Wall-E (Three-Disc Special Edition + Digital Copy and BD Live) [Blu-ray]
Walt Disney Studios Home Entertainment / 2008 / 98 Minutes / Rated PG
Street Date: November 18, 2008
Overall Grade 
A must have collection
Genres: Animation, family
Starring: en Burtt, Elissa Knight, Jeff Garlin, and Fred Willard Director: Andrew Stanton
Plot Synopsis: Pixar genius reigns in this funny romantic comedy, which stars a robot who says absolutely nothing for a full 25 minutes yet somehow completely transfixes and endears himself to the audience within the first few minutes of the film. As the last robot left on earth, Wall-E (voiced by Ben Burtt) is one small robot--with a big, big heart--who holds the future of earth and mankind squarely in the palm of his metal hand. He's outlasted all the "Waste Allocation Load Lifter Earth-Class" robots that were assigned some 700 years ago to clean up the environmental mess that man made of earth while man vacationed aboard the luxury spaceship Axiom. Wall-E has dutifully gone about his job compacting trash, the extreme solitude broken only by his pet cockroach, but he's developed some oddly human habits and ideas. When the Axiom sends its regularly scheduled robotic EVE probe (Elissa Knight) to earth, Wall-E is instantly smitten and proceeds to try to impress EVE with his collection of human memorabilia. EVE's directive compels her to bring Wall-E's newly collected plant sprout to the captain of the Axiom and Wall-E follows in hot pursuit. Suddenly, the human world is turned upside down and the Captain (Jeff Garlin) joins forces with Wall-E and a cast of other misfit robots to lead the now lethargic people back home to earth.
Wall-E is a great family film with the most impressive aspect being the depth of emotion conveyed by a simple robot--a machine typically considered devoid of emotion, but made so absolutely touching by the magic of Pixar animation. Also well-worth admiring are the sweeping views from space, the creative yet disturbing vision of what strange luxuries a future space vacation might offer, and the innovative use of trash in a future cityscape. Underneath the slapstick comedy and touching love story is a poignant message about the folly of human greed and its potential effects on earth and the entire human race.
Wall-E is preceded in theaters by the comical short
Presto in which a magician's rabbit, unfed one too many times takes his revenge against the egotistical magician.
Disc Features:
Disc One: - Audio Commentary - The standard DVD edition of 'Wall•E' includes an audio commentary with director Andrew Stanton.
- Short Film: "Burn•E" (HD, 7 minutes) - A beautifully-animated and whimsical Pixar short is included, called "Burn•E." The short is also viewable in a PIP mode that includes running storyboards for the entire short.
- Short Film (HD, 5 minutes) - An additional Pixar short is included, for an imaginative and visually-gorgeous little magician's tale called "Presto." I liked it even better than "Burn•E."
- Theatrical Trailers (HD) - Finally, there are a ton of trailers for other Disney titles, including 'Pinocchio,' 'The Chronicles of Narnia: Prince Caspian,' 'Earth' and 'Tinker Bell and the Lost Treasure,' as well as a 'Disney Parks' promo spot.
Disc Two:
The extras on disc two are divided into two sections, first "Robots," then "Humans." All materials are in full 1080 HD, with English, French and Spanish Dolby Digital 2.0 Stereo and subtitle options.
- Deleted Scenes (HD, 23 minutes) - The "Humans" section kicks off with four quite meaty scenes here, which you can play individually or as a group (with introduction by Stanton). The scenes are a mix of wholly completed and rendered scenes, and some in more raw states of completion. The four scenes are: "Garbage Airlock," "Dumper," "Secret Files," and "Docking."
- "Behind-the-Scenes" Featurettes (HD, 9 minutes) - This three-part documentary gives us a fairly thorough visual overview of the conception and production of 'Wall•E.' Interviews with Stanton and most of the main Pixar crew are intercut with extensive making-of footage shot during the story development, animation, and post-production processes. "The Imperfect Lens: Creating the Look of Wall•E" (14 minutes) covers the beginning stages of visual design. "Animation Sound Design: Building Worlds from the Sound Up" (19 minutes) dissects the creation of the film's entire soundtrack, which was constructed completely in the studio. Finally, "Captain's Log: The Evolution of Humans" (8 minutes) goes in-depth into the conceptualization and rendering of the film's human characters.
