Sunshine
February 2008 Reviewed by: Doug Blackburn Format: Blu-ray	(all ratings out of 5): Overall Enjoyment Picture Quality Packaged Extras Sound Quality

The sun is weak. Earth is cold. The sun needs a reboot from the biggest bomb humanity can create and transport to the sun. Eight astronauts have to deliver the bomb whether it kills them or not. The previous attempt to deliver the bomb failed, and this is our last chance. The earth will die if this mission fails.

I've been a lifetime science-fiction enthusiast, and this movie is the real deal. Good story, good execution, thought-provoking action. Its kindred movies are 2001, 2010 (underrated!), Silent Running (missed by many), and Solaris. We don't get films like this one often enough, so it's quite gratifying when a new one appears, especially one as good as Sunshine.

When there's not some intentional manipulation/effect in progress, images are excellent, with superb high-def detail. But there are a fair number of sequences with severe blur or overexposure, but, thankfully, there's not a lot of shaky camera work. The MPEG-4/AVC transfer is excellent overall, but there are blocky artifacts in two motion sequences and occasional white spots from dust on the print used for the transfer. But these are so fleeting that, unless you are looking for them, you'll probably not notice they are there. This is very nearly a reference-quality release; in fact, there are sequences that use every bit of video performance any video display can muster. Had there been more reference-grade sequences, it would have been possible to upgrade the rating for the picture.

The sound quality is excellent, even though I was not able to hear the fully decoded DTS-HD Master Audio soundtrack. The two Blu-ray players available for the review could deliver only the core DTS file from the DTS-HD MA lossless soundtrack. But having heard the difference between the Dolby Digital core and Dolby TrueHD soundtracks, it's easy enough to imagine the improvements that would be present with the additional data from the full MA soundtrack. There are periods of intense soundtrack activity in all channels, with low-level sounds mixed in to provide a wealth of detail. LFE activity ranges from subtle background sounds to powerful reference-level effects. Music and effects ambience are  distributed well to all channels. The soundtrack is easily the equal of the powerful subject and situations. In fact, Sunshine wouldn't be done justice without a good sound system to hear everything this soundtrack has to deliver.

Two of the extras require a Blu-ray player with specification 1.1 (Final Standard) or 2.0 (Blu-ray Live) to access them. Neither of the two players I had was capable of showing these two extras. One is an advanced PIP commentary track, the other feature lets you become the sound engineer to some degree. This feature also requires a 5.1 audio system. If I could have accessed these extras and found them interesting, the rating for these may have been higher.

Director Danny Boyle's commentary track is excellent. It is loaded with detail, insight, and enthusiasm. He's very articulate and delivers a constant stream of interesting background about the movie, the actors, the screenplay, the effects, and the photography. This is one of the best director commentaries I've experienced. The second audio commentary track is by Dr. Brian Cox, the scientific/technical advisor to the film. This commentary is also among the most interesting I've heard on any disc. While Dr. Cox is a professor at the University of Manchester, the commentary is not science-intensive. In fact, most people are going to be able to understand just about everything in it.

The other extras are conventional and OK, but nothing special: 12 deleted scenes, given with or without commentary; production diaries that appeared online during production; trailers for Sunshine and several other Fox Blu-ray titles; and two short films made by other, presumably amateur, filmmakers. This is Danny Boyle's way of trying to get better visibility for these favorite short works of his. If this had been my disc, I would have picked other short films. Those included here are a bit over the top for my tastes.

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