Dik Trom is not about dicks or anything sexual, which is unexpected for a Dutch film. Quite the opposite, Dik Trom is a charming PG-rated family film that is entertaining for children as well as adults. Based on children’s books by Cornelis Johannes Kieviet released in the early 1900s, this 2010 movie marks the eighth movie adaptation of Dik Trom. The director tries to get the message across that it’s okay to be fat if you are physically active and it’s okay to be a thin health-obsessed person if you eat junky food once in a while. The message is nothing new, but the movie is delivered in quite an entertaining visual spectacle! Imagine a mish-mash of George Miller’s Babe movies, Lass Hallstrom’s Chocolat, Tim Burton and Dr. Seuss – that’s Dik Trom!
Dik Trom, translated to Chubby Drums, is the name of the cherubic boy who’s the star of the movie. Dik is a pretty happy kid with two plump parents who love him dearly and feed him tasty food nonstop. Dik’s father is a very popular street food vendor (famous for selling hot dogs) in the town of Fatville. At a local sports competition, restaurant bigwigs offer Dik’s father a chance to show off his talent in an empty restaurant in the town of Thinville. The only catch is that if his restaurant doesn’t succeed after a month, he’ll have to close shop and go back to being a street food vendor. The Trom family packs their bags and head to Thinville which is like a town populated with families straight out of Michael Bay’s The Island. All dressed in very light shades, the townsfolk of Thinville constantly exercise to an extreme. Everyone is jogging in the street, using their treadmills on their porches, elementary school students sit at stationary bike desks, etc. At this point, we have entered Dr. Seuss land! The Trom family thinks that they can run a successful restaurant with ease until they realize that townsfolk are not only exercise fanatics but they are also health food freaks. Supermarkets are carb-free and meatless with aisles and aisles of fruit, vegetables, and water! The Trom family not only have a hard time figuring out how to get people into their restaurant, but they also have to deal with the town’s workout guru Sonja Slager who inspired the whole town to follow this health-obsessed madness as well as personal trainer Dolf who runs a popular gym next to the restaurant. Both Sonja and Dolf want the Trom’s restaurant to fail but they have a tougher time than they thought to rid the town of the Troms!
The Dutch Region-free Blu-ray is quite impressive. The 2.35:1 1080p is reference quality. The video is absolutely spotless. Colors are vivid and bright with no smearing whatsoever. The video is totally sharp and well contrasted. This is one of those movies where you feel like you have to wear sunglasses because the video is so three-dimensional and bright (but bright as in the director’s style of filming, not as a fault of the Blu-ray). The Dutch DTS-HD 5.1 is also excellent. Not quite reference quality as the video, but still very impressive. Dialogue is mixed slightly lower than sound effects and music, so there were times where I had to reach for the remote to monitor the volume. This mix makes pretty good use of all speakers and subwoofer. The English subtitles are perfect and the non-subtitled extras are a Making of, Casting of the child actors, a Flash mob dance promoting the film in a Holland mall, and a trailer to the movie.
Dik Trom is a visually spectacular family film worth seeing. I’ve been pretty disappointed with recent European films that are marketed only for their native country, but Dik Trom is the type of film that could be successful if it was marketed outside of the Netherlands. If you check out this excellent Blu-ray, I guarantee that you will be hungry while watching this cute film!
Detective Dee and the Mystery of the Phantom Flame is the best mainstream Hong Kong film of 2010. I didn’t think it would be as good as my other favorite Hong Kong film of 2010 – Gallants – but it is. Tsui Hark has gone back to what he does best – making extremely creative, fantasy, period-piece action films. After setting the bar for Chinese action movies with Zu Warriors From the Magic Mountain, Once Upon a Time in China 1 & 2, and The Blade, he has added another great film to his resume. Furthermore, he made this movie for something like 13 million dollars when this film looks like it cost 80 million dollars. Tsui Hark is creativity on tap – he knows how to spend his budget!
