...its tongue-in-cheek humor, its stylized imagery, and McDowell's performance are worth every minute of one's time.
Part three of the film slows down considerably from the first two thirds and can appear to drag on endlessly, but it eventually gets its point across: The treatment turns out to be worse than the crime. Alex, once "cured" of his antisocial behavior and released to the free world, gets physically ill at the very thought of sex or violence. The society in which Alex lives turns out in many ways to be more corrupt than the actual criminal element represented by Alex. His past gang buddies even wind up as cops!
As the old cockney phrase goes, the world is "as crazy as a clockwork orange."
Video:
The disc case says that the screen ratio is 1.66:1, the film's original theatrical size, yet it completely filled my widescreen television; so for all intents and purposes I'd say it was 1.78:1. In any case, the VC-1, high-resolution video does a good job capturing Kubrick's picture. This is not to say, however, that all viewers are going to like what they see. Kubrick was very keen on shooting in natural light, and as McDowell tells us in the audio commentary, the director lit most of the indoor scenes with normal light bulbs and window light. The result is that there aren't the kind of bright, hit-you-in-the-face visuals that some viewers associate with typical motion pictures; there's just a realistic simplicity. Moreover, the natural lighting gives the image a somewhat soft appearance, so you live with it. The HD transfer does everything it can, I'm sure, to represent what's on the print, and, I can assure you, that's pretty good. Kubrick began his life in pictures as a still photographer and migrated to motion pictures. The photography, imagery, lighting, and framing in his movies are so good, in fact, that you could hang any given shot on the wall. They are like works of art.
Audio:
The audio engineers do up the sound, mostly dialogue and background music, in Dolby TrueHD 5.1 and Dolby Digital Plus 5.1. Both soundtracks are admirably free of noise, but neither one does much in the rear channels. As was Kubrick's wont, the director took a lot of his music from various commercial recordings of the time, recordings mainly of Beethoven's Ninth Symphony, several of Rossini's overtures, a few selections from Elgar, Purcell, and Rimsky-Korsakov, several Moog synthesizer realizations by Wendy Carlos, and, of course, the Arthur Freed and Nacio Herb Brown song "Singin' in the Rain," performed by Gene Kelly. It's still good sound, if a tad edgy in parts, and slightly fuller and more robust in TrueHD. It's just not quite state-of-the-art movie sound by today's standards.
Extras:
Disc one of this special-edition, two-disc HD DVD set contains the feature film; English, French, and Spanish spoken languages; English, French, Spanish, Chinese, Japanese, Korean, and Portuguese subtitles; thirty-five scene selections; and an outstandingly informative and entertaining audio commentary by star Malcolm McDowell and film historian Nick Redman. Between McDowell's inside knowledge and high good humor and Redman's intelligent questions and comments, the two men provide one of the few such commentaries I sat through in its entirety.
Disc two contains only four items, but you'll understand in a moment the necessity for a second HD DVD. Things begin with a Channel Four documentary in standard definition called "Still Tickin': The Return of A Clockwork Orange," a forty-three-minute look at the novel and the movie with filmmakers, artists, writers, critics, and the movie's star. Following that is a twenty-eight-minute featurette called "Great Bolshy Yarblockos!: Making A Clockwork Orange," also in standard def, this time with filmmakers like William Friedkin, Hugh Hudson, Peter Hyams, George Lucas, Sidney Pollack, Steven Spielberg, and others. The third bonus item is the killer, though: a ninety-minute career profile of Malcolm McDowell called "O Lucky Malcolm!" in high definition. Not even a thirty gigabyte disc could hold almost four hours of high-definition material plus the other, standard-def extras. Things conclude with a widescreen, SD theatrical trailer, and WB's usual HD DVD goodies like pop-up menus, bookmarks, a guide to elapsed time, a zoom-and-pan function, and an Elite Red HD case.
