Men in Black (1997)

MEN IN BLACK (BLURAY) (BLU-RAY DISC) Product Description

 Details of Blu-ray DVD due out on June 17th, 2008
This is a fun movie with lots of elaborate special effects and sets that ought to really benefit from the hi-def treatment. The new Blu-ray release will have a bunch of special features, but only a few not taken from previous releases. Here are the new features:

-- Intergalactic Pursuit: Men in Black multi-player trivia game
-- Ask Frank the Pug interactive game
-- Alien subtitle track

Probably not much there, for most of us, but the old features are still plenty:

-- telestrator commentary with director Barry Sonnefeld and star Tommy Lee Jones (the telestrator lets them draw on the screen, as it were, like John Madden, but don't expect much extra excitement)
-- technical commentary with Barry Sonnenfeld, alien make-up effects guru Rick Baker, and three folks from Industrial Light & Magic
-- extended and alternate scenes (five scenes)
-- "Metamorphosis of Men In Black" (on how the project developed, 23 minutes)
-- Visual Effects Scene Deconstructions, with optional technical commentary (two scenes analyzed)
-- Character Animation Studies (animation of three characters analyzed)
-- Scene Editing Workshop (you get to edit some scenes)
-- Storyboard Comparisons
-- Conceptual Art Gallery
-- Production Photo Gallery
-- Men in Black music video with Will Smith and Mikey
-- 2 trailers

Specs: 1.85:1 Widescreen Transfer (1080p), English Dolby TrueHD 5.1, French Dolby TrueHD 5.1, Portuguese Dolby TrueHD 5.1, Spanish Dolby Digital 5.1, Thai Dolby Digital 5.1, subtitles in Arabic, Chinese (Mandarin Simplified), Chinese (Mandarin Traditional), Dutch, English (UK), English (US), French (Parisian), Indonesian / Bahasa, Korean, Portuguese (Brazil), Spanish (Latin Am), Thai.

Men In Black is a spoof/sci-fi/action flick about a super-secret cross between the Immigration and Naturalization Service, FBI X-Files division, and a disinformation office. Tommy Lee Jones and Will Smith are, respectively, a seasoned agent and a new recruit who work to find, legalize, track and police aliens from other worlds, and to hide the fact that such aliens exist. Aliens are given disguises and allowed to live among us as long as they don't cause too much trouble. There is apparently a lot of latitude in enforcing that requirement, since it turns out that Newt Gingrich, Sylvester Stallone and Dennis Rodman are actually aliens.

Beyond that set-up, which is made pretty funny, the plot isn't worth much except as a vehicle to hang a bunch of gags and action sequences on. And that's enough. The heroes fight aggressor aliens and save the Earth and a very small galaxy while remaining (mostly) cool and making wisecracks. What more could you ask for? May 9, 2008

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