This release collects every episode from season three of the popular Netflix original series about Piper Chapman (Taylor Schilling), a classy woman in her thirties who is sentenced to prison after being convicted of a ten-year-old crime of trafficking money for her drug-dealer girlfriend.
The DVD for this classic film is strictly bare bones. The story of a con man who serves out his sentence in a mental institution was novelist Ken Kesey's wake up call to the world of psychiatric medicine, and the film delivered its message with wit, drama, and complex human emotion. The DVD, however, merely offers language options in English or French, and subtitle options in English, French or Spanish. At least the two-sided DVD gives the viewer the choice of letterbox or widescreen. The package includes a smattering of production note cards, but they relay no more information than the back of a video tape box. The transfer is poorly done, clearly from a used film print, and while the English audio is Dolby (not 5:1), the French track is mono only.
Frank Darabont's critically acclaimed, quietly popular 1994 debut The Shawshank Redemption comes to DVD in a simple presentation that features a widescreen, anamorphic transfer, Dolby Digital 5.1 Audio, a stills gallery, and the theatrical trailer. With an understated, well-crafted film like this one, the focus should be on the finished work, but a Darabont commentary, filmography, "making of" featurette, and other extra features would make a nice counterpart to the film's restraint. Hopefully, Warner Home Video will see fit to release a deluxe version of The Shawshank Redemption that gives the film the treatment it deserves.