The Chronicles of Narnia: Prince Caspian is the latest big Blu-ray title from Walt Disney Studios Home Entertainment, scheduled for a December 2nd release.

This title is of course the second in the Chronicles of Narnia series.

The Chronicles of Narnia: Prince Caspian was directed by Andrew Adamson, who not only directed the first movie in the series, The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, but also the Shrek series for DreamWorks.

The movie faired pretty well with the critics, earning a Rotten Tomatoes score of 66% and IMDb score of 7.2/10.

Prince Caspian was also a strong performer in the cinema, making over $140M at the US box office.

The video on the disc is an AVC 1080p encode at 19 Mbps, and is presented in its original aspect ratio of 2.40:1.

Visit the details page for The Chronicles of Narnia: Prince Caspian to see full resolution screen captures taken from the disc.

The main audio is lossless DTS-HD Master Audio with 7.1 channels - 24 bits resolution at 48 kHz.

I am very pleased to see Disney moving towards 7.1 channel sound tracks for movie releases - I hope that this trend, which started with The Nightmare Before Christmas, will continue.

The disc is a dual layer BD50, with 48.7 GB used and is coded for Region A.

Special features are numerous and include BD Live Network features and a Digital Copy.

Expect an audio commentary from the film makers and cast, as well as behind the scenes featurettes with cast and crew interviews, a tour of the sets and locations and a view inside the technology used to make the film.

The Circle-Vision feature on the first disc uses the 360 degree HDRI camera castle images as the background for menus that cover many segments showing behind the scenes details of almost every aspect of the night castle raid sequence.

The segments cover a lot of the organization, technology and hard work that goes into making the scenes.

Over to the second disc, which is dedicated to supplements, fans of film making ‘gone wrong’ will enjoy the blooper reel, and there is also a deleted scenes segment with introduction from the director.

The second disc also contains many featurettes, covering the making of the second installment, the book to movie translation, the effect of the movie on the locations they shot in, the ‘pre-visualizing’ tools used to help create scenes, the creation of the creatures and effects shots, how the duel scene was shot and how actors were transformed into their fantasy world characters.

One could certainly spend a couple of hours going through the supplements on this release!

On the interactivity side, look for the Disney BD Live features including downloadable content, and an interactive Narnia game.

I expect to cover the BD Live features in more depth in a later posting.

The retail price is $39.98, or order it right now at Amazon for $24.99, saving 37% for a limited time!

Alternatively there is The Chronicles of Narnia: Prince Caspian Two Disc Edition, which does not have the Digital Copy disc and is in regular packaging, with a list price of $34.99 or at Amazon for $24.99.

The Chronicles of Narnia: Prince Caspian is another superb release from Walt Disney Studios Home Entertainment.

Extras:

• Special audio commentary by director and actors
• Behind-the-scenes interview with the cast and crew
• Tour of the film’s locations and sets
• Inside view of the technology and production behind the movie
• Bloopers
• Deleted scenes
• Enhanced Disney’s BD-Live Network exclusives
• Interactive Narnia game
• Downloadable features
• Digital Copy

Synopsis:

In The Chronicles of Narnia: Prince Caspian, the Pevensie children face a perilous mission and a greater test of their faith and courage. They find a world in which 1,300 years have passed. The White Witch is gone, the realm is ruled by a cruel tyrant and Aslan has been missing for over a thousand years. The four children embark on a remarkable journey to restore magic and glory to the land. Accompanied by Trumpkin, a valiant dwarf, Reepicheep the talking mouse and a suspicious Black Dwarf named Nikabrik, they raise an army of Narnians to rise up against the evil king Miraz.

This entry was posted on Monday, December 1st, 2008 at 10:48 pm and is filed under Commentary, Studios, US Releases. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.