The Crow is a film that has been in my DVD collection for sometime. Having recently upgraded the disc I had for the R2 Scandinavian 2 disc Limited Edition steel-book version I thought that I would review a film that is amongst my favourite movies.

Eric Draven (Brandon Lee) and his fiancée Shelly (Sofia Shinas) are murdered on the eve of their Halloween Wedding by T-Bird and his gang of delinquents sent over there on the orders of Top-Dollar (Michael Wincott).

Legend has it that when someone dies The Crow carries their soul to the land of the dead but sometimes something so bad happens that a terrible sadness is carried with it and the soul can’t rest. Sometimes the Crow can bring that soul back to put the wrong things right.

So at its basic level it is a story of revenge and Let’s face it, that storyline isn’t exactly over spilling in the originality stakes but don’t let that put you off as Director Alex Proyas and director of photography Dariusz Wolski     have created a wonderful visual feast of entertainment that sets The Crow apart from other movies of its ilk.

On watching this movie again recently I was reminded of Blade Runner; The depressing look and feel of the locations. The seemingly endless rain that falls down on the filth of the city but at the same time it is filmed in a graphic novel style not a million miles away from the more recent film noir Sincity. But on top of this if anyone remembers the Max Payne PC game from way back in 2001? This is how I imagined the real life world of Max Payne to look like.

The casting is spot on in all areas but special mention needs to be made for Brandon Lee. He is absolutely fantastic in this, his look is very much the Batman’s joker and I could really believe that his look influenced the make up in Heath Ledgers character. Another similarity between Ledger and Lee is that they both died young and in tragic circumstances, Lee was actually killed by a faulty prop gun during the making of this very film and his face was digitally superimposed on another actor in several shots. The tragic scenes that were filmed when the accident occurred were destroyed without being developed and are not in the movie at all. But I think this would have been the movie that would have propelled him onto bigger things.

His acting is spot on here. Take the opening scenes for example when we see him emerge from the grave and make his way back towards the now deserted apartment that he shared with his fiancée I could feel the pain and confusion of what was happening to him and the initial difficulty he has in coming to terms with what was going on.

Ernie Hudson plays the humane policeman Sergeant Albrecht, he is a shining light in what is mainly a sea of filth, he attempted to pursue the case when Shelly and Eric were killed but was stonewalled at every turn and eventually demoted. But when he sees Eric again he tries to help (after getting over the bewilderment of seeing a dead person alive). He even manages to get a few light hearted moments.

Sarah is a streetwise kid mostly abandoned by her barmaid/whore mother Darla (Anna Levine) and fends for herself most of the time; she was good friends with Shelly and Eric and misses them both very much. I thought she played her role very well, she seemed natural in the role and not wooden at all, I am surprised that she has not acted since.

Michael Wincott has always come across as a good bad guy, or shady character in a number of movies that I’ve seen him in, he just has that bad guy face and his gruff voice lends an air of malevolence that is on par with John Malkovich at his most evil. In fact in one scene we see him with a samurai sword on his back and for some reason I thought that he would have looked very good in “Highlander”.

For me the film has everything, stunning visuals, a great soundtrack, decent bad guys and some pretty good acting, if that doesn’t get you going then I am at a loss of what will.

Audio/Video:
I listened to this via a DTS soundtrack and it was awesome. The soundtrack was punchy and loud, bass rippled through my front room with that satisfying low noise. The haunting music suits the images on screen so well.

The dialogue was clear and concise too, never being overshadowed by the soundtrack. Surrounds were used nicely too with various effects panning the room.

Visually I found the transfer to be stunning, it is a very dark movie but I never felt there was a lack of detail, there was no detectable damage, it was a joy to behold.

Extras:

Disc 1:
Audio Commentary with Producer Jeff Most and Screenwriter John Shirley:
I was wondering why it wasn’t the director giving the commentary; Saying that the dialogue is quite interesting in explaining the dynamics of the story.

Disc 2:
A Profile on James O’Barr:
This is the guy that wrote The Crow graphic novel. A fairly interesting look at the creator of the comic, he seems like a fairly nervous guy and we find out about his life and the sad things that happened in his life that went on to influence his drawings.  We get excerpts of his drawings but the camera work when he is on screen is terrible, way too close and shaky. However I was enthralled by it and had to watch it till the end.

Brandon Lee’s Final Interview:
Watching this interview you can’t help but be amazed that he didn’t live to see the end of the movie. It is only a short interview but he obviously has a passion for the role, I think he would have gone on to great things.

Extended Scenes:
We are presented with 3 extended scenes that were shortened for the theatrical release. I enjoyed watching the scenes but I think that the idea to shorten them was ultimately a good one.

