Product Description

Bill Murray, Dan Aykroyd, Sigourney Weaver, Harold Ramis, Rick MoranisDirectors: Ivan Reitman

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #1668 in DVD
• Brand: Blu-ray Comedy
• Released on: 2009-06-15
• Rating: Parental Guidance
• Format: PAL
• Subtitled in: Danish, Finnish, Hindi, Italian, Norwegian, Swedish
• Number of discs: 1
• Dimensions: .26 pounds
• Running time: 105 minutes

Synopsis
When Dr. Peter Venkman (Bill Murrary) and his Columbia University colleagues (Dan Aykroyd, Harold Ramis, Ernie Hudson) are kicked out of their prestigious academic posts, they start a private practice as professional ghost-catchers. Although the three parascientists are idle for awhile, their television advertisements finally pay off when beautiful Dana Barrett (Sigourney Weaver) contracts them. It seems her apartment has become the entryway for ghastly ghosts and goofy ghouls hellbent on terroriSing New York City. Soon they're going to her rescue, trying to rid the city of the slimy creatures. GHOSTBUSTERS hit US screens in June of 1984 and went on to become one of the most successful comedy films of all time, spawning a sequel and a popular animated series.

Customer Reviews

Features and Tech details
One of the finest films ever gets the full blu ray treatment. The picture is pretty good since the film is now 25 year old and the sound is above average.

The film hasn't aged at all and stands the test of time. They just don't make films like this anymore. The acting and script is comedy at it's best. The Features while some of them are on the original DVD release there is enough extras added to justify getting the blu ray realease.

Since Amazon haven't lited the extras in full yet here goes.

Ghostbusters Blu-ray Disc Special Features:
All-New Exclusive Special Features
* Digitally Mastered Audio and Video
* Slimer Mode: Picture-in-Picture Graphical Viewing Experience with an examination of the spook-hunters' firehouse headquarters, an in-depth exploration of the creatures in the Ghostbusters mythology, behind-the-scenes discussions of making the movie, new cast, crew and special effects artists interviews and much more!
* Featurette: Ecto-1: Resurrecting the Classic Car
* Ghostbusters Garage: Ecto-1 Gallery

Additional Special Features
* Filmmakers' Commentary with Ivan Reitman, Harold Ramis and Joe Medjuck
* Featurette: 1984 - The Making of Ghostbusters - Interviews with the cast and crew
* Featurette: Interviews with Cast and Crew
* Featurette: SFX Team - Includes Before and After Multi-Angle Explorations
* Scene Cemetery - 10 Deleted Scenes
* Audio: English, italian
* Subtitles: English, Finnish, Hindi, Italian, Norwegian, Swedish
* Storyboard Comparisons
* Closed Captioned

Grainy but good transfer of a classic
Yes, it's true the film has a lot of grain, but nowhere near as much as, say, "Friday the 13th Part III" the world heavyweight champion for unloveable grain. And surprisingly there are plenty of dark and indoor scenes with very minimal grain. The other picture quality caveat is that a lot of mid-long shots are sometimes lacking in sharpness; and this does not always look like a stylistic choice. But there are countless close-ups and plenty of long shots which are very sharp. Especially the close-ups often have unbelievable depth and plasticity for a 25 year old film. When Winston is shown in close-up during the showdown with Zuul, this looks like a film from this or last year!

"Ghostbusters" has also been accused of having washed-out colours on BD, well the fire-engine red of the ecto-containment system in their cellar is superb and colours generally are very good; nothing like "Halloween" which is a little washed-out. Dana's appartment looks a bit faded, but I think that's how her furniture is supposed to look. Some of the FX are outed as a bit poor by HD such as the "streams" and the dogs, but the library ghost, Slimer, and Mr Stay Puft all look great in HD. And there is a shot of sky-scrapers a little before Dana's roof blows that holds its own with the typical HD showcase shots of many films made after the launch of Blu-Ray as a format. The soundtrack is occasionally a bit weak but for the most part more than acceptable, above all in the final showdown scenes and whenever the theme music is pumped out.

The film is a classic and needs no recommendation at this stage. If you are considering upgrading, do it unless you have an absolute allergy to grain. The Sony trailer for it as seen on "The International" is very fair; showing typical better and worse scenes, but the majority of scenes are in the former category. If only "Gladiator" had been released like this. Those who will sacrifice detail to be grain-free could have turned on their BD player's processing (as some might prefer to do here) and everyone could have been happy. This is a BD release full of sharpness, depth and detail, and, yes, occasionally more grain than some may like. At this stage most people will have established their expectations and tastes for Blu-Ray. I hope this review makes it clearer whether this disc is for you or not. Highly recommended.

Who Ya Gonna Call? Grainbusters!
Great film, a decent collection of extras (sadly the fantastic animated menu from the DVD has been replaced with a rather underwhelming menu on the Blu-ray).

Picture quality? Unfortunately this transfer is not very good. There are lot of scenes that contain grain. You can see it moving around like bacteria under a microscope. I know this is an old film and don't expect it to look like, say Transformers, but I have even older movies on Blu-ray and they don't contain nearly as much grain.

Picture quality enthusiasts - stick with an upscaled DVD for now. It will probably look better. If you're not convinced, check out some of the reviews on Amazon.com.