This is a wonderful sleeper hit from 1979 that went on to win an Oscar for best screenplay with nominations for best picture, director and supporting actress. It has uniformly good to great performances, some very amusing dialog, and a poignant coming of age story at its center.
Fox has released this as a double sided single layer disc with both an anamorphic widescreen and a full frame transfer. Not a lot was done to clean up the film elements in the video realm, so there are a lot of visible film artifacts in the presentation that are indicative of the film's low budget origins. The widescreen presentation looks extremely tightly framed at the top. I'm not sure whether it was just poor framing for the widescreen frame or an error in the video transfer, but heresy though it may be, you might actually appreciate this film more in full frame. (Pause to cover head and don flame-suit)
The box indicates a "stereo surround" soundtrack, but the DD2.0 stereo soundtrack does not contain the flags to tell your receiver to engage pro-logic decoding. The original mono soundtrack is included in DD2.0 mono as well. The audio elements are in similar condition to the video with limited fidelity. The stereo remix adds a little ambience during music passages (there are two very memorable ones involving a bike race set to "The Marriage of Figaro" and a serenade) and crowd scenes (the final race). The announcer's voice during the climactic race is actually drowned out somewhat in the new mix, and overall, I preferred the mono.
Extras consist of a trailer and some TV spots.
The film is too good not to own (especially given its budget price), but this will not be confused with a reference quality transfer. As far as 1979 classics on DVD go, this one looks more like "The Muppet Movie" or "Life of Brian" than "Aliens" or Apocalypse Now".
Regards,
Fox has released this as a double sided single layer disc with both an anamorphic widescreen and a full frame transfer. Not a lot was done to clean up the film elements in the video realm, so there are a lot of visible film artifacts in the presentation that are indicative of the film's low budget origins. The widescreen presentation looks extremely tightly framed at the top. I'm not sure whether it was just poor framing for the widescreen frame or an error in the video transfer, but heresy though it may be, you might actually appreciate this film more in full frame. (Pause to cover head and don flame-suit)
The box indicates a "stereo surround" soundtrack, but the DD2.0 stereo soundtrack does not contain the flags to tell your receiver to engage pro-logic decoding. The original mono soundtrack is included in DD2.0 mono as well. The audio elements are in similar condition to the video with limited fidelity. The stereo remix adds a little ambience during music passages (there are two very memorable ones involving a bike race set to "The Marriage of Figaro" and a serenade) and crowd scenes (the final race). The announcer's voice during the climactic race is actually drowned out somewhat in the new mix, and overall, I preferred the mono.
Extras consist of a trailer and some TV spots.
The film is too good not to own (especially given its budget price), but this will not be confused with a reference quality transfer. As far as 1979 classics on DVD go, this one looks more like "The Muppet Movie" or "Life of Brian" than "Aliens" or Apocalypse Now".
Regards,