Deleted Footage Montage:
A collection of deleted scenes to music, not much in the way of dialogue accompanying it. I like the haunting music to the film so I found it a decent watch.

Original Poster Concepts:
A few still pictures on potential posters for the film, some better than others.

Production Design:
Another set of still on drawn production ideas.

Storyboards:
Another set of drawings depicting certain areas of the film.

Overall:
I think that this is a superb release, the steel-book itself feels like very good quality, the film is a superb gothic tale which was a great transfer and punchy audio. It is a well acted film with high production values and was of course the last film Brandon Lee made, a superb example of the genre.

Reviewers set up:
32” Sony Bravia
Harman Kardon AVR7300 through KEF Q Series Speakers
PS3 via HDMI Connection (Video) and Optical connection via the AMP (Audio)

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The Crow – DVD Review

Dr Peter Venkman (Bill Murray), Dr Ray Stantz (Dan Aykroyd) and Dr Egon Spengler (Harold Ramis) are parapsychologists at New York University. It is quickly established that Stantz and Spengler are at least semi serious about their work whereas Venkman is just using it to hit on women. Everything however is about to change as they get kicked out of the University. Venkman explains that it was their destiny so that they can go into business together, and so Ghostbusters was born; a company created to rid normal people of the ghosts and spectres that haunt their daily lives.

Business is initially very slow but after a couple of high profile jobs they find that they are being inundated with calls about spooky spectres, in fact business is so good that they have to take on a fourth person and employ Winston Zeddmore (Ernie Hudson). Across town Dana Barrett notices that her eggs are cooking themselves on kitchen worktop and she has an entity lurking in her fridge. Louis Tulley (Rick Moranis) is her health conscious, geeky neighbour discovers large devil dogs in his apartment.

It would seem that Barrett and Tulley live in a building which is a conduit to another world and the team must rush over there to protect Dana and the stop the mighty Zuul from taking over the city. Will they get there in time? Will they save Dana and Louis? Will they have funny one liners to drop? You will have to watch it to find out.

I think Ghostbusters is one of those films that just ingrains itself into your brain, A true icon of 80s movie making it has pretty much everything that a good family film should have and what’s even better is that it doesn’t ever get dull even all these years later as my teenage son is a fan.

The script is fun too; written by Aykroyd and Ramis it is a great selection of witty comments, one liners and quips. Bill Murray does seem to get the lion’s share of these and so it could be argued that this is a Bill Murray film, but I disagree with that, sure he is prominent in the film but not to the detriment of the other actors although I would say this film is probably one of Murrays best outdone only by Groundhog Day.

In fact that is one of the big plus points of the film in that a little time is taken to build the characters, we like and we care about them all but each has their own way, their own personality which provides us with different types of comedy; from Moranis’ geeky accountant, to Murrays dead pan they all will make us laugh.

Another thing which I think is appealing is that even though it is a family comedy movie they haven’t dumbed it down, they all come out with these large complicated scientific explanations and the great thing is that we as the audience all get it, to a certain degree we do anyway and that is half the charm of the film as well as the special effects which although some look a bit dated these days were top class in 1984.

Overall I think Ramis and and Aykroyd did a wonderful job with the script and Ivan Reitman did a wonderful job of directing the proceedings. This is a great classic movie and one that every movie lover should own.

9/10

Audio:

Mine played out in Dolby Digital 5.1 and it is a pretty decent track. Dialogue and soundtrack are mainly front based and are well balanced. The surrounds are used on occasion but I would have liked to see them utilised more, the few times that I noticed them I thought that my rear speakers had blown and were producing a rasping sound

6/10

Visual:

The picture on this blu-ray release has been cleaned up and it is a pretty good transfer. I didn’t noticed any damage or serious flaws although the colours sometimes seemed a bit muted on occasion.

For the most part the Special effects stand up well to a High Def release, the only real let down was whenever the “devil dogs” were involved, especially in the apartments, but then this movie is very old and all the other special effects seem to have stood up a little better.

7/10

Special Features:

There is a wealth of extras on this blu-ray disc

Cinechat: This is like MSN but for use when watching a film, you will of course need an internet connection for this feature, personally I don’t know if I want to chat to people whilst watching a film, and if I did I would want an external keyboard rather than the PS3 remote in order to input text.

Commentary with Ivan Reitman (Director), Harold Ramis (Egon Spengler) and Joe Medjuck (Associate Producer): The three guys sit down to talk about the film.

Blu-wizard: According to the blurb this feature allows you to customise the way you view the special features, it allows you to create a playlist of extras that you want to see.

