Reviewhttp://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2009/apr/03/media-room-dvd-blu-ray-reviews-29354624/
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Krish..
His Music ~ My Mother Tongue
________________________________
From: Vithur <vith...@gmail.com>
To: arrahmanfans@yahoogroups.com
Sent: Wednesday, 1 April, 2009 9:56:32 AM
Subject: [arr] Slumdog Millionaire - Blu-ray Disc Review
Slumdog Millionaire - Blu-ray Disc Review
Tags: Anil Kapoor, Ayush Mahesh Khedekar, Azharuddin Mohammed Ismail, Danny
Boyle, Dev Patel, Digital Copy, FOX, Freida Pinto, Irrfan Khan, Rajendranath
Zutshi, Saurabh Shukla
has an average rating of 8.6 on IMDb
1080p in AVC MPEG-4 on a 50gb disc
DTS-HD 5.1 Master Audio
are decent with a Digital Copy
-
- 2008
- 120 minutes
- FOX
-
Overall Verdict - A definite MUST-SEE!
Buy it for $25.99 @ Amazon.com
— Review written by: Justin Sluss —
Trailer:
The Movie Itself won many “Oscars” this year, namely Best Picture. “Slumdog
Millionaire” was Directed by (now Academy Award winner) Danny Boyle, and
Co-Directed by Loveleen Tandan, with the writing credits of Simon Beaufoy
(screenplay) and based on the novel by Vikas Swarup. The story tells that of an
18-year-old orphan named “Jamal Malik” (played by Dev Patel) from the slum
streets of Mumbai, India. The boy lives a very rough life along with his
brother “Salim” on the streets and eventually meets a girl named “Latika” who
he falls in love with a very young age. The boy’s brother Salim and friend
Latika both disppear from his life due to a local crime lord. Fast forward to
the present where Jamal is age 18 and becomes a contestant on the Indian
version of the popular game show “Who Wants to be A Millionaire?“, where he
ends up winning 20 million rupees. There’s only one problem here, when the show
takes a break for the night,
the local police arrest Jamal claiming that he has cheated. The boy claims
that he simply knew the answers and it was fate. What follows is Jamal telling
his life story of living on the streets, losing his brother and love interest
(Latika). Jamal is reunited with both his brother, Salim, and former love
interest Latika later on in the film which is very moving.
Overall, “Slumdog Millionaire“, that Danny Boyle and his fellow filmmakers have
made here is something that is very simplistic and semi-believable but at the
same time is something that I cannot really explain in huge detail in my
synopsis for the film without having felt I have given away some of the film —
in terms of spoilers. I’ll just say that this film deserved all the “Oscar”
(Academy Award) nominations and wins. It’s a definite “MUST-SEE” film of last
year and is very happily welcomed to Blu-ray Disc.
Video Quality on this release is in full 1080p using the AVC MPEG-4 codec on a
BD-50 (50 gigabyte, dual-layered Blu-ray Disc) in the 2.35:1 aspect ratio.
The most important thing to note going in to watching this wonderful motion
picture is that it was filmed on many different types of cameras using both
film and HDTV digital recording methods. If you’d like to learn a bit more on
this, be sure to check out IMDb’s aspect ratio tech listing. With this being
the case, you are obviously going to see a large variety of video quality from
scene to scene throughout the film. A bit of this may have been intentional to
convey the unique type of visual style but it does seem to mainly be a case of
the variety of source material. The main two things you’ll notice that varies
are black level and film noise or grain. Now don’t get me wrong here. I’m not
so sure these things could be fixed too much but it is enough to hurt the
overall Hi-Def presentation here.
The black level (for the most part) is solid, especially in scenes that appear
to have been shot in Hi-Def such as the early chase / title sequence. It’s
scenes like these that also show off the amazingly vibrant color palette and
accurate fleshtones. Aside from the variety of source material causing some
consistency issues, there really is nothing to complain about in this Hi-Def
transfer. As I said, I’m not too sure how much these problems could have been
fixed without totally digitally butchering the source material. All and all,
“Slumdog Millionaire” on Blu-ray Disc earns itself a pretty solid “4 Star
Rating” for overall video quality. It does the film enough justice to get the
wonderful story delivered to the viewer, in this case in the beauty of High
Definition.
