Category: Monday Media
MONDAY MEDIA: Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles on Blu-Ray
As a huge fan of the Terminator film series, I was both thrilled and worried when FOX announced that they were developing a new show based off of James Cameron’s iconic sci-fi characters. My worries quickly disappeared and excitement grew as soon as the first episode premiered.
I enjoyed the show enough to purchase Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles – The Complete First Season on Blu-Ray. Rather than reviewing the show itself (which I believe any Terminator fan will enjoy), I’ll write a bit about the Blu-Ray release itself.
The Show
When you pop in the first disc, the series premiere beings playing immediately. No menus, no fuss. You just sit down and watch. When it ends, the credits roll and it moves right into the next episode. Since the plot line in each episode generally picks up right where the previous episode left off, it’s almost like watching a movie than an episodic TV show. Best of all, it disables the “Previously on Terminator…” recap at the beginning of each episode, so you don’t have to sit through what you’ve just watched (though they have included these snippets if you do want to see them). It’s very easy to sit down to watch one episode and end up watching several, only stopping because you reached the end of a disc.
Bonus Features
Here’s where Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles - The Complete First Season threw me for a loop. I wasn’t expecting much out of the bonus features in this set. I wanted it mainly to re-watch the show and anything else was, well, just a bonus.
While the gag reel, commentary, and other smaller bonus features are mildly entertaining, the best (and strangest) parts lie in the three behind-the-scenes featurettes on disc 1 that give the show’s creators some screen time to discuss how the show was developed, what they’re able to accomplish on a TV budget, and how they’re all huge fans of the original Terminator film series. It’s great to see that the folks behind this show truly want to do justice to the world that James Cameron set up in his ground-breaking movies. Hearing how the terminator endoskeleton visual effects are developed based on what such a creation would need to function and survive in reality is quite interesting and makes it clear that the team working on this show want everything to make sense… or at least as much as it can when dealing with the subject of killer robots taking over the planet.
The parts of these behind-the-scenes featurettes that surprised me were the interview snippets with Thomas Dekker (who plays John Connor) and Lena Headey (who plays Sarah Connor). While Summer Glau (who plays Cameron, the protective terminator) seems like she’s exactly as you expect her to be, the same cannot be said for Dekker and Headey. First, Headey speaks with a British accent. After nearly two seasons of The Sarah Connor Chronicles, I was not expecting her to sound so… formal. While I didn’t exactly expect her to always talk in a whisper or be quite as in-your-face as Sarah Connor, I definitely wasn’t expecting her to be a happy, smiling Brit.
Even more confusing is listening to Thomas Dekker talk about John Connor, as Dekker is about as far removed from his character as you can imagine. While John Connor is an angst-filled teenager yanked from the grunge era of the early ’90s, Dekker seems to be a chipper young actor with a personality more similar to what you’d expect out of the person in this on-set photo where he is clearly not in John Connor-mode. His voice is higher in pitch, not raspy, and he doesn’t always look like his fight-or-flight response is about to kick in. He’s quite the polar opposite from John Connor. The fact that he is completely void of all hair (including a lack of eyebrows) during the interviews also makes for a strange bit to watch (he was prepared for his role as a cancer patient in the upcoming film, My Sister’s Keeper).
Of course, the fact that both Headey and Dekker are absolutely nothing like their Terminator characters speaks volumes about their acting talents. When combined with Glau’s ability to portray a menacing robot while still remaining funny and cute, this trio forms a great cast to lead the show into the future.
Quality
The video and audio quality of Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles on Blu-Ray is mostly fantastic. The episodes look great – even better than the compressed version received on FOX while watching via digital cable. No noticeable visual artifacts were present during the many action scenes. The stars, sets, and visual effects all look great in high-definition.
The only problem I ran into was during the bonus features where, for some reason, the audio was completely out of sync with the video. I performed a firmware upgrade on my Blu-Ray player and it seemed to mostly fix it, but not completely. I haven’t been able to find anyone else that experienced the same issue, so please comment on this post if you have.
I definitely recommend picking up the Blu-Ray release of this show over the standard-definition one. After watching the show in HD on television, I couldn’t imagine reverting to SD for the home release. The high-definition, widescreen picture makes for a cinematic experience that doesn’t quite match the original films, but comes close.
