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Lots of stuff is still broken, but at least reviews can now be looked up and read.
PLEASE NOTE: Michael D's is currently in READ ONLY MODE. Anything submitted will simply not be written to the database.
Lots of stuff is still broken, but at least reviews can now be looked up and read.
City Hall (1996)

City Hall (1996)

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Released 9-Oct-2000
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Details At A Glance

General		Extras
Category	Thriller	Theatrical Trailer Main Menu Audio
Rating
Year Of Production	1996
Running Time	106:55
RSDL / Flipper	RSDL (61:35)	Cast & Crew
Start Up	Menu	Cast & Crew
Region Coding	2,4	Directed By	Harold Becker
Studio Distributor	Warner Home Video	Starring	Al Pacino John Cusack Bridget Fonda Danny Aiello David Paymer Martin Landau
Case	Amaray-Transparent	Starring
RPI	$24.95	Music	Jerry Goldsmith

Video		Audio
Pan & Scan/Full Frame	None	English Dolby Digital 2.0 (192Kb/s) French Dolby Digital 2.0 (192Kb/s) Italian Dolby Digital 2.0 (192Kb/s)
Widescreen Aspect Ratio	1.78:1
16x9 Enhancement
Video Format	576i (PAL)
Original Aspect Ratio	1.85:1	Miscellaneous
Jacket Pictures	No	Miscellaneous
Subtitles	English French Italian Dutch Arabic Spanish Portuguese German Romanian Bulgarian English for the Hearing Impaired Italian for the Hearing Impaired	Smoking	No
		Annoying Product Placement	No
		Action In or After Credits	Yes, at start

NOTE: The Profanity Filter is ON. Turn it off here.

Plot Synopsis

The story of City Hall is driven by events surrounding a meeting between Eddie Santos, a decorated Police detective, and Tino Zapatti, a known drug dealer. Something goes drastically wrong at the meeting, and both of them are killed in the ensuing gunfight. Unfortunately, an innocent six year old boy also gets shot and killed. This raises the profile of the incident to a point where the media becomes interested in it. The Mayor, John Pappas (Al Pacino) and his right hand man (or Deputy Mayor for those of you who like official titles) Kevin Calhoun (John Cusack) are now going to have to be fully prepared to answer questions from the media. To this end, Kevin starts gathering preliminary background information on the parties involved. This reveals that something was not quite kosher with the drug dealer's last court appearance. It appears that someone may have been paid off. Since the presiding judge, Walter Stern (Martin Landau) is a close friend of the Mayor's, Kevin has to discover if the major was involved or not, and he wasn't, then who was.

Also part of the proceedings is Bridget Fonda, who plays Marybeth Cogan of the Detectives' Endowment Association Legal Affairs division. Her job is to see that Eddie's name is not smeared incorrectly, as this would result in reduced benefits for Eddie's wife and family.

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Transfer Quality

Video

The transfer is presented in an aspect ratio of 1.78:1 and is 16x9 enhanced.

The picture is clear and sharp at all times, with an excellent amount of foreground detail. However, background detail is much softer. This is probably because of the way the movie was filmed, rather than being a transfer fault. No low-level noise was noticed and the shadow detail was excellent. There is some minor edge enhancement present, which I found rather distracting on a couple of occasions.

The colour is well-saturated and natural-looking throughout, as are the skin tones.

No grain was noticed, but there were a couple of scenes that suffered from some pixelization, causing some objects to shimmer and jump. The most noticeable examples are the white staircase railings at 28:45 and during the end credits.

Apart from the aforementioned pixelization, no other MPEG artefacts were seen. There are a couple of instances of minor aliasing, caused by the usual culprits - Venetian blinds and car chrome. Examples are at 23:33, 38:31, 80:40 and 82:57.

There is a reasonable sprinkling of small film artefacts, which tended to come in groups. One of the more noticeable film artefacts occurs at 97:37, but it is far from being severe.

This disc is an RSDL disc, with the layer change occurring at 61:36 in Chapter 17 on a scene change. There is a definite pause, but it is well-placed so it does not really disrupt the flow of the movie.

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

Audio

There are three 192kb/s Dolby Digital surround-encoded audio tracks on this DVD; English, French and Italian. I listened to the default English soundtrack at 3db louder than I normally do.

The dialogue was mainly clear and easy to understand, but there were quite a few times where it was harder to make out, only partly due to the accents employed. No audio sync problems were noticed with this transfer.

The musical score is by Jerry Goldsmith.

The overall sound mix is quite acceptable for this type of dialogue-driven movie. The front soundstage did not collapse into the centre channel at any time, and there was good sound separation. The surround channels are only lightly used, predominantly by the music. The overall soundstage suffers from the usual Dolby surround problem of being front-heavy, but given that the original film soundtrack was in Dolby surround, I don't see that we have too much to complain about.

The subwoofer receives a very light workout. If you have good full bandwidth speakers then you can leave the subwoofer turned off for this one.

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

Extras

The extras consist of one theatrical trailer.

Theatrical Trailer

The Theatrical Trailer is of good quality, presented in a 16x9 enhanced 1.78:1 aspect ratio, with a 192kb/s Dolby Digital 2.0 surround-encoded soundtrack. It is great to see a 16x9 enhanced theatrical trailer. Unfortunately, the picture quality is not quite as good as the movie's because it suffers from some noticeable grain.

R4 vs R1

NOTE: To view non-R4 releases, your equipment needs to be multi-zone compatible and usually also NTSC compatible.

The Region 4 version of this disc misses out on;

Pan & Scan version

The Region 1 version of this disc misses out on;

Theatrical Trailer
Main Menu Audio

Picture and sound-wise, both the R4 and R1 appear to exhibit the same qualities and limitations. Because of PAL's innate superiority over NTSC and the additional theatrical trailer, the R4 disc is an easy choice.

Summary

For me, City Hall was a good flick.

The video transfer of this disc is very good, with only some minor edge enhancement and pixelization tarnishing an otherwise excellent transfer.

The audio is good, with no real problems to speak of. Its weakness lies in its lack of surround channel use and some harder to make out dialogue.

The extras are extremely limited.

Ratings (out of 5)

Video
Audio
Extras
Plot
Overall

Review Equipment
DVD	Sony DVP-725, using Component output
Display	Sony Projector VPH-G70 (No Line Doubler), Technics Da-Lite matt screen with gain of 1.0 (229cm). This display device is 16x9 capable.
Audio Decoder	Built in to amplifier/receiver. Calibrated with Video Essentials.
Amplification	Onkyo TX-SV919THX
Speakers	Fronts: Energy RVS-1 (3), Rears: Energy RVSS-1 (2), Subwoofer: Energy EPS-150 (1)

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