Film/Feature: A
The importance of the Legend of Drunken Master is that it was the film that launched Jackie Chan in to world-wide stardom. Yes Chan was in other films before this 1994 blockbuster semi-sequel to Yuen Woo-Ping’s Drunken Master (1978), but it established his stamp on the martial arts genre: a mixture of acrobatic street brawling kung fu, inventive uses of everyday objects as weapons, and a Charlie Chaplin-esque humor.

Chan portrays Chinese folk hero, Wong Fei Hung who finds himself in the middle of the British consul smuggling the ancient artifacts of his fellow Chinese. He stands up to the thieves and shows of his style of kung fu–inspired by whatever tasty beverage is at arm’s length–called Drunken Boxing. It’s a stock story that follows the recipe for martial arts films at the time, but the last half hour of the film defined Chan’s contribution to the genre. It’s full of creative Yuen Woo-Ping fight choreography, over-the-top stunts that you’re certain Jackie had spent days in the hospital recovering from, and had that “top this” attitude attached to it.

Video: B+
The DVD may have been satisfactory, but this blu-ray is even better presenting Drunken Master on an 1080p encoded transfer in 2.35:1 aspect ratio. Overall, I’m pleased with this transfer as the obvious upgrades in color and details are apparent. The color of fabric and clothing especially the primary reds do jump out as opposed to the earth tones. It’s easy to distinguish the varying browns, blacks and grays in clothing although it still looks dull on the screen compared to what were used to these days. It was a muted film as far as color palettes go, but that’s true to life.

Details like the individual strands of the thick, Asian hair come out very well, but the picture could stand a bit more clean up. There’s still a bit of lint and debris which I noticed more in the final fight sequence but this is the cleanest I’ve seen the film. Major blemishes have been taken out. For example, in the start of the chapter entitled, “Eureka,” on the DVD there is an oval shaped burn that shows up in the upper right corner (which to my knowledge is taken from the actual negatives where the reels are supposed to change). Well now that’s gone. So despite what goes around in other reviews, we sometimes fail to remember that most of the great martial arts films haven’t even made to DVD yet, so the only thing that exists are crappy VHS tapes in some bootleg drawers. Could this film be mastered better? Sure, and I’d be the first in line to buy it, but this transfer will likely satisfy its core audience.

Audio: C-
Drunken Master gets a new 5.1 English Dolby TrueHD audio track. That’s right. No Mandarin track available. Not even at Dolby Digital. EPIC FAIL! But you can hear Jackie on that English dub, but man, I really do tire of films, especially martial arts films that don’t bother to prioritize the remastering of the audio tracks correctly. The English dub, folks should be last priority. I don’t care if you gotta dig through endless bowls of sticky rice and moo-goo gai-pan, get me that original Mandarin track.

There’s more dynamic range to the audio, at a lower volume level it comes ready to punch a hole through your wall, but this isn’t a soundtrack that’s been carefully mixed. Instead it sounds like someone set the levels high enough to discern a difference in level and then walked away for 90 minutes for lunch.

There’s an effort to send some directional noise to the rears which always makes the home experience that much better. For example, the geese that are sent loose on the train, echoing, igniting flames all push towards the rear channels. Also in the final scene where the barrels get dropped onto Jackie have a balanced thud that reminds you that you do have a subwoofer. But this is a film that’s mostly made for the front of your home theater and is not very exciting outside of that. Other audio selections include: 5.1 French Dolby Digital , 2.0 Spanish Dolby Digital, and subtitles are available in English, English SDH, French, Spanish, Portuguese, Polskie, Ceske, Turkish and Mandarin.

Extras: D
I don’t need great extras to accompany this film, and I certainly don’t need a 90′s interview of a young Jackie Chan reminiscing over Drunken Master memories. I’d gladly trade them for a new audio track. No? Okay, fine.

Behind the Master: An Interview with Jackie Chan SD (6:35) rehashes the old interview found on the DVD that explores the unique directing techniques and self performed stunts by Chan. It does show the difference of what the DVD looked like because this extra is not in HD.

Overall Shock Value: C
Drunken Master by itself is still a benchmark to which modern martial arts films are held to, including anything Chan has done since, and is arguably the most popular of his films. I was excited to see this film on high definition as an upgrade from my DVD, and it is that. The picture is improved as far as cleanliness, detail and definition, but I was still disappointed at the lack of effort to not give us a Chinese audio track. We will forever be stuck with the English dub. Copies exist out there, I just know it, and I find it hard to believe that Miramax couldn’t put forth the effort/money to track that original audio and master it for blu-ray. Outside of the upgrade in picture, the blu-ray isn’t a necessity until they put some investment into this title.

Year: 2002
Running Time: 99 minutes
Rated: PG-13
SRP: $39.99
Studio(s): Miramax
Release Date: September 2009

Film/Feature: A

For the first time on blu-ray comes Zhang Yimou’s first foray into the martial arts genre, having made a name for himself with beautiful and tragic dramas starring Gong Li (Red Sorghum, Raise the Red Lantern, Ju Dou). Hero is about a Nameless warrior (Jet Li) who plots with two other warriors, Broken Sword (Tony Leung Chiu-Wai) and Flying Snow (Maggie Cheung) to dethrone the King of Qin (Chen Daoming) who desires to be the first emperor of China. Two other characters help move the story along, Sky (Donnie Yen) an outlaw and first casualty of Namless, and Moon (Zhang Ziyi) who serves as Broken Sword’s apprentice. The story is told through flashbacks placed in the middle of a conversation between Nameless and the King. The assassins want China to remain separate entities, the King hopes to connect the divisions under one nation. The debate over whether or not the film supports the autocracy of China’s first emperor still rages on, and the film will split viewers one way or the other. I’m aware of that but to me this was a story more driven by love, hope and sacrifice through martial arts than it is to depict a documentarian look at history.

Hero is not the straight-forward chop-saki flick that many are accustomed to, and that too is why I like it. It a story of perspective and perception based on which character is telling the story. Yimou’s use of color is unparalleled and creates fantastical atmosphere never attached to the genre, and in Hero he gives some of the most memorable scenes ever to grace a martial arts film.

This is one export that I wished Quentin Tarantino and more specifically, Miramax had left alone, mostly because I think the film was good enough that it didn’t need to be brought over by the US studios. My hostility towards this film is from enjoying an imported DVD. After years of watching a more pure version of the film, the Miramax translation and poorly dubbed audio track irritate me to no end.

But back to what I love about this film. Martial arts aficionados love the re-match of Jet Li and Donnie Yen, filmed ten years after their first on-screen battle in Once Upon a Time in China 2. Romance fans love seeing Maggie Cheung and Tony Leung on screen again who have such great on-screen chemistry stemming from Wong Kar-Wai’s In the Mood For Love and revisited in 2046. And Zhang Ziyi fans will love to see her Moon character’s ass get schooled by Cheung, Leung, and Li’s characters.

I hate to use the word epic, but it’s a fitting description here. There’s tragedy, bravery, and selflessness that does battle with the emotional fire within us all when we believe in something strongly enough. That struggle is what interests me more than what historical reference Hero places the start of China as one nation in the minds of the current population. Yimou’s hope was that people would long remember specific scenes from Hero even after people forget the story. He accomplished all of that and more.

Video: A-
Hero has been brought over to high definition in a 1080p AVC-encoded transfer in 2.35:1 aspect ratio. Anyone familiar with Hero knows how beautiful this film is, and how color is a big part of the storytelling, and wow does it look great. There are not enough words to describe just how the color pops on high def. It’s important that the colors are so pronounced because they convey emotions and help tell the story in an artful, majestic way that is commonplace if you have seen the work of Zhang Yimou and cinematographer Christopher Doyle. Skip to chapter five “Jealous Fools” and you’ll see what I mean. That red is lipstick red instead of the red-orange we’re used to on the DVD. The detail is greatly improved on blu-ray. Hair, pores, the fibers in the silk or linen can all be picked out. On DVD skin tones lean towards being too yellow, and slightly dull, but boy do the colors sing here. Shadows in the drapery and clothing is all clear, and blacks are deep. This isn’t the cleanest transfer because there are still bits of dirt, artifacts, and moments of unacceptable grain that can be seen by your average videophile, but is it enough to distract you from the visual experience of Hero? No. What’s distracting is what comes next…

Audio: C
Again, Miramax took the time to give us a new 5.1 DTS-HD audio track BUT ONLY FOR ENGLISH! As an audio experience you have to love what was done with the sound. In chapter Two, the fight between Sky and Nameless shows everything the HD track can do. The spacial and atmospheric effects are really amped up. The sword fights is more resounding, you can feel the difference in weight of the weapons when they move. The “tinging” of weapons making contact ricochet around. Try chapter Three “Caligraphy” were Nameless and Flying Snow ward off thousands of arrows. This is a very active track where you can hear arrows whiz by. But then in the epic match between Flying Snow and Moon in the yellow forest, well, it’s sensory overload. You don’t miss one leaf that passes by your head… AND THEN you hear the bad dubbing whenever someone talks and it’s just so deflating.

There’s also a crazy and insultingly bad “Descriptive Audio” track too which has a Cate Blanchett-like voice who describes what is going on in between the audio, including character’s movements as if you were hearing an audio book. Then there’s a male Ralph Fiennes-like voice who reads all of the dialogue, no matter who is speaking, never changing the inflection or tone of his voice to differentiate between characters. But then even more puzzling when the actors talk, it’s the Chinese audio coming out of the actors’ mouths. Eventually the female voice does come in and recites the dialogue for female characters. It’s an aggravating track. The levels of sound effects and music cut in and out. I just can’t believe that Miramax spent money on this, but they couldn’t bother with a HD Chinese track or just couldn’t give us the Chinese cut of the film. Hero is not that difficult of a film to follow, and this Descriptive Audio track was as worthless as it gets.

Has there ever been so many options to bury the original 5.1 Dolby Digital Mandarin track in a Chinese film? It’s on there, and to have a seamless movie experience, then just listen to this track, but it’s tempting to switch back and forth with the new DTS-HD track for the fight scenes and then quickly toggle back to the Mandarin track for the dialogue. Other audio selections include are 5.1 Dolby Digital French and Spanish tracks, and subtitles are available in English, English SDH, French SDH, and Spanish SDH.

Extras: C
All of the extras are in standard definition and are what was on the original Miramax DVD. There’s no commentary and enough repetition in the main three supplements that they become exhaustive even though combined they’re under an hour. I wish there was an effort to produce something new, but I get the feeling that this Force of Four collection was all about getting it in HD, slapping a HD audio dub track and call it a day.

Hero Defined SD (24:00) Finally, I get to watch this and understand it (my import did not have English subtitles on the extras) and it is a good look behind-the-curtain on the challenges, the achievement and aim of Zhang Yimou and interviews the cast of their thoughts on making Hero.

Inside the Action SD (14:00) is a one-on-one conversation between Quentin Tarantino and Jet Li going over the progression of Li’s career in Hong Kong cinema. It’s actually a nice conversation, especially for newcomers to the genre, although it is disorganized. Someone must explain the final minutes to me, where they preview parts of the Hero Defined extra (above). Just more waste that could have been corrected.

Close-Up of a Fight Scene SD (9:00) Some notes and thoughts by the actors about the key fight scenes in the film.

Storyboards SD (5:00) A side-by-side comparison of storyboards and four fight scenes.

Soundtrack Spot SD (1:00) A commercial for the Tan Dun score.

Digital Copy Disc is a copy of the film for your laptop or portable media device. Why they just don’t give you a bonus DVD of the film I’ll never know. Oh and this digital download is only available up until 3/15/2011, so you have a wasted disc after then.

Overall Shock Value: C+
Well what’s most shocking to me is that in this day and age, and how cultured America wants to claim it is, when there’s an opportunity to do something right the first time, Disney/Miramax creates this blu-ray for the least cultured consumer. Who else is going to spend top dollar on a blu-ray but the films’ most diehard fans? This was a missed opportunity to do Hero right and get a proper HD transfer with HD soundtrack of the original film. They get it half-right here, and this is the best I’ve ever seen the film, but the other 50% of why I would want to upgrade to blu-ray is for the improved HD audio. Sorry, but that English track is an insult. I love Hero, and I love the way it looks, but Disney/Miramax, if you’re going to handle these foreign films, handle them like you handle your animated properties, otherwise hand them off to someone who does care.

Screen captures were taken from www.DVDBeaver.com

Film/Feature: B+
This 2003 film is fine modernization of the cult-favorite television show, Zatoichi: The Blind Swordsman. Directed by and starring Takeshi Kitano (AKA Beat Takeshi), this sword-slashing tale brings up to speed the adventures of a blind masseur who nomadically travels through the small towns of Japan, gambles, and when provoked is the baddest ass samurai warrior. As a turf war breaks out in the country towns gangs rob the towns people of their money offering “protection,” Zatoichi slices through in glorious form.

The film balances laughs with the mesmerizing and poetic violence, building to a confrontation between Zatoichi and a ronin bodyguard, Hattori played wonderfully by Tadanobu Asano who never fails to impress me. Time has been taken to show the complexities of many characters, not just Zatoichi, and like real people, no one is a clear cut good or bad person, well except for the gang bosses. The ancillary characters of Aunt Oume (Michiyo Ookusu), Shinkichi (Gadarukanaru Taka), the geishas, (Daigoro Tachibana and Yuko Daike) and the gang bosses (Ittoku Kishibe, Saburo Ishikura, and Akira Emoto) add their own bit of flavor and spice to the broth that makes Zatoichi an overall savory experience.

