...a visually stunning achievement, a meticulously photographed exercise in mood and imagery.
Audio:
The Warner Bros. audio engineers provide sound in Dolby Digital Plus and Dolby TrueHD 5.1, both of the tracks effectively reproducing the music of Gyorgy Ligeti, Dmitri Shostakovich, and Chris Isaak. While occasionally some strong bass notes come through the subwoofer and a haunting solo piano comes across strikingly, most of the audio processing has only to reproduce dialogue and sporadic music. Certainly, the sound, especially in TrueHD, is smooth, sophisticated, and well focused; it just doesn't have a lot of work to do. I might add, though, that for Kubrick the quiet moments are as effective as the louder ones, so contrasts are important, and the audio handles them nicely, too.
Extras:
The first thing the back cover says about the extras is that the movie is "selectable in both Rated and--for the First Time in North America--Unrated versions." As you probably know, in order to get an "R" rating in the U.S. rather than an NC-17, the filmmaker digitally inserted some characters in front of several risqué shots. OK, so maybe I'm technology challenged, but I could not find the "selectable" part of this business. I put the movie in, and it started playing as any other WB movie on an HD DVD would play; I found no choices involved. I looked in the Special Features for a rated and unrated version; not there. I looked in the scene selections; not there, either. I watched the film, and it appeared to be the unrated version because I could not find any digitally superimposed characters in front of the objectionable material. Yet the back cover prominently gives the movie an "R" rating. I suspect something amiss on the disc or in the back-cover text, and I suspect the latter.
Moving on. The first major bonus item is a three-part documentary titled "The Last Movie: Stanley Kubrick and Eyes Wide Shut." It's about forty-three minutes long and divided into three chapters: "The Haven/Mission Control," "Artificial Intelligence or the Writer as Robot," and "Eyes Wide Shut, a Film by Stanley Kubrick." These segments contain comments and remembrances by fellow filmmakers, collaborators, and family members who discuss the man, his methods, and his movies. Of special interest, several of the actors in "Eyes Wide Shut" discuss the director's obsession with retakes. Director and actor Sydney Pollack notes that it was not unusual for Kubrick to ask for twenty or twenty-five takes of a single, simple movement. Kubrick said that the real cost of filmmaking was in the preparation, the script, the sets, and so forth, while the actual shooting was relatively cheap. So, he would shoot and shoot and shoot again in order to have plenty of material from which to choose and cut the final film. Next up is the twenty-minute documentary "Lost Kubrick: The Unfinished Films of Stanley Kubrick," which discusses two of Kubrick's planned works, "Napoleon" and a Holocaust drama he was going to call "The Aryan Papers." After that there is a brief acceptance speech Kubrick gave upon receiving the 1998 Director's Guild of America D.W. Griffith Award, a speech introduced on disc by Jack Nicholson. Then there are three interviews, one with Tom Cruise, eight minutes; one with Nicole Kidman, eighteen minutes; and one with Steven Spielberg, eight minutes. All of these special features are in standard definition.
Additionally, the HD DVD includes a theatrical trailer and two TV spots in full-screen; thirty-eight scene selections; English, French, Spanish, and Japanese spoken languages; English, French, Spanish, Chinese, Japanese, Korean, and Portuguese subtitles; and English captions for the hearing impaired. Things conclude with WB's usual HD DVD features: pop-up menus, bookmarks, a guide to elapsed time, a zoom-and-pan feature, and an Elite Red HD case.
Parting Thoughts:
In the HD DVD version of the movie, whatever its rating, expect lots of nudity. Kubrick establishes the movie's tone at the outset when Ms. Kidman drops her dress in the opening scene, revealing purely Ms. Kidman beneath. Still, for all its sex and nudity, "Eyes Wide Shut" is not a sexy or erotic film. Kubrick does not want to show how sexy life is but how much sex affects us. He keeps the viewer as detached from the film's eroticism as the good Doctor Harford is while examining one of his beautiful, naked patients. The film is a visually stunning achievement, a meticulously photographed exercise in mood and imagery, the poetic evocation of a dream. Yes, it is overlong, and, yes, it is slow going. And, no, it does not sustain our attention as "2001" does. But "Eyes Wide Shut" is fascinating every inch of the way, and people will no doubt talk about it, pro and con, for years to come.
Warner Bros. have made "Eyes Wide Shut" available in HD DVD, Blu-ray, and standard-definition. All three formats are available individually, and the SD versions are also available in the big "Stanley Kubrick Director's Series" box, which includes "2001: A Space Odyssey," "A Clockwork Orange," "The Shining," "Full Metal Jacket," "Eyes Wide Shut," and the documentary "Stanley Kubrick: A Life in Pictures." Most of the films in SD come in two-disc special editions, with the exception of the single-disc "Full Metal Jacket" and the documentary.
I should add in closing that after watching "Eyes Wide Shut" in HD, I watched the standard-def version, which also proclaims on the box that it is "selectable in Both Rated and...Unrated versions." But I still couldn't find anything except what appears to be the Unrated version on the disc.
