The Spiderwick Chronicles Blu-Ray

PARAMOUNT
Street: June 24
Prebook: now
> Family fantasy is bright and fun on Blu-ray.

Fairies come alive in brilliant color in the high-definition version of The Spiderwick Chronicles. Indeed, the pinks and blues of the sprites and the bright red of their berries jump off the screen. Paramount stuffed a lot of extras into its first day-and-date DVD and Blu-ray new release, though none of them showcase Blu-ray's most innovative features. “Arthur Spiderwick's Field Guide,” the disc's in-movie feature, is basically pop-up trivia about the movie's fantastical creatures. Director Mark Waters bookends the extras with fun assurances that the creatures are real and the movie only recreated them. Perhaps the most interesting tidbit to emerge from the six featurettes is that, instead of finding a house that would have worked for the movie, the production crew found the perfect location, then tore down the guard house that was there and built the entire Spiderwick house from scratch. Fans of the books upon which the movie is based will be pleased to see interviews with Spiderwick's author and illustrator, Holly Black and Tony DiTerlizzi.

Shelf Talk: The Spiderwick Chronicles won't have a problem finding an audience, based on all the fans that made the book series bestsellers. Whether they will pay extra for the same special features on Blu-ray as on DVD is the question.