Cream of the Crop: HP's Favorite DVDs
By Harry Pearson
I have selected for inclusion on
this DVD list some of my favorite discs in the medium. This is
an initial, and far from complete, listing. And it is not, for
the moment, a "super" DVD list. That will come in time,
as I re-establish a video reference system worthy of the name
and have an opportunity to examine first hand the 16:9 enhanced
widescreen discs and to inspect, greatly magnified, these and
more ordinary discs on an eight-foot Stewart screen.*
Greg Rogers, our video technical
whiz, is firmly in favor of 16:9 enhancement on all widescreen
DVDs intended for use on a 16:9 screen for improved vertical resolution
on widescreen-shaped monitors or projectors, rear or front. He
writes:
There are two different widescreen
picture formats available on DVD. One format is known as 16:9
enhanced and the other is the conventional 4:3 letterbox format.
The split of available titles is around 50/50, although the
more Paramount, Fox, and Disney do DVD, the lower the percentage
of 16:9 DVDs there will be. (See the comment on the Miranda
line quadrupler.)
When 16:9 enhanced DVDs are viewed
on a 16:9 TV (direct view, rear or front projector), they have
one-third more vertical resolution than conventional letterbox
DVDs viewed on either a conventional or widescreen TV. This difference
is huge, overwhelming in picture details, vertical resolution,
reduced aliasing, and reduced interlace artifacts such as line
twitter.
In future issues, when I do compile
a list of "super" DVDs with the emphasis on picture
quality alone, non-enhanced widescreen discs will not be included.
For this particular listing, I will
put the enhanced widescreen discs at the head of the class, then
follow with first-class transfers (e.g., The Wild Bunch) of classic
widescreen films that are unenhanced, as well as the older standard
shaped films. I do that in deference to my own lasting commitment
to a higher standard of video quality. Still, I wonder how many
people (generally or among our readers) are equipped with widescreen
televisions and how many others who, like me at this point, don't
know what they're missing and will hardly understand the
hue and cry raised by the 16:9 folks. It turns out that 16:9 enhanced
DVDs must be downconverted within the player to standard, unenhanced
widescreen. And the downconversion process either robs the standard
widescreen picture of definition (that is, it can soften, as do
the Sonys) or introduces annoying artifacts.
In this listing, I have given priority
to those discs with both striking sound and image quality. But
not at the expense of content. I don't expect everyone to
agree with me about what is a good film, but I hope that you will
take chances on (maybe renting) some of the films listed here
that are unfamiliar to you. Two bullets after a title's listing
means the audio tracks are two-channel Dolby Digital (sometimes,
as in Blade Runner, terrific); one bullet indicates mono. Otherwise,
the discs will be the AC-3 5.1 encoded.
If it's sound you're after,
you'll find, in almost every direct comparison, that the
conventional laserdisc, which has as much storage room as a normal
CD, almost always sounds the better, with deeper bass, more transient
impact, better dynamic scaling, and greater resolution of the
dialog track. Not to mention resolution of ambience and soundstaging
properties (when they are present). We have given up the best
sound to get the DVD's increased image clarity. And how much
of an increase is that, usually? Approximately like the difference
you'd experience if your vision suddenly improved from 20/35
in each eye to 20/20 or better. (Ironically, the visual quality
of standard laserdiscs seems to have improved since the introduction
of the DVD.)
Of considerable concern to me is
the quality of what is being released on DVD. I, along with other
laser fans, was dismayed by the trashy quality of the films released
over the year-end holidays. Most of us expected some big, sexy
titles that would set us in a buying lust. But it was the same
old stuff. And exactly what is the same old stuff? Mostly those
movies that have finished off their theatrical runs and a few
of the classic films that will be sure sellers. But there is an
impoverishment of riches when it comes to serious cinematic works
of art, the kind that avid students of film will have to have.
