Baseball’s Greatest Games: New York Mets First No Hitter (2012/MLB/A&E DVD)/Fixation (2012/First Run DVD)/Los
Angeles Kings Stanley Cup 2012 Champions (Warner DVD)
Picture: C+ Sound: C+ Extras: D/C-/C+ Main Programs: B-/C+/B-
Now for
some sports and recreation titles…
Baseball’s Greatest Games: New York Mets First No
Hitter (2012) is
the latest of what is turning out to be a really interesting series of key
titles from A&E and their MLB parters.
It may have taken a very long time for the Mets to have this happen to
them, but captures the whole thing nicely as Johan Santana delivers against the
St. Louis Cardinals showing the oldest sport in the country is alive and
well. There are no extras, but the 131
minutes here is very thorough and fans of the sport and Mets in particular will
want to add this to their collection.
Though we
have covered bike racing before, Alex Trudeau Viriato’s Fixation (2012) is more about the love of bikes, using bikes,
riding bikes and living with bikes as a way of life. Though this is very short at only 40 minutes,
it does manage to capture the current state of the following these reliable
forms of transport offer. It does not go
into how the bikes have changed, but it will come as a surprise for some who
have not been keeping up how advanced their production has become. Not bad and serious fans will enjoy this in
particular. Two featurettes are the only
extras.
Finally
we have Los Angeles Kings Stanley Cup
2012 Champions which features the team’s road to getting Lord Stanley to
take home with them and note that they had never won before, so this was an
historic first for them and the fans. At
over two hours, this is a pretty thorough presentation of events, the skill,
victory and energy and celebration all around as a result. It is also nice to see quality NHL product on
home video overall, because there has not been enough of it.
Extras
include NHL Network interviews, Extended Locker Room Celebration, Top 10 L.A.
Kings Highlights, Behind The Scenes with The
Stanley Cup and ‘Because It’s The Cup’
TV Spots.
The
anamorphically enhanced 1.78 X 1 image on all three DVDs are about equal with
the Mets and Kings DVDs having good transfers from their mostly HD sources, but
they are also a little softer than expected, though fans with Blu-ray players
should note that the Kings title is
also available on Blu-ray. Fixation has some fine new HD footage
and vintage footage throughout. The
lossy Dolby Digital 2.0 Stereo on all three DVDs also tends to be equal with various,
minor audio flaws (location audio) and limits (some audio is clearer than
others). The Mets DVDs has three audio options including TV audio, a radio
broadcast in sync with the video and Spanish language coverage also synced up
with the video.
- Nicholas Sheffo