There’s a speed and style of Japanese samurai films that is respected here, the action scenes are fast and deliberately patterned after the art of Bushido, but because of the new century, it’s nice to see Kitano trying unconventional processes. The most striking difference here is the silver retention method (see extras) and the CGI blood that’s used to exaggerate the splattering of blood. Something that Kitano understands about filmmaking is the grandness of it, the ability to do something that’s artistic and entertaining and there are quirky inclusions of a large musical tap dance number (a la STOMP) that’s so very odd, and yet so exhilarating and a palette cleanser at the same time.

I believe those who hold the television series to a high standard, and rightfully so, would enjoy this take on the classic Zatoichi character. It’s a clever little tale and a bookend companion if you have the original 26-part TV series on hand. Kitano earned the Golden Lion award in Venice (Best Director) and it was one of the most successful films of 2003 in Japan. Still, a mixture of modernization and traditional can meet with mixed reaction, but I make no apologies for enjoying Zatoichi again and again.

The Region 2 Blu-Ray, the colors subdued.

The Miramax color flood departure from Kitano's original vision.

Video: C+
The main reason we’re looking at this blu-ray is to see it in its new 1080p AVC-encoded transfer in its original 1.85:1 aspect ratio. On the surface everything looks great, colors are richer, deeper, and more saturated and that’s all fine and well, except that’s one thing that the filmmakers wanted to tone down. If you watch the extras, their intent is to soften the color palette, soften the blood color, and that’s just not seen here. It’s the exact opposite in fact, which is fine if you don’t know any better. There’s also a lot of edge enhancement work being done here, adjustment of brightness, halos, and the contrast is especially all over the board which makes the perception of depth less pronounced. It seems more like an effort supervised by Miramax than it is a version that would be approved by Kitano. I’m going to downgrade video every time when the film’s director wouldn’t approve of it.

For more in-depth explanation, visit this review on DVD Beaver with screen comparisons of the difference in transfers out there for Zatoichi.

Audio: B-
There’s a 5.1 English DTS-HD audio track but at first I refused to listen to it because it’s unbearable to hear a Japanese film spoken in English. But I did listen to the action scenes and the musical number at the end in the DTS-HD track and it is a much louder and in-your-face upgrade. There is the original Japanese 5.1 Dolby Digital track and it’s fine in and of itself, just not as exciting as the HD track, but I used that track to hear the dialogue. Why Disney/Miramax was a Japanese DTS-HD track not created? There’s a Spanish 2.0 Dolby Digital too and subtitles are available in English, English SDH, French, Spanish and what I think is Farsi.

Extras: C
These are the same extras that were on the previous DVD release, in standard definition. There are no blu-ray exclusives.

Behind the Scenes SD (39:55) is a meaty look into the weekly stages of principal shooting and how Takeshi Kitano makes a film. Kitano’s attention to detail and every aspect is admirable and his understanding of all of the other contributing forces shows what a great filmmaker he really is. As this behind-the-scenes drags on though it does waiver on the edge of brown-nosing Kitano, but all-in-all, worth your time.

Video Interviews SD (21:29) is four separate interviews with crew members who all had their own experience of sharing duties with Kitano. Katsumi Yanagishima (Cinematographer) speaks of perfect camera angles and trying to convince Kitano to use a silver retention method, ENR film processing, to soften the colors of the final appearance. This is important to watch to see where the video mark is supposed to be. Norihiro Isoda (production Designer who built all the set pieces like Oume’s house, Kazuko Kurosawa (Costume Supervisor) discusses her choice of material and how she distinguished different groups with specific colors, as well as the meaning behind those choices. Tatsumi Nikamoto (Master Swordsman) recalls working with Asano, and all the great ideas Kitano came up with when they coordinated the sword fights.

Overall Shock Value: C
It’s a good thing Zatoichi was blind, too bad he wasn’t deaf too. For fans of this film like me, it’s easy to see the poor decisions made by Miramax. The extreme effort to put the film to current “high def” standards in comparison to Region 2 blu-rays, really strays away from the original design of the film. I’m all for highly detailed, crystal clear films, but not at the expense of the filmmaker’s original vision. The upgrade to the DTS-HD track is great for a more resonance and louder effects, and if you like stupid dubbed tracks. I do like this film very much so if you’re getting it with the Miramax Ultimate Force of Four Collection, it’s worth the watch but I’m not getting rid of my DVD anytime soon.

Pop Culture Shock tracked Thompson down at Comic-Con International, on the day before she would win another Eisner Award, this year for Best Painter/Multimedia Artist on Magic Trixie, Magic Trixie Sleeps Over. She first caught the attention of the masses with her work in the early 90′s on Sandman, Swamp Thing, Invisibles, and Wonder Woman, then began paving the way for her own creation, Scary Godmother (1997-2000), a series of children’s books and her love of Halloween. Other highlights include Finals (1999), The Little Endless Storybook (2001), Death: At Death’s Door (2003), The Dead Boy Detectives (2005) amongst countless other works. She has branded a whimsical, cartoony art style that’s filled with emotion, drama, and most of all, fun. Ernie Estrella caught up with Jill to discuss the truth about cats and dogs, reading oversized comics, and of course, painting The Beasts of Burden.

Where did the concept of Beasts of Burden come from?

JT: The first story Evan Dorkin had proposed a story to Dark Horse editor Scott Allie about a dog that has a haunted dog past. And Scott wanted him to draw it. Evan said, “No way, I couldn’t draw this story at all. I’d ruin it.” I would’ve loved to have seen what he would have done. I’m sure it would have 72 more panels in it because he can do that really well. So Scott kept trying to convince him to do it but then asked, “Well who would you want to work with if you’re not going to do it?” So he said that he should work with me.

Eventually though, it grew from these short stories, right?

JT: It was just an eight-page story and he had come up with some archetypical characters, but he didn’t think about it past that. Everyone loved that story so much, and as Evan kept writing stories they started becoming sequential and longer rather than stand-alone stories. By the third one we had started referring to things that happened in the past. After it was done it was popular enough that they wanted to do a mini-series.

Dark Horse is so successful at launching bigger projects that come from anthologies, look at the history of Dark Horse Presents (DHP) for example. Is that what they were hoping with the Dark Book of series?

JT: I don’t know. I mean I like an anthology, which people don’t tend to do as much anymore, but you have so much talent that’s scattered all about, that it’s nice to compile everything, or compile different styles in the same book with a common theme that holds everything together. I don’t know if they were planing on launching things from (Dark Book of). They wanted to work with so and so but they’re so busy with X, Y, and Z that they can’t do anything, but maybe they can do an eight pages of this monster story. Neil Gaiman’s writing a story and Craig Russell’s going to illustrate it–

You don’t care that it’s four pages or four panels, you want it.

JT: Right! But sometimes I prefer to read a book of short stories over a novel because I like to read a bunch of different things. They don’t do this much anymore but stories in a magazine. You’d read a magazine and there’s a short story of fiction in it, but you’d probably have to ask someone who had the authority of this at Dark Horse, but I think it was more that.

This is the first time in a long time that you’re regularly working with someone else, who is also a fellow artist. Could you talk about this collaboration?

JT: Evan and I have completely different styles of storytelling. [Laughs] It’s kind of different going back and collaborating with someone, after I’ve spent years and years now, writing and illustrating for myself. Going back and working from a full script is interesting because unfortunately the first thing in my head when I read the dialogue I think, ‘I could make two pages out of that one panel, I wonder if they’d let me open this sequence up. As far as other collaboration, Evan has all the stories in his head, it’s not like I’m adding plot.’ I get a full script from Evan, and I play around with layout, expression, and sometimes a little more pacing as I’ve said that I’ll ask to open things up to slow down an emotional moment; or I’ll make one panel into two because I want to show the steps building up to something or a reaction shot. But I’m not co-plotting this at all, Evan’s writing it.

With Scary Godmother and Magic Trixie, you don’t have a problem drawing characters that are non-human, Beasts of Burden is probably 95% animals.

JT: Yes! Yeah with the rare exception of the second anthology Book of Witchcraft, that had witches’ legs in it but they’re the Dog-Peanuts equivalent where you don’t see adults very much, you see cars and you hear about them, but you don’t see them. In Scary Godmother, Harry was my preparation for drawing expressions on animals because I tried to keep Harry real doggy but keep an animated range of emotion but to keep his mannerisms doggy, in the way he’d eat things. Scary Godmother fed him peanut butter sandwich and he’d spend forever trying to get it off the roof of his mouth, so I studied a lot of dogs in my day. But dogs are lucky, they’ve got eyebrows in the first place. Sometimes it’s harder to make the Oprhan to have some expression than it is the dogs. Naturally you’re not even adding an extra human element to dogs because of the eyebrows. They manipulate you with [raising eyebrows and making sound effects], tilt the head, but I’m a cartoonist. It’s easy to anthropomorphize things, you just have to keep it in the same facial structure.

Right, with this story you have to keep the art to a more of a realistic style than being playful.

JT: Mm-hmm. Yeah, I sometimes exaggerate some their regular emotions but they’re not walking on their hind legs. They do things like dogs. Evan and I have talked about this but I can show more expression and surprise by amping up when dogs get jumpy and excited, so Whitey is forever jumping up. I know when dogs get scared or intimidated their tails goes between their legs. So I crouch everyone down and put their tail between their legs. I watch dogs play how they fake fight vs. when they really fight. If dogs are confronting someone or some creature they’ll get low to the ground, bolt and attack. You exaggerate the mouths because they do a lot of talking. I think I’ve done a pretty good job of it.

You have, as seen by the preview art and the stories from the anthologies. Despite having a more realistic look, there’s a lot of life and expression to each panel.

JT: You have to engage the reader. It’s not just a painterly book where I’m doing portraits of people’s dogs.

What is the story going to be about in the Beasts of Burden mini-series?

JT: Each issue has a different story with a bad situation or bad creature. The first issue is the dogs visiting friends and it starts raining frogs. And they race back to tell Ace, who we last saw was chained up in the yard from the last story we did in Dark Book of Monsters. Evan likes to do the human interaction off panel. For example, “What happens if there’s a crazy thing that happens in your yard and your house is destroyed?” Well the dog is now chained, there’s a new house, he has to heal because he was nearly killed, so Ace is still back there. The second issue called “Lost” and a mother dog needs help finding her pups because they are missing. The third issue is the Orphan, which the cat, goes looking for Dymphna which is the mystical black witch cat in the Dark Horse Book of Witchcraft. He doesn’t think she died at the end of that story and goes on an adventure to find her. That one has a cast of a 1000 rats, and I’m not even exaggerating on the number [laughs]. And the fourth issue I don’t have yet, but I know that was tells the history of the town, and there’s a big graveyard in it but Evan’s doing some tweaks to that story but I think you learn more about why the town is haunted and is supernaturally infested and why everything happens to those poor dogs.

Comics today are so broad…

JT: What do you mean by broad?

There’s no corner that you can’t go. Or you have people say, “Oh that won’t sell.”

JT: Oh people say that a lot! [Laughs]

Okay, that’s true. I guess when I see something like We3 (DC/Vertigo 2004 by Grant Morrison and Frank Quitely) that came out… that starred three animals and that had as much going on in it, that took me by surprise–

JT: That series made me cry. That was super sad. I’m obviously a sucker for anything about all animals.

That series got its own cult following for various reasons

JT: Well there’s nothing out there that’s like it, that’s for sure.

And that’s what I feel about Beasts of Burden which conceptually is such a departure from the everyday story you see in comics today.

JT: I never thought about it that way, until I guess, now, [chuckles] or recently. I love comics in general. To me they don’t have to be about something specific. So this was an opportunity to work on something that I considered to be really cool project to paint with Evan, who I’ve wanted to work with, and whose work I really really admire. I didn’t think, ‘Wow, we’re doing something else that no one is doing.’ We have this cool story to tell and I’m happy to be a part of it. I didn’t realize that we are creating something that people really respond well to. It reminds me more of adventure books I would read as a kid and of course I like supernatural stuff too, but it’s something that’s not for children, but I wouldn’t target it to one specific type or group. I might say, ‘Do you like comics? Then you might like this.’

In today’s landscape of animated films, in particular Pixar for example, it matters not so much who’s playing out the story, but what and how that story is told.

JT: I want to be a good storyteller. My focus is to tell a story that’s going to touch people whatever the subject matter is, however old you are. I love this medium to tell stories. I talk about comics to groups of librarians or teachers or groups of kids, I don’t say “Here’s the best superhero comic you should read.” I bring with me a giant long box of comics that show the diversity of this medium. Because of superhero movies people think that comics have to be, ‘Biff! Bam! Pow!’ and that’s all you see in the box office headlines, but it’s just another form of media to tell stories of all genres. Whether or not it’s about anthropomorphic animals, technically it could be all humans, it’s the personalities– it’s much cuter if it’s animals. [Laughs]

Dogs do have personality.

JT: The personalities are set. The wise-cracking guy, the heroic guy, the cowardly or more reserved character; you got your everyman we can identify with [Jack the Beagle] and the outcast/rebel [the Orphan] who is fitting into a group he’s not supposed to. The female dogs are wise and elegant. Evan’s been writing the story about the mother who has lost her pups, and as a father it crushed him to write something like that, to think about what would happen if his child was missing. The story’s about relationships and how people react in extreme circumstances whether or not they’re dogs.

Since it’s a neighborhood setting, are there going to be other animals brought into the fold?

