Blu-Ray must-haves & official Blu-Ray thread

Having recently purchased a PS3 I'm now interested in building a Blu-Ray collection. I currently have four pre-ordered:

Star Trek (2009 film)
Up
Audition
Fight Club

I already own Fight Club and Audition on DVD, but I love them so much that I want these copies as well (plus, Audition comes with some nice extras so it's not a waste). For the most part, though, I don't want to make a habit of re-buying things I already have.

As soon as Miyazaki/Ghibli films start getting the Blu-Ray treatment, I'll be all over them.

So, which releases should I look out for in the future, and which current ones have good extras or benefit significantly from the new format?

The Dark Knight
Black Hawk Down
Jarhead

2001 (can get it for $10)
T2 (Skynet edition) (can get get it cheap also)
Kagemusha
The Dark Knight
Dark City
Blade Runner
Baraka
Raging Bull

Also, I don't really think that animation is a such big deal on blu-ray, because there is less detail in animation. I watched my Dragon Ball Z dvds on my PS3, blown up on my 52" HDTV, and there were no noticable imperfections on the drawing lines and such.

Oh yeah, even though I said that, get Wall-E.

Well, DBZ isn't really an example of good animation. It doesn't look good in any format.

Digital animation will look great, no doubt, so Wall-E makes sense. But, I already have that on DVD.

I mentioned Miyazaki/Ghibli stuff because I still don't own much of it on DVD and at this point I figure I may as well wait for Blu-Rays.

- Planet Earth (with David Attenborough narrating). Absolutely essential.
- The Fountain
- 300 (excellent PQ)
- Corpse Bride
- The Dark Knight
- Children of Men
- No Country for Old Men
- The Prestige
- Blade Runner: Final Cut (see if you can get the 5-disc Collector's Edition).
- Coraline (basically in terms of animated films, stop-motion films are incredible, because you really get to notice the small details on the dolls. Same goes for Corpse Bride).

All of these I consider incredibly impressive in terms of picture quality, and almost make the films new again. Also, you might want to check out www.highdefdigest.com for your Blu-ray reviews.

EDIT: the Terminator 2 blu-ray (whatever edition) isn't very impressive, imo. It's definitely better than the DVD versions and there are a lot of extra neat features, but the PQ isn't representative of the potential picture quality of blu-rays.

As I've stated, stop-motion animation seems a big deal. In terms of "drawed" animation, I've only seen Paprika on blu-ray, and that was pretty impressive, albeit not awe-inspiring as the likes of Corpse Bride or Planet Earth.

You should get Paprika, its nice.

The ones I cherish most are;

Blade Runner
Heathers
Chungking Express

There are a ton of others but if I had to pick 3 from my collection it would be those.

Rathma can you give me some insight on Heathers and Chungking Express? I've seen you speak fondly of them here before and have seen others do so elsewhere, but I'm not familiar with them.

As for right now, I've chosen my first three and am about to order them. Gonna buy Blade Runner 5-disc, 2001, and Terminator 2. Surprisingly I do not own any of these on DVD.

Anything Pixar looks amazing.

I have all Pixar stuff on DVD already. I'm gonna hold off on re-buying it.

Heathers is a great black comedy with Winona Ryder and Christian Slater. It is the original Mean Girls, but much darker. None of the subject matter could be attempted today, it makes fun of teen suicide.

Chungking Express is a low budget hong kong film that centers around 2 separate love stories. It is basically a romance film for people who hate romance films. QT helped bring he film to North America, if you look on youtube there is a video of him talking about it.

I'll agree with you on stop-motion animation. Coraline looked amazing in 2-D (the 3-D is terrible compared to the theatrical release because of the red & green glasses).

I'm sure there will be another T2 release on blu-ray in the future, but if you don't like the visuals in the opening credits, in the hospital, or the apocalypse scene, then you have a very high bar in terms of visuals. I thought that shit looked amazing.

Haven't seen Paprika.

The Dark Knight
Pan's Labyrinth
Blade Runner
Hellboy 2
Sin City
2001: A Space Odyssey

The Dark Knight
Pirates of the Caribbean Trilogy
Matrix Trilogy
Bourne Trilogy

Those are some of my personal favorites.

I'm the only one listing Baraka. More people should get that; it has the best visual clarity I've seen on blu-ray.

I was disappointed with The Matrix on blu-ray.

I really need to see Baraka, but I haven't seen a good price yet; I've only come across ~$20 prices, which isn't prudent at all. I'll definitely get it soon, though.

-A Clockwork Orange. It's cliche to say this, but you really do see the movie the way it was meant to be seen.
-The Fifth Element
-Robocop... if you can get it cheap and don't have it on DVD, get it. Not the most visually impressive but there's no reason not to have it. It cost me $10.

