Buy It Now!

Read my original THE PRINCESS AND THE FROG review.

As they did with their other recent animated release PONYO, Disney understands that animation is the cornerstone of their company and gives due respect to its release on Blu-ray. Disney Feature Animation’s return to hand-drawn animation is an explosion of color in 1080p. From the dark night scenes in the bayou to the brightly colored Mardi Gras scenes, the painterly frames don’t loose any of their luster. I didn’t even see color banding in the deep reds. The presentation makes one very aware that there is real artwork dancing across the screen. The DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1 audio matches the picture quality. Randy Newman’s music presentation is amazing, coming across the full range of speakers. The full soundscape is this way. The swamps come alive in the room with insects and creatures. Sounds whirl around the speakers from front to back, especially in scenes when voodoo magic comes alive. The rich picture and sound makes for an immersive home viewing experience.

For fans of the film, the presentation is supplemented wonderfully by the special features. Directors/co-writers John Musker and Ron Clements, and producer Peter Del Vecho participate in a nice audio commentary, giving behind-the-scenes details about the film’s development, as well as capturing the collaborative nature of animation by pointing out individual contributions of the artists that worked on the film. The disc also offers a Picture-in-Picture track where the film plays with a combination of pencil tests, storyboards, key animations and temp animation.
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Buy It Now!

Read my original PONYO review.

I say this a lot, but animation was made for Blu-ray. Disney does a remarkable job transferring Hayao Miyazaki’s latest world of wonder and whimsy to 1080p. The artists’ rich color palette pops. Look at Lisa’s pink car. Look at the deep blues of the fish waves. None of the details of the gorgeous hand painted art are lost. One can see the brush strokes in the backgrounds. The underwater scenes come alive with Studio Ghibli’s attention to detail from the particles in the water to flow of the water. The audio matches the picture very well. The English track is in DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1 and the Japanese track is in Dolby Digital 5.1. Or course the former is far better than the latter. The English track has clear dialog and great directionality. At one moment a call from the rear speaker actually made me turn. The English version simply balances all the elements of the soundtrack from the dialog to the music to the sound effects better.

As for the special features, English-language executive producers Frank Marshall and Kathleen Kennedy give a brief introduction to bringing PONYO to the U.S. in “Meet Ponyo.” In lieu of a commentary track, the disc offers a Storyboard Experience where the Japanese storyboards play in the upper right hand corner along with movie. The color watercolor paintings often match the art on the screen exactly.
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Check Out the Trailer

Lars von Trier’s disturbing film was the most controversial film at the 2009 Cannes Film Festival. Reactions were love it or hate it. The French reviewers who lean toward art films generally loathed it, while American reviewers were the most kind. Some called it torture porn. Others complained it was violently misogynistic. I found it a brave, unblinking decent into the abyss of the worst of human experience.

The story begins with He (Willem Dafoe, THE ENGLISH PATIENT) and She (Charlotte Gainsbourg, 1996’s JANE EYRE) having passionate sex. It’s snowing outside and their young son crawls out of his crib to get a closer look out the window. The child falls to his death. She sinks into unbearable grief. He is a therapist who doesn’t agree with the way the doctors are treating his wife and decides to treat her himself. He forces her to confront her greatest fears. The scariest place she can now imagine is their cabin in the deep woods called Eden, where she spent the previous summer with her son working on her thesis about gynocide. The more callously He pushes her, the more disturbed she becomes, which leads to violence both mental and physical.
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Check Out the Trailer

While it stars Matt Damon and is directed by Paul Greengrass, GREEN ZONE isn’t Jason Bourne in Iraq as the ads make it out to be. It is more akin to conspiracy thrillers of the 1970s. There is something fishy going on in Baghdad and one soldier is dedicated to getting to the bottom of it.

CWO Roy Miller (Damon) is that soldier. The story begins with his undaunted effort to investigate an alleged WMD location while the area is being looted. When his unit comes up empty handed again, he questions the intel, but his superiors stand by the reports. His determination to not settle piques the interest of CIA agent Brown (Brendan Gleeson, IN BRUGES), who too questions the intel.
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Sam Bell has been on the moon for nearly three years. He’s about to rejoin his family on Earth. He seems to be starting to develop a twitch. Has the years of loneliness made him lose his mind? He ventures out onto the surface to fix a mining vehicle and has an accident. When Sam wakes up, he ventures back out and finds someone who looks just like him.

Sam Rockwell (CONFESSIONS OF A DANGEROUS MIND) plays the dual role as Sam Bell and the second Sam Bell. The second Sam Bell is cocky and angered by the existence of the original scruffy Sam, who seems very calm about having a doppelganger. Second Sam wants to discover the truth. Their A.I. computer GERTY (voiced by Kevin Spacey, THE USUAL SUSPECTS) might know the answers, but has conflicting programming. The original Sam wants to ignore the new Sam and just get back to his wife Tess (Dominique McElligott, LEAP YEAR) and daughter Eve (Rosie Shaw).
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Post-Oscar Buzz

The Oscar winners have been announced and now some of last night’s winners and nominees are arriving on Blu-ray and DVD tomorrow. Big name stars and amazing performances highlight this week’s new releases, as well as an overlooked doc that is a must see.
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Goodbye Solo - the small film left a big impact

Each year the RFP Overlooked Awards celebrates films that didn’t quite get the praise in the awards season they deserved. New to this year’s awards is the expansion of the Best Picture Honorable Mentions to nine entries. If the Academy Awards can nominate 10 films, there’s no reason why I can’t highlight 10 films as well.
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In Disney’s animated version of Lewis Carroll’s classic children’s tale, Alice constantly described Wonderland as nonsense. Tim Burton’s rendition combines Carroll’s two Alice books and makes nonsense of them booth. But when I say nonsense I mean pointless.

In this version, Alice (Mia Wasikowska, AMELIA) is a 19-year-old who is about to be married off to the boorish Lord Ascot (Tim Pigott-Smith, QUANTUM OF SOLACE). To escape his very public proposal, she runs off into the woods where she follows a white rabbit in a waistcoat (Michael Sheen, THE QUEEN) down a rabbit hole. The White Rabbit and others believe she has been to their land before, but she doesn’t believe them. The Blue Caterpillar (Alan Rickman, SWEENEY TODD) tells her that she is hardly the Alice they were looking to slay the Jabberwocky, a fire-eyed dragon.
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Best Doc of 2009

This is a great week for family films on Blu-ray and DVD. And in addition to all the wonderful family offerings, the Pick of the Week is a strictly for adults production. It’s a pretty fun week in the world of home entertainment.
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Sometimes very smart people can seem like prophets. Especially in their area of expertise. Josh Harris is just one of those people. You probably don’t know whom he is, but you should. He knew how you’d be living today back in 1999. Ondi Timoner’s documentary delves into his predictions, as well as his personality. He began as an Internet pioneer and transformed into a Machiavellian artist.

In 1984, Harris was first exposed to what would become the Internet and knew right then and there that it was the future. He started Jupiter Research, which made wildly accurate predictions out the Net’s future, and later sold it for $80 million. Taking that money, he launched the first Internet TV site called Pseudo.com when most people were still using dial-up. He was rolling in so much dough that he also became legendary for massive Studio 54-like parties. But it was more than simple decadence, the gatherings brought in top young artists in NYC, which would become the creative lifeblood of Pseudo’s programming. Before his channel had any competition, he was telling programs like 60 MINUTES that the Internet was going to take over television.
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