Audio Quality on this release is presented in English / Hindi DTS-HD 5.1 Master
Audio. Let me first start things off by saying that “Slumdog Millionaire”
certainly deserves all of the “Oscars” (Academy Awards) that it received for
sound mixing and original music composed and produced by A.R. Rahman. The
dialogue is delivered very precise throughout and requires no volume
adjustments of any sort – as it does contain occasional subtitles or dialogue
on screen. The 5.1 soundscape created in this DTS-HD Master Audio mix is easily
one of my new favorite choices as a “demo material” worthy title to picking off
the shelf. This 5.1 mix contains some amazing dynamics, rear channel presence
and bass. I mean we’re talking enough “oomph!” in it to dust off your speakers
and bring back the wood smell that you’ve been missing.
As I mentioned earlier, the original music composed by A.R. Rahman, gets an
amazing audio presentation and is simply awe inspiring at times. Namely the
first real music sequence at Chapter 3 (6:30 into the film) where we get the
back story of Jamal’s younger slumdog upbringings, running from the police. I
could listen to this over and over, as it is the perfect example of what the
DTS-HD Master Audio codec is capable of delivering in terms of next-generation
high resolution audio. I can’t get over how everything is mixed perfectly and
sounds extremely realistic — especially the drums and percussion instruments
used which are rather hypnotic. Early on in the film when the police officer
punches Jamal in the face, the audience will surely jump out of their seats –
even if they previously saw it in theaters – as it contains a very convincing
loud monstrous crunch. All of the sound effects here are realistic and the rear
channel presence is used
wisely to contain audience noises on the set of the Indian version “Who Wants
to be A Millionaire?” show and so forth.
All and all, I feel the presentation you get here is amazingly solid and
definitely worthy of a perfect “5 Star Rating” for overall audio quality and
also worthy of being called “demo material“. Kudos to the folks at FOX here on
a job extremely well done!
Bonus Materials on this release are presented in a variety of Standard
Definition (SD) and High Definition (HD) MPEG-2 video using Dolby Digital 2.0
Stereo @224kbps sound — unless otherwise noted.
* Digital Copy is included on a second DVD-ROM disc which is compatible
with both iTunes (Mac) and Windows Media (PC).
* Audio Commentary with Director Danny Boyle and Actor Dev Patel
* Audio Commentary with Producer Christian Colson and Writer Simon
Beaufoy
* “Deleted Scenes” (33:51 - SD) include a total of twelve different
scenes which you can watch together using the “play all” function or
separately. These all feature Dolby Digital 5.1 Surround sound (@448kbps).
* “Slumdog Dreams: Danny Boyle & The Making of Slumdog Millionaire”
(22:58 - SD) is split up into 2 parts, although they both play as one. This
“making of” featurette proves to be very much worth watching. Here we get an
almost half-hour glimpse at the film’s Director Danny Boyle and his journey to
get the film made and some obvious behind-the-scenes footage of the movie in
production. Danny Boyle gives a really nice interview here along with some of
the other crew who worked on the film.
* “Slumdog Cutdown” (5:32 - HD) gives you a music video of sorts
featuring clips from the film as well as obviously music. This proves to be
very much a treat if you enjoyed the music in the motion picture as much as I
did.
* “From Script to Screen: Toilet Scene” (5:25 - SD) takes a look at the
transition from written word to film for the very disgusting scene that
involves our lead character “Jamal” diving into a pile of human waste to get to
see his favorite “Bollywood” actor.
* “Indian Short Film - Manjha” (41:03 - SD) is included which a very
cool added bonus for those who enjoy Indian culture and/or “Bollywood” films.
It’s not very often a movie gets a 41 minute short film included in it’s bonus
materials. This is certainly a nice thing to see.
* “Bombay Liquid Dance” (3:00 - SD) serves us up another music video
for a song featured in the film. Lots of footage of Bombay India here obviously
as the title suggests.
* “Theatrical Trailer” (2:07 - HD) features Dolby Digital 5.1 Surround
sound @640kbps.
* “European Theatrical Trailer” (1:57 - SD) is also included which is
nice to see but it sadly doesn’t get Hi-Def video treatment or 5.1 sound.
Overall the bonus materials here are pretty nice. They should leave fans of the
film pleased for now until the studio eventually decides to “Double Dip” on
this title in some “Collector’s Edition” or such. The bonus materials total in
at almost an hour, without the bonus short film included which runs 40 minutes
itself roughly. The inclusion of a Digital Copy should also leave fans pleased.
http://www.highdefd iscnews.com/ ?p=14968--
regards,
Vithur
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