This powerhouse of an anthology never falls flat as it pays homage to the original source material and breaks new ground in the field of animation.
Best extras: Each animated piece is accompanied by an eight-minute behind-the-scenes look at its origins that is not to be missed by anyone in love with the creative process.
Better yet, I'll take the 23-minute recap of the Halo story, exclusive to Blu-ray, featuring clips from all of the shorts and interviews with Microsoft Game Studios writer Eric Nylund, who is well-known for his work on the Halo canon. This is especially helpful for those new to the Halo universe.
Read all about it: Marvel Publishing handles all Halo sequential art these days. Its most recent, a five-issue series, Halo: Blood Line ($3.99 each), chronicles the Spartan team code-named Black. I also recommend learning about the life of an O.D.S.T. trooper in Peter David's Halo: Helljumper series, conveniently compiled into a soon-to-be-released trade-size hardcover ($24.99).
SGU: Stargate Universe 1.0, (20th Century Fox Home Entertainment, not rated, $59.99) From the combined might of a major motion picture and three television series, the Stargate universe has been collecting fans nearly nonstop for 25 years.
The latest continuation of the mythology is another live-action television series on the Syfy cable channel that requires little knowledge of the Stargate canon and might interest the sci-fi drama fan.
After a group of civilians, researchers and military types from Earth use a Stargate (a ringlike direct-dial device that ports anything that moves through it to similar rings around the universe) to escape an attack, they find themselves on a barely functioning starship called Destiny.
Destiny, which belongs to the Ancients the folks who built the Stargates roams the galaxy on autopilot and is tied to Stargates all over the universe with the mission to help its current crew, which is longing to return to Earth.
An ensemble cast of characters is stuck in the ship, including hotheaded but brilliant scientist Dr. Nicholas Rush (Robert Carlyle), college-age hacker Eli Wallace (David Blue) and determined team leader Col. Everett Young (Louis Ferreira).
The first 10 episodes of the series' first season get the Blu-ray treatment on a pair of discs. I'm not sure the grizzled look of the show demands a high-definition format, especially when inspecting the dimly lit starship, but the white-hot dunes of distant planets and the fiery reflections of a star look spectacular.
