Avatar (Original Theatrical Edition)

Avatar (Original Theatrical Edition) Review

Avatar (Original Theatrical Edition) Overview

After 12 years of thinking about it (and waiting for movie technology to catch up with his visions), James Cameron followed up his unsinkable Titanic with Avatar, a sci-fi epic meant to trump all previous sci-fi epics. Set in the future on a distant planet, Avatar spins a simple little parable about greedy colonizers (that would be mankind) messing up the lush tribal world of Pandora. A paraplegic Marine named Jake (Sam Worthington) acts through a 9-foot-tall avatar that allows him to roam the planet and pass as one of the Na'vi, the blue-skinned, large-eyed native people who would very much like to live their peaceful lives without the interference of the visitors. Although he's supposed to be gathering intel for the badass general (Stephen Lang) who'd like to lay waste to the planet and its inhabitants, Jake naturally begins to take a liking to the Na'vi, especially the feisty Neytiri (Zoë Saldana, whose entire performance, recorded by Cameron's complicated motion-capture system, exists as a digitally rendered Na'vi). The movie uses state-of-the-art 3D technology to plunge the viewer deep into Cameron's crazy toy box of planetary ecosystems and high-tech machinery. Maybe it's the fact that Cameron seems torn between his two loves--awesome destructive gizmos and flower-power message mongering--that makes Avatar's pursuit of its point ultimately uncertain. That, and the fact that Cameron's dialogue continues to clunk badly. If you're won over by the movie's trippy new world, the characters will be forgivable as broad, useful archetypes rather than standard-issue stereotypes, and you might be able to overlook the unsurprising central plot. (The overextended "take that, Michael Bay" final battle sequences could tax even Cameron enthusiasts, however.) It doesn't measure up to the hype (what could?) yet Avatar frequently hits a giddy delirium all its own. The film itself is our Pandora, a sensation-saturated universe only the movies could create. --Robert Horton

Please note: This edition of the film is not in 3D.

Versions of Avatar on Blu-ray, DVD, and Video On Demand

Edition	Format	Release Date	Special Features
Avatar (Extended Collector's Edition)	Three Blu-ray Discs	Nov. 16, 2010	Three versions of the movie including the previously unreleased extended cut, plus more than eight hours of bonus features including over 45 minutes of deleted scenes, interactive scene deconstruction, Pandorapedia, documentaries and featurettes, and BD-LIVE content (requires compatible player and Internet connection)
Avatar (Extended Collector's Edition)	Three DVDs	Nov. 16, 2010	Three versions of the movie including the previously unreleased extended cut, plus more than three hours of bonus features including documentaries and over 45 minutes of deleted scenes
Avatar (Original Theatrical Edition)	Digital Purchase	Apr. 22, 2010	None
Avatar (Original Theatrical Edition)	Digital Rental	May 9, 2010	None
Avatar (Original Theatrical Edition)	Two-disc Blu-ray/ DVD combo	Apr. 22, 2010	None
Avatar (Original Theatrical Edition)	DVD	Apr. 22, 2010	None

Stills from Avatar (Click for larger image)

KIDS FIRST! Review: Director/screenwriter/producer James Cameron brings his science fiction roots to DVD with the award-winning film, "Avatar." The almost three-hour epic is considered by many as the most beautiful movie ever produced thanks to its groundbreaking 3-D and graphics technology. Set in the far future, Jake Sully (Sam Worthington), travels to Pandora, a lush, jungle-covered extraterrestrial moon and home to a sentient humanoid race, the Na'vi. The 10-foot tall, blue-skinned Na'vi fight when a human corporation attempts to remove the indigenous people from their native lands. Human scientists create genetically-bred human-Na'vi hybrids known as Avatars to overcome the fact that they can’t breathe Pandora air. Jake participates in this program and encounters many dangers and beauties on Pandora as he scouts around. “Avatar” exhibits cinematographic and artistic excellence and creates interest in issues such as the environment. KIDS FIRST! Child Juror Comments: This DVD had great cinematography and amazing visual effects. One of my all-time favorite parts of the film was when Jake was walking through the forest of Pandora - everything lit up and looked amazing. The movie had a great soundtrack. It had a new age feel that felt like it was inviting you into a new world. It made the whole thing seem tangible, which is great. I wanted to be part of that world. The acting was great, too! You could tell which characters were bad and which were good with some bad sides. Overall one of the best movies I've seen. The actors roles fit their appearance, and there was a lot of foreshadowing and hinting throughout the movie.

