It is said that whoever drinks the sap from the Tree of Life will live forever. "The Fountain" takes place in the past, the present, and the future—yesterday, today, and tomorrow—where one man (Jackman) will travel to the ends of earth, throughout time, to save the woman he loves (Weisz). (Tricia Spears)
Special features are the same as on Side A of the HD DVD and include a 13-minute interview with Jackman and Weisz, almost nine minutes on visual effects ("VFX Step by Step"), fifteen-and-a-half minutes of scene-to-storyboard comparison ("Inside The Director's Mind"), the six-part "Inside The Fountain: Death And Rebirth" (51 minutes), a 95-minute montage of macro-photography sequences ("Peter Parks Bonus"), and the theatrical trailer. There are also up-front ads.
The VC-1-encoded HD DVD and Blu-ray Disc both show the same problems with the less-than-perfect black levels and bloomy whites, and shadow delineation is far from superb. Resolution is good, but not quite at the level of the best high-definition releases. (Danny Richelieu)
The HD DVD's Dolby Digital Plus encoding provides a subtle increase in overall fidelity over the Blu-ray Disc's Dolby Digital encoding, but both sound almost identical. Imaged effects are slightly easier to pick out of the soundfield in the HD DVD version, but, again, only slightly. (Danny Richelieu)