"The A-Team," "Despicable Me," "The Town" DVD Reviews

It was a big week on DVD and Blu-Ray. Three movies I really enjoyed in theater, all available this week to own. Let's start with The A-Team. For my theater review, click here. As far as the Blu-Ray goes, there's some cool stuff. You get an extended cut for starters. One of things I touched on in my review was that there were 5 significant action scenes in the film, rather than the standard 3. The Blu-Ray offers up one more, just for good measure!

There's also some cool behind-the-scenes material, along with deleted scenes and a gag reel. Here's all the details from Amazon.com:

The Devil's in the Details: Inside the Action with Joe Carnahan

Deleted Scenes

Gag Reel

A-Team Theme Mash-Up Montage

Plan of Attack

Character Chronicles

Visual Effects Before and After with Commentary by Visual Effects Supervisor James E. Price

Theatrical Trailer

The next big movie to hit video shelves this week was Despicable Me. The movie was sooo good. I was really looking forward to getting the Blu-Ray on this one. In my original review, I mentioned how visually stunning the movie is, the Blu-Ray is out-stand-ing. A ton of goodies, including 3 mini movies featuring the adorable Minions. There are a lot of extras that are a bit different from what you're used to. There's games and recipes, as well as the standard making of footage. Below is the full detail from Amazon.com:

Disc 1 (Blu-ray)

Exclusive on Blu-ray and Double-Pack DVD: 3 All-New Mini-Movies Featuring the Minions

The World of Despicable Me

Despicable Beats

Gru's Rocket Builder

A Global Effort

Despicable Me Game Previews

Commentary with Directors Chris Renaud & Pierre Coffin Featuring the Minions

The Voices of Despicable Me

Super Silly Fun Land

Blu-ray Exclusive Features

Gru-Control - see the making of the film with behind-the-scenes footage and cast interviews with a PIP window

Miss Hattie's Top Secret Cookie Recipe

pocket BLU - featuring the 'Minion Me' and 'Minion Dominion' apps for iPhone & iPad

uHear - Never miss another line of dialogue when you're watching Despicable Me with this feature that instantly skips back a few seconds on your Blu-ray disc and turns on the subtitles

Disc 2 (DVD)

DVD of Despicable Me

Disc 3 (DVD)

Digital Copy of Despicable Me (expires 12/31/11)

Finally we have The Town. From the first time I saw the trailer, I was hooked. Then I watched it and reviewed it, and then I sat and waited for the Blu-Ray. The extras here are nice, but I really wanted more to be honest. There is an extended cut of the film, which is great. But I don't know if this happens to you, but I usually can't remember the original cut frame by frame to notice the extras. But there is SOME behind the scenes stuff. One cool feature is "Ben's Boston" where there's a lot of talk about the various locations in the film.

I wish there was a bit more detail and discussion about the characters and what their various motivations were. Especially Jon Hamm and Chris Cooper's characters! Here is the rest of the goodies from Amazon.com:

Includes theatrical version
Extended cut not seen in theaters
Commentary on both versions by Ben Affleck
Ben's Boston
Segments include: The Cathedral of Boston; Nuns with Guns: Filming in the North End; Pulling Off the Perfect Heist; The Town and more.


Three great movies, three great Blu-Ray discs. I spent some serious money this week and next week should be no different. That's when Salt comes out on Blu-Ray and the third chapter in the Family Guy Star Wars parody. Til then, keep your DVD players on and watch some behind the scenes awesomeness.

"Despicable Me" Review

I thought Pixar had no competition whatsoever in the animated genre. I was wrong. Toy Story 3 was amazing, and will remain one of the best animated films of all time, but damn Despicable Me was good! I want to tell you what I liked and didn't like about the movie.

What I liked about the movie:
The Actors/Characters
I don't want to list every actor and what character they played, but this is an amazing cast. Steve Carell plays Gru, a local villain past his prime as far as great heists are concerned. He tries to out-villain the competition. His competition is an up-and-coming villain named Vector, voiced by Jason Segel. Gru adopts three girls to help in his plan, but ends up adoring the girls to death and changing his ways.

Then there's the minions! So cute and funny, but they did remind me of the pigeons in Finding Nemo. Still fantastic! The minions are the Worker Bees to Gru and are hilarious. They don't talk, at least not in a language the audience is supposed to understand. But the way they fight each other, and argue with one another is really great. The animators found a million ways to make the same back creators look different.

The Story

Truly original in every sense of the word. My wife and I walked out trying to find a movie with a story even close to this, and we couldn't think of any. A villain past his prime, adopts three little girls to help him with his heist, falls in love with them, and changes his ways? Come on! Priceless. The minions helping Gru every step of the way is so original.

The Visuals
This is something that we've almost come to expect perfection from in these kind of movies. But let me tell you, not many computer generated animated films look as good as this one does. Despicable is gorgeous to look at. There are rich environments full of color. Environments such as the carnival Gru takes the girls to is so detailed it's going to take multiple viewings to catch it all. Great job!


What I didn't like:
The Orphan's Story
I really liked the three orphan girls in the movie. I just wish the movie would have better developed their story. Why are they orphans? If it was mentioned, I missed it. Are they going to get revenge on the evil women running the orphanage? The relationship building between Gru and the girls is satisfactory, but should have been developed a bit more. Maybe a scene or two more of Gru getting closer to the girls would have been in order rather than a montage involving pancakes and the girls.

The Real Villain

Vector is such a weak antagonist. There is some really creative stuff surrounding the character, like all the booby-traps protecting his house; classic! But Vector himself is not that great of a character. And his "weapons" are stupid: a "piranha gun," "squid gun," come on. Hopefully they'll come up with something better in the future.


The movie is not at Pixar's level, but is still great! Such an original story, you can't predict what's going to happen because it hasn't been done before. I would totally recommend the movie to anyone, young and old. Thumbs up to the news of a sequel, I'm more than OK with that!