New to Blu: August 22-28 > Battleship

Battleship bombed in the US but was a hit internationally – so why is the US getting a superior Blu-ray release to the rest of the world?

The NZ version, which goes on sale this week, is missing a picture-in-picture director’s commentary that online US reviews recommend highly.

“The big extra of the bunch is ‘All Access with Peter Berg’, Universal’s picture-in-picture foray which turns out to be decent.

“Berg comes in and out of the track frequently to discuss concepts and motivations for the film, and uses illustrations and computer graphics in a touchscreen manner similar to Minority Report.

“It includes cast interviews as they recount the story and scene-specific moments, and there are many on-set moments included, like scene rehearsals, or between takes fun of Berg tying a naval knot in a rope.

“Previsualisation footage of the aliens and their weapons is also thrown in, and some nods to the board game are also mixed in.

“The feature serves as a true complement, not doing a lot to dominate the film, but throwing in its own worthwhile information.”

As the NZ disc is the same as the UK release, presumably this means most territories outside the US are missing the Peter Berg commentary (all the other extras appear to be the same).

Otherwise, “Battleship blows Blu-ray out of the water with a flawless, demo-worthy 1080p/AVC MPEG-4 encode that consistently surprises from beginning to end.”

“Even if you hate the movie, you’ll be hard pressed to find anything wrong with its high definition presentation … or its DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1 surround track for that matter.

“Battleship’s shock and awe continues with the full might and fury of a ground-shaking, wall-pounding, neighbour-waking lossless mix that doesn’t let up for a second.”

But if you want the ultimate Battleship experience on Blu-ray, order the US release (which Amazon has for a pre-release bargain price of $US25 compared to the NZ sticker price of $50).

Bear in mind it may be region-locked but this is unlikely as Universal Pictures releases typically are region-free.