Rodent's DVD Reviews

Tools    





DVD Review #9: The Abyss, One Disc Edition




Contents: 1 Disc

Disc Contents:
  • Theatrical Version of Main Movie
  • Director's Cut of Main Movie (with 24 minutes of added footage)
  • Optional subtitles for both versions
  • Chapter Selection for both versions
  • Optional Text Commentary for both versions (not audio commentary)
Pretty standard 'collectors' (for want of a better word) edition of a DVD.
No trailers, no special features at all.
It's quite simply both versions of the movie... on one disc.

The sound and picture is tip top though. The Director's Cut hasn't got dodgy sound or picture on the added scenes

Not much else to say...
50%



It is a good film. Watched it last night. Still blows me away every time.

The DVD is a bit sparse, but the Director's Cut is awesome.



DVD Review #10: The Karate Kid, Special Edition




Contents: 1 Disc

Disc Contents:
  • Main Movie with optional subtitles
  • Chapter Selection for main movie
  • Optional Commentary with John G Avildsen, writer Robert Kamen, Ralph Macchio and Noriyuki Morita
  • Trailers for The Karate Kid, The Karate Kid Part 2, Daddy Day Care and Stuart Little
Plus... 5 Featurettes:
  • The Way Of The Karate Kid Part 1. A 25 minute feature on the Pre-Production, casting, direction and Production of The Karate Kid. Includes interviews with writers, director, cast and crew
  • The Way Of The Karate Kid Part 2. A 20 minute feature with more on the Production and some of the fight choreography and the Legacy of The Karate Kid
  • Beyond The Form. A 13 minute featurette on the choreography of The Karate Kid, the differing styles of teaching seen throughout the film and a small history of Karate itself with Pat E Johnson (Martial Artist, stunt choreographer and movie stuntman). There's also an insight into Johnson's creation of Wax On, Wax Off... Paint The Fence etc
  • East Meets West A Composer's Notebook. An interview with the man behind the movie's music, Bill Conti
  • Life Of Bonsai. A 10 minute interview with the World's Leading Bonsai Master, Ben Oki. Basically a lovely little featurette on the history of Bonsai
Another single disc DVD that contains some great features and some really quite extensive information on the original and best movie in the franchise.
The commentary is also good from the four legends involved, it's full of little stories about the filming and some of the little insights are funny too. They also talk about the scenes as they happen as well, giving more insight into the production process.

The two main features, The Way Of The Karate Kid part 1 and part 2, are extremely nostalgic and full of information about the history of the movie too. There's intervoews with the main cast and the writers and director and contains lots of personal thoughts and experiences from time of production.

The Bonsai featurette is also a nice addition. It has nothing to do with the movie, but it's just a nice little touch and very informative.


All in all, I've seen more extensive single disc DVDs in terms of sheer content amount but then again, I've seen much worse, but The Karate Kid Special Edition is definitely one of my favourites and the information contained has quality about it.
90%.



DVD Review #11: Jurassic Park, Widescreen




Contents: 1 Disc, 1 Booklet containg a leaflet with a Chapter List

Disc Contents:
  • Main Movie with optional subtitles
  • Chapter List for Main Movie
  • Making Of Documentary narrated by James Earl Jones
  • Pre Production Meetings between Spielberg, the writers and effects wizards
  • Featurette on the Foley Artists
  • Cinematic Trailers for Jurassic Park, The Lost World and a Teaser Trailer for JP3
  • Animatic Storyboard of Raptors In The Kitchen
  • Cast and Crew Profiles
  • Production Notes
  • Storyboards
  • Encyclopedia on the various Dinos seen in the first film
  • Weblinks to the Jurassic Park website accessed through a PC
Pretty standard DVD with the features contained.
The Making Of is the most extensive of them all at 45 minutes of interviews with all the cast and crew and backstory for the pre-production, production and post-production of the film. Having James Earl Jones as Narrator for the feature is a work of genius.

