300
September 2007 Reviewed by: Rad Bennett Format: HD DVD/DVD	(all ratings out of 5): Overall Enjoyment Picture Quality Packaged Extras Sound Quality

This rousing action movie is based on the graphic novel by Frank Miller, which is a contemporary, romanticized version of the 480 B.C. Battle of Thermopylae, in which a handful of heroic Spartan soldiers held off the entire Persian army for several days. It is brutal and violent, but so was the Spartan society. One of the extras, "300 Spartans -- Fact or Fiction," presents interviews with director Zach Snyder, with Frank Miller, and with historians Bettany Hughes and Dr. Victor Davis Hanson. All four of them seem to feel that Miller’s vision of Sparta, if not accurate to the letter, is very true to the spirit of its citizens. Hughes is especially enthusiastic. Her description of the warrior Spartans vividly describes a society that thrived on war.

The disc is one of those combo-format presentations, which has the SD version on one side and the HD DVD on the other. The picture on the HD side is very impressive. Its definition is very good, and the colors are accurate to the original film. It is mostly sepia, with prominent browns, yellows, reds, and blue for night sequences. There is no green to be found. There’s a not a lot of depth, but that isn’t what the filmmakers were going for. They wanted their movie to be a live version of Miller’s drawings, and that is exactly what it looks like. The detail is astounding. There is a dark-blue-and-black scene with a wolf near the beginning of the movie. I imagine some monitors might portray the beast as a black blob with prominent, glowing eyes. But on a properly setup screen, there’s incredibly intricate shadow definition. You can sense the texture of the wolf’s comic-book fur. That is but one example, but every scene has a visual "wow."

The audio is as satisfying as the video. All channels are used almost all the time, creating a 360-degree soundfield that puts the viewer in the middle of the action, whether it’s a quiet or noisy scene. There are more of the latter. The surround mix has great presence, and individual effects are clearly placed at exact points in the soundfield. Using the Dolby TrueHD tracks, there’s no guessing where anything is.

If you are the type of viewer who feels you know more about editing than the director, this HD DVD is for you. You can use the menu to reorder scenes, take them out, or even shorten them. Then you can save your version to the player’s hard drive. This disc makes greater use of HD DVD's computer aspects than any other out there. There’s a sophisticated game, Vengeance and Valor, in which you can pick the number of men you want to use, arm them any way you want, and move them around. You can even call up reinforcements. The movie was shot using blue screen, with the backgrounds added later. You can watch a special version here that gives you the blue-screen scene in a picture-in-picture box. You can directly compare it to the finished product. This version also offers a commentary by Snyder that reveals all the cinematic tricks used to make this movie. And remember those mysterious A, B, C, and D buttons on the remote? This disc puts them to use.

These neat-as-can-be features are found only on the HD side of the disc. The SD side has an excellent picture and good Dolby 5.1 sound, but these pale when put up against HD and Dolby TrueHD. The only extra on the SD side is a commentary.

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