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Series ••••½ Picture ••••½ Sound •••½ Extras ••••½ |
Heroes has also joined the ranks of 24 and Lost as one of the best-looking shows on TV, as each installment is of feature-film caliber. On DVD, it's an absolute marvel to behold. Each episode practically begs multiple viewings just to revisit all of the savory eye candy made possible by the strong choices from the cinematographers and art directors.
In the extended, 73-minute pilot, "Genesis," the contrast between the blue and white umbrellas deployed by a pair of genetics professors who argue as they walk across a bustling marketplace in Bombay sets the stage for two of the show's most important colors. In Episode 4, blue tones dominate not only the confrontation between table-strapped mind-reading cop Matt Parkman (Greg Grunberg) and the enigmatic HRG (Jack Coleman), but also the scene aboard a frozen-in-time subway car where Future Hiro (Masi Oka) delivers an important message/catchphrase to Peter Petrelli (Milo Ventimiglia), the budding power-absorber. In Episode 8, these tones permeate the soothing Indian waters where idealistic genetics professor Mohinder Suresh (Sendhil Ramamurthy) scatters his father's ashes, and they also frame the New York City cab where he sees his father murdered during a visionary dream. Most tellingly, in Episode 16, blue is contrasted with pink during a tense scene between Mohinder and the power-hungry parasite Sylar (Zachary Quinto) outside a Montana motel. In this episode's commentary, director Greg Beeman discusses the color choices for that scene shot by shot with both of the actors present, pinpointing the exact moment when the pink that frames Sylar turns to blue as soon as he speaks his own name. (More on this set's fantastic commentaries in a bit.)
White also gets its due, often in blown-out, super-saturated fashion, such as when Sylar murderously breaks out of captivity in Episode 11 and when the hands of radioactive Ted Sprague (Matthew John Armstrong) go nuclear in Episode 12. In general, the show's color palette is quite rich. I love how, in the pilot, the green turf on the roof of Yamagato Industries in Tokyo — where office drone-cum-time traveler Hiro Nakamura (the aforementioned Oka) joins his fellow workers for exercise — practically glistens. The scene reminded me of a Monopoly board, thanks to an overhead shot of all the symmetrically placed employees that soon zeroes in on Hiro as he squints at an impending eclipse. (It's revisited in an extremely different context during the final sequence of the season finale, which serves as the opening gambit for the initial chapter arc for Season 2.)
Reds are, of course, in abundance, from the sweet cherry Cadillac convertible driven by Jessica/Niki (Ali Larter) to the blood that's sloshed around on faces, arms, torsos, and floors (pick an episode, any episode). That being said, the blood that poured down the forehead of quick-study waitress Charlie Andrews (Jayma Mays) in Episode 8 looked a bit too brownish to me — more like chocolate syrup, actually.
Special mention must be made of the vivid, future-predicting paintings by the tortured, drug-addled artist Isaac Mendez (Santiago Cabrera). All of them are courtesy artist Tim Sale, a legend in comic-book circles. Sale is profiled in one of the set's many excellent extras on Disc 7. There, he reveals that (gasp) he's actually color blind and does all of his artwork in black and white with "shades of gray" (hmm, just like the show itself).
Ah yes, the extras. No skimping here. Making Of, Special Effects, and The Stunts are fairly self-explanatory featurettes, and none of them should be watched until you've already seen every episode. At least 50 deleted scenes are at your disposal, and sci-fi fans should especially watch for the one where Parkman describes the gist of a classic Twilight Zone episode to Claire Bennet (Hayden Panettiere), the indestructible cheerleader. The Score shows the creative process of composers Wendy and Lisa (of Prince and the Revolution fame) in action alongside audio engineer Michael Perfitt. Wendy is dead-on when she says the music is "like another actor in the show." She also correctly points out that each main Heroes character has a theme that serves as their alter ego. The show itself has no central musical theme, as executive producer Allan Arkush notes during his commentary for Episode 18 — except perhaps the signature ascendant wail that fills the surround channels whenever the title of the show blots the screen (at a time, incidentally, that's never the same from episode to episode).
A word or two (or more) about the sound. I just wish the surrounds were used more often throughout the season. Sure, you get good use of them in scenes like Niki's Las Vegas encounter with ambitious, high-flying politician Nathan Petrelli (Adrian Pasdar) in Episode 4, Parkman's internal audio freakout in the convenience store in Episode 5, the mighty drum corps in Episode 9, and the channel-shifting of Peter Petrelli's ultimately fatal accusations directed toward Isaac Mendez at the end of Episode 16. And absolute silence is used to stunning effect when Parkman tries to read the mind of The Haitian (Jimmy Jean-Louis) in a bar and comes up empty in Episode 3. But a more regular, thorough 5.1 presence would have made the literal grand scheme of things all that much more sweet.
Okay now, let's talk commentaries. We get them on 13 out of 23 episodes — not a bad ratio. Some of them appeared initially at nbc.com — in filmed PIP form, in fact — when the episodes were first posted for Web viewing. These were somewhat looser affairs where commentators sometimes came and went during each act if they got called to the set. But what they show is the level of camaraderie and ease the cast members have with each other. Grunberg is the most gregarious of the bunch, the first to exclaim "Come on!" with unbridled enthusiasm whenever a particularly exciting or revealing sequence appears. His back-and-forth with Panettiere during the first half of "The Fix" (Episode 13) is a treat. Creator Tim Kring is at the bookends, covering both the season premiere and the finale, and he's a fount of information — and an exception to the usual rule that lone talkers can't carry commentaries (a rule that's not the case when it comes to showrunners, who are usually the best sources of intel and detail about their "babies"). Executive producer Arkush, who's also directed a few episodes, shows himself to be a master commentator on a number of installments — particularly on "Parasite" (Episode 18) — by sharing a level of insight into how certain scenes and shots got cut together, thanks to his having broken into the business as an editor.
Arkush is at his best when discussing "Company Man" (Episode 17) — one of my favorite hours of episodic TV ever. Here he's joined by Jack "HRG" Coleman and writer Bryan Fuller (creator of one of this fall's most anticipated shows, Pushing Daisies). Arkush reveals the amount of research that he did to shoot the script properly (you'll find tips of the directorial hat to Desperate Hours, Out of the Past, T-Men, Raw Deal, and Dog Day Afternoon, among others), while Coleman admits one of his key acting choices stemmed from Robert Blake's work in Of Mice and Men. It's one of those episodes that can be watched again and again, with another layer revealing itself each time.
And that's Heroes for you: a deeply layered show embedded with many gratifying rewards. Long may it reign. Now excuse me, I think I'll go exercise one of my powers and watch it all again. [NR] English, Dolby Digital 5.1; Spanish, Dolby Digital stereo; letterboxed (1.78:1) and anamorphic widescreen; seven dual-layer discs.
Addendum: Don't worry, high-def fans — we'll be getting into all the nitty-gritties and nuances of the Heroes HD DVD back in the near future.
Read the interview with Zachary Quinto
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