Slimer mode: This is a picture in picture commentary with some graphics running the top and bottom of the screen which would normally be the black lines of a widescreen picture. The volume of this feature seems quite low.

Ecto-1: Resurrecting the classic car (15.37): as the titles hints at, this is all about the Ghostbusters car, how they chose it and its restoration of it when they wanted to release the game. An enjoyable little extra and I think everyone would agree that the restoration work was top drawer.

Making of Ghostbusters video game (11.18): Another self explanatory special feature.

Ghostbusters Garage, ECTO-1 Gallery (5.27): A bunch of still photographs showing the famous car before and after restoration. There is a little moving footage to and it is displayed to us as a rolling gallery.

Ghostbusters the video game preview (1.43): This is basically the trailer for the video game. I’ve never played the game but it doesn’t look to bad.

Scene cemetery: Scenes that were killed off or shortened in the released film, the quality of the clips is quite poor.

1984 Featurette (9.45): This is a making of feature made a the time of the movie, the audio is quite low, the presenter seems to be lacking a little personality too, but an interesting document from the period, this is all un-restored footage.

Cast and Crew Featurette (10.53): A good 10 minute chat with most of the guys about the film and their feelings about it, Bill Murray isn’t in any of the modern extras though. Although I have to say that I watched all of these extras in order and I have to say the Dan Aykroyd seems to go off on one dropping scientific explanations wherever he can, he is obviously really interested in the entire paranormal thing.

SFX Featurette (15.22): The setup for this feature was quite bland. They had a bunch of people that has worked on the film all sitting in the same room and they each spoke about the SFX and how the bits and pieces were filmed, with the occasional movie clip thrown in.

Multi Angle Featurette: there are three multi angle features here; Spook central exploding, she’s a dog and crossing the streams. I must say that I don’t get the feature, 1st you get a bad quality version then a better quality version that plays.

Storyboard comparisons: compare the story board to the actual movie.

10/10

Overall:

A great family movie that I never tire of seeing.

Film:	★★★★★★★★★☆
Video:	★★★★★★★☆☆☆
Audio:	★★★★★★☆☆☆☆
Extras:	★★★★★★★★★★
Overall:	★★★★★★★★★☆

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Ghostbusters – Blu-Ray Review

The Series:

ITV1 drama usually concerns itself with crime, family difficulties or the odd period piece, however lately they’ve been moving into new territory with shows such as Moving Wallpaper (fictional show about producing another fictional TV show) Primeval (a show where a team of scientists battle prehistoric and futuristic creatures that have entered our time-space) and the focus of this review, Demons, which centres around a small band of demon hunters.

Demons aired earlier this year, to slightly mixed reviews and declining ratings, but with the DVD and Blu-ray release just around the corner is this six episode series worth picking up?
 
The show revolves around Luke Rutherford, a London teenager who learns from his godfather that he is the last descendant from the Van Helsing Line, and it’s his job to put and end to all the demonic and ghoulish goings on in and around London, whilst also trying to live a normal teenage life consisting of exams, parties and girls. The general plot is stupidly unrealistic, far-fetched and downright absurd, but it mirrors a string of successful American counterparts such as Supernatural, Angel and almost exactly mimics Buffy the Vampire Slayer, as she found out she was the latest in a long line of vampire slayers thanks to help from a guardian and also battled vampires and demons whilst trying to lead a semi-normal life.
 
British networks have tried for years to create a supernatural series that could rival those in the states, and whilst we tend to get the basic idea right, the shows never last. Take HEX (which happens to be made by the same production company as Demons), it had a short two series run on Sky1 and had a similar concept; a girl at an English school finds she is a descendant of a line of witches and must battle demons; it was never episodic, yet the arc felt purposely stretched, the effects were poor and the departure of both lead character and lead demon didn’t help improve ratings for the second series. Problems that affected HEX and other like-minded shows generally all boil down to one thing, money. Unlike the Americans, we simply don’t spend enough on decent television, which is why we lose all our best writers, actors, editors and effects producers to the states.  The latter being especially important, as a supernatural series such as this relies heavily on creating believable effects.

 
As British shows don’t have the budget for blockbuster, or even block-denting, effects they tend to do two things, gear even more to youth culture (by showing exams, parties and boozing) and go overly ‘quirky’ in order to create a ‘unique’ selling point. Thankfully Demons refuses to go down the same path; yes there is a driving test and one or two scenes set in a college, but then the hero is only a teenager, and as for quirks; granted there’s quite a few, including the odd semi-bullet-time fight effect that’s likely to make you cringe, and villains that look like they have just stepped off a panto stage, but they’re generally in good fun and the show doesn’t seem to take itself too seriously.
 
