..Gary
Dretzka
..Noah
Forrest
..Leonard
Klady
..R.J.
Matson
..David
Poland
..Douglas
Pratt
..Ray
Pride
..Michael
Wilmington
Blade Trinity
Directed by David S. Goyer
Wesley Snipes returns as the ultimate vampire slayer in Blade Trinity, a New Line Home Entertainment two-platter Platinum Series Unrated Version release (N7819, $30). As the third installment in the series, it has to take on more story and less action to be different from the previous two, though there are still plenty of great stunt sequences and mass vampire slaughters to satisfy a viewer's bloodlust. The hero also gets some youthful assistants, in case the franchise should wish to go on without him. The big plot turn in the film is that the vampires dig up the original Dracula, but he doesn't have much of a personality, and he's just one more next-level dude for Snipes' character to waste. The 2004 film delivers what is expected of it and is fully entertaining (Parker Posey plays one of the vampires), but the exuberance that one felt in the middle of the vampire fights, even with the second movie, has dissipated. Immortality has its limitations.
The DVD offers up both the standard 113-minute version and a 122-minute version that features a few more elaborate gore scenes and some more character building sequences. Sometimes a longer version will bog things down, and by the time the finale arrives, you're ready for the movie to end, but for the most part the longer version is a richer, more satisfying presentation of the film. The picture is in letterboxed format only, with an aspect ratio of about 2.35:1 and an accommodation for enhanced 16:9 playback. The color transfer is sharp in all lighting conditions. There is both a 5.1-channel Dolby Digital track with EX-encoding and a crisper DTS track with ES-encoding, and they deliver the action scenes with reasonable gusto. There are optional English and Spanish subtitles.
The longer version has two commentary tracks. On one track, the director, David S. Goyer (he also wrote the screenplays for all three movies) and co-stars Ryan Reynolds and Jessica Biel reminisce about the shoot and share anecdotes about their experiences. They talk about the other cast members, staging the stunts, and the whole milieu surrounding the franchise. Goyer also reveals some of his directing secrets. "Sometimes I would surreptitiously start filming a good 30 seconds before I'd yell, 'Action,' because all you guys would have different ways that you would prepare, and you would do different, interesting things that you were sometimes completely unaware of. I loved doing that. I had hand signals that I would shoot to our first assistant cameraman, and sometimes it meant, 'roll 30 seconds ahead of time,' sometimes it meant, 'roll 30 seconds after we wrap.' You know, occasionally, I would do something like if I, you know, scratch my chin in this way, what that meant to [the cameraman] was to yell that there was a hair in the gate, meaning literally a hair in the gate of the camera so that scene [was] screwed up, but there wasn't really a hair in the gate. And we would announce it to the set because if I felt like the actors were getting really tired and they didn't want to give more. Sometimes the camera crew would take a bullet for something that didn't exist."
The second track has two groups of speakers whose talks are intercut, including Goyer again, producers Peter Frankfurt and Lynn Harris, cinematographer Gabriel Beristain, production designer Chris Gorak and editor Howard E. Smith. They go into more detail about how the sets were constructed, how the Vancouver locations were utilized and other production details, though they also talk about the cast and the story. Beristain explains his methods for covering a scene with more than a half dozen cameras, and Goyer likens it to 'guerrilla filmmaking,' because some of the operators were told to just look around the scene and catch whatever they found interesting.
The second platter contains 107 minutes of production featurettes that give a viewer a clear idea of how the movie came together. There is an 11-minute blooper reel, the highpoint of which is when Biel destroys an expensive camera because her aim with a bow and arrow is so good that she hits it right in the lens. A minute-long alternate ending, which was wisely dropped, sets up a sequel by having the youthful assistants face off against a werewolf; and Goyer has fun with filmmaking by having his director self interview his writer self (each wearing a different shirt) in a 5-minute segment. Two trailers, 7 minutes of animation tests and a still frame gallery of all the elaborate weapons the characters use are also featured.
June 3, 2005
DVD Roundup: This Week's DVD Releases
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