Hey, everyone. "Moriarty" here with some Rumblings From The Lab.
If you were reading Coax when BAND OF BROTHERS aired on HBO, then you know how much I loved that series. I’m dying to get my hands on this box set so I can revisit this remarkable drama from beginning to end again. In the meantime, I’ll have to make do with this review...
Hi Moriaty,
I woke up today to find the new Band of Brothers DVD box set waiting for me. I remember you being a big fan of the series and thought you'd enjoy a review for the site.
The set consists of 6 discs in a rather extravagant fold out metal tin case, and it really looks the business. You get 2 episodes per disc, with the last one acting as a bonus DVD of additional material.
In my eyes, the show is an absolutely incredible glimpse into the life of a world war 2 paratrooper, and one of its major strengths is its ability to be amazingly entertaining while still educating on the people, the time, and the events.
Along with Saving Private Ryan, Band of Brothers started a fascination in WWII for me, but I'd say BoB is much more successful than Saving Private Ryan as it not only features the same mind-blowing fire fights and tracer showers, but provides us with much more engaging characters and dialogue. All of these soldiers were real people, and that really shines through.
Each episode is presented in 16:9 anamorphic widescreen, and looks gorgeous as you'd expect. As with Ryan, the colours are muted in places, with high levels of grain from start to finish, and the DVD does a solid job of reproducing that at all times. Even night time scenes are incredibly detailed, and I noticed numerous things I'd never even caught during the TV broadcast, including the alarming sight of flaming paratroopers falling out of a burning C-47 during the D-Day drops.
The sound is the true highlight of the set though, featuring DTS 5.1, Dolby Digital 5.1, as well as English, French and Spanish surround tracks. The DTS is the clear winner here, although the Dolby track is also impressive. The assault on Brecourt Manor in episode 2 is an amazing demonstration of the amount of effort and wizardy to be found in the sound track, as bullets come flying in quite literally from all directions, while the big 105mm cannons boom away at regular intervals in the distance, your subwoofer shaking the room each time. It's perfect DVD material, and the discs never disappoint in this area.
In terms of extras, HBO have provided a series of interesting documentaries, although you may have already caught some of these on TV back when the show first aired.
We Stand Alone Together: The Men of Easy Company
At 1 hour 20 minutes, this is fascinating series of interviews and footage relating to the real men of Easy Company. The words of insight which the survivors provided at the beginning of each episode appear here in their entirety, as they talk us through the war and their experiences.
The Making of Band of Brothers
A standard 30 minute long featurette, mostly consisting of interviews with the cast and crew, including Tom Hanks among other people (complete with Cast Away beard). These press kit style interviews are usually quite irritating, but these ones fare much better than most, and you actually wish this had been longer.
Ron Livingstone's Video Diaries
Before filming commenced, 50 actors were put through the now obligatory 10 day actor's boot camp that all modern war films seem intent on doing, and as a nice stroke of genius, Ron Livingston documents the whole thing on DV camera here, with a total running time of a little under 1 hour. Ron, who played Lewis Nixon in the show, is a funny if subdued guy, and intersperses the footage with comments and anecdotes. It's insightful and often hilarious stuff, and definitely worth a watch.
In addition to these, you'll find an interactive field guide which features biographies on the real life men of Easy as well as an interactive WW2 timeline, among other things. The only glaring omission is the lack of commentaries.
Despite some occasional omissions and alterations, the series remains faithful to the book for the most part, and captures its spirit perfectly. It's both sad and ironic that Stephen Ambrose passed away just as this is now being released to the public.
While the price of this Region 1 set is surprisingly expensive, it features the superb DTS mode missing from its much cheaper Region 2 cousin, and thus comes highly recommended. This is a great addition to the DVD library of war movie fans, and those interested in WW2 alike.
Call me Diggler
Wow. Sounds like they’ve done as good a job with the disc as they did with the series itself.
"Moriarty" out.