Whilst the villains may look they belong in panto, they don’t act like it, and most are played very well with a darkly comedic and ruthless edge; Mackenzie Crook’s (Gareth from the Office) Gladiolus Thrip being a perfect example, as despite the ridiculous costume he manages to still appear threatening. The costumes were a stylistic choice that I disagree with (especially the inclusion of a very unconvincing rat/man), but the style carried by the rest of the show is inspiring; it produces a London that is stylish, gothic, dark and yet youthful and real all at the same time. The Stacks (underground library and teams HQ) looks like any old library, aside from the hobbit hole front door and the fact it’s based in an underground passage, yet is a safe place that any viewer would love to have a nose around.
 
Addressing some of my misgivings about British television, the effects department have done a terrific job on this show, the Demons make up is done exceptionally well, and the shows effects are surprisingly stunning in some parts, with the main let down being a fully C.G. monkey/gremlin in episode one. The high standard is achieved as the show seems to know its limits; it doesn’t try and recreate dinosaurs, show shape-shifters or any other especially tricky elements, instead confining the C.G. work to mainly fast shots that are perfect for the show.

The stories are another area where Demons surprised me, they are pretty generic and you’re likely to have seen them a dozen times, but they are still well told (for the most part) and the real gold lies in the writers ability to tie classic stories into the modern context; with the Series’ best episode being directly related to characters from Bram Stoker’s Dracula (thankfully the big man himself does not appear). It’s a darker episode than most with, with elements taken from Angel and Blade (but don’t expect Blade levels of gore on a 12 Certificate), some good action and genuine character moments.
 
For the most part characters in this series are simply there, not to be disliked or cared for, but there are some points where emotions boil and you do care for them. Christian Cooke is just what you’d expect as Luke, the pretty hero who doesn’t exactly know what’s going on but always manages to dispatch enemies with ease and still go to college. One of the most perplexing things about his character was the ease with which he took the news that he was destined to fight demons; barely batting an eyelid at the thought of facing supernatural creatures and death for the remainder of his life. Holly Grainger plays Ruby (a carbon copy of Xander from Buffy) who also took Luke’s news surprisingly well, she often saves the day but only sticks around to help fight Demons because she is secretly pining for Luke’s affection. Philip Glenister (Gene Hunt from Life on Mars) plays American Rupert Galvin, Luke’s protector, mentor and godfather all in one. He embodies the emotionally scarred, gruff hero, and while the accent is different, the coat’s a different colour and there are demons instead of criminals, the role isn’t that different from Gene Hunt, so it’s one you know he can do well. Rounding off the main cast is Survivors star Zoe Tapper as Mina Harker, the blind piano player with psychic abilities that has been helping Galvin for a number of years. Zoe’s performance is adequate, but rarely more than that, and is not helped by her occasionally forgetting to act blind.

There are also guest appearances from actors such as Mackenzie Crook (playing one of the Series more perilous demons), Richard Wilson (Victor Meldrew) plays a brilliant part as Father Simeon, a helpful yet eccentric zombie priest, and Father Ted’s Mrs. Doyle as a psychic fraud.

The first episode of the series, is as expected, typically British, somewhat cringe-worthy and suffers from the worst effects of the series, but as the series progresses it begins to find it’s own becoming slightly darker and much more watchable with some decent (but mostly unoriginal) stories. There’s the usual banter between characters providing a small element of comedy and of course the demon battling scenes, which when absent of bullet-time(ish) effects are choreographed fairly well, however afterwards even a mild scratch seems to find the heroes in need of medical attention. The last episode however, despite possibly setting up a new intriguing enemy for the second series, was a bit of a let down, feeling rushed and out of place, attempting to go too big too soon.
 
Despite the average to disappointing bookends, the series delivers exactly what it is supposed to; it’s simple family light entertainment, an easy watch that’s perfect for the kids. Is this a British Supernatural? No. Is it a British Blade? No. It’s Doctor Who with demons and a library instead of Cybermen and a time machine. But for fans of any episodic show following a similar format, or people looking for an easy show that will impress the kids, this is it.

Picture:
If I were to be generous to this transfer I would describe it as bad. This 1080p transfer is not up to the job and suffers from noticeable grain with picture quality having obvious differences between not only episodes but scenes as well. By the end I may have grown slightly accustomed to it, but the picture seemed noticeably better on the final episode although still not great. Watching closely you can tell this is a high definition disc, and should be higher quality than the DVD version, but if you are buying this don’t expect a reference quality disc by any means.

