Twister (DVD)
2-disc Special Edition
APPROX. 113 MINS. - PROD. YEAR: 1996 - MPA RATING: PG-13
" The plot is thin and the characters are shallow. But who cares! The picture and sound are knockouts.
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Video:
This is, I believe, the third time Warner Bros. have mastered the film for standard-definition DVD, and in this latest outing the picture looks better than ever, shedding much of the noise of the older transfers. It's smoother and cleaner, and, interestingly, framed slightly differently, revealing a somewhat wider, 2.40:1 scope. The anamorphic image is as vivid as ever, though, and it has less of the murkiness I found in the older editions, while retaining much of the clarity and definition.
Audio:
The Dolby Digital 5.1 audio is the disc's strongest point, not surprising considering that director Jan de Bont had worked on equally outstanding sound in the movie "Speed" a couple of years before. The sonics here are excellent. Channel localization is fine, transient response is quick and clear, voices are natural, frequency range is extensive, and bass is prodigious, if a trifle woolly at times. For regular DD 5.1, it doesn't get much better than this for demonstration material to wow family and friends.
Extras:
The new Two-Disc Special Edition contains several bonus items on disc one. Among them is a commentary track by director Jan de Bont and visual effects supervisor Stefen Fangmeier, the same commentary found earlier, but this time the two men both speak from the center channel rather than from the left and right channels respectively, which was a little awkward. Their comments are informative without being either cute or surly as some commentaries can be. In addition, we find two theatrical trailers, thirty-four scene selections, English and French spoken languages, English and French subtitles, and English captions for the hearing impaired.
Disc two contains the bulk of the bonus materials. Some of it comes from the previous single-disc edition, and several items are new. First up we find a newly made, twenty-nine-minute documentary, "Chasing the Storm: Twister Revisited," that includes comments from the director, star Bill Paxton, and several others of the filmmakers today. After that are the thirteen-minute featurette "The Making of Twister" that helps to explain the film's creative processes and a second, eight-minute featurette, "Anatomy of a Twister," that sheds further illumination on the subject. Then there is a forty-five-minute History Channel documentary on twisters, "Nature Tech: Tornadoes"; followed by a music video, "Humans Being," with Van Halen; and, finally, a video game promo for a race-and-crash simulation called "Flat-Out: Ultimate Carnage," whose title pretty much says it all.
Parting Thoughts:
"Twister" is a film that has grown on me over the years. Even the movie's characters, which I had at first rejected as being too stereotyped, I have now grown to like. Sure, the plot still seems entirely computer generated, but to quibble about the plot of "Twister" is to miss the whole point of the film. This one is all about looking and listening.
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