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Shot in 2.35:1 Panavision, Costner made perfect work of filling the frame
with the grand splendour of the hillsides and landscapes that surround his
post and that of the Indian tribe.
Sadly, not the same nice things can be said of the transfer, which has
artifacts on view from time to time, over-saturated reds at times, gets
rather blurry when there's motion which is easily spotted in close-ups on
faces and although the print is anamorphic, what started off as a 2.35:1 widescreen
ratio looks a little squashed and everyone's faces a little fatter than they
should be. This was slightly eased by using the 'Just' function on my
Panasonic widescreen TV (Philips sets have a similar one with 'Super Zoom'),
but of course we shouldn't really have to do that.
What's very odd is that the theatrical version and, hence, the NTSC Region 1
DVD, run for 181 minutes, which leads to a PAL running time of 173 minutes,
as per the video. When I played this DVD though it gave a running time of
181 minutes, so have we just been given an iffy NTSC-to-PAL conversion then?
The average bitrate is 5.5Mb/s, occasionally peaking over 8Mb/s towards the
last hour of the film.
When it comes to the sound, though, there is no question. It's spot-on and
in both Dolby Digital 5.1 and DTS 5.1 in English dialogue. The effects of
occasional gunfire and whooping Indians don't stretch your system, but the
real joy comes in the score from John Barry and when I bought the
aforementioned video boxset, I really savoured the soundtrack CD.
There's not a massive amount happening in the extras department: a
2½-minute Trailer, a 7½-minute Featurette which is a
standard made-for-TV affair featuring 4:3 clips of the film interspered with
interview soundbites shot at the time on location, a 3-minute Kevin Costner
Profile which is really more of the same and finally a Director's
Commentary which goes one better by not only containing Costner but his
co-producer Jim Wilson.
There are 25 chapters through the film which isn't quite enough, English
subtitles for the hard of hearing and menus which contain subtle animation
and a looped part of the film score.
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Necessary cookies are absolutely essential for the website to function properly. This category only includes cookies that ensures basic functionalities and security features of the website. These cookies do not store any personal information.
Any cookies that may not be particularly necessary for the website to function and is used specifically to collect user personal data via analytics, ads, other embedded contents are termed as non-necessary cookies. It is mandatory to procure user consent prior to running these cookies on your website.
