'A Mighty Heart' - High-Def Digest review

[jed]

Kenneth's review of 'A Mighty Heart' is up. Although he quite liked the film itself and says that this is a technically solid HD DVD release, he cautions that this one isn't likely to turn heads.

Full review here:
http://hddvd.highdefdigest.com/1094/mightyheart.html

[Ph8]

Sounds good to me . I am interested in seeing this one and as of now I only buy a movie if its available in an HD format.

[hawaii sun]

saw the movie a few days ago, the audio was very good, however the PQ was grainy. not sure if that was the intent of the director.

[zaphod]

I've lived in Karachi, so this is a must for me. I'd pick it up anyway.
I don't care if the PQ is not perfect, I'm not buying any more day-and-dates on SD. The only thing bothering me is that there might be a 'definitive ultimate director's cut' with lots more supplements somewhere around the corner...

[ben1080p]

Ill give it a rent since the pq isnt looking that great.

[mmmmDoNut]

Everytime I see the cover for this movie, I always think of scanner darkly.

[HD Guru]

I don't get the audio marks - is it only getting 3 stars because it doesn't have massive use of LFE and surrounds due to there being no car chase scenes or robots or missiles or the like?

To me, if everything is totally crisp and dialogue is well placed then doesn't that come close to being a perfect "quality" audio encoding?

[AnalogBalrog]

I saw this HD DVD a few nights ago and was thoroughly dissapointed. The PQ, while possibly faithful to the source, was the worst PQ I've yet to see on HD DVD. I suppose it didn't help any that I didn't care for the film.

[posters5]

the PQ isn't as bad as "spartacus" and "american me". those hd dvds are actually worse than the best sd dvds!!!

[posters5]

Originally Posted by hawaii sun

saw the movie a few days ago, the audio was very good, however the PQ was grainy. not sure if that was the intent of the director.

that's not grain that you're seeing as the movie was shot on high-def video. rather, you're seeing video noise.

[supra2jzgte]

Why didn't they use VC-1 on Transformers so they could fit a TrueHD track on that bad boy.

[BambooLounge]

While a debate over director's intent v. video quality is alluded to in the review, I don't understand why there is even a debate. While I suppose there may be some who only want to view a movie as "eye candy," I don't understand giving a low grade for intended picture quality. Isn't the point of high definition video that it allows us to view a film as close as ever before to how the director intended it to look? Or is it graded based on some form of "ooo pretty" basis, which removes the intentions of the filmmaker all together. I think it is unwise to waffle between the two, since in some cases a reviewer will state that "even though it was the director's intention, the picture quality is poor" or on the other hand "the picture quality is poor b/c the OAR is wrong thus losing the director's intentions" Which is it?

This is more of a general post, but since the theme was mentioned in this review, I thought it was appropriate to post here, if it wasn't I apoligize

[Josh Z]

Originally Posted by BambooLounge

While a debate over director's intent v. video quality is alluded to in the review, I don't understand why there is even a debate. While I suppose there may be some who only want to view a movie as "eye candy," I don't understand giving a low grade for intended picture quality. Isn't the point of high definition video that it allows us to view a film as close as ever before to how the director intended it to look? Or is it graded based on some form of "ooo pretty" basis, which removes the intentions of the filmmaker all together. I think it is unwise to waffle between the two, since in some cases a reviewer will state that "even though it was the director's intention, the picture quality is poor" or on the other hand "the picture quality is poor b/c the OAR is wrong thus losing the director's intentions" Which is it?

A good review must by necessity balance the two aspects. To give a movie like this a perfect video score without cautioning that the picture is soft, grainy, and dull is misleading to readers. Imagine what uproar would have occurred if the '28 Days Later' Blu-ray, a movie that was shot on sub-Standard Definition DV for all but 2 minutes of its run time, had been given a score of 5 for its accuracy, without taking into account what it actually looks like.

On the other hand, of course the goal of a High-Def disc is to accurately represent the director's intentions without distorting or manipulating it. Both aspects must be weighed in the final score.

The review gave the 'Mighty Heart' disc a 4 out of 5 for video quality, which is perfectly respectable. No one should be upset about that. Not every disc is going to rate a 5.

[Ice2Dragon]

I enjoyed this movie, strange cuz I had some bad thoughts going into it, but found it enjoying.

Great looking one too, its not as bad as people are making it out to be. And its an enjoyable flick, not one Id watch again, but still a good enough rental.