Casino Royale (Blu-ray)

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Audio:
I much prefer PCM, which was the audio format from the first Blu-ray release, but Sony has been going with an English Dolby TrueHD 5.1 lately, and I have to grudgingly admit that the sonics are pretty solid. More than most TrueHD soundtracks this one fills the room, perhaps because low-range sounds are picked up as if the listener had Spidey senses, and distributed across the speakers as they are there's a rich dynamic sound that fills the space. To my ear, though, the PCM is still the superior soundtrack, and if you feel the same way you might keep your old version. Or, just bite the bullet and swap out your first discs. The TrueHD soundtrack is also available in French, with subtitles in English SDH (CC), English French, and Spanish. Dropped from the subtitle menu were Chinese, Korean, Portuguese, and Thai, so if that matters to you, there's another reason for sticking with the first release

Extras:
What complicates that decision, though, is that the first Blu-ray release didn't include a commentary, and this one does. Barbara Broccoli and Michael G. Wilson, who produced the film, are joined by so many people that you never know who's saying what. You can't really care, either, or it will drive you nuts. If you've listened to other Bond commentaries, you know what I'm talking about. Included in the mix is the costume designer, director of photography, special effects supervisor, composer, and production designer. As you might expect, each talks about his or her contributions and challenges.

Five short features are also brand spanking new, all of them in the 20-30 minute range. The longest is "The Road to Casino Royale," which is also the most entertaining. There's plenty of vintage footage of things that most Bond fans wouldn't have seen before, with still shots supplementing the video footage. If the Bond films look effortless, watch the politics behind some of them and you'll be amazed they got made at all. The next best feature is "Ian Fleming's Incredible Creation," a really detailed look at the book version and how the film deviates. Fleming gets his due here, with lots of footage and stills. Also worthwhile is "Death in Venice," which shows stars Craig and Green on-set doing interviews, and those immediate reactions always capture something that recollections never quite manage. Then there are two featurettes on the Bahamas which detail the Fleming connection and are most useful for their beach-walk down memory lane, where we recall other films that were made on the same beaches.

As for the repeats, there's a music video from Chris Cornell, "You Know My Name," and three features from the first release. In "Becoming Bond," the focus is on Craig, and there's some wonderful footage of the tough times he went through after being named Bond. It was something he was totally unprepared for, like a press day launch that had boatloads of Royal Marines picking him up and escorting him to the junket site. We also see how rigorous the screen test was, and learn how the crew felt quickly satisfied that Craig was up to the physical tasks of playing 007 in his newly reincarnated grittier version. "James Bond: For Real" isn't the autobiographical background on Fleming's character that it sounds like. Instead, it's another making-of extra that includes some storyboards and focuses on free running. These guys are wearing wires, but they still have to execute the jumps and fights on girders some 200 feet above the ground. It's amazing to watch the filming, and we get plenty of footage in this feature which shows the action and the cameras.

Another repeat is "Bond Girls Are Forever," a clip-and-interview documentary hosted by Bond girl Maryam d'Abo ("The Living Daylights"). The 2002 television production ran 46 minutes and featured d'Abo interviewing such Bond girls as Ursula Andress ("Dr. No"), Honor Blackman ("Goldfinger"), Luciana Paluzzi ("Thunderball"), Jill St. John ("Diamonds Are Forever"), Jane Seymour ("Live and Let Die"), Maud Adams ("The Man with the Golden Gun" and "Octopussy"), and Halle Berry ("Die Another Day"). And there's a storyboard sequence.

"Casino Royale" is also BD-Live enabled, and there's a Profile 1.1 picture-in-picture dual streaming visual commentary that features director Martin Campbell and Michael G. Wilson, one of his producers. Basically these guys were interviewed and appear in insets onscreen. But frankly, I preferred the audio commentary.

Rounding out the Blu-ray exclusives is a trivia game that, if you´ve read the books and seen all the movies, will leave no player shaken or stirred.

Bottom Line:
In his theatrical review, my colleague, John J. Puccio, called this "the best Bond in decades." I'm not going to disagree. I've always felt that the Bond franchise wandered too far off-course when the tone got to be a little too cheeky and the stunts so bizarre that they were comical. "Casino Royale" takes us closer to the Bond whom Fleming created. We see more vulnerable moments in him, more man than superman. Surprisingly, that makes the legend even stronger. Though the PCM is MIA, the bonus features make this worthwhile.

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