Detective Dee is a mystery movie so it’s best not to talk about the story, but let me say this – the problem with most Hong Kong mainstream action movies is that they forget to hire a good writer. I don’t think I can take another screenplay of “whoever finds the Golden Dragon Lotus martial arts ancient manual, that person will become the most powerful fighter in the world and will rule forever..different martial arts schools fighting each other to gain respect…etc.” It may be traditional in Hong Kong cinema, but enough is enough – the Shaw Bros. films went a bit overboard with this. It’s called overkill. So it is such a relief to get a Chinese action movie with a good story such as Crouching Tiger, Hero, House of Flying Daggers, Kung Fu Hustle, Ip Man, Gallants, and now Detective Dee. Tsui Hark is a smart man – he got a good screenwriter. Detective Dee is a totally entertaining, engrossing mystery movie that moves at such a graceful pace. The non-action scenes are just as intense as the action scenes. There is not one boring scene in this film. The camerawork, cinematography, costumes, sets, editing, acting, and story are all integrated together as a perfect mystery film. People have called this an Agatha Christie-type film. Maybe so, but I was thinking more along the lines of Young Sherlock Holmes (the only good Sherlock Holmes movie) mixed with Ridley Scott’s Legend. Tsui Hark is an amazing filmmaker. Dee may be considered a mainstream film, but this film is much more than that – it’s totally unique.
All the actors in this film are bad-ass as well. Andy Lau has gotten better and better as he ages. He is so believable as Detective Dee – I didn’t see him as an actor – he really was his character. Carina Lau was powerful as the emperor (she’s aged…but in a good way). And Bingbing Li was really impressive – showing an intensity and acting range that I hadn’t expected (certainly didn’t see it in The Forbidden Kingdom). The actor playing the albino was really good as well. All three of these actors have some crazy weaponry in this film. I don’t want to give it away though.
Detective Dee is the first Hong Kong movie I’ve ever seen in which I would want to see sequels. I’ve never craved franchises when watching Chinese movies, so this was the first time I ever had that feeling that I want more – Andy Lau should do one Detective Dee movie per year. His character is so interesting and entertaining, I want to see Tsui Hark do more of these.
The Hong Kong Region A blu-ray video and audio quality is almost perfect. What else is there to say? It’s a great blu-ray. And the English subtitles were excellent! The only extras are a 1080p English-subtitled trailer and teaser, as well as 4 short making ofs (non-subtitled).
Detective Dee is an original, totally entertaining mystery film. I usually don’t like buying mystery films, because they aren’t that exciting the second time around, but this movie is so visually entertaining, it’s totally rewatchable.
Is anyone here in denial that their “guilty pleasure” movies may actually be their favorite movies of all time? I like some movies which may be considered bad or not so critically acclaimed, but no matter how much I think that I like my more respectable films, I can’t stop thinking about or watching my guilty pleasure movies. Does anyone ever come home, stare at your video collection, try to figure out which movie to watch, and all that you can think of is your guilty pleasure movie that you may have watched a couple weeks ago? I feel bad that guilty pleasure films are more like “appetizers” – just something to watch until you figure out the “real film” you want to watch. While trying to frustratingly decide which film to watch or which film is due to watch according to the rotation, I always go back to my guilty pleasures. No matter how many times I watch them – such as Army of Darkness, Point Break, 300, Return of the Jedi, Temple of Doom, Chasing Amy, DeNiro’s The Fan, The Rock, Knocked Up, or Roberto Benigni’s Johnny Stecchino. I never really thought of these films so much. If someone talks about them, I would just refer them to as “entertaining”, but in actuality, they are better than the films I consider the best films ever. No matter how much you tell yourself that a film may be “mixed reviewed, having no substance, having no story,” you really can’t acknowledge those facts when it comes to a guilty pleasure film.
DOBERMANN is probably my favorite guilty pleasure film from France. I think there are tons of French films which are better – such as Amelie, Jean de Florette/Manon of the Spring, Camille Claudel, Queen Margot, French Cancan, L’Appartement, La Femme Nikita, Belle De Jour, Boudu Saved From Drowning – but they need your attention and one is not always in the mood for them. I am always in the mood for DOBERMANN.
DOBERMANN is nothing more than a live-action, ultra-violent anime cartoon. It’s just a cops-versus-criminals action movie. There isn’t any character development and there isn’t much story, but that’s not what the film is about. It’s not trying to be something it’s not – it’s just a cartoon with some extremely entertaining characters and amazingly filmed action, whether it be cliched or not. I don’t even know if the director is trying to spoof this genre of film. It doesn’t matter, because it’s just so entertaining. Jan Kounen is a such a great creative director. I think he’s France’s second most creative, eye candy-type director after Jean-Pierre Jeunet. If you love Vincent Cassell, Monica Bellucci, Tcheky Karyo, and Romain Duris, then you have to see them in this film!
