Has anyone viewed this title yet? It was released on June 23, but I haven't heard a peep. Strange considering it was nominated for best foriegn film. I imagine the animation will be amazing on Blu.

Watching now. 97% on RT for what it is worth. We'll see.

Watched about 1/3rd so far.
It has been amazing and it looks awesome.
DVDTalk is claiming it is not a direct digital transfer (unheard of these days with animation) but it looks flawless to me.

It does look really good.

You can see stats and screen shots here: http://www.blu-raystats.com/Stats/Details.php?ifb=WaltzWithBashir_43396300392

looked really nice and imho also was an interesting movie

I saw this in the theater. A very interesting film, visually very impressive, I'm not sure how much of a benefit BD quality will bring to such a title as it's a fairly simple animation style, but as a film it is exceptional and highly recommended. It is a very forceful film, particularly when the animation completely breaks down at the end. Highly recommended viewing, I'm curious to see it on BD, but it isn't necessarily something that I would immediately assume would be hugely benefitted from an HD presentation compared to some other animated films (Pixar, etc).

I started a thread about this movie awhile ago. As you can tell I enjoyed it a lot.
http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showthread.php?t=1125760&highlight=

Highly recommended viewing, I'm curious to see it on BD, but it isn't necessarily something that I would immediately assume would be hugely benefitted from an HD presentation compared to some other animated films (Pixar, etc).
In some ways, the simple animation style makes the need for a high bitrate encode even greater. Any encoding artifacts are going to stick out like a sore thumb since there is no surrounding fine detail for them to "hide" in. Banding can be a huge problem as well with smooth gradients and flat colors, but I'm happy to say that Sony Pictures Classics did a bang up job on this (as they also did last year with Persepolis) and the picture is rock solid throughout with a healthy 28Mbps AVC encode.

Here is an example shot that looks deceptively simple, but may be more complicated in practice to represent perfectly - click for full-size PNG:

http://media.cinemasquid.com/blu-ray/titles/waltz-with-bashir/4771/screenshot-med-29.jpg (http://media.cinemasquid.com/blu-ray/titles/waltz-with-bashir/4771/screenshot-lrg-29.png)

You may be able to see that the downscaled JPEG version has already introduced some light color banding at the top of the picture which is not present in the full-size PNG version.

looked really nice and imho also was an interesting moviehttp://***************/9/P/i.jpg

It looks sensational! I haven't seen it but i'll take the word 'interesting' as a compliment :)

I had the UK disc, but sold it on. It looks marvellous in HD, the film just happened to do nothing for me.

In some ways, the simple animation style makes the need for a high bitrate encode even greater. Any encoding artifacts are going to stick out like a sore thumb since there is no surrounding fine detail for them to "hide" in. Banding can be a huge problem as well with smooth gradients and flat colors, but I'm happy to say that Sony Pictures Classics did a bang up job on this (as they also did last year with Persepolis) and the picture is rock solid throughout with a healthy 28Mbps AVC encode.

Here is an example shot that looks deceptively simple, but may be more complicated in practice to represent perfectly - click for full-size PNG:

http://media.cinemasquid.com/blu-ray/titles/waltz-with-bashir/4771/screenshot-med-29.jpg (http://media.cinemasquid.com/blu-ray/titles/waltz-with-bashir/4771/screenshot-lrg-29.png)

You may be able to see that the downscaled JPEG version has already introduced some light color banding at the top of the picture which is not present in the full-size PNG version.

highbitrate, definitely, but not necessarily higher spatial detail. Again, it's been a while since I saw this movie since I saw it in the theater, but I don't recall it being very detailed spatially, so the HD presentation wouldn't seem to be as crucial as other aspects. Seeing the grain in the screenshots though is another thing that a high bitrate would be a very good thing for, and actually a place where higher resolution would help. But all I meant is that the animation style is of a fairly low resolution compared to some others, and that the difference between an HD and SD presentation of this film might not be as significant as with some other content. But again, this is from very faded memory, which is not to be trusted as you know, if you've seen the film since memory is the central theme of the movie. ;)

Still, I am very excited to see this on BD, this was a visually very impressive film.

