Blu Wednesday: "The Dark Knight"

(Blu Monday Wednesday is our roundup of what's new in Blu-ray...)

The biggest movie of the year (and the last several years) arrives on Blu-ray December 9, and The Dark Knight is looking like a home-theater showoff disc for me.  The detail and colors are tremendous in both dark and bright scenes (the Gotham General scene is a great example of the latter), and the punishing Dolby TrueHD soundtrack makes the house rattle.  (After giving us only Dolby 5.1 in a number of big Blu-ray releases this fall, Warner came through with Dolby TrueHD on this one.)  One of the most interesting elements of The Dark Knight was how certain scenes were shot in IMAX (watch the clip below for more info), and if you saw the movie in an IMAX theater the film's aspect ratio would suddenly change from standard 2.40:1 to a thrilling 1.43:1 that filled the screen six stories high. For the Blu-ray disc, director Christopher Nolan has somewhat re-created this experience by shifting his film from 2.40:1 aspect ratio (through most of the film) to 1.78:1 in the IMAX scenes. While the effect isn't as dramatic as it was in theaters, it's still an eye-catching experience to be watching the film on a widescreen TV with black bars at the top and bottom, then seeing the 1.78:1 scenes completely fill the screen. The main bonus feature on disc 1 is "Gotham Uncovered: The Creation of a Scene," which is 81 minutes of behind-the-scenes footage about the IMAX scenes, the Bat suit, Gotham Central, and others. You can watch the film and access these featurettes when the icon pops up, or you can simply watch them from the main menu.  I kind of expected this to be picture-in-picture, however. A welcome and unusual feature is that in addition to English, French, and Spanish audio and subtitles, there's an audio-described option that allows the sight-impaired to experience the film as well.  There are more bonus features on disc 2, and I'll be watching those next. --David

New Blu-ray pre-orders that have recently hit the catalog:

• Pineapple Express
• Beverly Hills Chihuahua
• A Time to Kill
• W.
• Donnie Darko
• Super Speedway
• Wonder Woman (animated)