With nothing better to watch on Saturday, I flipped over to HBO-HD and decided to watch Baggar Vance. I had never seen it before, didn't know much about it. I typically try to stay away from the Bob Redford "artsy-fartsy" flicks, but since Will Smith was in this one (who I enjoy), I thought I'd give it a view. (BTW, was this Jack Lemmon's last film appearance?)
I thought it was great. PQ was what HD film is supposed to look like. I thought the dynamic range of the soundtrack had way too many ups and downs, but that's probably the way it was mixed. Since it was late night viewing and the kids were in bed, I cranked the center channel to keep the total sound down, which didn't give me much chance to hear anything from the rears.
I was curious about the AOR, since HBO is notorious for reformatting films to fit a 16x9 frame. But from I could tell, it didn't look like I was missing much. Everything was framed reasonably well. I particularly liked the camera shots of the main character "finding the field" and the shots from the ball's perspective. Interesting camera work!
All in all, I thought this was a great presentation. I hate to watch movies "just because they are in HD", but I wasn't disappointed this time. I wish all of HBO's HD presentations looked this good.