DOBERMANN came out in 1997 and has been entertaining for as long as I’ve seen it. It’s not dated, and in fact, it’s a lot better than recent action movies which rely heavily on CGI, as it is currently known to hurt most new action movies. People want to see action movies with real sets and less CGI. That’s the thing nowadays. This movie is not only one of the best action movies I’ve ever seen, it’s also the shortest. It’s clocked at 103 minutes, but if you like this type of ultra-violent film, then it feels like a 30 minute movie. One of these days I’m going to list movies in which the actual time of the film feels shorter. DOBERMANN moves along at such a fast pace and intensity that it ends too quickly. It doesn’t feel incomplete – it’s just such a fast, entertaining flick. I would love to see Vincent Cassell and Monica Bellucci team up again for a sequel with Jan Kounen for the future.
DOBERMANN is like France’s FAST & THE FURIOUS, THE FIFTH ELEMENT, THE PATRIOT, MATRIX RELOADED or A KNIGHT’S TALE in the sense that it’s the action movie that France likes to release on multiple DVD releases throughout the years and on different formats. In France, it’s had about three special edition DVD releases, It’s been released on French Sony UMD for the PSP, and released on French Blu-Ray (no English subtitles though). This film is like their “sampler” action movie. If you want to test a movie on some new home theater in France, DOBERMANN is that type of film. And finally, I can enjoy this movie with this new DVD release.
As I’ve collected DVDs and blu-rays for some time now, I always fantasize about finding that unreleased, awesome quality DVD in some other country. I still can’t believe that there is no anamorphic DVD or blu-ray version of THE ABYSS. I really feel that there must be one country in the world that has that anamorphic version. So, as I’ve traveled around the world and researched online, I’m surprised to find certain DVDs that have better quality than their native country DVDs.
This NTSC Region-Free DVD is the real deal. It’s not a bootleg – it’s an official DVD from the Ukrainian DVD company AMALGAMA that is distributed for the Russian folk that live in North America. If you ever go to Russian neighborhoods in USA, such as in Brooklyn for me, you will find legitimate NTSC Region-Free DVDs as plentiful as their PAL DVD counterparts.
This DVD just has the basics but the basics are pretty much perfect. And I just want to remind others of all the other poor DVD versions of DOBERMANN over the years:
1. Hong Kong/Taiwanese NTSC DVD: awful full screen video with bad English subtitles.
2. United Kingdom PAL DVD: worse than VHS video quality, awful sound, fair English titles that I could barely read.
3. old Russian PAL DVD: interlaced anamorphic video quality was fair, sound was great, but NO ENGLISH SUBTITLES.
4. French PAL DVDs: great quality video and audio, but NO ENGLISH SUBTITLES.
I’ve got to say that this new DVD of DOBERMANN looks the same as the French anamorphic DVD counterparts. The progressive anamorphic 2.35:1 video quality is pretty damn awesome! The colors pop, the darks in the movie seem fine, the video shines and is crisp. This DVD looks amazing after what I’ve seen over the years with this DVD.
The DVD has the original French audio in Dolby Digital 5.1. It’s a great mix for home theaters. Like I said before, this is a French DVD sampler movie. Wait till you play the ass-kicking shoot-outs in this film. The surround sounds and subwoofer get a good work-out! This DOBERMANN DVD is my new home theater audio sampler that I will use along with GLADIATOR, MATRIX RELOADED, and KINGDOM OF HEAVEN. There is also a Russian DD 5.1 dub which I didn’t listen to.
The English subtitles on the Hong Kong/Taiwan and UK DVDs were awful and I remember being pissed off with them, either due to hardly being able to see them and/or because they just sucked. All that has changed with the English subtitles on this DVD – The English subtitles are clear to see, grammatically correct, and are not an issue as on the previous poor quality DVDs. The reason that the English subtitles are so good on this DVD is because I translated and edited the English subtitles for this company.
