Topic: Movie thread.

Random long tangential movie rant. So I have an OLED TV now and the other day sat down to watch my BluRay rip of Batman Begins and was mildly annoyed at the level compression in the blacks. Was never distracted by this before, presumably because I've always watched it on an LCD where you don't get that level of black detail anyways. So I figured bugger it, storage is cheap enough these days, I can deal with 30GB/movie, why not just re-rip some movies and store them as is. No further compression

So re-ripped a handful of movies again, still have my more compressed file on a portable HDD but the one on the NAS is in original quality. Watch The Fifth Element, looks great. Next day do another 20 movies and figured I'd watch The Dark Knight.... Plex for some reason wants to re-encode it. Dig further into it, realise that The Dark Knight is encoded in VC-1 not H264. Which is kinda crap because VC-1 is less widely supported these days AND is less efficient, worst of both worlds. Turns out Batman Begins is the same and, to add insult to injury, is "only" ~13Mbps. So for these movies I'm basically forced to re-encode because who supports VC-1 anymore......

So now I'm re-encoding the movies that were on BluRay in VC-1 at a bitrate similar to the higher end of the bitrate I had before. So like 10-15Mbps. But this time in H.265 instead of H.264 (about 20-50% more efficient again). Effectively because of how much more efficient H.265 is (esp compared to VC-1) I'm not dropping much quality (although it's re-encoding, you always drop some) but I gain compatibility and on average ~15GB/movie

...... basically, I think I've finally reached the point where the quality of early BluRays is biting a bit. And am retrospectively slightly annoyed at the fact that there's no way on the box to tell what the bitrate or codec a disc is in. At least with UHD discs the lowest bitrate discs are above the best BluRay discs, at least on paper. Which to be clear, a decent BluRay? Plenty good enough

/barely on-topic rant

edit: I found a Blu-Ray that was encoded in MPEG-2...

@EaglyTheKawaiiShika Since you're desperate for this point, sure that's exactly the same as thinking as Oscars should be made up of children and superhero films. Morbius and the Shrek cinematic universe for the win!!! ;p

Let me try this another way with references. Both Community and Rick & Morty, two shows you hold in high regard, makes references to things like Turgenev and My Dinner With Andre whilst also referencing how boring Marvel is. If you're willing to look at the high brow stuff in addition to the low brow you could understand all of the references!

@EaglyTheKawaiiShika I'm gonna have to side with jump on this one.

@EaglyTheKawaiiShika

@EaglyTheKawaiiShika I thought that was DC

In other words an animated movie

@Kermit1 "Um actually CG 3D animation and CGI are very different things" 🤓

@HotGoomba har har

Puss in Boots: The Last Wish at the local theater. Loved this movie, from start to finish it was a great time. Honestly, it reminded me of the Animaniacs movie, Wakko's Wish, which I did not expect to be reminded of, and I mean that in a good way. The adventure Puss wen on was great. Exciting, adventurous, funny, and even heartwarming. The dog, Perrito, won me over. Also, the battle between Puss and Death was truly epic. Even Goldilocks and the three bears ended up being great. Also, I loved how the trio of Puss, Kitty, and Perrito were headed to Far Far Away Land, cool nod to Shrek.

Also as a bonus, I loved the new DreamWorks opening. Nice to see my favorite DreamWorks character, Poppy from Trolls, make it to the new opening, alongside The Bad Guys, Po from Kung Fu Panda, Toothless from How To Train Your Dragon, and Shrek. Seeing this was enough to make me smile.

Oh yeah @Sunsy The new DreamWorks opening kicks ass.

Welp, I think DreamWorks is my favorite studio again.

@HotGoomba I can't wait for Shrek 5: Into the Orgeverse

@HotGoomba Indeed.

Honestly, before Trolls, I didn't see many DreamWorks movies. Mostly just Shrek, Shark Tale, Madagascar, and Mr. Peabody and Sherman. After seeing Trolls World Tour, I just started looking at their other movies, they've really grown on me. Got to see some of the other Shreks, the Kung Fu Panda movies, the first Puss in Boots, Spirit Untamed, Rise of the Guardians to name a few. I've enjoyed them all.

Puss in Boots: The Last Wish is my second theatrical DreamWorks experience, first being Trolls World Tour as part of a special showing at a local theater this past summer.

@jump Please never call it that again.

@jump

@EaglyTheKawaiiShika @jump looks at jumps signature I know one of you is not Nicolai, but that quote seems relevant as ever

@EaglyTheKawaiiShika Thanks for the advice however saying it isn't a high art prestige Oscar movie isn't insulting, it's just a fact. Prestige film is an actual term see below, the same way calling it a popcorn movie isn't an insult as it's a term also below.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prestige_picture

https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/popcorn_movie

Stop taking it personally as you must be able to look at the type of Oscar winning movies in the past like Parasite, One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, The Silence of the Lambs and acknowledge they are very, very different to the likes of Marvel, Shrek etc to see there's a reason why they aren't in the Oscar running.

@Link-Hero I'm both always serious and always trolling! ;p

I do think it's fair to say that artsy films shouldn't be seen as inherently better than more mainstream ones, and that there shouldn't be a hard line between Oscar-worthy prestige films and blockbusters, because some films can be emotionally intelligent as well as being entertaining the the masses. (It's like how books are split into 'literary fiction' and 'genre fiction', which has always annoyed me.)

But it's not like the Academy is entirely snobbish in that regard, given that Top Gun and Avatar are nominated for best picture for example. I mean, they definitely are biased towards more artsy films on the whole, but any committee that gives out awards is going to be biased one way or another. I just see the Oscars the same as I see any other award ceremony for any medium: it's interesting to see what wins but the main appeal is looking through the nominees to discover cool films I wouldn't have heard of otherwise (and will inevitably never get round to watching, but still).

@Ralizah I thought Tar was great myself. It's a tad slow and dense but Blanchett is just phenomenal in it.

It features Monster Hunter in it as well which I was surpised at.