Monsters, Inc. Collector´s Edition (2 Discs) (UK)

THIS IS THE BEST DISNEY DVD EVER.

THIS IS ABOUT MONSTERS WHO SCARE KIDS TO GET POWER TO THEIR CITY. BUT THE MAIN VILLAIN (RANDALL) CHEATS BY SCARING KIDS OFF DUTY TO BREAK A RECORD, WHICH GETS A KID NAMED BOO TO ENTER THE MONSTER INC.

THEN THE HEROES SULLEY AND MIKE HAVE TO HELP BOO GET BACK HOME AND AVOID RANDALL (WHO IS A CHAMELEON).

BEST FILM I HAVE SEEN FOR A LONG WHILE WITH LAUGHS, TEARS AND EXCITEMENT.

THE SOUND IS TOP NOTCH 5.1. DOLBY DIGITAL AND EXCELLENT DTS SOUND.

THE QUALITY OF VIDEO IS SUPERB.

NOW THE EXTRAS ARE SO GREAT WITH A NEW AMINATED CARTOON CALLED MIKE`S NEW CAR WHICH IT IS ONE OF THE BEST SHORTS EVER. OUTTAKES, TRAILERS, BEHIND THE SCENES AND EASTER EGGS.

MAKING THIS THE BEST 2 DISC DVD EVER.

I LOVE IT TO BITS.

This is a truly magnificent film that anyone with a vague sense of humour should watch… it is a truly wonderful piece of filmmaking. I love the fact that a film without any swearing, violence or nudity can be such a fantastically entertaining film. It is comedy at its best.

The disc itself is also worthy of much praise… video and audio quality are pretty much faultless, and the extra features… oh dear god the extra features. there are just so many quality extras. God bless Disney & Pixar in all their glory, for proving (once again) that quality and quantity can actually form as one. There are so many extras it's impossible to get into without me dribbling, and risk shorting out my PC… suffice to say that as far as I am concerned either one of the two shorts ('For the Birds' and 'Mike's New Car') that come with this 2 disc set are worth the purchase alone. This is what DVD is all about.

Buy it, and buy it now…… what are you still reading for?!?! Didn't you listen the first time!?

Despite my best attempts not to, I feel some 10s coming along. yup, there they are!

Story Synopsis

Monsters Inc. is the largest scare factory in the monster world and the top Kid-Scarer is James P. Sullivan (John Goodman), a huge, intimidating monster with blue fur, large purple spots and horns, known as "Sully" to his friends. His Scare Assistant, best friend and roommate is Mike Wazowski (Billy Crystal), a lime green, opinionated, feisty monster. And visiting from the human world is Boo, a tiny girl who turns the monster world upside down and teaches Sully and Mike that laughter is more powerful than a scream.

Disc Information
Finding Nemo Previe

Audio Commentary

Sound Effects Only Mix

`For The Birds` : Academy Award Winning Animated Short

`Mike`s New Car` :Animated Short

Outtakes

Monster TV Treats

Ponkickies 21 Animation

Disney Storytime

If I Didn't Have You Music Video

Company Play Program

On The Job With Mike And Sulley

Welcome To Monsters Inc

Your First Day

History Of The Monster World

Employee Handbook

Monster Of The Month

Scare Cards

Pixar's Fun Factory

Pixar Air Show

Story Is King

Monsters Are Real

Original Treatment

Deleted Scenes

Original Opening

Storyboard To Film Comparison

Cast Of Characters

What Makes A Great Monster

Character Designs

Monstropolis

Setting The Scene

Colour Scripts

Master Lighting

Location Flyarounds

Monstropolis Art Gallery



Guide To In Jokes

Animation Process

Early Tests

Opening Title

Hand Parts

Shots Department

Production Demonstration

Monster Song

Sound Design

Biaural Recording

Easter Eggs

Clips From The US Premiere

Trailers

TV Spots

International Inserts

Poster Gallery

Multi Language

Clip Reel



DVD Picture
Without going into depth, let's say that Monsters Inc is blessed with an utterly sumptuous and literally eye popping digital image. Using Pixar's superb direct digital image, transferred from the original digital cache file, this is as perfect as it gets. Colours are fully saturated, edge definition and sharpness are without fault, and there are absolutely no jaggies, artefacts, or blocking effects visible.

Also worthy of note, aside from the technical aspects, is the absolutely wonderful sense of depth to the image. Viewed in a darkened environment, the picture simply leaps out of the screen, Sully's gorgeously animated fur is rendered so well, both as a master stroke of CG animation and in pure imagery terms, that watching Monsters Inc is like watching a window to the world !

For the best example the opening sequence inside the test room has some of the best shading and lighting effects I've seen yet in a CG animated feature, and it really draws you in - at times it's easy to forget this is compressed picture data, the image is THAT good.

Put simply, until HD-DVD arrives (a long while yet) Monsters Inc can hold its head high and sit with its sister productions, Toy Story 1 & 2, and A Bug's Life, on the highly impressive 'reference quality' list. Until all movies are made this way, they can look to stay there for quite some time yet.

