Software Features

With Charlie’s Angels and Terminator Salvation on his resume, McG certainly knows hand to handle action movies – and his latest flick, This Means War, has just hit Blu-ray in the UK promising more of the same. Starring Tom Hardy and Chris Pine as rival CIA operatives fighting over the same woman, it’s perfect popcorn fodder. Just how we like it...

During the golden age of cinema, the so-called ‘studio system’ ensured Hollywood could monopolise the biggest stars of the era to guarantee box office returns. Today, audiences are more fickle. Even A-listers can be a gamble. If you want to put bums on seats, shift Blu-rays by the bucket load and rack up those streaming receipts, then you need heroes. Really big ones, preferably with iron suits, hammers and shields. And if you’ve got a Hulk, that helps too.

To demonstrate that there’s still life after death, a technique that Christopher Lee perfected in many a Hammer Dracula film, the studio whose byword was ‘horror’ is now enjoying a resurgence of interest in its movies thanks to Blu-ray. Now the battle between vampire and priest, alien and scientist, monster and creator can be enjoyed in high-definition. Even the infamous Eastmancolor looks better than it did at our local ABC cinemas during the 1960s.

The screech of a TIE Fighter as it flies across the surface of the Death Star. The electrical hum of a lightsaber. Darth Vader’s mechanical breathing. These are the sounds of Star Wars, sounds that have reverberated around home cinemas across the world for decades. With the Star Wars Saga finally making the leap to the ultimate home entertainment format, Anton van Beek caught up with the man charged with remixing these legendary soundtracks for Blu-ray, Skywalker Sound supervising sound editor Matthew Wood…

X-Men: First Class recently arrived on Blu-ray. Was there any discussion about filming it in 3D?