Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom (1984)

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General		Extras
Category	Adventure	Main Menu Audio & Animation Menu Animation & Audio THX Optimizer Web Links
Rating
Year Of Production	1984
Running Time	113:32
RSDL / Flipper	RSDL (57:39)	Cast & Crew
Start Up	Menu
Region Coding	4	Directed By	Steven Spielberg
Studio Distributor	Paramount Home Entertainment	Starring	Harrison Ford Kate Capshaw Amrish Puri Roshan Seth Philip Stone Ke Huy Quan
Case	Amaray-Transparent-Secure Clip
RPI	Box	Music	John Williams

Video		Audio
Pan & Scan/Full Frame	None	English Dolby Digital 5.1 (448Kb/s) Spanish Dolby Digital 2.0 (192Kb/s) Catalan Dolby Digital 2.0 (192Kb/s)
Widescreen Aspect Ratio	2.35:1
16x9 Enhancement
Video Format	576i (PAL)
Original Aspect Ratio	2.35:1	Miscellaneous
Jacket Pictures	No
Subtitles	English Spanish Croatian Greek Hebrew Portuguese Serbian Slovenian	Smoking	No
		Annoying Product Placement	No
		Action In or After Credits	No

    In the interests of getting this review out the door as quickly as possible, I am going to post an abbreviated synopsis. After all, you have probably watched this film dozens of times and have waited 5 years for this DVD, so anything I say is going to be redundant.

    Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom represents the second film in the trilogy, and the first of the films to feature "Indiana Jones" in the title (subsequently adding "Indiana Jones" to the re-release of the first film does not really change history, just like we will always remember the first Star Wars film as Star Wars and not Star Wars IV: A New Hope).

    Sometimes referred to as the "Asian" Indiana Jones film, there are only two real locations in this film: Shanghai, China, around 1935, and "somewhere in northern India" near "Pankot Palace." In reality, of course, the film was shot in Macau, Sri Lanka and in EMI's Elstree Studios in England.

    The opening of the film features a surreal cabaret act starring "Willie" Scott (Kate Capshaw). She is also the girlfriend of local thug Lao Che (Roy Chiao). Indiana Jones (Harrison Ford) has successfully recovered the cremated remains of the first Manchu Emperor and is willing to trade these with Lao Che for a big diamond. Needless to say, things don't quite go as smoothly as everyone would like, and Indiana runs for his life, taking Willie with him, aided by a cute Chinese kid called Short Round (Jonathan Ke Quan).

    They get onto a plane (with the aid of a cameo role from Dan Aykroyd plus George Lucas and Steven Spielberg acting as extras in the background) but it crashes in the Himalayas, although not before Indiana and company effect a daring James Bond like escape. They eventually find themselves in India, at a village devastated because their good luck charm - none other than one of the long lost Chankara stones - has been stolen and all their children kidnapped.

    Indiana and gang makes a trip to Pankot Palace, where they are greeted by the cast from Gandhi. There, Indiana seeks to find the stolen Chankara stone, and uncovers a bizarre religious sect determined to recover all 5 of the stones and wreak evil upon the world.

    This is probably my least favourite of the trilogy, but watching it again after many years reminded me that even the worst of the Indiana Jones film is one ripping good yarn. Therefore, my two thumbs up.

Video

    We are treated with a superb widescreen 16x9 enhanced transfer, presented in the intended aspect ratio of 2.35:1.

    Let me put you at ease if you have been apprehensive about whether the long wait for the trilogy to appear on DVD is worthwhile, and whether we will get a sub-standard transfer. Worry not, because this transfer is as good as I would dare hope for.

    Let me start off by listing the only faults I can find in this near-reference quality transfer. Okay, there is a slight amount of Gibb's effect, or mosquito ringing, around the opening titles. There are a few instances of very minor amounts of grain here and there. The end titles feature a slight amount of shimmering.

    That's it. The rest of the film is pretty much perfect. Detail levels are superb, with lots of low level detail such as the indentation patterns in the gong at the beginning of the film, the texture of the tweed jacket that Indiana wears in the palace, and even wrinkles on faces.

    Colour saturation is pretty close to perfect, and I suspect the contrast has been enhanced as the transfer has a very three dimensional look that pops into your eyes.