The benchmark which all animated DVD's should follow.

DVD Soundtrack
As with Toy Story 2, and A Bug's Life, Monsters Inc has been given the aural blessing by Academy Award winning sound designer Gary Rydstrom and his team of people from Skywalker Sound. To the uneducated, Rydstrom is the master behind the spectacular sound of (deep breath) : Saving Private Ryan, Jurassic Park, Minority Report, Disney's Atlantis, The Haunting and Star Wars Episode 1 just to name a few. What Spielberg does for the camera, this guy does for sound. The extraordinary lengths in which Rydstrom and his team have gone to achieve the superbly crafted sound here is to be saluted with honour.

The superb Dolby Digital Surround EX and dts ES 6.1 Matrix soundtracks are surely pushing the boundaries of multichannel audio in an animated feature. Every single element is intertwined to create a sonic tapestry that will both excite and delight in equal measure. The sense of space all around is stunning. Voices have been mixed to pan across the image, giving the sound thoroughly impressive depth at the front, whilst incidental effects such as people calling from off camera, or objects falling or being thrown, all have their own place in the stunning discrete landscape. The unbelievable chase through the door chamber towards the films finale is a tour de force, with aggressive, fully directional 360-degree sound: the sound of the doors clunking and clattering all around engulfs the listener in a most impressive way.

Did I say bass ? My word, if there was one soundtrack that could cook the sub, this is it ! From Sully's subtle footsteps, to the zany action of the sled sequence in the Antarctica sequence, Monsters Inc has low frequency effects in abundance, a now particular trademark in every Rydstrom mix.

And to round off, the overall fidelity of the recording is absolutely superb. Randy Newman's excellent score comes across in all it's jazzy, raspy glory. Voices have bite and warmth, and sound effects have impressive clarity, all adding up to one superb soundtrack. Monsters Inc is yet another state of the art mixes from the team at Skywalker sound, and a near reference quality mix to show off your system. Stupendous!

Reviewer`s ratings
So what's it like ? Well, this is certainly a Pixar movie, no other animation studio does it quite like these guys, the subtle humour, the little in-jokes, the absolutely stunning animation, the voices, the script, the story - all the Pixar trademarks are here, and in big style. However, whilst I love Monsters Inc (go on, call me a big kid !) it's just missing that last ounce of magic that made Toy Story 2 the movie it was.

Everything is right, it's just there seems to be that little something that doesn't click the whole thing into perfection. This is definitely more squarely aimed at the kids for sure - though the adult overtones remain in hilarious style (the visit to Antarctica with the abominable snowman is a cracker: upon entering his cave, he offers them snow cones, which are yellow in colour, after initial refusal, he pipes up, "Hey c'mon, it's lemon !" Snow, yellow staining, do the math…).

Perhaps it's that the story seems to focus too much on Mike and Sully. Steve Buscemi's character, Randall, is great, but half way through he's barely evident in the movie, which sort of takes things off on a tangent a little. To be fair, the director acknowledges this, and to be even fairer (if the word existed !!) this is NOT directed by John Lasseter. He was only Executive producer this time round, so maybe the influence of another, equally capable but not quite as talented director proves the slight undoing here.

Let's not be picky though, Monsters Inc is an absolute first class piece of 'film-making', to put it in the loosest term ! The achievements here of the entire Pixar crew are beyond criticism, the amount of painstaking work behind the millions of frames of animation is a wonder to behold, and the extras on disc 2 show all this in great detail. Indeed, the team at Pixar are genuinely passionate about their work, and for this I am willing to forgive any slight holes in the story and say this: whether you're 5, whether you're 85, Monsters Inc is an absolutely brilliant piece of modern animation, married to a great story with some excellent celebrity voice acting, and all presented on a stunning 2 disc DVD that simply cannot be missed.

I wanted to be harsh but I can't, I have watched this around 6 times already, and each time I fall deeper in love with the movie. Get it now…

Oh and before I finish, check out the new animated short, Mike's New Car, worth the existence of the second disc alone !

Monsters Inc is the fourth feature length computer animated film from Pixar Animation Studios; and if you look back to "Toy Story" (1995) and "A Bug Life" (1998) then the advances in technology are nothing short of stunning.
It`s not just the computer animation that make their films so special, it`s their understanding of film techniques, story, character and dialog that comes from John Lasseter`s background in working on such films as "Mickey`s Christmas Carol" (1983) for Disney and "Young Sherlock Holmes" (1985) for ILM before he helped set up Pixar.

In the town of Monstropolis, Sulley and Mike work at Monsters Inc a company that collects screams from children of the human world and converts the screams into power. Sulley is the top Scarer, and near the all time scare record, however, he has a rival, Randall Boggs, who will stop at nothing to get the record.
There is one thing however that scares the monsters - human children. When Randall`s dirty tricks go astray and a child (Boo) enters Monstropolis all sorts of chaos ensues as Sulley and Mike try to return her to the human world without anybody noticing.

