Monday, December 27, 2010

2010 on Blu-Ray

Part 1 of my look back feature on 2010 it brought some rather big Blu-Ray releases, I won't bore you with a long diatribe about the good and bad but just tell you what the top three are:

3. The Expendables: A new release on disc, the Expendables resembled to me what a no nonsense disc release should do, not give you hours and hours of worthless extras but just a few high quality bonuses that leave you feeling satisfied, and the bonuses here most certainly did that, sadly the Australian release left off the 90 minute making of so it feels a bit incomplete but what's here was good enough to let it qualify, as well as the booming 7.1 DTS-HD soundtrack and very entertaining movie, this was easily the best sound mix I heard on a Blu-Ray this year.

2. Beauty and the Beast - Diamond Edition: One of the great triumphs for the Disney studios (it's the ONLY animated film to score a legitimate Best Picture Oscar nomination), 2002's Platinum Edition DVD release was not the best, iffy Video, weak Audio and sub par extras really didn't do the film justice.

This year's Diamond Edition Blu-Ray however rectified all of those, with a beautiful Video presentation, great sound and some terrific extras that really take you behind the scenes into not only how the film was made but also how the Disney studios at that time rallied together to get back on track following several flops, a winner of a release.

1. Avatar - Extended Collector's Edition: Easily my favourite Blu-Ray Release from this year (though BatB came very close), James Cameron's Avatar combined first class Audio/Visual Quality with 2 full discs worth of terrific bonuses, from direct access to the 16 minutes reinstated to the film, the making of, the 70 minutes worth of deleted scenes plus so much more, this release deserves to become one of the finest special edition releases ever made.

So there you have it, short and sweet when it comes to the top three Blu-Ray's of 2010 for me, let's hope 2011 brings us some more as this format is really starting to show some serious potential and I look forward to more.

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