The rest of the features are pretty standard though, and mostly thrown in for the sake of it. Most of it is pretty pointless too and is mainly reading material rather than watching material... especially the Dinosaur Encyclopedia, what was the point in an encyclopia that tells you nothing interesting about the Dinos apart from how tall they were?
The Raptors In The Kitchen animatic storyboard is relatively good fun though, seeing how the animatic storyboards work.

The Weblinks don't work either and there's no Commentary, but at least there are Trailers which is something a lot of DVDs seem to be missing these days.


All in all, about 60 minutes worth of stuff to go through, if that. Kind of feels like it was chucked together for the sake of giving fans something to have. Still though, the Making Of is really well put together and the movie's picture and sound is tip top.
65%



If you ever need a ****** DVD to review (for whatever reason) its this one
http://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/B00006...4733868&sr=8-2
Not a great film
Boring special features
Bad audio
And some of the worse picture quality
__________________
Yeah, there's no body mutilation in it



Not my sort of movie so I doubt I'll be getting the DVD. Especially after what you've told me

The worst DVD I've seen myself is Critters. Mainly because the sound is out of sync with the picture and there are no features at all.



DVD Review #12
The Lord Of The Rings Extended Cut Trilogy Box Set






Box Contents: 3 separate cardboard DVD cases styled to look like individual The Lord Of The Rings novels: The Fellowship Of The Ring, The Two Towers and The Return Of The King


---


The Fellowship Of The Ring Case Contents:
4 discs and a booklet presented in a Middle Earth map style showing the Special Features disc contents.
Leaflet with a contents list of all 4 discs.

Disc 1 Contents: First half of main movie, presented in Widescreen and with Dolby Digital Surround, DTS Surround, Stereo Sound and English Subtitles.
Also contains 4 Commentary Tracks with Directors, Writers, Cast, Special Effects Crew and Design Team members.

Disc 2 Contents: Second half of main movie, presented in Widescreen and with Dolby Digital Surround, DTS Surround, Stereo Sound and English Subtitles.
Also contains 4 Commentary Tracks with Directors, Writers, Cast, Special Effects Crew and Design Team members.

Disc 3 Contents: 6 Documentaries covering JRR Tolkien and the adaption of book-film processes, WETA Workshop's efforts to design and build Middle Earth, weapons and costumes.
Interactive Map that follows the journey of the Fellowship.
Art Galleries with 2,000+ images and slideshows with Artist commentary with optional Subtitles.
Storyboards and Pre-vis sequences with actual film footage alongside for comparison.

Disc 4 Contents: 11 Documentaries covering cast, photography, "A Day In The Life Of A Hobbit", visual effects, post production, editing, music and sounds created for the movie and a look at the reaction at the time of cinematic release.
Also another Gallery with behind the scenes and production photos.


---


The Two Towers Case Contents:
4 discs and a booklet presented in a Middle Earth map style showing the Special Features disc contents.
Leaflet with a contents list of all 4 discs.

Disc 1 Contents: First half of main movie, presented in Widescreen and with Dolby Digital Surround, DTS Surround, Stereo Sound and English Subtitles.
Also contains 4 Commentary Tracks with Directors, Writers, Cast, Special Effects Crew and Design Team members.

Disc 2 Contents: Second half of main movie, presented in Widescreen and with Dolby Digital Surround, DTS Surround, Stereo Sound and English Subtitles.
Also contains 4 Commentary Tracks with Directors, Writers, Cast, Special Effects Crew and Design Team members.

Disc 3 Contents: 5 Documentaries covering JRR Tolkien and the adaption of book-film processes, the origins of Tolkien's Middle Earth, WETA Workshop's efforts to design and build Middle Earth, weapons and costumes. Also a look at how Gollum was created as a CG character.
2 Interactive Maps that show Middle Earth's Atlas and a location comparison of New Zealand and Middle Earth.
Art Galleries with 1,500+ images.

Disc 4 Contents: 8 Documentaries covering the filming of the movie, visual effects, post production, editing, music and sounds created for the movie. Also fight training and choreography.
Interactive sound demo of Helm's Deep.
More picture galleries with 300+ images and Artist commentary.


---


The Return Of The King Case Contents:
4 discs and a booklet presented in a Middle Earth map style showing the Special Features disc contents.
Leaflet with a contents list of all 4 discs.

