South Park The Complete Twelfth Season (Comedy Central Blu-ray + DVD-Video)
Picture:
B/C+ Sound: B/C+ Extras: C+ Episodes: B-
Well, it
had to happen. After being a huge hit
show for over a decade and having one of the best animated feature films out
there South Park has gone High
Definition. The Complete Twelfth Season (2008) is the first to hit the Blu-ray
format and to see it this way adds extra hoots and a few howlers to the
experience much like I remembered the film when I saw it in 35mm. This is the season where George Lucas &
Steven Spielberg sexually assault Indiana Jones as if he were real (in protest
of the awful Kingdom Of The Crystal
Skull), the gang find themselves in the original Heavy Metal movie and Obama becomes President.
We get 14
bold and wild half-hour shows here, all of which have their good and obvious
points, but the creators have found a way to keep it fresh by pushing not only
the subject matter and visuals, but caring about what they are sending up. Like The
Simpsons, the show still speaks to its audience in a cleverly
deconstructive way and manages to keep the characters on the cutting edge. Kenny has rightly returned and there is
plenty of character development since its launch.
Now the
odd news. The Blu-ray is at 1080i 1.78 X
1 digital High Definition while the DVD remains low def 1.33 X 1. Though the DVD looks good, the Blu-ray has
livelier colors and the improved definition beings new humor to the images and
the way they move, as well as the way they are composed in some pleasantly
surprising ways. The world they live in
seems at once more real and more surreal, making everything that much
funnier. The Blu-ray has Dolby TrueHD
5.1 and somewhat lesser Dolby Digital 5.1, while the DVD only has Dolby Digital
2.0 Stereo. Guess all involved are
trying to be consistent. Extras on both
are Digital Copy for PC and PC portable devices, more of creators Trey Parker
& Matt Stones funny mini-commentaries, more funny box illustrations and
three new pieces. They include a making
of an episode called Six Days To South Park, behind the scenes of making About Last Night in HD and Making
Boobage: Behind The Scenes Of Major
Boobage. The additional extras are
most welcome.
- Nicholas Sheffo
