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DVD Panic Room (3-Disc Special Edition)
An effective exercise in "confined cinema," Panic Room is a finely crafted thriller that ultimately transcends the thinness of its premise. David Koepp's screenplay is basically Wait Until Dark on steroids, so director David Fincher (Seven, The Game) compensates with elaborate CGI-assisted camera moves, jazzing up his visuals while a relocated New York divorcée (Jodie Foster) and her daughter (Kristen Stewart) fight for their lives against a trio of tenacious burglars (Jared Leto, Forest Whitaker, Dwight Yoakam) in their new Manhattan townhouse. They're safe in a customized, impenetrable "panic room," but the burglars want what's in the room's safe, so mother and daughter (and Koepp and Fincher) must find clever ways to turn the tables and persevere. Suspense and intelligence are admirably maintained, with Foster (who replaced the then-injured Nicole Kidman) riffing on her Silence of the Lambs resourcefulness. It's not as viscerally satisfying as Fincher's previous thrillers, but Panic Room definitely holds your attention. --Jeff Shannon
Review(s): DVD Panic Room (3-Disc Special Edition)
It Was Supposed To Be The Safest Room In The House!
Not that there was anything wrong with the picture and sound of the previous Superbit release. But now Panic Room returns in a package that truly contains every imaginable extra, and then some.
Unlike director David Fincher's Se7en, The Game and Fight Club, the plot is very streamlined. This has been a disappointment to some, but it fits the kind of movie this is perfectly. The point here is to get the audience biting its collective nails. The suspense is excruciating, and the film can take its place among such single-setting woman-in-peril classics as Night Must Fall and Wait Until Dark. Unlike those play-based stories, Panic Room is extremely cinematic, with Fincher's characteristic visual flair deploying in coldly exhilarating fashion from the opening credits on.
Gasp. Wheeze. "I surrender," he cried, buried under the weight of a seemingly endless number of features. If you have any iota of curiosity about the film left unsatisfied by this collection, then you seriously need to get a life.
--Disc One--
Disc One, apart from a handful of trailers for other prestige films, comes with three commentary tracks. David Fincher's tells us a lot not just about the film, but about the director himself, showing him to be a thoughtful, deeply engaged artist, whose care and love of the medium extends to a pretty thoroughgoing philosophy about everything from opening credits to the value of preview screenings. (I will no longer be surprised by the fact that Fincher's film consistently have some of the most striking and original credit sequences in contemporary cinema.) Track 2 has writer David Koepp discussing the scripting process, and he has brought along screenwriting legend William Goldman to act as an interviewer. Track 3 has cast members Foster, Whitaker and Yoakam, recorded separately, discussing their experiences with the production.
--Disc Two--
Now things get really involved. Disc 2 takes pre-production and production as its focus. The pre-production section featurettes are:
The Testing Phase, which shows how lenses and other equipment is chosen.
"Safe Cracking School" - behind-the-scenes footage of the filmmakers learing the finer points of, well, safe-cracking.
Next up on disc 2 we have Previsualizations. Think of previsualization as computer-generated, animated storyboards. In this section:
Creating Previs - Previs Demo (with optional commentary) -- here you see this process in action.
Habitrail Film -- essentially a computer-animated blueprint of the house, showing the movements for the elevator chase sequence.
Multi-angle feature - Here you can compare visually the storyboards vs the finished film or the previs vs the film, and the audio can be 1) the raw sound from the set; 2) commentary by the storyboardist; 3) the final mix; or 4) commentary by previs outfit PLF founder and animator Colin Green.
Now the features shift to the actual production phase, and this area is further developed on Disc 3. On Disc 2, you have "Shooting Panic Room" - an hour-long making-of documentary. Also included here is a make-up featurette.
--Disc Three--
The production features continue on disc three with a breakdown of four different sequences. You can view these in various stages: script, storyboards and video tests, on-set shooting, and the dailies.
19 visual FX featurettes (plus introduction) - These could have been packaged more reasonably as one documentary with chapter selections, but there you have it.
