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This movie is tedious and boring. Look! It has Tom Cruise running! Run little guy, run.

Guess it is good I got it on sale. This disc is going on the dusty shelf with the fuzzy teddy bear from AI. Double-stinker!

Maybe one of these days, the Harrasinator will write some retrowatch reviews. That guy watches 30 movies a day, if he can pull himself away from VH1 reality TV.

Say what you want about David Lynch’s adaptation of Dune, seeing it on Blu Ray was a complete eye opener! It has its messy, rushed narrative, but this is sci fi Shakespeare, or sci fi Lawrence of Arabia. And it looks just as epic.

I remember seeing Dune in the theater as a kid, and I’ve owned all of the other home video incarnations (minus HD-DVD, which I guess would have been the same as this Blu Ray version), but I never before noticed the absolute depth of detail on display. Every last square inch of every prop is fully realized, and the sets seem to go on forever, rich with texture. The models and miniatures kick the shit out of most current CG work, with a massive sense of scale and weight.

Dune does suffer from the same problem that the Dreamscape disc has, in that the optical compositing processes are just crap. The problems are extremely visible, and kicked me out of the story every once in a while.

And do the worms look more like sandy penises in high def? Probably, but I digress.

It’s a renter, just to admire the balls-to-the-wall art direction.

I’m a physical media addict. I had a huge VHS collection, which lead to a huge laser disc collection, then on to a DVD collection…and now on to Blu Ray. Shelves full of dead or dying media formats. And as a new set of media comes out, I replace the older versions with the new. The upgrade from standard def to high def has been significant. But is it necessary for all movies?

Hell no.

Case in point…Dreamscape!

Yes, at  one point, Dennis Quaid was charming and charismatic on screen, rather than sleeping his way through a paycheck (see the abomination that is G.I. Joe). Yes, the movie is thick with mid-80s apocalyptic, end of the world imagery. But the Blu Ray format heavily shows off the problems with mid-level old-school effects work. Bad optical compositing! Bad rear projection! Bad stop motion. At least the razorblade fingernails and glowing nunchucks on the bad guy are pretty cool.

And then there is the heavy-handed Michael Jarre score. It feels like he put his cassette recorder next to the TV, and blasted the tracks out. They overwhelm every scene. Glad that I got to hear it in full, remastered surround sound. Get me the ear plugs.

High def shows all of the flaws. I don’t want to watch porn in hi def either.