- BnL Shorts (HD, 9 minutes) - Full-length versions of the three short films watched by Wall•E in the film are presented here uncut and fully-animated. The three shorts are: "Captaining the Axiom," "Operation Cleanup" and "Meet the BnL Bots."
- Gallery (HD) - These extensive still galleries are divided into four sections: "Character Design," "Layouts & Backgrounds," "Visual Development" and "Publicity." The images are quite extensive, and including both conceptual art and more fully-rendered drawings. In total, I counted over a hundred different images. (Note there is also a "Play All" function that will automatically advance you through all the stills in the gallery.)
- Documentary: "The Pixar Story" (HD, 88 minutes) - Curiously, the best extra of this entire set is practically hidden in the disc's menus. It's in the "Humans" section, but on a second page that you have to scroll down to even access -- is Pixar trying to hide it?) Directed by Academy Award-winning filmmaker Leslie Iwerks, this is a fantastic documentary on the history of Pixar Studios.
- Vignette: "Wall•E's Treasures & Trinkets" (HD, 5 minutes) - The "Robots" section begins with this oddity.
- Sneak Peek : "Wall•E's Tour of the Universe" (HD, 1 minute) - This mock preview spot is a cute promo for the walle.com website.
- Bot Storybook (HD) - A sort of bizarre, animated interactive game, this can be viewed as a short stand-alone montage, or a "Play Along" mode allowing you to interact with the visuals on the screen.
- Bot Files (HD) - This is essentially a still gallery, with individual animated visual files for 28 different robots seen in the film. Each robot gets a 360-degree visual spin of the robot, with a narrator filling us in on some interesting facts about the machine.
- Trailers (HD) - Finally, four trailers for 'Wall•E' are included - three domestic, and one French-Canadian promo.
Disc Three:
Digital Copy - Finally, a third DVD disc is offered that contains a DisneyFile (aka Digital Copy) version of the film in 480p standard-definition. The DisneyFile copy is compatible with PCs, PSP and iTunes.
Tropic Thunder (Unrated Director's Cut)[Blu-ray] [Blu-ray]
DreamWorks Home Entertainment / 2008 / Unrated
Street Date: November 18, 2008
Genres: Comedy
Starring: Ben Stiller, Robert Downey, Jr., Jack Black
Director: Ben Stiller
Plot Synopsis: It's not really a knock to say that nothing in
Tropic Thunder is funnier than its first five minutes, so sly that--especially for people watching in theaters--you don't realize right away they
are the opening minutes of the movie.
This outrageous comedy begins with a series of fake previews, each introducing one of the main characters in the film-proper (not that there's anything proper about this film) and each bearing the familiar logo of a different motion picture studio: Universal, DreamWorks SKG, et al. Such playing fast and loose with corporate talismans verges on sacrilege, but it's an index of how much le tout Tinseltown endorses the movie as a demented valentine to itself. The premise is that the cast of a would-be "Son of Rambo" movie shooting in some Southeast Asian jungle get into a real shooting war with drug-smuggling montagnards. Don't ask--though the movie does have an answer--why such highly paid, usually ultra-pampered personnel as superhero Tugg Speedman (Ben Stiller), Mozart of fart comedy Jeff Portnoy (Jack Black), hip-hop artist Alpa Chino (Brandon T. Jackson), and five-time Oscar-winner Kirk Lazarus from Aus-try-leeah (Robert Downey Jr.) should be running through the jungle unattended and very vulnerable. It matters only that the real-life cast has a high time kidding their own profession and flexing their comedic muscles.
Bonus points go to Stiller for co-writing the script (with Justin Theroux) and directing, and to Downey, brilliant as a white actor surgically turned black actor for his role and utterly committed to staying in character no matter what ("I don't drop character till I done the DVD commentary"). Be warned: The movie, too, is committed--to being an equal-opportunity offender. Its political incorrectness extends not only to Lazarus's black-like-me posturing but also Speedman's recent, Sean Penn–style Oscar bid playing a cognitively challenged farmboy--or, in Lazarus's deathless phrase, "going the full retard." Others in the cast include Steve Coogan as a director out of his depth, Nick Nolte as the Viet-vet novelist whose book inspired the film-within-the-film, Matthew McConaughey as Speedman's sun-blissed agent back home, and Tom Cruise--bald, fat-suited, and profane--as an epically repulsive studio head. Two hours running time is a mite excessive, but otherwise, what's not to like?