There are "movies" and
there are "films." I make that distinction in the same
way I would between movie reviewers (Jeffrey Lyons, Gene Shalit,
Richard Corliss, and virtually all of the talking heads you see
on television) and film critics (David Denby, Pauline Kael -
now retired, Roger Ebert - usually, J. Hoberman of The Village
Voice, are some examples, far from all). There's absolutely
nothing wrong with movies or the enjoyment thereof - I get
a huge bang out of an intelligently done popcorn movie (e.g.,
Die Hard, the original, which is consistently witty, superbly
plotted and paced, beautifully photographed, and sly, sly, sly).
There is an art to doing them well and sometimes high art hiding
under their inviting surfaces. But there are also "films,"
cinema that entertains, yes, even if it tends to the more serious,
cinema that lingers in the mind long after you leave the theater,
cinema that enriches the spirit (Central Station is my favorite
of that category to come out during the past year).
For every film like The Pillow Book
that is issued on DVD, there are ten or 20 like the wretched Lost
in Space (whose video qualities and use of the DVD medium's
potential have left hard-core videophiles gasping in awe), which
I would in no way, whatever its visual excellences, recommend.
Unless I create a category for trash.
I believe that about covers these
introductory notes.
Now, on the with the shows:
Widescreen 16:9 Enhanced DVDs
The Pillow Book (Columbia/TriStar)
A multimedia film if ever there were one.
Peter Greenaway, its director and a man well-versed in the graphic
and fine arts, composed the film with varying aspect ratios in mind,
going from wide to narrow, making pictures within pictures, often
within a single scene. He uses this technique to complexly layer
the narrative, which is actually strong stuff (remember The Cook,
The Thief, His Wife and Her Lover). I like the sound (especially
as heard through Theta Voyager) and find it superior to many AC-3
tracks. [BUY]
The Fifth Element
(Columbia/TriStar)
Generally conceded to be the best DVD -
visually - and therefore a must for every system. The AC-3
is near the top of the list as well. As for the content, well, I
find this movie works better on video than it did in the theater,
where it was just too much. [BUY]
Legends of the
Fall (Columbia/TriStar)
I don't much care for this film. It
is misshapen and self-consciously arty and hi-falutin'. But,
again, like The Fifth Element, it is a stunning example of why DVDs
are better than conventional laserdiscs, at least visually.
[BUY]
Ronin (MGM/UA)
John Frankenheimer's return to form
(and not a moment too soon). An existentialist noir tale, European
in flavor, made spectacular by two car chases you aren't soon
going to forget. The AC-3's the thing here - I'm
not sure I've ever heard discrete five channel sound this lively
- and it can be deafening, especially during the heart-stopping
final chase through the streets of Paris (worth the movie). The
color balances are better than those of the print I saw in the theater,
and the film stock doesn't look as grainy, either. [BUY]
Dark City
(Fine Line)
Great science fiction/fantasy, if you disregard
the last 15 minutes of the film. A unique concept, carried stylishly
off in a visual design as radically inventive, overall, as that
of Blade Runner's a generation ago. What if, while you slept,
something was re-arranging your memories and your physical reality
so that when you woke up things wouldn't look or be the same,
and you'd never know it, unless...
[BUY]
Casino (MCA)
[BUY]
Starship Troopers
(Columbia/TriStar)
Here is a case where the small screen actually
helps us to see the laconic satirical side of a movie that, on the
big screen, looked like a paean to fascism, and a humorless one
at that. While I now get the joke, I don't think it's
very funny. And I'm worried about the number of boneheads out
there who won't get it. But as a triumph of DVD technology,
this you gotta see. [BUY]
Das Boot
(Columbia/TriStar)
In its expanded version, even stronger and
more suspenseful (agonizingly so) than it was in the foreshortened
version that has been in circulation up until now. The sound is
particularly good, since it effectively submerges you in an underwater
vessel (whose creaks and groans occur about the room, as if you're
on the boat) deep undersea (where you can hear the torpedoes, et
al., headed your way, or the military boats overhead). And wait
till the sub crash dives; with a good system, you'll be ducking
as the rivets explode. Das Boot is the story of a German submarine
crew during World War II; I don't imagine, since this is an
anti-war movie, that this was your typical submarine crew. Best
heard in German with subtitles (the disc also provides a dubbed
version). One of the few films on this list that can be called great.
