Bambi (Movie Review)

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Nominated for three Academy Awards, including Best Music - Scoring of a Dramatic or Comedy Picture, Bambi is a true animated classic of the silver screen. Long before the public's introduction to Aladdin, The Lion King, or Finding Nemo, Walt Disney single-handedly conjured the full-length animated feature film out of nothing and into an enduring, well-respected genre - creating one family classic after another, starting with Snow White (1937) then Pinocchio (1940), Fantasia (1940), and Dumbo (1941) before creating this gem in 1942. Directed by David Hand, a longtime Disney animator and supervising director of Snow White And The Seven Dwarfs, Bambi is a masterpiece of color, motion, and the beauty of life. Its relative simplicity harkens to a time long past when such movies focused on symbolism, emotional breadth, and challenging the boundaries of artistic creativity, instead of catering to a perceived audience demographic. The result is a truly remarkable and memorable family experience...

Bambi begins with the forest birth of a young fawn (Bambi) who comes into the world surrounded by an anxious crowd of admirers. Hailed as the "great prince of the forest," Bambi is thrust into an exotic world of animal and plant life, complete with all the highs and lows experienced in the world of reality. One of the film's most powerful scenes (and the one most often referenced in regard to Bambi) is when the dreaded "man" (i.e. a band of hunters) enters the forest and kills Bambi's mother. Although the scene takes place off camera, Disney manages to convey all the emotional trauma of the event in the brevity of a few bold and powerful brushstrokes.

As Bambi seeks to recover from his mother's death, he must learn to grow from a fumbling fawn into a fearless buck. The charming scenes of Bambi bumbling across a frozen pond are soon overshadowed by the power of his maturation into a formidable leader. Assisting him on his journey is a parade of unique personalities, the most notable of whom is a rabbit named Thumper. Thumper's vocal velocity and eagerness to befriend Bambi threaten steal the show, but the growing deer never loses his deserved spotlight. Throw in a skunk named Flower and a beautiful doe named Faline (Bambi's love interest), and the film comes together in its own right, creating a combination of tragedy and triumph all ages can enjoy...

In stark contrast to its contemporary peers, Bambi is a refreshing exit from today's highly commercial animated features. Although Thumper provides the necessary comic relief, the film is more than just a deluge of juvenile one-liners - and boasts absolutely zero fart jokes. Instead, Bambi wraps a timeless story of a life's journey to adulthood in the majesty that is mother nature. Its ingenious illustration of a forest teeming with wildlife and the dangers encountered by its inhabitants is truly awe-inspiring. In short, Bambi has all the makings of a tinsel-town classic - one that should make today's Disney creations utterly green with envy...

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V For Vendetta, A Totalitarian Theme

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V for Vendetta is set in London with the plot dictating the near future, around 2038 with Britain being ruled by a totalitarian regime. It is a story about the fictional V, a freedom fighter who seeks to change the sociopolitical scenario while he simultaneously fights a battle for his own personal vendetta. The movie as most of you would know, is an adaptation of a graphic novel written by Alan Moore and David Lloyd V for Vendetta. The film is directed by James Mc Teigue and produced by Joel Silver and the Watchowski brothers.

The director says, “We felt the novel was very prescient to how the political climate is at the moment. It really showed what can happen when society is ruled by government, rather than the government being run as a voice of the people. I don't think it’s such a big leap to say that things like that can happen when leaders stop listening to the people.”

The author, Alan Moore as usual disassociates himself from the film as he does for other film adaptations of his work. The film differs in certain aspects of the book for example the anarchist themes, the drug sequences and the negative Christian imagery. The political message the movie sends across has also been modified a little in order to make it fit with the modern times. As expected, the movie got both critical appraise as well as harsh criticism by the both the sides of the political spectrum as it contains politically sensitive content. If you haven’t watched the movie yet, let us tell you it’s worth all the acclaim.

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LCD Flat Screen TVs or Plasma TV - Which to Choose

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Many people are unsure as to what the difference is between LCD flat screen TVs and plasma TV sets. In fact it is only the screen and the way that the the image is created that is different between these two, and even between them and your big cathode ray tube TV : the rest is pretty much the same.

Let's look first of all at what LCD and plasma really are. Most people are acquainted with LCD from the display on their calculators but have never come across plasma before. So what is plasma? It has nothing to do with the clear fluid in the blood, but is a fluid of a sort in that it is a gas (which is technically a fluid).

