still in British cinema's, even as it gets an HD-DVD release State-side. Unfortunately it's one of those nasty, rather expensive combo-releases where the standard DVD, but Region 1 only, features on the reverse side. Fortunately the high definition side, unlike the rival Blu-Ray format, is region free and with Universal being the only film company that are exclusive to HD-DVD, long-suffering HD-DVD fans at last have something to feel good about with this 'exclusive' release, albeit at the rather inflated 'combo' import price.

Whether sales of this title will be strong remains to be seen. Recent negative reviews for the theatrical release are still likely to be fresh in potential purchasers minds. The film is directed by a man that many critics have (rather foolishly!) called 'this generation's finest actor', so why did so few critics appear to like the film? With a cast list to die for this should surely count as a 'must see'?

The Good Shepherd tells the story of the CIA, as seen through the eyes of Edwin Wilson (Matt Damon) over a period of more than twenty years. We follow Wilson's induction into the mysterious 'Skull and Bones' secret society, his work in England during the War for the Office of Strategic Services (the OSS, the precursor to the CIA), the formation of the CIA itself and conclude with the failure of the Bay of Pigs invasion that was intended to topple Fidel Castro in Cuba.

The Cuban failure highlights the fact that there appears to be a mole inside Wilson's department, and this sub-plot forms the main backbone of the film. Wilson struggles to find the mole and prove that he is not the guilty party, while also trying to ascertain the meaning of a blurry video-tape sent to him by his Russian counterpart 'Ulysses' that may or may not have some bearing on the matter.

There's a lot to cover, and based on the running time of 2 hours 40 minutes, the film appears to have been allowed the time it needs. The film is a complicated one to tell since it involves numerous tales of treachery, double-crossing and double-double-crossing. As if that weren't complex enough there's the added complication of continually shifting timelines as the story in told in non-linear fashion.

There are two separate, and oft-times conflicting, plot-lines here: the history of the birth of the CIA, as told through Wilson's personal history and involvement with the organisation; and the story of the mole investigation which takes place alongside his attempts to discover the meaning of the video-tape. With sub-plots mashed up and timelines constantly shifting as the film jumps from one story strand to another, things get very confusing very quickly. A missed whispered sentence can mean the difference between having a clear understanding of the intricate, interwoven plot versus being totally flummoxed as to what is really happening and how one event relates to another. I suspect that your enjoyment or dislike of the film will rest entirely on your ability or inability to keep up and pay attention to every line spoken throughout the constantly twisting timelines and sub-plots. I guess it's not hard to see why so many critics dismissed the film as 'over-long' or 'poorly directed'.

I think those critics pointing the finger of blame at De Niro have missed the point - the fault lies not with the direction (which is excellent), but partly with the rather-convoluted script - which, I admit, I'd find hard to put together any other way - and mainly with the fact that the central figure of Wilson, used to tell the tale, is not anyone the audience can readily identify with. Wilson is on screen throughout almost the entire running time of the film, and although his portrayal represents an incredible performance on the part of Matt Damon, it's just not a performance that the audience are likely to empathise with.

This is a complex tale, even without all its time jumps. At the risk of sounding condescending, the problem is there are just too many different characters and intrigues going on for the average viewer to be able to keep up, even given the deft performances and direction used here. Since this is a spy story told mostly about men who sit behind desks and have little-to-no personal lives, it's not hard not to see why modern audiences, more used to endless eye candy or touchy-feely rom-coms, might find the film somewhat hard to digest!

The attempt to breathe life into the script by showing so much of Wilson's private life should have worked, but fails here because he is such a buttoned-down caricature of a man that his personal life just isn't that interesting. This is in spite of the fact that it includes suicide, an indiscrete affair, resentful family members and ultimate treachery. Clearly there's something wrong when even having a wife as beautiful as Angeline Jolie can't make Wilson appear more interesting. He may make a great CIA employee, but as a human being he is really, really boring. And that doesn't make for a gripping or involving film experience.

That beind said, I thought the film was beautifully executed. Direction and cinematography are excellent - there's a strong sense of style and consistency, without the direction ever being too showy or distracting. The score from Bruce Fowler and Marcelo Zarvos heightens the mood and subtlety of the piece, instead of distracting from it. And the performances are uniformly excellent.

The cast are a film-maker's dream. The big name leads of Matt Damon and Angeline Jolie are both excellent, but the real surprise is the number of big-hitters that impress even when given just minor roles. William Hurt, Michael Gambon, John Sessions, Billy Crudup and John Turturro all deliver note-perfect performances. Ironically enough it's only the director's own performance, and perhaps that of Alec Baldwin too, which hit a slightly sour note. Both De Niro and Baldwin come across as playing roles we've seen them play too many times before. Reading the cast list there are even a couple of strong actors I failed to spot (Timothy Hutton and Joe Pesci), so I guess a second viewing might be necessary. A special mention for two actors I've not seen before who deliver incredible performances. Oleg Stefan is delightfully charming but creepy as the Russian operative 'Ulysees'; and Tammy Blanchard playing Wilson's first girlfriend - a deaf beauty called Laura - lights up the screen every time she appears.

