Toy Story 2 3D

The sequel to Walt Disney Studios' and Pixar Animation Studios' groundbreaking hit is "Toy Story 2." All the favorites are back with some terrific new toys. This time, Woody (Hanks)—now a valuable collector's item—is kidnapped by a toy collector (Knight). Buzz (Allen), and some of the other toy box friends take off to rescue him before their owner, Andy, returns from camp. (Gary Reber)

Special features include a "Toy Story 3" sneak peek: "The Characters" (HD 04:01); commentary by Director John Lasseter, Co-Directors Lee Unkrich and Ash Brannon, and Co-Writer Andrew Stanton; Buzz Lightyear Mission Logs: "International Space Station" (HD 03:45); "Paths To Pixar: Technical Artists" (HD 04:24); "Studio Stories: Toy Story 2 Sleep Deprivation Lab" (HD 01:27); "Studio Stories: Pinocchio" (HD 02:16); "Studio Stories: The Movie Vanishes" (HD 02:34); "Pixar's Zoetrope" (HD 02:00); "Celebrating Our Friend Joe Ranft" (HD 12:47); "Making 'Toy Story 2'" (SD 08:11); a profile on John Lasseter (SD 03:03); a "Cast Of Characters" featurette (SD 03:30); "Toy Box," which includes outtakes (SD 05:43), "Jesse's Gag" (SD 01:10), "Who's The Coolest Toy" (SD 03:18), "Riders In The Sky Music Medley" (SD 03:10), and "Autographed Pictures"; three deleted scenes (SD 04:11); galleries; a "Production" section" (SD 13:52); a "Music & Sound" section that includes "Designing Sound" (SD 05:39), "Maxing The Songs" (SD 03:25), "Woody's Roundup" music video (SD 02:16), and Randy Newman's Demo "Jessie's Song" (SD 02:50); a character interview (SD 02:04); trailers; TV Spots; posters; a "Baseball Woody" (SD 00:22) spot; a "Maximize Your Home Theatre" tutorial; sneak peeks; up-front ads; and BD-Live functionality. The four-disc set includes a Blu-ray™ 3D, a Blu-ray Disc™, a DVD, and a digital copy.

This is the same new 1080p AVC Blu-ray Disc™ that was released as a Special Edition and reviewed in Issue 149, with the addition of an enhanced MVC 3-D treatment. The visual experience definitively tops all previous releases. The transfer faithfully duplicates Pixar's pristine digital source. The color palette is exceptionally vivid, with rich and warm hues that will dazzle your eyesight. The striking and bold colors pop off the screen! Blacks are deep and solid throughout. Contrast and "shadow delineation" are superb, with excellent visual information in the darker scenes. Resolution is incredibly detailed, sharp, and clear. Every element, whether in the foreground or background, is perfectly descriptive and defined with excellent dimensionality. The picture is absolutely pristine, with no objectable artifacts or crosstalk ghosting, for a perfect visual experience. The 3D dazzles with convincing depth and dimensionality, natural toy character volume, and perspective. Both positive parallax "window" depth and negative parallax "out-of-screen" imagery is perfectly executed, for a convincing visual experience. The toy store segment is truly mesmerizing, with breathtaking depth and perspective. This is truly a reference-quality 3-D picture that deserves the highest praise for its effective dimensionality. This is what high-definition 3D is all about! (Gary Reber)

As with the new remastering of Rydstrom's and Summers' work in 5.1-channel lossless discrete DTS-HD Master Audio™ reviewed in Issue 149, this is the same soundtrack. Creativity in rendering the spatial soundfield is downright impressive. Sonic imaging is superb and fully-involving, with compelling split surround activity that dramatically opens up the soundstage. Pans are delivered from the front of the room to the rear, with a good use of the center surround channel, to complete overhead pans. Sound effects have been recorded with remarkable clarity and convey a compelling sense of poignancy. Dialogue is directionalized across the front stage, with good imaging, to match on-screen locations. Dialogue sounds even more natural and intimate, with good articulation. The dialogue production is exemplary, with well-recorded voices that sound very natural and remarkably well-integrated with the visuals. Somewhat surprisingly, there is some directionality with voices, with off-center dialogue being rendered in between the screen channels. Randy Newman's music is very nicely recorded, with an involving, expansive presence that is better resolved in terms of instrument timbre and positioning. Fidelity is pristine—a definite upgrade over the previous releases. The .1 LFE channel is used extensively, with an extremely deep presence at times that develops the low end well, consisting of both subtle low-end foundation to the music and poignant, significant moments with substantial sub-25 Hz extension that is system threatening. The split surrounds are used liberally throughout to wonderful effect. While the EX and/or ES center back surround channel (here retained on the French and Spanish EX versions) on the previous DVD added an increase in surround envelopment, with pans across the rear stage much more well defined, the phantom sense of center back surround is still intact, though, not as prominent. This soundtrack still stands as a superb sonic presentation, with consistently satisfying holosonic® soundfield envelopment, an essential for the surround sound listening experience. This is definitely a superlative example of what creativity and a production of par excellence can do to optimally refine the experience of surround sound for movies. For added engagement, activate the D-BOX Motion Code encoding, which really enhances the sense of dimension with all sorts of motion effects. (Gary Reber)