JT: There’s been a lot of dogs, in the third issue, we meet the Swifties, which is Orphan’s gang that he hangs around with, or there happens to be a lot of other stray cats. I don’t know if all these cats have a home or not. There’s the Ghettoy Kid, Johnny Whiskers, Mugsy, Sleepy Bob. I made Sleepy Bob look like my ex-roomate Cheryl’s cat Stu, because I used to think about how he’d used to lay around. Jonny Whiskers is like our ex-cat Lucian who’s no longer with us. In my neighborhood I see a lot of ginger cats and orange cats, the Oprhan’s orange, and I try to make them all look different, with different shaped faces. Mugsy is one of those tortoise shell cats, he’s a little stockier, I always have him sitting in a loaf. His personality I’d figure would be contained. And Ghettoy Kid is a tuxedo cat who goes with the Orphan to look for the witch. He’s got a rogue-ish type personality who would fit into a old fashioned, elegant guy whereas, the Orphan’s a James Dean-ish kind of cat.

I had a family cat who’s no longer with us who was an outdoor cat, never de-clawed and we’d see her in the morning and then she’d run off into the woods and would come back either at night or a few days later, we never knew what kind of adventures she was getting into and she knew where her home was–

JT: Yup.

She’d have this attitude like, ‘I was just doing my thang.’

JT: We had a family cat, the first one, he was a fluffy, cream-colored, tannish colored long hair cat, sadly named Puff, not for me, I named him that because he looked like Puff from Sally, Dick, and Jane books that’s why I wanted to name him, Puff. We got him as a kitten and he grew into this muscular tom cat with long hair and the poor cat had to suffer the indignation of calling him, “Puff! Puff!” He would come home beat up, scraped up from other fights and because he had color he showed a lot of dirt too, like oil from being under cars, and as I got older, I figured it was because I named him Puff. Other cats are making fun of him, and he’s having to defend himself and there were a lot of Puff colored kittens around, he really had to overcompensate for his name.

That sounds like my old family cat who would go missing for a week and come back looking like it was in a scuffle, and figured she was probably fighting some bees. If cats want to be out, they’ll get out. Even when it’s cold, they might come back within 10 minutes, but they’ll be back.

One time Puff was gone for a month, and my brother and I were crying about it and one day we came home from school and he was in the house. I got so scared when I was older about what teenage boys can do especially all the cruelty I saw, I was always so terrified that something bad was going to happen to him so I pulled a lot from that experience into the Orphan. Even our cat, Archie, who’s super old and makes a walk around the perimeter of our backyard in the winter, like a convict then he comes back in. “Alright, for some reason you (Archie) had to do that.” Then he’s all cold, he’ll wipe his feet off, but I figured he should get to do what he wants to do at his age.

Cover to Beasts of Burden #3

So, despite then the appearance of the cast, we can get a full sense of who they are?

They’re a really interesting cast, they’re evolving, they’re not just stereotypes. The wise-cracking pugs aren’t just the wise-cracking pugs. Things happen that affect them and their attitudes. They’re really rich characters.

If you have that experience of having pets and imagining their world away from you, that would probably be a good source of material for this series.

JT: Most definitely. I was the one who would be lured by the kitty and want to go play with it, even though I would be warned, ‘It’s wild, don’t play with that cat,’ and I would say, [In young Jill voice] “No it’s not, it has to belong to someone…” In a rough and tumble, Huck Finn type of existence I suppose. [Laughs]

What would you say is a new challenge in Beasts of Burden that you’re allowing yourself to… explore.

JT: Oh, I thought you were going to say technically… I would suppose it would be to engage the reader into their lives to show as much emotion as I can, to have them act with subtle expression, to get people to forget that they’re reading not just about dogs, but the main characters are the characters that they love. I want readers to love them, like how they get vested into human being characters, by the way I illustrate it.

What are some examples of how you tackled this?

JT: The way I paint things to set the mood and try to incorporate what I learned in working in manga, how emotion is played up and how pacing and interactive glances can build the tension or any other emotion that the characters might be feeling without the symbolic manga constraints like the lightning bolts or drip of blood coming out of their nose. I try to do that with color wash or background. When something is shocking or there’s violence I try to put red in the background. To me that’s an emotional reference for the reader that’s really intense or conveys anger. Certain scenes you’ll see where it’s done. There’s a scene where all these zombie dogs are chasing heroes and put a whole red wash and then I drew on top of that, because to me it was going to be so creepy and violent that I wanted to convey that without showing movement and motion.

You strike me as an artist that dislikes a lot of exposition cluttering up the art.

JT: What do you mean?

That you don’t need balloons that establish setting or what the character is thinking. The art is telling the story.

JT: That’s my job 100%, I feel that the only caption I want in there is, “And then…” or “Later that day.” Something expositional not explanatory.

Beasts of Burden: Let Sleeping Dogs Lie (From Dark Horse Book of Dead)

From the early released Beasts of Burden art, most of what’s not art is dialogue.

JT: Evan hasn’t written very many captions. I told him, “I feel like I’m doing my job if no one has to explain again what they’re supposed to be looking at. He does a little of that just to bring people up to speed, to transition one story from the previous issue to what’s happening now, or how much time has past because they’re dogs, there’s certain things that happen that where you can tell. I tried to ask if season changed a lot, or because it’s a mini-series if we would try to hit things seasonally, spring, summer, fall and winter which we did in the first four stories. We had each season represented, but emotionally what happened, we pick up after the long winter in the Dark Book of Monsters so that might be explained. Either the dogs will talk about what happened or use quick captions because there are no people to bring people up to speed, like “Oh I haven’t seen you since Christmas,” but I guess the dogs say that too like, “He hasn’t been outside the yard since the incident with the boy…”

They could tell convene at Christmas and talk about what awful and demeaning Holiday outfits their owners make them wear.

JT: I wanted to do a Christmas story. I try to convince Evan to do one, a seasonal thing to be more light-hearted. These stories, they don’t always end on a happy note. I needed to do something where not everyone dies or scary bad things happen. So I thought, let’s just do a Christmas story. If I was writing this for another anthology, Christmas couldn’t come because Pugs, when he was a puppy trapped Santa Claus because he thought he was a burglar and now all of them have him trapped in this house. So they’re either going to have to help him deliver parents or something… but that’s the difference between me and Evan. He’s writing about supernatural and I’m writing about mythological stuff but funny, I want it to be funny.

Once this is collected, is this a series you think would be marketed to a different audience?

JT: You’d probably have to be interested in the supernatural because the stories are fantastical so it’s not just everyday interactions with dogs, although you have some of that, so I think that would depend on the taste of the dog owner. But it probably crosses over into a lot broader spectrum. I suppose that people who got into Buffy the Vampire Slayer because they loved the vampire stuff, they got hooked in on the melodrama and then accepted all the fantastical stuff that was weaved into it, the same way as any other soap opera. That’s probably why I like it. I like an intricate, multi-character story.

You were approached for Wednesday Comics, right?

JT: Yes, I was in the middle of Beasts of Burden and Mark Chiarello, he wanted me to do a Wonder Woman story. I was trying to figure out how I can do both of these things at the same time and then I realized I couldn’t. I still want to do the story because it came so easily especially in that format in big beautiful eight or twelve pages that showed a certain type of story. That one would have been really fun to illustrate.

Mark has such a great design sense and the creators he recruited were so perfect.

JT: Oh my gosh, and don’t you love comics THAT big? I looked at it thinking, ‘This is how we should all be reading our comics!’

I read it on the floor, sprawled out sitting on my stomach.

JT: I could just be immersed in it much more readily than if it were regular-sized.

In that format, certain artists can tell much more in one page than others do in 22. Some of the creators really made use of that size.

JT: It’s amazing.

Is Brian (Azzarello, her husband) happy the way Batman came out?

JT: Oh god, yeah. Eduardo (Risso) was the first one done out of all of them. I think it’s one of the most amazing versions of Batman ever. He’s rouge-ish. Bruce Wayne is very… sexual.

We’re seeing characters in ways we haven’t seen before like the Hawkman story by Kyle Baker. It’s so awesome.

JT: And that Kamandi, oh my god, each one is my favorite in there, and Super Girl? Why are Amanda Connor and Jimmy Palmiotti not doing a regular Super Girl strip or comic? Amanda is such an amazing artist. I could read her comic all day long.

When my father was young, he used to read the big Prince Valiant comics where the original art was done on this large scale. To me it takes me back to what he experienced as a child.

JT: Well, I have a Little Nemo in Slumberland compilation and I’ve only started to read it, but it’s one of those things you want to lie on the floor with a big pillow under your belly and just get lost inside this sequential landscape. I felt just like Little Nemo and dive into those pages from horizon to horizon. When I open up that book, both sides completely fill up my field of vision and that’s kinda nice.

Windsor McCay's Little Nemo in Slumberland

In contrast to this concept, what do you think about digital comics?

JT: I like the portability of comics, and I’m interested now in trying to see them work on a phone, but I’ve never been able to sit up and read them really comfortably on the computer screen but if the Kindle or that type of format eventually gets comics – as long as I can curl up in a chair, on a couch or in a bed, because I like to read everything there, I just don’t want to have to sit up straight in front of a monitor, but I love a book. And the big comics there is some big nostalgia even if you didn’t grow up reading those. When I was growing up, Sunday comics didn’t look like that, but you heard about them. My grandparents would tell me, ‘When I was little, we read comics on Sunday and they were big!‘

For those who haven’t seen original art, especially an original Windsor McCay or Hal Foster, find what local comic art shows are nearby and seek them out to see how big a scale these are done at.

JT: I’ve seen them at the Milwaukee Art Museum, where there was a comic retrospective the one that was brought around the country. I was so proud to do this for a living and then see everybody’s originals, how big they were with the level of draftsmanship and design, [pauses] it just really hit me.

It is beautiful work to see and to imagine these legends working on a scale that big.

JT: I think about all of the little, tiny motions I do that would have been so much easier if they were more larger and more fluid. And I think for newspaper strip artists now, their panels aren’t even an inch by an inch it seems. They’ve been reduced even further. To go from THAT, to that. Everytime I’ve met someone who worked for a newspaper is amazed by how much space comics get. Everybody in comics say “I wish a million people read my comic,” but you’re trading off the freedom. I could never be happy to do three or four panels of something (at a time).

Magic Trixie Vol. 3: Magic Trixie and the Dragon by Jill Thompson

Anything else you’re working on?

JT: The third Magic Trixie book came out in June, I’d love for people to pick that up. Amazon’s probably the easiest way to get that, and I’m really proud of that. There are things that I pitched and that I’d love to do but I just don’t think they’re going to happen. Like I’ve always had an idea of a Wonder Woman graphic novel, that’s different than the Wednesday Comics project that I mentioned before. It would be a fairy tale that would be my take on the origin but not an origin story. It’s a stand-alone story but it wouldn’t have anything to do with the ongoing title.

Magic Trixie is being published by Harper Collins so that’s taken you on a different tour than some comic artists.

JT: I recently went to the American Librarians Association and got great responses there. Librarians have always been really supportive of graphic novels anywhere I’ve gone, but now that it’s really exploding, it seems like some librarians who are new to it, are overwhelmed because they don’t know where to start. So you wind up having great conversations with them about things that came out in the 80′s like Watchmen. They think, ‘These all go together, right?’ and I’m like, “No! Just like the way you separate books by age and genre, these have to be separated the same way. They want to put everything in the children’s section, but it doesn’t work like that. You’re going to have a smattering of comics in the children’s section. So it’s interesting to see how they incorporate them into their filing systems.

What are your future plans with Magic Trixie?

JT: I’ve done all the Magic Trixie books that Harper Collins is interested in, so I’ve got a trilogy, and that’s cool. I’d like to do more stories eventually, but right now I’m focusing on Beasts of Burden and looking forward to get Scary Godmother started back up. And when I finish Beasts of Burden, I’m going to start working on another Little Endless Book, a sequel to the other one I did with my editor, Shelly Bond. I’ll be writing and drawing that myself and will start that in the fall.

Will that be released in the summer next year?

JT: Probably in the summer. I don’t know how Dark Horse is going to put out all of the Beasts of Burden, but at some point I know they want to release the stuff previously in the anthologies and then put a big book out with the mini-series altogether. I know there are talks of us continuing Beasts of Burden after that, and I’m fine with all of that.

Magic Trixie by Jill Thompson

Remember to check out Beasts of Burden #1 at comic shops this week, and if you would like to read a few of the Beasts of Burden anthology stories go to Dark Horse eComics, Magic Trixie Vol.1, Vol. 2: Magic Trixie Sleeps Over, and Vol.3: Magic Trixie and the Dragon

Feature: B-
I am not a Browncoat or a Whedonite, but I’ve enjoyed nearly every television show put out by Joss Whedon. Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Angel, Firefly, and Dr. Horrible, all deserve their own respect. Dollhouse, though was a struggle. I honestly gave up on the show midway when it originally aired, bored by it, and said, “Eliza Dushku wearing next to nothing is just not enough to keep me watching this show.” Believe me, that’s saying something. This is how my Friday nights went this past spring. Paired with Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles on Friday nights, from which I would be jumping on my couch cushions afterwards, buzzing, and then I felt like I was swimming in a lap pool of thick pudding, twenty minutes into Dollhouse and seemingly going nowhere. So, imagine how I felt when T:TSCC was cancelled and Dollhouse was renewed for a second season? I was furious, but recently I finished the entire season on blu-ray and have come to the conclusion, I acted prematurely.

Dushku reunites with Whedon to star as Caroline, a woman who needs to burn her past and is willing to sign over five years of her life away and be part of the Dollhouse. Now dead, Caroline is given the codename: Echo. Her brain is stripped down to its essentials and its simplest of functions. She is for all intents and purposes, a blank slate, lacking any personality or emotion. The spa-like Dollhouse is disguised as an underground fantasy-escort prostitution ring, male and female “dolls” would be made to order by a willing client, who would specify certain traits or scenarios to play out. Oh, but the “dolls” are more capable of that. They can be ordered to do undercover jobs, infiltrate, spy, and anything else that can be programmed into their mind.

