One Year Anniversary Day 2: Movie of the Year

Casino Royale

When Sony first announced that they would be casting Daniel Craig, a relative unknown, as the greatest secret agent of all time, fans of the James Bond series were understandably upset. Once Casino Royale hit the silver screen, their fears were quickly replaced with feelings of joy in seeing Bond, once again, at the top of his game. Movie goers across the world responded, pushing the movie to nearly $600M in box office receipts.

In preparation for the Blu-ray release, Sony worked hard to ensure that the highest level of quality would be placed in consumer's hands. The video was encoded with MPEG-4 AVC, one of the first titles Sony had done with the new video codec. Audio came in the form of PCM, ensuring that nothing was compromised in the transition from movie theater to home theater. The results were nothing short of magnificent.

Armed with a blockbuster hit and a Blu-ray disc, Sony released the title to the world in March. After only two weeks on the market, Sony announced that they had shipped 100,000 units of the title, becoming the fastest selling title in high definition history. These strong sales didn't even account for the hundreds of thousands of copies which were given away for free with purchase of a PS3 in Europe and Australia.

Months later, the title remains a strong seller and more and more people pick up Blu-ray players and PS3s. Today, Casino Royale has sold more copies on Blu-ray than any other movie yet released. Even though there have been hundreds of titles released over the past year, it was easy pick Casino Royale as the clear favorite among Blu-ray owners.

Runner-Up: Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest

By definition, Blu-ray titles which are released after their DVD counterparts never do as well as those released at the same time. Even with this limitation, POTC:DMC did very well (selling approximately 24,000 copies its first week), and after seeing the results, its no wonder why. Excellent video and audio presentation via high bit rate AVC and 24-bit PCM plus a BD-J game featuring unique footage taken during the filming of the movie. A magnificent effort by the folks at Disney that is a definite must have for Blu-ray owners.