(The commentary track, however, is - well, let's say,
everyone is having a good time, even if it is at the expense of
the movie. Those Germans!)
[BUY]
Terminator 2 (Live) [BUY]
Body Double
(Columbia/TriStar)
In retrospect, one of the best of Brian DePalma's
thrillers. The 1:85.1 framing looks wrong, but the transfer is a
beauty, allowing us to study, along with its voyeuristic hero, all
the comings and goings across the canyon. There are many things
that makes this such a satisfying thriller, from implied goryness
of a murder our hero espies but is powerless to stop to DePalma's
twitting of the censors, even up to and through the end titles.
(He decided that the censors, the MPAA, were taking all the fun
out of horror movies by sanitizing them; here he gets even.) The
ending is actually quite wise and playful, letting us know what
a merry trail we've been led down.
[BUY]
Bram Stoker's
Dracula (Columbia/TriStar)
This you'll want for the soundtrack,
which, heard in discrete surround, doubles the creepy effectiveness
of this gorgeous and garish re-telling of the Dracula story (but
it's hardly any more Stoker's than it is Coppola's,
especially with all those "infectious" blood intimations
of AIDS). The surround track allows all sorts of weird and spooky
"things" to creep up behind you. The score, heard on a
wide stage, is stereophonically much more impressive than that of
the laser. And on the DVD, the hot oranges and reds don't bleed
or oversaturate, so the entire picture is easier to watch. I should
say that Gary Oldman is not my idea of Dracula, nor is Keanu Reeves
a convincing Jonathan Harker, and somebody should have put a leash
on Anthony Hopkins who snaps and swallows as if he is going to gobble
up every coffin on the set. [BUY]
Blade Runner (Warner Home Theater)
[BUY]
The Road Warrior (Warner Home
Theater) [BUY]
Stargate
(Live)
Better watch out for your subwoofers. I blew
a Bob Carver's Sunfire Cube right out of the room on this one,
so prodigious is the bottom octave. The movie is actually, for an
hour or so, genuinely inventive and mystifyingly original. Then,
like others from its director (Independence Day, Godzilla), it collapses
into the ruins of clichés lost. Glorious visuals, especially
that sandstorm. Kurt Russell looks both uncomfortable and if he
is having a bad hair day. [BUY]
Wag The Dog
(New Line)
An excellent transfer (visually) of a first-rate
black satire, one I have liked better upon repeated viewings. It
holds up. And has Dustin Hoffman been better in the past ten years?
He becomes the moral center of a film in which everyone else is
amoral and/or on the make. Why so? Because he is true in a way that
goes beyond satire; you begin to admire the character he's
playing, for his resiliency and his pride in a job well
done. [BUY]
Midnight in the
Garden of Good and Evil
(Warner Home Theater)
A mixed bag of a movie. Moments both semi-profound
and semi-cynical, with the blend of the Old Savannah and the new
never quite melding as it did in the book. Partly I think this is
the fault of not letting Savannah look as authentically moody as
it does in life. Every outdoor daytime shot was filmed on a bright
cloudless day, almost as if we were in California. And it is partly
because it pulls its punches when it comes to sex. When the Lady
Chablis shows up, the movie punches a hole in the ozone layer, but
most of the time, it never quite catches fire, despite a spookily
assured performance by the great Kevin Spacey. Maybe for the protection
of the movie's commercial prospects, Eastwood gave its narrator
(and the book's author) a girlfriend played by none other than
his own daughter. Visually, the movie shows
what Warners can do when it's at its peak (which is most of
the time these days). [BUY]
Standard Screen & Special Interest
Gone With the
Wind (MGM/UA)
Also subtly rechanneled for Dolby Digital.
Very little of stereo interest save in the invasion of Atlanta sequences.
[BUY]
Speedway
(Image) THX
Originally an Imax film that I am including
here for you sound freaks. The Dolby Digital on this one is something
to hear. Visually, it must have been a rip-snorter on the big Imax
screen; much is lost in translation here, although the image quality
is exceptional. [BUY]
Widescreen Unenhanced DVDs
Die Hard
(Fox) THX
I thought it the best transfer I've
seen of the film, although the sound is definitely lacking in the
percussive punch it had on laserdisc, much to my disappointment.
