DVD Review HTF REVIEW: Star Trek: Insurrection - Special Collector's Edition (1 Viewer)

[Jason_V]

Not to re-start any potential political discussions, but Mike Piller (does this guy look OLD or what??) does compare the forced relocation of the Ba'ku to the present Iraq situation in the extras.

I've always felt that the moral problem in the story for Picard and the others is this: is it right? Is it morally, ethically and legally right to displace people who call a place their home for a natural resource? One person or six thousand, lying, cheating and stealing to get what is not yours is wrong. As the captain said, it goes against the founding principles of the Federation.

 

[Grant H]

I don't have much of a beef with the Aliens transfer. The Quadrilogy version is a slight improvement with the better compression, but they over-did the noise reduction a bit. Still, it mostly looks like crappy-looking film stock, which is how it was supposed to look. And even so, in the rare instance there's bright light the picture clears up. It tends to looks grainy in the low-light scenes which is most of the film. Low light with some film stocks = grain. Cameron wanted it to look like WW2 footage. I've seen FAR worse transfers than Aliens.

I imagine there could be SOME improvement given the time it's been since they struck the transfer (same transfer in both sets, just different compression), but by now there would probably have to be more of a restoration effort applied. And who knows how that could botch it depending on who does it. Would be nice if they erased the wires in that one shot though. I'd want Cameron's involvement to be on the safe side (he ok'd the transfer we have), just so somebody doesn't go crazy and re-color the whole film and/or remove all the film grain. Maybe for HD it will be re-done since the flaws in the existing version will be readily apparent then.

 

[Tino]

Regarding the transfer:

I never trust screen shots so I was pleasantly surprised at how good Insurrection looked and sounded on my 65" SONY 16x9 set.

I haven't compared it to the previous one yet, but this one stands on its own as a fine transfer with excellent extras at a great price!

 

[Jason Borchers]

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[Mikel_Cooperman]

This review said it better than I could ever say it.....most of all, "Forced Humor."

http://www.darkhorizons.com/dvds/d-trek9.php



For the same reason they were putting product on the air that wasn't very good. In my opinion, Paramount has enjoyed the Trek money but dont have very good quality control.

 

[Bryan Tuck]

Just watched some of the deleted scenes. So it was actually the studio that wanted Ru'afo's comeuppance changed? They thought it was too soft? After seeing even the rough form, I think the abandoned version would have been much more appropriate than the tired let's-blow-up-the-bad-guy idea. That's really too bad.

Oh, well; I still like this movie, despite its shortcomings. I also think the score contains one of Jerry Goldsmith's most beautiful themes.

 

[Shane Dodson]

While I didn't really like the film, I do agree about the score. This is my favorite Goldsmith ST score...right alongside his work on TMP.

Great main title...great action cues. If only the movie measured up to the score, though.

NEMESIS, while a much stronger film, IMO...had a much weaker score...although a weak Goldsmith action score is still ten times better than most action composer's work.

Regards,

- Shane D.

 

[RickardL]

I would just like to chime in and say that the picture actually
looks *very* good on my 95" FP screen!!
I was pleasantly surprised after seeing the screen caps!

 

[Guido Bibra]

Folks, don't worry about the new transfer, it looks positively better! It's just not as badly sharpenend as on the old disc. I've compared several frames and tried to match the new version with the old one by applying an unsharp mask - after some double strength manual sharpening the two images look almost alike.

There's no detail missing, the old disc was just the victim of too much artificial sharpening. And like on the SE of First Contact, the new transfer here is stretched a bit more horizontally and makes some framing corrections. Color is also a bit different, with more red tones - all for the better, I think. It seems the source material just isn't that sharp after all, perhaps this has something to do to with the all-digital special-effects.

 

[Ed Faver]

I can't say that I noticed that much difference in picture quality on my 46" Hitachi Ultra. Maybe it's time to get my ISF tech in!

This is off the point, but I'll still bring it up. As with many other titles, I replced an older version of Insurrection with the CE. I have a colleague who has a son in Iraq. I gave her my older DVD (along with a bunch of CDs I burned) to send in her care package. Can I suggest that we all keep this in mind when upgrading a title? My friend said the guys & gals over there really don't care what they get. It's the fact that we sent something that shows them they aren't forgotten. That is apparently their primary concern (after staying alive, of course). If you are interested in doing this, but don't have an outlet, there must be a way to get information on where to send packages. I'd start with the Red Cross. I can get the web page link for my friend's organization to anyone who e-mails me. Thanks for listening!

Now, back to the good stuff. Did anybody think it was odd that Frakes or Berman didn't do an audio commentary? I found the text commentary to be mostly uninteresting fluff this time...

 

[Jason_V]

I hadn't thought of shipping some stuff over to the troops. Hmmm...now there's a pretty good thought...

I found it extremely odd that there was no audio commentary at all. Even for The Final Frontier, Shatner and Liz got together for one. Something must have gotten said or mentioned or someone was ripped on in the commentary for it to have been left off.

 

[Ric Easton]

Which makes you wonder why Paramount and all the other studios put in the disclaimers... "The views and opinions in the interviews and commentaries are not neccesarily the blah, blah, blah", if they're just gonna yank something they don't like anyway.

I'm also a little disappointed that there is no commentary, especially since every other movie has at least one.

Ric

Ric

 

[Bill Williams]

On a couple of the fan sites it was reported that Frakes did record an audio commentary for Insurrection. If that's indeed the case, why it got left off is beyond me.

 

[Nick T Robot]

So what do you guys think of the re-designed double wide 2 disc case? No longer 2 seperate "pages"


The cases that Star Trek's 1-8 (TMP through First Contact) came in

[url=http://s1.imagesubmit.com/startrekinsurrection-s.jpg] [/url]
The case my Star Trek Insurrection came in (Click to Enlarge)
It was purchased at Costco (Came in an early 90's CD style "long box" I don't know if that has anything to do with it)

Both discs are held together on the same "page" much like the 2 disc portions of the Matrix Box Set ("The Matrix" overlapping "The Matrix Revisited", "The Matrix Reloaded" overlapping "The Matrix Reloaded Revisited" etc)


That disclaimer is to protect the studio from any Lawsuits. If they don't like something on the DVD they don't want to be the ones to put it out there. If someone else doesn't like something on the DVD, they don't want to hear any complaints.

 

[Alex-A]

Um, all my Star Trek SCE sets utilize the same exact case. From TMP up to just now, Insurrection. Not sure what the deal is but I see no difference in the case design at all.

 

[Nick T Robot]

I couldn't find a picture of what it looks like, but I'll take a picture when I get home this afternoon and post it.

 

[Nick T Robot]

I've taken pictures of my case:

Inside view is above in my first post about this:

[url=http://s1.imagesubmit.com/startrekinsurrection-side-s.jpg] [/url]

Side View: Click to enlarge

 

[MarkHarrison]

Thanks for the warning! I'm picking up a copy tonight and now know to pay attention to the case.

 

[AlexBC]

Since it wasn't mentioned before, can anyone clarify if the DD and DTS tracks are EX and ES encoded respectively?

If they're not, it will be very odd because Star Trek V, VI and Generations were all DD 5.1 EX (I'm not sure about First Contatc either).

 

[RogerH]

I've been meaning to get this since I have the other CE's hopefully I'll get around to it next week (never seen this one before)