The extra is only a letterboxed non-anamorphic trailer of the movie (non-subtitled).
Upon starting the DVD, you have the choice of a Russian menu or an English menu which is nice.
Finally, finally, finally! An awesome movie finally released on a great DVD! An impressive DVD mastering by DVD company AMALGAMA! This movie ain’t THE DEPARTED or HEAT – It’s not trying to be that type of film. DOBERMANN is basically one of the best live-action cartoon movies I have ever seen. If you are grossed out by extreme cartoonish violence, then don’t watch this film! If you like watching movies that glorifies brutality in a stylishly-filmed way, then this DVD is an easy buy!
Oh how nice it is to count on the negative reviews of Indian movie critics! This is one of the poorest-reviewed movies which actually turned out to be better than expected. Indian movie critics just don’t like anything different than their usual “masala Bollywood lovey-dovey schmaltz”. I have no understanding why they have no interest at all in bizarre, weird, or fantasy/sci-fi flicks. This is what DRONA is: excellent direction and editing, weird, bizarre, action-packed with great choreography, Bollywood’s hottest actress Priyanka Chopra is in the film kicking ass, and it’s got the charm of a 1980s fantasy flick a la Highlander, Conan, or Excalibur without forcing it into mediocrity(Scorpion King 2 or Uwe Boll films).
DRONA is currently one of the most expensive Bollywood films and you can tell – the special effects, as well as the production, in this film are top-notch. Not an original story – we’ve seen it all before -but this time the film is based around Indian mythology, and Drona is a superhero that doesn’t quite know his powers yet. He goes on a journey to discover he’s “the one” (Neo) and has to stop evil in the process.
The positives in the film:
– excellent creative directing and editing
– the musical score was not the usual Bollywood-type music
– exciting car chase
– exciting Sikh martial arts, choreographed by the dude who worked on Troy, The Dark Knight, Stardust, and the Golden Compass
– amazing and crazy set designs
– just two locations – Prague and a desert
– good acting
– a nice pace (critics have called it boring…I call it “not being filmed” like an MTV quick-cut Bollywood action film)
The Eros NTSC Region-free DVD has pretty decent video and audio quality. The anamorphic video is very good, considering Eros’ poor quality past, and the DD 5.1 Hindi is awesome. The English subtitles are pretty good as well – not too many mistakes. For extras, there is a bunch of “making of” film clips running around a half hour total, and some trailers.
I see this movie as the equivalent of Japan’s CASSHERN. I think that DRONA is the better film, but I see them as similar-type films, in which they were both overhyped, huge expensive epic flicks, but disappointing. I can understand why people would be disappointed, but I’m totally not disappointed by DRONA though. It’s a great fantasy B-movie. What do people expect from this genre? I thought that Stardust was disappointing too, but for some reasons critics loved that film. That’s the thing with fantasy films – you can’t fault them for not being Oscar material. If you like fantasy films of the 1980s, then I highly recommend DRONA.
Finally. All I can say is finally. I have finally seen a real Bollywood film.
After all these years of thinking that I have been watching Bollywood films, I now understand that I haven’t been watching real Bollywood films until watching DARR. DARR is an example of a prototype Bollywood film that puts everything I’ve seen in the past to shame. All the typical Bollywood films that I have seen mainly from post-2000 have been put to shame. I started with Mission Kashmir and Devdas in the early 2000s to jump start my interest in Bollywood. But after those two films gave me a good first impression of Bollywood, I was usually disappointed there after – not that I wasn’t entertained by many Bollywood films, but I usually averaged about one impressive Indian film per year since the year 2000. I have always known that I should be watching pre-2000 Bollywood movies, but it’s hard for non-Indians to watch them due to the DVDs that have been available. I don’t consider myself too picky and I still enjoy watching DVDs, but pre-2000 Bollywood DVDs are pretty awful – the video and audio quality is fair to poor, but the main negative factor is that the English subtitles on pre-2000 Bollywood DVDs are painfully translated with grammatical errors. I can’t watch a movie with bad subtitles. I know that there may be many great old Bollywood films on DVD but I just can’t watch them due to those poor quality DVDs. And I do know it’s better than nothing to have a poor quality DVD with awful English subtitles, but I know that the poor DVD quality will kill the enjoyment of a potentially good Bollywood film for me.
