Sex And The City

We catch up with Sex And The City columnist Carrie Bradshaw (Parker) a few years after we left her and her bed-hopping friends in the popular HBO series. Carrie has just found the penthouse apartment of her dreams with Mr. Big (Noth), Miranda (Nixon) is settling into family life in Brooklyn, Samantha (Cattrall) is in L.A. with her movie star boy-toy Smith Jerrod (Lewis), and Charlotte (Davis) is living her dream of being a mom to her adopted daughter. When Mr. Big makes an arbitrary decision to marry Carrie, you could say the devil is in the details as she and he have differing ideas on the perfect nuptial ceremony. Based on characters from Candace Bushnell's book. (Stacey Pendry)

Special features include a commentary track by Director Michael Patrick King, A Conversation With Sarah Jessica Parker And Michael Patrick King (24 minutes), a featurette The Fabulous Fashion Of Sex And The City (18 minutes), four minutes of additional scenes available with or without commentary by King, a clip of Fergie In The Studio recording the theme song for the film (two minutes), a digital copy of the movie for your PC or Mac, an interactive map of The City, which gives you locations for entertainment, fashion, and landmarks featured in the movie; and juicy tidbits of information will be displayed while the film is playing in Dish It!.

While resolution is occasionally sharp in the anamorphically enhanced 1.78:1 DVD, heavy compression artifacts are noticeable throughout the presentation and can be distracting. Black levels are solid, though, and good shadow delineation helps create an adequate sense of depth in the picture. Fleshtones are overly pink, but colors seem to be naturally saturated. Contrast is balanced well. Source artifacts aren't noticeable, and edge enhancement is not a big problem. The VC-1-encoded Blu-ray Disc shows good black levels with a decent sense of depth. The picture looks quite clean, although perhaps too much so, with fine details somewhat soft. Rings of edge enhancement are noticeable as well. Colors are balanced well, though. (Danny Richelieu)

The Dolby® Digital 5.1-channel soundtrack favors the front stage, but the subtly used surrounds can be incorporated well to create an engaging experience. The LFE channel is rarely incorporated, and while the bass that is in the soundtrack sounds naturally defined, it rarely drops below 80 Hz. The front stage sounds rather flat, especially for a newer title, and dialogue often sounds muffled, with poor articulation. There are also times when dialogue sounds boxy and far too forward. Dynamic range is adequate, and background noise is not noticeable. The Blu-ray Disc's lossless Dolby TrueHD encoding has better fidelity, with improved articulation compared to the DVD, but voices still sound somewhat muddy. The mix still has its limitations, and dynamic range is not very natural. (Danny Richelieu)