Far and Away (1992) |
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General | Extras | ||
Category | Drama |
Theatrical Trailer Production Notes Biographies-Cast & Crew |
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Rating | |||
Year Of Production | 1992 | ||
Running Time | 134:08 | ||
RSDL / Flipper | RSDL (59:10) | Cast & Crew | |
Start Up | Programme | ||
Region Coding | 2,4 | Directed By | Ron Howard |
Studio
Distributor |
Sony Pictures Home Entertain |
Starring |
Tom Cruise Nicole Kidman |
Case | Brackley-Trans-No Lip | ||
RPI | $39.95 | Music | John Williams |
Video | Audio | ||
Pan & Scan/Full Frame | None |
English Dolby Digital 5.1 (384Kb/s) German Dolby Digital 4.0 L-C-R-S (384Kb/s) French Dolby Digital 2.0 (192Kb/s) Italian Dolby Digital 4.0 L-C-R-S (384Kb/s) Spanish Dolby Digital 2.0 (192Kb/s) Czech Dolby Digital 2.0 (192Kb/s) Polish Dolby Digital 2.0 (192Kb/s) |
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Widescreen Aspect Ratio | 2.35:1 | ||
16x9 Enhancement |
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Video Format | 576i (PAL) | ||
Original Aspect Ratio | 2.20:1 | Miscellaneous | |
Jacket Pictures | No | ||
Subtitles |
English French Portuguese Danish Finnish Swedish Norwegian German Dutch |
Smoking | Yes |
Annoying Product Placement | No | ||
Action In or After Credits | No |
After sleeping overnight in Mr. Christie's barn, he is awoken by the approach of Mr. Christie's’ feisty daughter, Shannon (Nicole Kidman). Joseph confronts Mr. Christie and states why he is going to shoot him. Unfortunately for Joseph, (but fortunately for Mr. Christie!), when he actually fires the gun it blows up in his face. Joseph is knocked unconscious by the blast and is taken upstairs to a bedroom where his clothes are removed so his wounds can be attended to. Mrs. Christie explains why this is done but I will let you hear that for yourself. Shannon is curious about men, and when her mother leaves the room she decides to have a little peek at Joseph's privates, which are being covered by a large bowl at the time. This is a great scene in the film.
Later, Stephen (Thomas Gibson) arrives, and here we learn of his love for Shannon. Unbeknownst to him, Shannon has plans to run away to America, where she hopes to find a better life. With the help of some rather fortuitous fog, Joseph escapes with Shannon and they flee to America. Upon disembarking the ship in Boston (America), Shannon's plans immediately go astray. Joseph gets introduced to a local pub owner, Mike Kelly, who sets them up in a one bed apartment in a brothel and finds them work in a factory where chickens are prepared for sale at the market. This sets the backdrop for another great scene where Shannon gets into an argument with the manager and is docked several days wages for calling him a pig and a few other nasty names.
Joseph takes up bare-fisted boxing at Mike's pub and finds that it is quite profitable. Things seem to be going well for our main characters, but inevitably it all goes terribly wrong and our two main character separate. Joseph goes to work laying railway tracks and here we find him remembering a long-ago night when he kissed Shannon (he is obviously still enamoured of her). A passing wagon train reminds him of his goal to posses his own land, so he sets off to try to make his dream come true. While getting ready to be a part of the horse race (which was the way you got to claim a piece of land), he runs into Shannon who has in the meantime been unhappily reunited with her former fiancé, Stephen. I suspect that the scene that had explained this ended up somewhere on the cutting room floor, as I saw nothing in the movie to actually indicate that they were engaged, but it is on the blurb on the back of the cover. Stephen has found a plot of land which fits Shannon's description of her perfect plot. When Stephen starts describing the land you realize it is really Joseph's dream plot of land (she is obviously still enamoured of him!).
Joseph is forced to buy a wild, unbroken horse after his tamer mount dies the night before the race. The race starts and in the mad rush and excitement to claim a piece of land, wagons roll and break, riders fall off and meanwhile poor old Joseph is still trying to get on his wild horse! Finally, he gets control of the horse by punching it in the head. For all you horse lovers out there, there is no need to worry - you don't actually get to see the punch land. This is reminiscent of that wonderful scene from Conan The Barbarian, where Arnold punches a camel in the head. Joseph sets off at full speed after the pack, in an attempt to claim his piece of land.