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Sin City (Two-Disc Theatrical & Recut, Extended, and Unrated Versions) [Blu-ray]

Sin City (Two-Disc Theatrical & Recut, Extended, and Unrated Versions) [Blu-ray] Review

Sin City (Two-Disc Theatrical & Recut, Extended, and Unrated Versions) [Blu-ray] Feature

• Title: SIN CITY BLU-RAY
  
• Publisher: BUENA VISTA HOME VIDEO / Genre: ACTION/ADVENTURE / Theme: CRIME / Rating: NR
• Product Type: VIDEO /
• Platform: BLU-RAY DISC

Sin City (Two-Disc Theatrical & Recut, Extended, and Unrated Versions) [Blu-ray] Overview

SIN CITY - Blu-Ray Movie

Sin City (Two-Disc Theatrical & Recut, Extended, and Unrated Versions) [Blu-ray] Specifications

Brutal and breathtaking, Sin City is Robert Rodriguez's stunningly realized vision of Frank Miller's pulpy comic books. In the first of three separate but loosely related stories, Marv (Mickey Rourke in heavy makeup) tries to track down the killers of a woman who ended up dead in his bed. In the second story, Dwight's (Clive Owen) attempt to defend a woman from a brutal abuser goes horribly wrong, and threatens to destroy the uneasy truce among the police, the mob, and the women of Old Town. Finally, an aging cop on his last day on the job (Bruce Willis) rescues a young girl from a kidnapper, but is himself thrown in jail. Years later, he has a chance to save her again.

Based on three of Miller's immensely popular and immensely gritty books (The Hard Goodbye, The Big Fat Kill, and That Yellow Bastard), Sin City is unquestionably the most faithful comic-book-based movie ever made. Each shot looks like a panel from its source material, and director Rodriguez (who refers to it as a "translation" rather than an adaptation) resigned from the Directors Guild so that Miller could share a directing credit. Like the books, it's almost entirely in stark black and white with some occasional bursts of color (a woman's red lips, a villain's yellow face). The backgrounds are entirely digitally generated, yet not self-consciously so, and perfectly capture Miller's gritty cityscape. And though most of Miller's copious nudity is absent, the violence is unrelentingly present. That may be the biggest obstacle to viewers who aren't already fans of the books and who may have been turned off by Kill Bill (whose director, Quentin Tarantino, helmed one scene of Sin City). In addition, it's a bleak, desperate world in which the heroes are killers, corruption rules, and the women are almost all prostitutes or strippers. But Miller's stories are riveting, and the huge cast--which also includes Jessica Alba, Jaime King, Brittany Murphy, Rosario Dawson, Benicio Del Toro, Elijah Wood, Nick Stahl, Michael Clarke Duncan, Devin Aoki, Carla Gugino, and Josh Hartnett--is just about perfect. (Only Bruce Willis and Michael Madsen, while very well-suited to their roles, seem hard to separate from their established screen personas.) In what Rodriguez hopes is the first of a series, Sin City is a spectacular achievement. --David Horiuchi

On the Blu-ray disc
Sin City looks and sounds great in high definition, with its rare colors looking especially splashy contrasting with the stark black-and-white and powerful 5.1 DTS-HD Master Audio (try Marvin's early escape scene to get a taste of the sound). Like the 2005 recut DVD, the two-disc Blu-ray edition has both the theatrical cut and the recut version that shows each of the four stories by itself. (Billed as "Recut, Extended, Unrated," the four separate stories are extended by only about 6.5 total minutes of movie action; the rest of the added running time is the splashy new title shots, named by the title of the story or book, and the four minutes of credits that run at the end of each segment.) New to Blu-ray on disc 1 is Cine-Explore, which plays the theatrical cut accompanied by the Rodriguez-Miller commentary track and drops in picture-in-picture panels of either the original graphic novel, the green-screen shots before the special effects were added, or both. This is a great way to watch a movie that was (1) based heavily on the look of the graphic novel and (2) shot almost entirely on green screen. Occasionally the shots are flipped as well, giving us the large green-screen shot with the theatrical cut in one of the inner panels. The other new Blu-ray feature is "Kill 'Em Good," an 8.5-minute condensation of The Hard Goodbye that combines Mickey Rourke's narration with scenes from the graphic novel similar to a motion-comic style. There's also some gameplay elements added: use the Blu-ray remote to drive the getaway car, toss money at Nancy, or battle Kevin and henchmen in the woods. As with most home-video set-top games, the controls are a bit clunky, but the last activity is worth making an effort to learn.

