At first I put off watching Kung Fu Panda. The way I figured it was that the bear could already tear me in half, what the hell are we doing teaching it Kung Fu? We’re really rolling the dice on this whole creating a slight against God. Bears shouldn’t know any form of the Martial Arts, end of story. Soon after forming this opinion I was told it’s more of an animated narrative than your standard Kung Fu training video.

There’s something about animation that I love. Usually when I profess my like for animation to people (people older than me, generally) I get strange looks. They immediately default to thinking I’m talking about some sort of Hello Kitty Saturday morning Hentai Special. I’m talking about the sort of animation where an animation company uses computers powerful enough to cure cancer to make movies that will ultimately see me sitting on my arse working on the already admirable groove in my couch while shooting popcorn out of my left nostril, a trick that no longer impresses the Wife. To be one hundred percent honest with you, it burns like hell and butter is all I can smell for three or four hours afterward.

But I digress. Let’s get down to brass tacks.

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The Bladerunner Complete Collector edition is, for lack of a better word the “shiznitz” or the “bullshibbin”. This is hands down the best overall bluray package I have seen. Nothing released this far comes close. Nothing. Firstly lets talk the movie or movies, I should say. The package contains four versions of the movie, including Ridley Scott’s 2007 cut “The Final Cut”, the 1982 U.S. Theatrical release, the 1982 International Release and the Directors Cut of 1992.

The video is astounding, you could be forgiven for thinking this was a new release movie. Every now and then there are effects that show it’s age but the video quality is as good as or better than the many of latest released DVD’s and Blurays. It’s simply that good. The video on the cuts is presented in 16:9 (varying between 2.2:1 to 2.4:1 depending on what version of the flick you’re watching), the audio mix is great but obviously soundtracks are heavily stylised in music of the time, this stands out greatly as the tracks are 25 years old. The quality is outstanding but the synths of the eighties stand out like a sore thumb. Having said that I would have no problems dropping twenty five bucks on the OST.

The Audio is delivered in 5.1 Dolby Digital as standard with over dubs in various languages available in 2.0. This is standard across all versions of the flick. Then to top this sucka off we have two extra discs containing nine hours of extra features. This is everything, docos, featurettes, commentaries, retrospective interviews. Basically everything you could possibly want out the extra features is here.

Everything. Except. HD.

All the extra features are in SD and are on SD DVD optical discs as opposed to Bluray discs. I can live with the SD footage as it’s all high quality and is so goddamned complete no one in their right mind could possibly fault it.

I gotta rap this up because I’ve completely decimated the idea behind these reviews, you’re supposed to be able to read these in a minute or less. So I leave you with this… Bladerunner on Bluray is worth owning, in fact it’s a pretty good reason to buy a bluray player.

Trailer:

I play games with a number of people online. Once we’re tired of playing a particular game online we generally look around the market and find something that seems to be popular, look into and see if it looks like something worth our time. If it is then we’ll all pick it up and get down to it.
Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare (CoD) is one of these games. Coming off Halo 3 Multiplayer I was looking for a shooter that would be a contrast to Halo 3. CoD was just what I was looking for.

What I can do is tell you that this one looks, sounds and plays very nice. The graphics for CoD more often then not are nothing short of perfect (for this genre of game) car explosions, grenade explosions, bullet hits, muzzle flares and effects for stun grenades and flash bangs are excellent. The audio however, is fairly ordinary and a little repetitive in places.

Single Player:
The campaign is a lot of fun with switching between various teams, (British and US forces) as you race through the plot. It’s fast paced and holy shit there are moments in this game where there are enemies and fire fights to the extent that I’ve never seen in a video game before. Having said that it’s very short.

But the Single Player Campaign is not where this game shines.

Multiplayer:
Multiplayer is where this game shines. It’s fast and frenetic, there are a couple of weird quirks. For example you get XP no matter if you win or lose so the ranking system is based on time spent playing as opposed to skill and the weapons system really makes it hard to punch through the learning curve associated with playing a new multiplayer title. You have to unlock weapons and weapon add ons such as scopes and grenade launchers. This isn’t too bad, but when you’re playing against others that have played for a long time and have a veritable arsenal of awesomesauce at their disposal it can become frustrating in places.
Then it happens, you start kicking arse and it rocks. With variants in classes and the ability to custom your own class you’ll be able to play this one for sometime before wanting to trade up to something else.

Having recently started a diet and having more recently found out I put more weight (seriously WTF?), I felt the need to be surrounded by other’s suffering my particular disposition for Mar Bars. Not just any wheezing lunchboxes either. I needed to see a fat guy being an action hero, I wanted my fat guy to kick the shit out of some terrorists. The guy putting foot to arse? Who else but Steven Segal?

This bluray was a surprise for me, originally released by Warner Bros on HD DVD this looks to be a straight port from an already rock solid HD transfer. Presented in 1.85.1 filling my entire screen with glorious knife throwing, 12 inch starburst firing, submarine sinking goodness. The image looks good, nothing mind blowing but you can tell it’s high def.

For me I thought the audio was the stand out feature here. Presented in a standard 5.1 Dolby Digital (and of course 2.0 flavours) this flick was mastered very well and has always been a stand out flick for audio. Other than a nice audio mix, Erika Eleniak, and a trip down memory lane this particular bluray delivered little and even less extra features.

Get it if you need one more movie to complete the El Cheapo four movie combo deal at your local vid store.

Trailer:

I’m more impressed with aspects of this flick rather than the flick itself and that works out well because I’m not reviewing movies here. No sir, I’m reviewing Bluray discs and this one is great in places.

The video is of course fantastic, animation is just built for HD. In fact my top five most anticipated bluray releases has a couple of animation titles in it. Surf’s Up is shot and presented like a fly on the wall surf documentary, in places it’s grainy and colour is touch and go here and there. This doesn’t just magically happen, when you render out animation you only get what you tell the computer to put out. Nothing more nothing less. Noise and grain had to be added as part of the post work flow and damn it works. The movie moves seamlessly in and out of Documentary and Movie genres and looks beautiful every step of the way. Some of the animation with regard to waves and water look real and this seems to be enhanced by a nice bluray transfer.

The audio is presented in PCM 5.1 and is real nice but nothing to write home about. The stand out feature here for me was the way they used a real handheld camera in a rendered environment to give the flick a real documentary feel. This extra feature simply wowed me.

As far as bluray is concerned I’ve heard Rattatouie is the way to go if you’re looking for an animation demo disc, Surf’s Up is nice and kind of novel in places but over a fairly run of the mill Bluray.

Trailer: