 ... |
The say there's a fine line between insanity and
genius. Looking at those of the past we now consider genius' and it's interesting
how some where seen as insane during their time.
It's the early 60's and USA and Cuba are near War.
During a dinner party at the Webber's, the United States President makes an
announcement on TV that Cuba is smuggling Nuclear Missles. Before you can say
Thanks-for-coming-now-leave-and-don't-forget-your-doggy-bag, Calvin Webber (Christopher
Walken), scientific Genius (seen by many as being a total nutball) takes his Very pregnant
wife Helen (Sissy Spacek), and her famous pot roast, into his underground bomb shelter,
where they plan to live until things blow over up top.
As one would expect, an air fighter jet crash lands on their house and it is
obliterated. The Webbers thinking it's a nuclear explosion and so set the bunker's
Time Lock seeking refuge in the Bomb Shelter for the next 35 years! (The World up
top actually thinks they were both killed in the explosion).
Within days Helen gives birth to a bouncing baby boy, who they appropriately name
Adam. Over the space of 35 years Adam grows up to be Brendan Fraser.
When the time lock deactives itself in 1997, the Webbers start to surface, to experience a
whole new world, one they think has recovered, barely from a nuclear holcaust. Adam
is most keen to find himself a girl and during his new world treking stumples across Eve
(Alicia Silverstone)..... With Adam being the naive fellow that he is (from his years of
isolation) Eve takes pity on Adam and becomes his assistant, while Adam stocks up on
Supplies to take back down to the bunker...problem is, Adam has a taste of life and is not
in a hurry to go back....but also doesn't want to leave his parents alone down there.
what's a boy to do?
So how does this transfer hold up?
...  |
VIDEO
At first glance this looks set to be a stunning Anamorphic Widescreen Transfer
which does in fact look so much smoother with considerable more detail than it's region 1
NTSC cousin. BUT looking a little closer it's riddled with some nasty single and
double frames of MPEG artifacting.
I noticed during quite a few cuts from one shot to another, around 1 frame before and 1
frame after the actual cut occurs the image breaks up. Even though these nasties come and
go very quickly being only 1 or 2 frames at a time, it happens quite frequently and i
found it somewhat disctracting (only because i was intentionally looking for more over the
duration of the film).
It turns out that BFTP was not authored in Australia like a lot of Roadshow's DVDs.
It was done in Germany (for the whole PAL world it would appear), and so Roadshow
unfortunately had less control over the making of this disc.
Looking at their track record for DVDs over the past two years this sort of authoring
blunder is not a very common occurance with Roadshow's home grown DVDs at least :)
This DVD is even spread over 2 layers of an RSDL DVD (The USA has both a Widescreen and
4x3 version on each layer of a dual layered disc!). The Layer Change occurs with Mr
Fraser walking down the footpath to Ms Silverstone's house dangling kis keys at mark
68:55.
The Link below is a sample of what I am
referring to with the single Frame artifacts. Given the size of these gifs it
does exaggerate the image a little, being so in your face. But it'll give you an
idea as to what i'm getting at....i hope :)
Click HERE for a Looksee
at the mpeg artifacting (NOTE it's 111kb)
 ... |
AUDIO
Good thing the audio mix is up to scratch. You have the choice of Dolby
Digital 5.1 or Dolby 2.0 Surround Audio Tracks.
The 5.1 mix sounds great and is encoded at 448kbps, but oddly, the 2.0 only at 192kpbs,
which is quite low for a Roadshow Title (but again, it's an overseas authored
transfer).
The 5.1 mix makes great use of multi channel split discrete sound, though not constantly
(only when required). Dialogue is clean and clear with some sounding more ADR
produced (a few swear words were also re-dubbed to keep the censor rating down....Alicia
Silverstone has a bit of a pottie-mouth at times in this film :)
Musically it's very nice with a low key score for the most part, and some great 50's and
60's and 70's and 80's and 90's classics thrown in for good measure.
Split surround FX kick in now and then and have a great dynamic range when they do.
Overall i don't think you'll be too disappointed with what's on offer here with the
audio mix.
.. |
EXTRAS
There's not a heck of a lot on offer here. We're missing a few of the extras
found on the USA release (like the "love tester") but we've also gained a few
extras for our version.
- Animated Menus. some nifty "60's style) menus and changing
menu effects, but not my most favourite looking menus at the end of the day (i like smooth
surfaces sweetie darling..smoooooth surfaces :)
- Theatrical Trailers (2) Both Anamophic Widscreen with DD5.1 audio
- B Roll On the Set footage 5 minutes worth (4x3 DD2.0)
- Biographies - contained within are a few cast and crew
interviews... Nice idea to include them for each Bios. But I think a
centralised locale for interviews is the better way to go for accessabilily.
- Deleted Scenes. 6 chaptered scenes totalling 5 minutes.
Now this is interesting. Did you know that TWO versions of BFTP were released?
A USA version and an International version. (New Line Cinema did the same sort of
thing with the Original Austin Powers, BUT with Austin, the
International Version was the longer cut!... :)
ALL of the Deleted Scenes here (presented in Glorious Anamophic Widesreen)
are PART OF the USA version. Why there were removed from our [international] version
is beyond me. The "Pacidena" scene gave closure to one of the films
threads (and was quite cute to :) Granted ALL the sequences removed from the Int'l
version were quite American in Nature, but they all certainly added something to the story
overall, so it's a pity they were removed :(
- Dolby Digital Aurora Trailer
New Line Cinema made 2 films pretty close together a couple of years back where both were
time travel themed (to some extent). This film, and Pleasantville.
I loved them both and it's great to see them finally released to DVD.
While BFTP does have a few video authoring problems, 95% of the film looks fabulous so
only the fussiest of DVD'ers are really going to care (or even notice). And having
seen the how much better this PAL version does actually look over the NTSC version
(even considering these very quick moments of artifacts), I simply prefer the region 4
version.
| PICTURE
QUALITY |
7/10 has brief artifacts
on a few shot changes |
SOUND
- Quality
- 5.1 WOW Factor |
9/10 clean and clear, and very dynamic
7/10 some good moments
|
| EXTRAS |
4/10 pretty limited |
Review Equipment
TV: Pioneer SD-T50W1 (16:9 RPTV)
DVD: Pioneer DV717 (using RGB outputs)
Receiver : Denon AVC-A1SE THX Ultra (Dolby Surround EX, DTS-ES Discrete)
Speakers:-
Mains: Quadral Amun
Centre: B&W CDMC-SE
Surrounds Left/Right: M&K SS500 (Dipole)
Surrounds Back : Polk RT/fx (Diplole)
Subby: M&K V125
- Reviewed 30th June 2001
* jpeg files for internet
promotion use only. Copyright© exists on all aspects of these files by Roadshow |
