American Beauty is a very strange beast of a film; it should have been critically acclaimed but made no money. It is directed by a first time director with a theatre background and is a study of families falling apart in American suburbia, normally the plot of a daytime TV movie rather than a box office smash. But thanks to a great script, superb acting and wonderful debut director Sam Mendes the film made $336m at the box office.

Sound
As with many recent new releases this film contains both a DD 5.1 and a DTS soundtrack on the same disc rather than having two separate releases. A t first glance you would think the dual soundtracks wouldn’t be necessary as the film contains very little in terms of explosions or action. However, as you watch the film in DTS you realise how important the music and sound of the film are, and how haunting the original score by Thomas Newman is, and this comes across far better in DTS. I usually find that DD 5.1 is more than adequate at dealing with heavy bass, but is not as good as DTS at dealing with higher and more subtle sounds. However, you are not likely to be disappointed with either soundtrack.

Extras
As you would expect from such a recent release, there are plenty of extras on the disc. Sam Mendes even mentioned that he enjoys listening to other director’s commentary tracks himself.
First of all is the standard making of/behind-the-scenes featurette, which is 20 minutes long and is your usual studio buff, whilst also going into a bit more detail on the making of the film. However, it would have been nice to see a bit more about the development of the idea for the film. You also have your standard trailers and production notes as well as brief biographies of the cast. Nothing particularly special there, but the two main extra features are worth talking about.
The commentary track by the director and writer is one of the better tracks I have heard. Sam Mendes has obviously paid attention to the commentary tracks he has heard on other films, as he strikes the right balance between insights into how the film was shot and little anecdotes on the cast and crew during filming, such as having Kevin Spacey use different euphemisms for masturbation in the bedroom scene causing the scene to be re-shot on numerous occasions due to cast and crew falling about laughing. He is helped in that a lot of the more technical stuff is covered by the storyboard sequences, but more on those later. The writer Alan Ball seems to have very little to say for himself as Mendes seems to keep talking throughout the film, they explain well the use of Ricky’s camcorder as his way to look closer at what he is seeing. There is also a good discussion of the cast and their performances, but what would have been nice would have been to have a commentary featuring the cast, who would surely have been open to do one for a film with which they were all so proud.
The unexpected bonus of the extras is the storyboard discussions between Sam Mendes and director of photography Conrad Hall. This feature runs to an hour in length and is fascinating throughout, both for those interested in the technical side of filmmaking and also to a more general audience. Many DVDs have storyboard sections, but most of them are just page upon page of pictures with little if anything to support them, and therefore become very dull very quickly. In this case, though, the two men sit and discuss the transition from what was envisaged and what was actually filmed, explaining what has changed and the reasons behind it, ranging from changing text on a screen to make it look like a prison cell to the shape of the set preventing a particular angle. They do this for numerous scenes throughout the film with the storyboard on one side of the screen and pictures from the finished film on the other. This may all sound rather dull and technical but it isn’t - Mendes and Hall obviously get on very well and there is plenty of humorous banter between the two with Mendes commenting on how brilliantly a shot had been changed and then Hall replying that it was the only way to get the pot plant in the background into the frame!
There is one thing missing from the extras department, though, that is a massive disappointment, and that is a deleted scenes feature. During the commentary Mendes refers to an extended opening and ending of the film where the kids are charged with the murder of Lester, but he decided to cut these at the last minute. Since they would probably put a whole new spin on the film, it would have been nice to have seen them included either via seamless branching or as separate clips on the disc. Apparently it was Sam Mendes' idea not to include these, which is a shame, but during the commentary he does mention seeing other scenes in the deleted scenes section of the DVD, but even these aren’t available which is rather strange.