| Video Roundup February 2008
Recent Hi-Def Releases
Lost: The Complete Third Season
(Buena Vista Home Entertainment, Blu-ray) ****1/2
 The pilot episode of Lost
aired in July 2004, and since then TV hasn’t been the same. Everywhere you look or
listen, you seem to hear something new about this cliffhanger series. If you’ve
managed to avoid the hype and the buzz, the story concerns a group of survivors of an
airliner crash who have been stranded on an island somewhere in the South Pacific.
Mysteries and discoveries quickly evolve, involving the island itself and the
survivors’ individual histories. Typically, an episode involves an issue of the
survivors’ present condition, and flashbacks will fill in those parts of a
character’s background that relate to the problem at hand. The first two seasons
looked excellent on regular DVD, but this Blu-ray edition of The Complete Third Season
is breathtaking. The lush jungle greens, the blue of the sky, the ocean’s shifting
hues -- all look rich, realistic, and three-dimensional. Most of the long- and
medium-range shots look like picture postcards. Needless to say, the survivors can only do
so much about their looks, and all the stubbled beards, furrowed brows, and out-of-place
hair can be seen with startling clarity. The soundtrack makes good use (for TV) of the
surround channels, and has excellent frequency response and dynamic range. The catch is
that there’s no point in watching the six discs of season 3 without first watching
seasons 1 and 2. Otherwise, you, too, will be hopelessly lost. Perhaps those will come out
on Blu-ray before long.
Mr. & Mrs. Smith (20th Century Fox,
Blu-ray) ***
 John and Jane Smith (Brad Pitt and
Angelina Jolie) look to be the picture-perfect couple, but Mr. & Mrs. Smith
opens with them in marriage counseling, so we know that all is not as it seems. It turns
out that each works as a well-paid assassin, though for competing firms. The first part of
the movie is quite clever and charming, but when each is assigned to take out the other,
the script goes over the top. If you can accept the premise, you’ll have a lot of
fun, but this is not a thinking person’s movie. The video transfer isn’t
perfect, but it’s very close. Different color schemes predominate in certain scenes
-- a steely blue for a corporate office, a golden glow for the desert. But all colors seem
vivid and natural, and in sum very pleasing, as is the large amount of detail. The audio
mix is even better, close to perfect. Fox’s high-definition soundtrack is encoded in
DTS-HD Master Audio, which most of us can’t yet decode. I get the core, however, and
even that is very impressive. Lots of bullets are shot and ricochet in this film, and the
sound of each is precisely placed. But the quieter sounds are handled just as carefully;
this is a very intricate mix. And while the sounds, whether soft or loud, come from the
soundfield’s entire 360 degrees, the dialogue is entirely intelligible 100% of the
time. There are three commentaries and deleted scenes.
Ocean’s Thirteen (Warner Home Video, HD
DVD/DVD) ***
 This edition in the Danny Ocean
series is a competently made heist film that’s better than its predecessor, Ocean’s
Twelve. It’s studded with stars who seem to be enjoying themselves and each
other’s company, among them George Clooney, Brad Pitt, Matt Damon, Andy Garcia, Don
Cheadle, and Bernie Mac. This time out they plot to turn the opening of Willy Banks’
new casino into a disaster. Al Pacino plays Banks to the hilt, and Ellen Barkin is his
sexy assistant. The transfer is very good, though that might not be obvious at first;
director Steven Soderbergh has opted for maximally distorted colors and images. Oranges
predominate, and flesh tones are seldom entirely natural. But every once in a while
there’s a scene with such incredible detail -- say, of the interior of the casino --
that there’s no doubt that you’re watching a high-definition transfer. The other
side of this combo disc includes the film movie in SD DVD. The audio tracks are mostly
front and center, but in some scenes, such as one featuring a simulated earthquake, the
subwoofer and rear channels kick in to make quite a ruckus. Extras include an interesting
study of four actual heists.
Oldboy (Tartan Video Asia Extreme Series,
Blu-ray) ****
 This might be the ultimate revenge
movie. A man is kidnapped and locked away in a room for 15 years, then released. During
that time he transforms himself from a wimpy, alcoholic businessman into a lean, mean
machine bent on revenge. He finds out who locked him away, but he must learn why, or bad
things will happen to the nice girl he met after his release. People talk about the bloody
scenes in this movie, and they’re definitely there, including tooth extraction and
live octopus eating. But more often, this Korean film, directed by Chan-wook Park, is
rhapsodic in a Quentin Tarantino way. With its lush, European-sounding score by Yeong-wook
Jo and its very cinematic camerawork, it reminds me of Brian De Palma when he’s
imitating Alfred Hitchcock. Oldboy is clearly the work of a man who loves film, and
very refreshing after the many recent puff movies from American directors. The Blu-ray
transfer is better in bright scenes than in dark ones, but nothing is ever less than very
good. The DTS-HD Master Audio soundtrack is just about perfect: The entire 360-degree
soundfield is used with great imagination in a mix that keeps one’s attention without
being distracting. There are extras galore -- in fact, an entire second disc full. There
are three commentaries, as well as an option to watch the movie in dubbed English, but
don’t do it; Korean with English subtitles is far better, even though they’re
old-style white subtitles and take a little effort to keep up with when things are moving
rapidly.
