Andrew Machado

Wanted was dubbed as the new Matrix and I have to agree.  The special effects, camera work and action scenes were top notch.  Luckily it is now officially coming to Blu-ray and DVD.  The specifications of the Blu-ray are off the hook.

Tech specs for the BD-50 dual-layer presentation enjoy 1080p/AVC MPEG-4 video, a DTS-HD Lossless Master Audio 5.1 Surround track (48kHz/16-bit), and additional Dolby Digital and subtitle offerings in English, French, and Spanish.  I am really excited to see that this film is DTS-HD Lossless as that ensures every bass thump and word uttered from Jolie’s lips will be captured perfectly.

Extras will feature a suite of making-of featurettes ( “Cast and Characters,” “Stunts on the L Train,” “Special Effects: The Art of the Impossible,” “Groundbreaking Visual Effects: From Imagination to Execution,” “The Origins of Wanted: Bringing the Graphic Novel to Life,” “Through the Eyes of Visionary Director Timur Bekmambetov,” “Wanted: Motion Comics”), deleted scenes, an alternate opening, and the “Making of Wanted: The Game” interactive feature.

Exclusive to the Blu-ray will be four U-Control extras including picture-in-picture, a scene explorer, motion comics, and assassin profiles. BD-Live features boast My Chat, MyScenes Sharing, and a “My Wanted” commentary maker.

Show me the money is what everyone in America was muttering in 1996. Well it is now 2008 and Sony has decided Jerry Macguire needs to be rereleased in Blu-ray in full 1080p resolution with a Dolby True-HD 5.1 soundtrack. Personally I am excited for this release as I remember Jerry Macguire being a great film and will probably be even better on Blu-ray with the improved picture and Jonathan Lipnicki’s “Did you know Cats and Dogs can smell fear” line being in Dolby True-HD.

Courtesy of Amazon.com

Entertainment Weekly called this movie recently one of the best date movies ever. Do you agree? To me its a great film for the fact it balances the line between being very entertaining and funny, yet builds the characters up enough that women can find the film moving.

A movie that tried this was For Love of the Game which has yet to be released in Blu-ray. Bill Simmons said it best about this movie, “My advice to the producers: Release a director’s cut in which every nonbaseball scene with Preston gets chopped, and end it with Costner crying in his hotel room.” and I totally agree. The baseball footage in that movie is outstanding and should be seen by every baseball fan. Hopefully one day I will get to write about that Blu-ray release.

Enjoy Jerry Macguire on Blu-ray. It releases September 9th for the retail price of $19.99.

Over the last 2 years or so we’ve seen a real change in the electronics industry. Even the most basic consumer has shifted from a standard cell phone like a Motorola RAZR to a smartphone. Most of these people have made the jump to an Apple iPhone because Apple has bridge the gap of taking tons of features and dumbing down the interface enough so people can grasp mobile email and mobile web browsing. But what has happened to the living room?

We have finally seen the proliferation of flat panel LCD and Plasma TVs into the living room. These displays have resolutions that are either 720p or the current buzz word 1080p. Now I am all for people buying a 1080p TV, it displays 1080 vertical pixel lines of resolution resulting in the most detailed picture a consumer can buy. However, you must really have source material in 1080p to truly enjoy the TV at full potential. So what material gets brodcasted in 1080p currently? Nothing on Cable or on Direct TV (Direct TV claims they will be broadcasting movies in 1080p some time this fall, but I wouldn’t hold your breath). So the only other option you have as a user is Blu-ray. Blu-ray players range in price from $399 to well over $1000, but you spent over $2000 on the 1080p so why not pick up a Blu-ray player as well?

So what are the advantage of Blu-ray in your living room besides 1080p? Well Blu-ray players also play DVDs and will upscale them to a higher resolution then they were originally made making them look much better on your TV. The real kicker with Blu-ray in my eyes is the fact that the discs hold 50 gigabytes of data. Compare that that to a single layer DVD at 4.7 gigs or a dual layer at a little over 9 gigs and you see that they will be able to fit a lot more stuff on a disc.

Currently that extra space is being used not only on extras scenes but on new functionality Sony has dubbed BD-Live which allows the Blu-ray movie to leverage a user’s internet connection and deliver online websites and additional content for films. I am not a big fan of these things because I am strictly a movie watcher and care more for sound rather than extras. So what about sound?

Well I am happy to say Blu-ray has really nailed the sound aspect of what a movie is all about. Back in the days of DVD people were really happy to just get Dolby Digital 5.1 sound. That was a center, right, left, rear left, rear right and a subwoofer speaker, now movies can go as high as 7.1 adding two additional speakers for additional sound. What is really neat though is with the extra space Blu-ray offers we are seeing movie soundtracks that are uncompressed audio which means there is 0 compression in the audio to get it to fit on the disk. Uncompressed audio sounds amazing, but you have to have the proper equipment to use it. I highly recommend if you are a user upgrading from a 5.1 DVD setup to replace your DVD player with a PlayStation 3 and replacing your receiver with a Onkyo - 606. That receiver will put out a decent amount of power to all your speakers and give you the flexibility to plug your cable box into it.