The Warner Bros. audio engineers provide sound in Dolby Digital Plus and Dolby TrueHD 5.1, both of the tracks effectively reproducing the music of Gyorgy Ligeti, Dmitri Shostakovich, and Chris Isaak. While occasionally some strong bass notes come through the subwoofer and a haunting solo piano comes across strikingly, most of the audio processing has only to reproduce dialogue and sporadic music. Certainly, the sound, especially in TrueHD, is smooth, sophisticated, and well focused; it just doesn't have a lot of work to do. I might add, though, that for Kubrick the quiet moments are as effective as the louder ones, so contrasts are important, and the audio handles them nicely, too.
Extras:
The first thing the back cover says about the extras is that the movie is "selectable in both Rated and--for the First Time in North America--Unrated versions." As you probably know, in order to get an "R" rating in the U.S. rather than an NC-17, the filmmaker digitally inserted some characters in front of several risqué shots. OK, so maybe I'm technology challenged, but I could not find the "selectable" part of this business. I put the movie in, and it started playing as any other WB movie on an HD DVD would play; I found no choices involved. I looked in the Special Features for a rated and unrated version; not there. I looked in the scene selections; not there, either. I watched the film, and it appeared to be the unrated version because I could not find any digitally superimposed characters in front of the objectionable material. Yet the back cover prominently gives the movie an "R" rating. I suspect something amiss on the disc or in the back-cover text, and I suspect the latter.
Moving on. The first major bonus item is a three-part documentary titled "The Last Movie: Stanley Kubrick and Eyes Wide Shut." It's about forty-three minutes long and divided into three chapters: "The Haven/Mission Control," "Artificial Intelligence or the Writer as Robot," and "Eyes Wide Shut, a Film by Stanley Kubrick." These segments contain comments and remembrances by fellow filmmakers, collaborators, and family members who discuss the man, his methods, and his movies. Of special interest, several of the actors in "Eyes Wide Shut" discuss the director's obsession with retakes. Director and actor Sydney Pollack notes that it was not unusual for Kubrick to ask for twenty or twenty-five takes of a single, simple movement. Kubrick said that the real cost of filmmaking was in the preparation, the script, the sets, and so forth, while the actual shooting was relatively cheap. So, he would shoot and shoot and shoot again in order to have plenty of material from which to choose and cut the final film. Next up is the twenty-minute documentary "Lost Kubrick: The Unfinished Films of Stanley Kubrick," which discusses two of Kubrick's planned works, "Napoleon" and a Holocaust drama he was going to call "The Aryan Papers." After that there is a brief acceptance speech Kubrick gave upon receiving the 1998 Director's Guild of America D.W. Griffith Award, a speech introduced on disc by Jack Nicholson. Then there are three interviews, one with Tom Cruise, eight minutes; one with Nicole Kidman, eighteen minutes; and one with Steven Spielberg, eight minutes. All of these special features are in standard definition.
Additionally, the HD DVD includes a theatrical trailer and two TV spots in full-screen; thirty-eight scene selections; English, French, Spanish, and Japanese spoken languages; English, French, Spanish, Chinese, Japanese, Korean, and Portuguese subtitles; and English captions for the hearing impaired. Things conclude with WB's usual HD DVD features: pop-up menus, bookmarks, a guide to elapsed time, a zoom-and-pan feature, and an Elite Red HD case.
Parting Thoughts:
In the HD DVD version of the movie, whatever its rating, expect lots of nudity. Kubrick establishes the movie's tone at the outset when Ms. Kidman drops her dress in the opening scene, revealing purely Ms. Kidman beneath. Still, for all its sex and nudity, "Eyes Wide Shut" is not a sexy or erotic film. Kubrick does not want to show how sexy life is but how much sex affects us. He keeps the viewer as detached from the film's eroticism as the good Doctor Harford is while examining one of his beautiful, naked patients. The film is a visually stunning achievement, a meticulously photographed exercise in mood and imagery, the poetic evocation of a dream. Yes, it is overlong, and, yes, it is slow going. And, no, it does not sustain our attention as "2001" does. But "Eyes Wide Shut" is fascinating every inch of the way, and people will no doubt talk about it, pro and con, for years to come.
Warner Bros. have made "Eyes Wide Shut" available in HD DVD, Blu-ray, and standard-definition. All three formats are available individually, and the SD versions are also available in the big "Stanley Kubrick Director's Series" box, which includes "2001: A Space Odyssey," "A Clockwork Orange," "The Shining," "Full Metal Jacket," "Eyes Wide Shut," and the documentary "Stanley Kubrick: A Life in Pictures." Most of the films in SD come in two-disc special editions, with the exception of the single-disc "Full Metal Jacket" and the documentary.
I should add in closing that after watching "Eyes Wide Shut" in HD, I watched the standard-def version, which also proclaims on the box that it is "selectable in Both Rated and...Unrated versions." But I still couldn't find anything except what appears to be the Unrated version on the disc.
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[release]21836[/release]