The City of Lost Children

"Jean-Pierre Jeunet and Marc Caro's visually stunning, adult fairy tale comes to startling life on DVD. The bold vision of the French duo is just as warped as it was in the cinema. The surreal, colorful imagery is served well on DVD. Much of the film is enshrouded in shadows or lit by candles, so a quality transfer was vital. Luckily, the digital transfer does not distill cinematographer Darius Khondji's magical craftsmanship. Jean-Paul Gaultier's costumes have never looked better on a TV screen. The sound is always crisp and clear. Barking dogs, talking brains, cackling schoolteachers, and whispering children are all perfectly mixed for maximum effect. Angelo Badalamenti's haunting score sounds superb. The DVD is packed with special features. Director Jeunet and actor Ron Perlman's running commentary provides for a touching, light-hearted look at the filmmaking process. Viewers will snicker when they hear about a dog who wouldn't take orders and why he needed a urine wrangler. The costume design gallery consists of about twenty Gaultier sketches, some of them simply detailed close-ups of the same picture. An extensive production-stills gallery presents the films' sets as realized in black-and-white sketches, and ""Talent Files"" provides brief biographies/filmographies of Jeunet and Caro, Perlman, Badalamenti, and Gaultier. The theatrical trailer could teach Hollywood a great deal about film promotion; it is entirely free of dialogue and more than a tiny bit spooky. A stunning film, The City of Lost Children is beautifully presented on this DVD. It's an absolutely joyful experience."