Disc 1 Contents: First half of main movie, presented in Widescreen and with Dolby Digital Surround, DTS Surround, Stereo Sound and English Subtitles.
Also contains 4 Commentary Tracks with Directors, Writers, Cast, Special Effects Crew and Design Team members.

Disc 2 Contents: Second half of main movie, presented in Widescreen and with Dolby Digital Surround, DTS Surround, Stereo Sound and English Subtitles.
Also contains 4 Commentary Tracks with Directors, Writers, Cast, Special Effects Crew and Design Team members.

Disc 3 Contents: 6 Documentaries covering JRR Tolkien and the adaption of book-film processes, WETA Workshop's efforts to design and build Middle Earth, weapons and costumes.
2 Interactive Maps that show Middle Earth's Atlas and a location comparison of New Zealand and Middle Earth.
Art Galleries with 2,000+ images.

Disc 4 Contents: 7 Documentaries covering the filming of the movie, visual effects, post production, editing, music and sounds created for the movie.
Also a tribute to cast and crew involved throughout.
More picture galleries showing Production and behind the scenes photos.


---


I've cover a couple of extensive DVDs on here already with Alien 3 Definitive being one of the best for features, but this LOTR Box is by far the biggest.

Combining ever aspect of behind the scenes photography and filming and adding picture galleries and cast and crew notes, interactive maps with commentary and subtitles throughout.

Any fan of LOTR will be extremely happy with this Box and any movie fan who, like me will revel in the longevity of the presentation too.

Highly detailed and very little missed out from the finish product, LOTR Extended Cut Trilogy Box Set is one that every movie lover and DVD lover should own.

I've sat and watched all 3 films throughout with the original soundtrack, and have watched all 3 films each with the 4 various Commentary Tracks too, which equates to 54 hours and 30 minutes of film alone... and with the rest of the Documentaries and Galleries of near 6,000 images on the second and third discs respectively, I lost track but I would hazard a guess at, near as makes no difference, 100+ hours of LOTR joy.

The Documentaries are also highly informative, they leave nothing out of the commentaries and explain in great detail how certain CG/miniature shots and scenes were pieced together and show great detail from anything in costume design to the casts' character development.

The overall Commentary Tracks on the main films are also packed with little snippets of info and the main cast Commentary is not only informative and interesting, but also funny at times and full of stories and anecdotes of life behind the scenes and life on set.
There's also over 40 people involved in the commentaries.

It's that extensive, it's actually hard to take it all in on the first time round, I've watch a couple of times and am still discovering things I missed last time.

Definitely a buyer.

101% Perfect.



Ok so, not a fan of the movies, but I bought them when one of our members was writing quizzes and I was putting them into MoFo's Quiz Section.
Decided to dust them off the shelf and watch them again and also the special features discs...


5 Year Thread Bump!


The Harry Potter 16 Disc Box Set




Contents:
16 DVDs: Discs are divided nicely into sleeves, each labelled Year 1, Year 2 etc.
The Box-Art is also pretty solid, it looks pretty and each sleeve is also nicely decorated.
All 8 movies, each movie on 1 disc... and the other 8 discs containing Behind The Scenes footage and various Making-Of documentaries. Some of which are over an hour long, and others a little shorter ranging from 10 minutes to 30 minutes.


The Movie Discs are pretty basic.
They have the movie, and subtitle options, and a little animated home-page screen.


The Special Features Discs though, are a mixed bag.


Each special features disc covers something different.
One of them covers the CGI Effects and Practical Effects, another covers the Character Writing, another the Music and Sound Effects, another covers "How It All Began" with the books, and another covers the actors themselves and casting choices, etc etc.


The problem with these special features discs, is the actual content.
Some of the documentaries contained are made by ITV (British channel 3) and are basically a guy called Ben Shepard acting like a fanboy and giggling like a girl whenever he talks to the cast.
It's also so cheaply edited, that Ben Shepard also says stuff like "After the break, we'll be doing..." and then there's a slapdashed cut in the footage.
They've basically taken an independently made making-of, and chucked it into the special features.


