Instant Review: Something, Something, Something, Dark Side

What a gorgeous piece of work, absolutely stunning to look at. The only drawback, of course, is the total lack of any jokes. Nothing funny here. But very pretty.

** Captain Infinity

I saw the preview and it looked like it might be amusing...

"Captain Infinity" wrote in message news:[email]...

I had low expectations but was very pleasantly surprised by how funny it was. And yes, it is also very pretty. Too bad it wasn't widescreen.

Once Upon A Time, Arthur Lipscomb wrote:

We must have watched different versions. The one I saw wasn't funny, but it was widescreen.

** Captain Infinity

On Dec 25, 7:21 pm, Captain Infinity wrote:

Two versions of the DVD set?

"Captain Infinity" wrote in message news:[email]...

I rented the blu ray from Netflix. However, according to the box art, it's 1.33:1 http://www.dvdempire.com/Exec/v4_item.asp?item_id=1489748&tab=5&back=1&anchor=1#topoftabs

Maybe you had your TV set to zoom?

On Fri, 25 Dec 2009 19:21:10 -0500, Captain Infinity wrote:

I'm guessing you were watching an episode of Two and a Half Men.

Captain Infinity wrote:

On the version I have, the menu screen is 16:9 (I didn't check the extras), but the show itself is 4:3. Why bother with a Blu-Ray release if it's 4:3?

-- Don

In article , Don Del Grande wrote:

Why not? If you're talking about, for instance, STAR TREK (Original Flavor), it was finished on film, which is way higher quality than Blu-ray, but it's still 4:3. Why shouldn't 4:3 stuff be put on Blu-ray with side bars just as readily as CinemaScope stuff should be put on Blu-ray with top and bottom bars?

Anim8rFSK wrote:

The difference being, they didn't know that TV would someday be in 16:9 format when they made "Star Trek". They did when they made "Something Something Something Dark Side".

Besides - FG never struck me as having enough detail in its animation to need anything more than standard definition resolution. (Maybe if they did more with colors - for example, the way they changed the background at the start of the opening credits of "American Dad" - then HD would make sense.)

-- Don

"Don Del Grande" wrote in message news:[email]...

I think perhaps your conflating the quality of the picture with the aspect ratio. The two are unrelated. If there's a choice between superior picture quality and inferior picture quality I would never pick the inferior version. It's precisely because I care about such things that I have blu-ray in the first place. Yes I'd prefer it to be widescreen but just because it's 4:3 doesn't mean they should degrade the picture quality. And being 4:3 in no way degrades the picture quality.

Plus, if you've only ever seen the standard def version of something, you can't really say the high def version wouldn't be substantially better. I recently put in the blu-ray for The Prisoner (original series) and was stunned at how beautiful the picture looked. I never would have guessed the picture could look *that* good. That reminds me, I've been meaning to watch that set. Since there's nothing else on tonight...

Arthur Lipscomb wrote:

You can't really compare live action to animation in most cases when comparing HD to SD - live-action will always have enough detail (especially in colors) to make an HD version superior to an SD version. Family Guy, on the other hand, uses a lot of "blocks" of solid color (for example, how much variation is there in any character's skin or clothing color, or Brian's fur?) which would not see any significant improvement in HD.

That being said, there are some scenes in SSSDS that probably do look much better in HD - the outdoor scenes on Hoth come to mind.

-- Don

"Don Del Grande" wrote in message news:[email]...

Maybe I just have a better TV than you. Because even solid blocks of colors look better in high def than standard def on my TV. I'm not talking about upconverting a 480i image. But if the *original* image is rendered in high def, it *will* look better whether it's a solid block of color or not. Which as others have noted is why older programs shot on film look excellent in high def since the films were higher resolution than the blu ray.

The asteroid field sequence was pretty good too.

"Captain Infinity" wrote in message news:[email]...

Have to agree here. for a 54 minute show, there was only about 10 minutes (if even that much) that was amusing-to-somewhat-funny, and the rest was played pretty straight, and very boring.

the regular show is absolutely great, but Seth completely dropped the ball with this parody. hopefully he'll do better with the 3rd one they are already working on.

"devilthorn" wrote in message news:[email]...

I really liked the parts that were pretty straight. At times it was almost a shot for shot line for line remake of Empire except in (non wide screen) high def. I was able to enjoy it as a work of art even when they weren't telling jokes (although I *did* find it funny). It made me want the originals in high def even more. I also liked the comments and observations they would make about the originals; like Lando wearing Han's clothes at the end or when they *know* where Boba Fett is going, why does it take so long to rescue Han . The only parts I didn't like were when they deviated from the original script without replacing the deviation with a joke but those tended to more or less be cuts made for time.

"Arthur Lipscomb" wrote in message news:hh5cot$bhb$[email]...

i was just very disappointed that only about 10 minutes of the 54 minute run time was even remotely funny. if i wanted it straight, i'd just watch the original Empire.

Family Guy is supposed to be funny (at least most of the time.) if i wanted unfunny, i'd go watch The Cleveland Show.

"devilthorn" wrote in message news:[email]...

On this we agree!