List Price: $14.98Amazon.com's Price: $5.79 You Save: $9.19 (61%)as of 11/24/2009 21:25 EST
Availability: Usually ships in 24 hours
This item ships for FREE with Super Saver Shipping.
Aspect Ratio: 2.35:1
Audience Rating: PG (Parental Guidance Suggested)
Binding: DVD
Brand: Warner Brothers
DVD Layers: 2
DVD Sides: 1
EAN: 9780790733227
Format: Anamorphic, Closed-captioned, Color, Dolby, DVD, Special Edition, Widescreen, NTSC
ISBN: 0790733226
Item Dimensions: 100
Label: Warner Home Video
Languages: EnglishOriginal LanguageDolby Digital 5.1EnglishSubtitledSpanishSubtitledFrenchSubtitled
Manufacturer: Warner Home Video
MPN: D15041D
Number Of Items: 1
Picture Format: Anamorphic Widescreen
Publisher: Warner Home Video
Region Code: 1
Release Date: December 30, 1997
Running Time: 150 minutes
Studio: Warner Home Video
Theatrical Release Date: July 11, 1997
Related Items:
Browse for similar items by category: Click to Display
Editorial Review:
Product Description:
After an astronomer discovers communication emanating from the star Vega, she leads an international team in deciphering it, and travels through space to contact the senders of the message.
Genre: Feature Film-Drama
Rating: PG
Release Date: 3-FEB-2004
Media Type: DVD
Amazon.com:
The opening and closing moments of Robert (Forrest Gump) Zemeckis's Contact astonish viewers with the sort of breathtaking conceptual imagery one hardly ever sees in movies these days--each is an expression of the heroine's lifelong quest (both spiritual and scientific) to explore the meaning of human existence through contact with extraterrestrial life. The movie begins by soaring far out into space, then returns dizzyingly to earth until all the stars in the heavens condense into the sparkle in one little girl's eye. It ends with that same girl as an adult (Jodie Foster)--her search having taken her to places beyond her imagination--turning her gaze inward and seeing the universe in a handful of sand. Contact traces the journey between those two visual epiphanies. Based on Carl Sagan's novel, Contact is exceptionally thoughtful and provocative for a big-budget Hollywood science fiction picture, with elements that recall everything from 2001 to The Right Stuff. Foster's solid performance (and some really incredible alien hardware) keep viewers interested, even when the story skips and meanders, or when the halo around the golden locks of rising-star-of-a-different-kind Matthew McConaughey (as the pure-Hollywood-hokum love interest) reaches Milky Way-level wattage. Ambitious, ambiguous, pretentious, unpredictable--Contact is all of these things and more. Much of it remains open to speculation and interpretation, but whatever conclusions one eventually draws, Contact deserves recognition as a rare piece of big-budget studio filmmaking on a personal scale. --Jim Emerson
Average Rating: 
Rating:  -
1997 gave us two of the best movies of the decade...Titanic, and Contact. From the opening shot to the end credits, Contact is a combination of great acting, (led by the always amazing Jodie Foster), great story and amazing directing by Robert Zemeckis. Entertaining and inspiring. A classic.
Rating: -
Contact is one of the most well-done sci-fi movies I have ever seen. Stays away from exaggerated technological explanations for things and focuses on how things would be if another Alien specie contacted us. More about Humanity.
Rating: -
I LOVE THIS MOVIE,I THINK ITS ONE OF THE BEST SI-FI MOVIES EVER MADE,I HAVE THE DVD,BUT WHEN IT CAME OUT ON BLU RAY I JUST HAD TO HAVE IT!!!!
Rating: -
Excellent high definition transfer- major upgrade over the standard definition DVD.
Recommended.
Rating: -
An exceptional looking Blu-ray, "Contact" tells the story of Ellie Arroway (Jodie Foster)and the impact that her discovery of a message from an alien race impacts society. In essence "Contact" acts as both a literal title and a pun--the film is about contact between science and faith, between a woman who loses her family at a young age trying to reconnect in some little way with what's she lost and her unending faith that she will discover there IS life out there.
Working with authors Carl Sagan and Anne Druyan director Robert Zemeckis has refashioned the tale adding the character of David Drumlin (Tom Skerrit)as an adversary who dogs Ellie every step of the way pushing her further and further away from her opportunity to embrace her discovery. Featuring a terrific supporting cast "Contact" focuses more on the humanity rather than the hardware but deals with a number of complex themes in the process. Rather than focusing on a team that goes to meet the Vegans Zemeckis and screenwriters James V. Hart & Michael Goldberg elect to make one person go throwing the finale into question--again, it comes down to a matter of faith and Ellie believes.
The Blu-ray has all of the original extras that were on the 1997 DVD. While the transfer looks extremely good with nice detail, color and clarity. It appears to be digitally scrubbed though with a bit too much digital noise reduction used reducing the level of the detail in the process. Nevertheless, it does blow away the original DVD by leaps and bounds particularly the opening sequence as we look at the Earth following the radio waves as they leave our planet moving further and further away from our solar system.
"Contact" is a very good if flawed film. The faith vs. science themes that were so prevelent in Sagan's book are still here but presented in a bit of a muddled fashion. There's zero chemistry on screen between Foster and McConaughey. David Morse brings a strong, quiet presence to his role as Ellie's father. The ending although it is touching and does provide a sense of closure (and while it does make sense in many respects) may feel like a cheat to some. I thought it worked quite well within the context of the film. Some of the story elements like the subplot involving a terrorist attack on the "Machine" and NASA are deftly handled--they could have been blown up (pardon the pun)into soap opera spectacle but Zemeckis plays it low-key. The other flaw is the time compression from discovery to execution; while it was essential to keeping the film moving forward it also makes everything seem as it it happens rather quickly.
Over all this is a exceptionally good looking Blu-ray and the fact that Warner has ported over all the DVD extras (something that many studios have chosen not to do)is a big plus as well. Highly recommended.
|
