Foster is a master at portraying a woman in terror who's trying to balance her fears with a survival instinct that drives her to somehow prevail.
Video:
"Flightplan" has a lot of soft background shots, and that means there's a slight blurring and graininess in many of the scenes. It's a filmmaker's choice, but one which doesn't exactly provide a fitting showcase for the new Blu-ray technology. The colors are also deliberately desaturated in numerous scenes, while in others the filmmakers shot using a colored lens or wash. It's not a bad picture, but you won't see detail leaping out at you the way it does with some of the more eye-popping Blu-ray releases.
Audio:
But the audio? There's nothing like uncompressed PCM (48kHz, 16-bit) sound to put the rumble in those jet engines. More than that, though, for a psychological thriller so much depends upon visual images and sounds, and here, even the rain falls and drips with incredible clarity and precision of sound. Though there are additional options in Dolby Digital 5.1 English, French, and Spanish with English SDH, French, and Spanish subtitles, I frankly don't know why anyone would choose anything but the pure HD sound.
Extras:
The SD release offered a five-part making-of feature. The Blu-ray version gives you two of them, "Emergency Landing" (visual effects) and "Cabin Pressure" (designing the Aalto E-474). They're actually two of the three best featurettes (along with the tour of Los Angeles International Airport), but fans will wish they had the entire documentary. Personally, I would have rather had another short feature or two than the short film, "Jet Stream," by awardwinning filmmaker Louie Schwartzberg. Buena Vista has apparently contracted with Schwartzberg to produce short films along the lines of the Soarin' ride at Disney World, where the cameras pan-and-scan elements of the natural (and in this case, also mechanical) world. I could understand the logic behind it for the first few Blu-ray discs, because it was a way to showcase the new High Definition medium as much as anything. But now? It seems like superfluous fluff. Same, really, with the "Movie Showcase" feature, which gives "instant access to select movie scenes that showcase the ultimate in High Definition picture and sound." Okay, we get it. Hi-Def is better than standard definition. Don't waste disc space on Blu-ray touting features. Instead, give movie-lovers more features relating to the film itself.
Bottom Line:
Jodie Foster is a master at portraying a woman in terror who's trying to balance her fears with a survival instinct that drives her to somehow prevail. In "Flightplan," as in "Panic Room," she gives us a character who's able to sustain our interest and maintain our sympathies, even as the world presses tightly around her . . . and, by voyeuristic association, us.
"Flightplan" has a lot of soft background shots, and that means there's a slight blurring and graininess in many of the scenes. It's a filmmaker's choice, but one which doesn't exactly provide a fitting showcase for the new Blu-ray technology. The colors are also deliberately desaturated in numerous scenes, while in others the filmmakers shot using a colored lens or wash. It's not a bad picture, but you won't see detail leaping out at you the way it does with some of the more eye-popping Blu-ray releases.
Audio:
But the audio? There's nothing like uncompressed PCM (48kHz, 16-bit) sound to put the rumble in those jet engines. More than that, though, for a psychological thriller so much depends upon visual images and sounds, and here, even the rain falls and drips with incredible clarity and precision of sound. Though there are additional options in Dolby Digital 5.1 English, French, and Spanish with English SDH, French, and Spanish subtitles, I frankly don't know why anyone would choose anything but the pure HD sound.
Extras:
The SD release offered a five-part making-of feature. The Blu-ray version gives you two of them, "Emergency Landing" (visual effects) and "Cabin Pressure" (designing the Aalto E-474). They're actually two of the three best featurettes (along with the tour of Los Angeles International Airport), but fans will wish they had the entire documentary. Personally, I would have rather had another short feature or two than the short film, "Jet Stream," by awardwinning filmmaker Louie Schwartzberg. Buena Vista has apparently contracted with Schwartzberg to produce short films along the lines of the Soarin' ride at Disney World, where the cameras pan-and-scan elements of the natural (and in this case, also mechanical) world. I could understand the logic behind it for the first few Blu-ray discs, because it was a way to showcase the new High Definition medium as much as anything. But now? It seems like superfluous fluff. Same, really, with the "Movie Showcase" feature, which gives "instant access to select movie scenes that showcase the ultimate in High Definition picture and sound." Okay, we get it. Hi-Def is better than standard definition. Don't waste disc space on Blu-ray touting features. Instead, give movie-lovers more features relating to the film itself.
Bottom Line:
Jodie Foster is a master at portraying a woman in terror who's trying to balance her fears with a survival instinct that drives her to somehow prevail. In "Flightplan," as in "Panic Room," she gives us a character who's able to sustain our interest and maintain our sympathies, even as the world presses tightly around her . . . and, by voyeuristic association, us.
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[release]20326[/release]