7.6 | / 10 |
Users | 0.0 | |
Reviewer | 3.5 | |
Overall | 3.5 |
Dr. Temperance Brennan and Special Agent Seeley Booth in more mystery, murder, and mayhem.
Starring: Emily Deschanel, David Boreanaz, Michaela Conlin, T.J. Thyne, Tamara TaylorComedy | 100% |
Romance | 78% |
Mystery | 16% |
Drama | Insignificant |
Crime | Insignificant |
Video codec: MPEG-4 AVC
Video resolution: 1080p
Aspect ratio: 1.78:1
Original aspect ratio: 1.78:1
English: DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1
English SDH, French, Spanish
50GB Blu-ray Disc
Five-disc set (5 BDs)
Region A, B (C untested)
Movie | 3.5 | |
Video | 4.0 | |
Audio | 4.0 | |
Extras | 2.0 | |
Overall | 3.5 |
Have you visited your local police station lately? Now, you don’t need to confess to any nefarious activities to answer in the affirmative: this is a completely innocent question designed to merely ferret out how many readers might be aware of what their local precincts look like. My own nowhere near representative experience with such matters is that police stations are often housed in older buildings, some of them approaching the decrepit, where fluorescent lighting showers its hideous white rays on often ghastly looking old plaster walls and dinged up desks, chairs and tables. While some long running television franchises, notably Dick Wolf’s multifaceted Law and Order, have tended to show our public safety public servants working in fairly shabby environments, there are a whole host of other crime related dramas on the air now where seemingly run of the mill cops have decidedly luxe working conditions. Think of shows like CSI: Crime Scene Investigation or the relatively recent Canadian import Motive, and those who are prone to wondering where their hard earned tax dollars go might assume that the sleek Plexiglas environments and gigantic flatscreen apparatuses that are regularly on display in these series are part and parcel of real life “cop shops”. Bones is another series with a rather improbable high tech appearance, but at least in the case of this long running Fox series, most of what appears to be the very expensive trappings of the Jeffersonian Institute are part of the Federal government, which supposedly has even more spare change lying around which it can throw at supposedly arcane divisions like the one where Dr. Temperance “Bones” Brennan (Emily Deschanel) plies her trade of forensic anthropology.
Bones: The Complete Eighth Season is presented on Blu-ray courtesy of 20th Century Fox Home Entertainment with an AVC encoded 1080p transfer in 1.78:1. This latest season follows comfortably in the generally excellent footsteps of the last few seasons' Blu-ray releases, with a sharp and nicely detailed looking presentation that may in fact be a bit too detailed for more squeamish viewers when the close-ups of moldering corpses come into view (which they do with fair regularity). Colors are rather unexpectedly bold and bright for a show of this kind of dour content, and contrast is consistent, helping make transitions from outside field work to the environments of the Jeffersonian (which are admittedly fairly brightly lit most of the time) seamless.
Bones: The Complete Eighth Season falls pretty much resolutely in line with the previous Blu-ray releases of this series, with a perfectly fine, if fairly routine, lossless DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1 mix. The show almost always features some sort of surround activity in every episode, with nicely positioned ambient environmental sounds placed around the surrounds, but just as often—in fact, probably more often—the show tends to play out in quieter dialogue scenes which are anchored front and center. This is certainly a workmanlike sound mix, and one that offers just enough surround activity to create a decent, if not overwhelming, sense of immersion.
Disc One
I personally found myself more involved and engaged in this season of Bones than I have for that past couple of seasons, but I still couldn't help but feel that the series is starting to show signs of increasing age and tiredness, something that really came to bear when once again the same arch-nemesis who gave us last year's cliffhanger returned to do much the same thing again this year. The show still continues to be entertaining in an undemanding way, but there's a decided lack of the joie de vivre (or should that be joie de mort, considering the show's emphasis?) that highlighted the first few years of the series. There's still probably more than enough here to keep longtime fans hooked, but the writing may be on the wall for Brennan and Booth. Recommended.
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