- Aspect Ratio: 1.85:1
- Video Codec: AVC/MPEG-4
- Resolution: 1080p/24 (23.976Hz)
- Audio Codec: English DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1
- Subtitles: English SDH, French, Spanish
- Region: A (B? C?)
- Rating: G
- Run Time: 89 Mins.
- Discs: 2 (1 x Blu-ray + 1 x DVD)
- Studio: Walt Disney Studios Home Entertainment
- Blu-ray Release Date: October 4th, 2011
- List Price: $39.99
[amazon-product]B00559SGCU[/amazon-product]
Overall
[Rating:3.5/5]
The Film
[Rating:4/5]
Video Quality
[Rating:4.5/5]
Audio Quality
[Rating:4/5]
Supplemental Materials
[Rating:3/5]
Purchase African Cats on Blu-ray+DVD Combo Pack at CD Universe
Shop for more Blu-ray titles at Amazon.com
Click thumbnails for high-resolution 1920X1080p screen captures
(Screen captures are lightly compressed with lossy JPEG thus are meant as a general representation of the content and do not fully reveal the capabilities of the Blu-ray format)
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The Film
[Rating:4/5]
DisneyNature, the studio that brought us Earth and Oceans, has teamed up with Keith Scholey and Alastair Fothergill to tell us a story about lions and cheetahs and their daily lives on the African savannah. Narrated by Samuel L. Jackson, the film deals with a young lion named Mara, a mother cheetah named Sita (who just gave birth to 5 cubs) and Fang, the leader of a pride dealing with trying to defend his family from a banished lion.
Having never seen any of the previous DisneyNature efforts, I was unsure how to go into African Cats. Clearly I know of the subject matter and had a feeling the film would be informative. I was just worried that Disney would slap their overly ‘sappy’ hand on the subject, thus making it bland. Boy was I wrong!
Not only is African Cats entertaining, but it’s also well made with many, many beautiful shots of the barren landscape. Here these deceptively gentle beings are captured in their manners with a stylistic eye. The producers don’t overly zoom into anything, giving both the subject and audience a wide enough shot to take in everything that’s occurring.
For those of you who have enjoyed Oceans and Earth, I recommend African Cats. Heck, even those who haven’t given previous DisneyNature efforts their time, give African Cats 89 minutes of your day.
Video Quality
[Rating:4.5/5]
African Cats arrives with an AVC MPEG-4 transfer taking up roughly 22.21GB of the BD-50 Blu-ray Disc the film is featured on. A quick glance over to IMDb doesn’t really reveal how the film was shot. With that said, I found this transfer to be quite pleasing. Due to the African landscape, the film’s color palette contains bright yellows and greens. There’s a film-like quality here resulting in very little grain, only occasionally showing up in some of the darker sequences (i.e. like in screenshot 3 found below). The transfer is free of any other anomalies that may affect other transfers like dirt, print damage, etc.
Audio Quality
[Rating:4/5]
African Cats arrives with a DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1 mix that compliments the aforementioned video pretty well. While this may at first seem like a subtle track, there are few moments during listening to this that will sound like the opposite. Dialogue, delivered by Samuel L. Jackson, is always intelligible and never muddled. Very concise at times. The LFE is deep and immersive, adding to the atmosphere, making us feel right there. Dynamics are sharp, whether it be a roar from the rears that echoes throughout the room or the immersion of Nicholas Hooper’s score. All in all this is a fine mix that captures each moment well.
Supplemental Materials
[Rating:3/5]
The supplements provided on this release are:
- Filmmaker Annotations
- “The World I Knew” – Jordan Sparks Music Video
- Disney & Nature
- Save the Savanna
- Digital Copy
- DVD
The Definitive Word
Overall:
[Rating:3.5/5]
Walt Disney Studios Home Entertainment continues their successful DisneyNature series with a well made effort. Excellent video, solid audio and a few well made features all add up to make this one easy to recommend to families.
Additional Screen Captures
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[amazon-product]B00559SGCU[/amazon-product]
Purchase African Cats on Blu-ray+DVD Combo Pack at CD Universe
Shop for more Blu-ray titles at Amazon.com
Overall
[Rating:3.5/5]
The Film
[Rating:4/5]
Video Quality
[Rating:4.5/5]
Audio Quality
[Rating:4/5]
Supplemental Materials
[Rating:3/5]
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