Ghosts of Mars (Blu-ray) (2001) |
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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 |
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Rating | |||
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 |
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Widescreen Aspect Ratio | 2.40:1 | ||
16x9 Enhancement |
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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 |
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.
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.
Sharpness | |
Shadow Detail | |
Colour | |
Grain/Pixelization | |
Film-To-Video Artefacts | |
Film Artefacts | |
Overall |
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.
Dialogue | |
Audio Sync | |
Clicks/Pops/Dropouts | |
Surround Channel Use | |
Subwoofer | |
Overall |
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.
Sixteen minutes and fifty-eight seconds.
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.
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.
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.
A two minute and thirty second trailer in the aspect ratio of 2.35:1 with Dolby Digital 5.1 audio.
A ninety-eight second trailer in the aspect ratio of 1.85:1 with Dolby Digital 5.1 audio.
A two minute and twenty-eight second trailer in the aspect ratio of 1.85:1 with Dolby Digital 5.1 audio.
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.
NOTE: To view non-R4 releases, your equipment needs to be multi-zone compatible and usually also NTSC compatible.
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.
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.
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Audio | |
Extras | |
Plot | |
Overall |
Review Equipment | |
DVD | Sony BDP-S350, using HDMI output |
Display | Panasonic 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 Decoder | Built in to amplifier/receiver. Calibrated with Ultimate DVD Platinum. |
Amplification | Onkyo TX-SR606 |
Speakers | Yamaha NS-45 Front Speakers, Yamaha NS-90 Rear Speakers, Yamaha NSC-120 Centre Speaker, Wharfedale Diamond SW150 Subwoofer |