Thursday, July 9, 2009

Blade 1: One of the most slipshod Blu-Rays I have ever seen

So, I just cracked open my copy of Blade 1. I bought it. I am a big fan of the movie. I saw it on the occasion of my 32nd Birthday at the theater. I was dragged out by friends. Man was I surprised! I loved it. I was shocked to find myself thinking that Bruce Lee finally had a successor, and he was Wesley Snipes. This was the first financially sucessful comic book conversion from Marvel House. Everything before it had failed, both artistically and financially.

So you can imagine my dismay when I found a slipshod Blu-Ray in my package:
  1. 25GB single layer
  2. No Extras. No behind the scenes. No interviews. No nothing.
  3. No English subtitles. Some of us are hard of hearing.
  4. 17 MBits of video bandwidth. 30mbits to 35 is more common these days.
  5. We do have a rather nice DTS which is uncompressed at 1.5 Mbits. They should have offered us 24/96 DTS-HD Master Audio
  6. Only English and French. No Spanish. Some of us have Spanish-speaking relatives.
Well... look on the bright side. It is 1080p. We do have an uncompressed English sound track, at a minimum quality level. We do have fairly decent picture. This squashes any of the shitty DVD releases they did of the movie.

Still, Blade was the first successful Marvel property. It is a fine piece of work. It deserves better treatment than this.