Inconvenient Truth, An

Sound:
English Dolby Digital 5.1 Surround and English Dolby Digital 2.0 are the two included soundtracks with "An Inconvenient Truth." English, French and Spanish subtitles are included as well. The vast majority of the film is Al Gore standing in front of a focused audience and talking into a microphone. They laugh at some of his nicely done jokes and cheer some of his strong points. Much of this audio takes place in the center channel, with applause out of the left and right channels. Some of the video footage includes music and ambient sounds that sparsely populate the rear speakers. As was the case with the image quality of "An Inconvenient Truth," the sound is adequate, but expectedly so. Everything is crystal clear, but the archival footage varies in quality and the front three speakers are almost all that is used, with the center channel doing a commendable job of having Mr. Gore sound crystal clear.

Extras:
"An Inconvenient Truth" comes packed in a thin cardboard packaging that has a heavy plastic shrinkwrapping that protects it. It´s thickness is only about a fourth as thick as a standard DVD case and is a symbol of Mr. Gore´s desire to do very little thing possible to help the environment out. This also shows that Paramount was very open to working with the former Vice President bring his message to the mass marketplace. Inside of the packaging is "Ten Things to Do" to help do your part to help curb Global Warming. Aside from the thin packaging, "An Inconvenient Truth" contains a nice number of bonus features.

An Update with Former Vice-President Al Gore runs for slightly more than a half an hour. It details much of the additional effects on our climate and the added evidence since "An Inconvenient Truth" was released and how the documentary has started to bring about some change that is nicely presented in anamorphic widescreen. The second featurettes, The Making of An Inconvenient Truth is a quick ten minute featurettes that quickly offers some information on what was involved in brining Al Gore´s message to film, but feels short and definitely could have been longer. "I Need to Wake Up" Music Video by Melissa Ethridge is also included.

Two running commentaries are included on the DVD. Sadly, Al Gore was not involved with the commentary tracks. The first Commentary by Director David Guggenheim features a lot of technical information, but also adds more insight into the problem of Global Warming and the director´s own thoughts. The second Commentary by Producers Laurie David, Lawrence Bender, Scott Z. Burns and Lesley Chilcott is a Criterion styled commentary that also dives deep into details, but also includes personal thoughts. I didn´t find much more that wasn´t covered by Mr. Gore, but skipping through them did offer up a few nice background bits. A Al Gore commentary would have been nice, but the two included ones aren´t bad.

Closing Thoughts:
I always considered Al Gore a boring politician. I don´t particularly care much for politicians and originally ignored "An Inconvenient Truth." However, after the odd weather behavior helped ground me for almost two weeks, I had a lot of inspiration to finally just sit down and watch it. A few days later, I´m up and writing my review for this documentary which opened up my eyes to how fast our environment is chancing. I feel my opinions are not nearly as important as it is for others to sit down and build their own opinions on the issues, but to also see the various bits of evidence and information detailed by Al Gore. It is startling and whether or not Global Warming is fully behind the climate changes, I feel everybody should sit down and get a little education. Mr. Gore is a fine public speaker and is impassioned by the environmental threats and he should be commended for "An Inconvenient Truth."

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