And they didn't enhance it? [BUY]
Kundun (Disney)
The combination of sight and sound floored
me. In the theater (Sony's Lincoln Square, Manhattan), the
print looked pale, slightly soft, and rather flat. On disc, the
colors are vivid to the point of hallucination and the stereo scoring
of the magnificent Philip Glass score a worthy counterpoint at every
moment. Again, a multimedia of a movie. And it is, I think, in this
form that it must be seen. You won't get the nuance and meanings
of the spiritual biography of the Dalai Lama unless you have the
opportunity for repeat viewings. Scorsese has decided to tell the
story entirely from the point of view of the re-incarnated child
who becomes a living god without comprehending exactly what is going
on in the world about him. It takes at least two viewings to begin
to read the different layerings of meaning and the insights buried
in the texture of those layerings. It certainly burned out the movie
reviewers, who generally panned what they couldn't understand,
and too bad - it deserved a wider audience. Glass' score
is as good as that of Koyaanisqatsi, if not so minimalistically
accessible.
[BUY]
Dune (MCA)
[BUY]
From Dusk Till
Dawn (Disney/Miramax)
The soundtrack, like the movie itself, is
vibrantly alive (check out that bat attack), though not so discrete
as the Sony SDDS in the theater. The movie also has a crazy energy
that will suck you right in, unless you're turned off by gooey
gore (an NC-17 if ever there were one).
[BUY]
The English Patient (Disney)
[BUY]
The Wild Bunch (Warner Home
Theater) [BUY]
Tampopo (Fox
Lorber)
Far and away the cleanest, most beautiful
transfer I've seen on this film. If you had to ask me to compile
a top-ten list of the best in cinema, Tampopo would be there. It's
a wise, funny, and sometimes touching look at the efforts of a Tampopo
(Dandelion) and her attempts to learn to make great noodles, but
it is cast in the form of a Western (this may sound weird, but it
works). The underlying theme is revealed in the very last shot and
in the numerous parallel stories being woven in and out of the great
noodle recipe quest, and none more satisfying than that of the gangster
(who dresses in white) and his lady (with whom he exchanges an egg
yolk, unbroken, in a mouth-to-mouth series of kisses that will either
tickle your fancy or make you squirm).
[BUY]
Picnic at Hanging
Rock (Criterion)
A visual feast and a beautiful transfer.
One of Peter Weir's (The Truman Show) earliest and best. It
may be a great film as well. You'll wonder whether those school
girls actually did disappear on that rock (they did not) and puzzle
for hours over the connection between the barely repressed eroticism
and what is happened atop that large geological formation called
Hanging Rock. That being said, Criterion, which is supposed to be
the High End leader in laser technology, does not go in for 16:9
enhancement and I think we have a right to an explanation.
[BUY]
The Prophecy
(Disney/Dimension)
A good score, even in two channels, with
some startling audio atmospheres, and a beautiful transfer of a
rather more thoughtful apocalyptic thriller than most. There's
plenty of evidence, Biblically speaking, that God sends down angels
to do His dirty work. That is premise that underlies this film,
which has many strong moments, and a kind of indeterminate and not
visually satisfying ending. (The ending gets better with repeated
viewings, but the business involving Eric Stoltz at his fiery end
does not.) Yes, a mixed bag, but the goodies outweigh the dross,
and Christopher Walken, playing Gabriel (of horn fame, and note
the joke about that) owns the show.
[BUY]
The Blues Brothers
(MCA) [BUY]
Tombstone
(Disney/Hollywood)
Of all the films about Wyatt Earp and the
events in Tombstone back when, this is the one that comes closest
to the factual truth. Wonderful two-channel sound, with lotsa bounce.
Terrific performances. I often wished for
PCM digital, à la the 12-inch laserdiscs, for that last word
in percussive impact, especially during the gun battles. Some rough
editing shows: Why is there a burning building as the Earps begin
the march toward the O.K. Corral? [BUY]
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