Charlie and the Chocolate Factory (Blu-ray) (2005)

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General		Extras
Category	Adventure	Audio Commentary-Tim Burton Isolated Musical Score Featurette-Charlie And The Chocolate Factory: Chocolate Dreams Featurette-Different Faces, Different Flavors Featurette-Designer Chocolate Featurette-Under The Wrapper Featurette-Charlie And The Chocolate Factory: Sweet Sounds Featurette-Becoming Oompa-Loompa Featurette-Attack Of The Squirrels Featurette-Fantastic Mr. Dahl Featurette-Pre-Vis Augustus Gloop Dance Featurette-Pre-Vis Mike Teavee Dance Featurette-Club Reel Theatrical Trailer
Rating
Year Of Production	2005
Running Time	115:23
RSDL / Flipper	No/No	Cast & Crew
Start Up	Programme
Region Coding	4	Directed By	Tim Burton
Studio Distributor	Roadshow Home Entertainment	Starring	Johnny Depp Freddie Highmore David Kelly Helena Bonham Carter Noah Taylor Missi Pyle James Fox Deep Roy Christopher Lee
Case	Amaray Variant
RPI	$39.95	Music	Danny Elfman

Video		Audio
Pan & Scan/Full Frame	None	English Dolby Digital 5.1 English Dolby TrueHD 5.1 French Dolby Digital 5.1 German Dolby Digital 5.1 Italian Dolby Digital 5.1 Spanish Dolby Digital 5.1 Dutch Dolby Digital 5.1
Widescreen Aspect Ratio	1.78:1
16x9 Enhancement
Video Format	1080p
Original Aspect Ratio	1.85:1	Miscellaneous
Jacket Pictures	No
Subtitles	English for the Hearing Impaired French German Italian Italian Spanish Dutch Danish Finnish Norwegian Swedish French Titling German Titling Italian Titling Spanish Titling Dutch Titling Danish Titling Finnish Titling Norwegian Titling Swedish Titling	Smoking	No
		Annoying Product Placement	No
		Action In or After Credits	No

    When I was a boy growing up in the Parramatta region, an event occurred at school on a yearly basis that I am still at a loss to explain the exact reasoning behind. Simply put, the children of years three through six were squatted down on the floor in front of the dinky little television and VCR that the school library had, and we were made to watch the film entitled Willy Wonka And The Chocolate Factory. It should also be noted that in previous years, we had occasionally been sat down in front of the television in another room of the school and made to watch the ABC series called Play School. The "oh... hello" greeting that generally opened an episode of that show once drew a "yes, I am stupid too" response from me, complete with a couple of mild cuss words that you can fill in with your imagination. Why they did not think to also excuse me from watching Willy Wonka... to have a chin-wag with the school psychologist is something I am never going to fully understand, because Willy Wonka... is no different in my eyes to Play School. As far as I am concerned the only adults who really think this kind of material is something to sit a child aged three to ten in front of are child abusers.

    When I was ten or eleven years old, however, a director emerged in Hollywood and catapulted himself into the A-list by doing something very simple: he took a subject that demands a serious tone seriously. Nobody needs to be told that the film I refer to is called Batman, and it did to a childish, intelligence-insulting conception of its characters what Charlie And The Chocolate Factory does to its predecessor. Simply put, when I watched Tim Burton's Charlie And The Chocolate Factory for the first time, my nightmares of Gene Wilder singing "the candyman can!" to me finally stopped. This is partly because Tim Burton's Willy Wonka is portrayed as if he is a real person, as opposed to some omniscient demigod who is all-seeing and always correct, no matter how abusive and ignorant his statements may seem. Although Roald Dahl died some time before Tim Burton set his magic to work bringing the story, the story as Dahl (who, when asked what the formula for success as an author of children's books was, said "Conspiring with children against adults.") wrote it, to the screen.

    Charlie Bucket (Freddie Highmore) is from a poor family. His father works in a factory, at least until he is made redundant by automation, and the rest of his family including all four grandparents live in a run down little house on the very edge of the city. Charlie's grandfather Joe (David Kelly) once worked in the factory at the centre of town where Willy Wonka (Johnny Depp) and his company produce chocolate and other confectionary. Wonka has not been heard from by the public in many a year due to attempts by other companies at industrial espionage against him, but soon he announces that he has hidden five golden tickets in chocolate bars that are being distributed around the world. Charlie is a perfect reflection of his parents in that he is not ruthless or without morals, so he is forced to watch as one by one, the tickets are found by a small group of utter brats. And what brats they are. Violet Beauregarde (AnnaSophia Robb), Veruca Salt (Julia Winter), Mike Teavee (Jordan Fry), and Augustus Gloop (Philip Wiegratz) are all dreadful people.

    In this, by the design of Dahl, they are a perfect reflection of their parents. Whether it be in a hypercompetitive nature, a gluttonous nature, a sedentary nature, or a heightened sense of entitlement, Burton hits on the head what the "original" missed by a mile: that children are a product of their environment. And another contrast exists in the songs. Rather than the hyper-sweet tuneless crap that was deemed acceptable in the early 1970s, 2005's production punctuates the ironic demise of each child with a song that, while often sounding like it was written on a heavy dose of acid, is strangely appropriate. Anyway, the punchline is that Wonka is offering a special extra prize to one of the five children who will tour the factory. What this prize is and why Wonka is offering it is kept a mystery until the final reels, although anyone who has heard the story already knows.

