Sony has released three pretty stellar documentaries on Blu-ray in the last month. Here’s a quick look at each one…
IT MIGHT GET LOUD (2008, Blu-ray released December 22, 2009 – MSRP $37.95)
A lot of my pals went to see It Might Get Loud in the theatre a few months ago when it was released. Their reviews were far from glowing. I, therefore, entered into screening it without much hope for enjoyment. Imagine my shock when I found myself transfixed by the film!
It Might Get Loud won’t be for everyone. I understand that. But it’s a fantastic chronical of the lives and the creative processes of three very different musicians – Jimmy Page (Led Zepplin), The Edge (U2) and Jack White (The White Stripes). More biographical than musical insight is to be found here, so be warned if that’s what you come seeking. Those just sitting down for an entertaining ride will be pleased.
The Blu-ray looks pretty good and sounds like a million bucks! Image quality is a touch uneven but overall quite nice. You’ll want to make sure you turn the volume waaay up for this one, though. The DTS-HD MA 5.1 audio track is awesome! Special features include an excellent commentary track with director David Guggenheim and producers Lesley Chilcott and Thomas Tull, a 38-minute press conference with all the musicians, 26-minutes of deleted scenes and BD-Live functionality.
DOGTOWN AND Z-BOYS (2001, Blu-ray released January 5, 2010 – MSRP $24.95)
Dogtown and Z-Boys is an award winning doc about a group of troubled kids who managed to revolutionize the sport of skateboarding. In some ways, they actually created it, as we know it today.
The film is assembled from a ridiculous treasure trove of vintage footage and modern interviews by original Z-Boy-turned-director Stacey Peralta. That’s why this thing feels so raw and honest and inside. Peralta was there. He was a part of it. And he uses that to illicit truly candid comments from his skating contemporaries.
As a result of the varied nature of the source material, Dogtown and Z-Boys is not the slickest Blu-ray presentation on the block. Sony has done their best with the 4:3 aspect ratio film but it just can’t measure up to slicker productions like It Might Get Loud or Peralta’s follow-up, Riding Giants. Thankfully, the disc makes up for it in its bountiful special features:
- All new look at Tony Alva’s art show
- Evolution of Pool Skating with Tony Alva and Bucky Lasek
- Commentary with Director Stacey Peralta and Editor Paul Crowder
- Lords of Dogtown Webisodes
- Three Featurettes
- Bicknell Hill Session
- Jeff Ho 2000
- Mar Vista 2000
- Multi-Angle Freestyle Branching Scenes
- Deleted Scenes
- Alternate Ending
RIDING GIANTS (2004, Blu-ray released January 5, 2010 – MSRP $24.95)
Riding Giants seems in a lot of respects to be a kind of sequel to Dogtown. Okay, sequel isn’t the right word. It’s an extension of the material director Peralta obsesses over. The material he knows the best – men and their boards. Only this time, those boards trade the safety of wheels and dry land for the power and the danger of conquering the most colossal waves on Earth.
Riding Giants is, for all intents and purposes the modern history of surfing. Peralta covers decades of activity in the sport, focusing on the stars of every era. Thankfully for the production, most are still alive and able to give colourful commentary, spicing up the storytelling considerably. Greg Noll, surfing star of the 1940s makes the film with his unhinged, expletive riddled comments and stories, as far as I’m concerned.
Like Peralta’s Dogtown, Riding Giants uses footage from a variety of sources to tell its story. The resulting image on the Blu-ray is far more even than the Dogtown disc and much more impressive overall. But still far from perfect. I don’t believe there’s anything wrong with the encode here. It’s simply the nature of the footage. The DTS-HD MA 5.1 soundtrack is quite immersive, however. You might sometimes feel like you’re on the beach!
Rounding out the disc package are a host of special features:
- Commentary with Director Stacey Peralta and Editor Paul Crowder
- Commentary with Writer Sam George and Surfers Greg Noll, Jeff Clark and Laird Hamilton
- Two Featurettes
- Making-of Riding Giants
- Fuel TV’s Blue Carpet Special
- Deleted Scenes
- Surf Talk
- Wave Complexity
- Half Moon Bay
- Original Ending
- End Credits Sequence
[...] films. Having worked on such programs as The Shield and Alias and directed the whimsical It Might Get Loud, he is best known as the director of An Inconvenient Truth. This time he takes on the educational [...]