Contact coming in October! - Page 6

Contact was also my first-ever DVD (though to be fair, I bought like 10 others later on in the same day).  I consider it a life well-lived.  I'm going to keep it though, for pure nostalgia.

I understood that and didn't mean to imply otherwise. 

"Lone Star" and "Frailty" are probably his two best films. The rest of course is history. "Failure to Launch" anyone?

"Contact" was also my very first DVD purchase. In fact it was the reason that I decided to spring for a player and become an early adopter of the format. I'll be picking up the Blu-ray, particularly now that the initial reports of quality problems seem to have been sorted out. Matthew McConaughey be damned.

Fully agree on Lone Star. Excellent movie, and Matthew was quite good. Don't think he was shirtless too often in the movie either. 

Never saw Frailty.

But how can you not appreciate "That's what I love about these high school girls, man...I get older...they stay the same age." 

Too late. Already cursed.

I'm unconvinced that it's the Post Office's problem; Amazon has recently been shipping USPS via FedEx. FedEx takes the packages to your nearest FedEx depot, and then delivers them to the local post office. Delays are happening somewhere in the FedEx/USPS interchange, and I'm inclined to think that FedEx is sitting on them (until they have enough to go bother visiting the USPS), not the USPS (who's going to your house no matter what each day).

But maybe that's just my one terrible experience with FedEx talking. ;)

Can't remember exactly now, but yes, Contact was also one of my first DVD purchases back in 1998(?) -- and I didn't actually have a player yet when I ordered it.

Agreed that Frailty, a Bill Paxton film -- and I used to only think of Paxton as the "game over, man" guy in Aliens  -- is very good and definitely too often overlooked.  Never saw Lone Star.

Failure to Launch is a fun enough, chick flick rental for the WAF, but for that kind of flick, I'd rather own Hitch instead.  


Definitely check out Frailty unless you don't like horror-type films at all -- this is not your typical horror flick, but is a bit more like Silence of the Lambs (to give an idea off the top of my head).

And yeah, Dazed and Confused is pretty good even if one might find it a tad dated (or generally do not like that kind of flick).  

_Man_

Actually,  when it comes to color, one's own eyes are not usually *THAT* good to trust.

It's one thing to say you can only appreciate/enjoy what you can personally see w/ your own eyes -- simply because it's your own experience in the end.  But it's quite another to generalize it like that as though that's the best way to judge actual PQ or color accuracy.

It's a quite well-known *fact* that our eyes cannot be trusted to determine color accuracy.  Anyone who's spent any significant amount of time in photography (whether for motion pictures or for stills) will know that.

That's why your ISF calibrator doesn't come to your home and just trust his eyes to calibrate your TV for $400-plus.  And that's also why we have the old saying Never The Same Color (Twice) -- or that web presentation of color pics is a precarious state of affairs...


Anyhoo, *VERY* glad to hear more input that there's probably nothing to worry about w/ this release.

_Man_

As the one who receives WB BD titles and then gets them out to the reviewers, I can say that you never know when they will arrive.  I have received them anywhere from two weeks before release to two weeks after.  Contact arrived a few days prior to release and Cameron is working on the review. 

My copy arrived today, going to watch it tomorrow night, looking very forward to it.

My review is up and it confirms the positives others have posted already.

I'm mostly MOR about the screencap subject, however I do think the extreme close up of the eye was a poor choice to illustrate anything. Yes, I noticed a color shift during the pullout, but it's for a fraction of a second. Plus, based on the information in the special features, there was a fair bit of CGI work done to that eye, both in the coloring of the iris and the integration of it with the opening scene material.

I thought the soundtrack on this disc lacked low end. Unfortunately, I'm stuck listening to the lossy track, but I recall the Dolby Digital DVD track feeling a bit more punchy on the low end. On this disc, the sound of the machine's rings revolving just didn't have the smae sonic impact that I remember from the original DVD. I also had to crank this disc up a lot to get any impact. I wish the hell that Warner would drop Dolby and start using DTS Master Audio. I'm stuck listening to the lossy tracks and as far as I'm concerned full bit rate DTS kicks Dolby Digital's sorry ass. 

Not a bad movie, but as I watched it I kept being reminded of what annoyed me about this flick when I first saw it. I'm not religious, but the constant Hollywood message that believers are all violent nutters gets old....well, all except the new age, touchy feely types like  McConaughey's character. Apparently, as far as Hollywood goes, those types are the voice of reason when it comes to spiritual matters. Still, it is one of those rare SF films; the kind with no firearms or evil aliens with nasty designs for the human race.  

I thoght it looked and sounded great.

that's cause he didn't take his shirt off in this film, (hence weakest link) ;).

"Sahara" is a guilty pleasure of mine.  

I believe he did. It's been a while since I saw this (haven't had a chance to watch my copy yet), but I'm pretty sure there's a scene where he is in bed (presumably undressed) while Jody gets up and puts her clothes on. I imagine he is visible shirtless. But, I can't recall for sure. So far, I've successfully blocked that image from memory.

LOL.  I can't remember, offhand, either, but I also don't remember him being *THAT* bad in Contact.  Maybe some of y'all are slightly biased against him due to what you had previously seen from him before ever watching this film.  When I first saw Contact, I didn't know a thing about him and hadn't seen him in anything else before.  Certainly, I wasn't thinking if he'd go shirtless or not during the course of the film -- can't say the same about Harvey Keitel in any of *his* films though.   