This would have been a great transfer if it weren't for the endless stream of film artefacts and a major video lockup at 46:52 which caused a 3 to 15 second pause on most of the DVD players that were tested. Two discs and seven different DVD players were used to confirm the video lockup, with the test results shown below. Hopefully Columbia Tristar will be able to fix this problem before the scheduled release date.
Player/Model | | Disc B |
Orion DVKT | | |
Panasonic A360 | | |
Pioneer 505 | | |
Sony 525 | | |
Sony 725 | | |
Start 2001 | | |
Toshiba 2109 | | |
The transfer is presented at an aspect ratio of 2.35:1. It is 16x9 enhanced.
Sharpness was very good throughout the film, although after the 102:00 minute mark the picture quality seemed to degrade with some minor edge bleeding creeping in. Shadow detail was good, but I felt that a couple of scenes should have been a little brighter. No low level noise was seen.
The colour was very good and is accurate to the original film.
The opening sequence was ever so slightly grainy, but it soon settles down to be reference quality, right up until the 102:00 minute mark, whereafter any shot of blue sky has a noticeable graininess to it.
Aliasing was practically non-existent, with just a few occurrences which were very minor. I saw two instances of telecine wobble, both of which occurred during the end credits.
Film artefacts are by far the biggest problem with this transfer. A lot of the artefacts are very minor and should go by unnoticed on a TV, but there are also far too many larger distracting ones for my liking.
This disc is an RSDL disc, with the layer change placed in Chapter 7 at 59:10. It is a little disruptive to the flow of the movie as it causes a noticeable pause in the video that lasts for several seconds. I have seen plenty worse and many better, but it is still far superior to actually having to get up and flip the disc over.
I first confirmed that the video lockup at 46:52 had been fixed, which it had. I then watched the entire movie to confirm that it did not suffer from any new video or audio problems, which it didn't. The remastered version played seamlessly. I would like to commend Columbia Tristar for fixing this problem. It is good to see such problems are taken seriously and corrected.
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Catalogue Number on the spine of the DVD package | DU29947 | DU29947 |
Disc Number on the label side of the DVD | DU29947 U1-20212 | DU29947 U1-20212 |
Serial number around the inner rim of the data side of the DVD, in non-reversed printing | U1 20212.1.A VA02 IFPI L906 | U1 20212.1.A VB05 IFPI L907 |
Serial number around the inner rim of the data side of the DVD, in reversed printing | U1 20212.1.B VA02 IFPI L906 | U1 20212.1.B VA02 IFPI L906 |
Sharpness | |
Shadow Detail | |
Colour | |
Grain/Pixelization | |
Film-To-Video Artefacts | |
Film Artefacts | |
Overall |
There are no less than seven audio tracks on this DVD of which only one is English. The English Dolby Digital 5.1 soundtrack is the default and is the one I listened to.
The dialogue was mostly clear and easy to understand, but there were several occurrences where it was hard to make out, with the Irish accents not helping this at all. I found myself listening to this soundtrack at 3db louder than I normally do in an effort to overcome this.
No audio sync problems were noticed. Neither were there any clicks, pops or dropouts heard.
The surround channels were used to created a nice sound envelope without ever being really noticeable. This made the sound feel front-heavy for most of the movie.
The subwoofer did not have much to do in this movie, but when it was needed it came through beautifully.
Special Note: The cover shows the audio tracks for German and Italian soundtracks as Digital Digital 2.0 surround encoded, but they are in fact both Dolby Digital 4.0 soundtracks.
Dialogue | |
Audio Sync | |
Clicks/Pops/Dropouts | |
Surround Channel Use | |
Subwoofer | |
Overall |
NOTE: To view non-R4 releases, your equipment needs to be multi-zone compatible and usually also NTSC compatible.
There are no compelling reasons to prefer one version over the other.
If the major video lockup is fixed or you have a DVD player that is unaffected, then the video quality should be considered as being good, spoiled by excessive film artefacts. On the other hand if the video lockup is not fixed and you have a player that is affected, I feel the video quality can only be classified as just barely acceptable.
The audio quality is quite good.
The extras are pretty basic.
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 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) |