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PLEASE NOTE: Michael D's is currently in READ ONLY MODE. Anything submitted will simply not be written to the database.
Lots of stuff is still broken, but at least reviews can now be looked up and read.
Ghosts of Mars (Blu-ray) (2001)

Ghosts of Mars (Blu-ray) (2001)

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Released 15-Apr-2009

Cover Art

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Details At A Glance

General Extras
Category Science Fiction Audio Commentary
Featurette-Scoring Ghosts Of Mars
Featurette-Video Diary: Red Desert Nights
Featurette-Special Effects Deconstruction
Trailer-Blu-ray Disc™ Is High Definition!
Trailer-Resident Evil: Degeneration
Trailer-Pineapple Express
Trailer-Hancock
Trailer-Lakeview Terrace
Trailer-Quarantine
Rating Rated MA
Year Of Production 2001
Running Time 98:07
RSDL / Flipper No/No Cast & Crew
Start Up Menu
Region Coding 4 Directed By John Carpenter
Studio
Distributor

Sony Pictures Home Entertain
Starring Ice Cube
Natasha Henstridge
Jason Statham
Pam Grier
Clea DuVall
Joanna Cassidy
Case Amaray Variant
RPI $39.95 Music John Carpenter


Video Audio
Pan & Scan/Full Frame None English Dolby TrueHD 5.1
German Dolby TrueHD 5.1
Italian Dolby TrueHD 5.1
English Audio Commentary Dolby Digital 2.0
Widescreen Aspect Ratio 2.40:1
16x9 Enhancement
16x9 Enhanced
Video Format 1080p
Original Aspect Ratio 2.40:1 Miscellaneous
Jacket Pictures No
Subtitles English
English for the Hearing Impaired
Smoking No
Annoying Product Placement No
Action In or After Credits No

NOTE: The Profanity Filter is ON. Turn it off here.

Plot Synopsis

    John Carpenter is one of my favourite directors, and a great influence upon the way I tell stories in any format. Like another certain director I could say the same thing about, his career has had definite phases and turns. From about 1990 onwards, however, he seems to have been stuck in a rut where the material he brings to the screen has been of decidedly mediocre quality. Critics cite Ghosts Of Mars as being his worst work to date, but therein lies the irony. It certainly does not compare with his greatest pieces such as Halloween or Escape From New York, but one cannot help wonder if Carpenter was deliberately sending himself up. During such sequences as Big Daddy Mars' (Richard Cetrone) speech to the rest of the possessed, one cannot help picture Carpenter giggling his bum off as he sat at the editing suite.

    Ghosts Of Mars has a confused story structure, for certain. Although the entire story is told in flashback, characters frequently tell stories in flashback to fill the viewer in on details of the plot. To tell it in a linear fashion, however, a team of Mars police officers are riding to a mining colony called Shining Canyon in order to transfer a prisoner named James "Desolation" Williams (Ice Cube). Williams is wanted for a lengthy list of crimes that is never directly cited in the film, but he is also about to be cited for some rather grisly murders that he proclaims he simply walked into the aftermath of. The team picking him up consists of Commander Helena Braddock (Pam Grier), Lieutenant Melanie Ballard (Natasha Henstridge), Sergeant Jericho Butler (Jason Statham), and a pair of rookies played by Clea DuVall and Liam Waite.

    When this team of police arrive at Shining Canyon, they are surprised to find the town completely deserted save for Williams, who is still sitting in a cell. Further investigation of the town's buildings reveals large pools of blood, some creative displays of metalworking, and eventually enough corpses that it cannot possibly the work of one man. Nonetheless, Ballard and Braddock are quick to blame Williams. After a check of the holding cells, and a trip out to the mine shaft on Jericho's part, the officers discover the truth of the matter is far worse than they thought. A mysterious, bacteria-like element carried by the winds has "possessed" most of the mine workers. Led by a man named in the credits as Big Daddy Mars, the possessed mine workers attack, kill, and severely mutilate anyone they encounter who happens to not be possessed.

    It is a pretty minimal plot, and it is a testament to John Carpenter's skill as a director that in spite of the structure it works as well as it does. Littered throughout the piece are moments that, in one particular case, one caused my father to ask me "where do you find these movies?". Given the film's flaws, then, I can wholeheartedly recommend it but only to certain types. If you are like me and thought that Snakes On A Plane was too well-made, or secretly crave examples of bad films being made on purpose, then Ghosts Of Mars is right up your alley. If you are like me in the sense of being a fan of John Carpenter's work, then Ghosts Of Mars will at least be of interest to you. If you fall into neither of these categories, then my advice would be to look elsewhere.