Audio:
Similarly disappointing is the disc’s two channel audio, as this is a series that really could have boosted it effectiveness by creating some subtle rear channel soundtracks to heighten the uneasy feeling of some of the darker scenes. What sound there is however is clear, well balanced and well placed, and Jack C Arnold’s series score is particularly impressive being worthy of a big budget film. The theme tune (Eyes of the Night by Starlight Mints) is also noteworthy as it is fits the show perfectly being modern, upbeat, memorable and likely to get stuck in your head for hours.

Extras:
Demons contains no extras whatsoever, aside from the obligatory interactive menu (which actually looks rather nice) and the option to turn subtitles on and off.

The Bottom Line:
Demons is an average series, more mature/gore hungry viewers should look elsewhere (possibly at Blade: The Series, or Supernatural for something in-between), but this is perfectly suited for Saturday night family entertainment. The stories are far-fetched, acting mostly average and some scenes are laughable, but it’s true to form and provides good honest fun.  If you’re a fan of Doctor Who type shows, this is a must buy, but being only six episodes long, having poor picture and unmoving audio quality it may be worth settling for the standard DVD, or even waiting until that comes down in price. Also if you were planning on buying to catch up before the next series airs, there’s little need as Philip Glenister has announced that he will not be returning, and has put the shows whole future in doubt.

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Demons, Blu Ray Review

What they believe they’ll find there is an ancient pyramid that predates the Egyptian, Cambodian and Aztec pyramids but contains features from all three cultures so may be a missing link to these ancient cultures. They also hope that it will hold an array of fabulous secrets that have lain beneath the ice for millennia. What they don’t realize is that they are being lured into an ancient battleground where they are intended to be the ritual sacrifices necessary to allow mankind’s ancient Gods to prove themselves worthy of their kind by hunting and killing the most terrifying creature in the galaxy.

Review

This is the movie fans of both franchises had been waiting for ever since, by some caprice of Stan Winston, an Alien skull appeared in the spaceship trophy room in Predator 2. That sparked the fans hunger for a confrontation between the two most terrifying movie creatures to date and what resulted was a series of comic books and video games that just had to inevitably lead to a movie and 15 years later, here we have it.

Most of you will already know that this movie suffered from a fairly negative and later unsubstantiated internet press around the time of its release but, having seen it in the cinema, I didn’t think it was as bad as was being put around at the time, even though it’s obvious that it was shot to get it in on a PG-13 certificate (and a wider teen audience). Director and co-writer Paul W.S. Anderson must take some of the stick but, avid Alien fan that he is, he stepped down from directing both Mortal Kombat: Devastation and Resident Evil: Apocalypse to write and direct this film and even though it’s already been nominated for a Razzie for worst remake or sequel, I think he made a reasonable, if flawed attempt.

First thing, the movie is too short at just 96 minutes and over 11 of those are spent on the end credits. That leads to a serious lack of build-up and character development resulting in a lack of fear factor and, other than for a few of the characters, I never really cared either way what happened to them and most were just monster fodder. The lack of time also meant things were rushed through to get to the action. For example, when John Hurt got impregnated in Alien it took several hours for the creature to gestate and rip its way out and then it took a while for it to grow but here, all of that seemed to take a few minutes to get from the face hugging of a few initial victims to a pyramid full of full grown Alien nasties. Then there’s the lack of the gore present in earler movies in the franchise, another price paid for its younger certificate.

There are a few other bits of sheer bollocks in the script such as saying things like “ancient maps show Antarctica was free of ice”. Sorry but any such maps would need to be modern ones as there wasn’t anyone around then to make the maps. References to time were also a bit outrageous. I mean, why would the Predators measure anything by our solar system time reference and if they came back every 100 years, there must have been some lean hunts before mankind returned to the Antarctic or we had satellites to “notice” their presence. Then there’s the laughable device that can be used to dial 10/10/2004, not even remotely close to the Aztec’s way of measuring such things, and the 10-minute cycle used to reconfigure the pyramid based on the same premise.

Anyway, the negative stuff aside, while Anderson hasn’t exactly had a stream of hits so far (Mortal Kombat, Soldier, Resident Evil), his directing here is on target and his style of fast cuts and well framed shots suits the pace of the film. The cast also perform well enough – Sanaa Lathan, who played Wesley Snipes’ mom in Blade, is the real heroine of the piece as Alexa Woods, the team guide and Lance Henriksen, a serious veteran of science fiction movies including Aliens and Alien³, gives an excellent performance as Weyland and it was nice to see him back in the franchise. Others worth a mention, although they don’t really add much to the story, are Raoul Bova and Ewen Bremner as two of the scientists and Colin Salmon as Weyland’s right hand man. Everyone else is pretty forgettable and just fodder for the hunt.

