The Video: A

The Audio: A

The Extras: B+

Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince
received decent reviews when it came out in the summer of 2009.  It has a fresh rating of 83% over at Rottentomatoes.

The Video:

The video here is excellent.  The codec is VC-1 in 1080P, formated in the 2:40.1 aspect ratio.  This is a very dark film, story wise and cinematography wise, and the dark areas still show detail with little to no noise.  A very attractive picture to see.

The Audio:

The audio is presented in Dolby TrueHD 5.1.  A very clear mix.  There is action in the movie, of course, but there are moments when the quite subtle elements are still heard and not muffled or muddled.  A very enjoyable soundtrack.

The Extras:  B+

On the first disc there is Maximum Movie Mode, which is not much more then a Picture in Picture track through out the movie, but it is a generous one.  You will see animatics, production stills, and interviews with the cast.

Focus points:  These are fourteen chapters that are also in the Maximum movie mode.  I found “The Millenium Bridge” chapter the most interesting as it showed how they shot the opening sequence of the movie.  Interesting movie making points in this chapters.

The majority of the extras are presented the second disc.   The majority of the extras on this disc are fluff and aimed at a younger audience.   But there is one documentary that is very engaging, JK Rowling: A Year in the Life.  The documentary spends a year with Rowling as she finished writing the film book Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows.  I knew very little about the author of the books, but this is a very engaging portrait of the author and the interesting life that she has led so far.  This documentary is where you will actually learn something about the world of Harry Potter.

There are of course other extras on the disc:

Close-up with the cast of Harry Potter:  This is a series of eight featurettes with the cast of the movie, as they show different parts of the production.  Daniel Radcliffe sits down with editor MArk Day, Rupert Grint shows a day of stunt work, Emma Watson talks with make-up artist Amanda Knight.  For my money the most enjoyable was seeing Weasley twin James Phelps earn his stripes as an assistant director.  It was refreshing to see someone from the cast not rest on their laurels and try to do something new.

First Footage of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows:  Not much here, a few seconds of footage from the upcoming movie.

Overall:

For the Harry Potter fan this will be an automatic addition to their collection.  There will be a double dip on this one, so if you can hold off I would recommend getting this through Netflix for the time being.

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Star Trek (2009)

The Orphanage

The Video: A

The Audio: A-

The Extras: B+

The reboot of Star Trek was highly anticpated and seemed to please both die-hard Star Trek followers, casual fans, and other movie goers.  Rottentomatoes gave it an extraordinary 95% freshness rating.

The Video: A

The video here is excellent.  This transfer comes in 1080 P in MPEG AVC codec.  Shot in anamorphic widescreen 2.39:1 the image is very clear and organic due to the imperfections in shooting with anamorphic lenses.  Personally I did not enjoy a lot of the lense flares employee stylistically in the cinematography but the image still translates very well to Blu-Ray.

The Audio: A-

Presented in Dolby TrueHD with 5.1.  With such an active track being a sci-fi action film ideally I would like to have had a DTS-HD 7.1 track.  But this track is very clear and alive as needed for such a film.

The Extras: B+

On the main feature disc you get a feature-length commentary track with Director J.J. Abrams, Producers Bryan Burk and Damon Lindelof, and Writers Alex Kurtzman and Roberto Orci.  You learn a lot.  There is a lot of discussion in the beginning about the need for continuity in the Star Trek universe and how that problem was solved.  Most of the information that is presented in the commentary is also shown in the documentaries on the second disc.  BD-Live is also available on the first disc.  Currently that brings you to an RSS feed of NASA news.  I can only assume this will change in the coming years as we wait on the sequel.

The second disc is filled a ton of featurrettes.  There is no one long form documentary here, but five separate featurette sections.  The first being To Boldly Go which is a general overall look at the making of the movie.

The second section is labeled Casting.  This section, as the name implies, deals with casting a movie with characters that were originally played by other actors.  The piece seems to focus on the casting of Spock which is understandable since Lenoard Nimoy is also in the movie, I would like to have seen a little more about Chris Pine and how he was chosen to be the new Kirk.  Because Zachary Quinto looks so much like Spock, Pine on the other hand doesn’t make that connection as well for me.