Sulley and Mike are (as the trailer said `Just doing their jobs`) and of course fall for the charms of Boo, allowing Randall`s foul plan for capturing human children and submitting them to the scream machine to be tested.

There is fast moving action, lovable monsters and of course slapstick comedy but this is not simply a film for children. These days, for a family film to be successful, it has to appeal to the adults who have taken the children to the cinema, or are watching at home with them, and with so much going on it`s hard for adults not to get drawn into the general situation. While the humour has some distinctly adults joke for obvious reasons. Whilst some of the storyline may be a little scary for small children, it all ends up happily for our heroes. Though the idea that small friendly employee run companies are better than big blank mega corporations is hardly the reality of US business.

There are a lot of in jokes - such as the restaurant named "Harryhausen`s", indeed they have their own `In Jokes` section on the second disc.

The technical quality is as perfect and you can get with a digital source transfer to DVD. The 1.85:1 anamorphic transfer is bright and clear and full of colour. Everything is locked in place; blacks are dark with no noise while the colours are solid and steady with no sign of bleeding. There are two sound options for the film, Dolby 5.1 and a DTS 5.1, both are clean and clear with plenty of atmospheric effects, listen especially to the door room chase sequence. As usual the DTS mix does have the edge with more presence and clarity. Its no real wonder that the TV shops are using `Monsters Inc` as a demonstration disc to show off the TV`s - you could even use it as a disc for showing off your system. (Particularly the comedy version of the THX Logo before the start of the film.)

This two disks collector`s edition has of course the majority of extras on disc 2.
Disc 1 does, however, feature an audio commentary from Pete Docter, Lee Umkrich, John Lasseter and Andrew Stanton. This is an interesting commentary, describing the process of making the film, character and scene development, and an explanation of some of the technology break throughs. It`s not for children though who will rapidly get bored.

Lastly on disc one there is a trailer for the next Pixar movie "Finding Nemo".

The second disc of this collectors set is absolutely packed with material, so much so that I`m only going to review some of it.
The opening menu features two doors, Humans Only and Monsters Only. The Human world concentrates on the world of Pixar and the making of the film while the Monsters door introduces you as a new employee of the Monsters, Inc. factory. The Monsters section is split into three sections, "New Adventures", "Behind the Screams" and "Monsters, Inc. Orientation". In new adventures there is a new four-minute short "Mike`s new car", a collection of "interstitials" made for US TV, a music video of the song "If I Didn`t Have You" and a read along story "Welcome to Monstropolis". You also get "Peek-a Boo: Boo`s door game" and perhaps most interesting some animation created for the Japanese Television "Ponkickies 21" which is just bizarre. "Behind the screams" has yet more animation; "deleted scenes" featured during the end titles and "On the Job with Mike and Sulley" a two-minute "news report" on our heroes. We also get to see "Company Play Program" which was created by Pixar to be the actual program from the play featured in the film. The last section in the Monsters section is "Orientation". There are two types of material here, video and static picture galleries. The short animations make up the video section "Welcome to Monster`s Inc", "Your First Day" and "History of Monster World". The static galleries introduce to the world with pictures and text, most amusing is the "Employee Handbook" with such gems as "Hazard I.D Symbols" and "How to avoid Repetitive Scare Injury".

The bulk of the material is in the "Human world" and includes all the usual material you`d find on a disc that explains the film making process. So you get "Early animation tests" (with a commentary by Thomas Porter, Steve May and Michael Fong) "Guide to in -jokes" (21 page still gallery with explanations), "International Inserts" (replacing English with local languages in the film), picture galleries and behind the scenes material.
One particularly strange piece is the section on "Binaural recording", watch and listen with headphones and be amazed. (Binaural recording had a brief life in the late 1970`s and early 1980`s - the BBC even did some plays in the format, but it would appear to have died with the advent of multi-channel recording. So why there is a binaural sound test is a secret only known by someone at Pixar.)

"For the Birds" the Academy Award winning short that played before Monsters Inc in cinemas is a joy to watch again. Disney has been doing great work recently with their premiere releases and I have to say that the collector`s edition of "Monsters Inc" is no exception. However, on one of this sites forums, there has been a number of people who have had trouble with the extra disc and even the menus, so it would seem that Disney are still not catering for all DVD players.

Whoever at Disney is responsible for sub-editing their boxes and leaflets did not do their job. On the box it is stated that there is a `Surround Sound Effects Mix` - the film is in 1.85:1 Widescreen - there is only a Dolby 5.1 soundtrack. On the leaflet it says there is a choice of presentation of Fullscreen 1.33:1 or Widescreen 1.85:1 and that the sound is Dolby 5.1 Ex soundtrack or Dolby 5.1Ex sound effects only track.
In actual fact what you get is the film in 1.85:1 Widescreen a Dolby 5.1 soundtrack AND a DTS 5.1 soundtrack (the DTS logo is on the disc).

Monsters, Inc is a worthy addition to any collection of family films.

The story is dodgy, It`s not as much fun as a bugs life or the Original Toy Story but there are some funny moments to savour, plus the usual sentimental claptrap...