Blue's Clues-Blue's Big Musical (2000)

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General		Extras
Category	Family	Main Menu Audio & Animation Music Video-I Can Be Anything That I Want To Be Music Video-There It Is Featurette-Backstage At Blue's Clues Game-Who Am I?
Rating
Year Of Production	2000
Running Time	80:01
RSDL / Flipper	No/No	Cast & Crew
Start Up	Menu
Region Coding	4	Directed By	Todd Kessler
Studio Distributor	Paramount Home Entertainment	Starring	Steve Burns Ray Charles The Persuasions
Case	?
RPI	$39.95	Music	Nick Balaban Michael Rubin

Video		Audio
Pan & Scan/Full Frame	Full Screen, not known whether Pan & Scan or Full Frame	English Dolby Digital 2.0 (192Kb/s)
Widescreen Aspect Ratio	None
16x9 Enhancement	No
Video Format	576i (PAL)
Original Aspect Ratio	Unknown	Miscellaneous
Jacket Pictures	No
Subtitles	English for the Hearing Impaired	Smoking	No
		Annoying Product Placement	No
		Action In or After Credits	No

    Blue's Big Musical is a must-own disc for those with children from toddlers through to about eight-odd years old. Even though it is an American show, it is nothing like that other show with that purple creature whose name I refuse to speak.

    Blue's Clues is a weekly show that I believe is shown on our free-to-air TV network. The aim of the show is to both entertain and to teach and this it does very well. This disc contains a special 80 minute movie based on the weekly show.

    The show contains a single human being called Steve who inhabits a world populated with living objects and a small blue dog called Blue. The objects are those from everyday life; a salt and pepper shaker, a spade and bucket, a side table draw, and many other characters. The world is entirely computer generated. The characters are first drawn on cardboard, then shot with a digital camera, and then animated by computer. This gives a very unique look to the show. Steve interacts with these characters. Considering that he does this entirely in front of a blue screen, he does a fantastic job.

    In each episode, and also in this movie, there is a mystery to be solved. There will be clues found during the show and thus the name Blue's Clues. Along the way they sing some songs and have a great time. They have intentionally included material for each of the early age groups, both for entertainment and for teaching. There is also a lot of interaction in the show with the kids in the audience being asked questions - even the littlest of viewers will become engrossed. Before I watched the included making-of feature, I was impressed with the quality of the material in this show; now that I have seen the effort that goes into each show I can understand why this show works as well as it does.

    In this particular movie they are putting on a concert in their back garden. There is a list of tasks they must complete before the curtain goes up, including writing a song that they can sing. The song-writing section, aimed at the slightly older kids is absolutely fantastic. It introduces the basics of music in a very entertaining fashion and includes the voice of Ray Charles as the G-clef. The concert at the end is a great entertainment sing-along. In fact, if you really want to get into the spirit of things, you can print out the words for the songs from the web site at http://www.nickjr.com/grownups/home/shows/blue/bcdtv/index.jhtml.

    My three year old son has sat riveted to this twice already, and I can see that this disc is already a favourite and will be spinning many more times. Can you believe that he insists that I play this disc on the big screen? A home theatre fanatic already!

Video

    The transfer is presented at 1.33:1 and is not 16x9 enhanced.

    I found this transfer a little soft, particularly at the size of my screen. This is a very brightly-lit computer generated world and as such I did not see any shadows to check for detail. There is no low level noise.

    The colours very bright, fully saturated and with no sign of any noise. This is just the sort of world that kids love.

    There are no transfer-related MPEG artefacts. In fact, there are no transfer artefacts at all. Sometimes the source material has an edge around Steve but the kids are never going to notice.

     The English for the Hearing Impaired subtitles are accurate to what is happening. Depending on what is happening on-screen, they can appear at the bottom or the top of the screen.

    This is a single layer disc as such there is no layer change.

Video Ratings Summary

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

Audio

    Dialogue quality is excellent. All the characters voices are easy to understand and audio sync is spot on.

    The music is fantastic. The little songs that are inserted like the clue song are great. Kids love this sort of music - simple tunes that they can learn and join in with. Ten out of ten for the composers of this show!

     The surrounds are only really used for the music. I did not hear any ambience or particular effects. They do expand the soundstage somewhat but are not essential for this kind of show.

     I don't think the subwoofer received much at all.

Audio Ratings Summary

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

Menu

    A static menu with a Dolby Digital 2.0 soundtrack. The music loop runs for 42 seconds.

Music Video : I Can Be Anything That I Want To Be

    Presented at 1.33:1 and accompanied by a Dolby Digital 2.0 soundtrack with the surround bit set. This is an extended version of the same song as is in the movie. The quality is the same as well.

Music Video : There It Is

    Also at 1.33:1 and accompanied by a Dolby Digital 2.0 soundtrack with the surround bit set. This is another extended version of a song from the movie.

Featurette: Back Stage

    Presented at 1.33:1 and also with a Dolby Digital 2.0 soundtrack with the surround bit set. This featurette runs for 15:51 and is great. We meet the entire group that brings us Blue's Clues. We meet Steve, the people that do the voices and see the amount of work that goes into making this a fantastic show.

Game : Who Am I

    There are six pages of questions such as "Who wears a green stripey shirt?". Once you have read the questions, you press enter and the character that the questions relate to is revealed. Won't have much interest after the first time through, but we must remember the target audience here.

    The Region 4 version of this disc misses out on;

• DVD ROM content.

The Region 1 version of this disc misses out on;

• Nothing

    Details on just what the DVD ROM content contains is a little hard to come by. The titles appear to be 'instrument sound matching' and 'water xylophone'. The lack of this feature means we have to call a TKO for Region 1.

    I can't recommend this disc highly enough even though on a large screen there are a few minor problems. Your kids won't see them and you will love the small relief that this disc will give you while they are riveted to the screen. Your conscience can also take a break as there is much that is educational as well as entertaining on this disc.

    Good video for a weekly show.

    The audio is good.

    The extras turned out to be very interesting as the featurette is aimed at parents.

Video
Audio
Extras
Plot
Overall