The picture is presented in 2.35:1 anamorphic widescreen and is an absolutely excellent transfer even given that most of the scenes are pretty dark being shot at night or underground in the pyramid. Colours and blacks are solid and shadows well defined and everything is sharp and free of grain, artefact, etc. Altogether an excellent quality picture. The sets and visual effects are also excellent with the Aliens and Predators well realised and especially the periodically reshaping pyramid – a brilliant concept that adds a little more edge to the plot.

There are two choices for sound, a Dolby Digital 5.1 and a DTS 5.1 track. The DTS is as ever the best of the two but you really won’t be disappointed with the Dolby track if you don’t have the hardware to appreciate the DTS one. Both are very well engineered surround sound experiences and once the action gets going down in the continually reshaping pyramid, the soundstage becomes seriously dynamic and effects laden. The DTS track is simply excellent and adds so much more value to the movie.

Anyway, leaving the fairly thin plot to one side, what this movie is all about is the battle between the Predators and Aliens and the scenes where we get to see them get it on. Can the technologically advanced and super strong Predator species prevail over the ultimate predatory species, the Alien? Their history in this movie suggests that they can or they wouldn’t breed them for this sport but the result is never a sure thing and the danger factor is still there and the fight scenes between the two in the film worked quite well for me. As for the corny ending, it reminded me of the ending in Species and it’s obviously a lead into a possible sequel with some new possibilities so here’s hoping they do it a lot better than this one.

Extras

There are two discs here and a pretty full package of extras…

Disc 1

This contains both the theatrical and extended versions of the movie, the latter of which was being hyped as containing a new, never seen in the cinemas, opening sequence. However, that is all you get, a new opening that lasts about 90 seconds, almost a teaser trailer in itself, and no other deleted or extended scenes.

Commentary by Paul W.S. Anderson, Lance Henriksen and Sanaa Lathan – This is a pretty good collaboration where they all seem to be enjoying the experience and that gives us some good information all round and really shows us just how Alien crazy Anderson is. It covers all the usual stuff such as casting, characters, sets, locations and the monsters and we also get a rundown on all the little tributes to the earlier movies in both franchises, and there are a lot of them.

Commentary by Alec Gillis, Tom Woodruff Jr. and John Bruno – This is the technical commentary and these guys are the creature designers and visual effects supervisor. They’ve all worked on some of the earlier Alien or Predator movies and they give an interesting commentary on the visual effects used here and give some comparisons on those used on the earlier movies as more and more use is made of CGI these days. It’s not as chatty as the other commentary and is a bit drier but tech-heads will probably love it.

NB: The above commentaries are only available in the theatrical version of the movie.

Inside Look – Promotional previews and behind the scenes peeks at some upcoming Fox projects. Includes Hide and Seek, Elektra and Robots and lasts about six and a half minutes in all.

Trailers – Insert the disc and, after the annoying anti-piracy messages, you get trailers for Millennium/Harsh Realm, Man on Fire, The X-Files, The Clearing and Enduring Love.

DVD-ROM – Stick the disc into a PC DVD drive and it’ll get you into a setup to install something, which eventually gets you to the menu, the first three items of which are decent Flash presentations where mousing over the text bubbles blows them up to a readable size…

• Read The Complete 1st AVP Comic Book – Tear through all 27 pages of AVPs first comic book.
• Making Of AVP Comics – Have a look at the stages involved in making a 10-page comic book. Includes an article written by Randy Stradley, author of Dark Horse’s first Aliens Vs. Predator miniseries (1989) and originally appeared in the Aliens Vs. Predator trade paperback collection, first published in 1991.
• Sneak peek Of The Latest AVP Graphic Novel – View the first 16 pages of “Thrill of the Hunt”
• Dark Horse Comics Official Website – Just a link to the site.
• AVP Official Website – As above.
• Play Movie – Guess what this does?