It’s a crazy amalgam of Frankenstein, the Matrix and Dushku’s previous television show, Tru Calling as the sultry brunette gets to play out a barrage of personalities and kick ass in prime-time television. The formula was very clear at the start and we are introduced to all of the other principle dolls: Sierra (Dichen Lachman), Victor (Enver Gjokaj), and Mellie (Miracle Laurie). Each “Active” doll has a handler who sees each doll through their mission. Echo’s is Boyd Langton (Harry Lennix). The scientist who administers the downloads is Topher Brink (Frank Kranz). Dr. Saunders is the resident on staff (Amy Acker) who was attacked by Alpha, a rogue doll and left her permanently scarred. Overseeing the operation is Adelle DeWitt (Olivia Williams) and her chief of security, Laurence Dominic (Reed Diamond). The Dollhouse is known only by its rich clients and the final component of the show is an FBI Agent Paul Ballard (Tahmoh Penikett) who is insistent to prove to his superiors of the Dollhouse existence.

The problem that I had with the early part of the season is that when the dolls don’t have a persona downloaded into them, the show is pretty vapid as the actors just walk around like zombies in a spa. I understand that’s how they’re supposed to be, but to watch half a show of that made for a laboring experience. It was as if there was a bit of arrogance by Whedon and crew thinking that their loyal following and Dushku fanboys could carry the show long enough for a payoff long down the road. The buzz was just about dead by the first month of the show and then… well, the show made a dramatic turn at the halfway point.

After all of the dolls are introduced and laid out, Echo begins to act up and remembers things. She evolves as a doll and leads a breakout. While the jail break wasn’t successful, that episode was a turning point for the season. The peripheral characters emerged and Echo became a secondary role. Dr. Saunders is revealed to be a former doll named Whiskey, Topher is an entertaining yet creepy character, DeWitt faces moral dilemmas, and a spy infiltrates the Dollhouse. Suddenly the show was going somewhere. It was coherent, the writing got better and the cast really buckled down and made for compelling science fiction. Each episode upped the ante laid down by the prior, reaching a climax when Alpha makes his return.

But wait, there’s more! Whedon shot another episode titled, “Epitaph” show on digital for half the costs and set in the post apocalyptic future 10 years later. Viewers get a glimpse of how the technology has evolved and peer into civilization’s doom and no one is left from the show, or are they? Felicia Day (The Guild, Dr. Horrible) guest stars as Mag, and leader of a band of “actuals” who are humans who have kept their bodies free of technology. This episode was made for DVD/Blu-ray because international contracts call for 13 episodes and the first season ended with only 12. So, Whedon pitched the idea to Fox to make this final episode at half the costs and in turn gave them the strongest episode of the entire season. It’s so worth the wait to see after completing the original twelve episodes that even though I wanted to forget this series when I first saw it, I am now craving the second season and hoping that the show will evolve into what’s peeked at in Epitaph sooner rather than later. So while it’s an extra, I have to say that this episode really saved this show for me because it shows where they want to ultimately go and trust me, when I say it’s a good place.

Video: B+
Dollhouse on blu-ray brings home a 1080p AVC-encoded MPEG-4 transfer framed in 1.78:1. Primary colors are clean and burst on the screen. Textures and skintones reproduce accurately especially that great cherry wood tone that’s present throughout the Dollhouse. Overall it’s pretty good but once in a while details get a big muddy, which may be due in part to the varying camera setups and stage design. Blacks, shadows and contrast ratio are all consistently solid throughout season one, and the only stray cat is “Epitaph” because it was shot on digital. You can see the graininess and dip in picture quality but that actually adds to the ambiance of the post-apocalyptic era they were trying to create.

Audio: B
There is only one audio option and that’s English 5.1 DTS-HD. It’s a fine track that has the goods on panning effects and motion sound. I felt I had to turn up the volume though to get the dialogue at a resounding level, about ten clicks higher than what I normally listen at. Bass is real punchy during explosions and high action sequences. The balance overall could have been tweaked better, but it’s a satisfying audio experience in general. Subtitles are available in English, French, Spanish, and Portuguese.

Extras: B-
Audio Commentaries – There are three total and each one is different to the next. They scored big though by putting subtitles specifically for the commentaries which I think is a long overdue. Seriously, how are deaf people supposed to understand audio commentaries? Anyway it’s was a great touch.

Joss Whedon and Eliza Dushku on Episode 1, “Ghost” make it very clear they’re not focused to do an in-depth commentary noting that it’s early in the morning and they’re hungry. Whedon is very comfortable with his fan base so once in awhile it’s okay to break away from the norm, but this isn’t a track you’ll likely revisit.

Whedon on Episode 6, “Man on the Street” buckles down on this track and talks about what part of the show is about, this difference of opinion, and “What to believe, how we’ve come to believe and how we’re forced to believe and how everyone’s perspective is valid. There’s a fantasy of control or of perception. When we have a fantasy, we don’t think about the little things that somebody else is going through that make them not jive with our fantasy, we just have the fantasy.”

Jed Whedon and Maurissa Tancharoen on Episode 13 “Epitaph” are the main writers of the show and have been with Joss for some time. They start off the commentary announcing that their recent marriage nuptials and sets the tone for a very care free and fun track. They offer some insight into writing this important episode and then get a bit personal on the track. It’s funny folks, but be forewarned of some gushy and intimate details. Ultimately, the crew needed to make a cheap cool finale that would “Blow people’s minds.” Goal accomplished. I was turned off though at the censoring that was done in this commentary. There’s just no need for that.

The rest of extras are in Dolby Digital Stereo and are shown in HD, AVC-encoded and are found on disc three.

Making Dollhouse HD (20:48) Whedon guides you through the assembly of the cast, writers room, and growth of the mythology in the series. Whedon’s a bit of droll in the featurettes, as if again, he had just woken up but this is a comprehensive overview. It feels a little EPK-like, but worth seeing.

Coming Home HD (7:11) is one of those lovey-dovey featurettes that briefly scans Whedon’s co-workers who have worked with him on all of his prior television shows. They hug, they trust, and drink and kiss each other’s butts so you know just how bad your job sucks and their family environment rocks.

Finding Echo HD (5:07) interviews Dushku about how she wanted to be a bigger part of a show than just being the star, and how a small investment of buying lunch got her a TV show and some production experience. Whedon in return got her the variety of work she wanted as displayed by the dozen or so plus characters she gets to play and found a collaborator within her.

Designing the Perfect Dollhouse HD (6:00) More animated, Whedon moves around the set touring viewers on his Eastern Spa influenced set and that the massage area was an excuse to have naked people running around the set.

In Private Engagement HD (5:47) Everyone on the set is asked if they would like the Dollhouse world to be real.

Un-aired Pilot “Echo” HD (45:47) this is the original and technical “13th episode” that was shot but it eventually was chopped up and used throughout the season, leaving them with no 13th episode and thus the reason for “Epitaph.”

Deleted Scenes HD (29:46) there’s a barrage of scenes left on the cutting floor.

I am doll eyes, doll face… doll skin… Overall Shock Value: B-
Joss Whedon’s latest show takes its grand old time to find its solid ground to stand on. The first half of the show is really dreadful, to be honest, and even seeing Eliza Dushku shake her thang isn’t enough to keep me yawning though the early episodes. BUT, as the story settles in–and perhaps facing cancellation–the show got a jolt of new life at the halfway point and ended on a respectable plateau. But if there’s a reason to bring this blu-ray box set home it’s the un-aired episode, “Epitaph” which saves the show so much that I’m very hopeful of the second season. Technically, it’s a solid win for Fox, although not perfect, but a definite upgrade over the DVD, so if you’re going to bring home a Dollhouse, make it’s the blu-ray and give the show a fair and thorough shot before you judge it, unlike me.

Film: B
One minute everything can go right in life, and the next could be the beginning of nothing but pain and sorrow. Life is fragile. Nearly 80,000 homeless roam Los Angeles like nomads, the most of any American city, and much less separates them from us than you think. Plenty of them came from good foundations, and stable lives, but suddenly life came crashing down on them hard. They are ignored by their families and ignored by society itself. After LA Times journalist, Steve Lopez crashed on his bicycle, he paid attention to one homeless man who played the sad strings of society.

The Soloist is a serious drama based on a true story of Lopez (Robert Downey Jr.) discovering a musical prodigy laying next to waste on the streets of Los Angeles. After some fact checking, the famed New York City art school, Juilliard accepted one Nathaniel Ayers (Jamie Foxx) in the 1970s as a promising cello player with a fervor for Beethoven. Ayers never finished his schooling, however, because he was tormented by voices in his head. Decades later, a broken and disheveled man, Ayers wanders the streets of Los Angeles with his life collected in a shopping cart uttering madness to himself all day and sprawling out on the cement jungle each night.

Lopez uses Ayers at first, to keep his job alive during the crumbling newspaper industry. In his column, he writes about Ayers wondering how someone of his talent could find himself struggling to stay alive on the streets. Without any kind of education or training, Lopez befriends Ayers and tries to bring him back to society by making Ayers passion for music more accessible to him. But Ayers is filled with demons that won’t allow for an easy transition. Tested to uncomfortable limits, Lopez remains persistent in getting Ayers to a better place, and in return Lopez sees what he’s been missing in his life. Changes occur in the self-absorbed writer, who at the beginning of the movie was concerned with one person.

The painful reality of the landscape of The Soloist is that there are not enough people like Steve Lopez to care about any of the thousands that wander from overpass to street grate. Most people would rather avoid Skid Row (the streets of downtown LA where the homeless reside) like the plague and understandably so. It’s the humanity of two men that will humble those who watch the Soloist. Two men who find a friendship together, and test it to great measures because each thinks that being alone will make them happier. It’s easier. It’s simpler. Maybe, but the consequences of being a true “soloist” can take its toll to where there’s not much that separates a homeless man and a well-to-do writer.

Apparently, many people avoided this film as well at the box office back in April when most movie goers were ramping up for the summer blockbuster. After seeing the film I can see why it wasn’t a bigger hit. It’s not because of the acting (god no) or the script, or even anything the crew could have done. Okay, it is an achingly slow film, but the general public doesn’t want anything to do with the hardships of others, especially when so many are experiencing tough times of their own. And if escaping from that reality is what movies are all about, then The Soloist is not for you. But for those who want to see two fine performances and more importantly, get exposed to real life, do so, you owe it to your fellow man.

Video: A
The Soloist is fitted with a splendid 1080p AVC-encoded transfer framed in 2.39:1. Detail is not a problem as seen in the scenes inside the LA Times offices. Stacks of paper and mayhem are ubiquitous at every turn. The scenes of Skid Row are filled with orchestrated motion and depth and as complex as those scenes are, there is not a loss of detail whatsoever. The scene where Nathaniel sees the LA Philharmonic rehearsal with Steve at Disney Hall he closes his eyes and a firework display of color goes off that’s just the tip of the iceberg of how well colors are reproduced. Fleshtones, equally striking and accurate revealing every wrinkle, stress line, and blemish of the homeless unapologetically.

Audio: A-
A dialogue-driven 5.1 Dolby True-HD audio track steers the Soloist to place where all of the details stand out. There are panning effects and directional noise that accurately places you in the center of the more active scenes but the ones that stand out are when conversation is going on in the foreground and in the background. Skid Row is particularly filled with life during the day or night. And when the music plays, that’s when you sit back and enjoy it how Nathaniel would and let it take over your mind. The room fills with warmth, perfectly pitched and balanced. Bigger bass is reserved for some of the few action sequences we are privy to, but isn’t overpowering. Also available on the disc are French and Spanish 5.1 Dolby Digital tracks, and subtitles in English, English SDH, French and Spanish.

Extras: B+
Anytime you watch a film about real people, you want to see and get to know the actual people who the film portrays. The extras provided satisfy that curiosity as the real Steve Lopez, Nathaniel Ayers and his sister, Jennifer talk (and perform) in front of the camera and are gracious enough to share their story first hand. I only wished there was a full performance by Ayers instead of the minute or two we do get but here’s what is included. All of the featurettes are in HD with the exception of the deleted scenes.

Audio Commentary with Director Joe Wright picks his spots to interject technical aspects of scenes, information about schizophrenics, themes and particular moments that he felt he could have done better, like downplaying the cello as a character. It a bit of dry track, not talkative enough, but that’s better than being overly annoying.

An Unlikely Friendship: Making the Soloist HD (19:37) shows behind-the-scenes footage of the integral parts of the film such as courting Lopez to adapt his story and articles to film, Jamie Foxx learning how to play the cello and violin, and getting the people on skid row to be extras in the film and add authenticity to the Soloist.

Kindness, Courtesy and Respect: Mr. Ayers + Mr. Lopez HD (4:48) shows the real Steve Lopez and Nathaniel Ayers (and his sister) talking about their friendship as well as Ayers playing the cello. This is the most we get to see of Ayers and despite the new found fame, he is still living in the LAMP apartment and walks the streets of Los Angeles.

One Size Does Not Fit All: Addressing the Homelessness in Los Angeles HD (9:45) speaks of the rapidly growing homeless rate in Los Angeles in skid row. There are more homeless in Los Angeles than San Francisco, Chicago, New York City, Philadelphia, Portand, and Houston combined. Social services like Midnight Mission and LAMP talk about their programs and their causes in hopes of publicizing the problem and ask for whatever help can be donated.

There were five Deleted Scenes SD (9:49) that show Lopez with the flirty lab technician (Jena Malone), Lopez and Nathaniel listening to Beethoven in the car, Nathaniel’s childhood antagonists, playing the cello for his sister at LAMP, and an extensive scene where the voices in his head are “dealt” with.

