Stripped
(2012/Inception DVD)/True Blood: The
Complete Fifth Season (2012/HBO Blu-ray w/DVD)/Wasted On The Young (2010/Gaiam Vivendi DVD)/The Wicked (2012/RLJ DVD)
Picture:
C+/B- & C+/C+/C Sound: C+/B &
C+/C+/C+ Extras: D/C/D/D Main Programs: D/C-/D/D
And now
for more Horror thrillers and how they are hitting rock bottom…
J.M.R.
Luna’s Stripped (2012) has a group
of friends going to the strip in Las
Vegas for sex, fun and one of the four guys 21st
Birthday. They are taping themselves,
are very stupid (unbelievably so) that they allow themselves to get lured into
a sexual rendezvous with some ladies (prostitution is legal there, despite
being run by Mormons) and these morons and up getting themselves abducted. This quickly becomes yet another played-out
torture porn fiasco, totally amateur hour in the worst way and character
development is thinner than onion paper.
We get
all kinds of odd nudity, but the HD-shot mess does not even know what to do
with Vegas and it drags out much longer than its 80 minutes length. It is only amazing they took up that much
time to do basically nothing but be boring.
A dumb trailer is the only extra.
The HBO
hit series True Blood: The Complete
Fifth Season (2012) has seen better days and though I was not a big fan, I
understood its appeal. Unfortunately,
the show has become a silly comedy with not much new to offer (feels like a
clone of the overrated Buffy The Vampire
Slayer, but with adult actors) and unless you are a fan from the start,
there is not too much of a reason to watch.
We get 12 more episodes and if not for the ratings, this would have
folded already, which means it is past its prime.
The idea
of vampires in the real world as a novelty as worn out and the actors are
trying to make this work, but a sense of slight boredom is starting to set in
and the result is a show that is not as “true” as it used to be. Even anything sexual seems less so. Only fans need bother.
Extras
include Digital Copy for iTunes, PC and PC portable devices, Enhanced Viewing
Blu-ray capacities for all the episodes, Episode
Six: Autopsy feature, True Blood
Lines interactive feature, Inside The
Episodes for all 12 shows and audio commentary tracks on five episodes.
Ben C.
Lucas’ Wasted On The Young (2010) is
a goofy Australian attempt to imitate bad Hollywood
thrillers badly set on social media, but in this case people are turning up
dead and the texting only seems to encourage more bloodshed and bad script
writing we have to suffer through in its very long 97 minutes.
We get
“wasted” the whole time and so do the actors who have only signed up to get
better roles, but most actors in these cynical projects usually get lost in the
shuffle and we never hear from them again.
I expected more from Down Under, but did not get it and the ending is as
absolutely stup9id as the whole enterprise. Skip it!
An
Australian trailer is the only extra.
Last and
as least as anything here, Peter Winther’s The
Wicked (2012) is an absurd mess about a witch allegedly eating young people
(how young? Particularly children, but
who cares!) so this is a child-in-jeopardy exploitation mess that is as
bankrupt as anything on the list and the so-called witch is like Blair meets
that young Asian gal with long hair and a long white t-shirt who has shown up
in a few hundred bad Asian horror thrillers, but this one is all black and all
boring!
Like the
rest of the entries on this list, we get blood and idiocy, but no suspense,
intelligence or realism. This also runs
105 minutes, making it the longest of the three lame solo releases and drags on
and on and on and on. Makes one wonder
if the makers of any of the independent productions here have actually seen
many of the films in the genre? Wow is
this one awful!
A Making
Of featurette is the only extra.
The 1080p
1.78 X 1 digital High Definition image transfer on the Blood Blu-ray is the best presentation here as expected, but its
lesser anamorphically enhanced DVD version can more than take on the DVDs of
the other releases. Some shots are stylized
to their disadvantage, but it is a professional presentation throughout and
overall.
The
anamorphically enhanced 1.78 X 1 image on Stripped
and especially Wicked can barely
keep up, but Wicked is the softest presentation here looking very weak throughout
and furthering the difficulty in watching it.
The anamorphically enhanced 2.35 X 1 on Young is mixed but consistent enough and all DVDs have their share
of motion blur.
The
DTS-HD MA (Master Audio) 5.1 lossless mix on the Blood Blu-ray is easily the sonic champ with a fine soundfield
throughout, well recorded audio, warm presentation and the kind of presentation
we are used to from HBO. All four DVDs
offer lossy Dolby Digital 5.1 mixes, but none of them happen to really hold
their own and do not impress a bit. The
three independent features also can show their budget limits and might as well
have been simple stereo presentations.
- Nicholas Sheffo
