Toy Story 3 3D (2010) Blu-ray Movie Review

15 years after the first Toy Story film, Pixar return to the series that started it all, capping the series off with an emotional and fun ride for the kids of today, but especially so for the kids that grew up in the early 90's whom have grown up with the films.

Andy has grown up and is about to leave home to go to college. The toys don't get played with much these days, but at least they've stayed together. All this is threatened when the toys find themselves at the mercy of the aggressive play at the local day care centre - if they don't make a timely escape, they'll face certain death. But escape may prove difficult under the watch of the bad toys at Sunnyside day care.

Toy Story 3 is a heartwarming capper to a series which has grown in stature and become even more beloved as time has gone by. With fly-by-night films filling toy store shelves and then disappearing just as fast, there are very few film series that can sustain the interest of the public for 15 years, but Toy Story has done just that. I'd always wanted a Woody and Buzz toy for my own, and a few months did just that...but ended up buying the whole collection. That kind of dedication doesn't happen for every film.

Video

Toy Story 3 3D is presented in the aspect ratio of 1.78:1 (its original aspect ratio), encoded with MVC compression.

3D fans might be slightly disappointed by the presentation of Toy Story 3 3D, but it's nothing to do with the technical qualities of the disc. The truth is, the film has some of the most subtle 3D effects yet seen for a 3D film, so those looking to be poked in the eye by a toy should go and play with a toddler. Roger Ebert even advocated to audiences to skip seeing the film in 3D and go straight to the 2D presentation for a brighter image. Ultimately on Blu-ray you have the choice between the 3D and 2D presentation, and truthfully I will probably opt for the 2D version in most cases. The irony is of course that Toy Story 3 is the only film in the series to be natively produced in 3D, yet is also the least impressive.

Despite this, the 2D presentation is simply amazing, with great colours and a razor sharp presentation (as one would expect). The jump in animation quality between the 3 Toy Story entries is really a sight to behold, to the point where it's almost jarring - but it's responsible for its emotional edge over its predecessors.

Overall, another impeccable result from Disney.

Audio

The main audio track is encoded with DTS HD Master Audio 7.1 at 24 bits.

The same amazing mix is featured on both the 3D and 2D versions, and either way they are extremely aggressive and involving mixes. It's hard to imagine but every animated film needs to have an audio mix built from the ground up. Whilst this gives the audio designers leverage to do whatever they want, there is still a sense of reality that must be injected to not completely isolate an audience.

An amazing track that is sure to be a family friendly, demo-worthy track.

Extras

Unfortunately, for this 3D re-release of Toy Story 3, Disney have dropped the 2nd Blu-ray disc of extra features which was included on the previous 2D Blu-ray release which means that fans will want to hold on to the original release to retain all the features. The following features are found on the 2D disc.

Day and Night harkens back to the days of cinema being used to exhibit short films, and this is one of Pixar's latest, but completely separate from any existing franchise or characters. It's cute, but I found out it wore out its welcome relatively quickly.

The Buzz Lightyear Mission Logs is a very short featurette which explains the concept of space travel to the littlies.

The Toys featurtette briefly discusses the introduction of some of the new characters and locations featured in Toy Story 3.

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Xbox 720 logo in Real Steel movie trailer

Legit Reviews reports a trailer for upcoming robot boxing movie Real Steel contains an Xbox 720 logo at the 0:23 mark.

Did Microsoft hint at a new console in the upcoming Real Steel or are the folks behind the movie trying to make some buzz? If you look closely at the latest trailer for Hugh Jackman's robot boxing movie or the featurette from way back in August, you will be able to spot an Xbox 720 logo in a wide shot of the arena.

Xbox 720 logo in Real Steel movie trailer - More news at DV Hardware

Star Wars Episode II: Attack of the Clones (2002) Blu-ray Movie Review

Despite its commercial success, many Star Wars fans were left confused and disappointed by The Phantom Menace, which by the time the next prequel was released, had hardened into staunch negativity. This made the launch of Attack of the Clones a harder sell for LucasFilm and Fox, however a strong film could have turned it around. Unfortunately, Clones seemed to take many of the complaints of its predecessor on board and magnify them exponentially.

