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TV show review: CONTINUUM season 4
PHOTOGRAPHY

WORLD WAR Z Blu-ray/ DVD combo

review by David Blackwell

 

DETAILS:  122 minutes (unrated)/ 116 minutes (PG-13- DVD), six featurettes, digital copy

VIDEO:  2.40:1 (Anamorphic Widescreen) 1080p High Definition

AUDIO (Blu-ray):  English 7.1 DTS-HD MA, French 5.1 Dolby Digital, Spanish 5.1 Dolby Digital, Portuguese 5.1 Dolby Digital, English Audio Description

AUDIO (DVD):  English 5.1 Dolby Digital, French 5.1 Dolby Digital, Spanish 5.1 Dolby Digital, English Audio Description

Subtitles:  English, French, Spanish, Portuguese

 

STUDIO:  Paramount Pictures/ Plan B Entertainment/ Skydance Productions/ GK Films/ Hemisphere Media Capital

Theatrical RELEASE DATE:  6-21-2013

Blu-ray/ DVD RELEASE DATE:  9-17-2013

Former UN investigator Gerry Lane (Brad Pitt) is called in to find the source of the zombie plague that has overrun the world.  His family (wife and two daughters) are safe aboard a naval ship while Gerry’s investigation takes him to South Korea and Jerusalem (Israel) as he searches for the source so a cure can be put together to stop the spread of the infection.

 

WORLD WAR Z started as a book written by Max Brooks which Brad Pitt’s Plan B saw as a book to adapt into a movie (or even a trilogy).  It had a troubled production which resulted in Damon Lindelof and Drew Goddard writing a new third act which resulted in about 30 to 40 minutes ending up on the cutting room floor including the Battle of Moscow (which only a few seconds of it is seen in the climax now).  The first two thirds is an intense action thriller before switching to a drama with moments of tension.  Marc Forster does a good job directing WORLD WAR Z and Brad Pitt brings in a competent performance as Gerry (even if it isn’t spectacular) where he does enough to sell you on the guy who wants to get the job done and keep his family safe.

 

WORLD WAR Z is the type of movie you need the big scale to show what a zombie pandemic would do to the world and how it would be approached.  It makes me want to track down the book and read it.   I wonder if the film will make enough money to greenlight a sequel (but I hope thyme have a finished script without having to go back and spend $50 million to shoot a new third act) as it will have to make over $400 million to break even on the $200 million budget (and that doesn’t even factor in the money spent to promote it).  I enjoyed WORLD WAR Z even though the third act is different from the first two third’s action thriller drive.  You could argue on one hand the third act is necessary to bring a resolution to Gerry’s quest and open the door for a sequel while it does seem a little out of place to the pacing set by the film in the first 90 minutes.  I want to see the movie again, but I am more curious on what extras will show on the blu-ray (hopefully the original third act in the deleted scenes or an alternate cut option to show how the movie was originally cut together).  WORLD WAR Z will make some money, but it remains to be seen if enough will be made to convince Paramount to make a sequel.   It is a good action thriller which has a quieter third act which does fit with how the film’s logic works even though you will have to get past some of the obvious clichés written in to drive the movie’s plot at times.   Go see WORLD WAR Z so a sequel can get made.

 

SPECIAL FEATURES:

The Blu-ray could have been a great special edition instead of a disc with average produced EPK standard features.   They omit several things that could have made this a great special features disc and it sounds like director Marc Forester doesn’t want some of the missing stuff on a special edition version either (which is a shame).   The blu-ray doesn’t feature any of the deleted scenes from the unfinished original third act they discarded in favor of the rewritten version which takes place in Wales.  They could have created a featurette around it in addition to explaining why they changed the third act instead of completely ignoring it in the production featurettes.  Also no theatrical trailer or a featurette on the book that the movie is very loosely based on are included on the disc.

 

ORIGINS- Brad Pitt and the producers talk about the origins of how the movie rights of a then unpublished book were picked up and developed into a movie while the book became a hit.

LOOKING TO SCIENCE- the producers and scriptwriter J Michael Straczynski talk about the behavior of zombies while this featurette also covers the origins of zombies.   Evolutionary biologist David Hughes and science writer Carl Zimmer focus on how the behavior of zombies for the film was drawn from nature and the behavior of ants.

 

PRODUCTION which is split up into four featurettes:

OUTBREAK- how they used Glasgow to stand-in for Philadelphia with some help from some CGI and green screen

THE JOURNEY BEGINS- how they used green screen and CGI to enhance a few sets like the ship landing sequence

BEHIND THE WALL- how the production used Malta to stand-in for Jerusalem and enhanced the zombie scenes with CGI in part or full.  Also they talk about the casting of the director’s friend in his first acting role as an Israeli character (the tenth man who would disagree with the other nine) and how the female character’s name translates into Lieutenant.

CAMOUFLAGUE- a brief part of how they filmed the airplane zombie attack before switching gears to cover the third act (which is the new third act and not the one they originally wrote and shot).

 

Also included in the combo pack is the theatrical cut in standard definition on the DVD and the digital copy of the theatrical cut.   The Target release includes a 48 page art book which includes art from the full ART OF WORLD Z book.

 

FINAL ANALYSIS:  I really love WORLD WAR Z despite some of the logic flaws, but I wish the director and blu-ray content producer Laurent Bouzereau would have included the original third act as a deleted scenes section (and a featurette on the rewrite of the third act).  

 

This blu-ray review is (c)9-23-2013  David Blackwell and cannot be reprinted without permission.  Send all comments to feedback@enterline-media.com

 

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