Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #2697 in DVD
• Released on: 2008-10-21
• Rating: R (Restricted)
• Aspect ratio: 2.35:1
• Formats: AC-3, Color, Dolby, Dubbed, Subtitled, Widescreen
• Original language: English
• Subtitled in: English, French, Spanish
• Dubbed in: French, Spanish
• Number of discs: 1
• Running time: 116 minutes

Customer Reviews

Movie: 3.75/5 Picture Quality: 4~5/5 Sound Quality: 4.5/5 Extras: 3.75/5
Studio: Warner Brothers
Version: U.K / Hong Kong / Region A, B, C
VC-1 BD-50
Running time: 1:56:22
Movie size: 29,153,937,408 bytes
Disc size: 45,585,051,868 bytes
Total bit rate: 33.40 Mbps
Average video bit rate: 23.83 Mbps

Dolby TrueHD Audio English xxxx kbps 5.1 / 48kHz / 16-bit (AC3 Core: 5.1 / 48kHz / 640kbps)
Dolby Digital Audio English 640 kbps 5.1 / 48kHz
Dolby Digital Audio French 640 kbps 5.1 / 48kHz
Dolby Digital Audio German 640 kbps 5.1 / 48kHz
Dolby Digital Audio Italian 640 kbps 5.1 / 48kHz
Dolby Digital Audio Spanish 640 kbps 5.1 / 48kHz
Dolby Digital Audio Spanish 640 kbps 5.1 / 48kHz

Subtitles: English for the Hearing Impaired / French / German / German for the Hearing Impaired / Italian / Italian for the Hearing Impaired Spanish / Dutch / Chinese / Korean / Spanish / Portuguese / Danish / Finnish / Norwegian / Portuguese / Swedish / French / Japanese [switch Blu-ray menu language to Japanese in your player]

Number of chapters: 24

#Featurette-Burton + Depp + Carter = Todd
#Featurette-Sweeney Todd Is Alive: The Real History Of The Demon Barber
#Featurette-Musical Mayhem: Sondheim's Sweeney Todd
#Featurette-Sweeney's London
#Featurette-Grand Guignol: A Theatrical Tradition
#Featurette-Designs For A Demon Barber
#Featurette-A Bloody Business
#Featurette-HBO First Look: The Making Of Sweeney Todd
#Featurette-London Press Conference
#Featurette-Razor's Refrain
#Gallery-Photo

If you like musicals and want one with a dark edge, this is for YOU!
"Sweeney Todd" is everything you'd expect out of a Tim Burton/Johnny Depp collaboration. In order to appreciate this movie, you gotta be not only a fan of musicals, but a fan of dark comedy/drama.

So, if you give this movie a chance and watch it from beginning to end, I'm sure you'll end up being surprised by it and will enjoy your experience. I know I did! At first, I didn't know what to make out of it, but it definitely grows on you!

By the way, the blu-ray, which has already been released overseas, has received rave reviews so the U.S. release should be just as good, if not better. With a high-end, high-def set-up, "Sweeney Todd" is poised to be a top-notch release!

BEWARE - if the quality of the visuals matter to you on this HD release
I really enjoyed this at the movies, and when I bought the English Blu-ray and watched it again, with 2 exceptions.

First, the movie itself (SPOILER ALERT IF YOU HAVEN'T SEEN IT!), if only the daughter had lifted the lid and seen Todd kill the mother the despair would have been even greater - not for her, but for Sweeney. If he knew his beloved had seen him commit the act the tragedy would have been even more intense. (END SPOILER) But that's probably a personal and subjective thing, and not why I didn't mark it higher.

Secondly, the Blu-ray version of the movie. The reason I only gave this 2 stars is because if it's the same as the English Blu-ray, you may want to save your money, because the heinous digital noise reduction rears its ugly head again. DNR is used to smooth out film grain and artefacts and must be used incredibly judiciously. There seems to be a LOT of ignorance around here about film grain as opposed to video noise, and people complaining wrongheadedly about things looking 'clean' and 'HD'. Let me explain:

Visuals are obviously very important to Burton and an integral part of his storytelling. While film stocks have been getting more refined over the last hundred years many directors use higher amounts of grain INTENTIONALLY as a tonal element to literally add 'grit', roughness and a patina of texture to the visuals. It is used to enhance the mood of the movie, and when used by a visually competent director is done with purpose to help sell the tone.

The disgusting thing that happened here however is not as pervasive as the abominable PATTON, but even MORE wrongheaded. O.K., so DNR and edge 'enhancement' (ha!) are used to 'clean up' an image (only stuff shot digitally or cg animated films will be completely without grain) but when they get rid of that grain, they obviously obliterate fine detail - so much for 'high-def'! What happened on Todd, a film where obvious grain which is part of the actual structure of the film stock NOT added on top and therefore inextricable from the detail of the picture (without manually supervised frame-by frame instructions), was that they used the plasticising DNR on the faces of Depp and Carter - but ONLY under the eyes and around the nose and cheeks! Not only that but after obliterating the lines there, they didn't even bother to match the film gain in the rest of the plate back on top! So what you get is a horrible smeary plasticy mess. Which sort of defeats the whole purpose of the film in setting a grimy, lined and depressing world of despair and bloody revenge! They're SUPPOSED to be cracked and worn, literally and figuratively!

Usually I'm annoyed at people who mark a movie down because it was "too dark" or some technical reason apart from the actual story and worth of the movie itself. Here however I think I'm justified as whatever marketing moron approved it - probably the same sort that still puts out pan-and-scan for "Concerned Disney Christian Mothers' Group" types that think for some reason the black bits are put "over the top of the picture" (one question - why would they?!) - obviously didn't realise that he or she wasn't SUPPOSED to make the stars look pretty and unlined. Did they not noticed the black bags under the eyes? The ghostly makeup? The reason that these actors took the roles in the first place??? It wasn't done to Alan Rickman!

'Cleaning them up" in such a half-finished way or at all subverts the point of the story and the characters! The promise of HD is that we get as perfect a simulation of the theatrical print as possible. NOT to make it look like a video sports event. It's like the fools working at big stores who turn on the 100/120hz scanning on the HDTVs because it's so high-tech and smooth - that's meant for video-based sporting events (and text)! There's a special mode on ALL these sets to display films in their originally projected 24 frames a second. But they do the 120hz thing because it's 'slick' and 'hd'. Same sort of wrongheadedness as this slathering of DNR on Sweeney Todd. It's all about the original intent.

Lift your game, Dreamworks. I'm going to see about a refund on mine - or whether they'll put out a decent update like they did with Fifth Element.

Sorry for the massive post everyone, but this is the stupidest thing I've seen in quite a while. If you're the type who doesn't notice fine detail stuff, DON'T bother with the HD version of this. It's an insult to Burton, Depp, Carter and all who made the film.