Blu-ray Review: “IMAX: Under the Sea”

“That is not a fish. PLEASE tell me that is not a fish.”

Not counting the gasp she let out when she saw the box, those were the first words my four-year-old daughter said while we watched IMAX: Under the Sea, and that pretty much set the tone for 40 minutes of stunningly rich, beautifully filmed aquatic exploration. These days, it seems like just about every major movie lands on IMAX screens, but once upon a time, they were the near-exclusive domain of short nature documentaries — which means that even though it might look like a trifle next to Clash of the Titans (or whatever big-budget action movie is playing at your local IMAX theater), Under the Sea is really more of a gentle throwback.

Director Howard Hall has plenty of experience working underwater — his previous films include Into the Deep, Island of the Sharks, and Deep Sea — and Under the Sea is every bit the visual treat you’d expect from someone with Hall’s résumé. His camera lingers over fish that don’t look like fish (hence my daughter’s early exclamation), fish that do unexpected stuff, and fish that are just plain fun to look at, with the pleasantly subdued Jim Carrey serving as narrator every step (stroke?) of the way. If you wanted to quibble, you could take issue with the inordinate amount of time the movie spends on the cuttlefish, but between its deadly tongue and its color-changing skin, there’s plenty of spectacle to go around. Read the rest of this entry

Blu-ray Review: “The Princess and the Frog”

Even if you aren’t the kind of person who tends to get caught up in hype, you have to admit that last year’s Princess and the Frog made for a pretty killer story. The studio that invented longform animation, then abandoned it for CGI, returning to its classic roots…led by the guy who directed Toy Story and helped start sounding traditional animation’s death knell in the first place? What could be more perfect?

Well, in Disney’s eyes, the movie’s eventual $264 million worldwide gross could have been a little bigger — and as far as most critics were concerned, The Princess and the Frog was a solid, albeit disappointingly slight, effort that didn’t quite live up to its advance billing. (Not that anything could have, but whatever.) For a studio that spends an inordinate amount of effort trying to make filmgoers believe each of its releases is a certified classic (except Song of the South, right? Ha ha), the lavishly promoted Princess was a bit of an embarrassment.

Scrub away all that hype, though, and Princess is actually quite a bit of fun. If you’re the type of parent who, like me, sort of detests the whole Disney princess thing to begin with, the movie won’t do much to change your mind — despite a few surface changes to the studio’s formula, it’s very much the slice of happily-ever-after fairy tale that the title indicates — but it’s beautifully animated, with vibrant characters, gorgeous visuals, and a gently rollicking set of songs from one of my favorite artists of all time, Randy Newman. I mean, hey, it’s Disney. What exactly are you looking for, if not peerless craft in service of a storyline that probably doesn’t quite deserve it? Read the rest of this entry

Blu-ray Reviews: “Up” and “Monsters, Inc.”

How do you make the Blu-ray release of one of the best movies of the year even bigger? Bundle it with a disc and a half worth of bonus features, plus a DVD, plus a digital copy of the film.

Oh and if you’re Pixar, you do it on the same day you bring one of your earlier smash hits to Blu-ray — and attach just as much extra content to that release, too.

Since debuting with Toy Story in 1995, Pixar has defied expectations by not only cranking out smash hits while helping pioneer a brand new type of animation, but by opening up new vistas in the stuff that really matters — like, you know, storytelling. They’ve shown us what happens to our toys when we’re out of the room, peeked into the hidden lives of bugs and fish, proved that monsters are just as scared of kids as kids are of monsters, exposed the travails of former superheroes, let us hear cars talk, put a rat in the kitchen, and made us fall in love with a robot janitor. Every time they announce a new movie, the odds of it not living up to its predecessors grows — has a studio ever held a perfect batting average for this long? — so when it came out that Pixar’s 10th feature would follow the adventures of a grumpy old man who sails away in a house to which he’s tied thousands of helium-filled balloons, bets were high that Up would mark the spot where the house Buzz Lightyear built fell down.

How about that? With 98 percent at Rotten Tomatoes and almost $650 million in worldwide box office receipts, Up made it a perfect 10 for Pixar — and if you missed it in theaters, now’s your chance to bring it home in glorious high definition. Read the rest of this entry

Blu-ray Review: “Tinker Bell and the Lost Treasure”

It may have taken Disney more than 50 years to give Peter Pan’s spunky sidekick her own feature, but now that they’ve kicked off the Tinker Bell film franchise, they’re through fooling around: Tinker Bell and the Lost Treasure arrives only a year after 2008′s Tinker Bell, and comes complete with the kind of top-shelf voice cast (including a cameo from Anjelica Huston) and big-budget extras (including a score performed by an 82-piece symphony) that used to be synonymous with Disney. Direct-to-video animated films get a bum rap, and that’s due in large part to the crap that Disney released in the ’90s; between Tinker Bell and its sequel, however, the studio seems to be making a real effort to turn all that around.

