Picture Perfect HD Chicago Blu-ray Movie

Rating summary

Movie		3.5
Video		4.0
Audio		4.0
Extras		0.0
Overall		3.5

Picture Perfect HD Chicago Blu-ray Movie Review

Will Picture Perfect HD Chicago be your kind of Blu-ray?

Reviewed by Jeffrey Kauffman November 17, 2011

Chicago had always been a “layover” city for me, nothing other than a couple of hours' respite at O’Hare as I made connecting flights here and there, at least until I met my wife. Betsy had grown up near Milwaukee and had become a broadcaster there, ultimately being recruited to be a news anchor for two large Chicago stations, WXRT and WMAQ. She lived in the heart of downtown Chicago for several years and developed a number of close friendships and professional relationships that lasted even after she moved to the west coast and Portland, market share-wise a big step down from Chicago, but something she wanted to do for quality of life reasons (plus she had the added side benefit of meeting me here, and, yes, that is a joke). Because she still had so many friends in Chicago and hadn’t seen them for a while we made a special side trip to the Windy City one year when we were actually visiting her parents at their summer cabin in the North Woods of Wisconsin, and I finally had a chance to get to know the midwest’s largest metropolis. I instantly fell in love with Chicago, and spent several days simply walking around the beautiful downtown core. I certainly have nothing against New York, and in fact my father was raised in Manhattan, as were his siblings, and I returned to the Big Apple repeatedly to visit family growing up, but my experience in Chicago led me to return to our hotel room one day and exclaim, “It’s a lot like New York, only with friendlier people and wider streets!” If you’ve spent time in Chicago, you no doubt know how spectacularly beautiful it is, and if you haven’t, Picture Perfect: Chicago will give you at least an inkling of some of the delights that are in store for you in one of the crown jewels of American cities.

The tour starts out with a really cool installation at Crown Fountain. There amid the squealing kids and meandering pedestrians is a giant 2001: A Space Odyssey-esque monolith which has an equally humongous female face projected on it somehow. The face changes subtly over time, blinking, smiling, and then in the coolest ever effect, pursing her lips at which point the monolith becomes a fountain and a stream of water emanates from her mouth. The kids go slightly crazy when this happens and the effect is so startling it will probably bring a smile to the actual lips of anyone watching this sequence. Next up is another water feature, Buckingham Fountain, a beautifully lit piece with the Chicago skyline rising in the background. Two sequences feature this fountain, one in daytime and the other at night. (It's kind of funny on this release that times are given for these shots, times which remain static despite these shots each lasting several minutes). If I’m not mistaken, this may well be the fountain used in the opening credits sequence of the old Ed O’Neill-Katey Sagal sitcom Married With Children.

Chicago’s iconic Lake Shore Drive gets two sequences in Picture Perfect HD Chicago. First up is a beautiful morning shot taken from a skyscraper which looks out on Lake Michigan on the right and some of Chicago’s gorgeous skyline largely on the left. Cars scurry along the wide lane like ants foraging at a picnic. There’s another sequence a bit later in the program that seems to have been taken from some vantage point out on Lake Michigan, or somewhere where a huge swath of the lake is present in the foreground, with Lake Shore Drive acting as intermediary between the water and the impressive skyscrapers.

If you’re a fan of Source Code, you already know about “The Bean”, the weird metallic art installation that’s a central feature of Cloud Gate in Millennium Park. People swarm around the bizarre reflecting piece, and one almost expects Jake Gyllenhaal and Michelle Monaghan to show up there in their science fiction paradoxical conundrum rendezvous. One of Chicago’s biggest tourist attractions, Navy Pier, which juts out into Lake Michigan, is the focus of the next sequence, as we get to ride on the gigantic Ferris Wheel located on the pier. Slowly but surely the wheel revolves, giving us a gently changing view of the city, the buildings, and even people walking around the Pier below.

A gorgeous nighttime sequence follows which is shot where the Michigan Avenue Bridge crosses the Chicago River. This is a lovely segment that features gorgeous skyscraper lights reflecting in the dappled waters of the River. A daytime shot of the intersection of Michigan Avenue with East Delaware follows, and simply shows cars and pedestrians on the wide city streets. One of the scarier (yes, scarier) things ever seen in an ambient video comes up next, as we get a view of the really precipitous outcropping in the Willis Tower known as The Ledge. This pure glass block sticks out several feet from the main structure of the skyscraper, allowing those brave enough to get a 360 degree (truly, meaning all around and above and below) view of what’s going on around them. If your acrophobic, you’d best stay away from this sequence.

Another segment highlighting the Chicago River is up next, with really beautiful aquamarine water being the main attraction. And then as a close, we have a fireworks display over Navy Pier in nighttime. This may have been filmed from a distance, as the sound of the fireworks is not as explosive as one might have expected. Picture Perfect HD Chicago of course had to pick and choose from among countless locations it could have visited, but for a brief introduction to the Windy City, this serves as an effortless way to see some sights and take in the many joys Chicago has to offer.

Picture Perfect HD Chicago Blu-ray Movie, Video Quality 

Picture Perfect HD Chicago is presented on Blu-ray courtesy of Topics Entertainment with an AVC encoded 1080p transfer in 1.78:1. Results here are a bit more variant than in other Topics releases. Some of the sequences pop magnificently, notably the two sequences shot around the Chicago River, which offer fantastic fine detail, brilliantly saturated color and really good depth of field. For whatever reason (perhaps another kind of camera was utilized?), other sequences seem just slightly soft by comparison. You can see this difference if you look at the screenshots of the skyline taken from aboard the Ferris Wheel at Navy Pier, but there's also noticeable softness in the shots from across Lake Michigan looking toward Chicago as well as the downtown intersection scene. Overall, though, this is a very good to excellent looking Blu- ray, with appealing contrast, good black levels (especially in the fireworks sequence), and aside from one or two very quick moments of aliasing, a pleasing lack of compression artifacts.

Picture Perfect HD Chicago Blu-ray Movie, Audio Quality 

Picture Perfect HD Chicago features two lossless DTS-HD Master Audio 2.0 stereo mixes, one consistently of ambient environmental sounds and the other mixing those sounds with music that is kind of Chill-esque house beats. In terms of the music, in a city so renowned for its jazz and blues, why those genres weren't explored for the soundtrack is a little puzzling, and while there's nothing horrible about the music utilized here, there's similarly nothing very exciting about it, either. The ambient environmental noises are soothing and feature some decent directionality within the confines of a basically narrow stereo mix. Fidelity is top notch, and low end, especially with regard to the thump-heavy music track, is superb.

Picture Perfect HD Chicago Blu-ray Movie, Special Features and Extras 

There are no supplements per se on the Blu-ray disc, but as is Topics' usual practice, this Combo Pack also includes a DVD of the title.

Picture Perfect HD Chicago Blu-ray Movie, Overall Score and Recommendation 

Picture Perfect HD Chicago doesn't break any new ground in terms of ambient television offerings, but it's unusually scenic and it certainly gives a nice, if generalist, overview of some of the beauty that Chicago has to offer. Some of this video pops magnificently, while other sequences seem to pale, albeit slightly, in comparison, with a bit softer look and less defined contrast. Topics continues to push the envelope with this sort of release, and while this may be a bit more standard than their incredible releases of Rise and Rebel last year, releases which really showed what ambient offerings could provide, Picture Perfect HD Chicago is an engaging and inviting tour around the Windy City. Recommended.