KUNG FU PANDA (Blu-ray)

Written by Senora Bicho

Po (Jack Black) dreams of being a kung fu master but being an overweight, uncoordinated panda makes working in his father’s noodle restaurant seems more appropriate. One day the tortoise Master Oogway (Randall Duk Kim) has a vision that Tai Lung (Ian McShane), a kung fu master who went bad, will escape from prison so Oogway calls for a ceremony to select the Dragon Warrior, who legend says is to be a supreme kung fu master. The red panda Master Shifu (Dustin Hoffman) believes that one of the Furious Five [Tigress (Angelina Jolie), Viper (Lucy Liu), Monkey (Jackie Chan), Mantis (Seth Rogen) or Crane (David Cross)], whom he has trained, will be chosen. Due to a series of wacky events, Po ends up being selected as the Dragon Warrior.

Shifu and the Furious Five reject him at first and believe that Po is an embarrassment to the group. Shifu is determined to get Po to quit. Po discovers Tai Lung was raised and trained by Shifu and both believed that Tai Lung was to be the Dragon Warrior. When Oogway disagreed, Tai Lung became enraged and attacked the village and that is what caused his imprisonment. Shifu was very hurt as he loved Tai Lung and has refused to love anyone since. Tai Lung does escape from jail and Shifu eventually comes around and trains Po. The Furious Five try and fight Tai Lung themselves but are unsuccessful. Once Po’s training is complete he is given the dragon scroll but it is blank so he returns home and Shifu is going to fight Tai Lung. Once home, Po’s dad teaches him that what makes something special is to believe that it is special. With this knowledge Po rushes off to fight Tai Lung.

The video is presented in 1080p and 2.35:1 ratio and the artwork looks absolutely stunning. This is the disc to impress people who are curious about upgrading to Blu-ray. Just make sure they are prepared to have their eyes pop and their jaws drop. The colors are amazingly vibrant and the detail is extremely impressive from the animals’ fur and feathers to textures of objects that are inconsequential to the movie. The opening sequence has a great style all its own. It’s sad but true that this digital-to-digital transfer weakens the argument for fans of hand-drawn cel animation.

The audio is Dolby TrueHD 5.1. The action sequences make great use of the surround and the subwoofer gets a good workout, but the sound team also treats the quieter moments with just as much attention.

The disc has a lot of extras with a mix for children and adults. The Blu-ray exclusives are “Animator’s Corner,” which uses picture-in-picture to show storyboards and interviews to explain the film’s creation, and “Trivia Track,” a pop-up feature that is self-explanatory. Both can be accessed while the movie is running. BD-Live feature offers “A Day in the Life: A Shaolin Monk in Training” and “Po Around the World.”

Most of the other extras are presented in high definition. “Meet the Cast” is a featurette that introduces the characters and their voice actors. “Pushing the Boundaries” highlights the animation, and “Sound Design” focuses on the sound of the movie. “Mr. Ping’s Noodle House” is a standard-definition segment featuring Alton Brown the host of Iron Chef America that illustrates how to make noodles, and “How to Use Chopsticks” is just what it says. “Conservation International: Help Save Wild Pandas” provides information about pandas, encourages protecting them and tells how. “Dragon Warrior Training Academy” is a game that gives players the opportunity to become a dragon warrior. “Printables & Weblinks” is accessible through a computer. There’s also a music video for “Kung Fu Fighting” by Cee-Lo, “Learn the Panda Dance”, “Do You Kung Fu?”, a DreamWorks animation jukebox, DreamWorks trailers, and more.

However, what’s surprisingly absent is the 25-minute animated film Secrets of the Furious Five that is available on DVD. It’s almost inexplicable that it wouldn’t be included, but this is no doubt some terrible idea by some marketing weasel. Even if there were no room to add on the disc in its current state, surely fans would be willing to pass on some of the extras to have this altogether. If it doesn’t appear on the Kung Fu Panda 2 Blu-ray, Dreamworks should be embarrassed and I will encourage people to steal themselves a copy.

I really enjoyed Kung Fu Panda, the story was fun and interesting and can captivate both kids and adults. The characters are well developed for a cartoon and the voice selections are perfect. Jack Black is the star of the show and doesn’t disappoint; he is perfect as the bumbling lovable panda. Plus, the Blu-ray disc is marvelous. Even if you don’t have children, you should give this one a chance.

WANTED Has Too Much That Isn’t

Written by Hombre Divertido

Wanted (2008) does have Angelina Jolie and Morgan Freeman, cool special effects, a pounding soundtrack, and at points, a frenetic pace, yet still manages to be boring and predictable.

James McAvoy plays Wesley, a cubicle-dwelling loser, who is recruited by Fox (Jolie) to join The Fraternity, a group of assassins run by Sloan (Morgan Freeman). Wesley is told that his father, who abandoned him as a child, was a recently killed legendary member of the Fraternity. Wesley is to be trained to follow in his father’s footsteps and eventually enact revenge on his father’s killer. Said training takes up a ridiculous amount of the movie, as does the miraculous healing process that the injured go through by being glazed like a Krispy Kreme doughnut.

Wesley eventually gets on board in a motivation switch that is as muddled as the rest of the script. Though most of this is bad, it fails in comparison to the absurdity that is the ending to the clunker.

Why Jolie and Freeman chose this project is a huge question, but their performances are satisfactory, as is that of McAvoy. It is the script (written by Michael Brandt, Derek Haas and Chris Morgan, based on the comic books by Mark Millar and J.G. Jones) that is the disappointment here, as even the romance between Wesley and Fox that is alluded to in the trailers never materializes.

Director Timur Bekmambetov does his best to make this script exciting, and the special effects are some of the best of the summer thus far (except for the sequence at the end with the rats), but the audience will see every turn coming long before it approaches.

Recommendation: Skip it. It may appeal to the fans of the comic books, but unfortunately it’s far too bloody for anyone that age, and too dumb for anyone older.