The official synopsis of the film is as follows: The tale of Disney’s favorite fairy, Tinker Bell, continues in an all-new magical adventure beyond Pixie Hollow! Discover how the Pixies make their magic dust! Let your imagination soar as Autumn comes to Pixie Hollow. Take off in a hot air balloon with Tinker Bell and her new friend Blaze, a lightning bug who lights her way, on an enchanting secret journey to find a new moonstone, the source of the Pixies mystical dust. But hold on tight! There’ll be amazing encounters, some close calls, and a daring rescue by her old friend Terence! In her biggest adventure yet, Tinker Bell not only learns a lesson in responsibility, she discovers the true meaning of friendship. From the creators of Tinker Bell, ‘Tinker Bell and the Lost Treasure’ is a captivating journey of self-discovery everyone will want to take. Read the rest of this entry

Blu-ray Review: “Willy Wonka & the Chocolate Factory”

Synopsis: A poor little boy wins a ticket to visit the inside of a mysterious and magical chocolate factory. When he experiences the wonders inside the factory, the boy discovers that the entire visit is a test of his character.

A movie about a wild-eyed reclusive madman who sends the entire world into a candy-scrabbling frenzy as part of an elaborate mindfuck culminating in the transfer of his candy empire to a child, 1971′s Willy Wonka & the Chocolate Factory is one of the odder “children’s” movies ever made, and one whose survival as a cult favorite was largely dependent on Gene Wilder’s tremendous work in the title role, as well as the movie’s natural appeal to the type of weirdos who grow up to be film directors (see: Burton, Tim). Willy Wonka wasn’t terribly successful when it was released, least of all among parents who questioned its dark overtones and smattering of scary moments (just ask poor Spike Jonze about those folks), but it’s become accepted as a sort of minor classic over the years, particularly since Burton fumbled his Johnny Depp-led Wonka remake a few years ago. Read the rest of this entry

Blu-ray Review: “Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs: Diamond Edition”

If you’ve been looking for an excuse to make the jump from DVD to Blu-ray, look no further. Matter of fact, thanks to Disney’s brilliant strategy of bundling DVDs with their Blu-ray releases, you don’t even have to own a Blu-ray player to take advantage of the new face lift the studio has given its 1937 classic — but if you do have one, make sure you put a pillow under your mouth the first time you watch the Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs Diamond Edition transfer, because your jaw is going to drop.

There have been a fair number of catalog Blu-ray reissues at this point, and consumers have had to resign themselves to the fact that not all hi-def upgrades were created equal — when you’re dealing with source material from more than, say, 20 years ago, you’re going to see a fair number of defects, even after the most painstaking remastering job (see the Batman Blu-ray for an example). Given this, you’d expect the Snow White Blu-ray to be the kind of pleasant-but-not-remarkable upgrade you’d get out of most older films, but you’d be wrong — Disney has been rolling out some truly breathtaking restoration jobs in the last year or so, and Snow White might be the fairest of them all. Is it perfect? Probably not — you can go over any transfer with a magnifying glass and pick out flaws here and there, however minor. But watching Snow White, you won’t want to; you’ll be too busy marveling at just how incredibly lush and beautiful this hand-drawn classic remains more than 70 years after its release. Every feature-length animated film has its roots in Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs — along with quite a few live-action movies — and this set gives it the fawning respect it deserves. Read the rest of this entry

Blu-ray Review: “Wallace & Gromit: The Complete Collection”

Boasting wonderfully silly storylines, a maddeningly addictive theme song, and distinctive stop-motion clay animation in the CGI era, Aardman Animation’s Wallace and Gromit have gone to the moon, won Academy Awards, and even gotten their own full-length motion picture — but they’ve never gone to Blu-ray until now.

Timed to coincide with the DVD release of the new Wallace & Gromit short A Matter of Loaf and Death, the expansive Wallace & Gromit: The Complete Collection brings the doltish inventor and his sharp-witted canine companion to hi-def for the first time — and does it in style, packing in tons of bonus material, including audio commentary and behind-the-scenes featurettes for each of the four W&G short films: 1989′s A Grand Day Out, 1993′s The Wrong Trousers, 1995′s A Close Shave, and the aforementioned Loaf, released last year. The picture is brilliantly crisp throughout, giving you a crystal-clear look at Nick Park’s creations, right down to the fingerprints on the clay; the audio, while about as unspectacular as you’d expect for this sort of thing, comes in Dolby 5.1, 5.1 PCM, and Dolby 2.0. Read the rest of this entry