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"I am Jack's Blu-ray." A satire of consumerism, machismo,
cultural asphyxiation and anarchy, "Fight Club" may well be the defining
cultural fantasy of the '90s. Now David Fincher's schizophrenic portrait of an
insomniac white-collar drone (Edward Norton) and a veritable guerrilla
underground of sensation-starved anarchists debuts on Blu-ray. The format is
made for Fincher's kind of dense imagery and technically complex visual
manipulation; you can freeze frame those subliminal images and slow down those
"flutter-cut' sequences with even greater clarity than DVD. New to this edition
are "A Hit in the Ear: Ren Klyce and the Sound Design of Fight Club," an
introduction to the art of sound design with a rudimentary interactive sound
board that stymied me (you need a bonus-view enabled player to access this
feature), plus a surreal trip to the Spike TV Guy Film Hall of Fame Awards (with
Mel Gibson arriving on a horse and under a Viking helmet to hand out the award)
and a keyword search index that's more funny than useful. That's in addition to
the supplements carried over from DVD, including four audio commentaries
(Fincher's solo track is the most articulate and insightful of the bunch, plus
there's a cast track that plays like a reunion party, a writers' track and a
technical track), 17 thumbnail featurettes on key scenes and special effects
(all with optional commentary), seven cut and/or alternate scenes and galleries
of art, stills and promotional material.
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| My Brilliant Career |
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The 1979 drama of a modern young woman (Judy Davis) in
19th-century Australia was director Gillian Armstrong s assured feature debut
and one of the early entries in what became called the New Australian Cinema.
This outback take on a Jane Austen romance launched the brilliant career of
Davis and helped establish the rising star of Sam Neill. The Blu-ray debut
includes all the supplements of the 2005 DVD release: commentary by director
Armstrong, the featurette "The Miles Franklin Story" (a four-minute profile of
the novel's author), interviews with Armstrong and producer Margaret Fink, and
newsreel footage from the Cannes Film Festival with Armstrong, Fink, and star
Judy Davis.
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| sex, lies, and videotape |
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The feature debut of Steven Soderbergh helped put Sundance on
the map and defined the fledgling American indie movement of low-budget films
made outside the studio system with established stars (in this case James
Spader, Peter Gallagher, Laura San Giacomo and Andie MacDowell). The film
arrived on DVD on its 10th anniversary, and now bows on Blu-ray for the 20th. In
addition to the commentary featuring Soderbergh and fellow director Neil LaBute
(recorded for the earlier DVD release), there is a deleted scene, a very brief
"20 Year Reunion at the Sundance Film Festival" (not even four minutes long) and
vintage interview clips with Soderbergh, plus movieIQ mode (for BD-Live enabled
players).
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| Kevin Smith Box Set |
Kevin Smith's debut film, "Clerks" (1994), is a grungy guerrilla
comedy about smart-aleck dropouts in the lowest rungs of the service industry,
shot on black-and-white 16 mm with a starvation budget in the hinterlands of New
Jersey. Fifteen years later it's still arguably his best film: scruffy,
sardonic, sarcastic and surly. And the Blu-ray debut features two versions of
the film (with commentary on each) and all the supplements of the earlier DVD
special edition. The set also features a pair of films rooted in the same Smith
"askewniverse": " Chasing Amy" (1997) and " Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back" (2001), also with
commentary and other supplements. Smith kept his scruffy aesthetic even as he
graduated to studio budgets, which begs the question: Why Blu-ray? The answer:
Why not? |
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| Near Dark |
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"There's a price for the night." The artwork for Lionsgate's new
release of Kathryn Bigelow's 1987 film plays upon the romantic angle a la
"Twilight," but there's a very different kind of romance in this feral and
ferocious vampire road movie noir. This is a movie about blood in all senses of
the word, and it defies the traditions of vampire lore with a moving portrait of
healing and sacrifice. But it's also a modern Southwestern with teeth. Director
Bigelow offers a solid commentary track, and the disc includes the excellent,
original 47-minute documentary featurette "Living in Darkness" and a deleted
scene with director commentary.
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Sean Axmaker is a film critic for the Seattle Post-Intelligencer, a DVD
columnist for MSN Entertainment and a contributing writer for GreenCine.com,
Turner Classic Movies Online, Parallax View and Asian Cult Cinema, among other
publications. Find links to all of this and more on his shamelessly self-promoting blog.
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