August 19, 2009
Posted by Martin:
The Tale of Despereaux
The Video: A
The Audio: A-
The Extras: B
The Tale of Despereaux
came out in December of 2008, an animated movie based on the 2004 Newberry Award winning book by Katie DiCamillio. Unfortunately critics were not kind to this movie. I agree with Roger Ebert, a beautiful movie to look at, but a very disjointed storyline.
The Video: A
This is the strength of both the movie and the Blu-Ray disc. This animated movie looks very different from other animated movies, it is a very painterly look and beautiful to behold. It is encoded in 1080P using the VC-1 codec on a 50 GB disc. You could use this disc as a visual reference for your BD system, it is very attractive.
The Audio: A-
Encoded in DTS-HD 5.1, the audio is very lively. With so many action scenes the LFE and surround channels get a work out. This is an enjoyable sound track. I don’t give it a full A because it is not encoded in full 7.1.
The Extras: B
The extra here are good, but not extraordinary.
The Tale of The Tale of Despereaux: This is a short making of segment. Here you learn that the voice actors were recorded together, unlike other animated movies. Consequently the director has the potential to get better performances out of the actors. There is footage of the actors performing scenes and it looks like a lot of fun to have been in the room with the actors. The segment moves on to how lighting was used differently to create the look for the movie. By the end of the piece it turns into a normal “making of” and a promotion for the movie. Scene Progressions: This is an interesting piece, you see the progression of scenes from the script, to lay-out, to animation, to final lighting with filmmaker commentaries. This runs 35 minutes.
The rest of the extras:
- Top Ten uses for Oversized Ears
- Sneak Peak for Curious George 2
- Two Deleted Songs
- Picture in Picture-Allows you to watch the movie and see behind the scenes. Requieres a “Profile 1.1″ player.
- Picture Animatic-Allows you to watch an animatic at same time with the movie.
Overall, the movie maybe weak for some, it is great to look at. For those that are a fan of the book, they will enjoy this disc.
Other Blu-Ray Disc Reviews:
Wall-E
Twilight
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Animated Movies, Family | Tagged: Blu-Ray, Blu-Ray disc | 
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Posted by mctiller
March 12, 2009
Posted by Martin
The Movie:
The Disc itself:
The video on this disc is as expected spectacular. One of the benefits of Blu-Ray is the simple transition from a digitally created or aquired film to the digital disc. I would consider this disc a reference disc to show off the video capabilies of Blu-Ray.
The audio on the disc is DTS-HD 5.1. I am a little surprised it is not a 7.1 mix, but that is a minor question. The sound here is also reference quality. It has to be, the first part of the movie is told without real dialogue. With Ben Burtt doing the sound design this is a soundtrack of extraordinary skill, the clarity and subtly of it also makes it a reference disc. The sounds of the distopian future, the papers blowing in the wind, Wall-E driving around, and wind blowing through a ghost town are all things that are communicated in clear tones. They are not muddled here.
The Extras:
There a plethera of excellent extras on the disc. Let's go through the ones I think are worth your time.
The director's commentary with Andrew Stanton comes with something Disney calls Cine Explore. In this case it just seems to be added visuals to the audio commentary. Now the visuals are interesting in most cases as they show sketch boards, and early concept drawings, they also add photographs of the people he is discussing.
Staton discusses how he developed his ideas for the movie. He discusses The Tripletts of Bellville and it's use of a French song, which inspired the opening of Wall-E. The blending of the opening happy and old song with the sad and disturbing opening images. Apprantly he tries to keep his political views to himself as a director, at least that is what he says in the commentary. Apparently he has been asked about his views on consummerism and ecological living, looking at the movie alone one could definately see opinions being written in the movie. But according to the commentary that was not the ultimate purpose of the movie, but it is hard not to see the message in the movie.
There is a second and more entertaining and in many ways more enlightening commentary is the Geek Track, a pop-up commentary, with Pixar's "Geek Squad". This commentary is completely inspired by Mystery Science Theater 3000. You will have to see it to understand. This commentary can wander and get off task, but as commentaries go it is one of the more enjoyable.
There are several other extras, but the main extra and by far the best one is "The Pixar Story" by Leslie Iwerks. This shows behind the scenes work and history of how Pixar came to be. From it's birth under George Lucas to the growth under Steve Jobs the history of Pixar is quite insteresting to learn. I found the most enjoyable clip is watching Toy Story director John Lasseter recieve the news that Toy Story has been green lit. It is shown thre home movies. So it gives the feel of actually being there. This documetary alone is worth a rental of this disc. As a side note this documentary shows about 5 seconds from The Empire Strikes Back, which is great to see what Star Wars will look like on Blu-Ray.
Other Extras:
Presto, is the short movie that showed with Wall-E when it originally came to theaters. A nice addition to the disc.
Burn-E is a second animated short new for the Blu-Ray release. It is a cool little flic as it tells the story of a background character from Wall-E, and it makes for great connections with the main movie. There is also a bonus onto the short which shows original boards to the movie.
"Lots of Bots" Storybook is a little bit of a time waster. It gives backgrounds on all the different robots in the movie. Interesting information here but nothing extraordinary here.
Animation Sound Design, is a featurette about Ben Burtt and the extraordinary work he does on this film. It is awesome to see him work with real world objects to create other worldly sounds. It is nice to see that not all sounds are completely computer generated.
Overall Disney does its homework and delievers a great overall disc for both Pixar lovers and general movie watchers.
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Posted by mctiller
