...a literate script, gorgeous scenery, and fine acting combine to produce a poignant and inspiring cinematic experience.
The picture quality is a bit different from its earlier Image Entertainment edition, too. It's still all burnished browns and earth tones, sometimes slightly softened to give a more realistically natural effect, but this time the transfer is not THX certified. Does not being certified make it worse? No, actually, I found the new transfer very slight better than before. The bit rate is about the same as it was, and the screen size is different, as I mentioned above, but the colors are not so dark as before, making the visual characteristics a degree more lifelike in appearance. More important, the new picture is now more stable than ever; that is, there are fewer moiré effects and jittery lines. It just looks more "right" in this new edition and is even easier to watch.
Audio:
The Dolby Digital 5.1 sound is excellent, too, especially in the second half of the movie where it comes into its own. We are placed solidly in the middle of a buffalo stampede, a rain storm, a tribal war, and so on. The distinct directionality of the various channels, the frequency response, and the wide dynamics afford us just that much more involvement in the story.
Extras:
In addition to the film's excellent audiovisual properties, the new two-disc MGM Special Edition has augmented the extended version of the movie with a number of helpful bonuses. Disc one is double sided, with the film continued on the flip side: Twenty scenes and 120 minutes on side one, twelve more scenes and 101 final minutes on side two. The first disc also contains two audio commentaries, the first with Kevin Costner and producer Jim Wilson. Their observations are often as entertaining as they are enlightening. For instance, I couldn't help noticing as I watched the film how loud the gunshots were and how strong their transient impact was. Costner explains that he wanted the audience to feel those shots, as well as hear them. Well, we feel them, all right. The second audio commentary is with film editor Neil Travis and director of photography Dean Semler, and while it is not quite as interesting as Costner's and Wilson's, it contains a wealth of internal information. Side two concludes with an original, twenty-minute "making of" promotional featurette and a music video with conductor John Barry. English is the only spoken language provided, but there are subtitles in English, French, and Spanish.
Disc two's major bonus item is a new, eighty-one-minute retrospective documentary, "The Creation of an Epic." It's so big it's been divided into seven chapters: "Introduction," "Novel to Screen," "Actor Becomes the Director," "The Buffalo Hunt," "The Look and Sound of Dances," "The Art of Composition," and "The Success of Dances." Much of this documentary is taken up with self-congratulation, but there is more to be learned about the movie as well. For example, the editor tells us the studio wanted a film that lasted no more than two hours, twenty minutes tops; they got three hours because the editor and Costner would not give up some cherished scenes. Well, now they've got four hours. The second disc is rounded out by a nine-minute "Dances With Wolves" photo montage introduced by the still photographer on the set, Ben Glass; a five-minute presentation reel; a poster gallery; a pair of TV spots; and a widescreen theatrical trailer. The plastic keep case for the two discs is housed in a cardboard slipcase resembling a frontiersman's leather pouch.
Parting Thoughts:
"Dances With Wolves" may remind viewers of two other good films that came before it: Robert Redford's "Jeremiah Johnson" and Dustin Hoffman's "Little Big Man." Like Redford's film, "Dances With Wolves" tells a very personal story of one man's retreat into the Wilderness, into the greater simplicity of Nature. Yet "Wolves" adds the tragic element of Hoffman's film as well. We see the coming of the White Man with their callous disregard for the Native American culture, disrupting and eventually replacing it. These factors, along with a literate script, gorgeous scenery, and fine acting combine to produce a poignant and inspiring cinematic experience. It's a long film, especially now in its extended version, but it's a film that shouldn't be missed.
Audio:
The Dolby Digital 5.1 sound is excellent, too, especially in the second half of the movie where it comes into its own. We are placed solidly in the middle of a buffalo stampede, a rain storm, a tribal war, and so on. The distinct directionality of the various channels, the frequency response, and the wide dynamics afford us just that much more involvement in the story.
Extras:
In addition to the film's excellent audiovisual properties, the new two-disc MGM Special Edition has augmented the extended version of the movie with a number of helpful bonuses. Disc one is double sided, with the film continued on the flip side: Twenty scenes and 120 minutes on side one, twelve more scenes and 101 final minutes on side two. The first disc also contains two audio commentaries, the first with Kevin Costner and producer Jim Wilson. Their observations are often as entertaining as they are enlightening. For instance, I couldn't help noticing as I watched the film how loud the gunshots were and how strong their transient impact was. Costner explains that he wanted the audience to feel those shots, as well as hear them. Well, we feel them, all right. The second audio commentary is with film editor Neil Travis and director of photography Dean Semler, and while it is not quite as interesting as Costner's and Wilson's, it contains a wealth of internal information. Side two concludes with an original, twenty-minute "making of" promotional featurette and a music video with conductor John Barry. English is the only spoken language provided, but there are subtitles in English, French, and Spanish.
Disc two's major bonus item is a new, eighty-one-minute retrospective documentary, "The Creation of an Epic." It's so big it's been divided into seven chapters: "Introduction," "Novel to Screen," "Actor Becomes the Director," "The Buffalo Hunt," "The Look and Sound of Dances," "The Art of Composition," and "The Success of Dances." Much of this documentary is taken up with self-congratulation, but there is more to be learned about the movie as well. For example, the editor tells us the studio wanted a film that lasted no more than two hours, twenty minutes tops; they got three hours because the editor and Costner would not give up some cherished scenes. Well, now they've got four hours. The second disc is rounded out by a nine-minute "Dances With Wolves" photo montage introduced by the still photographer on the set, Ben Glass; a five-minute presentation reel; a poster gallery; a pair of TV spots; and a widescreen theatrical trailer. The plastic keep case for the two discs is housed in a cardboard slipcase resembling a frontiersman's leather pouch.
Parting Thoughts:
"Dances With Wolves" may remind viewers of two other good films that came before it: Robert Redford's "Jeremiah Johnson" and Dustin Hoffman's "Little Big Man." Like Redford's film, "Dances With Wolves" tells a very personal story of one man's retreat into the Wilderness, into the greater simplicity of Nature. Yet "Wolves" adds the tragic element of Hoffman's film as well. We see the coming of the White Man with their callous disregard for the Native American culture, disrupting and eventually replacing it. These factors, along with a literate script, gorgeous scenery, and fine acting combine to produce a poignant and inspiring cinematic experience. It's a long film, especially now in its extended version, but it's a film that shouldn't be missed.
![Lost [TV Series]](/images/displaymedia.php?id=23770&sizew=70&cat=3)
Average user rating (1-5):
[release]10826[/release]