Product: Contact on DVD
From: Warner Bros.
Available at: Most video rental locations
Recommended! (More info on Contact from the Internet Movie Database is here.)
The most elaborately enhanced DVD movie title we've seen so far is Warner Bros' Contact, starring Jodie Foster. The DVD version of the film (based on the book of the same name by the late Carl Sagan) includes a number of extras that will make special effects enthusiasts drool: Special Effects coordinators Ken Ralston and Stephen Rosenbaum provide an audio commentary of how the effects were done in every scene in the movie. Director Robert Zemeckis and Jodie Foster provide alternate commentaries and often provide unique insights into subtleties of the film. Did you know, for example, that the sparkles in an alien's hand in a magical scene on Vega echo the shape of spilled popcorn in an earlier scene? Or that the "wormhole" graphics were designed to symbolize all the colors of the chakra, leading to gold, the color of enlightenment?
For special effects enthusiasts, the best part of the disc is a section where Ralston and Rosenbaum show the individual components that make up the film's many elaborate SFX. The effects, from Sony Pictures Imageworks, are dissected and shown layer by layer. You can see, for example, how a daylight shot of a barge on a sunny day becomes a rainy nighttime shot of a harrier jet landing on an aircraft carrier, or how a bunch of guys throwing rocks into a pool of water adds realism to a catastrophic explosion in the movie. Other key scenes -- shown with composite layers added one by one -- include how the "universal zoom" sequence at the beginning of the film was created, and how many of the movie's effects are created using digital compositing and blue screen effects.
There's even a scene that shows how digital magic changed the clothes Bill Clinton wore in his "guest appearance."
For those who enjoy knowing how movie magic is created, Contact on DVD is a must-have.
Another DVD title with plenty of great behind-the-scenes extras is The Matrix. This disc features full length commentaries by the actress who plays Trinity, the special effects chief, and includes several mini-features on how the special effects were done -- including the stunning "time freeze" effects that are the movies "showcase" effect. The disc also features some intriguing extras, such as a music-only soundtrack, a "follow the white rabbit game -- and a couple of bona fide "Easter Eggs," in which you get to choose the "red pill or the blue pill." The digitization quality is top-notch, too. Highly recommended.
Other Notable DVD titles
The DVD version of the movie Terminator 2 includes some interesting extras on the DVD disc: biographies of the actors, production notes, theatrical trailers and more.
The Austin Powers movie disc has several scenes that were deleted from the movie, including two alternate endings, commentaries on every scene by the director and Mike Myers, plus several extra goodies, such as animations, a spy-genre retrospective and "Music to shag to." The second Austin Powers installment, The Spy Who Shagged Me, is due for release on November 16th.
The Starship Troopers DVD has plenty of extra goodies, including interviews with director Paul Verhoven and early test animations of the "bugs" and outer space battle scenes that were used as proof-of-concept prototypes during production. There are also some scenes that didn't make the final cut, including a hilariously sucky alternate ending.
We also checked out the the first entirely computer-generated DVD-ROM disc we've seen: Planetary Traveler, from Third Planet Entertainment. This disc features animated landscapes built with Bryce3D, a 3D program from Metacreations. Despite its occasionally overbearing music, it is a sightseeing tour unlike anything else.
Another notable new DVD title is Microsoft's Encarta 98, which exploits the enormous capacity of DVD discs to fit more multimedia content than ever on a single disc. Encarta 98 DVD edition includes an amazing "Virtual Globe" feature that, for example, not only allowed us to locate our home town on the map, but could also zoom right down to street level and locate interesting tourist destinations in a number of metropolitan areas. Alternate views provided us with sights and sounds of the cities, topographical relief maps of the areas, statistics and much more. Very cool.
DVD "Easter Eggs"
The DVD Review site keeps a nice database of hidden features in these and other DVD titles. For the complete list, click here.
Browse or Search the Internet Movie Database for other DVD movie titles.
Send comments, disagreements, or your own picks and pans to gben...@istar.ca.
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