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Transfer Quality

Video

    Ghosts Of Mars was released on DVD-Video in April 2002. I liked that disc, but this new BD-Video blows it away in almost every conceivable sense.

    Like every film John Carpenter has made save for Dark Star, Ghosts Of Mars was shot anamorphically with a 2.40:1 aspect ratio. The transfer preserves this aspect ratio within a 1920 by 1080 progressive window. Every improvement that this disc makes over the DVD can at least partially be associated with this fact.

    The transfer is sharp. No, let me repeat that with the proper emphasis: this transfer is sharp. Little details like the mutilations the possessed have performed on themselves leap out of the frame in a way that reminds me why I have basically decided I will (almost) never watch DVD or anything else that is in standard definition again. Like all Panavision films, there is a variable loss in detail as things get distant from the camera and its focal point, but even these parts of the transfer exhibit a dramatic increase in sharpness. The BDP-S350 reports that the film was encoded using the AVC codec, with a total bitrate that generally varies between 24 and 31 mb/s. Shadow detail is excellent, and there is no low-level noise.

    The colours of the film place a very heavy emphasis on red, as one would expect from a film set on Mars. Skin tones are consistent, and no bleeding or misregistration is evident.

    Compression artefacts were not noted in this transfer. The biggest problem I had with the DVD release was aliasing, which was generally mild but very frequent. I am pleased to report that due to the progressive nature of this transfer, there is not so much as a hint of aliasing to be found in this transfer. You can seriously put two televisions side by side, play this disc on one, and the DVD on the other, and tell your friends who still fail to understand the overwhelming benefits of Blu-ray that this is why DVD is now living on borrowed time. Film artefacts were so minimal that I did not really notice them at all, if indeed they were present.

    Subtitles are offered in English and English for the Hearing Impaired. The latter are considerably more accurate to the spoken dialogue than was the case on the previous DVD release.

Video Ratings Summary
Sharpness
Shadow Detail
Colour
Grain/Pixelization
Film-To-Video Artefacts
Film Artefacts
Overall

Audio

    Four soundtracks are present on this BD. The first three are in Dolby TrueHD: the original English dialogue, with dubs in German and Italian. A quick comparison between these three soundtracks shows a minor loss of separation of the dialogue from the other elements in the dubs, but the overall quality is otherwise very consistent between the three. The fourth soundtrack is a Dolby Digital 2.0 audio commentary with John Carpenter and Natasha Henstridge.

    The dialogue in the English soundtrack is amazingly clear and easy to understand at all times. This was also the case on the DVD, but the added space between the elements with the lossless compression just makes it that much easier. Even the guttural speech of Big Daddy Mars seems to make more sense in this transfer. No problems with audio sync were noted.

    The score music consists of compositions by John Carpenter that are performed by Anthrax and Buckethead. A featurette about this score also makes references to Steve Vai contributing guitar solos, but for some reason he is not listed in the credits. In any case, like all Carpenter films, the score music is one of the best elements and perfectly suits the onscreen action. In fact, this could well be one of Carpenter's best scores. It is good enough that I seriously hope the rumours about Sony contemplating an attempt to resurrect the failed SACD format with the Blu-ray disc structure as a base are true, because I would teleport myself to the local JB Hi-Fi in order to buy a disc containing a 96 kHz, 7.1 channel, 24-bit rendition of this score. It is easily worth the purchase price of this BD-Video by itself.

    The surround channels are used to separate the music from the rest of the soundtrack, with the (very) occasional directional sound effect thrown in for good measure. Of particular note are directional effects whenever the possessed throw throwing weapons at the hapless heroes. This soundtrack will not win any awards for its use of the surrounds. In that sense, it is more or less exactly the same as the Dolby Digital effort on the DVD.

    The subwoofer is aggressively utilised to support gunfire, explosions, and the marching of the possessed. It complements the rest of the soundtrack perfectly, neither missing a beat nor calling attention to itself.

Audio Ratings Summary
Dialogue
Audio Sync
Clicks/Pops/Dropouts
Surround Channel Use
Subwoofer
Overall

Extras

Menu

    One point for providing a very good Top Menu in addition to the Pop-Up Menus that should never have (dis)graced the format in the first place. The Top Menu is animated with Linear PCM 2.0, 16 bit, 48 kHz audio. Navigation is extremely straightforward, and while as previously mentioned there are not enough Chapters, this is a reference example of how all Menus on BD-Video should be.

