Chicago

It’s no big surprise that after the Oscar winning success of Moulin Rouge, that Chicago went on to be so successful. For the sake of movie musicals, I can only hope Hollywood doesn’t screw up the genre & flood the market. As for the players, it shows a lot of versatility & I personally respect actors more that can do it all (act, sing, & dance). Catherine Zeta Jones, John C. Reilly, Queen Latifah, Renee Zellweger, & Richard Gere all do an excellent job & make wonderfully memorable performances.

When a movie does as well as CHICAGO did, people look forward to the DVD release. Unfortunately, in my opinion, Miramax did a minimal-to-adequate job (especially after the Moulin Rouge Special Edition DVD). First, the one thing that confuses me is the menu. The main menu shows 3 continuos montages & the title graphic. It’s a bit distracting that the montages are stretched, as if taken from the 16×9 master, but squished to fit on the menu. At first I thought it was designed for a 16×9 display but after further testing its the same. The extras are what put a damper on my opinion. So much hype & success, fans of the film would want to see as much as possible about their favorite movie. Instead, we got a directory commentary, a small **-minute featurette, & the deleted scene/song that appeared on the soundtrack. For a 6 time Oscar award winner, I would’ve expected, a few more or at least much longer behind-the-scenes, 2 commentary tracks (director & actors), and maybe bios on the talent.

In terms of presentation of the film, the video & audio quality are great. There weren’t any video artifacts visible to the naked eye & the colors were vibrant & clear. I was glad to see that the movie itself is formatted in Anamorphic 16×9, instead of just a letterboxed 4×3. The audio was done well. Both the DTS 5.1 & DoblyDigital 5.1 sound great, with the DTS just a bit more deeper & powerful.

My Rating: Collector’s Edition

(Note: this is based on the DVD itself, not the movie)