Anakin Skywalker (Hayden Christensen) has grown up to be a confident, albeit arrogant Jedi under the tutelage of Obi-Wan Kenobi (Ewan MacGregor), who's command of the Force is undoubtedly strong, but altogether reckless. The Jedi are spread thin across the galaxy to defend the Republic from the growing threat of the Separatists, led by Count Dooku (Christopher Lee) but a pawn to be manipulated by Darth Sidious (Ian McDiarmid). When the Jedi become aware of a giant army of humanoid clones designed for the purposes of battle, the wheels for all out war start to grind into action. Amidst this backdrop, Anakin Skywalker now reunited with Padme Amidala (Natalie Portman) foster an impossible relationship which feeds into Anakin's anxiety for control and love.

Attack of the Clones is essentially a good story, told poorly. Once again, the actors look confused and unconvincing composited from the blue screen into an ILM created backdrop. The Clone War battle is basically a joke; the most bloodless, unrealistic and cartoony portrayal of war ever seen. There are no consequences to any actions, making the sequences feel like watching someone play a video game. The script, despite input from screenwriter Jonathan Hales, is still very pedestrian and despite some effort by the cast to inject warmth and humanity into its robotic words.

Overall, Attack of the Clones solidified to many that Lucas had lost the handle on the franchise and left many hardcore and casual fans alike rather disappointed one times too many.

Video

Attack of the Clones is presented in the aspect ratio of 2.35:1 (its original aspect ratio), encoded with AVC MPEG-4 compression.

Unlike Menace, Clones had a state of the art DVD transfer, the first live action DVD to be mastered from digital files. As such, this Blu-ray whilst still a generational leap in quality, is just not to the same level.

Ten years ago, Lucas shot Clones on the Sony/ Panavision CineAlta 24p 1080 camera. Think about the amazing leaps in digital photography quality we've had in this time. They are significant. Most digitally shot films are now lensed at 4K resolution, so it's kind of a shame that 1080p will be the best Clones will ever look, unless the live action segments are upconverted - which is unlikely. The transfer's digital pipeline certainly magnifies the cartoony CG aspects of the film, making it appear all the more unrealistic. But that is the film and little can be done about that.

Colours are generally bright and bold, with a fairly sharp amount of detail, even if some live action is strangely soft in focus (which was apparently a deliberate decision of Lucas whilst filming).

So for all intents and purposes, save for compression, this Blu-ray might as well be the films master. The reality is it will never look better than it does here.

Audio

The main audio track is encoded with DTS HD Master Audio 6.1 at 24 bits.

Sound mixer Gary Rydstrom knows how to mix a film and he returns for the last time to the Star Wars universe to create an aggressive, full blooded mix with deep and booming bass that will rock the foundations of the home theatre. The mix has been accused of being 'overly cooked' by some home theatre gurus, but most will simply turn it up. It's amazing.

Whilst there is no real issue with hearing dialogue, occasionally it becomes obvious that some of the on-set dialogue which should have been re-recorded has not been, and has a noticeable hiss underneath it. The lossless nature of the track means it's not able to hide deficiencies as well as before.

The soundtrack by John Williams is quite reasonable, although far from his best. George Lucas evidently didn't love it that much either. He cut it to bits during post production and added segments from Menace. If you have a keen ear, the sloppy editing does become fairly obvious.

Surround channel use is very high and when the clone battle begins, you'll at least believe you are there.

This is a reference quality mix. My cat hates it, but it gets a thumbs up from me.

Extras

Again, LucasFilm have included some worthwhile extra features designed to co-exist with the previous DVD supplements. That is, they aren't replicated here, so you'll have to hang onto your old DVDs to retain everything.

The main disc features two audio commentaries. The first is carried over intact from the DVD release, featuring George Lucas and many members of the crew, including Producer Rick McCallum, Sound Editor Ben Burtt and ILM staff. The second, newly produced track is comprised of interview comments and edited together in a fairly relevant and cohesive manner.