Price
Currently on Amazon.com, the entire first season of Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles on Blu-Ray is just $19.99. If more feature-length films were priced as affordably as this 3-disc set, I’d be buying a whole lot more movies on Blu-Ray and I suspect the technology would catch on a lot faster than it has.
Overall
If the Blu-Ray release of Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles is what we can expect out of future home releases of television shows then call me satisfied. The show looks and sounds great and the bonus features are good enough to enjoy once or twice. With season 2 not returning from winter break until February, I think I’ll be going back and re-watching more of season 1 very soon.
TweetMONDAY MOVIE: Garfield Gets Real & Garfield’s Fun Fest
It’s time for my first daily post and I’m starting off with one of my favorite cartoon characters of all time: Garfield.
Jim Davis has been drawing Garfield comics since before I was born, so I essentially grew up with the antics of the orange fat cat kicking Odie off of tables, shipping Nermal to Abu Dhabi, and dealing with Jon’s loneliness. In recent years, Davis has stopped producing new Garfield anthologies and focused on movie making.
The latest installments into the Garfield universe come in the form of computer-generated films called Garfield Gets Real and Garfield’s Fun Fest, bringing Garfield and the gang into 3D graphics, rather than the 2D look we’re used to. Both movies are armed with a unique spin that places Garfield, Jon, Nermal, Odie, Arlene, and loads of new characters into a setting where Garfield is the star of his own comic and reports to a studio every day to shoot new strips along with his fellow actors.
Before I continue with my thoughts, here are the trailers for both films:
Garfield Gets Real
Garfield’s Fun Fest
The plot of Garfield living in a town where he’s a comic star allows for a new kind of interaction between familiar characters. While traditionally in the Garfield comics and television show, Jon and other humans don’t actually understand what Garfield says, in Gets Real and Fun Fest, all characters, animal or human, speak by moving their mouths and can fully communicate with each other.
As a huge Garfield fan, I was initially taken aback by Garfield’s ability to actually hold a conversation with Jon and other humans. But as I was pulled further into the films, I realized that this new version of Garfield opens up a whole new dimension (pun intended) to his character. One major complaint of Garfield non-fans is that the jokes have gotten stale over the years. Garfield eats lasagna. Garfield sleeps a lot. Jon fails on yet another date. These two films provide a new angle from which Davis can approach his beloved characters. One of my favorite scenes Gets Real involves showing how the 2D comic strips are shot, rather than drawn, with characters posing and performing in front of backdrops, like a movie would be in our world.
Both movies are intended for children and have plenty of jokes aimed at younger audiences. However, they’re not non-stop parties as previous Garfield television shows have been. Each of these films has lessons to be learned about appreciating friends and family and believing in yourself. Garfield has become much more than a one-dimensional cartoon cat, adding layers of emotions including betrayal, jealousy, embarrassment, and even sadness. While the movies are filled with humor, they never lose sight of the important themes behind them.
Visually, the film looks correct to be part of the Garfield universe. While the computer graphics used are not state-of-the-art (in fact, they look quite dated), the character design is about 98% accurate to what you’d imagine Garfield looking like in three dimensions. It is not at all like the horrid Garfield live action films from a few years ago in which Garfield barely resembled his cartoon self and Odie was portrayed by a real dog.
Voice acting legend Frank Welker (Transformers, Inspector Gadget, Scooby-Doo, and many, many others) takes over for the late Lorenzo Music as the voice of Garfield and does a fantastic job at it. In fact, all of the voices are fitting for their roles, though Jon sounds a bit younger than in his previous television cartoon life on Garfield and Friends.
While I enjoyed Garfield Gets Real more than Garfield’s Fun Fest, I’d recommend both for any avid Garfield fan. For those who are only casual Garfield readers, these films may be too much of a departure from the usual Garfield strips for you to fully enjoy. It’s almost necessary to see Gets Real before Fun Fest, as the introduction of the comic strip studio presented in the former and audiences are expected to know about it in the latter.
The two films are available on Amazon.com individually (here and here) or as a two-pack here.
More information about both movies can be found at Garfield.com.
TweetNew Daily Posts
To ensure that I actually post to this blog at least once a day (except on Sundays), I’ve created a schedule of themed posts that I hope you’ll enjoy: Monday Media (also Monday Music and Monday Movie), Tuesday Tech, Wednesday Whine, Thursday Theme Park, Friday Flashback, and Weekend Web.
Find out more about each of these categories by clicking here.
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