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I never thought I’d see the day that my own hometown makes it to the big screen, and now that it’s on DVD I’m even more excited. In fact, My Uncles ex wife’s mother owned the property before selling to make way for the dish. Sam Neil leads an impressive array of Australian characters in The Dish. The scientific team at the radio telescope soon find out that what won’t happen, will; and the short time to correct it falls into a human drama worth seeing. Amongst the aussie humour lies a deep an meaningful story of Australia’s role on capturing those famous images of "man walking on the moon".

Rob Stitch and the team at working dog deliver one of the best Australian films I’ve ever seen. What most impressed me was the soundtrack and of course the musical score by Edmund Choi, he created a grand operatic score for the film, which matched the beauty and grace of the dish in motion, and with one hundred tons of metal overhead the central station, you can be sure, it doesn’t move fast.

The dual layer transition was quite early in the film (10.30) due to the ample array of special features that makes this DVD a truly interactive experience. There’s a lot of real footage from that era including a short making of the actual dish.

So how does this transfer hold up?

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VIDEO
The 1.85:1 anamorphic widescreen transfer was not as good as I expected from recent film from Village Roadshow. The transfer appeared to have some difficulty with sharpness and keeping focus, which could be inherent of the source material.

Grain also appeared to be a problem at times but this can also be attributed to the contrast level, which was also a little overpowering.

The colour palette was quite limited, but it relayed a true country feel – almost period piece.

There was very little in the way of film or digital artefacts. The transfer appears to be quite well done but the original source material has created some difficulty given that this didn’t have a good impression at the cinemas either.

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AUDIO
The Dolby Digital 5.1 audio track was very much reliant on the dialogue to carry the film. The sound effects were great but a little too punchy for my liking.

The surrounds were quite active during the film to support some subtle and at times explosive sound effects. The montage of the black and white footage carried its audio track well. Given the difference in age of the footage it was not a distinct difference that would give it away.

The .1 LFE channel made itself known quite often and at times seemed a little overdone.

EXTRAS

• Audio Commentary – Rob Sitch and Santo Cilauro – The pair give an expected humorous overview of the film.
• Audio Commentary – Jane Kennedy and Tom Gleisner – Another light-hearted approach to the making of the film with some interesting background titbits.
• Storyboards – a big collection of storyboard sketches.
• NASA Archival footage – The footage we loved but couldn’t use (self explanatory really) very extensive and complete collection of footage
• Apollo 11 diary – A well-conceived and structured reproduction of the original diary from Apollo 11.
• Cast and crew bios.
• Key dates in early human space flight. A time line structure quite interesting. .
• Hidden Dish - Allows you to activate a special 90-second montage of footage in the film.
• Stills Gallery – Nice collection of stills from the film.
• Trailers 2 trailers and 2 T.V. spots (bonus The Castle trailer)

Overview

A truly classic Australian film, which will be enjoyed by all. A must have in every collection.

Review Equipment
TV: SONY Trinitron 80cm (16:9 selectable)
DVD: PIONEER DVD, DV525 (via S-Video) / PIONEER DVD/LD, DVL909 (via S-Video)
Receiver: PIONEER THX-ULTRA DD&DTS VSA-E07
Speakers:-
Fronts: SONY towers SS-X7S
Centre: SONY SS-TX7S
Rears: SONY towers SS-X7S
Sub: RICHTER – THOR

- Reviewed 14th May 2001

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