Dirty Dancing: Collector's Edition (1987) |
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Dirty Dancing: Collector's Edition (1987) |
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| General | Extras | ||
| Category | Drama |
Menu Animation & Audio Audio Commentary-Eleanor Bergstein (Director) Featurette Featurette-Live In Concert Music Video-Time Of My Life Music Video-Hungry Eyes Music Video-She's Like The Wind Featurette-Reliving The 60s Theatrical Trailer Featurette-Behind-The-Scenes Biographies-Cast & Crew Production Notes |
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| Rating |
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| Year Of Production | 1987 | ||
| Running Time | 100:05 (Case: 186) | ||
| RSDL / Flipper | Dual Layered | Cast & Crew | |
| Start Up | Menu | ||
| Region Coding | 2,4 | Directed By | Emile Ardolino |
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Studio
Distributor |
Vestron Pictures Magna Home Entertainment |
Starring |
Patrick Swayze Jennifer Grey Jerry Orbach Cynthia Rhodes |
| Case | Click | ||
| RPI | $34.95 | Music | John Morris |
| Video | Audio | ||
| Pan & Scan/Full Frame | None |
English Dolby Digital 5.1 (384Kb/s) English Audio Commentary Dolby Digital 2.0 (192Kb/s) |
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| Widescreen Aspect Ratio | 1.85:1 | ||
| 16x9 Enhancement |
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| Video Format | 576i (PAL) | ||
| Original Aspect Ratio | 1.85:1 | Miscellaneous | |
| Jacket Pictures | No | ||
| Subtitles | None | Smoking | No |
| Annoying Product Placement | No | ||
| Action In or After Credits | Yes, at start of credits | ||
During a family summer holiday at Kellerman's holiday resort, Francis "Baby" Houseman (Jennifer Grey) becomes infatuated with one of the entertainment staff, Johnny Castle (Patrick Swayze). Of course, Johnny doesn't think much of little Miss Rich, but Johnny still shows Baby a few basic Dirty Dancing moves. When Penny Johnston (Cynthia Rhodes), Johnny's regular dance partner, finds herself in a predicament, Baby offers to learn the Mambo so she can fill in for Penny at Johnny and Penny's regular after hours Dirty Dancing gig. Johnny reluctantly agrees. At first he is frustrated with Baby's slow progress, but he starts to appreciate Baby's good qualities and begins to be drawn to her without really knowing it.
Call me a sentimental fool, a softie, or even a romantic, but this is without a doubt one of the best films ever made. For anyone who likes a good romance (which by the way is only part of the appeal of this movie) and hasn't seen this movie, rush out and take a look at it. Of course the movie may have now dated somewhat, so you may not think this is such a great flick and wonder what all the fuss was about, but in its day it was a huge hit. Jennifer Grey steals the show with her superb acting performance.
The transfer is presented in an aspect ratio of 1.85:1 and is not 16x9 enhanced.
Foreground sharpness and detail is great, but anything in the background is extremely soft and I do mean extremely soft, with little or no detail present. There are instances where objects are just smeary blurs when you would expect to see at least some detail, if not a lot. I personally found these instances extremely annoying, distracting and very ugly to look at. One example of this can be found at 86:06, where the face of a person in the middle of the picture is just a big blur, with no detail present whatsoever - very ugly (the transfer, not the person). Other noteworthy examples are at 7:68, 27:25, 42:02, 54:04, 87:17 - 87:22 and 89:25. This is by far the biggest problem for this transfer and it really degrades the picture. The use of 16x9 enhancement would have definitely helped, but I think a lot of the softness can be attributed to the poor quality or inappropriate master that was used to generate this transfer. It was probably an old Laserdisc master, hence the lack of 16x9 enhancement. If this is not the case, then Magna Pacific really better have a look at the authoring software they are using as the picture detail should have been a lot better than it was.
Shadow detail was good, when it was meant to be there. No low-level noise or edge enhancement was noticed, which was nice. Some occasional red banding was present around the edges of Jennifer's and Patrick's faces. It was pretty minor, but was just strong enough to be slightly distracting once I had noticed it.
The colour was very good, with all objects being well-saturated and natural-looking. There were a couple of scenes where the skin tones looked a little red, but this is because of the lighting that was used during filming, and is not a transfer fault.
Apart from deliberate grain during the opening Black & White sequence, grain was extremely rare and always minor. The only instances of grain that I noticed for the entire movie were at 2:18, 2:27, 28:40 and 51:38.
No MPEG artefacts were noticed, apart from one absolutely trivial and totally inconsequential instance of posterization at 91:41, but you'll need a magnifying glass or a very quick eye to spot it, so it's nothing to worry about. There were two severe moiré artefacts present, at 36:01-36:07 and 37:43 - 37:59, plus two trivial instances at 3:16 and 5:46. There are also some minor interlacing artefacts, but they are rare and do not disrupt the picture quality.
Film artefacts are extremely rare and small when they do appear. There is one small-to-mid sized white scratch that will probably catch your eye at 59:18, more because of its placement (middle of the screen) than anything else.
This is a Dual Layered disc, with the movie all on one layer and the extras on the other, so there is no pause during the movie.
| Sharpness |   |
| Shadow Detail | |
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| Grain/Pixelization | |
| Film-To-Video Artefacts | |
| Film Artefacts | |
| Overall | |
The dialogue was clear and easy to understand throughout the film, with no audio sync problems noticed. There were a couple of inconsequential instances where I spotted some ADR work.
John Morris' musical score is wonderful and it really sets and enhances the mood of the movie.
The surround channels are predominantly used for music with subtle background noises and the odd sound effect thrown in as well. The sound is predominantly front-biased with occasional enveloping sequences, which is fine for this type of film. The front soundstage is open and not confined to the centre channel, which really helped the soundtrack. On a couple of occasions, however, the sound coming from the centre speaker seemed a fraction loud, but this is a minor point and is not a transfer fault. Two instances of poor studio mixing were noticed, at 84:57 (music double beat) and 96:48 (music jumps). Surround channel highlights are at 24:40, 41:23 and 79:25.
The subwoofer is very lightly used throughout the movie. This isn't the type of film that requires much deep bass anyhow, so it wasn't missed.
| Dialogue | |
| Audio Sync | |
| Clicks/Pops/Dropouts | |
| Surround Channel Use | |
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| Overall | |
NOTE: To view non-R4 releases, your equipment needs to be multi-zone compatible and usually also NTSC compatible.
In all respects other than picture detail, this transfer is great, but with the picture lacking so much mid-ground and background detail this transfer falls into the merely acceptable category. Personally, I think there should be a law against allowing the use of old laserdisc masters to create DVDs. I think I'd better go take a cold shower and cool off, before I say something that I will regret...
Overall the audio is of good quality. There are a few minor problems with the audio soundtrack, all of which can be attributed to the original mixing of the soundtrack, so there is really isn't anything to complain about here.
There are lots of extras on this DVD, many of which are of good picture and audio quality, but there are also some very average ones too.
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| Plot | |
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| 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 DVD player. Calibrated with Video Essentials. |
| Amplification | Onkyo TX-SV919THX |
| Speakers | Fronts: Energy RVS-1 (3), Rears: Energy RVSS-1 (2), Subwoofer: Energy EPS-150 (1) |