The remaining bonus features are contained on the first extras disc, along with the bonus features for Phantom Menace and Revenge of the Sith For this review, I will talk about the bonus features relevant to Attack of the Clones. The bonus features are divided by the four 'worlds' relevant to the plot: Coruscant, Naboo, Tatooine and Geonosis.

Next up are five Deleted Scenes including a more explained backstory for Count Dooku leaving the Jedi order, a very unfinished extended speeder chase (the sequence was already way too long), more light on Anakin's nightmares, a brief talk between Anakin and Padme's disturbingly Australian father and a subplot from the climactic end battle where Jedi master Ki-Adi Mundi leading an attack on the droid control ship.

The Overview segments are some of the more interesting features on the disc, which take a brief look at each of the four menu worlds. Despite their brief length of just 3-4 minutes each, there is a lot of information imparted and they are edited very well together.

Next are a few brief Interviews segments; one with Ewan McGregor and another with Hayden Christensen, and another brief segment with Hayden Christensen and Christopher Lee discussing the complexities of blue screen photography.

The Collection shows a few of the stunning models, costumes and creatures created for the film, with impressive 360 degree turns which show the detail the artisans went to.

Finally, the concept art gallery brings a handful of high resolution concept art sketches and artwork to screens. Star Wars fans will recognize a lot of this art from the 'Art of Star Wars' series of books. Whilst much of the art is impressive, I've always disliked on screen still galleries and this doesn't change my mind.

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Daylight (1996) Blu-ray Movie Review

The year is 1996 and the resurgence of the disaster movie genre is well and truly back into vogue. Aliens have invaded the world in Independence Day, Twisters have devastated Tornado Alley in Twister and in this film, aging star Sylvester Stallone tries to resuscitate his career from a bigger disaster than all those put together; the previous year's Judge Dredd.

When an explosion tears through the Hudson River Tunnel, sealing off both ends, Dr Kit Latura (Sylvester Stallone) has to guide the motley crew of survivors to safety, traversing many and varied obstacles in their way. But not all will be successful, and the questioning of his leadership could jeopardize them all.

Now 15 years old, Daylight has aged a little, but the visual effects have held up surprisingly well. I guess that's why you pay the big bucks for ILM. It's certainly not a classic and fits very much into the mold of 'check your brain in at the entrance', but it's still a worthwhile Saturday night matinee.

Video

Daylight is presented in a full screen aspect ratio of 1.85:1 (its original aspect ratio), encoded with VC-1 compression.

Unfortunately, Universal continues their trend of re-hashing what appears to be old HD transfers of films, slapping on a bit of DNR to hide video noise and film grain and spitting out a new encode. Worse, Universal have re-purposed the same encode from the HD-DVD release back in the day which was reasonable enough, if not a little aged.

Realistically, it's not all bad. Despite looking a little soft, the transfer is reasonably balanced, with good detail and relatively good colours (albeit a little desaturated - likely an artistic choice).

Similar to last month's release of Babe, it's still pretty good and infinitely better than my aged NTSC DVD, but simply bettering a DVD release should not be an appropriate benchmark for success and Universal's cheap Blu-ray tactics are continuing to wear thin. It's a real shame that many of my favourite catalogue films are Universal releases. I'm genuinely scared for Scarface and Jurassic Park later this year, but please - by all means, prove me wrong Universal.

Audio

The main audio track is encoded in DTS HD Master Audio at 24 bits.

Holding up a fair bit stronger than the video track, Daylight was always a demonstration worthy mix from the early days of DTS laserdisc and DVD.

While the years since have dulled the sharpness a little, it is still a good example of relatively aggressive mid 90's audio mixing.

Of course, many of the techniques that have been honed in the last decade are absent here. Most notably, it seems that audio mixers went crazy during the action scenes, but then forgot to spend as much effort to carve out a convincing aural experience through other scenes.

Bass usage is relatively high, but tends to overwhelm the mix with a generic, non distinct rumble rather than a punchy and tight sound that is used today.