The actual properly made behind the scenes footage and "making-of" footage is also repeated from disc to disc, documentary to documentary.
What I mean is, for instance, the CGI and Practical effects footage:
Some of that stuff is repeated in the Character Writing segments, just with a slightly different voice-over.
Cast interviews are repeated several times as well. You get to see footage of a Daniel Radcliffe interview again and again, spread across 4 different discs.
It's sad really, considering the amount of work that went into the movies, and yet they felt that they had to bulk out the DVDs by repeating the same footage.
If you were to take out the duplicated stuff, the Special Features running time would be dramatically cut by at least 3 quarters. No joke.

---
All in all...
The movies are well put together on the discs, and the DVDs and the DVD Menus etc all match each other in aesthetic. Which is nice to see especially when some box-sets these days are a midge-modge when it comes to aesthetics.
The Special Features segments are informative when they do actually decide to show something different to all of the other discs... but they're just so repetitive in their content that it hardly seems worth buying them.


My rating: 45%




Star Trek: Stardate Collection


Contents:
Outer card sleeve.
Inner box is a solidly made plastic clip-lock-box.
Inside the Inner box, is a leafed disc holder that opens like the pages of a book, each page containing a disc.
Booklet with a list of the contents.
12 discs, containing all 10 of the original movies, 1 movie per disc, with discs 11 and 12 containing extra added special features.

Disc 1: Star Trek: The Motion Picture
Presented in 2:35:1 Anamorphic Widescreen, with 5.1 Dolby Surround
Voice Commentary from: Michael & Denise Okuda, Judith & Garfield Reeves-Stevens and Daren Dochterman
Featurettes:
The Longest Trek
Special Star Trek Reunion
Starfleet Academy: The mystery behind V'ger

Disc 2: Star Trek: The Wrath Of Khan
Presented in 2:40:1 Anamorphic Widescreen, with 5.1 Dolby Surround
Voice Commentary from: Nicholas Meyer and Manny Coto
Featurettes:
James Horner: Composing Genesis
Collecting Star Trek's Movie Relics
Starfleet Academy: The Mystery Behing Ceti Alpha VI

Disc 3: Star Trek: The Search Of Spock
Presented in 2:35:1 Anamorphic Widescreen, with 5.1 Dolby Surround
Voice Commentary from: Ronald D Moore and Michael Taylor
Featurettes:
Industrial Light & Magic: Visual Effects
Spock: The Early Years
Star Trek And The Science Museum And Hall Of Fame
Starfleet Academy: The Vulcan Katra Transfer

Disc 4: Star Trek: The Voyage Home
Presented in 2:35:1 Anamorphic Widescreen, with 5.1 Dolby Surround
Voice Commentary from: Roberto Orci and Alex Kurtzman
Featurettes:
Pavel Chekov's Screen Moments
The Three Picture Saga
Star Trek For A Cause
Starfleet Academy: The Whale Probe

Disc 5: Star Trek: The Final Frontier
Presented in 2:40:1 Anamorphic Widescreen, with 5.1 Dolby Surround
Voice Commentary from: Michael & Denise Okuda, Judith & Garfield Reeves-Stevens and Daren Dochterman
Featurettes:
Star Trek Honors NASA
Hollywood Walk Of Fame: James Doohan
Starfleet Academy: Nimbus III

Disc 6: Star Trek: The Undiscovered Country
Presented in 2:35:1 Anamorphic Widescreen, with 5.1 Dolby Surround
Voice Commentary from: Larry Nemecek and Ira Steven Behr
Featurettes:
Tom Morga: Alien Stuntman
To Be Or Not To Be: Klingons and Shakespeare
Starfleet Academy: Praxis

Disc 7: Star Trek: Generations
Presented in 2:35:1 Anamorphic Widescreen, with 5.1 Dolby Surround
Voice Commentary from: David Carson and Manny Coto
Featurettes:
Scoring Trek
Next Generation Designer Flashback: Andrew Probert
Stellar Cartography On Earth
Brent Spiner: Data And Beyond Part 1
Trek Roundtable: Generations
Starfleet Academy: Trilithium

