Cinema Libre’s High-Def presentations of both Waiting For Dublin and Cannes Man are a bit of a bet in their own right. Waiting For Dublin sports a fairly-nice 1080i 1.85:1 transfer overall. Colors, contrast, and detail are set at “medium-well” at best, and the film is pretty-much devoid of any grain. Cannes Man, on the other hand, will have HD purists wondering what the hell they’ve been duped into buying. The film is extremely grainy — a byproduct of low-budget film stock and an attempt by filmmakers to make the movie look as “documentary-ish” as possible — and the 1080i 1.78:1 transfer hardly warrants a Blu-ray release.
Sound-wise, Waiting For Dublin sports a Dolby Digital 5.1 soundtrack that appears to be nothing more than a renamed 2.0 Stereo mix. It suffices, but only from the front. Cannes Man features a DTS-HD 2.0 mix that also makes little-to-no use of those rear speaker thingies. And, while you’d think that would be OK with such a talky flick, I found the mix to be so low that I had to really crank up the volume. I also found the fact that there are no subtitle options available with either title to be rather frustrating, but not as annoying as the lack of any special features: both releases boot up with a few trailers for other Cinema Libre flicks and the jump straight to the feature film. A generic menu is included on each movie.
The bottom line: I understand them wanting to release some catalogue titles to Blu-ray. I do. Alas, Cinema Libre’s issues of Waiting For Dublin and Cannes Man are a bit questionable (particularly the latter title).
Hell, maybe it was all part of a bet...
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