Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within - Blu-ray
Yes, we did see the movie and yes, we know it bombed ruthlessly, losing around $120 million and thus killing Square Pictures. However, this was the first feature film to attempt photorealistic CG humans, and it sports some of the greatest eye candy your Blu-ray player will churn out. The storyline has something to do with a dying planet, some ghostly phantoms and CG Steve Buscemi. Honestly, it was probably the Eastern religious psychobabble that confused Western audiences. You really can’t go wrong with the disc. The whole movie was made on computers, so the digital transfer is excellent and the lossless 5.1 PCM audio bombards your eardrums.
TMNT - HD-DVD, Blu-ray
Taking place after the ludicrous live-action third film (in ancient Japan no less), the adolescent assassin amphibians have to battle the foot clan once more sans Shredder. There’s some brooding, some teamwork and a lot of action. Shallow story aside (it’s about turtles vs evil for crissakes), the battle scenes are awesome like a rain-drenched rooftop brawl between Raphael and Leonardo. TMNT comes in both Blu-ray and HD-DVD flavors with an astounding digital transfer showcasing solid blacks and miniscule details. In addition, both versions have a lossless Dolby TrueHD 5.1 mix, which sounds incredible in all the fight scenes. Get it for your kids… or just lie and say you have kids. At least start dating.
