Final Countdown The Limited Edition

Product Description Farewell, My Queen marks the return of acclaimed director Benoît Jacquot (A Single Girl, Seventh Heaven, Sade, Deep in the Woods) and brilliantly captures the passions, debauchery, occasional glimpses of nobility and ultimately the chaos that engulfed the court of Marie Antoinette in the final days before the full-scale outbreak of the Revolution. Based on the best-selling novel by Chantal Thomas, the film stars Léa Seydoux as one of Marie’s ladies-in-waiting, seemingly innocent but quietly working her way into her mistress’s special favors, until history tosses her fate onto a decidedly different path. With the action moving effortlessly from the gilded drawing rooms of the nobles to the back quarters of those who serve them, this is a period film at once accurate and sumptuous in its visual details and modern in its emotions. Diane Kruger gives her best performance to date as the ill-fated Queen and Virginie Ledoyen is the Queen's special friend Gabrielle de Polignac. Additional Features It's a bit light for a two-disc set, but the limited edition of The Final Countdown is worth it if only for the half-hour of interviews with the Navy pilots who helped with the filming of the F-14 footage. Two dozen years after the movie, six pilots are interviewed separately and together, and they tell about the experience of flying, how in comparison missile shots in Top Gun are "just bogus," how much they liked the cast, and what they would have done had the final decision been theirs to make. There's also a 14-minute interview with guru Lloyd Kaufman, who served as associate producer; various stills; and a DVD-ROM article from the Commemorative Air Force Dispatch that recounts the experiences of the pilots who flew the Japanese Zeros. Despite some stumbles and a bit of dead air, director of photography Victor J. Kemper provides a reasonably entertaining commentary track. The Final Countdown was briefly available as a poor-quality DVD from Pacific Family Entertainment, and it's safe to say that Blue Underground's new THX-approved high-definition transfer is the best the film has ever looked on home video. The 5.1 Dolby Digital EX and 6.1 DTS ES tracks are limited by their source material, however, and don't have quite the oomph or surround effects one would wish for in the aerial-dogfight scenes. --David Horiuchi