LEMONY SNICKET on DVD
April 6th, 2005 by Andre Soares
The cinematography (by Emmanuel Lubezki) and the production design (by Rick Heinrichs; art direction by John Dexter and Martin Whist; set decoration by Cheryl Carasik) found in Brad Silberling’s Lemony Snicket’s A Series of Unfortunate Events are of the utmost quality. However, a series of beautiful tableaux do not a good film make, especially considering that the Baudelaire children’s myriad on-screen misfortunes lack urgency, intelligence, and feeling. Hardly helping matters is the fact that Jim Carrey chews on the film’s Gothic scenery as if he hadn’t eaten for decades.
Lemony Snicket’s A Series of Unfortunate Events Region 1 DVD (U.S. / Canada / U.S. territories) release date: April 26, 2005
Features:
- Picture: Choice of anamorphic widescreen - 1.85:1 or full screen - 1.33:1, pan and scan
- Audio: English, French, Spanish (Dolby Digital 5.1), Commentary (Dolby 2.0)
- Subtitles: English
- Closed captioned
- Audio commentary by director Brad Silberling
- Audio commentary by Brad Silberling and the Real Lemony Snicket (Daniel Handler)
- Featurette "Building a Bad Actor," about the creation of Olaf’s characterization
- Featurette "Making the Baudelaire Children Miserable," about the casting of the Baudelaire children
- "Interactive Olaf," a feature that allows viewers to choose among four Olaf monologues that were made for costume tests
- Orphaned scenes: 11 "Dismal Deletions" and 5 "Obnoxious Outtakes"
List price: US$29.99.
The two-disc special edition has all of the above extras, plus the following photo galleries and featurettes about the film’s visual effects, sound, art direction, costume design, and music:
- A terrible tragedy: alarming evidence from the making of the film: "A Woeful World," "Costumes and Other Suspicious Disguises," "Violet’s Functional Designs"
- "CAUTION! Incredibly Deadly Vipers," "The Sad Score"
- "Volume. Frequency. Decibels" - "The Unsound Sound Designer," "You Probably Shouldn’t Listen To These"
- "Sinister Special Effects" - "An Alarming Conspiracy Involving Sunny, "An Even More Alarming Conspiracy Involving Sunny," "The Terrible Fire," "Trains, Leeches and Hurricanes"
- Gruesome galleries: "Shadowy Stills," "A Woeful World"
List price: US$38.99.
A Paramount Home Video release.
Region 2 DVD (Europe, Japan, South Africa and the Middle East including Egypt) release in the United Kingdom: May 25, 2005
Features / extras seem to be identical to the ones found in the Region 1 version.
Listed prices: £17.99 (single disc); £19.99 (special two-disc edition)
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