    The film source is virtually spotless, and I suspect blemishes have been digitally edited out.

    There are several subtitle tracks on the disc: English, Spanish, Croatian, Greek, Hebrew, Portuguese, Serbian, and Slovenian. I turned on the English subtitle track briefly. Dialogue accuracy was about average, and there are several instances in the film where the spoken dialogue has been simplified in the subtitles.

    This is a single sided dual layered disc (RSDL). The layer change occurs towards the beginning of Chapter 18 at 57:39 and results in a slight pause as our heroes walk in the secret passageway to the ritual chamber. This is not the ideal place for a layer change, but at least it occurs in a relatively quiet part of the film where there is little movement.

Video Ratings Summary

Sharpness
Shadow Detail
Colour
Grain/Pixelization
Film-To-Video Artefacts
Film Artefacts
Overall

Audio

    There are several audio tracks on this disc: English Dolby Digital 5.1 (448Kb/s), Spanish Dolby Digital 2.0 (192Kb/s), and Catalan Dolby Digital 2.0 (192Kb/s).

    The original soundtrack was encoded in Dolby Stereo, so the Dolby Digital 5.1 track has obviously been remastered. I would have liked to see a dts 5.1 audio track, but to be honest the Dolby Digital 5.1 sounds marvellous, and I'd be struggling to think of any obvious areas that needed improvement.

    Apart from a slightly bright overall sound, the audio track sounds like it could have been recorded yesterday, for a modern film.

    Dialogue was consistently clear and sharp, and there are no issues with audio synchronization. I noticed some instances of non-centred dialogue, such as Willie singing during the opening song and dance, and various whispers and off-screen dialogue.

    The soundtrack is rather enveloping and atmospheric, and I continually noted Foley effects distributed across all channels. Of course, most of the panning occurs across the front channels, but occasionally I detected good usage of the surround channels, such as the childish scream that Indiana hears straight after he tries to steal the Chankara stones after the sacrificial ritual.

    The subwoofer was well integrated into the overall soundtrack, and is mainly used to support the low frequencies in the special effects.

    The original music score by John Williams comes through in all its glory and is mixed into all channels.

Audio Ratings Summary

Dialogue
Audio Sync
Clicks/Pops/Dropouts
Surround Channel Use
Subwoofer
Overall

    Paramount has obviously decided to optimize the quality of the transfer and minimize the amount of extras on the disc. A good decision, and one that I thoroughly approve of, since all the extras are on a separate bonus disc. What we have is a two hour film spread across a dual layered disc using up nearly 7Gb of storage. The transfer rate consistently hovers around 7-8Mb/s, resulting in excellent transfer quality.

Menu

    The menus are 16x9 enhanced, and extensively animated with background audio. In addition, there are animated menu transitions.

THX Optimizer

    This is a set of calibration screens to allow you to optimally adjust your display to the same levels as those used to encode the film.

Web Links

    You are promised an "exclusive web link" if you put the disc into a PC with a DVD-ROM player and install the InterActual Player. I didn't bother.

    There is censorship information available for this title. Click here to read it (a new window will open). WARNING: Often these entries contain MAJOR plot spoilers.

    The Region 4 version of this disc misses out on:

• French Dolby Digital 2.0 surround encoded audio track and subtitle track

    The Region 1 version of this disc misses out on:

• Additional foreign language audio tracks and subtitle tracks

    The R1 and R4 discs appear to be identical except for PAL vs NTSC formatting, and foreign language content.

    The video transfers are virtually identical in quality, except the R1 seems slightly softer and grainier but has less Gibb's effect ringing and edge enhancement. Although the average bitrate of the transfer is about the same (7.64Mb/s vs 7.57Mb/s), the R1 bitrate is more variable, ranging from 6-9Mb/s.

    The audio transfers are also very similar, except the R1 has slightly better bass definition due to lack of 4% speedup. I would rate the R1 audio transfer as reference quality, and the R4 audio transfer as "near reference quality."

    Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom is the second film in the highly acclaimed Indiana Jones trilogy.

    The video transfer is superb and near reference quality.

    The remastered 5.1 audio track is excellent.

    There are minimal extras.

Video
Audio
Extras
Plot
Overall