Check out my review of the Oblivion (Blu-ray + DVD + Digital Copy + UltraViolet) disc!

The Oblivion Blu-Ray was the top-selling DVD release last week for good reason. The film is stunning.

Released August 6, 2013, I got the special Target exclusive OblivionBlu-Ray because it has an awesome little concept art book included.

The 12-page concept illustration book is worth getting since they inexplicably never released an art book for the film. The images are small, but printed on glassy stock and look wonderful.

The five-clip "Promise of a New World: The Making of Oblivion" series of features are a fascinating insight into the design of the movie. Being a trained architect, Joseph Kosinski was able to help visualize the movie in ways many directors can't.

It also showcases some breath-taking illustrations for the film underscored by the ethereal score.  My favorite feature was "Destiny" which had beautiful illustrations set to music along with director commentary.

• Format: Color, Widescreen, Multiple Formats
• Language: English (Dolby Digital 2.0 Stereo), English (Dolby Digital 5.1), English (DTS-HD Master Audio 7.1), French (Dolby Digital 5.1), French (DTS 5.1), Spanish (Dolby Digital 5.1), Spanish (DTS 5.1)
• Subtitles: English, French, Spanish
• Dubbed: French, Spanish
• Region: All Regions
• Aspect Ratio: 2.40:1
• Number of discs: 2
• Rated: PG-13 (Parental Guidance Suggested)
• Studio: Universal Studios
• DVD Release Date: August 6, 2013
• Run Time: 124 minutes
• ASIN: B008JFUO4U

Special Features

• Oblivion (Blu-ray Format) – The theatrical version of the film on blu-ray.
• Oblivion (DVD Format) – The theatrical version of the film on DVD.
• Oblivion (Digital Copy/UltraViolet) – The theatrical version of the film (digital copy/Ultraviolet).
• Audio Commentary – Feature Commentary with Tom Cruise and director Joseph Kosinski.
• Deleted Scenes
• Promise of a New World: The Making of Oblivion – A comprehensive and thought-provoking multi-part feature covering the making of Oblivion. Includes the following parts.
  
  • Destiny – Looks inside the conceptualization, development and pre-production of Oblivion and the planning that went into the Herculean task of shooting the epic film.
  • Voyage – Follows the creation of the amazing Bubble Ship from its early design conception to its journey around the world.
  • Combat – Explores the film’s ground-breaking action and death-defying stunts, all performed by one of the most popular movie stars in the world.
  • Illusion – Focuses on the film’s post-production and dazzling visual effects.
  • Harmony – Delves into the innovative musical world of M83.
• M83 Isolated Score – Watch the entire film accompanied by the evocative music track.

Here are some images from the illustration book:



It's worth the effort to get the Target exclusive, but if you want to get the standard version and you enjoyed the visuals of this film make sure you pick up the Oblivion (Blu-ray + DVD + Digital Copy + UltraViolet)* disc today.

Rating:
Video 5 stars
Sound 5 stars
Special Features 4 stars
Overall: 5 Stars

See more Oblivion concept art and illustrations on my blog.

Official OBLIVION Synopsis
Tom Cruise stars in Oblivion, an original and groundbreaking cinematic event from the director of TRON: Legacy and the producer of Rise of the Planet of the Apes. On a spectacular future Earth that has evolved beyond recognition, one man’s confrontation with the past will lead him on a journey of redemption and discovery as he battles to save mankind.
 

Jack Harper (Cruise) is one of the last few drone repairmen stationed on Earth. Part of a massive operation to extract vital resources after decades of war with a terrifying threat known as the Scavs, Jack’s mission is nearly complete.  Living and patrolling the breathtaking skies from thousands of feet above, his soaring existence is brought crashing down when he rescues a beautiful stranger from a downed spacecraft. Her arrival triggers a chain of events that forces him to question everything he knows and puts the fate of humanity in his hands.

Oblivion will be shot in stunning digital 4K resolution on location across the United States and Iceland.

Directed by Joseph Kosinski.

Starring: Tom Cruise, Olga Kurylenko, Andrea Riseborough, Nikolaj Coster-Waldau, Melissa Leo
Cinematography by Claudio Miranda
Production Design by Darren Gilford

Official Site: www.oblivionmovie.com/‎

Release date: April 26, 2013

© 2013 Copyright Universal Pictures, Relativity Media, Chernin Entertainment, Monolith Pictures, Radical Studios,

*Sales from my Amazon links provide a small commission to help me buy Art Book and Blu-Ray discs for my reviews

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Captain America: The First Avenger has no concept art gallery. I was going to drop my rating because of it, but then I watched the gorgeous featurettes and stopped complaining.