The score by Randy Edelman is appropriate, but entirely unmemorable.

Overall, a reasonably good mix that has aged better than many of the same era.

Extras

Quite stunningly and supremely annoying, Universal have decided to release Daylight on Blu-ray in Europe and Australia without any of the extra features that were included on the special edition DVD, or the recently released U.S. Blu-ray. This is despite the fact that Universal distributes the film in all three territories.

Again, this happened to Babe and I have no idea why Universal are going to the trouble of mastering another Blu-ray image without extra features, rather than simply re-purposing the U.S. master. It's frustrating and annoying, especially so when otherwise, a large amount of disc space is simply going to waste.

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The Twilight Zone: Season Two (1960) Blu-ray Movie Review

The first season of The Twilight Zone received a rapturous response when it was first aired on American screens in the fall of 1959. For all its quality attributes; the acting, the music and the adult tone of the series, the one thing that set The Twilight Zone above its rivals on television screens was the quality of its scripts. Rod Serling worked extremely hard to craft an engaging series, with interesting, topical and thought provoking stories that are as relevant 50 years later as they always were.

Some episode highlights of the second series include: The Russian allegory The Invaders, the William Shatner starring The Nick of Time which was recently remade as the feature film The Box, and A Thing about Machines which goes to show that some things never change.

The vast majority of the second season Twilight Zone scripts were again penned by creator Rod Serling and showed little evidence of degradation and burn out that would plague later seasons. Just like the first series, The Twilight Zone is quality and relatively timeless television at its best.

Video

The Twilight Zone is presented in a full screen aspect ratio of 1.33:1 (its original aspect ratio), encoded with AVC MPEG-4 compression.

The vast majority of the second series of The Twilight Zone was shot on 35mm film, before being transferred to video. All previous TV, VHS and DVD masters were derived from these video transfers. For this release (and future broadcasting) new copyright owner Image undertook a major restoration of the series from the original camera negative, revealing a level of detail and quality never seen before. Unfortunately, due to studio cost cutting, six of the episodes were shot and edited on low quality analog tape. Unsurprisingly, these look considerably poorer than the majority of the episodes shot on film.

For fans of the series, the quality on offer here is nothing short of a miracle. Check out almost any shot featuring a facial close up to see exactly what I mean. Obviously, there is no colour in the image, but the gradients of black and white are pleasing, with very little black crush.

Overall, this set features some very pleasing transfers that replicate the Twilight Zone masters perfectly.

Audio

The main restored audio track is encoded in uncompressed PCM 2.0 (dual mono) with an unrestored mono audio track using the same codec.

Viewers of the Twilight Zone: Season will know exactly what to expect here. The audio track on offer here is every bit the 50 years of age and all the audio track can do here is present it to the best of its capacity. It's fine enough, but don't go expecting any surround sound shenigans here.

There's not much that really needs to be said about the audio. Suffice to say, it is highly audible and very clear. Sound effects and music sound perfectly fine, however their frequency response is severely hampered.

Overall, this features perfectly serviceable audio under the constraints of the original elements.

Extras

Again, Shock Entertainment and Image have produced a fabulous treasure trove of extras for fans of the series. Let's jump in.

20 of the episodes feature an Audio Commentary (in fact, many have multiple commentary tracks); featuring original actors, screenwriters and Twilight Zone aficionados such as authors and film historians. I didn't listen to each and every one due to the obvious time factors, but I thoroughly enjoyed what was on offer here - fans will definitely learn a lot and be enthralled by the tidbits and trivia they'll learn.

Additionally, almost all of the episodes also feature an Isolated score audio track from Hollywood legends such as Jerry Goldsmith and Bernard Hermann.

A 2002 re-creation of select episodes were performed as radio plays and are presented here with a single still image as a background. All 16 episodes equal around 12 hours of audio. Plasma owners would be recommended to simply turn off their display during this time.

Finally, we have a bunch of vintage Interview segments and promo spots for the series.

Overall, a very impressive collection of extras. Just like the first season, it's hard to imagine this set will ever be bettered.

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