    By now, you will have guessed that I quite enjoyed this version of Charlie And The Chocolate Factory. It is not perfect, by any means, but it is made with a love and reverence of the source material, despite what one might think of the added material, that was sorely lacking in the previous version. I would even bet that if I were to sit down with Tim Burton and ask, one Mutant to another, why he made this adaptation in the first place, that his response would have something to do with wanting to see Roald Dahl's story actually translated to the screen. As opposed to a heap of trash being thrown on the screen and Dahl's name slapped on it. If you possess the insight to watch and recognise that in this adaptation, then this Blu-ray Disc is a must-have. If not, then my care of anything you have to say in the matter, or any other, is already forgotten.

Video

    Previously, I have had reservations about Blu-ray Discs from Roadshow. Titles such as Get Smart have shown artefacts that simply should not be there in a genuine 1080P transfer. I say this because, some occasional scares aside, Roadshow appear to have turned around such lapses in the quality of their transfers and produced a real winner.

    The transfer is presented in the aspect ratio of 1.78:1 within a 1920 by 1080 window that appears to actually be progressive.

    The transfer is exceptionally sharp and clear, with the literal vomitorium of colour on offer so sharply delineated that my first impulse whilst watching the opening sequences in the factory was to pause playback and consume some acid. Shadow detail, on the few occasions when it becomes important, is excellent. No low-level noise was evident.

    I used the word "vomitorium" (it is a band name) to describe the colours inside the factory. Outside of the factory, the colours are muted and drab, deliberately, to set a contrast. The transfer captures these schemes without any bleeding or misregistration. There were shots in which skin tones appear unevenly smudged or blurred, but this appears more the fault of the makeup artists than the transfer.

    Compression artefacts were not noted in the transfer, except for one instance very early on as the clouds the camera travels through in the opening shot where the fading-in circles of clouds turn blocky as they form. Whether this is simply the manner in which this sequence was made in the computer or an actual compression artefact is unclear, but I am inclined to believe the former given how clean the rest of the picture looks. The transfer is compressed in the VC-1 codec and varies from as low as eight or nine megabits all the way up to the late thirties. This is a great improvement over the DVD release, in which borderline macro-blocking was a frequent occurrence, especially during the snow-laden sequences outside of the factory. No film-to-video artefacts were noted, and not for lack of opportunity. Film artefacts consisted of the very occasional black or white mark upon the transfer that was, when noted, small enough to be ignored.

    Subtitles are offered in English for the Hearing Impaired. These are accurate to the spoken dialogue, right down to the frequent Dahl-isms that pepper Johnny Depp's dialogue.

Video Ratings Summary

Sharpness
Shadow Detail
Colour
Grain/Pixelization
Film-To-Video Artefacts
Film Artefacts
Overall

Audio

    Accompanying a very nice video transfer is an audio transfer that disappoints in one minor respect. You see, when I was in the local JB Hi-Fi contemplating whether the disc was worth the asking price, I read the back cover, which indicated that a Dolby TrueHD 7.1 soundtrack was present. Dolby TrueHD it is, and a stellar example of that format's superiority to its lossy family members it is, but it is sadly only 5.1 channels.

    Unusually for a Roadshow disc, there are a large number of soundtracks on this disc. The first is an English Dolby Digital 5.1 soundtrack, which I immediately skipped over except to compare certain sequences for the benefit of friends who are still only half-convinced of the joys of lossless audio. The second choice is an English Dolby TrueHD 5.1 soundtrack, which I have listened to multiple times now. Dubs in French, German, Italian, Spanish, Dutch, Català (this is what the Pop-Up Menu says, I am just quoting it - it appears to be Castilian Spanish), Danish, Finnish, Vlaams (an alternate Dutch translation from what I can gather), Norwegian, and Swedish are offered in Dolby Digital 5.1 (this really is excessive, and, as I said, unusual for a Roadshow disc). Finally, an audio commentary in Dolby Digital 2.0 and an isolated score in Dolby TrueHD 5.1 are offered. I listened to the English dialogue in TrueHD (obviously), the audio commentary, and the isolated score.

    The dialogue is clear and easy to understand at all times, although Johnny Depp's speech when the character is first introduced does take a little adjusting to. Fortunately, as the character relaxes more, he speaks louder. The vocals in such numbers as Augustus Gloop have never sounded more beautiful, either. Separation of the elements is great, with every effect, instrument, or vocalisation perfectly audible. During the aforementioned musical numbers, if you shut your eyes tight and just listen, you can start to vaguely imagine a couple of dozen small men dancing around and singing at you. Audio sync was a minor issue during the musical numbers, with Deep Roy's lips sometimes not quite jibing with the timings of the vocal track, but this is almost certainly a side-effect of the manner in which the actor was cloned and spliced into the picture so repeatedly.