Product Details

• Actors: Chris Evans, Hugo Weaving, Samuel L. Jackson, Hayley Atwell, Sebastian Stan
• Directors: Joe Johnston
• Writers: Christopher Markus, Jack Kirby, Joe Simon, Stephen McFeely
• Producers: Alan Fine, Amir Madani, Dan Masciarelli
• Format: AC-3, Color, Dolby, DTS Surround Sound, Dubbed, Subtitled, Widescreen
• Language: English, Spanish
• Subtitles: English, French, Portuguese, Spanish
• Region: Region A/1 (Read more about DVD/Blu-ray formats.)
• Aspect Ratio: 1.85:1
• Number of discs: 2
• Rated: PG-13 (Parental Guidance Suggested)
• Studio: Paramount Studios
• DVD Release Date: October 25, 2011
• Run Time: 124 minutes

Special Features

• Includes Digital Copy
• Deleted Scenes
• Behind-The-Scenes Featurettes
• Marvel One Shot: A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to Thor’s Hammer -- Go deeper inside the Marvel Universe and unveil secret plans to assemble the ultimate superhero team, the Avengers. 
• And more!

Here are some of the featurettes I found interesting along, with some admittedly poor screen caps from the disk. I just couldn't resist putting some of these on the site.

Featurette Review
Designing the Costume
The director and producer talk about the challenge of designing a faithful comic book costume while making out realistic. Some concept art with interviews with lead concept artist Ryan Meinerding and some brief, but beautiful pan and scans of the illustrations.

Heightened Technology 
The producers and actors talk about the desire to bring advanced technology to WWII without looking out-of-place. We get a few shots of concept art on boards during production and some beautiful images of Daniel Simons' vehicle designs. He's the star of the featurette since he talks extensively about his design principles.

The Transformation 
A great explanation of how the creators got Chris Evans to look skinny and why they did it the way they did. There are only two illustrations, but the focus is on the technology.

Behind the Skull 
This feature talks about how they brought the character of the Red Skull to life. Artists Ryan Meinerding and Charlie Wen take about the challenge of balancing the anatomical effect of a man with his face burned off while maintaining the classic image of the comic book character. Here are some really nice illustrations in this video. The best on the disk really.

Overall, it's a really good set of disks. The concept art for the Marvel films are some of the best in the business and, besides the lack of a gallery, it's still a good disk to own.




Charlie Wen's website is http://charliewen.typepad.com/ and Ryan Meinerding's is http://boyrobot.com/. Both guy's are pretty busy, so Wen's site hasn't been updated since 2010 and Meinerding's blog domain has lapsed. Just go to Marvel.com to see their stuff.

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The film Rise of the Planet of the Apes (2011) has some amazing concept art attached to it, so I was really looking forward to the Blu-Ray special features. I was pretty disappointed.

The Details
Actors: James Franco, Andy Serkis, Freida Pinto

Directors: Rupert Wyatt
Format: AC-3, Color, Dolby, DTS Surround Sound, Dubbed, Subtitled, Widescreen

Language: English
Subtitles: English, Spanish
Region: Region A/1 (Read more about DVD/Blu-ray formats.)
Aspect Ratio: 2.35:1
Number of discs: 2
Rated: PG-13 (Parental Guidance Suggested)
Studio: 20th Century Fox
DVD Release Date: December 13, 2011
Run Time: 105 minutes

Special Features
Disc 1: Theatrical Feature Blu-ray

• Deleted Scenes
• Mythology of the Apes
• The Genius of Andy Serkis
• A New Generation of Apes
• Scene Breakdown
• Character Concept Art Gallery
• Breaking Motion Capture Boundaries
• Composing the Score with Patrick Doyle
• The Great Apes
• Audio Commentary by Director Rupert Wyatt
• Audio Commentary by Writers Rick Jaffa and Amanda Silver
• Theatrical Trailers

 Disc 2: DVD + Digital Copy

The Review
The sections on how they did the special effects are pretty cool. The "Scene Breakdown" and "The Genius of Andy Serkis" were really good at explaining how they did the motion capture. It's pretty jarring to watch men act like apes sitting in cages. Pretty cool.


The key section for me is the "Conceptual Art Gallery". The interface has a series of images divided into seven main ape characters (Rocket, Maurice, Koba, Caesar, Bright Eyes, Buck and Lucky) from the film. You click on the character to see the artwork.

The images are high quality, but sparse. Maybe less than twenty. You can get better concept art.from google. I'm pretty sure some of them are reference photographs, unless they have an incredibly high resolution.

Here's the breakdown:
Artist credits: No
Still images: Yes
Resolution: High
Number of images: Low (less than 20)
Zoom: No

So, the disc gets three out of a possible five stars.

Buy it here at amazon.

What did you think of the movie and the Blu-Ray disc?

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Note: This is a review of the quality of the special features and not the movie itself.

The Last Starfighter (25th Anniversary Edition) [Blu-ray] is a good DVD with memorable interviews with production designer Ron Cobb.

The Last Starfighter (1984) has been one of my guilty pleasures since I was a kid. It's not a great movie by any means, but the break-through special effects and the heart-warming story of a video game junkie that becomes a fighter pilot always warmed my heart. It seems unfair that the Blu-Ray is less than $15 and the DVD is in the $5 bin. I know it's not great, but it's better than it's shelf mate Popeye.