But now here is Yash Chopra’s DARR released on blu-ray by Yash Raj Films. A perfect Bollywood movie released on a perfect Indian blu-ray. Finally. This blu-ray is why we all upgraded from DVD to blu-ray. And if you haven’t upgraded to blu-ray yet, this DARR blu-ray is the blu-ray that should change your mind if you are interested in Bollywood films.
I don’t know what to talk about first – the movie quality or the blu-ray quality first? DARR seems to be a Bollywood masterpiece that I would have assumed that many people would have been waiting for to come out on blu-ray for a while. I blind-bought this blu-ray based on postive reviews of the movie and blu-ray, but I didn’t sense that Bollywood fans were telling others online that this is a must-have blu-ray? I’m assuming that most people that buy Bollywood blu-rays would buy this blu-ray since this is a masterpiece. This film has ironically come out on blu-ray during the same time as the STAR WARS blu-ray. This film is like STAR WARS, a film that seems to have also influenced so many Bollywood films, but all these other Bollywood films cannot capture the essence and charm of what DARR has:
1. Yash Chopra.
Within the first couple frames, you know you are watching a real film, instead of a current Bollywood movie that’s trying real hard to be a real film. I always thought that Bollywood filmmakers were trying to copy Hollywood. Maybe. But i’m now starting to believe that current Bollywood filmmakers are trying to capture the filmmaking style of old Bollywood. I haven’t seen enough old Bollywood films to make a statement like that. I’ve seen DARR. I’ve seen DIL SE…and i can’t think of too many other 1990 Bollywood films I’ve seen. But I know that Yash Chopra represents Bollywood. This is the first Yash Chopra film I’ve seen. I feel like an idiot as if I have just watched a Steven Spielberg film for the first time at the age of 34. I have always heard of Yash Chopra and I always knew that I should be watching all of his films if I like Bollywood. And now they better put the rest of his films on blu-ray. I have a feeling I will now be blind-buying Dil To Pagal Hai and Veer-Zaara on Bollywood blu-ray next. I do hope they release more of his older films on blu-ray though. Yash Chopra is a real classy filmmaker. His direction is perfect. In DARR, the supposedly cheesy scenes in this film – such as some of the fight scenes, the 80s music, and the absolute gullibility of everyone of not knowing that Shah Rukh Khan’s character is the villain – are actually not cheesy at all. Whatever magic Yash Chopra does as a filmmaker makes all of his scenes gold. While these scenes would be typically cheesy or negative in another Bollywood film, it’s not found in DARR. It’s Bollywood charm.
2. The story.
DARR is interesting from beginning to end. It’s not even a rip-off of any Hollywood film. The ending may look similar to Cape Fear, but there have been many showdowns in a boat. One could have said it’s like a remake of Dead Calm (it’s not). And it’s not a remake of Cape Fear. I didn’t think that DARR was a remake of a Hollywood film. I thought that the movie is very Alfred Hitchcockian which is a plus, and I also thought of The Talented Mr. Ripley mainly due to both Damon and Khan playing memorable and similar creepy villains, but it’s far from being some knock off. DARR is original and it’s a special movie for Bollywood. I just get a kick out of the story that these two lovers just want to be happy, they want to sing and dance, but they can’t get this annoying creepy a-hole out of their lives who won’t let them frolick around the Swiss flower fields as in another Bollywood film. This film is like a cross between The Sound of Music and a horror movie. This is the first time I’ve seen a Bollywood film with violence that makes sense. I think other Bollywood filmmakers are confused and have been inspired by this film – they make a masala film for everyone, but the violence in those films just seems out of place. It’s as if they saw DARR and said, “hey, let’s throw some violence in our film too because it is possible to have a cheerful charming love story mixed with a violent story.” But in other Bollywood movies, it just seems out of place. And furthermore, Bollywood filmmakers seem to have loved Khan’s bad-ass, villainous performance so much that they think his character should inspire future protagonists in Bollywood films – STALKERS! His character shouldn’t be transferred to the good guys. His character should have inspired more three-dimensional villains in future Bollywood films. Khan’s creepy villainous character is so memorable that it’s as if other Bollywood filmmakers think that Khan’s perfect example of an antagonist should actually be transferred into protagonists (aka leading men…the good guys). No, don’t do that. It’s creepy. That’s one of the worst aspects of Bollywood screenwriting nowadays – making the protagonist (aka the good guy) the stalker? Stalk the girl and then she will finally fall in love with you? Please don’t do that, it’s poor writing. This is why the story is so good – it’s as if Yash Chopra is addressing that stalking protagonists in Bollywood films are creepy and weird.
