Average Reviews:
(More customer reviews)I hope that everyone who had problems playing the first 2 Bond collections had them addressed by now because Volume 3's layout and features is consistent with the previous two. All players that received firmware upgrades after October 2008 should be able to play this set.
Here is my evaluation of the current Bond Blu-ray collection (a work in progress as I'm not fully done with the viewing) - and it's not unlike my impression of the first 2.
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THE GOOD:
- Incredible video quality, most likely better than what the audience saw on release date on some of the older movies.
- Lots of extras, most of them worth watching or listening to.
- Beautiful, innovative packaging.
THE NOT SO GOOD:
- The sound restoration not as good as the video on the early Bonds.
- Some of the 'extras' sections would benefit from a 'play all' option.
- The boxes could be a bit slimmer.
- May require upgrades on certain players if they haven't been upgraded since September-October 2008.
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The overall impression is of quality, inside and out. The box could be a little smaller but the packaging is exquisite. There's a transparent plastic slide cover over a solid cardboard box holding a small binder on which the individual movie disks are attached to pages. Each movie comes on one disc holding the movie itself and in incredible amount of extras.
The menu interface is well organized and there's even some humor in labeling. For example, the option that plays the movie is labeled 'The Mission' while the historic promotional material is found under 'The Propaganda'. Depending on which section you may be, menu options branch into further sub-menus.
The extras are numerous and, for the most part interesting. There are features on the restoration process and we get to learn who did what, why and how. Then, we see contemporary documentaries on the making of the movie and so on. The Goldfinger disc, for example, includes actual radio interviews with Sean Connery, 2 major documentaries on 'the making of' and 'the world of' Goldfinger, about 30 minutes each, original trailers, screen tests, an interview with Honor Blackman (Pussy Galore), even a feature on Bond's Aston Martin. And, amazingly, it all fits on one disc.
The area where some of the older installments show their age is the sound. The audio options include the original sound track which, in the older releases is 'mono' but all movies come with DTS-HD Master Audio 24-bit 5.1 surround as the default. The sound wasn't upgraded and improved to the degree that the picture was but, it's understandable. Going from mono to 5.1 surround is the equivalent of upgrading from black and white to full-color 3-D in the world of images. Commentary sound tracks featuring the director and the cast and crew are also included.
When it comes to the video quality, the best that I can say is that you've got to see it to believe it. The restoration of the older movies started with the actual original negative, which is the one reference copy that's almost never touched. Once the copy was digitized as a 4000 lines resolution digital copy (Bluray is 1080) every frame was reprocessed to eliminate any possible defects from 'dirty optics', such as the proverbial hair that we sometimes see on the older movies to scratches, bad exposure, color brilliance. The restorers' goal for the end result, and this concerns the video only, not the sound quality, was to deliver what would appear to be a contemporary movie with a 60's or 70's theme rather than a 60's or 70's movies. In my view, they succeeded and, surprisingly, the 1964 Goldfinger looks as good as the 1979 Moonraker.
My overall rating is a solid five-stars. Just about everything in this release is superlative: the physical packaging, the interface design, the extras, the video quality. The sound is not so good on the older movies but, given the state of sound restoration technologies, I did not feel compelled to remove a star because the old movies sounded more or less like they did on release date or better.
Click Here to see more reviews about: James Bond Blu-ray Collection Three-Pack, Vol. 3 (Moonraker/ The World is Not Enough / Goldfinger)
Disc 1: Goldfinger Ultimate Edition Blu-ray Widescreen Feature Film
Disc 2: Moonraker Ultimate Edition Blu-ray Widescreen Feature Film
Disc 3: The World Is Not Enough Ultimate Edition Blu-ray Widescreen Feature Film
