Mini-DVD Reviews: Perry Mason: Season 1 Volume 2 (Nov. 21); CSI: The Complete 6th Season (Nov. 14)

Saturday, November 18, 2006

Mini-DVD Reviews: Perry Mason: Season 1 Volume 2 (Nov. 21); CSI: The Complete 6th Season (Nov. 14)

Welcome to another edition of Saturday mini-DVD reviews! Today we take a look at CBS DVD-Paramount Home Entertainment's Perry Mason: Season 1, Volume 2 and CSI: The Complete 6th Season.
See skees53's mini-DVD review of Perry Mason: Season 1, Volume 2.

Perry Mason: Season 1, Volume 2 (CBS DVD, $49.99) contains all 20 episodes from the second half of the first season of the classic courtroom drama. Raymond Burr stars as the all-star attorney Perry Mason that'll help the underdog client prove their innocence no matter what odds are stacked against them. This 5-disc set contains the 20 episodes from the second half of the first season beginning with the February 1, 1958 episode, "The Case of the Lonely Heiress," and going until the final episode of the first season, "The Case of the Rolling Bones."
In the second half of the first season, Perry has the daunting tasks of defending a woman when a con artist that caused her sister to commit suicide is suddenly poisoned ("The Case of the Lonely Heiress"), working with an important witness that has multiple personalities ("The Case of the Deadly Double"), working with a witness that claims to be able to identify somebody by the shoes they are wearing ("The Case of the Daring Decoy"), and many more cases where the person that should have done it, well, didn't do it! These particular episodes, despite its age of the series, has guest stars that many classic television fans will recognize, including Denver Pyle, Yvonne Craig, John Hoyt, Nancy Kulp, and more. Sadly, despite the fact that Perry Mason has an unusually large fan-base for a show as old as it is, the set is totally void of any special features, but the excellent presentation of the episodes along with the excellent video and audio quality requires that I give this set a verdict of not-guilty (or if it makes more sense this way, it is just a pretty good set!).
-- Reviewed by skees53

(4/5 stars)

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CSI: Crime Scene Investiation - The Complete Sixth Season

CSI.: Crime Scene Investigation - The Complete Sixth Season (Paramount Home Video/CBS DVD, $89.99)

CSI: Crime Scene Investigation is a fast-paced drama about a passionate team of forensic investigators trained to solve crimes the old-fashioned way – by examining the evidence. CSI: Crime Scene Investigation is on the case 24-7, scouring the scene, collecting the irrefutable evidence and finding the missing pieces that will solve the mystery.

My Review: CSI remains my favorite series in the CSI franchise. It just is consistently good every week, and they keep it fresh with interesting storylines.
While some of the original characters like Grissom have had less of a role in recent seasons, the entire cast is outstanding. I'm not sure if the show has reached its peak. Grey's Anatomy has presented a strong challenge, but CSI has continued to put up impressive numbers.

This 7-disc set contains all 24 episodes of the sixth (2005-06) season. The episodes are presented in Anamorphic Widescreen (1.78:1) with Dolby Dolby Digital 5.1 Surround or Spanish 2.0 Surround audio. It has a running time of 17 hours, 21 minutes. C.S.I's packaging has remained pretty consistent throughout all the seasons. The faces of the 5 main cast members are featured on the cover. The inside case is in a book format that you can flip through to get to the discs. Each disc features a different half-photo of one of the cast members and the CSI logo. The menus are very stylish and easy to navigate. They have a montage of video clips, with some intrumental music playing in the background. Options are available for Episode Selection, Set Up, Previews (only on Disc 1), and Special Features. On the Set Up menu, you can choose either Dolby Digital 5.1 Surround or Spanish 2.0 Surround. Closed captioning is availble for all of the episodes. As you would expect from such a recent show, the video and audio quality is outstanding.

Like the other CSI releases, this set includes an impressive amount and variety of special features. There are 7 audio commentaries available for 6 of the episodes by the crew and one of the cast members. They are insightful and interesting and add a lot of trivia facts. I would have liked to hear more commentaries from the cast. Six exclusive featurettes are found on Disc 7.

"Shooting Stars" - Audio Commentary by Writer/Director Danny Cannon
"Gum Drops" - Audio Commentary by Writer Sarah Goldfinger and Director Richard J. Lewis
"A Bullet Runs Through It, Part 1" - Audio Commentary by Showrunner/Co-Writer Carol Mendelsohn and Technical Advisor/Writer Rich Catalani
"A Bullet Runs Through It, Part 1" - Audio Commentary by Danny Cannon
"A Bullet Runs Through It, Part 2" - Audio Commentary by Carol Mendelsohn and Director/Producer Kenneth Fink
"Killer" - Audio Commentary by Executive Producer Naren Shankar, Writer Dustin Lee Abraham and Kenneth Fink
"Poppin' Tags" - Audio Commentary by Dustin Lee Abraham and Actor George Eads

The Scene of Sound (26:42) - Follow the process of creating final sound for Episode 607 "A Bullet Runs Through It, Part 1." This was a fascinating featurette that has
a lot of behind the scenes type footage. They show how they do the mics, the spotting session, music score, foley artists, ADR stage/looping and the final mix. There's a lot of work for them to do in a short period of time.

Gadgets & Gizmos - This featurette is hosted by Technical Advisor Rich Catalani and divided into six sections: Borescope with Fiberoptic Camera (:53), Forensic Buddy (1:15), Scanning Electron Microscope (:47), Nicolet Almega (Laser Ablator) (:53), Camlite (1:15), Micro FTIR (1:29). It was cool to see how all these gadgets are used to create the various shots.

Coroner Reports - David Berman and Robert David Hall are interviewed. This featurette is divided into four sections: Respecting the Dead (1:06), Stomach Contents (:51), Special Handlings (1:21), Surprise Findings (:39). I would have liked to see this as a longer segment. It is hard to overlook these guys contributions to the show. They always add some humor.

Apparent Cause of Death (6:52) - Special Effects Make-Up artist Matthew W. Mungle takes us through the process of turning a perfectly healthy actor into a corpis, complete with an exposed chest cavity and a sawed-off skull cap. I know that the
make-up and effects aren't real, but they could sure fool me many times.

Season Six Trajectory (19:18) - CSI's Cast & Crew discuss where CSI is going in Season Six. They talk about the characters, their backgrounds, and the themes of this season. There seemed to be less details on the characters this season than in the past, but when they do it seems to make more of an impact. Melinda Clarke (Lady Heather) returned this season, and she is interviewed as well. This featurette gives a pretty good summary of the season, but where was the mention of the relationship between Grissom and Sara?

The New Title Sequence - CSI's Producers and Visual Effects Artists discuss the process of creating a new opening sequence. They used basically the same opening credits for the first 5 seasons (with only a few new shots tossed in each year). This season they completely re-did it. There are still a lot of the classic scenes used like the exploding apple and Grissom using the sledgehammer on the head.

Final Comments: There are so many crime shows on TV today, but CSI remains the best. I think one of the keys to the success of the show is that they've been able to keep all of the original six cast members. The cast has great chemistry, and they have a great production crew to put it all together. There are no shortage of special features on this set that will give you some interesting details on how much work goes into making an episode. You will definitely want to pick up this set to add to your collection.

-- Reviewed by Todd Fuller