Pixar Short Films Collection: Volume 1 (Walt
Disney, Blu-ray) ****
 Before, between, and during the
makings of Toy Story, A Bug’s Life, Monsters, Inc., Finding
Nemo, and Ratatouille, etc., Pixar made Luxo Jr., Tin Toy, Geri’s
Game, and For the Birds, to mention only the best of the 13 CGI shorts in
the Pixar Short Films Collection. It begins at the beginning, with The
Adventures of André and Wally B. (1984), and proceeds to the latest, Lifted
(2007), in the process tracing the history of Pixar and its founder, John Lasseter, who
provides commentaries for most of the shorts. If you watch them in chronological order,
with the commentaries, you get a de facto history of Pixar and its groundbreaking
techniques. I was interested to find that several of them were originally shot in 3D. With
that format now returning to theaters, perhaps we’ll see some of these as originally
conceived. In the meantime, this Blu-ray Disc looks as good as anything out there. The
colors are steady, the contrast right on, and the image sharpness makes full use of the HD
format. In Geri’s Game, about an old man playing a game of chess with himself,
you can see the individual wood grain on the chess pieces with such clarity that you might
want to try to reach out and pick one up. The sound is robust and exceptionally clean.
Extras include shorts starring Luxo Jr. that Pixar created for Sesame Street.
The Sopranos: Season Six, Part II (HBO Home
Video, HD DVD) ***1/2
 When you look at it objectively, you
wonder how a family headed by a ruthless mob leader could ever have become America’s
favorite family next door. But that’s what happened, and most audience members were
sorry to see it go. Season Six was not The Sopranos’ strongest, and
there was much controversy over the ending of the final episode: some were satisfied,
others found it a cheat. I’m with the latter group. One thing we can all agree on is
that the HD DVD transfer of Season Six, Part II is, along with the third season of Lost
on Blu-ray, one of the two best-looking TV series yet to be released on disc. The
extraordinary level of detail brings out all sorts of little touches and makes the images
look quite three-dimensional. Tony’s back yard is a good demo piece, looking a lot
larger and deeper than on SD DVD. Of course there’s microscopic detail in close-ups,
and interiors bristle with detail and depth. Nor has HBO stinted on the sound. To my
surprise, they’ve provided Dolby TrueHD 5.1 tracks. Most of The Sopranos is
talk, but there are those moments of action in which the sound effects need to be
realistic, and some of the source music even has subwoofer-range bass. It’s all
ideal. I don’t think anyone could have mixed these tracks better. This is a
demonstration title for the HD DVD format.
Twilight Zone: The Movie (Warner Home Video,
HD DVD) ***1/2
 This 1983 movie has had a checkered
history, due to the accident that occurred during the filming of its first story, when
star Vic Morrow and two illegally hired children were killed. The movie has had to fight
that reputation. Actually, it’s pretty decent -- no masterpiece yet quite
entertaining, a compilation of four favorite episodes from the original Twilight Zone
TV series, updated for the big screen. Warner has now done its first widescreen transfer
of the title, and last fall released it simultaneously on SD DVD, HD DVD, and Blu-ray. The
picture quality is frustrating: at times as sharp as can be, at others soft, with
imperfect contrast. No doubt some of this is due to the film’s four stories being
filmed by four different directors (Joe Dante, John Landis, George Miller, Steven
Spielberg). The sound is another story. Jerry Goldsmith wrote one of his most colorful
scores for Twilight Zone, and the Dolby TrueHD soundtrack lets it be clearly heard
in all its glory. Whether it’s the twangy piano in "A Quality of Mercy,"
massed violins swooning nostalgia in "Kick the Can," or a sardonic
devil’s-trill violin in "Nightmare at 20,000 Feet," all of the instruments
have presence. This in no way obstructs the dialogue, which is solid and easily
understood. No extras, except a wretched, tattered trailer that makes you grateful the
feature has been newly transferred.
Zodiac: The Director’s Cut (Paramount,
HD DVD) ****
 Director David Fincher has fashioned
a methodical crime thriller in the tradition of All the President’s Men,
with exacting attention to detail. Based on the events surrounding California’s
"Zodiac" killer of the late 1960s and early ’70s, Zodiac is a study
in obsession, as Fincher follows three men who become hopelessly addicted to finding the
enigmatic murderer. This HD DVD edition presents a very clean picture that faithfully
reproduces what I saw in the theater. Details in the newspaper offices are clean and
clear, while the intentionally muted colors are very steady, with excellent skin tone. The
sound is largely up front; the surrounds come more into play in the film’s final
third, and add to the exciting buildup to the climax. Zodiac’s SD DVD release
was bare bones -- no extras. This HD DVD has lots of them, the most impressive and
fascinating being a five-part documentary on the real "Zodiac" killer that
includes interviews with police officers who worked on the case, as well as a surviving
victim. It’s fascinating to watch this right after the movie and realize that Zodiac
has been so faithful to the historical events.
...Rad Bennett
radb@hometheatersound.com |
