Product Details

• Actors: Sean Connery, Pierce Brosnan, Roger Moore, Ursula Andress, Joseph Wiseman
• Directors: Lee Tamahori
• Format: Box set
• Language: English (DTS-HD High Res Audio), French (Dolby Digital 5.1), Spanish (Dolby Digital 1.0)
• Subtitles: English, Spanish
• Region: Region 1 (U.S. and Canada only. Read more about DVD formats.)
  
• Aspect Ratio: 2.35:1
• Number of discs: 3
• Rated: PG-13 (Parental Guidance Suggested)
• Studio: MGM
• DVD Release Date: October 21, 2008
• Run Time: 359 minutes
• Average Customer Review: 3.8 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (26 customer reviews)
• ASIN: B001CXYDO8
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #24,133 in Movies & TV (See Top 100 in Movies & TV)
• For more information about "James Bond Blu-ray Collection: Volume One (Dr. No / Die Another Day / Live and Let Die) [Blu-ray]" visit the Internet Movie Database (IMDb)

Editorial Reviews

Studio: Tcfhe/mgm Release Date: 10/21/2008 Run time: 362 minutes Rating: Nr

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

16 of 17 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A Showcase Blu-ray Release, November 24, 2008

By 

A. Dent "Aragorn" (Minas Anor, GD) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: James Bond Blu-ray Collection: Volume One (Dr. No / Die Another Day / Live and Let Die) [Blu-ray] (Blu-ray)

Let me first state that I was completely unaware of the problems with playing these movies until I browsed through the Amazon reviews. It is disturbing to constantly hear of people who paid good money for their expensive players not being able to fully enjoy movies that are expected to play on them. However, I have not experienced any problems playing a Bluray movie ever and this review is only discussing my personal experience with this specific package.

_____________________________________________
THE GOOD:
- Incredible video quality, better than what the audience saw on release date on some of the older movies.
- Lots of extras, most of them worth watching or listening to.
- Beautiful packaging.

THE NOT SO GOOD:
- The sound restoration not as good as the video.
- Some of the 'extras' sections would benefit from a 'play all' option.
- The boxe could be a bit slimmer.
- May require upgrades on certain players.
_____________________________________________

The overall impression is of quality, inside and out. The box could be a little smaller but the packaging is exquisite. There's a transparent plastic slide cover over a solid cardboard box holding a small binder on which the 3 individual movie disks are pages. Each movie comes on one disk, holding the movie itself and in incredible amount of extras.

The menu interface is well organized and there's is even some humor in labeling. For example, the option that plays the movie is labeled 'The Mission' while the historic promotional material is found under 'The Propaganda'. Depending on which section you may be, menu options branch into further sub-menus.

The extras are numerous and, for the most part interesting. The Dr. No disk, for example, has a very informative HD documentary on the restoration process and we get to learn who did what, why and how. Then, we see 1962 trailers, a contemporary documentary on the making of the movie, a 1960's interview with a gun specialist discussing the various James Bond handguns, even radio commercials.

The sound options include the original sound which, in the older releases is 'mono' but all movies have surround 5.1 as the default. The sound wasn't upgraded and improved to the degree that the picture was but, it's understandable. Going from mono to 5.1 surround would be the equivalent of upgrading from black and white to full-color 3-D in the world of images. The area where some of the older installments show their age is the sound.

When it comes to the pictures, the best that I can say is that you've got to see it to believe it. The restoration of the older movies started with the actual original negative, which is the one copy that's almost never touched. Once the copy was digitized as a 4000 lines resolution digital copy (Bluray is 1080) every frame was reprocessed to eliminate any possible defects from 'dirty optics', such as the proverbial hair that we sometimes see on the older movies to scratches, bad exposure, color brilliance. The restorers' goal for the end result, and this concerns the video only, not the sound quality, was to deliver what would appear to be a contemporary movie with a 60's or 70's theme rather than a 60's or 70's movies. In my view, they succeeded.

My overall rating is a solid five-stars. Just about everything in this release is superlative: the physical packaging, the interface design, the extras, the video quality. The sound is not so good on the older movies but, given the state of sound restoration technologies, I did not feel compelled to remove a star because the old movies sounded more or less like they did on release date.

Please note that and I am not factoring in player issues because, sooner or later, those are going to be addressed.

11 of 12 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Which Bond is Best? You Decide... in High Def!, November 15, 2008

By 

Chris Boylan "MrBoylan" (Astoria, NY USA) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: James Bond Blu-ray Collection: Volume One (Dr. No / Die Another Day / Live and Let Die) [Blu-ray] (Blu-ray)

There will always be debates on who makes the best Bond, and this trilogy gives you a sampling of three strong contenders spanning 40+ years of Bond: Sean Connery in "Dr. No" - the film that started it all, Roger Moore in his first turn as Bond, "Live and Let Die" and Pierce Brosnan as 007 in "Die Another Day" the final film before the series "re-boot."

When I put the "Dr. No" Blu-ray Disc into my player for the first time, my jaw hit the floor. The luscious detailed images that appeared on a large 1080p projection screen looked more like a movie made last year than one made in 1962. The main reason the films look so good is that all twenty of the pre-Craig Bond movies were cleaned up and restored with great care by Lowry Digital Images, using the original camera negatives. The first nine films (including "Dr. No" and "Live and Let Die" from this set) were all scanned at a whopping 4K resolution, and the other eleven were re-mastered at full HD 1920x1080 resolution - a perfect fit for Blu-ray disc. While the 12 megapixel (4000x3000 pixel) mastering of the first nine films may seem like overkill, for 1080p high definition's 2 Megapixel image, the results speak for themselves.

The sound is no slouch either, with the films re-mastered in lossless DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1 Surround (the original mono or stereo track is also included on each of the older films, for the purists). The producers went back to the original master recordings, cleaned up the audio and created a truly immersive surround sound stage for each film. If you haven't seen the early Bond movies before, then you're in for a treat with these Bond classics on Blu-ray.

As to compatibility, it is important to note that some players (notably the Samsung BD-P1500 and LG BH200) do currently have playback problems on these discs. It's important to know that if you own one of these players. But this should not be a reflection on the software, just because the player manufacturers have improperly implemented the Blu-ray specifications. Also, LG and Samsung have committed to providing firmware updates to fix any playback issues with these titles. Also, most of the current generation players (including the newer Panasonic and Sony players with the latest firmware applied) have no problems playing these discs.

Full reviews of each of these Blu-ray discs are available on Big Picture Big Sound.

5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Poor Packaging: Update, December 15, 2009

By 

Polypeptide "Polypeptide" (Collingswood, NJ USA) - See all my reviews

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: James Bond Blu-ray Collection: Volume One (Dr. No / Die Another Day / Live and Let Die) [Blu-ray] (Blu-ray)

I was hesitant to purchase this set because of the complaints about poor packaging. However, I just received Vol 1-3 and the packaging is completely professional, with each disc in an individual, hard-plastic case. No `foam' packaging here - I guess MGM responded to the quality complaints.