Blu-ray Picks for the Week of July 21 – Watchmen: Director's Cut (Review)

Brenden — Tue, 21 Jul 2009 14:00:22 +0000

WATCHMEN: DIRECTOR’S CUT (2009, Blu-ray released July 21, 2009 – MSRP $35.99)

It’s two in the morning and I can’t stop watching the Watchmen Blu-ray disc. I got home late from work. Totally bagged. Ready to hit the sack minutes after kicking off my shoes. I had been seriously committed to sleep before finding the Watchmen disc in my mailbox. And now I’m done. I can’t tear myself away. Zack Snyder has me held enthralled, talking at me from the blackened studio of his Maximum Movie Mode, unveiling the secrets of his violent, masked universe.

I was all ready to slam this disc. I admit, I didn’t care for Watchmen in the theatre. The film has, to my mind, too many problems to be considered a success. While a lot of my issues with the theatrical cut still exist in the Director’s Cut featured on the Blu-ray disc (awkward dialogue, wooden performances, horrific music choices) I’m delighted to say that this version works a hell of a lot better! Wow. Consider me shocked. Watchmen actually needed that extra 30 minutes or so to breathe. To be honest, I had to hit the internet after watching to figure out where most of the “new” footage was found. To my surprise, a good percentage of it comes from simple scene extensions, longer takes, fewer cuts. That’s why it plays a bit better. It doesn’t cut abruptly away from a character moment. It lingers a bit longer and allows the weight of its world to sink in. In this three hour cut, the Watchmen actually works.

On top of enjoying the film itself, I was drawn in by Warner‘s new Maximum Movie Mode, where the director literally steps into the picture to walk you through a sequence. This works brilliantly well (watch a preview over at our previously posted article here) but only pops into the movie periodically. This is a crying shame. I could watch the entire film over again like this. When Zack isn’t on screen Maximizing the Movie, the rest of film plays through with pop-up facts, timelines, Picture-in-Picture interviews, comments and behind-the-scenes footage and offers to zap you out of the film to look at other content. I’ve never cared much for that, you know. As much as some of these features might interest me, I don’t ever want to leave the film to see them! There’s some great stuff there too, you know: artwork, designs, photos, focus point videos (which you can thankfully access outside of the “Mode”.) I just don’t want to have to stop the film to experience them. You hear me, Warner?! Give me the same content but never stop the show. That’s what Maximum Movie Mode is for. To display lots of stuff while the film rolls on.

Oh yeah. Almost forgot. The 3-Disc Watchmen: Director’s Cut set has more stuff to appreciate too! There are a handful of featurettes and things on the second disc and they’re great. Really nice stuff. None of it is going to blow your mind but its all a nice compliment to the bounty of information found on disc one. There’s also a digital copy of the film, found on its own, on a third disc. Yeah. I know. Digital Copy. Who cares…

For a full run-down of the discs features, read our detailed article here: Watchmen: Director’s Cut Detailed, includes Facebook Social Media Connectivity

ANOTHER PICK – CORALINE

I can’t speak intelligently about this Blu-ray disc as the studio didn’t send me a screener but I can tell you that I’ll be heading out directly after work to pick this up tonight. I loved Coraline in the theatres. It was my first 3-D experience. Yes, I’m serious. No, I haven’t been living in a cave.

I was dazzled by the tech, the polarized-lens 3-D thing. I thought it looked amazing without having to sacrifice the colours of the film itself, as red-blue anaglyph 3-D does. Sadly, that’s the only kind of 3-D we’ve got available to us at home at this time and the Coraline Blu-ray disc provides a version in that style. I don’t hesitate to tell you that I’ll be avoiding that version, however and enjoying the film for the first time in standard old, flat 2-D. I wonder how it will hold up?

ANOTHER PICK – 300: THE COMPLETE EXPERIENCE

I’m not going to try to sell you on 300. You either like the film or you don’t. If you’re here, reading this review, you probably think the movie’s all right and are no doubt familiar enough with the story, so I’m not going to bore you with it. It is, at its core, a two-hour fight scene. It’s an amazing battle, and incredible eye candy to be sure. But really, this sort of action epic, light on story, heavy on special effects is either your bag or you’re going to look elsewhere for your cinematic delights.

That out of the way, let me say WOW! I love this Blu-ray package. What an amazing job Warner has done with this set. Double-dip be damned, if you care at all about this film and are the sort of person who enjoys bonus features on a disc (I know there are two or three of you out there who couldn’t give a Spartan’s spear about them) then it’s worth ditching the old bare-bones one in favour of this, the 300: The Complete Experience.

Read my full review here: 300: The Complete Experience Blu-ray Disc Review

Neil Gaiman's Coraline Coming to Blu-ray in 3-D (UPDATED with Package Art)

Brenden — Thu, 14 May 2009 11:42:25 +0000

Coraline creeps through the portal to home video

Now, this is exactly the Blu-ray news that’ll get me out of bed early on a Thursday morning. Henry Selick‘s brilliant stop-motion adaptation of Neil Gaiman‘s Coraline is making it’s way to Blu-ray, with both 2-D and 3-D formats available on the same disc! This is fantastic! Coraline is the first film I ever had the pleasure to see in 3-D in the theatre and I have to say, I was so taken aback by the effect that I barely noticed the film itself for the first 15-20 minutes or so. After the technical be-dazzlement wore thin, I sat stunned, wholly taken in by the content alone. This was not only a fantastic film but an incredible theatrical experience for me. One I can’t wait to replicate in my home theatre.

(WARNING: SCIENCE ZONE AHEAD) But while details of the process used to bring 3-D to the Coraline Blu-ray are nowhere to be found at this early date we can safely assume that the four included pair of glasses will be of the old-school anaglyph (red/blue) variety as opposed to the more effective polarized lenses used in theaters. To bring this experience home, I would need to own a projector that will show the film at 72fps, a push-pull electro-optical modulator called a ZScreen in front of the lens, switching polarization and a special cinema screen to minimize depolarization and to reflect back as much light as possible to counter polarization losses. Sigh. With all the gadgets involved and the ridiculous expense attached I don’t see high quality 3-D happening in living rooms anytime soon for those of us not named Bill Gates. Until the time when a new technology succeeds and becomes an affordable solution for the home, we’ll have to settle for the same cheap alternative used on The Creature from the Black Lagoon over half a century ago. (NOTE: END OF SCIENCE ZONE)

With or without 3-D, the film is a triumph of animation and of story. And the Blu-ray disc looks set to please as well:

CORALINE
(July 21, 2009, MSRP $39.98)
2-D and 3-D Versions Included
4 Pairs of 3-D Glasses Included
Video: 1.85:1 1080p VC-1
Audio: 5.1 DTS-HD Master Audio

Special Features Include:

• Feature commentary with director Henry Selick and composer Bruno Coulais (on 2-D and 3-D versions)
• Deleted scenes
• The Making of ‘Coraline’
• Voicing the Characters
• Creepy Coraline
• D-Box
• U-Control (on 2-D version only):

• BD Live:

• Digital copy of 2-D version (expires July 31, 2010)

Link to details of Coraline Collector’s Edition DVD: www.nbcuniversalstore.com

To learn more about Coraline visit this excellent blog: EVIL BUTTONS
Review at FPS Magazine: Coraline Review

The Blu-ray Blog » Coraline

Blu-ray Picks for the Week of July 21 – Watchmen: Director's Cut (Review)

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