Sound: Dolby Digital 5.0, Stereo (Dolby Digital 2.0)
Languages: English
Subtitles: None
Widescreen: 1.78:1
16:9-Enhanced: No
Macrovision: Yes
Disc Format: DVD 9
Price: £12.99
Extras: Behind the Scenes, Audio Commentary, Location Subtitles
Director:
Ron Fricke
(Baraka, Chronos)
Producers:
Ron Fricke and Mark Magidson
Writing credits:
constantine Nicholas and Genevieve Nicholas
Music:
Michael Stearns
Shot in IMAx, Chronos
is an exercise in time-lapse photography that effectively takes you from morning, through the day and
into the night.
Through the course of the brief running time we take in the sumptuous visuals of Lake Powell in Arizona,
Stonehenge, busy New York streets, the pyramids of Egypt, the Sphinx, English castles, French castles and
cathedtrals, St. Peter's Basilica in Rome and so many more places that if I were to list them all you'd
think you'd clicked on to a text-based world atlas by mistake.
It's incredible to see things like the temples of Egypt in such a state of disrepair, but then you see
the scale of them and can't begin to imagine how they ever got built in the first place.
To review this DVD based on its film content is rather a difficult one because what's put in front of
you is a must-see. After all, it's the closest most of us will get to seeing the world's wonders and the
way all the images are intercut and put to music has to be seen to be believed. It's incredibly clever
and as it runs for 42 minutes there's absolutely no reason not to make time in your busy schedule
for it. It certainly knocks spots off anything normal telly could throw at you of an evening.
The picture is mostly spot-on perfect. I say mostly because, for some unknown reason, when fast motion
occurs there's a slight jitteryness as things pass by you quickly, such as a 'flight' through the
Grand Canyon and the aforementioned Lake Powell. Maybe this was a combination of how it was filmed and
of the process of transferring it to DVD since it was shot with the intention of being played on a
screen that fills the wall of the cinema and would be a treat to behold. That said, the fast-motion
sections that are affected by this don't happen too often.
The music is a triumph with everything blending together seemlessly and coming across at times as
if Rick Wakeman's been taken back to the '70s and given all his favourite keyboards to play at once
while dropping a few happy pills. It's a bit odd that the sound is just Dolby Digital 5.0, so there's
no subwoofer channel as that would be the icing on the cake, but what we have here is already a delightful
treat.
According to
IMDB.com,
composer Michael Stearns used a instrument called the Beam to generate many of the sounds for this film,
which is 12 feet long made of extruded aluminum with 24 piano strings from 19-22 gauge. The original
instruments it was based upon were made from cast iron and difficult to move around.
I haven't seen the films always mentioned in the same breath as this one, Baraka, also directed
by Fricke, plus Godfrey Reggio's Koyaanisqatsi and Powaqqatsi, but I've got the last two
on DVD so I'll have to make time to watch those.
When it comes to the extras, the Behind the Scenes (30:59) section is split into four parts,
starting with a look at all the artists pointing their cameras and how they got the job done. This is
shown by showing static pictures while a commentary on this is given by Ron Fricke, production manager
and co-editor Alton Walpole and composer Michael Stearns. The other three parts go into more
detail about the Beam, Michael Stearns and Alton Walpole.
There's also a feature-length Audio commentary from the same three guys and, finally, the
Location Subtitles option is certainly one worth turning on as it's used in every scene
and tells you what and where you're looking at so that'll eradicate any traces of "Ooh, what's
that place. It looks familiar" happening in your household.
It may not seem like there's a massive amount of extras but there's plenty to be going on with and
for the film that you get on this disc, plus the fact most discounted sites like Amazon are selling
it for less than a tenner, it's a must-buy.
There are 9 chapters to the short film which is fine for the length here and the main menu has a short
piece of music from the film played over a static image of several shots from the film blended together,
part of which can be seen on the cover.
DVDs reviewed by the editor are watched on a Panasonic TXW32R4 32" widescreen TV
connected to either a Creative Dxr2 DVD-ROM player or Microsoft Xbox and
played through a Sony STR-DB930 amplifier.
PC games reviewed by the editor are on:
Since Nov 2005: Intel Pentium D 830 3.0Ghz, 1Gb RAM, 128Mb nVidia GeForce 6700XL, Windows XP
Since Aug 2003: Intel Pentium 4 2.66Ghz, 512Mb RAM, 128Mb GeForce4 MX440 graphics, Windows XP
Since May 2003: Intel Pentium 4 2.6Ghz, 512Mb RAM, 128Mb ATI Radeon 9600TX graphics, Windows XP
Since Jun 2002: Intel Pentium III 600Mhz, 384Mb RAM, Windows 98 SE, 64Mb ATI Radeon 8500LE
Since May 2000: Intel Pentium III 600Mhz, 384Mb RAM, Windows 98 SE, Voodoo 3 3000 AGP
