Virginia's Run - Canada-only DVD - Info? (1 Viewer)

[Randy A Salas]

Virginia's Run is a wonderful 2001 family film about a girl, who's trying to cope with her mother's death, and her horse. It stars Gabriel Byrne and Joanne Whalley and was directed by Peter Markle. It never played widely in theaters and now it's finally out on DVD, but in Canada only.

I'm trying to find out specs for the Canadian DVD (from Alliance Atlantis/Universal), but only a handful of Canadian retailers list it and with little info. I've been able to glean that it's widescreen anamorphic and has a Dolby Digital 2.0 English track.

Does anyone here have the DVD? Can anyone verify if the specs above are true? Any extras?

Thank you.

 

[Herb Kane]

Does this help Randy:

http://www.dvd-plus.com/catalog_deta...&catlist=13438

 

[Randy A Salas]

That's the most detailed info I've found, but I was hoping for more. Thanks, Herb.

 

[Randy A Salas]

As a follow-up for anyone who cares about this fine family film:

The Canadian DVD is anamorphic widescreen with Dolby Digital 2.0 surround, although it has impressive bass and effective panning across the front channels. There are absolutely no extras.

In ordering the DVD and trying to track down more info, I ended up talking to the film's producer, Robert Schwartz, who also did Iron Will and Wooly Boys. My chat with him about why U.S. fans can see Virginia's Run on DVD before it plays widely here in theaters actually turned into the sidebar to my DVD column in yesterday's paper. The good news is that the eventual U.S. DVD (probably at least a year away from release) will have lots of extras.

 

[AnthonyP]

Any chance one knows how the quality of the modified "fullscreen" MGM transfer compares to the anamorphic Alliance Atlantis one?

I know Alliance Atlantis has reports of iffy transfers on occasion so am not sure if that, by default, their anamorphic one would be a safe blind buy or that one has to choose before a decent modified "fullscreen" transfer or a poor anamorphic one in its IAR.

Here is the only review of the U.S. MGM release I could find (can't find anything on the Alliance Atlantis one).

dOc DVD Review: Virginia's Run (2002)

Why do studios in this day and age still think reformatting pictures is an acceptable practice? I have news for you MGM, this image does not fit my 16x9 screen, and ruins the composition. The image is crisp, colors are nice and well saturated, black levels are solid. Print defects are minor and small in number. Grain is well rendered. It's not a bad looking image, but just doesn't feel right.