3. Juhi Chawla.
I always thought that Ash and Madhuri Dixit were the main two female stars that are not only hot, attractive, and sexy, but also great actresses. I didn’t know of Juhi Chawla. I have only seen her before in Luck By Chance and I thought that she was pretty hot and looked like an older Ash, but I had no idea how talented she is. She is amazing in Darr. She’s not only an amazing performer, she surprisingly has a comic talent. The funniest scenes in the whole movie are subtle quick scenes which involve her – whether it is to kick off her shoe and lands on her head or to cross her eyes, she understands humor. So she’s hot, sexy, attractive, good actress, and funny – the perfect package. It’s a shame that she doesn’t get big roles anymore since Bollywood likes to use youngsters for their leading ladies. Her Kiran is a great character and it’s understandable why Khan’s character is obsessed with her.
4. Shah Rukh Khan.
“I love you, K-K-K Kiran!” I’ve never seen a more memorable three-dimensional villain in a Bollywood film. Now I understand why Shah Rukh Khan is a star. He should play more villain roles. It’s too bad he turned down a role to play a villain in a James Bond film, because he would be a great villain.
5. Music.
Great songs one after another. The best song is the final one with Shah Rukh Khan and Juhi Chawla.
6. Everything else is great in this film too – Sunny Deol is a reliable leading man, playing it cool and chill (as the way Bollywood leading men actors should be), the scenery especially of Switzerland (I loved the scenes of Geneva where I used to live), the action (the chase scenes in this movie are the best I’ve seen in a long time, as good as chase scenes in Point Break or the beginning of District B13), and the brother and sister-in-law whom are both actually funny too. It’s so nice for a change when “funny scenes” in Bollywood films are actually funny and not forced. I love the final, final scene in the movie which may be a bit jarring to some but just shows that it’s good to laugh about crazy and negative experiences that happened in our lives, even if it may seem to soon to laugh about them.
The Yash Raj Films blu-ray is just about as perfect as it can get. First, start off with the first beautiful front cover I’ve ever seen for a Bollywood blu-ray. That is how a blu-ray cover should be – a nice painting of imagery that captures the essence of the film. Second, the back cover shows clear blu-ray specs and a grammatically correct summary that doesn’t give away the movie as in most Indian blu-ray back cover summaries. Third, turn on the blu-ray to see a charming menu. Fourth, play the movie and watch what blu-ray is all about – perfect video quality. Nothing is more impressive than an old movie getting a perfect remastered video quality. The result is a movie with more 3D depth, sharper edges and more visible detail and textures. DARR has been brought back to life in 1080p. The image and colors are rock solid and clean. The audio is another story. Overall the audio is excellent, especially during the song scenes, but the dialogue has a sort of echo-sound. And it’s throughout the whole movie with both audio tracks. I’m not even sure which one is better sounding – the DTS-HD or the Dolby Tru track. And once again, the songs sound perfect. It’s just when characters are talking. It sounds like they are talking in some echo chamber. But it has that type of acceptable audio which one would hear on an older film. I’m assuming it sounds that way because the actors dubbed in the dialogue later? I’m not sure but the audio is totally solid other than that aspect.
There are no extras and the English subtitles on the movie are….drum roll…..perfect! Yay! This is one of the rare Indian home videos released by an Indian movie company that actually put perfect English subtitles on their blu-ray. Keep it up!
I’m going to say it again – Yash Chopra’s DARR is a prototype Bollywood film. It’s not a film to watch with kids, but this is a perfect Bollywood film and if you are a Bollywood movie fan, I don’t understand why you wouldn’t buy this blu-ray. If you are tired of the current trend of lazy filmmaking in Bollywood, DARR is an example of how a Bollywood movie should be filmed. DARR is a must-have!
couchpotatofarm 