Tune Into FREQUENCY now on Blu-ray (Video Review)

Frequency now on Blu-ray from Warner Bros. Home Video

If you love time-travel and haven’t seen the film Frequency, then you are in for a real treat, for this is not your typical Delorean traveling, Terminator shoot em-up, high-school idiots in a phone-booth type of film. Now on Blu-ray, this clever scifi drama’s premise unites a deceased father (Dennis Quaid) and his older son (James Caviezel) via an atmospheric anomally that opens a window of communication between 1969 and 1999 and their attempt to stop a terrible tragedy before it’s too late…again! I loved this film when it originally came out and have been excited about it’s release from Warner Bros. home-video finally to Blu-ray. I had a chance to review it this week and am here to run down it’s pro’s and cons…just click ahead.

 

 

 

Packaging:

I know this is not one of Warner Bros. more highly popular libary titles, but I’d wished an effort could have been made to give me something a bit more clever and creative for the cover box art. It looked like a poorly photo-shopped crop of Dennis Quaid and James Caviezel was inserted onto the cover with a bad crop and blur job on their heads…this image also greets you when the main menu comes up. Tucked away in my home library with the spine facing me in between Flight of the Navigator and Game of Thrones: Season 1, I guess it doesn’t really matter until I pull it out.

 

Blu-ray menu selections:

There’s this weird scary sounding voice followed by haunting music that repeats far too often while searching around the complex menu (more on that in a sec), if it’s part of the movie soundtrack I surely don’t recall it, nor see a reason it needs to scare the crap out of me like I’m supposed to watching Paranormal Activity: Frequencies of Fright!!!

The menu itself offers up a standard selection of scene selctions, audio, subtitles and special features…but unleasing those special features is where the fun begins. Quite an impressive cornucopia of things to choose from, nothing too new that hasn’t been found on the prior DVD release, but nice that they didn’t skimp out on including these.

Behind the Scenes: A fun story-telling of the science and complexities of making a non-typical, sci-fi time-travel, father and son movie. One of my favorites on the Special Features section.

Deleted Scenes: Eh, nothing too terrific here to radio home to 1999 about, some extended scenes, moments that didn’t drive the story, though my favorite was an extended scene of when 1999 John Sullivan tells his 1969 best pal Gordo to invest when he gets older in something called “Yahoo”

Music Only Track: Oh, if only it was…instead composer Michael Kamen gives a very detailed and very elongated description of every influence and reasoning behind his choices for the music movements composed for this film, why he let the filmmakers include songs like Elvis and Martha and the Vandellas, but he kept the score…musical. I then kept advancing from track to track hoping it was just a brief introduction that went too long and then the film with just the score…but each track had Kamen still explaining…something…and then we’d get about :30 seconds of instrumental gold and then more talking…so I wasnt too impressed with this feature.

Rough 3D Animation/Animation with Lighting/Complex Animation and Conceptual Solar Galleries: Click on these and you get various options to view a 4 part sequence showing the stages of the opening scenes solar flare eruption in the film…easily could have been all linked together and in one option. For the fans of the science behind science-fiction then the additional special features though quite dated in appearance and gain, are still fun.

Solar Science: An indepth look at spacial and atmpspheric anomalies and if solar flares could really create an effect like experienced in the film, especially an aurora borealis over Queens New York! No, they cant, in case you were curious.

Ham Radios: I grew up the son of a Ham Radio operator, so this was a nice profile into the history and now dying breed of Ham Radio and the technology used to talk around the world via radio signals. With the on-going technical advancements since 1999 like the internet, Facebook and Skyping, it won’t be long before this part of society is extinct for sure, if not gone by now. Still, a cool profile piece and tribute to the men and women who were hams.

Commentary: I had just sat thru re-watching the movie and honestly didn’t wish to re-watch with commentary, but it’s offered and appreciated

Creating Natural Phenomenon for Film: As someone who was fascinated that swirling glitter in water made the transporting effect in Star Trek, it was cool to see how they blended real footage of atmospheric anomalies with computer generated effects to make a very realistic aurora borealis effect.

 

 

The Sound:

The DTA-HD MA 7.1 track was impressive! The various firefighting scenes of the film were fantastic, explosions, wood cracking, water spraying, layers of chaos and sirens, very well done. Even details from sound effects added to an atmospheric condition in the heavens to old tubes in the ham radio warming up were given extra love and sweetened to perfection in this. Again quite impressive and sounded better than I’ve ever experienced this film in the past.

The Image:

A great transfer to Blu-ray, the colors, the richness, the balance of light and dark, a nice hint of grain to remind you that this movie still comes from a decade before film started becoming extinct, a truly well handled conversion process which makes up for anything else I may have been unsatisfied with earlier in this review.

Frquency is now available for a great price on Blu-ray and on Amazon, so grab a copy today!

 

Hey John, be sure to get your copy of Frequency on something called Blue-Ray from those Warner brothers, in the year 2012 ok son?

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