The upcoming Blu-ray of Road to Perdition (3 August), Sam Mendes' followup to American Beauty, is absolutely gorgeous. Avowed former Blu-ray skeptic Mendes acknowledges his admiration of the picture quality in an optional introduction to the feature. He specifically makes mention of how glad he is to see Conrad Hall's cinematography so elevated by the additional visual data and bitrate as compared to DVD.

There are a few notable sequences in the rain and snow that show the transfer off really well, but for my money the real gold here is seeing strong definition in every little line in the irises of Paul Newman's eyes. Individual hairs in Tom Hanks' mustache, the rich textures of the period costumes, and the copious dark scenes are all equally strong reference points, but Newman's eyes really pop more than ever, or at least since I saw Road to Perdition theatrically.

The only additional new extra is a short featurette on Conrad Hall's career, and it's solid stuff. Cinematographers don't get nearly the attention I wish that they did, and this reminds me of how I wish someone would grab four or five major directors of photography and set them about collaborating and competing on composing a project of some sort and just put a camera on them doing their thing. Of course, I realize that cinematographers themselves would probably hate this type of scrutiny.