Juilliard: The Education of Nathaniel Ayers HD (4:08) Producer Gary Foster discusses Ayers acceptance into Juilliard and what a prestige achievement it was for him to play there. Foster also has a story to tell about Ayers and fellow classmate, Yo-Yo Ma.

Beth’s Story HD (2:02) – an animated short or public service announcement about how easy it can be to be homeless.

The Theatrical Trailer HD (2:33) makes the film seem like a more powerful and magical movie.

An Orchestrated Drag – Overall Shock Value: B+
There’s nothing inherently wrong with The Soloist, as it retells the very real and surprising bond between two men who would probably have never met, set against the landscape of the troublesome homeless problem in Los Angeles. The acting of Downey Jr. and Foxx is exceptional and the story has the right amount of depth and weight to it. I found the story overall depressing and dragged down by the reality of the LA homelessness–which is the point–but it’s not the type of film I could bring myself to enjoy again and again; not because of the social issue at hand, but because the pacing just drags to a snail’s pace at times. I still admire the work behind The Soloist and do think it’s worthy of a strong and confident rental. With the fine extras that should be explored and a solid technical treatment, The Soloist blu-ray preserves the story of Nathaniel Ayers and Steve Lopez in highest of regards.

“As the rhythm designed to bounce
What counts is that the rhymes
Designed to fill your mind
Now that you’ve realized the prides arrived
We got to pump the stuff to make us tough
from the heart
It’s a start, a work of art
To revolutionize make a change nothin’s strange
People, people we are the same
No we’re not the same
Cause we don’t know the game
What we need is awareness, we can’t get careless
You say what is this?
My beloved lets get down to business
Mental self defensive fitness
(Yo) bum rush the show
You gotta go for what you know
Make everybody see, in order to fight the powers that be
Lemme hear you say…Fight the Power”
-Excerpt from “Fight the Power” Chuck D, Public Enemy-

Spike Lee had officially arrived on the scene as a filmmaker, encapsulating the climate within black communities at a most troubling time when police excessive violence and brutality had reached critical mass. Do the Right Thing was an alarm and people woke up. It created a media wildfire to those who feared riots would break out; insinuating that people would riot, not intelligent enough to understand that the film was not a blueprint but rather a fire starter for generating discussion within the black community, to stop waiting to be saved and start taking care of their own. People spoke with their vote and above all of that, Lee directed his first truly great film, one that is now 20 years old.

Depth, in Do the Right Thing was felt in every scene. Scenes didn’t start and stop with who was talking on camera, but continued on in conversations off-camera, who was seen in the background, and what was going on all around. Lee captured a living and breathing community, and did so in spades. The tapestry of conversations had to have made Robert Altman proud. There was the signature Spike Lee montage, which was especially memorable with harsh racial epitaphs and stinging slurs that cut so deep, it reached our funny bones. Ossie Davis, Ruby Dee, John Turturro, Robin Harris, Danny Aielo, and yes, by even Spike himself reached deep for such vivid characters. Careers were just starting to bud in Samuel Jackson, Martin Lawrence, Richard Edson but the deepest soul, the most piercing sound, and the most truthful was Perez who grew up in Bed-Stuy, untainted by the actor’s creed or methods, simply spoken, (ear-achingly) from the heart.

Lee wanted to convey the theme of heat. The hottest days of the summer are supposed to bring out the worst in people. Murders go up, crime goes up, and on this particular day, in the fragile community of one street block all hell broke loose. He made the center of the wheel Sal’s Famous Pizzeria, which has fed the neighborhood for generations. The spokes that defined the wheel’s size were Sal (Aielo) and his two sons, Pino (Turturro) and Vito (Edson). Their delivery guy, Mookie (Lee) who was focused on getting paid, his hot-blooded Puerto Rican woman (Perez) and kid, and his sister Jade (Joie Lee). Across from Sal’s stood the Korean Fruit and Vegetable Delight (Steve Park and Ginny Yang); a local drunk by the name of Da Mayor (Davis) paced back and forth, trying to catch the eye of Mother-Sister (Dee), an elder slumlord who hung out her sill; three male yentas gossiped all day (Paul Benjamin, Frankie Faison, Harris) and radio dee jay Mister Señor Love Daddy (Jackson) who oversaw everything through a glass window.

For an entire day, Lee kept the wheel spinning with one of Mookie’s friends, Buggin Out (Giancarlo Esposito) who asks Sal the pivotal question, why are there only pictures of white, Italian celebrities on Sal’s Wall of Fame. To which Sal answers, it’s his store, he can put up what he wants and he only wants Italian-Americans on the wall. Buggin Out then states in all of the years Sal has been there there are no whites that give him any business. After being ushered out by Mookie, Buggin Out spends the rest of the day trying to get the community to support a boycott of Sal’s Pizzeria, and is turned down by everyone except for two others who were wronged that day, Radio Raheem (Bill Nunn) and Smiley (Roger Guenveur Smith). As the day came to a close, a poignant moment. Sal expressed his pleasure in a day’s work to his infantry of workers, clueless of Pino’s hate, Mookie’s bottom line, and Vito’s wish to keep the peace. Then the wheel stopped spinning and broke off its axle and the heat finally got to all of them as the boycotters stormed in.

The heat was not an excuse but rather the catalyst to surface the feelings, of love and hate, that laid dormant. Fireworks can’t go off without lighting the fuse and on any other day, what happened probably would have never occurred. There were no guns or drugs that incited the riot (which was important), just the rage and anger stemming from Mayor Edward Koch, who was up for re-election in 1989. From disappointment in the laziness and finger-pointing of black communities, the assertion of other immigrants who are trying to survive as hard as the next person, gentrification, and the realization that selective racism is still racism. It wasn’t until after the cops choked Radio Raheem to death that Mookie boils over from the insanity of it, and lashes out on the symbolic place of hate: Sal’s Famous Pizzeria. What’s soon left is one sad but beautiful mess. Away from the burning rubble, it’s back to the ubiquitous stoops and streets everyone goes only to wonder if any of it had made a bit of difference.

VIDEO: A-
This is so close to a perfect transfer but just falls shy. One couldn’t tell the film was 20 years old, the 1080p high definition transfer is AVC-encoded and at 1.85:1 aspect ratio is a big reason. Details like when the cops drive by the three “wisemen” there’s a little lens flare between the officers’ faces I never noticed before. The red wall behind them looks like it was colored with a Crayola crayon. The different degree of perspiration on each actor’s necks and faces are easy to see. Beard stubble, reflections in windows, and the years of filled up potholes can all be pointed out. In the critical scene with Pino and Sal, you can see the scratches and dirt on the window. Again in the opening credits, the bright primary hues bolt off the screen and exemplify how good Do the Right Thing looks in high definition. Skin tones are full of warmth and life, shadows and contrast are exceptional and all without any artificial edge enhancement. There’s still that acceptable level of grain but as a longtime fan of the film, it’s a joy to see what cinematographer, Ernest Dickerson captured preserved so well.

Still, this is not the cleanest transfer. Specks and the occasional bit of dirt that can be seen, when hunting for them. The opening title sequence especially has lots of dirt which has a bit of an urban grit appeal to it perhaps very few clean negatives exist, but unfortunately that’s not the last time the debris flashes on the screen as it can be seen throughout the rest of the film. It’s more noticeable when the camera is stationary, not panning or in extreme close-ups. The debris isn’t distracting by any means but I have to call it when I see it. So now that I’ve got that out of the way, I can STILL say that this is the best I’ve ever seen this film. And I’ve seen it a lot.

AUDIO: A-
I hate to use the opening credits as an example again but that is the liveliest Do the Right Thing will get in its English 5.1 DTS-HD Master Audio track. With a helicopter chugging around the room and planes flying, your head will be spinning to follow the sound. The bass gets a boost full of Public Enemy as the film’s anthem is an undercurrent to the emotions that boil over and the fifteen or so scenes in the film where its played get the same audio treatment. It’s easy to overlook the sweet and soft jazzy score composed by Spike’s father, Bill Lee. It’s in there and even at low volumes is as important as Fight the Power. The surround channels get music, street chatter, and various noise but the strength is in the center channel reproduction of the dialogue. Also available are Spanish and French 5.1 DTS audio tracks and subtitles are available in English SDH, Spanish and French.

EXTRAS: A-
The last time Do the Right Thing was released it was on a superb Criterion Collection DVD from which all of those extras have been exported over. Exclusive to the blu-ray disc are two extras including a new commentary by Spike Lee and a retrospective look back. The rest of the extras are in standard definition, MPEG-2 encoded and in Dolby Digital 2.0.

Audio Commentary by Spike Lee looks back at his breakthrough film as he works through trying to remember stories and reflections on his third film. This is not a rehashing of the same stories on the previous commentary, they are some new thoughts and reflections especially for the 20th anniversary. Some anecdotes (for example his dealing with the Sinatras) are more entertaining to hear this time around because Spike’s describes them in much more detail and without the seriousness he held in the first one.

The second Audio Commentary is with Lee, Director of Photography Ernest Dickerson, Production Designer Wynn Thomas and Actor Joie Lee is ported over from the Criterion Collection release, a fine gathering of many of important players in DTRT. Dickerson in particular shares his technical knowledge, Spike recalls troubles and stories that developed in making the film, and Joie addresses some of the outsiders’ concerns with the film.

Do the Right Thing: 20 Years Later HD (35:47) – A trip back memory lane includes the use of color to convey heat, a where are they now segment, stories about stretching props, the Larry Bird jersey and how Fight the Power came to be. This is the only featurette in high def.

Deleted and Extended Scenes SD (14:14) – Eleven scenes were cut including another pizza delivery for Mookie, Sal’s Cadillac being used as a frying pan, lots more Jade, and more Martin Lawrence silliness. Many of these could have easily been put back in with no problem.

Behind the Scenes SD (57:59) – A bunch of handheld videos of Spike leading early script readings with the cast, interviews with Rosie Perez and her observations as a first time actress having lived in Bed-Stuy, wrap-up parties, and a clip of Sal’s Famous Pizzeria being constructed. Caution to those who get queasy with hand-held camera work.

Making Do the Right Thing SD with Spike Lee Intro (1:01:49) opens up this deeper look into the Bed-Stuy neighborhood, how shooting the film affected their daily lives, how the locals got involved with the film, and what the locals tried to do to keep the drugs away from the shoot. This was a smart extra to include as you get to hear from people in Bed-Stuy speaking the reality of life there. And as an epilogue, Back to Bed-Stuy SD (4:49) A trip back to the street block where DTRT was shot to see the faded murals and what else has changed since 1989.

Editor Barry Brown SD (9:38) – talks about meeting Spike, composing the film, finding relevant artists for Senor Love’s roll call, and making one scene look more genuine.

The Riot Sequence SD (1:30) – Lee normally does not storyboard but this is one of the few instances where a scene was planned and drawn out in full detail prior to shooting. After an intro, one can peruse through each page of that storyboard.

Cannes, 1989 SD (42:22) – an exceptional Q&A press conference after the screening at the 1989 Cannes Film Festival that included the typical misconceptions for those who didn’t understand Mookie’s actions, the neighborhood of Bed-Stuy, race relations, life vs. art, the debate over the two quotes at the end of the film, and why there was no mention of drugs. Also much of the foreign press wanted to make it seem like such racial problems were only an American problem.

Trailers SD there is one Theatrical Trailer (2:12) and two TV Spots (0:31 and 0:31) sadly all in standard definition.

The Fight is Not Over. Overall Shock Value: A-
Do the Right Thing turns 20. It’s a shocker that one of my touchstone films has reached that age. Universal did it proper by preserving and in fact, enhancing it on blu-ray because I don’t recall seeing it this good. Spike Lee’s breakout film still holds up with race relations still a struggle, no matter how big the band-aid. In America, President Obama is proof of some progress, but as long as we continue to dwell on our differences, instead of embracing our similarities, we will always be marching uphill. Prejudice is still holding us back whether it’s race, religion, sexual orientation or two tribes in Rwanda. It’s not local to America, the inner cities or the suburbs, but continues to strap us down from healing, changing and evolving, So when the temperature gets hot, literally and figuratively, it’s Highly Recommended that YOU do the right thing.

FILM: D
Since the modern horror flick is so formulaic at this point, I avoided The Unborn at the theaters but hoped I’d be in for a surprise when it hits blu-ray. Hope left early into screening The Unborn, along with his friend, Thrills, Chills, and Originality. This time there’s no charge of a poor American remake, or a sequel that waters down the enjoyment of earlier installments. No, The Unborn did it all to itself, summoning a tired tale of family curses and hauntings in Casey Beldon (Odette Yustman), causing me to search under the couch pillows for holy water to wing at the screen. “Save my soul! Save my soul!” I screamed. Yeah. Didn’t work.

So this Beldon gal is a college co-ed in Chicago. She babysits to earn some cash, and keeps her body tight by working out regularly. Lately she’s been daydreaming and things begin to startle her. Cue in those cleverly-timed shriek noises and shrills designed to make you jump out of your seat. Casey shares her troubling mind with her superstitious friend Romy (Meagan Good) and boyfriend Mark (Cam Gigandet) but is mocked and ignored until one too many freak outs in public restrooms and lecture halls. At least one thing remains constant in horror flicks…. white folk are craaaazeeeeee!

When an eye doctor suspects she may have been a twin on the improbable chance she experienced Genetic Mosaicism, where placentas of two embryos can be fused and blood is transferred between fetuses. According to her father (James Remar), Casey had a twin brother who died when her umbilical cord wrapped around his throat. Nicknamed “Jumby” the unborn twin sent Casey’s mother (Carla Gugino) to a psych ward where she was diagnosed with depression and committed suicide. Yeah. That’s a bit of a skeleton I’d say, but nothing compared to what else she finds out.