However, I’ve got a Mac and this isn’t a Mac friendly DVD but open the disc on the desktop and you’ll see a DVDROM folder. I did a bit of digging around in there and entering file:///Volumes/AVP_SE_D1_FG_UK/DVDROM/Screens/base.html into a Flash enabled web browser will get you into the above menu. Not that it works as expected but you can access the first three items directly as follows and they’re well worth it if you’re an AvP fan…

1. Open the DVDROM folder.
2. Open the Screens folder.
3. Open the Comics folder.
4. Open the appropriate file as follows…

• first_comic.html – Read The Complete 1st AVP Comic Book
• making_comic.html – Making Of AVP Comics
• novel_comic.html – Sneak peek Of The Latest AVP Graphic Novel

Disc 2

Pre-Production

• Conception – A pretty good 26-minute piece with director Paul W.S. Anderson, producer John Davis, production designer Richard Bridgeland and creature effects designer Tom Woodruff Jr. talking about the origins of the movie. They also discuss the design concepts for things like the pyramid, whaling station, Predator weaponry, costumes and the animatronics creatures.
• ADI Workshop – Some behind-the-scenes footage showing the ADI (Amalgamated Dynamics, Inc.) visual effects guys at work on some Predator/Alien footage, animatronics Alien facehugger, the Predator shoulder weapon and various other bits and pieces. Lasts about seven minutes.
• Storyboard Gallery – Browse through the 200 storyboards created by Brent Boates, Phil Norwood and Richard Bennett and containing some excellent early artworks.
• Concept Art Gallery – 29 more pieces of Richard Bennett’s excellent artwork on stuff like sets, creatures weapons, etc.
• Conception Enhanced Viewing Mode – This is just the Concept featurette above but supposedly in enhanced viewing mode. I couldn’t tell what was new here though.
• Easter Egg – Highlight the ADI Workshop item and press the Right arrow to reveal a facehugger just to the right. Press Enter to get a nine-minute comical piece with Tom Woodruff Jr. talking to some poor Czech technicians about his roles as the creature in this movie, Alien³ and Alien Resurrection and some of his earlier work on Jumanji, Evolution, X-Files, Mortal Kombat and Pumpkinhead.

Production

• The Making of AVP – An entertaining, hour long feature on the making of AVP with input from Director Paul W.S. Anderson, producers John Davis and Chris Symes, cinematographer David Johnson, creature designers Alec Gillis and Tom Woodruff Jr, production designer Richard Bridgeland, miniature supervisor Richard Van Den Bergh and Sanaa Lathan, Lance Henrikson, Colin Salmon, Raoul Boya, Carsten Norgaard and Agathe De La Boulaye. This is the best extra in the package and it gets right into the nuts and bolts of making a big visual effects movie. We get to see the huge sets created in Prague, how they made the Antarctic seem real, the enormous pyramid set, the Alien Queen and her minions and more.
• Miniature Whaling Station – A seven-minute short where Director Paul W.S. Anderson, visual effects supervisor John Bruno and miniature supervisor Richard Van Den Bergh show us how they achieved the collapse of the Whaling Station using amazingly detailed miniatures.
• Trouble at the Mouth of the Tunnel – Cinematographer David Johnson gives us a behind-the-scenes look at filming the tunnel explosion and explains how a camera got destroyed by the sledge and we also get to see how things can go disastrously wrong when you’re working with fire. Lasts just under four minutes.
• Facehuggers and Eggs – 15 minutes worth of showing the filming of the sacrificial chamber scene where Ewan Bremner and Carsten Norgaard are facing a nasty end at the mercy of a horde of facehuggers.
• The Making of AVP Enhanced Viewing Mode – Like the Concept feature above, this is supposedly in enhanced viewing mode but again, I couldn’t tell what the difference was.

Post-Production

• Visual Effects Breakdown – An excellent 30-minute featurette with Director Paul W.S. Anderson, visual effects supervisor John Bruno, visual effects producer Adam Valdez, CG supervisor Ivor Middleton and visual effects supervisor Ben Shepard show us how they created some of the visual effects for ÔAlien vs. PredatorÕ. We get a look at animating the facehuggers, the Predator technology and sequences from roughs to finished composites for the big Alien vs. Predator fight, the Piper Maru, the Flashback, the Queen and the climax scenes.
• Deleted Scenes – There are 11 deleted scenes here and they can be played with an optional director’s commentary with Paul W.S. Anderson and Lance Hendrikson telling us why they were cut. The whole lot lasts just under nine minutes.

Licensing The Franchise

• Alien vs. Predator: The Comic Book – A short, 11-minute look at the Alien vs. Predator comic book with Dark Horse Comics publisher Mike Richardson, editor Randy Stradley and artist Chris Warner and how the movie compares to those stories.
• Monsters in Miniature by Todd McFarlane – This is the guy that created the action figures for Alien vs. Predator and he talks for about 13 and half minutes on how they were designed, produced and marketed for a more adult audience.