Scoring - another multi-angle feature, showing the scoring of 4 cues. Watch the orchestra at work by itself or in tandem with the image of the scene being scored.
Sound Design - a featurette with interviews with the men responsible here: Ren Klyce and David Prior.
Digital Intermediate - find out all about colour timing. As you can see, a lot of these extras are extremely technical.
Super 35 Explanation - if, indeed, you are getting lost in all the jargon, here's an essay by David Prior that explains most of the principle terms.
For once, we have truth in advertising. This is a "special edition" in every sense of the term. A fine suspense film, exhaustively analyzed.
BORING & ABSURD
WHAT HAPPENED TO MY BELOVED JODIE???? THIS MOVIE IS BY FAR HER WORST ONE... ONLY ENTERTAINING IF YOU'RE ABLE NOT TO THINK [NOT EVEN SLIGHTLY] ABOUT THE PLOT... IF YOU DO YOU WILL FIND IT ILLOGICAL AND FULL OF GAPS.
I MEAN WHO CAN SPEND THOUSANDS OF BUCKS BUILDING A "HOME BUNKER" AND FORGETS TO PUT A POLICE SIREN, OR AT LEAST A CELL PHONE???]
Not one of David Fincher's best but still good.
Panic room is a pretty good thriller from David Fincher who has made seven, the game and fight club and if you know those films then you'll expect the same dark and moody atmosphere in this film and I didn't mind since hes a realy good director and knows how to make a nice shot like when he moves the camera all across the room as we see the three burgulars or criminals trying to sneak in the house from outside. The story starts out with Meg Altman (Jodie Foster) and her daughter Sarah who are staying at their New York apartment that has a special built in panic room, they have just purchased it but unfortunatly thier first night doesn't go to well when three criminals dicide to break in and steal whats inside the panic room. Meg Altman is a newly divorced woman which explains who she can afford an expensive appartment with a panic room, her husband is probably filthy rich. The film was great as it has afew twists and turns as each person is trying to outsmart the other including a scene where the criminals try to gas them out of there. The criminals are played by Forest Witicker, Dwight Yokum and Jared Leto who's character is an idiot basicely. The only flaw with this film was that the criminals seemed like the three stooges and they weren't as intimidating as I thought they were and sometimes it was hard to take them seriously but otherwise it was pretty good and I highly recomend you watch this film.
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One Hour Photo may be more civilized than Taxi Driver, but it's just as effectively creepy. Like Martin Scorsese's classic, this riveting character study is so compassionately detailed that we sympathize with poor Sy Parrish (Robin Williams) even as he grows increasingly unhinged. Sy is a meticulously dedicated one-hour-photo technician, but the pictures he processes--particularly those belonging to the successful, seemingly happy family of Nina and Will Yorkin (Connie Nielsen, Michael Vartan)--turn into the unhealthiest kind of obsession. The Yorkins' snapshots portray a joyful life that the lonely and traumatized Sy could never hope to achieve, and he sinks deeper and deeper into the solace they bring... until evidence of infidelity turns him into a seething crucible of... More Info about this DVD Actor(s): Robin Williams - Connie Nielsen - Michael Vartan Director(s): Mark Romanek DVD Release Date: Released the 18 February 2003 Usually ships in 24 hours
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As a more conventional follow-up to his innovative thriller Memento, Christopher Nolan's Insomnia offers ample proof that his skills are genuine. A superbly crafted remake of the 1997 Norwegian thriller, this moody police procedural is transplanted to a remote Alaskan town, where a veteran Los Angeles detective (Al Pacino) arrives to investigate the murder of a teenaged girl. Professional tragedy collides with psychological turmoil as the detective suffers from sleeplessness under the region's perpetual daylight, and a local rookie cop (Hilary Swank) begins to suspect that truths are being hidden as the disturbing case unfolds. While the Alaskan setting intensifies the atmospheric mystery, Pacino's bleary-eyed disorientation adds a rich layer to his character's erratic... More Info about this DVD Actor(s): Al Pacino - Robin Williams - Hilary Swank Director(s): Christopher Nolan DVD Release Date: Released the 15 October 2002 Usually ships in 24 hours
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