Still haunted in her dreams, Casey seeks the help of Sofi (Jane Alexander) an elderly woman who knew her mother while at the looney bin, Arthur Wyndam (Idris Elba) Rabbi Sendak (Gary Oldman) two men of the cloth versed in the Jewish Kabbalah –stay with me– only to discover her family’s been long-cursed by the Nazi regime. There’s only one way to rid the family of this curse; a proper exorcism that’s destined to destroy the set of the film and take everyone in proximity with it.

Yustman really tries in the film, a poor woman’s Megan Fox (minus the clubbed thumbs and bad tattoos) and even greases up her body so that she can fit into tight, white tanks and undies to parade in. Her green performance is just one of the many turned in by the younger cast members. Jane Alexander is the most convincing of cast members as Sofi, Oldman and Elba appear… out of place. But this film struggled from the beginning with David S. Goyer’s script. More widely known for his part in writing Christopher Nolan’s Batman films, it was Goyer’s name that originally piqued my interest in The Unborn. Sadly, Goyer left his imagination in the bat cave playing chess with Alfred. There just wasn’t anything new, scary, or exciting about The Unborn. The deceased twin manifests itself into a demonic child whispering “Jumby wants to be be born now.” A premonition of things to come, but maybe it should have said, “Jumby wants a refund.”

VIDEO: B+
Despite all of the filmmakers’ travails, The Unborn is seen with a nice 1080p VC-1 encoded transfer in 2.40:1 aspect ratio. The picture has a bit of a fog about it, stylized and intentional, where objects that scream for emphasis get that spotlight while everything else drops back. There’s still plenty of accurate detail like pores on the skin, textures of various substrates that come across as authentic and the colors are so lush and rich at times it’s a shame that such a good looking film didn’t have much else going for it except…

AUDIO: B
All of the audio comes via a more than serviceable English 5.1 DTS-HD Master Audio mix. Universal loves the DTS-HD format and it does provide that screech and startle effect. Subwoofers will arise from the dead every now and then when they are called on and do an admirable job. There are some sweet spots in the film like the exorcism climax that utilizes the surround channels to a nice degree with eerie atmospheric effects, but too much of the audio in this film stays up front and center disconnecting the viewer from a complete experience through much of the film. There’s also an English 2.0 Dolby Digital mix, and 5.1 DTS tracks in Spanish, French, Dutch, and French Canadian. Subtitles are available in English SDH, Dutch, French, and French Canadaian.

EXTRAS: D-
Sometimes bad films have great extras but I guess Universal decided to cut its loss at the box office and spared no extra cents and dollars on a good supplemental package. Perhaps it was best to end the suffereing.

My Scenes – Universal’s standard bookmarking option allows you to place a mark at any moment of the film that puts you to sleep.

Deleted Scenes HD (6:37) – Six scenes that didn’t matter much but at least they’re in high def.

Not a shock here, Overall Shock Value: D+
I can’t say I was disappointed in the film because my expectations were not set that high. In fact it was spot on what was expected, which was another lazy, plain potato chip filled with trite scare tactics that’s as tasteless as the rest of the bag. Hollywood has once again relied on the usual gimmicks and gags to try and incite horror instead of really putting together a story that really drives The Unborn forward. If Hollywood cannot write but one good scary flick a year, then don’t bother pushing one out the door seemingly every month. The only thing horrific was the effort behind creating this film. There have been worse films, no doubt, but The Unborn’s only redeeming quality was that it scored high marks in the PCS AV department. And there’s one minute difference between the unrated cut and the theatrical cut. I don’t think there’s much difference. I’d pass on both but if you must see The Unborn for yourself, rent it first.

Season Two: A
For those who haven’t checked out season one or any other Lost seasons may want to read my review of season one first as the rest of this write-up may be full of spoilers.

The second season of Lost takes it up another notch as it begins with Locke and Jack sitting atop the hatch door having blown it wide open. What awaits for them is the key to the entire season and escalates the level of danger on the island, but it’s nothing compared to what the rest of the season has in store. Michael, Sawyer, and Jinn make it back to the island after being ambushed by the Others out at sea, but land on the other side and are captured by another group of people who appear have been on the island for a long time. Have the Lost version of the three stooges been captured by the Others or some other tribe? Michael has lost Walt again, and becomes an unstable force this season.

The hatch is actually some type of underground scientific bunker equipped with modern amenities such as a bathroom, kitchen, an armory of weapons, and a computer room where every 108 minutes a numeric sequence must be typed into a computer as follows, “4, 8, 15, 16, 23, 42” and a clock resets once that code is executed. These numbers have been coming up in conversations and flashbacks from season one and has once again appeared in a maddening task that may or may not ensure the safety of those on the island.

Aside from what information could be gathered from the orientation videos, the function of the button is unknown. But what happens if the number sequence is not entered? Is it just a test to see if people would perform a task on the mere suggestion of its importance? The hatch also serves as a test to those who spend time in it. The worst comes out of those who spend any duration in the hatch, physical or mental. And the hatch becomes the most important character in the second season. It’s purpose and possible link to flight 815.

The raft captors turn out to be the few survivors of the tail of the Oceanic Air 815, Michelle Rodriguez plays Ana Lucia, a hot-headed former cop, and Adewale Akinnoye-Agbaje plays Mr. Eko a former drug lord turned priest who is connected to one of the major finds in season one. The “Tailies” have been thinned out by the Others and have led a much different month and a half compared to the survivors we’ve been following. Trust, and a lack of it is a big theme in this season and a reason why the Tailies act the way they do, practically enslaving Michael, Jinn, and Sawyer. Kate’s sketchy past is in full bloom as we discover what got the authorities hot on her trail, and tensions build between Kate, Sawyer, Jack, and Locke. Faith is another theme that weighs heavily on the Lost cast which goes hand-in-hand with trust. Locke has faith that he’s meant to push those numbers but when he is tested, how strong is his faith? Jack, who is a man of science has no faith in what Locke believes, only what he sees and knows what is right. Mr. Eko plays a priest whose faith in continually tested. Locke’s ability to walk isn’t the only miracle on the island. And the reunion between spouses may bring a tear to the kind-hearted.

Connections between survivors are slowly revealed, unbeknownst to the characters and this adds more levels of questions to the show. Many of them have met prior to the crash or have come into contact with a common acquaintance. How many more are there? If that wasn’t enough, a powerful body blow was delivered in Henry Gale (Michael Emerson) who is captured and suspected as being one of the Others. He claims to be another survivor from a hot air balloon crash but Sayid thinks otherwise.

The performances of season two was another fearless signature. Rodriguez, and Akinnoye-Agbaje were exciting additions and stole every scene that they were in but Emerson’s turn will stiffen your spine. Evangeline Lilly, Matthew Fox and Jorge Garcia also made good on opportunities to shine. Guest starring roles by Julie Bowen as Jack’s ex-wife, Henry Ian Cusick as Desmond, the hatch station agent in waiting were good too. By season’s end, a majority of the questions going into this season have been answered but the higher stakes gave way to a whole new set of questions that rope you into season three. Lost surrendered the information you wanted, but they dictated pace and then took that satisfaction away from you by leaving you at the altar crying. But there’s no reason to be sad, because you can watch it over and over and over.

Video: A+
The wrinkles in season one have been ironed out in this 1080p AVC-encoded transfer in 1.78:1 aspect ratio. Having been to Hawaii I can attest to the stunning signs of the different terrains and landscapes. Seeing all of it in high def was almost as good as being there. I found no poor contrast ratio or grainy night scenes in this box set. The colors were just full of intricate range, skin colors warm, pores present, stubble-VERY present. This is what I expected out of the first season but there’s nothing to groan about this transfer. No muddy scenes, no edge enhancement or the fading Textures reproduced very well, shadow delineation was good as were the contrast and details. It’s a sparkling gemstone of a transfer and is enough reason to upgrade to blu-ray because it’s certainly better than what’s seen on digital downloads and previous DVD transfers.

Audio: A+
The English 5.1 Uncompressed DTS-HD master audio track is again, another spectacular audio mix. The same great jungle and atmospheric noises from season one are present in this track as well, but there’s a lot more gunfire being shot and some blaring sound effects like the alarm in the hatch to enter the numbers can get on your nerves. One particular episode that shows Claire remembering her abduction from the first season has noises that quickly flash and is grating after awhile inducing a migraine so believe me when I say that this thing is mixed darn well because the effect worked. Much like the video, the audio mix is notched up a bit and you almost don’t notice it as much because you’re sucked into the show so intensely but there’s so much attentive detail to the surrounding channels. It’s just a perfect mix on all fronts (and backs). Also included are English and French 5.1 Dolby Digital tracks, a Spanish 2.0 Dolby Digital track, and subtitles for practically every major language.

Extras: A
Season Play is a blu-ray exclusive where multiple users can view the season and follow the show at their own pace and pick up wherever they leave off. I don’t see why this is such a big deal, as it’s a feature that should be on all blu-rays (the resume function anyway) but I do like the idea of having different profiles because it’s easy in a family to get ahead of someone or fall behind but it will always remember where each person off. It unfortunately does not carry into subsequent seasons.

For owners of the DVD box set, there’s a coupon inserted which is a Mail-In certificate that will rebate you $20 for upgrading to blu-ray. A small incentive for stepping up and double dipping. Of course the likelihood of anyone who still has the original receipt I’m betting is slim. Still, it’s a nice offer. And to those who do have the DVDs will see most of these extras are the same ones ported over and unfortunately are still in 480i standard definition.

There are five Audio Commentaries spread throughout the first six discs on episodes “Man of Science, Man of Faith” with Lindelof, Carlton Cuse, Bryan Burk and Jack Bender; “23rd Psalm,” with Lindelof, Cuse, and Burk, “Dave” with Bender, Jorge Garcia and Cynthia Watros; “What Kate Did” with director Paul Edwards, cinematographer Michael Bonvillain, and Evangeline Lilly; and “The Whole Truth,” with staff writers Elizabeth Sarnoff, Christina Kim and actors Daniel Dae Kim and Yunjin Kim. These range from an hour full of chatting in the “Man of Science, Man of Faith” ep full of observations and what the producers and writers wanted to establish in the second season to absolute torture in “Dave” where it Bender was pulling teeth to get Garcia and Watros to fill the dead air with real conversation.

Disc Seven holds the remaining extras which are split into three sections once again, carrying the theme of the Dharma Initiative videos into the menu and selection options. Disappointingly, most of the extras are in standard 480i definition and stereo 2.0 but subtitles are available for all the extras in several languages.

Phase 1: Observation

Fire + Water: Anatomy of an Episode (31:46) – The episode that rocks the relationship of Claire and Charlie gets broken apart piece by piece from the on-location pre-production, to shooting, color correction, and adding in post-production dialogue.

Lost: On Location (1:02:00) – is another excellent extra broken up into 13 parts and like in other seasons reveals behind the scenes challenges, themes and important moments episode by episode. Actors, producers, digital effects crew, and many others contribute entertaining interviews and personal experiences that pertain to that episode although Michelle Rodriguez seems to say the same thing over and over.

The World According to Sawyer (4:31) – Sawyer’s awesome catch phrases are highlighted here.

Phase 2: Conditioning

The Lost Flashbacks SD : The Wake, The New Au Pair and Locke’s Father are three character flashbacks that were kept out of the final cut for episodes: Abandoned and Lockdown.

19 Deleted Scenes SD (22:55) – show what was left on the curring room floor which is mostly side conversations or some other story telling devices.

Lost Bloopers SD (4:05) – I normally hate bloopers because they’re worth viewing again but this I found myself laughing pretty hard and would consider revisiting at a later date.

Channel 4 UK Promo Directed by David LaChapelle (1:06) – Another sexy and slick short commercial by music video extraordinaire, LaChapelle. It shows you the voice and style you can have as a director when you take the same characters and settings and give a completely different vibe.

Phase 3: Conclusion

Lost Connections HD – is a useful organizational chart of who is connected to who and how. The six degrees of Jack is amplified in this follow-up season and this chart is based on the theory of centrality in that strangers cross paths multiple times in their life.

Mysteries, Theories and Conspiracies SD (10:17) – Show producers and writers and yes, even fan groups form their theories and cases of mythology that surrounds the show.

Secrets from the Hatch SD (15:47) – Take a deeper look into the big arcs in season two. Not only is what happened inside the hatch set talked about here, but also the designing and creating it, and what manifested out of the main characters as a result from this major plot element.

Easter Eggs
There are as many as ten easter eggs that I found by navigating around in the menu. It’s hard to pick up from all of the artificial “distressed film” but the cursor dot jumps around when you push up/down/ or diagonal from the Phase 1, 2, or 3 position. Of the ones I found are Bernard up in the air (1:11) Kraft services dishing Dharma cookies on the set (1:16) and very brief diagram of island sweat (0:36). On the Beach with Evi (4:28) is an interview with Evangeline Lilly who is asked about the second season preparation and her character. Dominic Monaghan with a joke (0:26) Walt getting wet (1:12) a deleted scene of Hurley and Rose (0:29) Jack with a bleep-worthy outtake (0:50) Lilly with the baby who plays Aaron (0:31) and season 2 rain delays (1:12).

Overall Shock Value: A+
This season of Lost started by going against the grain of what made the show so good, but that proved that the Damon Lindelof and the rest of the writers/producers were not afraid to shake it up. By the end this season was even better than the first revealing even more about each castaway, sometimes giving more doubt about certain characters who many so blindly rooted for in the first season. The connections between passengers/survivors create even more intrigue and mystery than before and despite all of the guess work that’s involved, Lost is headed towards somewhere and not just spinning its wheels. There was lots of new energy brought forth with new cast members and the dynamics that came from the hatch. With a truck load of extras, high definition video and audio, Lost: The Complete Second Season is another must-buy package. Namaste!

