Smart Discs

by Chris Raley
Winter 2003/Spring 2004

Final Destination II and John Q
New Line Cinema
$28 and $27, respectively
www.newline.com
New Line Cinema integrates information about the making of the movie into the movie itself with its infinifilm feature. Using this feature you can choose to view the film with prompts that will take you to short featurettes about a particular aspect of the scene you're watching and then return you to the film where you left off. So, in Final Destination 2 you can learn how Dave Ellis planned and shot the massive highway accident in the beginning of the film while you're watching it.

You can also choose to add the Fact Track to your infinifilm experience. So while you're watching John Q you can read the short facts that are occasionally displayed on the bottom portion of the screen. However, we wonder if movie watchers would really be interested in such mind numbing details as "In 1999 the International Brain Surgery Association named BMW 'safe car of the year.'"

Instead of including further documentaries about the making of the film in question, the infinifilm feature has documentaries about the subject matter. Not surprisingly you can find "Fighting for Care" in John Q and "Cheating Death: Beyond and Back" in Final Destination 2.

Also, both DVDs have deleted scenes, Web links and a feature called script to screen. This feature allows you to watch the movie on the interActual player, which the DVD installs, and compare it with the script. The movie appears in a small screen on the upper left corner of the player and the script appears on the right where you can scroll down it.

T2: Extreme DVD
Artisan
$30
www.artisanent.com
Like New Line's infinifilm, T2 integrates information into the film experience and also includes some PC features. T2's Extreme Interactive Mode gives you a detailed look at the film while it's playing by providing a running text commentary on the bottom of the screen and burst information at the top designed to give insight into the film's methodologies. If that isn't enough, watch for the Cyberdyne logo, which takes you to video segments and audio slide shows.

Included on disc two is the complete film on Windows Media 9, along with the "Infiltration Unit Simulator and T2 FX Studio," where you can change images you import into a T-1000 or T-800 Terminator. And in the "Skynet Combat Chassis Designer," you can build and test your own fighting machine.

Treasure Planet
Disney
$30
www.disney.go.com
Treasure Planet has yet another take on integrating information into the film. You can choose to watch individually the plethora of featurettes about the film or the three deleted scenes (which appear in a combination of full color and pencil animation) or you can watch them incorporated into the film in the Visual Commentary mode. In this mode, the producer, directors and some of the animators take you through the film with an audio commentary. At the appropriate points the DVD goes automatically to short featurettes relevant to the scene you're watching.

Included in the Bonus Material is a virtual 3D tour and treasure hunt of the RLS Legacy and a DisneyPedia feature that teaches kids about the real life and history of pirates.

Dragon's Lair: 20th Anniversary Special Edition
Digital Leisure
$60 (box set)
www.digitalleisure.com
To celebrate the 20th anniversary of Dragon's Lair, Digital leisure released a box set of Don Bluth games which includes Dragon's Lair, Dragon's Lair II and Space Ace. In the Dragon's Lair DVD you'll find previously unreleased playable scenes, interviews with the creators, a documentary about the game and the episode of the arcade gameshow Starcade, in which two contestants compete for the Dragon's Lair Arcade game. Fortunately you can play Dragon's Lair without having to find a place to put that bulky arcade game.