While I'm not quite ready to compile those just yet, I am having fun at The Auteurs on the message boards throwing around music lists. Some folks are getting a head start with this type of thing here and here. Not only will us bloggers get the chance to dole out our annual best of the year lists in a couple months, but there's something called a decade that's about to end as well. This time, my anticipation is matched by pristine quality. For the 3rd time, "Heat" has served as my introductory choice for a new technology. The shadow of Pacino's body (and every other actor) flows into the rest of the image. something that standard DVD is just unable to differentiate. Hannah (Pacino) talks on the phone against the backdrop of downtown Los Angeles, his figure looks and feels set apart from the background. The other noticeable difference in the Blu Ray version of "Heat" is the way this new format defines the human body. For a film geek such as myself that revels in the details, I'm in cinematic heaven. Whereas the image before had been flat, this HD transfer vividly calls out the obscured lighting that (probably) had no intention of being noticed before. As the van moves down the street, one can see green lights in certain doorways and blue lights in other portions of the frame.
Only having seen this film on standard copies before, the array of colors picked up at night is startling. It's the little details that Blu Ray accentuates in "Heat". I certainly don't remember my sparse copies of HD-DVD movies looking/sounding this terrific. Granted, my HD-DVD choice about 15 months ago was the wrong one, but Blu Ray seems to trump even that format in clarity and sound. Until watching it on Blu Ray over the weekend- when I let out an 'oh my god' after seeing how much detail is present in the transfer- I'd never realized the glorious potentials of Blu Ray. The aerial scene in "Heat" (pictured below) as the camera begins on a long shot of downtown Los Angeles at night, then slowly arches downward to track one lone van crawling through the industrial section of town, is a feast of light and dark. Mann is a filmmaker who uses the fluorescent city to his extreme advantage. People who did not see these films shown on a digital projector were certainly missing the visual boat. I can remember not understanding the complaints leveled against him when he went completely Hi-def with "Collateral", "Miami Vice" and (most recently) "Public Enemies". If any filmmaker was destined for HD, it's Michael Mann.
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