The plasma in a TV screen is formed from neon and xenon gases that, when electrically charged, turn into what are known as ions. As the energy passes through this ionic cloud of gas they start moving faster and faster, and the negative and positive particles that make up the ionic gas become attracted to each other. When they collide they release a photon of energy. A photon is akin to a 'particle' of energy that is part particle and part wave.

This plasma is contained between two plates of glass with a tiny space between them. The inside surface of the plate that you view is coated with hundreds of thousand of tiny cells, each of which are coated with phosphor, a substance that emits light when hit by a photon. These can be excited to produce either blue, green or red light, and which are excited by the photon is determined by the energy of that photon.

The TV signal is converted to electrical energy that excites the photons of the plasma gases to specific energies according to the color of the original subject, and so excite the particular set of phosphor needed to produce the color. As red, blue and yellow can produce just about every other color of the rainbow, so red, blue and green do the same with photon sensitive phosphors.

On the other hand, an LCD (liquid crystal display) screen is totally different, and much more difficult to explain. To put it in simple terms, a liquid crystal is one that is more liquid than solid, and whose structure can be oriented by electromagnetic fields to either block polarized light or allow it through. Polarized light is light that is arranged so that its vibrations occur only in one plane, so that it is easily filtered.

Basically an LCD works by cells either allowing light through or not. This is colored by the use of red, blue and green filters in the front of each pixel, so that if light is passed through a pixel it is colored. If it is not passed through, then it is not colored. Therefore, both systems work through the use of the same three colors of light, just as the old cathode ray color TV does. With CTR the screen also contains red, blue and green phosphors, just as with the plasma screen, which are excited by a beam of electrons aimed at each specific pixel.

The choice between plasma TVs and LCD flat screen TVs depends on your specific needs that are beyond the scope of this article, but suffice it to say that each has its own merits and drawbacks, and whichever you choose will likely be a compromise. The situation will remain thus for many years since High Definition TV is not dependent on any particular system, other than it it is certainly not the old CTR, or Cathode Ray Tube TV.

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A Plasma HDTV or an LCD TV Set - Which is Better?

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Though both LCD and plasma displays come in the form of slim flat panel displays, yet from a technology perspective, these two flat panel displays process the image in a totally different manner.

Plasma uses a matrix of tiny gas plasma cells that are charged by precise electrical voltages to emit light and hence to create the picture image. Liquid Crystal Displays (LCD) panels - work by trapping a liquid crystal solution between two sheets of polarized glass. When an electric current is passed through the liquid crystals, they change the polarization of the light passing through them in response to the electric voltage - as a result of which, more or less light is able to pass through the polarized glass on the face of the display.

It is not the scope of this article to go into the actual details of how these different display technologies process the image - after all, what really matters is not what is going behind the screen but rather how these different display technologies perform as a television screen. At the same time, it is worth taking note that it is these same differences that give each of these display technologies, its strengths and weaknesses, and that therefore render one more suitable than the other in certain circumstances.

The list below highlights the most important differences between these two flat panel display technologies:

Size: For the time being, collision between plasma television and LCD TV occur in the 40 to 50 inch screen range. In reality, most LCD TVs top out at around 50 inch; larger screen sizes are also available though choice is still very much limited. This means that for anything larger than 50-inch, a plasma display is your only real option if what you are after is a direct-view TV system. On the other hand, at the smaller end of spectrum, namely 15" to 36" TVs, LCD is the way to go if what you want is something stylish and slim (at under 4-inches in depth).

Price: Here, the playing field is leveling at a fast rate. Up to very recent, plasma was the obvious choice for all screen sizes where collision between these two technologies occurs; this is no longer the case. In general, plasma still leads by a good margin only at the bigger screen sizes - 50-inch and upwards. At the smaller end (up to 44-inch), the price advantage when it comes to plasma vs LCD TV sets, starts to shift more towards LCD TVs.

Overall Picture Performance: Both plasma and the latest TFT-LCD flat panel displays are capable of producing excellent picture quality - with bright, crisp clear images. However, plasma flat panel displays are more suitable for basic home theater usage than LCD. The gas cell structure within a plasma display is such that there is no light leaking between adjacent cells (or pixels). This renders plasma displays capable of displaying deeper blacks - hence more suited to television and movie scenes where lots of dark and light content is shown simultaneously.

In comparison, the nature of LCD technology - where a backlight shines through the LCD layer - means that it is hard for it to achieve true blacks (i.e. true absence of light) as there is always some light leakage from adjacent pixels.