Season One: A-
For the longest time I came up with every excuse not to watch Lost. I simply couldn’t keep up with it week to week and knew that it was the type of show that you could miss an occasional episode, and sure I could watched it online but I hate watching anything outside of my home theater. And after the DVDs started coming out, I knew a high definition version would soon come. That time has finally arrived.

For the few that haven’t seen Lost, the show is about the survivors of flight Oceanic Air 815 and the mystery that surrounds the island they now call home. En route from Sydney, Australia to Los Angeles, the flight steered far off course and split into three parts. The fuselage landed in the jungle, the main cabin landed on the beach and the tail and the passengers in it ripped away in mid-air. It was concluded that the rescue search is probably looking in the wrong place and a rescue would be unlikely arriving. The survivors realize that they must work together to survive the dangers on the island, which include a monster, a mysterious tribe and even themselves. Each survivor carried baggage on board, and I’m not talking about luggage. They are all “lost” in their own life, many of them flawed with troubled paths that brought to Australia and ultimately flight 815.

Jack (Matthew Fox) is a doctor who never reconciled with his father before his death was bringing his body home for the funeral; Jin (Daniel Dae Kim) and Sun (Yunjin Kim) are a Korean couple with secrets; Kate (Evangeline Lilly) is a deadly fugitive on the run; Sawyer (Josh Holloway) is a conman looking to settle a score; Hurley (Jorge Garcia) won the lottery on cursed numbers; Charlie (Dominic Monaghan) is a heroin addict and one half of a British pop band “Drive Shaft”; Michael (Harrold Perrineau) is forced to be with his son Walt (Malcolm David Kelley) for the first time since he was a baby; Claire (Emile de Ravin) is pregnant with an unwanted child but is told by a psychic to keep it; Sayid (Naveen Andrews) is a former soldier for the Iraqi Republican Guard Army looking for his lost love; Shannon (Maggie Grace) and Boone (Ian Somerhalder) are emotionally damaged step-siblings; Rose (L. Scott Caldwell) was separated from her husband who was in the back of the plane but is adamant he is still alive; And John Locke (Terry O’Quinn), a tormented man, who up until the plane crash was paralyzed from the waist down.

While flashbacks are often a weak story device, Lost relies on them to reveal details about each survivor in clever ways. Because we know so little about these people the flashbacks are crucial and dispel preconceived notions that develop out of the willingness to succumb to stereotypes and tried and true archetypes for example: There’s no way a fat man can be rich. There’s no way a woman can be so deadly. Surely the redneck is stupid and killing things come easy for him. An Iraqi soldier is not to be trusted. There’s no emotional love in an Asian couple. And that’s when the writers of Lost get you with the element of surprise. Eventually, answers come but not before more questions present themselves. These characters have an opportunity to reshape their path in life in front a strangers who don’t know their past. Tthe audience often has more knowledge than what the characters know.

Eventually people split off into their role on the island, some set up camp on the beach, others at inland caves. Some build a raft to get off the island and get help prompted by Claire being abducted during by one of the Others, (a group of people who were previously living on the island) infiltrated the survivors. Locke and Boone meanwhile find a hatch to some type of underground bunker to which Locke feels he was meant to find since he has already been gifted with the ability to walk again. I’m leaving out dozens more storylines but mostly the show is best experienced with fresh eyes.

There is more than island action and science fiction though. The flashbacks open human stories that people can relate to. But it’s how these flashbacks carry you through the higher concept is the fun. There is such a large ensemble in Lost and yet not a single one gets grates on the nerves. The performances from Fox, O’Quinn, Andrews, in particular are the best of their careers and that’s not a slight to Monaghan, Perrineau and the rest of the cast because there’s not a weak link here, but it’s been some time since I’ve been this impressed with network television. While JJ Abrams, gave Lost a much needed midas touch, the credit should be given to Damon Lindelof who is the lead writer and continues to be an ever-present guiding force behind the show. Lost is show about redemption and reinvention and whether it’s the exploration of these themes, or you just want to come up with your own mythological theory of a bigger picture as to why all of these people survived, you can do it now endlessly in high definition.

Video: B+
Of all of the Lost box sets, Season One has to be the weakest of the bunch, but not by much. Lost was still trying to find its way including the pilot which was produced at a different time than the rest of the show. The presence of grain is more prominent in this first season compared to its subsequent siblings. Still the blacks are rich and dark but contrast is not as fine tuned as one would like as one can see during some of the night scenes when the details just get lost. Considering the rest of the beautiful bold green foliage and serene postcard views of Hawaii are clear to see, I think this lack of stability in the darker scenes just may be due to the way it was originally shot. Neither that or any noticeable presence of artificial enhancement should detract you away from this release though. It’s got the goods where it counts thanks to a fine 1080p AVC-encoded transfer in 1.78:1 aspect ratio.

Audio: A
For a television show, Lost is the type of show that is enhanced by having surround sound. The audio, in high definition as well, comes by way of a English 5.1 Uncompressed DTS-HD master audio track and it sounds spectacular. It has both power and grace. The opening scene of the pilot has it all, a pure reference scene to be played in home theaters for sure. The high pitch ween of the engine turbine spinning with made chaos surrounding Jack will put you right in the middle of the sand. I haven’t made much mention of the monster on the island which is obscured on purpose but you can’t avoid the sound of it. Upon its arrival, your subwoofer will punch holes through your room as trees are ripped out of the ground and tossed into the air with a loud roar; it’s a magnificent spectacle that puts you in that fearful moment. Island noises like the constant surf, jungle noises, and the constant rain are pretty accurate even though much of the audio is put in afterwards since filming on an island can often be difficult. When things rustle at night you’ll find yourself looking in the direction that they’re coming in as the spatial sound has been mixed very well. Dialogue is set at a comfortable level no matter if it’s whispered or someone is screaming. I can’t imagine watching the show on a laptop after seeing it like this. Also included are English and French 5.1 Dolby Digital tracks, a Spanish 2.0 Dolby Digital track, and subtitles for practically every major language-I’m not kidding.

Extras: A
Season Play is a blu-ray exclusive where multiple users can view the season and follow the show at their own pace and pick up wherever they leave off. I don’t see why this is such a big deal, as it’s a feature that should be on all blu-rays (the resume function anyway) but I do like the idea of having different profiles because it’s easy in a family to get ahead of someone or fall behind but it will always remember where each person off. It unfortunately does not carry into subsequent seasons.

There are five Audio Commentaries spread throughout the 7 disc set for episodes: “Pilot I & II,” with JJ Abrams, Lindelof, and Bryan Burk; “Walkabout,” with Jack Bender, Terry O’Quinn, and David Fury; “The Moth,” with Lindelof, Burk, and Dominic Monghan; “Hearts and Minds,” with Carlton Cuse, Javier Grill Marxuach, Maggie Grace, and Ian Sommerhalder. I love commentaries and all of these with the exception of the “Hearts and Minds” commentary are full of great depth of the each episodes characters, storylines, themes and how each show took shape.

The rest of the extras are presented in three groups (Departure, Tales From the Island, and Lost Revealed) which have a play all option or can be taken in small bites. Disappointingly, most of the extras are in standard 480i definition and stereo 2.0 but subtitles are available for all the extras in several languages. There’s also very little that’s new for those who already own the DVD but, there is a Mail-In certificate that will refund you $20 for upgrading to blu-ray. A small incentive for stepping up and double dipping. Of course the likelihood of anyone who still has the original receipt I’m betting is slim. Still, it’s a nice offer.

Departure

The Genesis of Lost SD (8:40) speaks of the early inception and concepts of what would become Lost, as well as the early syncopation and bromance between JJ Abrams and Damon Lindelof.

Designing a Disaster SD (7:59) shows how producers and set designers found a plane for the pilot episode and how they constructed the opening minutes of that initial scene.

Before They Were Lost SD (23:01) is your typical “assembling the cast” extra.

Audition Tapes (24:39) – 14 total audition tapes of the principal cast members.

Welcome to Oahu: The Making of the Pilot (33:22) – Shooting on location and the pilot and plane scenes

The Art of Matthew Fox (6:07) – Fox narrating a nice montage of black and white photos he took while on the set of principal shooting and later gave as gifts to the cast and crew.

Lost at San Diego Comic-Con (1:50) – is a brief reaction to the fan fare of Comic-Con where Lost premiered to an audience and instantly got great feedback.

Tales From the Island

Lost: On Location SD – is my favorite featurette on the disc where themes of the episodes are discussed, actors who are featured get to speak about their character’s arc, and any special effect unique to that episode is explored. I suggest seeing it in one bundle but I’ve marked out the time for each segment should you want to view them separately. (5:20) The Trouble with boars, (3:20) White Rabbit (7:19) House of the Rising Sun (1:48) The Moth (4:24) The Confidence Man (4:55) All the Cowboys Have Daddy Issues (2:57) Whatever the Case May Be (6:21) Hearts and Minds (3:05) Special (9:21) Exodus

On Set with Jimmy Kimmel SD (7:15) – is a funny bit from Kimmel’s television show and his shtick when he was on location and just being Jimmy.

Backstage with Drive Shaft SD (6:40) – A short featurette about where the song sung by the “legendary” pop band came from which isn’t as interesting as the strange lyrics or the bad sound of it all.

Lost Revealed

The Lost Flashbacks SD are exactly what it says, character flashbacks that weren’t used. At the Airport Claire (3:07) At the Airport Sayid (1:28)

Deleted Scenes SD are a mixture of extended scenes and ones that didn’t make the cut. Most of them not particularly missed but are worth a one-time viewing. Smoking (1:10) Chicken or Lasagna (0:42) Kate and Sayid (1:09) The Climb (2:02) Finding the Tell (1:03) For Vincent (0:54) Partners (0:55) Where did You Go? (0:55) The Huddle (0:53) Claire’s Doctor Visit (1:55) A Deal’s A Deal (0:47) Captive (0:28) Secrets (1:49) The Jack Situation (0:42) Whispers (1:00).

Bloopers From the Set SD (4:17) – A substandard collection of bloopers

Live from the Museum of Television and Radio SD (10:56) – a Q&A with cast and crew in front of a live audience that shows what funny guys Garcia and Holloway are in real life hosted by Hollywood Reporter’s Robert Dowling.

Flashbacks & Mythologies SD (7:28) – an extra about how the flashbacks were so important to the success of the show and specifically how much more is learned than the characters themselves. Also laying down the gridwork of the connections and questions without revealing too many of the answers too early.

While I haven’t found any Easter Eggs yet, I’m sure there are some because almost every other season has them. Feel free to share them here. Lost: The Complete First season is also tricked out with D-Box technology for those tycoons who have it.

Overall Shock Value: A
Lost is a beautiful, beefy, sexy beast on blu-ray that secures its hold as one of the best shows on television, now enhanced with a stunning HD transfer and immersive sound that lurks all around you. I’m not going to apologize for experiencing it for the first time this way because this is the way to watch it. But even if you have seen it all before, Lost is the type of show that you get something new with each viewing. There are details and hints dropped about the bigger story, and being obsessed enough to go back to hunt for these clues are not above the casual fan. It’s just a rites of passage. Offered at an affordable price with internet deals to be in abundance, Lost: The Complete First Season on blu-ray is one of the best bundles of high def enjoyment money can buy.

Feature: A+
Can you believe that the Transformers have turned 25 years old? I can’t either but it’s more of coming to grips that I’ve been around long enough to remember when these “Robots in Disguise” broke on the scene. The Shout Factory and Hasbro are putting out a new DVD collection of the long-beloved Transformers Generation One cartoon, the series that started it all.

It had been some time since I last saw the Transformers cartoon series, having bought the series for my nephew through the DVDs that Rhino released some years ago. But it didn’t take me long to relive rushing home from the school bus and plop myself in front of the tube. I’m not sure if it was the cool intros and outros, the slick music full of orchestrated trumpets and flutes, light-saber sound effects or Casey Kasem voicing nearly every damn character. But I made sure I never missed an episode, and I made short work of this release.

Paired up with Hasbro’s other giant, G.I. Joe, I was locked down in the Autobots v. Decepticon war. Two races of robots who found themselves crash-landed on Earth millions of years ago only to have awaken to much more primitive, organic earth, home computers with five-inch floppies, the urban sprawl filled with the sound of ghetto blasters, wow, 1984 seems like millions of years ago for us too! Suddenly awaken and repaired to disguise their alternate selves to everyday vehicles and objects, the Decepticons are bent on heading back home to their planet of Cybertron but are going to rape the Earth’s natural resources for their energy and consumption. The Autobots? Well, they’re there to stop them and to hopefully get back home too.

The first season put it all out there, the entire scope of the story and was fearless of what kids would gravitate to. Multi-part stories, the leaders on both sides depended on their teams. I learned military words like “reconnaissance” and “espionage,” and understood at the ripe age of eight the importance of our natural resources. The Decepticons, were often more appealing than the Autobots. Who didn’t love the ever-loyal Soundwave with his suave Roger Troutman-voice box and his array of cassette beasts? I loved how Starscream made it public of his plans to overthrow Megatron and become leader of the Decepticons, and how others plotted to take over both of them.

The introduction of new robots timed conveniently with toy counterparts always brought excitement. The simple-minded Dinobots were featured the most in this first season, and deluxe action figures like Shockwave, Skyfire, and everything blew up when Devastator and the Constructicons wreaked havoc on this first-grader’s mind, and still does today. Yes there are guys who get shot and in the next scene are seen okay, characters are colored incorrectly, and multiple other miscues, but that was part of the fun. It’s how I still like to remember the Transformers which have taken on a different life on the big screen. People identify with it so much that Peter Cullen was brought into to voice Optimus Prime again for the big screen, the only thing that seemingly remains true to the original series. While awesome and visually arresting in its own way, the charm of the G1 cartoon will never be repeated, even with all of its flaws and if you haven’t purchased them before, now is a great time to relive those after-school memories.

