Blu Ray Screencaps from Tomb Raider – The Cradle Of Life.
Angelina Jolie brings Lara Croft to life and is perfect casting for this role, there are rumours that they are planning to bring Lara Croft back to the big screen with a younger actress but i would rather they tempt Miss Jolie back, if they must re-cast then i hope they find someone who can act as well as look good in the role.
The first film was entertaining but this film is superior and better filmed, this film also has a better music score and Angelina seems more assured in the role.
I originally was less critical of the films image quality but on a repeat viewing and with more experience at seeing faults i feel this release has had minor film grain reduction and there is also some minor compression artifacts on view especially at the beginning of the film. Grain reduction does not affect every scene but scenes which retain the grain look more detailed.
I feel some people do not understand the effects grain reduction can have on a blu ray release, you often reduce image quality by reducing grain, they just do not have the tools available to reduce grain and keep all the detail intact, grain in film is not evil, its essential and should be retained.
The minor issues with this disc could have been avoided by simply using a BD-50 and having a higher bitrate for difficult to encode scenes. Deja Vu as i think i said the same thing last week about another release but its worth repeating.
The sound mix is very good and although the Germans get a lossless track its dubbed into German and i dislike dubbed soundtracks, the english language dts track is 1509kbp/s and its a good sound mix, i feel that people sometimes dwell too much on the codec used and forget about important things such as how the track was mixed, its all in the sound mix folks and although i would prefer a lossless track i was happy with this discs sound quality, speech was clear, surrounds were active and engaging and bass was deep, its a good sound mix.
I think there will be another release of this film in an english language country that improves upon this release and will likely give us a full blown lossless track but for now i think this is a good release with some minor issues which affect overall quality.
View blu ray screencaps of Tomb Raider: The Cradle Of Life below. Click again for the full HD frame.
