Release Date: March 04, 2007.
Film Rating:
/ Voices of: Ray Romano (Manfred), John Leguizamo (Sid), Denis Leary (Diego)
Written by: Michael J. Wilson
Directed by: Chris Wedge
The Coolest Event In 16,000 Years.
Rewind time to 20,000 years ago and the earth would look like a very different place…the landscape would be different. Rivers and lakes would be flowing in the place of dry canyons today. Many unknown creatures would be running around; either extinct or a near-ancestor to a present-day animal. The story of Ice Age takes place at the beginning of our last ice age; at the moment of when the glaciers were beginning to crawl south into North America. It was a time when the ice bridge was formed between Siberia and Alaska allowing many different species of mammals to migrate there as well. It was also during the time when Neanderthal (pronounced Nee-ander-taal) and man coexisted before the Neanderthals became extinct.
In this story, a bitter woolly mammoth named Manfred has the unfortunate run-in with a clumsy and defenceless Sloth named Sid. Sid needs a friend and Manfred wants him to get lost. All of the animals are migrating south, but Manfred is taking the lone trip north to the glaciers for reasons unknown to us at this time.
Bad-luck has it that the two of them are given a baby Neanderthal from a wounded mother and she hopes they will protect it from the sabre-toothed tiger named Diego. Diego wanted the baby for his “boss” as revenge because these Neanderthals killed half of his pack for clothes. Diego, frustrated that Manfred and Sid have this baby agrees to help the two of them find the father of the baby, but of course, Diego has his own agenda too.
Sarcasm is what makes this movie funny, especially because of Ray Romano as the voice behind Manfred. I can’t say his voice is warm and fuzzy like the creature but that’s why John Leguizamo is there for the voice (and comic relief) of Sid. The movie has its slow and exciting moments, but one thing I am thankful for is that it’s not very “busy” for an animation. The backdrops are very simple and there isn’t a lot going on in each scene unlike what we see in Robots or The Incredibles. Simple movies like Ice Age are relieving sometimes. They cause fewer headaches.
When referring back to my Super Cool DVD Edition released virtually two years ago from this Blu-ray disc’s release date, the image of this Blu-ray disc mops the floor with the DVD. This will be the new animation demo disc in retail outlets: the image is bright, adequately colourful, and loaded with three dimensional images. What I found strikingly 3-D were scenes involving the Neanderthals. For instance, when the baby’s mother is in the water, grasping onto the rock for dear life, the sense of visual space is superb as she pushes her baby up to Manfred and Sid. Her face looks polished from being wet, and the foreground and background images are wonderfully created. I didn’t quite see this sense of realism in every scene with all animals, but overall it’s quite incredible. Close attention to colour and contrast seem to have been taken care of in this film. The cool colour tone and lighting gives the feel of loss and death, as well as for the ice age; both go hand in hand. The edges around objects and characters have a natural smooth texture to them rather than a distinct and sharp look. No edge enhancement or compression artefacts were noticed during my viewing. The image is shown in its correct aspect ratio of 1.85:1 and the “black bar” rests more at the top of the image.
As with all other Fox releases, the 5.1 audio is encoded with DTS-HD Master Audio. While I’m still unable to decode this lossless codec, listening to the core 1.5MBPS DTS encoding on this BD betters the Dolby Digital encode on the DVD. The soundtrack has been designed to delivering the sound of a barren landscape. There is mild ambience throughout the film but there is always something going on in all channels at an appropriate sound level. All channels work together to create phantom imaging to the sides and center-rear. Most welcoming is the use of directional dialogue across the front channels that sounds tonally balanced between speakers. When watching films on an 8-foot screen, directional dialogue using phantom imaging between channels is very appreciative because the sound of the image is easily localizable right on the screen.
During the film’s intense moments, such as with Scrat’s first acorn adventure, the soundtrack does get a little louder but doesn’t nearly come close to any high SPL we’ve heard in other films. In the past I’ve criticized the audio of this soundtrack as being a tad too bright because I’ve heard it on countless audio systems during my years in audio retail. Most of the time it was on smaller treble-boosting systems, but I didn’t hear this effect this time in my system most likely because I’ve changed much of my audio gear to items delivering greater accuracy. Thus, this time around I enjoyed Ice Age much more. The soundstage is wider, the music is bigger and clearer, and sound effects feel more engaging. Most of the bass heard in this film comes from the front channels including the center. These channels are definitely full range in this respect. There is a little bit of dedicated .1 LFE sound and it appears randomly in the film. The most effective use was with the first ice crack at the beginning of the film as well as a few moments closer to the end.
/ TACTILE TRANSDUCER ON/OFF?: ON
It’s “cool” to use a bass shaker for this film. When Scrat pushes that first acorn in the ground, it gave me that extra sinking feeling that was very effective! When the sofa was rumbling with the LFE, it was always an enhancing experience rather than a distracting one.
This Blu-ray disc includes the special features included on the first DVD release, not the Super Cool Edition. Why? I don’t know. Even though this is a BD-25, for an 81-minute film, I’d think that SD features should have been able to fit (except of the Extreme Cool View feature which would need retooling for BD). I’m not a BD authorer so I may be ignorant in this respect. Yet again, I’m forced to keep my DVD for the extras.
This BD only includes the audio commentary by director Chris Wedge and co-director Carlos Saldanha, Scrat’s Missing Adventure featurette (funny!) as well as the 10-minutes worth of deleted scenes also with optional directors’ commentary. Some of the scenes aren’t finished yet they are completed with dialogue. They fill up the entire screen and look very good, regardless.
The disc also has the theatrical teaser and two trailers in high definition – a large step up from the non-anamorphic widescreen trailers on the DVDs.
IN THE END...
Ice Age still remains an animated favourite of mine. It’s simple, nicely paced, and sarcastically funny. It’s not busy and fast moving, relieving the viewer of a big screen headache. Ice Age has never looked and sounded as pristine as it does on this BD. It has all of the resolution one could ask of from the format. Once again, I ask Fox to please include the special features from previous DVD releases. But I’m sure that one day this title will get its special feature treatment again in the future, with more enhancements using the power of the Blu-ray disc format.
Michael Osadciw
March 07, 2007
Review System