Shout Factory released news of a complete series, “Matrix of Leadership” Edition Collector’s 16-DVD Set due out in mid-July packing the entire G1 series. 38 hours, extras, and collectible book. But for those who can’t wait or afford the big box, here’s a breakdown of the episodes included in the first season.

Disc One
More than Meets the Eye, Pt. 1-3
Transport to Oblivion
Roll For It
Divide and Conquer
Fire in the Sky
S.O.S. Dinobots

Disc Two
Fire on the Mountain
War of the Dinobots
The Ultimate Doom, Pt. 1-3
Countdown to Extinction
A Plague of Insecticons
Heavy Metal War

There’s also an option to play the multi-part episodes seamlessly.

Video: C+
It was apparently too much to ask for the video to be cleaned up for the 25th anniversary. While color is vibrant and looks like its original 1.33:1 airing, the transfer is full of dirty white specks and lint throughout the picture. We’re not talking VCR bad, but I expected lots more work to have been put into cleaning up wherever the original was wrong. Animation inconsistencies, for example Optimus in one episode is seen as a yellow truck instead of red, the changes were not made. Shout Factory does make a note in the accompanied booklet and explains that the original broadcasts were compared to the much altered Rhino DVD release and they claim that all efforts were done to correct as best they could. Rhino did put in a lot of added mess that has been since stripped back out. Are these disappointments enough to take away from the enjoyment of it, no, but I wonder if the effort was a sincere attempt or just a rush job to capitalize on the upcoming film?

Audio: B
The 2.0 Stereo soundtrack is new and created from the original audio tracks. It sounds better than the artificial 5.1 tracks that Rhino provided which was too much, but I wouldn’t have minded another attempt at surround sound if done more tastefully. Still this should appeal to the purists who were up in arms over the last DVD release of these episodes.

Extras C-
The third disc of the set contains all of the extras but don’t get too excited. It’s an anemic sampling of what should have been a large collection of archival material. The presentation is an upgrade from the Rhino editions, nicely animated menus, a black and white magnet, and episode booklet. Three discs are housed in two slim-pack cases and a slipcase cover. The rest is as they say, is cheese.

Triple Changer: From Toy to Comic To Screen (19:54) – Executives of Hasbro’s Transformer line are interviewed about that magical mid-80′s period when they struck gold finding out about a line of transforming toys from Japan with with no story or war of good vs. evil. The executives and marketing group put those elements along side the toys and created what eventually became what it is now. Color schemes, faces, and design are all lightly treaded and interestingly a Marvel Comic written by Bob Budiansky and edited by Jim Shooter allowed a more complete story to be constructed so that audiences to dig deeper into the story. But because of such a fast track to success, there were plenty of inconsistencies between cartoon, comic, and toys. The communication line just couldn’t keep up. It’s the only extra of real substance and quality but is sadly too short.

Original Commercials (1:31) – Three TV spots: Optimus Prime and Megatron, Insecticons and Dinobots, G2 Optimus Prime for the action figures are terrible condition, as if it were taken from a warped VCR tape, faces of the kid actors are blurred out, it looks like a nightmare but it’s fun nonetheless.

Running Away From Home with Bumblebee (0:31) – is just one of the classic Public Service Announcement to steer kids in the right direction because, “Knowing is Half the Battle.”

Printable Transport to Oblivion Script is a PDF file when placed into your computer allows you to view and print the full script of that episode.

They Have Risen…AGAIN! Overall Shock Value: B-
That seems a bit harsh for an anniversary edition of one of my most treasured child cartoon series, but it’s not a diss towards the series itself but rather Shout Factory’s rather meager attempt at capitalizing on the success of the Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen. I would have preferred a video transfer cleaned of all of the debris and some better thought-out extras than just pulling what was and has been lying around for all these years. Kind of makes you want to hold out for the “Matrix of Leadership” box set doesn’t it? Me too.

SEASON ONE: A

Just how obsessed are we with killers? Enough to follow them weekly, religiously. We like to observe them from afar, pretend we’ve caught them and everything is okay, until next week. There’s only umpteen different CSIs on television. Millions tune in to see a wooden David Caruso, or a quirky William Petersen hunt the killers down. Then there’s Criminal Minds, Cold Case, and on and on. They just run into each other eventually. But one thing none of these get into is inside the mind of a killer. We peer into it slightly in a confession scene or when suspects fit a profile, but never in television and rarely in film do we really try to hear the thoughts of someone who enjoys the kill, but that was all before Dexter.

Based on the Dexter novel series by Jeffrey Lindsay, Michael C. Hall stars as Dexter Morgan, a blood spatter analyst working for the Miami Metropolitan Police Department, helping solve crimes based on studying crime scenes and evidence. What lies inside Dexter though is a darkness known only to him, that’s far more insidious and dangerous than anyone around him can imagine.

Dexter was trained by his foster father Harry (James Remar), to blend in, and to abide by a code to set him apart from criminals. He knew as a child that Dexter was different, that he had demons in him, a proclivity to kill that he had seen while being a detective himself. Harry steered Dexter so he could wouldn’t kill innocents. Now Dexter fakes human interactions so that he can fit in with us regular folk. See, Dexter is a serial killer himself, but with a code: killing only those who live only to prey on others. The process only gets you so far, Dexter goes beyond that line. Way beyond.

Around him is a small circle of associates (he would never consider them friends): Debra, his sister and former Vice cop, new to the Homicide Unit; Lt. Maria LaGuerta (Laruen Velez) who is in charge the entire unit, has a thing for Dexter and hates his sister; Det. Angel (David Zayas) a cool fedora-wearing cat who wears masks of his own as his marriage is in shambles; Vincent Masuka (C.S. Lee) is Dex’s partner in the lab and is not your average token Asian because he’s always ripe for an inappropriate comment and Sgt. James Doakes (Erik King), the one officer who suspicious of Dexter. Finally there’s Rita (Julie Benz), his girlfriend and mother of two, damaged by her ex-husband’s emotional and physical abuse. She’s as far removed as he is and is the perfect companion.

Once acquainted with Dexter’s surroundings, the show has a large arc that spans the entire season. Another serial killer known as the “Ice Truck Killer” who cuts people up similarly to Dexter but drains the body parts of their blood before laying them out for all to see. He or she knows Dexter and what he does because he leaves clues in his apartment. Miami’s best serial killer may have met his match. With a great hook, there’s the question of who could it be. It’s obviously someone close to Dexter and there’s plenty of people to suspect keeping the entire season full of compelling and spine-chilling moments. Some episodes will cause your head to spin away but you can’t, instead you’ll find you rooting for the butchery to begin. You won’t recognize yourself by the end of the first season. Dexter just has that effect on people.

SEASON TWO: B+

The second season kicks off with Dexter’s “stash” being found at the bottom of the ocean and has been dubbed by the media, (regrettably by Dex) as the Bay Harbor Butcher. The FBI is brought in and Dexter must carry on the lie to Rita that he’s a recovering drug attic to cover up what he did to her ex-husband. Forced to lay low and go to Narcotics Anonymous, Dexter experiences going “clean” and loses his killing touch. All of his co-workers are assigned to SP Agent Frank Lundy’s (Keith Carradine) task force on the Butcher case except Doakes. Lundy was said to have been responsible for solving real murder cases, D.C. Sniper and Green River Killer and if anyone can snuff out Miami’s most treacherous serial killer, it’s him.

Dexter meanwhile wrestles with his psychological urges to kill while maintaining his one step ahead of his co-workers, eliminating anything that would link him to the Bay Harbor Butcher. But that’s not all, he has to juggle his sister living with him who is now an emotional wreck from the season one aftermath, and his relationship with Rita and the kids, which is crumbling. The show becomes increasingly inventive as the show steers away from the formulaic traps of (well, in this show anyway) our main character’s killing-a-week. But what keeps this season from being on par with the previous one is Lila Tournay (Jaime Murray). Posing as a sympathetic sponsor at Dexter’s NA meetings, this British bird creates jealousy for Rita as she’s able to relate to his inner demons. Since Dexter doesn’t have to hide himself as much with Lila, he lets his guard down and like a snake, slithers her way into his life until she’s a major problem. Her overt British accent is borderline fingernails on a chalkboard by the eighth episode and you’ll find yourself screaming at the television when she appears warning Dexter of her wickedness. The sophomore season of Dexter looks like a series’ ender but by the end finds a way to wrap everything up and stir up a lot of excitement for season three.

Dexter is just a new take on the weekly crime scene investigation shows that have littered the tube since CSI appeared. For the first time on film or television are we able to get inside the mind of the serial killer. Most times they are being chased, and we can only get hints of what they’re thinking through a profiler, or a confession scene. But Dexter takes you deep into that seedy part of your mind and asks you to take a ride beside Miami’s best serial killer. Is he a criminal, or a hero? Is he conditioned this way, or can he initiate real change into who he is?

VIDEO: A
Dexter is shot in high definition and transfers on both seasons are 1080p AVC-encoded and at 1.78:1 ratio. Miami is a city full of life, sunlit settings and places full of color. Exterior shots like a golf course or the everglades look sharp and bold. But the Dexter blu-rays really show off their strength in producing an extremely gorgeous scenes at night. Dexter does most of his work after hours and into the morning, but when the city is lit up or the sun is just about to rise or set, it’s like a postcard on your television. Because it’s shot in HD, nearly every pore is there to see on each actors skin. Freckles, blemishes, a little acne, it’s all there and I’ve always thought it to shoot in this format because so much can be seen.

AUDIO: A-
Both seasons have exciting English 5.1 Dolby TrueHD audio tracks that utilizes the strength of each channel. A mixture of 90% English and 10% Spanish Dialogue is well-heard front and center. Subwoofers lull in the background, at times to the sound of a heartbeat but mostly to accentuate the eerie and haunting score, otherwise it’s reserved for the impact of gunshots or music. Season two sees an increase in the lively Cubanismo music sprinkled around that illuminates a scene with brass instruments and the pounding rhythm section. From dogs barking to conversations at a crime scene, if something happens off camera or there’s a camera angle switch, all the respected noises are placed accordingly and accurately where they’re supposed to be heard. One of the show’s directors, Tony Goldwyn likes to take the camera and spin around the actors. In season one, he pans around Dexter’s boat as he’s dumping parts into the ocean and each speaker gets a kiss as the camera circles.

A Spanish 5.1 Dolby TrueHD track is also included in season two, an upgrade from the Spanish 2.0 Stereo track on season one. White English subtitles are available for the hard of hearing. Don’t think that’s going to allow you to translate when Spanish is spoken though. Unless the characters specifically translate in English, the subtitles are turned off and the context and method acting tells you what is being said.

EXTRAS
SEASON ONE EXTRAS: C+
Audio Commentary episode six, Return to Sender with Jennifer Carpenter, David Zayas, Lauren Velez and Erik King. This motley crew who play Deb, Angel, LaGuerta, and Doakes respectively watch the show like fans. It’s fun to hear them joke around and react to the acting like people who are experiencing it for the first time but do point out notes only actors would see.

Audio Commentary episode twelve, “Born Free” with series executive producers Sara Colleton, Clyde Phillips, and Daniel Cerrone. Not as fun as the cast commentary, but is not a waste of time. Again they watch more as admirers of the show.

The Academy of Blood (10:58) – Interviews with Steve Schliebe, a criminalist and real blood expert break down arterial spurting, shadowing and ghosting, blood dropping into blood, expiratory blood, and what can be read from the patterns of blood. This piece looks to be a string of podcasts strung together as Schliebe is introduced several times. Some editing would have been nice.

Witnessed in Blood (12:28) – is like a 48 Hours segment about a real murder case that was solved with blood spatter study.

Michael C. Hall Podcast SD (8:53) – Michael is interviewed about the complex character of Dexter Morgan.

First Episode of Dexter, Season 2 SD – it says the first episode of the third season, but in actuality it’s the first of the second season.

First two episodes of The United States of Tara – because Showtime wants to keep you on their channel, there’s a free sampling of the first two hours of the Diablo Cody-written/Steven Spielberg produced television show starring Toni Collette.

SEASON TWO EXTRAS: C-

The same two download-able episodes for United States of Tara from Dexter’s season one set are available here too.

Blood Fountains (1:00) – a brief little podcast on a promotional tour of Dexter that involved popular fountains across the country dying their water red so it looked like the bloody sets of the television show.

Ken Olson, Little Chino and Roger Hicks Profiles of three of Dexter’s targets as told by the “Dark Defender” each lasting around 1:40 are creepy little promotions for these three scumbags that Dexter gets his hands on in season two.

The best extras on season two are the Nine Podcast Interviews with each recurring cast member. Each one is around five minutes long, give or take a minute, and add up to one solid chunk of press interview fluff that fans would like to hear.

Overall Shock Value Season One: A / Season Two: B
Dexter is as gruesome as they come taking procedural detective television to another level. The lead character isn’t just unpredictable, he’s a psychopath too, and whether you agree with his ethics or not, Dexter ups the ante of the TV vigilante. The extras are reasonable for season one, but season two shows no major effort. Depending on how good your BD Live connection is will determine the level of enjoyment you’ll get out of these few supplements, but that shouldn’t sway you from tracking Dexter down in blu-ray and see everyone’s favorite serial killer in high def. Both seasons are available now and a three-season pack will also be due out in August 18 when season three comes out.