The film is shot mainly using cold blues, greens and greys that help enhance the mood of the piece, without resorting to the sort of de-saturated look that has annoyed me on so many other recent releases. The transfer to HD-DVD is good, without being stunning enough to highlight as reference quality. The picture is often soft and, if I'm honest, there's little here that impresses over and above what would be available on the best standard DVD release (assuming the title gets a high quality standard Region 2 DVD release later this year).

Extra's are a mixture of the good and the bad. 'The good' is sixteen minutes of deleted scenes that are presented in fully finished form ie high-definition, with music and effects all up to the standard of the main feature. They add depth to some of the characters and sub-plots that have had to be rushed through in order to get the running time of the main feature down to 2 hours and 40 minutes. 'The bad' is the U-Control feature. This probably sounds treacherous coming from a supporter of the 'rival' to the Blu-Ray format, given how 'picture in picture' is proving to be a silver bullet in HD-DVDs claims for superiority (more on this in my personal blog 'Wednesday Wibble' next week), but one has to ask 'What on earth were Universal thinking?' in using this feature on this release.

U-Control is a feature that allows you to view a subsidiary 'feature' using a 'picture in picture' feature which, at the moment, Blu-Ray doesn't support. The idea is that when you switch the feature on an icon pops up whenever there is something of interest you might want to watch while the main film is still playing. In the case of The Good Shepherd what this means is that the usual Making of featurette is missing. Or rather it's spread across the whole duration of the film in a ridiculous postage-stamp sized window that can only be watched while the main feature is playing. If you want to hear Robert de Niro or any of the other film-makers talking about the film it's all here, but you have to spend two hours 40 minutes waiting for various bits of it to pop up at reduced size. How is this any kind of advantage over standard DVD? I know we live in a world dominated by the decisions of an MTV-raised generation that has the attention span of a newt, but this is a gimmick too far. It makes an interesting feature - a behind the scenes 'Making of' - absolutely useless. The only consolation the viewer has is that the standard DVD purchaser doesn't get this 'HD-DVD -exclusive' featurette at all.

The Good Shepherd was a film I enjoyed, albeit a fundamentally flawed film that will not be to everyone's taste. It's certainly worth a rental if you can spare the time, and possibly a purchase if you need to revisit it to catch the subtleties you are likely to miss on a single viewing.

Happy Feet (2006)

With the advent of DVD and big screen TVs cinema attendance figures are falling, but one film genre remains buoyant - the one aimed at kids.

CGI 'toons are the name of the game these days and although expensive to produce, the profits are so huge it seems everyone's jumping on the band wagon. It's unusual for kiddie-oriented fare to deliver less than 300 million dollars at the box office, particularly if released around school holiday time. Add in a few well-known 'voices' from the Hollywood A-list, and a few adult-oriented jokes and you're guaranteed a winner, regardless of the quality of the script or the CGI, as the abysmal A Shark's Tale proved.

CGI 'toons are a God-send for lazy film companies who want to make bucketloads of cash, with box office sales just being the tip of the iceberg where profits are concerned. Tie-in merchandising is a sure-fire seller, and kids love to watch and re-watch their favourite 'toons over and over again on DVD. A successful 'toon delivers a triple-whammy, as those parents who took the family to see the film at a cinema then buy the DVD and stuffed toys and games too. All-in-all it's a wonder anybody bothers to take risks by making films that aren't 'toons these days!

Happy Feet is yet another in the 'cute animal' series of CGI films that have hit the multiplexes this year. Fortunately it's written to a higher standard than most of this fare is, and although it can get a little preachy at times, especially in its final five minutes, there's enough here to keep the most jaded parent amused. The film probably deserves an extra star just for the innovation of NOT having a series of fart jokes in it!

CGI films generally look superb on DVD, but on HD-DVD they really shine and Happy Feet is no exception - this is a stunning looking disc, and a great advert for high definition (whether you're talking the HD-DVD disc reviewed here, or the Blu-Ray version that's also available).

Mumble, voiced by Elijah Wood, is an Emperor Penguin who's a little different from the other penguins in the colony. This may or may not be down to his father accidentally dropping him while his mother was away foraging for food. In this story Emperor Penguins are generally born with a talent for singing, and the ability to compose and deliver a unique song that reflects their personality and helps attract a mate. Mumble, because of his 'disability' can't sing. He does however have a talent for tap-dancing, which the other penguins, and the Scottish Presbyterian leaders of the community in particular, find decidedly odd, if not downright abnormal.

