Extreme Measures (1996)

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General		Extras
Category	Thriller	Main Menu Audio Theatrical Trailer
Rating
Year Of Production	1996
Running Time	113:16
RSDL / Flipper	Dual Sided	Cast & Crew
Start Up	Menu
Region Coding	4	Directed By	Michael Apted
Studio Distributor	Warner Home Video	Starring	Hugh Grant Gene Hackman Sarah Jessica Parker David Morse Paul Guilfoyle Debra Monk
Case	Amaray-Transparent
RPI	$24.95	Music	Danny Elfman

Video		Audio
Pan & Scan/Full Frame	Pan & Scan	English Dolby Digital 2.0 (192Kb/s) French Dolby Digital 2.0 (192Kb/s) Italian 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 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	No

    Dr Luthan keeps on digging and digging, which only lands him in more and more trouble. It all comes to head a little before the end of the move. At this point I felt like screaming out "God no, that's not fair! How can this be happening to this man?". Hugh's acting during this scene is excellent and you can see exactly what his character is feeling. I cannot say much more without spoiling the movie, so you'll just have watch it if you haven't seen it before.

Video

    For those of you who still need convincing of the benefits of widescreen presentations, play the first 45 seconds of Chapter 4 of the widescreen presentation three or four times so you can really get a feel for the scene and its framing. Now, flip over to the 4x3 presentation and play Chapter 4 again. This is by no means the best example to demonstrate the benefits of widescreen presentation, but you will certainly see what I'm talking about.

Widescreen Presentation (Side B)

    The picture is extremely sharp at all times, with only one scene at 100:00 where Gene Hackman appears out of focus. This is more likely to be a source material fault rather than a transfer fault. No low-level noise, edge bleeding or excessive edge enhancement was noticed.

    The colours were well-saturated and very natural looking.

    Pixelization or grain was basically non-existent on my sizeable screen. Surprisingly, if you pause any scene, some minor grain and pixelization is evident. Thankfully, it is all but unnoticeable while the movie is playing.

    There were no MPEG artefacts, but moiré effects and aliasing artefacts are a real problem with this transfer. They strike almost continually throughout the entire film, and unfortunately most of these instances are severe enough to be noticeable and distracting. One of the worst instances is at 82:25, where a severe moiré pattern affects a chrome heater. The credits also suffer from some shimmer.

    For those of you lucky enough to be using a Progressive Scan player and display device, I'm sorry to say that not even these can rescue this transfer. Whilst it improves the image markedly, the picture still seems edgy and prone to mild aliasing throughout.

    Film artefacts are another problematic area for this transfer. There are far too many film artefacts for the age of this film. They are mostly small and unobtrusive, but due to their frequency they become a little distracting at times. There are also some large vertical film scratches that run from the top to the bottom of the screen. Examples of this are at 23:18, 93:30 (where it looks like someone has drawn on the film with a felt-tip pen), 100:57, and at 105:12 - 105:14. There is a reel change marker at 93:33.

Pan & Scan Presentation (Side A)

    The colours were well-saturated and very natural-looking, but a couple of the outdoor scenes seemed to be a little overbright, which tended to wash out the colour just a little. There aren't very many of these scenes, so it is not a real problem. No low-level noise, edge bleeding or excessive edge enhancement was noticed.

    Picture grain is little more noticeable in this version of the movie, but it is only just noticeable on a few occasions.

    The aliasing is just as frequent on this side of the DVD, but it is a lot less severe and is much more tolerable, however it is still at an unacceptable level.

    The number of film artefacts is basically identical.

Packaging Error

Video Ratings Summary

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

Audio

    The dialogue was clear and easy to understand at all times.

    No transfer-induced audio sync problems were noticed with this transfer, with only one scene suffering from some obvious dialogue replacement (at 66:16).

    Danny Elfman's musical score adds tension to many of the key sequences.

    The surround mix is quite good, with a surprisingly well-balanced sound stage for a Dolby Digital surround-encoded soundtrack. The surround channels were most frequently used for music, but there are also a goodly smattering of effects and background noises present, which create a nicely detailed and natural-sounding soundstage. During a couple of the more dramatic scenes, you are totally enveloped in the soundfield.

    Good use of the subwoofer is made throughout the film. The music and a couple of the more dramatic scenes really sounded great.

Audio Ratings Summary

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

Menu

    The menu selections are; Play Movie, Scene Selections (13 + Credits), Theatrical Trailer and Languages.

    There are actually 40 chapters on this disc, so the scene selections are grouped in threes, which is rather inconvenient.

Theatrical Trailer (1:56 minutes)

    Side A (Pan & Scan) has a non-16x9 enhanced 1.78:1 aspect ratio picture with a 192kb/s Dolby Digital 2.0 surround-encoded soundtrack.

    Side B (Widescreen) has a 16x9 enhanced 1:78:1 aspect ratio picture with a 192kb/s Dolby Digital 2.0 surround-encoded soundtrack.

    The picture quality can only be described as average because of the almost constant aliasing and the large number of film artefacts.

    The soundtrack is of very good quality.

    The extras are extremely limited.

Video
Audio
Extras
Plot
Overall