But all I meant is that the animation style is of a fairly low resolution compared to some others, and that the difference between an HD and SD presentation of this film might not be as significant as with some other content. .
While there are not intricate textures there are lots of (out)lines where without HD it's hopeless to get a clean and sharp version with minimal digital artifacts. SD simply can't do it.

But again, this is from very faded memory, which is not to be trusted as you know, if you've seen the film since memory is the central theme of the movie. ;)
Yes, your memory may have filled in some colored balloons and an amorphous image of your father holding your hand at the carnival to make it more acceptable to your personal dreamworld. :)

I guess my point was that although the video presentation is very compressible both spatially and in motion, it is almost in a sense too compressible in that it presents a great temptation to the standard algorithms to cut corners and introduce problems that are unfortunately so common in SD 2-D animation titles on DVD as mhafner rightly points out. I do not know the filmic details of the transfer and did not see this theatrically, but I would not put it outside the realm of possibility that some of the "grain" was added pre-encode to help keep the compression from becoming too aggressive.

However, I agree with you that a very acceptable SD translation of this film could be created with proper skill and care. Fortunately, I do not have to care about this and I am glad to have such a wonderful HD transfer which could hardly be improved upon IMHO (other than perhaps some slight and momentary banding during the "I remember shooting flares" scene towards the end of the film).

Well, I'll be the odd man out, and say that this movie just didn't work for me.

I remember reading the reviews for it when it first came out, thinking that it would be an interesting movie to watch, but I can't see what all the hoopla is about.

I thought it started out very good, examining the role of memory, experiences, and the mind, but it completely lost me about half-way through the movie.

I wasn't bothered that it was an animated documentary, and I'll agree that the end was literally eye-opening, but it wasn't engrossing, and fell short of it's promise.

With the high rankings on RT, I must be missing something.

Scott

Well I finally watched this last night and was very moved by the film. I didn't realize it was going to be a documentary going in, so that was interesting and made the film even more heartfelt and touching.

I thought the transfer was very well done in my opinion. There was a surprising amount of grain, it was great.

Anyways, I don't want to steal anyone's BR screencaps, but I don't have the ability to take BR screencaps at the moment. Here one shot comparing it to the German DVD (which looks awful by the way). Sorry I didn't get the exact same frame. The BD shot is from cinema squid:


German DVD
http://parkerday.com/screenshots/waltz_with_bashir/dvd_snapshot20090701101833.png

BR
http://parkerday.com/screenshots/waltz_with_bashir/screenshot-lrg-29.png

Anyways, I don't want to steal anyone's BR screencaps, but I don't have the ability to take BR screencaps at the moment. Here one shot comparing it to the German DVD (which looks awful by the way). Sorry I didn't get the exact same frame.
Thanks for the comparison shot. The DVD is definitely showing some problems with color banding/posterization.

I watched the BD last night.

Unfortunately, I get a kind of shadow image to the left of all the dark lines - it's kind of a faint dark magenta repeat of what's a little bit to the right of it. I have a 50" Sony GWII. I checked the Image Revision settings in the Setup menu, and Auto or 2 or 3 (indistinguishable) were still the best - 0 or 1 made a very pronounced shift in the image. I suspect it's a problem with my TV, since none of the screen shots here or at DVDBeaver display it.

(It shows very, very faintly on the Transformers BD - maybe it's as RPTV artefact/issue that I've just never really paid attention to before.)

But since my TV is out of its extended warranty, and we'll likely get a new one this fall, I don't want to pay $300 for a service call on a 6-year-old TV when it's a very minor problem. Any ideas of the cause or cure? I use a PS3 for my BD player.I felt the porn-on-TV scene should have made this movie X-rated; I'm glad my near-teen granddaughter didn't watch it with us; it's too bad, because the rest of the movie is something I think a mature pre-teen could handle (if he/she didn't get bored), esp. one who is interested in the modern history of Israel. I wish it had been done more discreetly. It's something viewers need to be warned about, IMO.

I didn't even get through half of this movie. It isn't my cup of tea per se but it was only a rental. PQ was very good for the most part as far as I got at least.

More than likely others have seen it since the last post which was quite awhile ago. Hopefully you enjoyed this movie.