Shunned and rejected Mumble makes friends with a group of foreign-sounding penguins, the 'Adelie Amigos', all seemingly voiced by Robin Williams, with outrageous foreign accents who love his tap-dancing in a way that his own breed can't. Mumble takes it upon himself to try and meet 'the aliens' who appear to have abducted the all-knowing Rockhopper penguin (again voiced by Williams) and who, he feels, may have some answers as to why the ice is melting and his own breed are struggling to survive.

The CGI work is stunning, but there were times when I found the directorial style rather irritating. Too often the point of view is from ground level, so that the characters are nearly always towering over the camera and looking down. I can only assume this was a deliberate move as it's done so often, but I'm not sure why. The aim should be to involve the audience, but this tends to alienate the feeling of participation or reality: penguins are not known for being tall creatures! That issue aside some of the scenes are breath-taking, almost life-like, and appear to be almost 3-dimensional in quality thanks to the clarity of high-definition. For most of its running time the film is breath-taking and internally consistent, and it's only in the last five to ten minutes that things start to fall apart.

In the final section of the film, where the ecological sub-text suddenly gets ramped up a number of notches, real-life humans are added into what has been completely computer-generated imagery up to that point. Since humans have already been depicted in CGI this comes across as a rather hokey effect to emphasise the importance of the 'green' message. With everything that's gone before, the effect is not dissimilar from someone who's been driving a car down a straight road for 90 minutes suddenly deciding for no apparent reason to swing a hard left! The overall impression, increased by not just the change in tone, but the visual representations used, is of an ending that's been tagged on from a completely different film, and for no apparent reason!

I also found the use of 'modern' pop songs irritating to the extreme. What happened to having songwriters actually write NEW songs for such films, instead of presenting us with hackneyed karaoke cover versions of 'popular' songs? There are a few word changes to acknowledge the fact the original song has been transplanted into a story, but the choice of songs doesn't seem particularly relevant to the story. Nor are the different songs consistent in style. One can only assume the decision was made based on needing to sell some obscure compilation album where the tracks available were negotiated at a bargain price, rather than their relevance to the plot.

Where the film does impress is in the casting. Of course if, like me, you find Robin Williams over-the-top performances more irritating than amusing, you may beg to differ, particularly since he's over-used here, voicing several characters instead of just one. But at least there is a script (of sorts)with a limited number of lines stopping him from completely taking over proceedings. Plus it's a relief we don't actually have to watch him.

Elijah Wood is perfectly cast as Mumble in a role that was tailor-made for him. Hugh Jackman shows with this film, as he does with Flushed Away (officially out on DVD tomorrow, when I'll be reviewing it), that he has a real talent for voice acting in the role of Memphis. Nicole Kidman turns in a surprisingly apt performance (I've never really been a fan of hers) as Norma Jean, and Hugo Weaving demonstrates (yet again) what a terrifically versatile actor he is, in the role of Noah the Elder.

Despite the inclusion of the song Let's Talk About Sex (WHOSE idea was that??!!!), this is a very family-friendly movie, targeted mainly at a young age group. Unfortunately the same can't be said for the two 'new' scenes (actually deleted scenes) included as extra's on the 'Special Features' menu. One of these introduces the late Steve Irwin, voicing a bird who encounters Mumble on his travels and calls him a 'wanker'! Lord knows what they were thinking when they recorded that, let alone included it on a DVD that will no doubt be played by toddlers around the land!

While there's plenty of interest in the main feature for those adults happy to re-kindle their inner child, there are none of the usual adult 'in' jokes that usually dominate such fare. This may be a curse of a blessing, depending on your viewpoint of whether such deliberate tactics to maximise the potential audience generally work in favour of the film as a whole, or have the opposite effect.

The extra's on the disc are, unfortunately, a bit thin. There's no real Making of,cast interviews or even snippets of the celebrities who voice the characters at work, as has become the norm on DVDs of this sort of film. There are a couple of 'new' scenes that were deleted from the film, but both are short and add little value or real excitement, the way a genuinely new 'mini-feature' usually does.

The main addition is a rather tedious Take a Private Dance Lesson featurette where Savion Glover explains the choreography performed by the penguins and demonstrates the tap-dancing sequences - dull as dishwater for adults, let alone children with a short attention span. The package is rounded out with a couple of short music videos, together with an old Warner Brothers cartoon I Love to Singa, presumably included because it has a similar 'odd one out' theme to Happy Feet. There's nothing here to get very excited about, and certainly no real usage has been made of the much-touted HD-DVD features like the U-Control in-picture feature that the tentpole releases have implemented.

If you've got kids then Happy Feet has to be a purchase rather than rental. This is one that is likely to get played over and over again. Even if you haven't got kids, if you're looking for a high definition showcase disc, this is as close to perfection as it gets, with some breath-takingly sharp hi-resolution scenes. Happy Feet is rather flawed in several respects, but it has a good heart and is a little gem of an HD-DVD nevertheless. Recommended!