    The music consists of a score by Danny Elfman. The vocals are also at least partly his work if the featurettes are anything to go by. In a very sharp, at times unsettling, contrast to the sachaarine, get-your-hand-out-of-my-pants numbers of the previous film, Elfman's music is by turns creepy in a sense that it is giving us a window into the mind of Willy Wonka, wistful in its embodiment of Charlie's humility and innocence, and just damned fun to listen to. There is a good reason why this score is offered in isolation with lossless audio.

    The surround channels are used to direct sound effects and music, with directional audio figuring prominently in such sequences as the chocolate river boat ride. The surrounds are almost never silent, and when they do go into silence, it is only for the briefest of moments. The entire sound field comes alive during the musical performances, with what seems like dozens of clones of Elfman echoing from each and every channel, corresponding more or less exactly with the on-screen action. When all is said and done, I am torn in two directions. On the one hand, this is one of the best 5.1-channel mixes I have thus far heard on BD. On the other hand, it makes the failure to deliver on the promise of 7.1 channels even more disappointing. Had the caseliner merely stated 5.1 channels, then I would be perfectly happy with what is present on this disc. Having said all of that, the price I paid was definitely money well spent, so this complaint may be considered a minor quibble and a warning to caseliner designers to make more of an effort to get it right in future.

    The subwoofer had a ball throughout the film, supporting sound effects and musical numbers with a bouncy aplomb. It was beautifully integrated with the rest of the soundtrack.

Audio Ratings Summary

Dialogue
Audio Sync
Clicks/Pops/Dropouts
Surround Channel Use
Subwoofer
Overall

    A large quantity of extras are present. All of the featurettes are presented in a 1.78:1 aspect ratio with Dolby Digital 2.0 audio, not 16:9 Enhanced, and standard definition.

Menu

Audio Commentary - Tim Burton (Director)

Isolated Score

    Presented in Dolby TrueHD 5.1, this isolated score allows one to listen to the instrumental score and Oompa Loompa musical numbers without that pesky dialogue or those obtrusive sound effects getting in the way. Frequent silences occur, but this is well worth a listen as it exposes all kinds of musical cues one might otherwise miss or fail to fully appreciate.

Picture-In-Picture

    This is merely a secondary video track containing all the featurettes, a trivia track, and other content that is really hard to appreciate when mixed in with the film.

Featurette - Charlie And The Chocolate Factory: Chocolate Dreams

    This featurette explores the vision that Tim Burton had for the film from the time he started working on it. Well worth a look, in my view.

Featurette - Different Faces, Different Flavors

    This featurette goes into the different actors who were cast to play different characters, and the process by which they were cast.

Featurette - Designer Chocolate

    This featurette covers the production design (things like building sets, costume design, and so forth).

Featurette - Under The Wrapper

    This featurette discusses the visual effects that were used in the film.

Featurette - Charlie And The Chocolate Factory: Sweet Sounds

    Now this is the featurette that stands out. Danny Elfman discusses all the artistic and logistical considerations that went into scoring the film, and composing the songs, which are based around Dahl's poems. Apparently, the Augustus Gloop number had fifty vocal tracks on it. You know you are onto a winner, content-wise, when I will watch all seven minutes and seventeen seconds in spite of the video being SD.

Featurette - Becoming Oompa-Loompa

    Another interesting featurette, this one describes how they made a singular actor by the name of Deep Roy appear in the finished film hundreds of times over. Film is meant to defy reality to some extent, and this one accomplishes it by having one man be in multiple places at once! What is especially interesting to know is that all the different Roys were deliberately acted out to move slightly out of sync with one another.

Featurette - Attack Of The Squirrels

    Apparently all of the squirrels in the film were real. This featurette covers how the production team accomplished the finished squirrel sequence.

Featurette - Fantastic Mr. Dahl

    A featurette about Roald Dahl, author of Charlie And The Chocolate Factory, among many other things. Featuring interview footage with the man himself, and footage of his writings being read out loud by granddaughter Sophie Dahl, this is again well worth watching in spite of the crap resolution. For one thing, the video footage shows just how incredibly tall Roald was. For another, it is quite interesting to hear ideas developed by other authors.

Featurette - Pre-Vis Augustus Gloop Dance

    Crude visualisations of the dance acted out dozens of times over by Deep Roy during the Augustus Gloop number. Nothing particularly special.

Featurette - Pre-Vis Mike Teavee Dance

    This is a little more interesting, a crude visualisation of the Mike Teavee song. Interesting mainly for including rehearsal footage.

Featurette - Club Reel

    A dance number with a heap of rejected visualisations that looks like someone got a little too carried away with the ProTools and video sequencer. If I had to pick an absolute nadir for the extras on this disc, this would be it.

Theatrical Trailer

    Oh come on, Roadshow, surely digging out a HD version of such a recent trailer is not too much to ask?

    The video transfer is excellent.

    The audio transfer, whilst breaking a promise on the cover specs, is of reference quality.

    The extras are mostly recycled.

Video
Audio
Extras
Plot
Overall