I'm watching Fincher's The Game (HD-DVD) right now. I've always liked the movie, but I have to confess that the only reason I chose it was because it was the only Fincher movie available in HD. Weird, right? The Game, Fight Club, and Se7en are all visibly striking movies, but it's somewhat odd that the weakest of his little twisty trilogy was the one to make the leap to HD first. I figured they would have gone with the cult classic Fight Club to lure in the savvy crowd, or his biggest box office hit, Se7en. The Game was no flop, like Fight Club was, but there's not a person in the whole world that would paint it as a more desirable movie than the other two.
So naturally, the reason The Game must have been chosen was probably that it was the only option readily available. Maybe it was the quickest to transfer or something. 2007 is, I think, its ten year anniversary, but the package is not advertising that.
But the transfer's quality betrays the HD label. This was most definitely a quickie, something they got on the market in a pinch in order to capitalize on the Fincher audience. This is the weakest HD effort I have yet seen. It's still a visually striking film, but the quality is, well, it looks like a decent quality DVD upscaled. The colors are muted, and not because it's a dark film, but because it hasn't really been restored. It looks similar to what happens when you upscale a DVD onto the big screen: since there's not color information to fill in all the pixels, information is lost, and everything appears faded when it comes to color. Similarly, some shots, not all, are a bit fuzzy, as if even getting the film to the proper HD resolution was a half-assed effort.
Don't get me wrong, it's not like this thing looks like the cinematic equivalent to Synbios; it's just that this is my first not great HD experience, and as such, it will be something of a benchmark to me. And if you folks need a benchmark of what is not a good quality release for HD, here it is. At least the movie is pretty good. Well, at least if I can beat down my suspension of disbelief, which I think takes quite the effort as the movie goes on.
The Departed also wasn't a great transfer, but Scorsese isn't a director that relies on visual pop frequently. No slam on him, it's just style. Some directors do a few iconic shots to better stick in your memory, but Fincher, in his early days, relied on MTV-like visual stimulation once every couple of minutes. Of course a weak transfer hurts the more visual movie more. The Departed also wasn't as bad as this. Since it is a more recent film, and it probably had more digital processing involved to begin with, the coloring was fine. Not superlative as it has been in the best HD releases, but fine.
