Inkheart

Brendan Fraser is Mo, the antiquarian book restorer who can bring characters out of books and into the world merely by reading them aloud, in the screen version of Cornelia Funke's best-selling young adult fantasy. With the gift comes a curse, of course: One from our world takes its place in the book. You can imagine the tragedy this has brought him merely from the weight of guilt and loss that Mo carries with him as he slips through European villages and tiny backroads with his teenage daughter Meggie (Eliza Hope Bennett) while fleeing the villains he released from a third-rate fantasy years before. Director Iain Softley lacks a certain sense of wonder at the potential of the premise, but he also avoids the busy, breathless action and contrived cliffhangers of so many recent fantasy adventures and gives the climactic scene an elemental evocation of dark, destructive power in physical form. But mostly I appreciate the way it both celebrates the power of literature and reminds us that stories have a life beyond the page, even if they are only in our own hearts and minds.

In the short featurette "Eliza Reads to Us," actress Eliza Bennett reads a favorite passage from the original book that didn't make it to the screen. Exclusive to Blu-ray is "From Imagination to the Page: How Writers Write," which is part making-of and part author profile with Cornelia Funke discussing the creative process, and a story created by the cast and crew through a story game. The commentary track with director Iain Softley is accessible only via BD-Live, which requires a compatible player.