Disc Features: • Audio commentary with Ben Stiller, Jack Black and Robert Downey Jr
• Featurettes: "Blowing Shit Up," "The Hot LZ," "7 Cast of Tropic Thunder" features, "Make-up test with Tom Cruise")
• "Full Mags" with Optional Intro by Ben Stiller and editor Greg Hayden
• MTV Movie Awards clip
• "Rain of Mandess" trailer
• DreamWorks Public Service Announcement
Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants 2 (+ Digital Copy) [Blu-ray]
Warner Home Video / 2008 / Rated PG-13
Street Date: November 18, 2008
Genres: Comedy, Drama, Teen
Starring: Amber Tamblyn, America Ferrara, Alexis Biedel, Blake Lively
Director: Sanaa Hamri
Disc Features: • Featurette: "Go Jump Off A Cliff"
• Additional Scenes
• Gag Reel
The Universe: The Complete Season 1 [Blu-ray]
A&E Home Video / 2006 / 705 Minutes / Unrated
Street Date: November 18, 2008
Genres: Documentary
Awake [Blu-ray]
Weinstein Co. / 2008 / Rated R
Street Date: November 18, 2008
Genres: Horror
Starring: Jessica Alba, Hayden Christensen
Plot Synopsis: Sexy and suspenseful, Awake turns the disturbingly real phenomenon of "anesthetic awareness" -- in which surgery patients, though completely paralyzed, are conscious of everything they are experiencing, including the pain -- into a "completely absorbing" thriller (Roger Ebert). When failed anesthesia leaves a rich young tycoon (Hayden Christensen, Star Wars) alert but immobilized during open-heart surgery, he overhears a devious plot to have himself killed. Co-starring Jessica Alba (Sin City) and Academy Award-nominee Terrence Howard (Crash), Awake does "for operations what Jaws did for the beach"
Jeff Dunham's Very Special Christmas Special [Blu-ray]
Image Entertainment / 2007 / 85 Minutes / Unrated
Street Date: November 18, 2008
Genres: Comedy
Starring: Jeff Dunham
Plot Synopsis: Jeff Dunham and his cast of characters join to make Christmas very special - and hilarious - like only they know how. All new show also includes never-before-seen material with numerous DVD extras, including the music video, "Roadkill Christmas." Share this must-have event with the entire family for Christmas and all year long!
Disc Features: • Behind-the-scenes material
• Music video: "Roadkill Christmas"
Southland Tales [Blu-ray]
Sony Pictures Home Entertainment / 2006 / Rated R
Street Date: November 18, 2008
Genres: Drama, Sci-Fi
Starring: Curtis Armstrong, Sarah Michelle Gellar, Justin Timberlake
Director: Richard Kelly
Plot Synopsis: Well, filmmakers should aim high, they say. And Richard Kelly shot the moon on his highly-anticipated follow-up to cult sensation
Donnie Darko, which expands the apocalyptic mood of that movie and blows it up tenfold. Set during the election season of 2008,
Southland Tales proposes a series of apparently linked events: the reappearance of a vanished movie star (Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson), now an amnesiac; the bizarre doubling of a policeman (Seann William Scott in two roles); the development of an energy source from ocean waves; and the presence of an Iraq War veteran (Justin Timberlake) who seems to be watching everything, and narrating some of it. Not that the narration helps; even with voice-over (reportedly added after the film's disastrous debut at the 2006 Cannes Film Festival),
Southland Tales doesn't come close to making sense, let alone at the minimum level of dangling a carrot to lead the audience along (even
Mulholland Drive had a semblance of murder mystery to be solved, or not). The cast is loaded with
Saturday Night Live cut-ups, but only Jon Lovitz connects, and in other roles people like Sarah Michelle Gellar, Christopher Lambert, Bai Ling, and John Larroquette are utterly mystifying, by no fault of their own. In some of the musical sequences Kelly gets in stride, but it's easy to create drama in a three-minute music video, and harder to do over two and a half hours. Some top critics rushed to champion the movie, as though flying in the face of philistinism, so feel free to try out this incoherent pastiche for yourself.