Marketing

• HBO Special – A 13-minute featurette giving us a behind the scenes look at making the movie. Includes interview material with director Paul W.S. Anderson, producers John Davis and Chris Symes, production designer Richard Bridgeland, creature designer Tom Woodruff Jr., various visual effects team members and Lance Hendrikson, Sanaa Lathan and Raoul Boya. It’s not bad as a short promotional piece and they talk about the origins of the story, the sets, the creatures, the CGI and visual effects and the characters.
• Theatrical Teaser – A 50-second teaser trailer, just enough to whet the appetite.
• Theatrical Trailer – A two-minute trailer for the movie, promises more than the final result delivers.

Overall

The critical slamming this received aside, AvP is a reasonable piece of sci-fi popcorn entertainment. Okay, it’s a bit short on thrills and running time but the excellent video, sound and the top-notch set of extras on this DVD set goes a long way to try and make up for that here. With two commentaries and a load of extras, there’s way more material here than anyone could reasonably watch in one evening and fans will love the comic book stuff on Disc 1 and there’s even a hidden Easter Egg if you need more.

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Alien Vs. Predator Extreme Edition, DVD Review

Review

Ever since watching the wonderful Amelie I have had an interest in checking out more of Director Jean-Pierre Jeunet’s work, so when the opportunity to review Delicatessen came along I was more than happy to take it. Delicatessen was filmed backed in 1991 and was also co-directed by Marc Caro, it also features a completely different (much darker) story than Amelie so I think it is a little unfair to compare the two films. However much of Jeunet’s visionary style that was used so effectively in Amelie is present in Delicatessen and this is most definitely no bad thing.

The whole thing takes place in a rather strange post-apocalyptic world where food (particularly meat) is extremely hard to come by and the Butcher Jean-Claude Dreyfus and his tenants have a very sinister way of getting food. The thing I really liked about the film was the ingenious way that the comedy manages to just keep it above becoming far too dark and sinister.

I guess it’s a tribute to the directors that I so quickly found myself getting absorbed in such a strange world, full of very eccentric characters. Louison (Dominique Pinon) and Julie (Marie-Laure Dougnac) are such innocent people that they are a stark almost uncomfortable contrast to the other characters within the apartments. Then there are the troglodytes, an underground (literally) group of anti-cannibalistic fighters, who have an almost cartoon-like style to them.

I also liked the way that the film doesn’t rely on excessive or graphic violence in order to portray it’s vision, the violent scenes are either left off screen or to the viewers imagination which for this kind of film, is the way it should be. In fact Jeunet even comments on the fact in his commentary track.

While the whole 90 minutes of the film are highly entertaining there are a few “magic” scenes for me that make it something special. Strangely enough these are the more light-hearted scenes. For example without wishing to spoil the film for you there is a scene where Lousion is trying to find a squeaky spring on the bed of Mademoiselle Plusse (Karin Viard). The two of them starting springing up and down and side-to-side on the bed, in tune with music on the TV. Trust me when I say that it looks better on screen than it does when I write about it.

Video/Audio

As far as the video quality goes, this is a difficult one for me to quantify. It is presented in a 1.85:1 Anamorphic widescreen format, which I’m assuming is the original cinematic format. The reason it is difficult to assess is the fact that film is presented with a very bleak almost monochrome colouring, which I guess is used to portray the starkness of the world they live in. There is some evidence of print damage and occasional digital problems, especially with some of the foggier scenes.

The French Dolby Digital 2.0 audio track (no English I’m afraid) is good enough but nothing exceptional. If you can speak French you will find the dialogue clear, for the rest of us English subtitles are available.

Extras

There’s a commentary track by Jeunet in French, subtitles for the track are also available in English. Jeunet start the commentary by explaining that Caro does not like commentaries and therefore turned down the offer to do this one. As in Amelie this is another good commentary from Jeunet, he is often quite honest and critical about his own work. He also occasionally says some less than complimentary things about the American style of film making.

From The Archives Of Jean-Pierre Jeunet, is a selection of screen tests and behind the scenes footage and runs at around 7-minutes long. ‘Fine Slices By Diane Bertrand’, is a 13-minute behind the scenes feature, again in French with English subtitles. Finally there is a collection of one trailer and six teaser trailers.

Overall

If you want to look for something a bit different to the usual Hollywood offerings and don’t mind your comedy being rather dark, then I can highly recommend this DVD. From the opening scene with the current tenant dressing up as garbage and hiding in the dustbin you know you’re in for something a bit different and this is certainly what you’ll get.

It is presented on a more than adequate DVD with a reasonable if not exceptional selection of Extras. Video and Audio quality are again acceptable if not reference quality. All in all this gets a well deserved 4 out of 5 from me, although this mark reflects the quality of the film more than the DVD.

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Delicatessen, DVD Review