John Beresford
12-19-2003, 09:11 AM
Well, being that no one really is responding to my reviews on the Pirates of the Caribbean or Escape From New York DVD reviews, let me share some comments about Paramount's Saturday Night Fever Anniversary DVD, which I watched for the second time last night (second time since owning it; my girl bought this DVD for me last Valentine's day because she knew I liked the film, and so did she) with my girl because it was the night before she was leaving for Florida to go see her parents down there for Christmas...we ordered in, and threw in Saturday Night Fever, and fired up the surround sound...being that I'm not going to see her for well over a month, we watched this classic Travolta film over not-so-good Italian food in my apartment...
Saturday Night Fever -- the 25th Anniversary DVD -- is presented in widescreen, but it is the "matted" format, which eats up more black area on top and bottom of the screen so the dark areas dont look so bad on 4:3 TVs like mine. I wish all DVDs would come like this, or in fullscreen. Anyway, the picture quality was good, but it didnt make you fall off your seat -- lots of evidence of grain were present, but what dissapoints me is that Paramount didnt claim to "digitally remaster" this classic film...so all we are getting here is a simple transfer from master print to DVD, with no cleaning up project to make the film look much better----as MGM just did with Escape From New York; THAT film sports a brand new HD film transfer that really makes it look better than the previous versions.
Anyway, the picture of Saturday Night Fever didnt look that great, as I said...the sound is in Dolby Digital 5.1, and while keeping the Bee Gees music loud and punchy through the front soundstage (and creeping into the surrounds during many scenes), the soundfield has a strange presence to it----dialogue gets low and then loud, and the overall mix sounds weird...passages of music go low and suddenly loud, too, and there is a particular scene when Travolta and Lynn-Gourney are dancing at the end in the contest to "More Than a Woman," when the sound engineers added some kind of music to the surround channels for this song and it sounds VERY WEIRD....suddenly, you cannot hear the Bee Gees' voices through the front channels, and these LOUD strings and instruments start blaring through the surround channels, as if it was added in....VERY strange. I dont know why they mixed the music like that. It didnt sound right, and made my girl look at my surround speakers like "what the hell is that?"
But in all fairness, there were good usages of the audio in Saturday Night Fever to definitely improve upon the VHS/Pro Logic II old copy; sounds of trains going by in the distance behind you, car horns, crickets chirping outside in a tree....more than one time, my girl turned her head and looked for noises she REALLY thought were coming from my apartment or outside the window in the street....they were sounds from the SURROUND SPEAKERS in the film, and they really sounded realistic. The opening sequence, for example, when Travolta is walking down the street to "Stayin Alive," just before the music starts in the opening credits, we see a New York subway train rushing toward the screen, and the sound of the train blasts from the front speakers into the right surround as it rips away in the distance...it was quite impressive for a film from the '70s.
Many people criticize this Anniversary DVD for the lack of special features, as the only one is the VH1 Behind the Music special that was included, but my take is, who cares? The film, Saturday Night Fever, is whats most important here. Aside from a pretty weird-sounding Dolby Digital mix at certain points, the overall presentation was more than okay, I guess. Best this film looks so far, anyway. Better than the VHS version.
Saturday Night Fever -- the 25th Anniversary DVD -- is presented in widescreen, but it is the "matted" format, which eats up more black area on top and bottom of the screen so the dark areas dont look so bad on 4:3 TVs like mine. I wish all DVDs would come like this, or in fullscreen. Anyway, the picture quality was good, but it didnt make you fall off your seat -- lots of evidence of grain were present, but what dissapoints me is that Paramount didnt claim to "digitally remaster" this classic film...so all we are getting here is a simple transfer from master print to DVD, with no cleaning up project to make the film look much better----as MGM just did with Escape From New York; THAT film sports a brand new HD film transfer that really makes it look better than the previous versions.
Anyway, the picture of Saturday Night Fever didnt look that great, as I said...the sound is in Dolby Digital 5.1, and while keeping the Bee Gees music loud and punchy through the front soundstage (and creeping into the surrounds during many scenes), the soundfield has a strange presence to it----dialogue gets low and then loud, and the overall mix sounds weird...passages of music go low and suddenly loud, too, and there is a particular scene when Travolta and Lynn-Gourney are dancing at the end in the contest to "More Than a Woman," when the sound engineers added some kind of music to the surround channels for this song and it sounds VERY WEIRD....suddenly, you cannot hear the Bee Gees' voices through the front channels, and these LOUD strings and instruments start blaring through the surround channels, as if it was added in....VERY strange. I dont know why they mixed the music like that. It didnt sound right, and made my girl look at my surround speakers like "what the hell is that?"
But in all fairness, there were good usages of the audio in Saturday Night Fever to definitely improve upon the VHS/Pro Logic II old copy; sounds of trains going by in the distance behind you, car horns, crickets chirping outside in a tree....more than one time, my girl turned her head and looked for noises she REALLY thought were coming from my apartment or outside the window in the street....they were sounds from the SURROUND SPEAKERS in the film, and they really sounded realistic. The opening sequence, for example, when Travolta is walking down the street to "Stayin Alive," just before the music starts in the opening credits, we see a New York subway train rushing toward the screen, and the sound of the train blasts from the front speakers into the right surround as it rips away in the distance...it was quite impressive for a film from the '70s.
Many people criticize this Anniversary DVD for the lack of special features, as the only one is the VH1 Behind the Music special that was included, but my take is, who cares? The film, Saturday Night Fever, is whats most important here. Aside from a pretty weird-sounding Dolby Digital mix at certain points, the overall presentation was more than okay, I guess. Best this film looks so far, anyway. Better than the VHS version.