Disc Features: • Audio commentary by director Richard Kelly
• Featurette: "USIDent TV: Surveying the Southland"
• Still Gallery: "Southland Tales: The Prequel Saga Graphic Novel"
• Short Film: "This Is The Way The World Ends"
Encounters at the End of the World [Blu-ray]
Image Entertainment / 2008 / Unrated
Street Date: November 18, 2008
Genres: Documentary
Starring: Werner Herzog
Director: Werner Herzog
Plot Synopsis: Just about anywhere Werner Herzog goes becomes an interesting place, in part because the director shapes it with his distinctively sardonic eye. In
Encounters at the End of the World, the 'Zog heads off to Antarctica, finding there a population of unusual people, hallucinatory underwater life, and penguins. He doesn't appear on camera, but the unmistakably Teutonic Herzog voice is very much with us all the time, a baleful tour guide for this blank destination. In the human outposts of Antarctica, Herzog finds the kind of people you might expect would gravitate to the edge of existence--the curious, the oddball, the wanderers who've run out of other places to explore. He finds some deadpan hilarity, especially in filming a communication drill involving people practicing blizzard conditions (they wear buckets over their heads while roped together). The underwater photography (a realm previously explored in Herzog's
The Wild Blue Yonder) is by Henry Kaiser, and it meshes perfectly with the director's interest in alien eye-scapes. And when Herzog finally does find penguins, his imagination goes to the idea that some penguins go insane, scurrying off into their own suicidal directions. This isn't as arresting a film as
Grizzly Man, but it is an entertaining travelogue spiked with quirky observations.
Disc Features: • Audio Commentary with Werner Herzog, Henry Kaiser and Peter Zeitlinger
• 6 featurettes
• Interview with Werner Herzog hosted by Jonathan Demme
The Who At Kilburn: 1977 [Blu-ray]
Image Entertainment / 1977 / Unrated
Street Date: November 18, 2008
Genres: Music
Starring: Roger Daltrey, Pete Townsend
Disc Features: • Complete London Coliseum gig
• Additional footage
Priceless [Blu-ray]
First Look Home Entertainment / 2008 / 102 Minutes / Rated R
Street Date: November 18, 2008
Genres: Drama
Starring: Gad Elmaleh, Audrey Tautou
Director: Pierre Salvadori
Plot Synopsis: On the French Riviera, nothing comes cheap. And when it comes to men, Irene has very rich taste. One very confusing night, she is duped at her own game. Her knight in shining armor turns out to have no shine at all. Irene, however, is the woman of Jean's dreams. The only way to win her heart back is to turn the tables on her. Audrey Tautou (The Da Vinci Code, Amelié) stars in a romantic comedy that proves true love is PRICELESS.
Mirrormask [Blu-ray]
Sony Pictures Home Entertainment / 2005 / Rated PG
Street Date: November 18, 2008
Genres: Adventure, Animated, Family, Fantasy
Starring: Stephanie Leonidas, Jason Barry, Rob Brydon
Director: Dave McKean
Revolver (2005) [Blu-ray]
Sony Pictures Home Entertainment / 2005 / Rated R
Street Date: November 18, 2008
Genres: Crime, Drama
Starring: Jason Statham
Director: Guy Ritiche
Disc Features: • Audio Commentary
• Featurettes
• Deleted Scenes
• Alternate Ending and Opening
• Outtakes
Lucky Number Slevin [Blu-ray]
Weinstein Co. / 2007 / 109 Minutes / Rated R
Street Date: November 18, 2008
Genres: Action, Comedy
Starring: Josh Hartnett, Sir Ben Kingsley, Morgan Freeman, Stanley Tucci)
Director: Paul McGuigan
Disc Features: - Director’s Commentary
- Additional Commentary -- A second commentary features actors Josh Hartnett and Lucy Liu, with comments from writer Jason Smilovic added after the fact.
- Making Lucky Number Slevin (SD, 13 minutes) – This neatly constructed featurette includes interviews with the cast and crew that trace the development of the film.
- Deleted Scenes and Alternate Ending (HD, 21 minutes) -- This lengthy collection of cuts and extensions were wisely removed from the film.
- Theatrical Trailer
