Blu-ray Movie Reviews

Sean Penn has been impressing me more and more with both his roles in film and his efforts behind the camera. Into The Wild is a moving film about a young college graduate that decides to go off the radar and embark on an adventure across the country and into the wilds of Alaska. Along the way he makes friends and faces some interesting challenges in the wild. The film is based on true events and I must say it was quite inspiring in spirit. The photography is outstanding, as is the score and original songs by Pearl Jam front man Eddie Vedder. Newcomer Emile Hirsch also gives a stellar performance as the young traveler finding his place and living his dreams.

This was one of the last HD DVD releases from Paramount and continues their trend of outstanding HD presentations. They really were putting out some great looking transfers near the end of the format. As I mentioned before the photography of this film is stunning, especially in the wide open landscapes of the southwest and the Yukon area of Alaska. Detail and depth are first rate and fine object detail is as good as I've seen on any HD release. Like Paramount's recent release of Zodiac the image is just impeccable in terms of detail and how clean and defined the image appears. Fine film grain is preserved perfectly and I didn't notice anything in terms of distracting elements. I am anxious to see if they keep up the trend with future Blu-ray releases later this year.

Paramount was getting away from including lossless audio soundtracks on their releases, which was a bit of a disappointment. Hopefully this won’t be the case now that they've committed themselves to the Blu-ray format which features increased storage capacity and higher transfer rates. That isn't to say that this soundtrack is disappointing, I just want to see lossless or uncompressed soundtracks supported across the board. The highlight of this soundtrack for me was the score and original songs by Eddie Vedder. The rich vocals added a lot to the emotion of the film and the score was balanced perfectly with the onscreen action. It literally added another character to the story. The sound design relied heavily on the ambience of the outdoor environment and the 5.1 mix does a great job with spatial cues and putting you there. The soundstage is extremely wide and everything is balanced nicely from channel to channel. Dialogue sounds very natural in balance and timbre and imaging in the front soundstage was solid. A solid presentation in every regard.

Extras are a bit thin on this one. There are two featurettes that seem to be spliced from the same feature. The first includes interviews with the cast and a look at the story. The second has more to do with production and focuses on the process and some of the issues Hirsch had to deal with in character. The trailer is also included.

It would be hard to walk away from this one unmoved. Most could only dream of being brave enough to take a journey like this one. Penn has done an outstanding job bringing this story to the big screen and Paramount has done a wonderful job with the A/V presentation. Let's hope they don't wait too much longer to get into the mix again.