Now, I'm not arguing I liked his acting in Contact, but just that it wasn't *THAT* bad...

_Man_

It wasn't that his acting was completely horrible, it's that he was miscast. Badly. I never bought him as Joss. Not for a second. Part of that was due to his acting skill, or lack thereof, but part of it was because IMO McConaughey just wasn't the right choice to portray that character in the film.

Very impressive picture quality, and sound quality! Watched this last night and found it nothing short of impressive. Add to that, it's just flat out one of the best sci-fi films to date. If you're a fan of this film, pay no attention to those screen caps. I watched this on my 96" DIY screen from 6' away with an Epson 1080UB and a PS3. Most impressed!

Good to hear guys, I was hoping my copy would arrive today, but it didn't. Guess I'll have to watch Wizard of Oz instead, picked up the single disc Wal-Mart version today.

Agree on the PQ being fine. As someone who was burned on the Gladiator BD quality (those screencaps and reports of bad PQ were spot on) Contact does not suffer from any significant quality issues.

I do love the lossless track as I heard things in the mix I'd never heard before (particularly in the cacophonous sounds at the beginning of the movie). Also the violin sounds of the soundtrack underscoring the first audible sound of "the signal" was way more obvious to my ears.

Finally, I'm glad to be rid of the "world's worst layer change positioning" with this BD. Okay, so I may be exaggerating, but until I had a DVD player that played through the layer change seamlessly, the Contact DVD layer change always bugged me, especially since there is a fade-out either shortly before or after that scene [can't remember] that would have made for a much more seamless layer change experience.

Hmmm...  Can you offer more specifics about why you feel he was completely miscast?

I mean it's not like the character is anything remotely like a typical (Catholic or maybe Episcopalian?) priest AFAIK or any kind of remotely conservative minister afterall -- Rob Lowe is the one playing the extremely conservative minister caricature, and if not for the obvious stereotyping there, he would be at least as miscast as anyone in the film me thinks.  Basically, the Father Joss character seems thoroughly liberal as far as ministers go -- and he'd probably actually have to be gay to be anymore liberal than he was in the film.

_Man_

I always thought McConaughey was very good as Joss.  I'm not sure, but this might have been only the first or second movie I'd seen him in, so I didn't have any preconceived notions based upon other roles.  Anyway, I thought he did a fine job in the role, and held his own in supporting Foster.

Doug

I hadn't seen him in anything but Lone Star and A Time To Kill up until I saw Contact in theatrical release. I just never liked the guy as an actor very much, but that isn't the main thing that bugs me about his role as Joss. IMO he just doesn't fit the character. Everyone has their own likes and dislikes. :)

I too wondered out loud (earlier) whether that's not part of the (underlying) issue for some viewers.  I can't recall watching any of his movies before Contact, so I had no clue about him (nor the mentions about going "shirtless", etc. until much later ).  It's really one of those things can have subtle enough impact on one's POV -- again, not saying I thought he was good, but just saying I didn't think he was that bad.



So IOW, his past history might've impacted your view of the (mis)casting choice then?  Truth is the script itself (as presented on screen) kinda requires someone who could pass for a highly liberal minister w/ probably a frat boy past-life before becoming a minister.  I really don't see it as much of a miscast.  If there's a real problem in that area, then it's actually the script itself calling for the various characters to be the way they are, which in turn led to the casting of McCanaughey and Lowe (among some others).

I mean it's not like McCanaughey was asked to do anything he couldn't do fine enough -- unless his acting/on-screen presence caused Zemeckis to alter or excise some important scenes.  The film's story wasn't really set up for him to convince the world stage (in the story itself) about faith.  It was only set up for him to *help* persuade Ellie *alone* -- and he was only able to nudge her just a slight tad in that direction, not much more.  It was Ellie alone who would ironically in turn be the one to provide the voice of reason about what faith in the real truth might really mean in the skeptical, modern day, scientifically driven world.

The film was centrally/primarily about Ellie's life journey (and how her faith or lack thereof and her understanding about faith, etc. evolved) leaving everybody else as at best tertiary characters, not even secondary, IMHO -- well, Father Joss would come closes to 2ndary because of "screen time", but he's really not quite that much more than the equivalent of several different characters and events combined to factor into Ellie's life journey.

Honestly, that's really the *only* way I can reconcile all the various caricatures, archetypes, etc. in the film and still take it seriously (rather than be offended, etc.).  And I guess it seems realistic enough that a very liberal minister (w/ a potential "frat boy" past-life) would be the one to get closest to Ellie by the end of the story -- and still probably not really quite *that* close.  And it's not like Tommy Lee Jones or whoever else could've been all that much more convincing in such a role (w/out altering the character itself) afterall...

_Man_
Edited by ManW_TheUncool - 10/13/09 at 11:36am

Man, why are you trying so hard to convince me that I SHOULD like McConaughey in Contact when I've said multiple times that I do not? That's simply my opinion and I've spelled out why I, PERSONALLY, feel that way. End of story. Your opinion is obviously different and you're certainly entitled to it. There is no debate here.

Sorry.  I do tend to write out loud and carry on like that -- and also just assumed we (in general, not just you and I) were having dialog/discussion on the subject.  I guess it's just part of my "process" (or perhaps, neurosis  ).  I think my wife sometimes calls it "diarrhea of the mouth" or some such.

_Man_

That's a great exchange!    You guys made my day.