Skip Skip Skipping Along

So, anyway I'd finally had enough. My Return of the King DVD was skipping and stuttering and after 2 years of this with my Samsung DVD player I had been pushed to the edge.

Most times I wouldn't notice. Often the only problem was the layer change, but about 1 in 4 of my DVDs had noticable skipping issues. So, last week I invested in a new Philips DVD player.

I took a couple of DVDs to Media Markt with me to make sure the new player wouldn't have the same problems: Pandora's Box because my player doesn't like the second layer of this one and refuses to play the end, Bound because it has what looks like a physical fault that stopped some early scenes from playing and Finding Nemo, because the branching on that can cause problems.

They all checked out. Even Bound, which I was convinced wouldn't play on anything. But there I was in my local Media Markt watching hot lesbo action in the name of research.

What this means is that some DVD's of mine will have to come in for some critical re-evaluation, especially those that I didn't like so much at the time. What made me realise this was watching Infernal Affairs again over he weekend. This disc did skip but, until I watched it again, I didn't notice how much and I didn't realise how it had affected my enjoyment of the movie because, damn!, it's good.

My initial disappointment, partly, was that, being a Hong Kong movie, I expected a more John Woo type experience. Guns are rarely fired, however, and, when they are, it's not balletic in anyway.

The box compares the movie to Heat but the film it most reminds me of is Manhunter. It's a movie where the story is propelled by meetings, formal or otherwise, and tense moments are created by little more than countdowns on computer screens or tense little glances. There is action, but only that necessary to further the plot. The story, a spy in the Triads vs a spy on the Police force, works it's way through as many permutations of spy and counter-spy as it can, showing the dilemma both characters face by being a good man in a bad world and vice versa. Great tense stuff.