That Time of the Month: Jaws (Blu-ray)
By: Brandy Serra
“I
don't want no volunteers; I don't want no mates. There's too many
captains on this island. Ten thousand dollars for me by myself. For
that you get the head, the tail, the whole damn thing.”
It
won't set you back 10g's, but you'll feel like you got away with a
damn good deal when you bring home the Jaws blu-ray, 'cause it really
is the whole damn thing. The blu-ray is caked with tons of bonus
material, including two features that are as long as the friggin'
movie (or thereabouts). Without further ado, here's...
Whatcha Get:
First, let's talk about the damn movie, as in how it
looks. The blu-ray restoration of Jaws is fucking sensational.
Excuse my lame word, but there is simply no other way to describe it.
The movie looks so epically good that it's like a brand new movie
they just made that's set in the 70's. It is so crisp and beautiful
that it's like getting to see it for the first time all over again.
They did such a fine job they even threw a little featurette on the
disc telling you how hard they worked on restoring it from the
original reels (yeah!) and soundtrack (fuck yeah!). During this I
learned that a single frame can take three to four hours to restore.
Yeah, I said hours. Still, they made it look like the most awesome
job on the planet. They look like they're sitting at fucking Houston
Ground Control in there, with all their fancy knobs and buttons and
shit. Anyway, the quality of this makes me very excited about
the other movies Universal is restoring for their anniversary. There
is also a 100 minute documentary called “The Shark Is Still
Working” exclusively on the blu-ray, that talks all about the
badassery and legacy that is Jaws, the impact it had (and still has).
It's a pretty neat little deal because it has its own section on
the menu, so you can watch the entire thing or select any one part of
it that you want to view. It's laced with cast and crew putting in
new insights and there's some new footage and what-not, too. It had
me hooked like an addict and I was ignoring everything else going on
around me. Also included is your ultraviolet and digital copy, so if
you're all tech savvy, you just creamed your jeans.
The other documentary is just as long as the movie,
called (rather blandly) “The Making Of Jaws”. It's pretty
awesome, as you get to see Scheider and Dreyfuss talk
about all of the strife and struggle it took to make this movie and
how much everyone was just ready for the shit to be over. Just like
the other documentary, it's loaded with cast and crew, and you learn
a lot of really awesome shit about the flick, although some of the
information (and indeed, some of the exact footage) is in both
documentaries. The DVD is also peppered with small tidbits of nifty.
You get some little things like some original storyboards and
production photos, which are cool but probably only going to be
viewed once. In the same vein, they have some items from the
merchandising of Jaws, including photos of all lobby cards, different
posters and ads, book covers, magazines, etc., and some photos of
some cool swag like a Jaws paddleball. Also, there is the obligatory
ORIGINAL THEATRICAL TRAILER!, which fucking rules, and deleted scenes
and outtakes (where you get to hear Scheider say fuck! And watch Shaw
piss off some little kid). There's also a little 10 minute video
filmed on the set with a British host interviewing Spielberg about
the actual filming of the movie. Fucking crazy timewarp seeing him
so damn young.
Whatcha Want:
I don't know about you, but whenever we get a new DVD,
the first thing I want to know is “Commentary!? Who's on it?” I
fucking love commentaries, and I have to say my heart sank when we
scanned the back of the box to find no such feature. However, the
insane abundance of information thrown at you in the two
documentaries alone would make a commentary fucking moot. So,
really, nothing about this sucks. Hey, I had to write something
here.
The Actual
Fucking Movie:
Let me begin by saying we've easily watched this three
or four times since we acquired our copy. This is pretty sound for
us, considering our movie watching schedule (how full and all over
the place it is). The first day we put it on it was a lazy, rainy
day and our daughter was running around the house like a maniac; an
atypical day at Chez King. However, our daughter loves shark movies
and when we told her what we were watching, she piped down and
plopped down with us to indulge in Jaws. As aforementioned,
it was like seeing it for the first time again, and I don't know
about you, but I remember the first time I watched Jaws and it blew
my damn little kid mind. Well, mind re-blown.
I'm not going
to slap a synopsis on here because I don't believe there's anyone
around who doesn't at least know wtf Jaws is about, even if for some
crazy reason they've never seen it. Quint said it best: “Shark's
in the water. Our shark.” Damn right, you fucking badass, that
crazy big shark is out there and he is ripping people's days and
bodies apart. He doesn't give a fuck about devouring a little kid on
his floaty raft and how taboo that might be. However, the greatest
and most quintessential element to Jaws has absolutely nothing to do
with the fucking shark! It's all about the people and their
relationships with one another – be them easy, ie. Brody and
Hooper, or hostile, ie. Quint and Hooper – and how they are going
to come together to deal with this daunting and seemingly
insurmountable task. This is a man versus nature movie in it's
basest form, but the seriousness that everyone brings to their role,
and the emotion they convey really makes you care about these guys
and root for them. You want them to destroy that damn shark, when
usually the roles are switched in a movie such as this, and you just
want to see some shark munching mayhem. I believe the fact that
Spielberg encouraged his cast to improv lines really adds to how real
the movie feels. Indeed, all of the best lines are improv: “Wanna
get drunk and fool around?” “You're gonna need a bigger boat.”
etc. Couple a secondary viewing after watching the documentaries,
and you take so much more away from the movie. Like the fact that
Shaw and Dreyfuss had a real rivalry going on, off camera, and were
one-upping each other whether the film was rolling or not, and how
some of the lines from the movie were taken from the islanders who
were in it (Quint's line about bluegills and tommy cots).
The Final Word:
Money well spent. This is easily the best DVD we've
grabbed in some time, and you simply cannot go wrong adding it to your
collection. Twenty bucks isn't really much, all things considered,
and I mean, c'mon, it's fucking Jaws.