Also on the discs are almost all the other features that were on the two-disc unrated recut edition, though they're in standard definition. The theatrical cut has the two commentary tracks (the first is by Rodriguez and Miller discussing the concepts and the cast, and the second is mostly by Rodriguez, but Tarantino drops in briefly for the scene he directed as does an enthusiastic Bruce Willis for his segment) and the alternate audio track with a live audience in Austin, Texas. There are also 47 minutes of featurettes covering Miller, Tarantino, cars, costumes, props, and special effects; a 14-minute take in which Tarantino can be heard coaching the actors; Rodriguez's usual "flic school" (among the topics is how scenes were created by merging footage of actors who never actually met); footage of Bruce Willis's band performing in Austin at the time of the shooting; another Rodriguez cooking school (this time it's breakfast tacos); and the "green screen version" of the film: the entire film as it was shot in front of the green screen, sped up to play in only 12 minutes. --David Horiuchi

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The Exorcist (Extended Director's Cut & Original Theatrical Edition) [Blu-ray]

The Exorcist (Extended Director's Cut & Original Theatrical Edition) [Blu-ray] Review

I have the VHS tape, the original DVD, the 25th anniversary DVD, The 25th anniversary box (with book, lobby cards and actual frame from the film),the extended version DVD, the anthology box set with all the films in the series, the paperback, 2 hard covers, and the audio book read by the author. I also have an excellent book on the making of the film. Needless to say I am an expert on the film as I have been revisiting it since I first saw it on tv in the 70's.

I am psyched for the Blue-ray release. I am about to turn 41, and have yet to see a movie that scares me as much as The Exorcist. The Omen came close, Texas chainsaw was cool. Amityville was great, but let's face it. The Exorcist was so well written, expertly researched (based on a true story), and brilliantly directed.

Linda Blair was 14 years old, playing a 12 year old. She never matured into a great actress, but what a job she did in this film, and she was only 14! The movie was so well cast. Even some of the priests were real priests! It doesn't scare me any more due to the hundreds of times I've seen it, but I still revisit it because it is an achievement beyond any other film. There were no computers back then, so you can't really compare the effects to a Star Wars, or a Titanic. The job these guys did with what they had is beyond words.

The scares don't come from a Freddy, Jason or Michael Myers jumping out of a dark corner. The true fright comes from the fact that the movie makes you feel like you might actually be looking directly into the eyes of a demon, if not Satan himself. The mind games that the demon plays with Father Karras, while Karras is trying to prove genuine possession are riveting.

If you've never owned it I demand that you purchase the Blue-ray edition. If you own it already, you may not want to shell out the extra cash for an upgrade unless you are a fanatic like me. I highly recommend the original novel. I also recommend the book on the actual TRUE case this story is based on. It's called Possessed: The True Story of an Exorcism by Thomas B. Allen.

Fans of the film are welcome to e-mail me at NolanKevin7@aol.com.

The Exorcist (Extended Director's Cut & Original Theatrical Edition) [Blu-ray] Overview

Controversial and popular from the moment it opened, The Exorcist marks its historic Blu-ray premiere in a 2-Disc Edition featuring Stunning Hi-Def Presentations of the Original 1973 Theatrical Version and the 2000 Extended Director's Cut. The frightening and realistic tale of an innocent girl inhabited by a terrifying entity, her mother's frantic resolve to save her and two priests--one doubt-ridden, the other a rock of faith--joined in battling ultimate evil always leaves viewers breathless. This greatest supernatural thriller of all time astonishes and unsettles like no other movie.

The Exorcist (Extended Director's Cut & Original Theatrical Edition) [Blu-ray] Specifications

Director William Friedkin was a hot ticket in Hollywood after the success of The French Connection, and he turned heads (in more ways than one) when he decided to make The Exorcist as his follow-up film. Adapted by William Peter Blatty from his controversial bestseller, this shocking 1973 thriller set an intense and often-copied milestone for screen terror with its unflinching depiction of a young girl (Linda Blair) who is possessed by an evil spirit. Jason Miller and Max von Sydow are perfectly cast as the priests who risk their sanity and their lives to administer the rites of demonic exorcism. Ellen Burstyn plays Blair's mother, who can only stand by in horror as her daughter's body is wracked by Satanic disfiguration. One of the most frightening films ever made, The Exorcist was mysteriously plagued by trouble during production, and the years since have not diminished its capacity to disturb even the most stoic viewers. --Jeff Shannon

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