Parting Thoughts:
Although "A Clockwork Orange" gets its points across early on and begins beating the viewer over the head with them by the end, its tongue-in-cheek humor, its stylized imagery, and McDowell's wonderfully understated performance are worth every minute of one's time.
As the old cockney phrase goes, the world is "as crazy as a clockwork orange."
Video:
The disc case says that the screen ratio is 1.66:1, the film's original theatrical size, yet it completely filled my widescreen television; so for all intents and purposes I'd say it was 1.78:1. In any case, the VC-1, high-resolution video does a good job capturing Kubrick's picture. This is not to say, however, that all viewers are going to like what they see. Kubrick was very keen on shooting in natural light, and as McDowell tells us in the audio commentary, the director lit most of the indoor scenes with normal light bulbs and window light. The result is that there aren't the kind of bright, hit-you-in-the-face visuals that some viewers associate with typical motion pictures; there's just a realistic simplicity. Moreover, the natural lighting gives the image a somewhat soft appearance, so you live with it. The HD transfer does everything it can, I'm sure, to represent what's on the print, and, I can assure you, that's pretty good. Kubrick began his life in pictures as a still photographer and migrated to motion pictures. The photography, imagery, lighting, and framing in his movies are so good, in fact, that you could hang any given shot on the wall. They are like works of art.
Audio:
The audio engineers do up the sound, mostly dialogue and background music, in Dolby TrueHD 5.1 and Dolby Digital Plus 5.1. Both soundtracks are admirably free of noise, but neither one does much in the rear channels. As was Kubrick's wont, the director took a lot of his music from various commercial recordings of the time, recordings mainly of Beethoven's Ninth Symphony, several of Rossini's overtures, a few selections from Elgar, Purcell, and Rimsky-Korsakov, several Moog synthesizer realizations by Wendy Carlos, and, of course, the Arthur Freed and Nacio Herb Brown song "Singin' in the Rain," performed by Gene Kelly. It's still good sound, if a tad edgy in parts, and slightly fuller and more robust in TrueHD. It's just not quite state-of-the-art movie sound by today's standards.
Extras:
Disc one of this special-edition, two-disc HD DVD set contains the feature film; English, French, and Spanish spoken languages; English, French, Spanish, Chinese, Japanese, Korean, and Portuguese subtitles; thirty-five scene selections; and an outstandingly informative and entertaining audio commentary by star Malcolm McDowell and film historian Nick Redman. Between McDowell's inside knowledge and high good humor and Redman's intelligent questions and comments, the two men provide one of the few such commentaries I sat through in its entirety.
Disc two contains only four items, but you'll understand in a moment the necessity for a second HD DVD. Things begin with a Channel Four documentary in standard definition called "Still Tickin': The Return of A Clockwork Orange," a forty-three-minute look at the novel and the movie with filmmakers, artists, writers, critics, and the movie's star. Following that is a twenty-eight-minute featurette called "Great Bolshy Yarblockos!: Making A Clockwork Orange," also in standard def, this time with filmmakers like William Friedkin, Hugh Hudson, Peter Hyams, George Lucas, Sidney Pollack, Steven Spielberg, and others. The third bonus item is the killer, though: a ninety-minute career profile of Malcolm McDowell called "O Lucky Malcolm!" in high definition. Not even a thirty gigabyte disc could hold almost four hours of high-definition material plus the other, standard-def extras. Things conclude with a widescreen, SD theatrical trailer, and WB's usual HD DVD goodies like pop-up menus, bookmarks, a guide to elapsed time, a zoom-and-pan function, and an Elite Red HD case.
Parting Thoughts:
Although "A Clockwork Orange" gets its points across early on and begins beating the viewer over the head with them by the end, its tongue-in-cheek humor, its stylized imagery, and McDowell's wonderfully understated performance are worth every minute of one's time.
Average user rating (1-5):
Not yet rated.
Not yet rated.
[release]21838[/release]