[Movie -- / Day 318]
With his first feature MOON, director Duncan Jones has created a marvellous piece of modern sci-fi that harks back to the glory days when plot was more important than the special effects budget. Don’t watch this movie and expect to see explosions and a triple-digit body count. Rather, watch it and expect to see some glorious moon-scapes and some astonishing acting from Sam Rockwell, who is essentially alone on screen for 90 minutes.
There’s no point in delving into the plot in this post, as we reviewed it when we caught it in the cinema back in August (you can read the review here) – if you fancy watching the trailer, to give you a flavour of MOON’s greatness, you can do so on our Oscars 2010 piece. So, this post is not so much a review of the movie, but a review of the newly released bluray.
As you’d expect from a brand spanking new release, MOON looks beautiful, presented in it’s original aspect ratio and with a crisp, clean image throughout, the dust and lens-flare added to the model work mean there are very few shots that give away the scale of the base and vehicles. Sonically, the DTS-HD soundtrack is also top drawer – OK, there are no massive explosions ripping through the room and the subwoofer is hardly taxed, but every audible element is present and correct and Clint Mansell’s beautiful score is at it’s haunting best.
So, MOON has fittingly excellent audio and visuals… But what about the extras? Are there any gems hidden away in the package? Well, no. Unfortunately, as far as I could find, there is only the standard extra material fare… There are a couple of short featurettes, the obligatory Making Of Moon and Creating The Visual Effects. They’re OK but are in total less than half an hour, which feels a little stingy. Better quality are a pair of Q&A sessions, one from a screening in Houston and one from the Sundance Film Festival. These give a much better flavour of what happened behind the scenes and how the movie came to be.
Of much more interest to me are the two commentaries on the disc; the first featuring writer/director Duncan Jones, concept designer Gavin Rothery and production designer Tony Noble; the second featuring Duncan Jones again, but this time backed up by producer Stuart Fenegen. I haven’t had time to listen to both commentaries yet (when are studios going to dump these stupid ‘digital copies’ and start including useful stuff like MP3 versions of the commentaries? I can promise them, I will NEVER, EVER, want to watch a movie on my iPod or my phone, yet there are countless occasions when I’d like to listen to a commentary during a long journey! If anybody reading this has any clout with The Man, have a word will you?), but from the quick dips I had into each, both seem to offer lots of trivia about the movie and the production process and I look forward to either having the time to sit down and listen to them, or figuring out how to get them onto my iPod.
Finally, also included on the disc is WHISTLE, a 26 minute short by Duncan Jones dealing with an assassins guilt – in my opinion, if you’ve only got half an hour spare, skip the featurettes and watch this.
MOON is out on DVD and bluray on Monday – and, despite the slightly sparse extras, is well worth purchasing. It’s one of the best movies of the year and an essential addition for any sci-fi fan.
My Rating: 
[ IMDB rating: 8.0 / 10 | IMDB link | Running time: 97 mins ]
