10 Things I Hate About You – Blu-ray Disc Review

Tags: Andrew Keegan, David Krumholtz, Disney, Gil Junger, Heath Ledger, Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Julia Stiles, Karen McCullah Lutz, Kirsten Smith, Larissa Oleynik, Larry Miller, Susan May Pratt, Touchstone

has an average rating of 6.9 on IMDb
1080p in AVC MPEG-4 on a 50gb disc
DTS-HD 5.1 Master Audio
has “making of” in HD & commentary
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– 1999
– 90 Minutes
– Touchstone (Disney)
–
This uses 24.3GB for the movie out of 30.8GB total.
Street Date: January 5th, 2010

Overall Verdict – One Not to “Hate”

Buy it for $14.99 @ Amazon.com

— Review written by: Brendan Surpless —

The Movie Itself was directed by Gil Junger. Cameron (Joseph Gordon-Levitt), a new kid at school, instantly falls for the beautiful Bianca (Larisa Oleynik). The only issue at hand is that Bianca’s parents refuse to let her date unless sister Kat (Julia Stiles) also dates. If only Kat wasn’t seen by nearly everyone at her high school as the last person they would ever want to date (Kat doesn’t really have the best social skills). Looking to be with Bianca, Cameron enlists the assistance of Patrick (Heath Ledger), a school bully, in hopes of being able to charm both Bianca and Kat with Patrick. What results is a film that is both funny and one that shows the pure talent that the late Ledger had.

Loosely based on William Shakespeare’s story “The Taming of the Shrew”, I had never seen “Things” in its entirety before my junior Shakespeare class in college. Having read “The Taming of the Shrew” in the aforementioned class, I recall my professor saying he was only showing us this film as a companion piece to the story, as even though it was loosely based, it was an interesting twist on the story. I had known of both the plot and that Ledger was in it, but just never got around to it. And what a shame that is.

Certainly one of the highlights is the story. Even though it doesn’t really accurately re-tell the Shakespeare tale, it’s still both highly enjoyable and a real charm mainly because of the chemistry between Kat and Patrick. Stiles and Ledger works as they play off one another perfectly, adding a sense of both wit and style to their performances. We immediately sense the loathing Kat feels towards Patrick, and the indifference Patrick feels toward Kat. Initially it would seem that he wouldn’t even give her the time of the day, but she begins to grow on him leading to him trying to court her. Some of the courting techniques are charming and feature situations that we can’t help but smile at.

Overall, “10 Things I Hate About You” is a rare teen comedy that is both intelligent and funny. It’s all too common for ‘teen comedies’ in this day and age to rely more on ‘uncensored’ footage instead of actual plot. “Things” is a welcome change and is highly enjoyable throughout. Recommended for those looking for a smart comedy instead of slack-jawed humor.

Video Quality on this release is in full 1080p using the AVC MPEG-4 codec on a BD-50 (50 gigabyte, dual-layered Blu-ray Disc) in the 1:85:1 aspect ratio. The film’s color palette tends to focus on more of the brighter colors of California. Yellows, greens and blues all come off fairly accurate. There are a few sequences where the colors do look overly saturated resulting in a loss of detail/clarity to the image (one such example takes place right around 11 minutes where Bianca jumps in Joey’s car). Fleshtones fluctuate from scene to scene. Some of the characters have rather pale looking faces while others have overly bright looking faces. There are a few moments of “3-D” pop but only a few brief sequences. The film’s print is in good condition for the most part. Grain is kept to a minimum only becoming noticeable during some of the darker sequences. All in all this is a fairly good effort from Disney. Fans will be mostly pleased as this earns a “3.5 Star Rating“.

Audio Quality on this release is presented in DTS-HD 5.1 Master Audio. With a selection of 90s tunes that I’m sure most of us remember hearing, the provided DTS-HD track is a fairly good effort by Touchstone. The selection of both musical (Patrick singing on the bleachers) and song moments come across the front landscape perfectly. Dialogue is well-reproduced but sometimes does have volume issues making us have to reach for the remote on more than one occasion. Dynamics are kept to a minimum as the film’s sound design does tend to focus on more of a front heavy mix. LFE is pretty much absent except the occasional oomph from the varying song selection. Having seen this on dvd a few years back, I will say that this lossless upgrade is a decent upgrade. Fans will be pleased as this is the best “Things” will ever sound. This earns a “3.5 Star Rating“.

Bonus Materials are presented in High Definition with Dolby Stereo Sound.

• 10 Things I Love About 10 Things I Hate About You 10 Years Later: This runs close to 35 minutes and feature a few moments with rare Ledger screen-tests as well as cast and crew comments on the film.
• Audio Commentary with co-writers Karen McCullah Lutz & Kristen Smith and actors Andrew Keegan, David Krumholtz, Larissa Oleynik & Susan May Pratt:

Blu-ray Disc packaging:

Screenshots:

NOTE: The full-sized 1920×1080 files are in a .PNG file format and uncompressed. Bare with the slow loading times, keep in mind these files are at least 1MB (1 megabyte) in size each.

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