Black Swan (DVD + Digital Copy) (2010)

I had already seen Black Swan at the cinema and was blown away. For the record, I don't know the first thing about ballet, I took my wife to see the film as I knew she was very keen already. The film is something special, dark, intense and gripping, Portman is breathlessly excellent throughout - even if you think this would not be your sort of film - STILL GO AND SEE IT!The blu-ray transfer is sharp - despite the often grainy shots - as it was intended, to capture the visceral, bone-grinding intensity of ballet in its warts-and-all depiction. The sound to is crisp and adds to the several intense, almost hallucenagenic scenes.The direction is tight and imtimate, the cast is consistantly excellent (including a welcome reappearance by Winona Ryder) and the film itself is a rare beast - beautiful,dark and gripping all the way through.A rare find. Go and see it.

I started to watch this with some trepidation, having read loads of negative reviews. Within a few minutes, I was smitten. The movie takes you on an exhilarating rollercoaster ride - boring, it ain't!I'm not a fan of horror movies as such but I do enjoy sophisticated chillers. I rank this film up there with "The Others","Rosemary's Baby","Repulsion" and "Dead of Night". Totally unforgettable! Also, I've never seen a movie so seeped with images of menstruation since "Company of Wolves" (a film I do regard as slow and pretentious). I felt that the images of blood compounded the true unspoken fears being experienced by the child-woman, Nina. I had my suspicions that her physical (and hence, emotional) development was being retarded just as had happened to countless Eastern European gymnasts in Cold War times.As to Nina, I felt that Natalie Portman was beautiful to look at in the role but did not give (for me) an Oscar-winning performance. Like Keira Knightley, she is only capable of managing a few facial expressions, though that might be the reason why she was cast in this particular role. The frozen child-woman again. Still, I'm awarding the movie 5 stars, and heck, I might even attend a ballet soon!

Film: Black Swan is an erotic psychological thriller, portraying the main character Nina (Natalie Portman in her Oscar-winning performance) as the mentally fragile ballerina, who has just been cast as the Swan Queen in a New York City ballet company's production of Swan Lake. The film is all about Nina's desperate attempts to achieve artistic perfection in her new-found dream role, which consumes her and begins to disintegrate her sanity. Imagine Repulsion [DVD] [1965] meets The Red Shoes - Restored [DVD], with elements of David Cronenberg-style body horror sprinkled on top, and the result is Black Swan. The film's intense psychological nature won't be to everyone's taste, and it really does get more and more disturbing the more you watch, as you are delving into the psyche of a someone whose mind is unraveling by the minute. Darren Aronofsky's direction is bold and Portman's performance is the finest of her already-impressive career, and the final 30-40 minutes is nothing short of wild. Black Swan gets under your skin, but it is thrilling from start to finish, and I cannot recommend it enough.Blu-Ray Quality: A lot of people have been complaining that the Blu-Ray transfer is bad. That is wrong. Yes, the picture is grainy and dull compared to other recent Blu-Ray releases, but this is not because of the transfer, but because of the way the film was shot. Aronofsky and his team did not shoot using a 35mm lense camera, and instead shot the film mostly using a handheld 16mm and video-capable DSLRs. 16mm cameras yield a grainier and softer picture, especially in dark shots. Why did they use a 16mm camera if it is going to look more grainy? There are numerous possible reasons: 16mm cameras are much cheaper (Black Swan was filmed on an extremely tight budget of $13 million), they are smaller and hence easier to carry around (Black Swan was mostly filmed hand-held), and maybe Aronofsky preferred the intimate, grainy, documentary-like look of the picture. Like it or not, this is the way the film was shot, and has nothing to do with the blu-ray transfer itself. The blu-ray does well in staying true to the original source material visually, whilst the sound effects are highly impressive (esp during those tense horror-moments).Extras: I would have given this Blu-Ray a 5 had it not been for a disappointing lack of extras. The only extra feature of note is a badly edited 'making of' documentary titled 'Metamorphosis', and the rest are just 3-5 minute interviews with the cast and crew about their characters, filming, preparation etc. Nothing too in depth. No deleted scenes, no alternate edits, no outtakes and barely any pre-production footage.