I don't have it but I want to get Ratatouile.

I second:
Sin City
Corpse Bride (this one is unbelievable)
Blade Runner

I also ordered No Country For Old Men, Kagemusha, and Chungking Express.

I hope the Criterion Collection fleshes out on Blu-Ray at a reasonable rate. I trust them with my life. Great collection of films.

If you're into it Advent Children Complete is pretty epic on blu-ray. Adds a whole heap of actual plot depth, but unfortunately doesn't fix the gratuitousness of most of the second half of the film.

Also Reservoir Dogs.

Coraline looks pretty damn sweet. District 9 should also be a great movie to have on Blu-Ray.

That was the point of the film Or at least it was for me

Transformers
Watchmen
Iron Man
Wall-E
Independence Day

at least, those are the BDs that I have.

Wings of Desire is coming out soon on blu-ray.

Criterion Collection is still the best. I buy every new release they put out. I wish they could release Ran on blu-ray, but they couldn't get the rights for it. Fuck.

Batman Begins

Since there are so few Blu-Ray Criterions out thus far, I'd love to try and play catch up and start a library myself.

And there was me hoping for some continuation to my favourite game of all time that had some character depth and a coherant plot.

Fuck. All of these are coming out in September:

Requiem For a Dream
Hero
Crank 2
Labyrinth

This is a dangerous new habit.

Holy crap! Fantasia and Fantasia 2000 come out in March 2010. Oh man.

how did it take this long to mention Watchmen?

Exactly. I have a difficult time trying to stop buying blu-rays.

Some blu-rays I'm looking forward to:

The New World Director's Cut
Army of Darkness
Wings of Desire
Gomorrah
Heat
Taxi Driver (hopefully Martin Scorsese's commentary track from the laserdisc is on there)
Star Trek
Drag Me to Hell
Up
Stop Making Sense
Monsters Inc.

$$$$$

It's not a must have now since there's a super duper set coming out around Christmas. Plus, it's not a great movie.

It was an unbelievable movie.

I've got about 7 or 8, and I think The Shining is the most impressed I've been, visually.

Unless they gave it Lord of the Rings treatment, there was no way they wouldve been able to cram a 60 hour sequel into an hour and a half movie. Knowing this beforehand I resigned myself to the fact that it was going to be Final Fantasy VII-2 Lite with some amazing action sequences, and thats pretty much what it was. The true sequel (a la an RPG) is yet to come, if the "20 Year FF7 Project" and the ending of the movie are any indication.

Considering the state of Square at the moment, and all the amount of garbage that comes out with the FF name on it, I can see my childhood being ruined for the umpteenth time.

What pissed me off about Advent Children wasn't the fanservice or anything (i expected it after all, what could you do with 90 minutes?) it was how the characterization of almost the entire cast was different, if the characters didnt look similar to their video game counterparts I wouldn't know who was who.

They can poop all they want as long as I get my FF VII remake in either 2012 or 2017.

I DON'T WANT THEM TO GAY IT UP THOUGH.

It'll all be irritating voice acting, effeminate everyone, nasty ass music remixes and some faggy retuning of the materia system unless they get the original director and Nobuo back on task. I'll stick to my low polygon count and low res backgrounds kthxbai.

no country for old men has the best pq of all the blu-rays i own; (about 50ish)

isn't it pointless to get Blu-Rays that weren't filmed in 1080p? i mean I bought Predator, and it just looks like a video tape

I don't think so. Some stuff shot on good film looks really excellent in HD. Older movies that tried. Predator doesn't count.

Uhhhhh....no.

I haven't seen Predator on blu-ray, so I'm guessing that the video is grainy like the Lions Gate Paul Verhoeven releases. That's because they were transferred from a film source that wasn't cared for properly.

I dont think it works the way you think it works.

Films are filmed on film (lol) which is analogue and can be encoded to digital at any quality. Same as how you can rip vinyl at 3000kbps or more.

Gotcha, kinda forgot that they recorded things other than digitally.

Gladiator came out on Blu Ray yesterday but apparently the picture quality is terrible and it looks worse than the DVD. This makes me sad as I was really looking forward to this one.

I bought the Braveheart and Evil Dead II blu-rays yesterday. I haven't watched them yet, but Braveheart is a part of the "Sapphire Series" (whatever that means), just like Gladiator. I hope Braveheart is better than what you said about Gladiator.

The stills for Gladiator look really embarrassing. I have not seen it in motion but pretty much everyone says they are shit.

Braveheart appears to be getting favorable response.

Also, from another board, regarding the upcoming Hero release...

You'll have to let me know how Evil Dead 2 looks on blu-ray. I've thought about getting it, but I've read that there's really not a huge difference from DVD.