Audio Commentary - John Carpenter (Director/Writer/Composer), Natasha Henstridge (Actor)

    Like another of my favourite directors, John Carpenter would have to work very hard to make a bad audio commentary. Throughout the feature, he and Natasha Henstridge mostly talk about the technical challenges and other stresses of shooting the film. This is an example of why I believe that audio commentaries are really the only extras that should be indiscriminately ported over from the DVD.

Featurette - Scoring Ghosts Of Mars

    Normally, I am utterly against the transfer of SD material to Blu-ray Disc. This is, after all, a high-definition medium. Scoring Ghosts Of Mars is an exception that proves the rule. I must, however, take issue with a statement in Peter Bracke's review of the Region A disc. Anthrax were around making music for those with working ears (and brains, lest we forget) when the likes of Korn et al were just itches in a collection of pants, and to call their work on this score "prototypical nu-metal" not only insults everyone involved in making this great score, it displays a profound level of ignorance about the music that the professional journalists of my childhood would have sooner jumped out of a window than be caught displaying. For six minutes and twenty-four seconds, we see very raw-looking footage of the players recording cues in the aspect ratio of 1.33:1 with Dolby Digital 2.0 audio.

Featurette - Video Diary: Red Desert Nights

    Sixteen minutes and fifty-eight seconds.

Featurette - Special Effects Deconstruction

    Six minutes and thirty-three seconds. Like the previous featurette, it is presented in the aspect ratio of 1.33:1 with Dolby Digital 2.0 audio, and is an example of the sort of "extra" that simply wastes space.

Trailer - Blu-ray Disc™ Is High Definition!

    A two minute, twenty-seven second advertisement for BD-Video in the aspect ratios of 1.78:1, 1.85:1, and 2.35:1 with Dolby Digital 5.1 audio.

Trailer - Resident Evil: Degeneration

    A one minute, fifty-eight second redband trailer in the aspect ratio of 1.78:1 with Dolby Digital 5.1 audio. The feature in question is actually worth a look even if you are not a fan of the video games.

Trailer - Pineapple Express

    A two minute and thirty second trailer in the aspect ratio of 2.35:1 with Dolby Digital 5.1 audio.

Trailer - Hancock

    A ninety-eight second trailer in the aspect ratio of 1.85:1 with Dolby Digital 5.1 audio.

Trailer - Lakeview Terrace

    A two minute and twenty-eight second trailer in the aspect ratio of 1.85:1 with Dolby Digital 5.1 audio.

Trailer - Quarantine

    A ninety-four second trailer in the aspect ratio of 1.85:1 with Dolby Digital 5.1 audio. In spite of the drunken-looking photography, it looks like this title might be worth a look.

R4 vs R1

NOTE: To view non-R4 releases, your equipment needs to be multi-zone compatible and usually also NTSC compatible.

    A review on High-Def digest leaves out any mention of the numerous trailers that grace the local disc. Whether this means they are absent or simply unworthy of mention is unknown.

    The Region B version of this disc misses out on;

    The Region A version of this disc misses out on;

    This is really a judgement call, depending on your linguistic preferences. In the absence of any confirmation or denial regarding the presence of the trailers on the Region A disc, I will declare this one to be even.

Summary

    Even a bad John Carpenter film does its business all over a good Peter Jackson or Zack Snyder film from an almighty height, and Ghosts Of Mars is no exception. Saved and damned at the same time by its flat-out refusal to take itself seriously, it is elegant proof that a film does not have to have major artistic pretensions, a social conscience, or even an ability to make complete sense, to be a damned good time. Like I said earlier, if you are a fan of Carpenter or like films that seem to have been made badly on purpose, then this is definitely worth considering.

    The video transfer is a reference-quality representation of a fairly averagely-shot film.

    The audio transfer is good, but not great.

    The extras are numerous, but only two of them are really complementary to the overall package.

Ratings (out of 5)

Video
Audio
Extras
Plot
Overall

© Dean McIntosh (Don't talk about my bio. We don't wanna know.)
Thursday, April 30, 2009
Review Equipment
DVDSony BDP-S350, using HDMI output
DisplayPanasonic Viera TH-42PZ700A. Calibrated with Ultimate DVD Platinum. This display device is 16x9 capable. This display device has a maximum native resolution of 1080p.
Audio DecoderBuilt in to amplifier/receiver. Calibrated with Ultimate DVD Platinum.
AmplificationOnkyo TX-SR606
SpeakersYamaha NS-45 Front Speakers, Yamaha NS-90 Rear Speakers, Yamaha NSC-120 Centre Speaker, Wharfedale Diamond SW150 Subwoofer

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