A New Vision discusses why this Star Trek feels different from previous Star Trek films.  They want it to feel more like a Star Wars film in terms of pacing and speed.  As a Star Wars fan that makes me smile.  I’m not sure how well hard core Star Trek fans will feel about this when they see it.  There is also technical explaination on creating effects in the camera as opposed to CGI in post production.  It was cool to see JJ Abrams literally shaking the camera during a take.  I think that would drive me nuts if I was the cameraman though.

You will find several other featurettes including:

• Planets
• Ben Burtt and the Sound of Star Trek
• Gene Roddenberry’s Vision

You will also find deleted scenes.  You can chose to watch these scenes with or without commentary.

Overall, this is a great release of Star Trek.  I could easily recommend purchasing this disc for your collection.

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The Orphange

Star Trek II: The Wrath of Kahn

The Video: A

The Audio: A

The Extras: B

The Orphanage is well known for being produced by Guillermo Del Toro, it is directed by Juan Antonio Bayona.  The movie was very well received when it was released in the United States in early 2008.  Not bad for a horror movie.

The Video: A

The video here is excellent.  Transfferred in VC-1 codec, in 2.35:1 format, there are absolutely beautiful scenes to see.  Oscar Faura’s cinematography is excellent through out the film.  I saw no artifacts or unnecessary grain in any of the shots.  This is an attractive film to see, despite it’s disturbing content.  Blacks are a deep black as they need to be, and flesh colors are attractive and clean.  This is an attractive movie to see.

The Extras: B

You receive several behind scenes featurettes, all in Spanish.

When Laura Grew Up: Constructing the Orphanage (18 minutes) This is a fairly standard behind the scenes.  There is a lot of talk of Guillermo Del Toro and how he was so great to work for.  But as you watch it you really begin to realize that Del Toro is “executive” producer, and an absent one at that.  His name helped sell the movie.

Tomas’ Secret Room: The Filmmakers (10 minutes) This clip tells you more about the actual making of the movie, breaking it up into section on the director, the art crew, the music, the special effects, and the opening sequence.  This is the more informative behind the scenes piece.

Horror in the Unknown: The Make-Up Effects ( 9 minutes) — This takes a look at the work on Tomas the boy in the movie, plus a couple of other actors in the movie.  Not much additional information here.

Rehearsal Studio: Cast Auditions and Table Read (3 minutes) Behind the scene look at the auditions and the table read, some enjoy this other do not.  I don’t care that much for these.

Marketing Campaign (SD, 6 minutes) — Spanish and English trailers for the movie.

Still Gallery (HD) — Scores of photographs from the making of the movie.

Overall a very good disc.  Worth adding to your Netflix queue.

Other Reviews:

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Star Trek II

Star Trek The Wrath of Kahn

The Video: B

The Audio: B

The Extras: A

This is the fan favorite of the long running Star Trek movie series and it gets a great treatment on Blu-Ray.

The Video: B

The transfer is great.  I give this one a B because the original cinematography I would not consider A material.  There is not a lot of crispness to the image in places, but in all honesty Wrath of Kahn as never looked better.

The Audio: B

Presented in Dobly TrueHD 7.1 this is a fine sounding track.  This track is not reference level.  The track can lean more toward the higher frenquency due to the musical score.  The sound stage is not used fully for this film.

The Extras: A

This is where the disc really shines, there is a flood of extras.  There are two feature commentaries, although one of the commentaries is from the original DVD release.

Library Computer offers on-screen information about the different elements on the screen.  An interesting way to learn about phasers, and starships.

The most informative piece is about the production of the film.  You learn that producer Harve Bennet has never seen a Star Trek episode when he was brought on board, so he spent several months catching up and watching all the episodes.

You also learn that Leanord Nimoy (Mr. Spook) wanted to leave the series, he wasn’t even sure that he wanted to do the movie in the first place.  Thus the death of Spock was written into the script.  Since this came out two years after The Empire Strikes Back, I couldn’t help but think about the parallels with Harrison Ford thinking about leaving his series and the Han Solo storyline.

There are other featurettes about Star Trek collections and collectors.  A piece that passionate fans may enjoy.  I learned about the ill-fated Phase 2 Star Trek series in this section, as someone was connected enough to have clothing from that unproduced series.

The featurette about Star Trek authors is really for the true Trekkies.  Here you have two talking heads that talk about Star Trek books, these two talking heads are REALLY intro Star Trek.  The information here was well above my Trek level.

Overall, this is a great Blu-Ray.  This is a great example of how well done extras can add to the knowledge and experience of a movie, especially a well loved movie such as this one.

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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.