Disc 8: Star Trek: First Contact
Presented in 2:35:1 Anamorphic Widescreen, with 5.1 Dolby Surround
Voice Commentary from: Damon Lindelof and Anthony Pascale
Featurettes:
Industrial Light & Magic: The Next Generation
Greetings From The International Space Station
Spaceshipone's Historic Flight
Brent Spiner: Data And Beyond Part 2
Trek Roundtable: First Contact
Starfleet Academy: Temporal Vortex

Disc 9: Star Trek: Insurrection
Presented in 2:35:1 Anamorphic Widescreen, with 5.1 Dolby Surround
Voice Commentary from: Jonathan Frakes and Marina Sirtis
Featurettes:
Westmore's Legacy
Marina Sirtis: The Counsellor Is In
Brent Spiner: Data And Beyond Part 3
Trek Roundtable: Insurrection
Starfleet Academy: The Origins Of The Ba'ku And The Son'a Conflict

Disc 10: Star Trek: Nemesis
Presented in 2:35:1 Anamorphic Widescreen, with 5.1 Dolby Surround
Voice Commentary from: Michael & Denise Okuda
Featurettes:
Reunion With The Rikers
Today's Tech, Tomorrow's Data
Robot Hall Of Fame
Brent Spiner: Data And Beyond Part 4
Trek Roundtable: Nemesis
Starfleet Academy: Thalaron Radiation

Disc 11: The Captains' Summit
William Shatner, Leonard Nimoy, Patrick Stewart and Jonathan Frakes, sitting in a circle, interviewed by Whoopi Goldberg, about how Star Trek has affected their lives, life on set, and anecdotes about living with each other and the other cast members for such a long time.

Disc 12: Evolutions
The Evolution Of The Enterprise
Villains Of Star Trek
I Love The Star Trek Movies
Farewell To Star Trek: The Experience
Klingon Encounter
Borg Invasion 3D
Charting The Final Frontier

Review
What a box-set!
Ok, comparing it to some box-sets like LOTR, this one isn’t as packed with information about every single minute detail of every movie… but, it is extremely fun to go through the contents of the features.

Filled with loads of info about the backgrounds of the various movies, ILM special effects, music, characters and so on, this is a must-buy for fans of Trek, and a decent set to own for the more casual Trek viewer.


The character segments on Spock, Data, Troy, Chekov and so on, are also pretty cool, if a little short at only a few minutes a time, but, they are a nice touch.
Sadly though, if they had compacted all the stuff about Data into one featurette instead of having 4 parts spread across 4 discs, they could have added more segments on other characters like Picard, Worf, Kirk, Uhura and so on. Bad call really… though arguably Data is the most intriguing character among the many, I’d still have loved to see similar segments on other characters.


The other things in the features, like Charting The Final Frontier and the Starfleet Academy segments, are super-nerd stuff.
Not that they alienate (ahem) the viewer if said viewer isn’t a super-Trekkie… but they’re made of the stuff that die-hard Trekkie’s will love, and also casual viewers will find quirky and fun.


The fact that they could have gone full-on-Trekkie with all these things, but didn’t, is what I love the most about this box-set.
---
The special features discs 11 and 12 are a nice touch as well when you consider they could have just stopped with the first 10 discs.
The last disc #12, is basically outside-the-movies stuff like The Klingon Encounter, and the walkthrough footage of the Borg Invasion 3D… but it’s lovely to watch these things, and see Trek from the perspective of super-fans and side-actors.



The Star Trek Experience segment especially, is one of the loveliest homages to the fan-base of Star Trek I’ve ever seen.


The Captains’ Summit though on disc #11, is one awesome idea and is such a joy to watch. Shatner, Nimoy, Stewart and Frakes all chundering and chattering about Trek together, and occasionally trying to talk over each other to get their point across, is super fun, albeit surreal, to watch.


---


All in all, they’ve managed to delicately balance the nerdier, well, Trekkier things in the features with a more casual accessibility, so they’re universal yet still informative and fun to watch, and that is a very important word, it’s fun to watch… makes this box-set a definite buyer.
Superb.
My Rating: 96%