This does not mean that LCD panel s are not suitable as TV screens; today's LCD TV sets make use of extreme high contrast panels that are capable of displaying very deep blacks, yet the latest plasma TV sets still have a slight edge.

Viewing-angle: What used to be a clear advantage for plasma displays is becoming more and more a non-issue especially with the latest generation of LCD televisions, however...

Do not always assume that viewing angle is no longer an issue when comparing plasma vs lcd TVs. The tendency - in particular with the cheaper LCD TV sets - is that the deterioration in picture quality with off-axis viewing is more accentuated with LCD than with plasma displays.

Image Retention and Burn-in: LCD TVs enjoys a technological advantage; they are not prone to burn-in, and image retention in LCD TVs - referred to as 'image sticking', is often completely reversible.

It is important to realize here that while burn-in in plasma displays and image sticking in LCD panels both lead to image retention, yet these are two completely different phenomena.

Burn-in is no longer much of a concern as it used to be with plasma televisions up to the recent past, especially for people with normal TV viewing requirements. Similarly, image sticking with LCD TVs is unlikely to take place under normal home entertainment use.

Viewing Distance: It seems that the pixel size and shape of an LCD panel renders a smoother picture than an equivalently sized plasma panel for the same pixel count.

This means that even if your viewing distance falls within the recommended distance of approximately twice the screen width for an HDTV, if this is less than at least nine feet, most probably you will be better off with an LCD TV.

Life-time: This is a non-issue with either technology. In fact, both plasma and LCD TV sets come with a quoted half-lifetime of around 60,000hrs. Even if this were just 30,000hrs, it would imply more than 14 years of use at 6 hours a day. And this when the average household in the US replaces the TV set every 7 years!

In other words, both plasma and LCD TV sets make use of extremely stable and reliable display technologies. As such, lifetime is more dependent upon manufacturer quality rather than upon display technology.

Response: Plasma TV sets carry an advantage here because even though LCD technology has improved to the extent that this is becoming less of an issue, yet LCD has still some way to go to achieve the same level of pixel response times as phosphor based displays.

Power Requirements: The advantage here goes to LCD panels as these consume less electricity. Estimates show that the use of LCD panels can result in some 30% power savings for the same screen size than plasma display.

Making the Choice

There is a market for both plasma and LCD displays - Plasma gives you a bigger screen for your dollar, deeper blacks, but then LCD do not suffer from burn-in and at the smaller end of the market (less than 40-inch screen size), LCD is your only way forward if you want something slim and stylish.

It is all a question of knowing what are the advantages and limitations of each with respect to your specific needs.

This article is an excerpt from a series of informative guides appearing on Practical-Home-Theater-Guide.COM under the Plasma and LCD TV sections of the site.

It covers only the very basics when it comes to compare plasma vs LCD TVs. There are a lot more considerations one has to take into account when selecting the display technology for a flat screen TV.

To find out more, please refer to the detailed guides appearing on the same site at http://www.practical-home-theater-guide.com/plasma-vs-lcd-TV.html.

Last updated on 10th May 2007. Copyright (c) 2004/2007 http://www.practical-home-theater-guide.com. All rights reserved.

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Panasonic Viera TH-42PZ85U 42-Inch Plasma

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Panasonic has released yet another top product to help compete with the other top Plasma Screen Televisions Manufacturers which keeps them up with the current competition. The Viera TH-42PZ85U 42-Inch 1080p Plasma is very functional and has everything you want in a High Definition Television. From the Connectivity to the top of the line screen coloring and amazingly fast moving lines keeping up with every type of television show, movie and even fast paced sporting events for one of the best Television viewing experiences available on the market.

The Panasonic Viera offers 1920 x 1080 Resolution, 1000000:1 Dynamic Contrast Ratio for the Brightest whites and darkest blacks, 4096 Shades of Gradation for spectacular Color Reproduction which is unheard of when looking into plasma televisions. All of these extras factored in together make the Panasonic Th-42PZ85U one of the top Plasma screen Televisions on the market and also make your Television viewing experience a great one. The colors are brighter and more crisp than most Plasma screens and at a much more affordable price than some of the top High Definition Televisions on the market.

A Panasonic Plasma screen Television combines anti-glare and anti-reflection technology with the natural light-emitting properties of plasma, to give you a super-wide viewing range with a crisp, beautiful image from almost any angle that you may be watching from. Another unique fact about this Televisions is that it is rated so high that it will last 100,000 hours, which is about 30 years of regular or 11 years of non-stop usage before the brightness of the display will start to go out, While other top Plasma Televisions will begin going out within 5 years of purchasing.

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