Description
"Greetings, Starfighter! You have been recruited by the Star League to defend the frontier against Xur and the Kodan Armada.” So begins an adventure of galactic proportions in The Last Starfighter. After Earthling Alex (Lance Guest) conquers the Starfighter video game, he is recruited by alien Centauri (Robert Preston) to be part of an elite legion of fighters. Leaving behind his trailer park home for the outer regions of space, Alex becomes the last hope for the beleaguered Star League and hundreds of worlds – including Earth. Loaded with out-of-this-world bonus features and digitally remastered for optimum picture quality, The Last Starfighter 25th Anniversary Edition is the ultimate video game fantasy come true"

Special Features Review
Heroes of the Screen
A making of featurette that covered a lot of the same ground as the the later video "Crossing the Frontier". Most of the footage is the same with one noteable exception: Paul Power the storyboard artist. They even do a time-lapse of his starting a storyboard and talking about his philosophy.

Crossing the Frontier: Making The Last Starfighter
In the 32-minute making of featurette, “Crossing the Frontier: Making the Last Starfighter” key members of the crew are brought back to talk about the making of the movie and it's mind-blowing. From one scene where the technical director does the math on a chalkboard and tells them they should use models to stories about sleeping on Cray computers it really makes you appreciate how much work it took for the film.

The highlight for me was watching Ron Cobb. The guy is humble and honest talking about the development. Part of the feature focuses on how they took advantage of his drafting skills to plot every single line of the ships he designed. They basically scanned them into the computer and ran with it. Besides designing the vehicles he also designed Xur's scepter.

Image Gallery
An extensive Image Gallery has numerous production and promotional photos on the characters, ships, merchandise. The gallery shows concept art and drawings for the Starcar, Starfighter and Starfighter landing bay.

Overall, it would have been nice to see some more designs, but the interviews with the great Ron Cobb more than made up for it.

You can see more amazing storyboards from Paul Power at his website http://www.paulpower.com/
Maybe one day Cobb will finish his website http://roncobb.net/ 

Stars: 3.5 out of 5

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Overall, if you don't have access to any other concept art books, this is a great resource. If you do have the books or have special edition DVDs I wouldn't get this set for the concept art.

Star Wars concept art is the gold standard of concept art. All the greatest concept illustrators worked on the Star Wars films starting with Ralph McQuarrie. I was especially eager to dig into it and see what was offered.

The Star Wars: The Complete Saga (Episodes I-VI) [Blu-ray] set comes with nine disks. The six movie disks and three bonus disks. The first one has all the deleted, extended and alternate scenes; prop, maquette and costume turnarounds; matte paintings and concept art; supplementary interviews with cast and crew.

This is the one I focused on. The interface is fascinating. Using beautifully animated key scenes from the movie you are taken into the world of each film. The disks then organize all the material by planet and each planet has a section for concept art. Its kind of confusing in a way. Suppose you want to see concept art from Coruscant? Is it under Episode I, II or III? It takes some getting used to.

Each planet has an average of ten pieces of concept art. So, if you do the math its over 90 images. Nice.

The images are amazing and really give insight into the creation of different characters and their history. Nice little touches are the mentions of concept art for the prequels that became part of Star Wars: Clone Wars and the fantastic savagery of the Wookie Kashyyyk warriors.

Like I said, Star Wars concept art is always amazing to look at. These disks are loaded with the best concept art from the films.

Here's the downside. One problem I have with almost all concept art in DVDs is you can't zoom in to get a better look. It has a single image formatted to take up the top and bottom of the screen and that's it. Some art is so rich in detail its frustrating not to be able to check it out.

On the plus side, they're not cropped or modified, so you get the full effect. There's a slide show feature which is nice for cruising through the images one at a time, but you can also jump to any of the images.

Another notable, but common omission, is the credits for the images. As per usual, the art is shown with no indication who drew them. Some of the paintings have signatures like Doug Chiang, but most are anonymous.
Considering how important artists are to visualizing the Star Wars films, I was surprised that there wasn't a single interview with any of the artists. Not even veteran artists like Ralph McQuarrie. That was disappointing. Especially since the other DVDs had full featurettes on the concept artists and it wouldn't have been hard to add them.

The Star Wars Blu-Ray set is a must have for lovers of the films, but disappointing to lovers of concept art.

What did you think of the disks? Would you buy or recommend them?

Below are links to the Blu-Ray disk and a selection of my favorite "Art of Star Wars" books.

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A new feature will be showing which DVDs released this week has concept art or storyboards.
Heroes: Season Four
Product DescriptionSullivan Brothers Design Gallery (Disc 3, HD, 3 minutes): A short montage of concept art for the Sullivan Brothers Carnival.
Experience all the intrigue and suspense of Heroes: Season 4 in this 5-disc set that includes all 18 gripping episodes from the fourth season’s volume, Redemption. As the Heroes mourn fallen friends and face dangerous new foes, prepare for a wild ride — filled with shocking twists and turns — through an ominous funhouse that culminates in a Brave New World. Then step right up and explore hours of exclusive, behind-the-curtain magic with the show’s writers, stars and artists. more »