Wah, tdy very quiet one... either everybody still in holiday mood or too busy, work all piling up...
Managed to catch
Lara Croft: Tomb Raider yesterday. Almost the entire movie was covered with grain even though the print master seemed to be in good condition. At this point how I wish that the 'avoidable' DNR technique should be applied on this one!

The grainy is not film-like & its becoming a distraction especially on darkly lit and interior scenes. The exterior daytime shot however are quite sharp & almost grainless.
I'm not sure whether this grainy effect was intentional or the film stock used was of low quality. It could've been a good sight, this movie... because the cinematography of Peter Menzies Jr. was quite good (I like his work on Incredible Hulk

). I suspected the reason being Paramount utilised MPEG-2 codec for their early releases like this movie, instead of the now preferred MPEG-4 AVC like the recent Iron Man and Indy 4 bds. Maybe this artifact may not be so apparent on a bigger, full HD TV.... or was it the other way round? (mine is 32" & HD-ready onli...

)
PQ: 3 out of 5 (AQ is nothing to comment, the DD 5.1 is pretty norm to me...)
Agreed with you, the PQ for this movie is so crappy that you might as well just watch the DVD version and won't notice difference. AQ is also a major disappointment. Probably it was released many moons back at a time when everyone was just beginning to experience HD.
I actually "forced" myself to finish the movie and very quickly sell it off before it loses its value. Just my 2 sen.