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Twilight

The Video: A-

The Audio: A-

The Extras: B-

Taken was written by Luc Besson of The Professional and The Fifth Element fame, and directed by Pierre Morel.  It didn’t do so well with the critics, receiving a 57% on Rotten Tomatoes.

The video: A-

The video here is presented in 1080P/AVC and formatted in 2.35:1.  This is an attractive image, Michel Abramowicz’s cinematography is well suited for the gritty story line.  Most of the action takes place at night and in shadowy rooms, and his work is excellent here.

The Audio: A-

The Audio is present in DTS-HD 5.1.  Since this is an action movie the soundtrack pops and is very active, a very attractive soundtrack.

The Extras: B-

I was surprise to see so little extras here.  The extras center around two feature length commentaries.  The first track is with director Pierre Moral, cinematographer Michel Abramowicz and Michel Julian.  This track is spoken in French and given English subtitles.  Although it is nice to learn about some of the technical aspect of the movie, reading the text makes the commentary hard to finish.  The second commentary is with screen writer Robert Mark Kamen.

Other extras include:

“The Making of” a short standard fluff piece about the making of the movie.

“Avant Premiere” five minutes of footage from the premiere, nothing much here.

“Story board to Screen” a short featurette with key scenes where the story board is shown on one side of the screen as the scene plays on the other.  I have never been much of a fan of this type of extra.

The second disc includes the digital copy for your ipod.

Overall, the movie is nice to look at and listen to there isn’t much there in terms of extras.  I’m not sure if they would double dip this one, since it didn’t recieve a lot of criticial respect, but you really never know these days.

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Be Kind Rewind

Be Kind Rewind

The Video: B+

The Audio: B

The Extras: B-

Be Kind Rewind starring Jack Black and Mos Def has an interesting premise, re-shooting famous movies on VHS.  On Rottentomatoes it received a 66% fresh rating. Roger Ebert gave it 2 1/2 stars.  Written and Directed by Micehel Gondry who also directed Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind.

The Video: B+

I give this a B+ because a lot this movie is focused in VHS land.  And I have to admit there was something nostalgic about seeing that look.  The rest of the film is attractively shot.  The film is formatted in 2:35.1 and is video codec in VC-1.

The Audio: B

Encoded in DTS-HD Master 7.1 this is a well done track.  Again when the movie goes into VHS the sound goes with it, and I found that ejoyable.  It is a good mix.

The Extras: B-

There are a few extras here.   Included are:

• Passaic Mosaic
• Brooker T and The Michel Gondry
• Jack Black & Mos Def Improvise Songs
• A Conversation with Jack Black and Michel Gondry
• Fats was Born Here
• The Making of “Be Kind Rewind”
• Mos Def, Michel Gondry & Jean-Michel Bernard LIVE! – Tribute to Fats Waller
• Theatrical Trailer

The two I recommend are “Passaic Mosaic” which is a short clip about the town where the movie both occurs and is shot.  I found this to be a very touching and original piece.

“The Making of Be Kind Rewind” is a good behind the scenes feature.  A good balance of seeing how the director worked, along with the actors and the crew.  For 33 minutes you learn a lot about this original movie.

Overall, I could recommend renting this disc, but there is no need to add this one permanently to your collection.

Video: B

Audio: B

Extras: C

Confessions of a Shopaholic came out in Feburary to poor reviews.  It was based on two books by Sophie Kinsella.

The Video: B

The video here is good.  The focus is on bright, attractice fashion pieces, consequently the saturation can be distracting in certain places.  This is an acceptable image, but there is nothing to show off here.

The Audio: B

Encoded in DTS-HD, the audio is clear.  But this is a romantic comedy and not alot of use of the sound stange for surround sound.

The Extras: C

Not a lot here, the studio did not put much effort into this release.  There are six behind the scenes featturettes, which focus on the fashion design in the film, the green scarf that plays a big plot point, and few other parts of the movie.  There are deleted scenes most of them were wisley left out, I did like one where Rebecca gets a parttime job at a clothing store, that seemed to fit the rest of the movie.  There is also the standard outtake and blooper reel.  And lastly there are three music videos included Shontelle and Akon’s “Stuck with Each Other,” Trey Songz’ “Takes Time to Love,” and Jordyn Taylor’s “Accessory.”

If you are a fan of this film and the books then I could recommend purchasing this disc.  For everyone else if you are into romatic comedies then just rent this one.