7.2 | / 10 |
Users | 0.0 | |
Reviewer | 2.5 | |
Overall | 2.5 |
Fantasy | 100% |
Horror | 49% |
Crime | Insignificant |
Video codec: MPEG-4 AVC
Video resolution: 1080p
Aspect ratio: 1.78:1
Original aspect ratio: 1.78:1
English: Dolby TrueHD 5.1
English SDH
50GB Blu-ray Disc
Three-disc set (3 BDs)
Slipcover in original pressing
Region A (B, C untested)
Movie | 2.0 | |
Video | 4.0 | |
Audio | 4.0 | |
Extras | 2.0 | |
Overall | 2.5 |
Lost Girl lives up to its name in more than one way as its fourth season gets underway. As this increasingly tiresome series’ fourth season stumbles out of the gate, the last refuge of a lazy writer—a missing hero and/or heroine —is front and center. This may strike some long time viewers as odd, given the cliffhanger involving Dyson (Kris Holden- Ried) at the end of the series’ third season, but those selfsame viewers will probably already know cliffhangers in this show are neither quite as cliff bound nor as hung (so to speak) as they first appear, and instead of Dyson’s predicament, this year starts off with Kenzi (Ksenia Solo) on the hunt for a Raiders of the Lost Ark inspired chest containing—well, something. Therefore, when Dyson himself shows up a moment later looking none the worse for wear after what looked like a pretty calamitous accident, it's hardly surprising when that accident is shunted to the side, the typical way this show tends to resolve supposedly life altering incidents that regularly crop up at commercial breaks, episode closings, and season finales. But even this isn’t the supposed real focus as Lost Girl continues exploring a by now almost ludicrously overcrowded and dense mythology, for it soon becomes obvious that not only is main character Bo (Anna Silk) gone, she’s forgotten. There is absolutely no trace of Bo ever having lived, and there are all sorts of new relationships and character interactions as a result. The first scene with Kenzi also highlights another gambit the writers of Lost Girl have come to rely on to the point of annoyance—having solo (Ksenia or otherwise) performers narrating their own actions on screen as the scene unfolds. In this particular instance, Kenzi lets us in on the somewhat less than profound musings of her mind and her current predicament, and it’s a way too obvious way to communicate salient information to the audience. To be clear, this is not voiceover—this is an actor talking to him or herself on screen as he or she performs various actions. This is also no mere fluke, however, for repeatedly various characters will “talk to themselves” on screen so as to bring the viewer up to speed. Even Bo (once she’s found, or at least been revealed to the audience) engages in this habit, offering up fairly useless commentary about the location where she comes to at the close of the first episode.
Lost Girl is presented on Blu-ray courtesy of Giant Ape Media (distributed by anime giant FUNimation Entertainment) with an AVC encoded 1080p transfer in 1.78:1. This fourth season falls very much in line with the series' previous years, with a nicely crisp and well detailed looking high definition presentation that makes the most of the sometimes spectacularly dressed sets and better than average if sometimes soft looking CGI elements. As with the third season, there's been quite a bit of fairly aggressive color grading at times here, to sometimes quite good effect. For example, the opening few episodes feature Bo on a mysterious train that is bathed in sepia and rose tones, giving a slightly spooky ambience to the proceedings. Contrast and black levels are both consistent and when the show indulges in close-ups, fine detail is excellent.
As with previous seasons, the fourth year of Lost Girl on Blu-ray has a serviceable and occasionally impressive Dolby TrueHD 5.1 track that really shows its mettle in the show's action and special effects laden elements. The sound design here often utilizes fun if hokey foley effects which accompany things like Kenzi erupting into "sparks" or Bo sucking the life force out of various characters, and those elements sound great here. Dialogue is cleanly presented, though tends to be unidirectional a lot of the time. Fidelity is excellent and dynamic range is quite wide in this series.
Fans who have stuck with Lost Girl are probably willing to overlook what has become more and more tedious about this series, including things like putting characters into supposedly threatening situations only to almost immediately rescue them. There's one very important departure from this trope in this season, and how the show chooses to resolve it (if indeed they do) will probably finally prove if the writers have truly run out of ideas and are merely rehashing the same tired old folktales. For longtime aficionados, the technical merits of this latest season on Blu-ray continue to be strong.
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