Twister (Blu-ray)
APPROX. 113 MINS. - PROD. YEAR: 1996 - MPA RATING: PG-13
" ...it almost seems as though AV engineers invented high definition expressly for this movie.
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Video:
I found WB's previous, standard-definition release of "Twister" somewhat compromised by noise and grain and a dark, murky tone. Hardly any such worries here. The 1080p/VC-1 transfer is excellent on practically all counts, presenting the 2.40:1 widescreen image in beautifully rich, vibrant, detailed colors and good delineation. There is still a small degree of natural print grain, understandable in a film the moviemakers shot largely on location under gray skies. Yet the overall picture is transparent and bright enough, and while it remains a tad dark in selected scenes and maybe a touch too well filtered, there is little of the murkiness or noise I experienced before.
Audio:
The movie's CGI and high-definition picture may look great, but it's the movie's soundtrack that upstages everything else. That the audio is the movie's preeminent feature is not surprising considering that director Jan de Bont worked on the equally outstanding sound for the movie "Speed" a couple of years earlier. One can hardly fault the sonics here, especially now that Warners have transferred the audio to disc via lossless Dolby TrueHD 5.1. The general impression is one of smooth, true-to-life sound; the distribution of information throughout all five-point-one channels is superb; the transient response is quick and clean; the voices are clear and realistic; the frequency range is extensive; and the bass is taut, the greater focus making it sound deeper and less woolly than in regular DD 5.1. There were several occasions when I swore the couch moved! If you want to demo your sound system for friends and neighbors, pick a scene--any scene--and crank it up.
Extras:
This new Blu-ray edition of "Twister" comes with a lot of bonus material from the previous edition and several new items as well, all of them in standard def. Things begin with a commentary track by director Jan de Bont and visual effects supervisor Stefen Fangmeier that is informative without being either cute or surly as some commentaries can be. Next up, we find a newly made, twenty-nine-minute documentary, "Chasing the Storm: Twister Revisited," that includes comments from the director, star Bill Paxton, and several others of the filmmakers today. After that are the thirteen-minute featurette "The Making of Twister" that helps to explain the film's creative processes and a second, eight-minute featurette, "Anatomy of a Twister," that sheds further illumination on the subject. Then there is a forty-five-minute History Channel documentary on twisters, "Nature Tech: Tornadoes," followed by a music video, "Humans Being," with Van Halen.
The extras conclude with a pair of theatrical trailers; thirty-four scene selections; English and French spoken languages; English and French subtitles; English captions for the hearing impaired; and pop-up menus.
Parting Thoughts:
"Twister" is a film that has grown on me over the years. Even the movie's characters, which I had at first rejected as being too stereotyped, I have now grown to like. Sure, the plot still seems entirely computer generated, but to quibble about the plot of "Twister" is to miss the whole point of the film. This all about looking and listening, especially now that it's in high-definition picture and sound. The movie has never been more fun. Indeed, it almost seems as though AV engineers invented high definition expressly for this movie.
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