Of Mice and Men (1992)

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General		Extras
Category	Drama	Theatrical Trailer
Rating	?
Year Of Production	1992
Running Time	106:12
RSDL / Flipper	No/No	Cast & Crew
Start Up	Language Select Then Menu
Region Coding	2,4	Directed By	Gary Sinise
Studio Distributor	MGM	Starring	John Malkovich Gary Sinise Ray Walston Casey Siemaszko Sherilyn Fenn John Terry Richard Riehle Alexis Arquette Joe Morton Noble Willingham Joe D'Angerio Tuck Milligan David Steen
Case	?
RPI	$19.95	Music	Mark Isham

Video		Audio
Pan & Scan/Full Frame	None	English Dolby Digital 2.0 (192Kb/s) German Dolby Digital 2.0 (192Kb/s) Spanish Dolby Digital 2.0 (192Kb/s)
Widescreen Aspect Ratio	1.85:1
16x9 Enhancement
Video Format	576i (PAL)
Original Aspect Ratio	1.85:1	Miscellaneous
Jacket Pictures	No
Subtitles	English for the Hearing Impaired German for the Hearing Impaired Spanish Swedish Finnish Norwegian Danish Greek Hungarian Turkish	Smoking	Yes
		Annoying Product Placement	No
		Action In or After Credits	No

    This is a classic story based upon one of the great American novels, Of Mice And Men, by John Steinbeck. It has been made into a movie at least five times, initially in 1939 starring Lon Chaney Jr and Burgess Meredith and then twice for American television and once for Turkish television (now that would be interesting). The original film is generally considered to be the best version and was nominated for four academy awards including Best Picture. This version was made for theatrical release in 1992 and was directed by one of its stars, Gary Sinise, who does a good job here both in directing and playing George.

    The story itself is a sad and deeply moving yarn about George (Gary Sinise) who is a good-hearted itinerant worker during the depression in the western states of the US. His travelling companion is a mentally retarded gentle giant called Lenny (John Malkovich) who George promised Lenny's dying aunt he would look after. Lenny is a very nice simple person who does not really understand the world around him and the effect he has on others. He gets pleasure from simple things such as petting animals and thinking about George's story of the farm that they will own in the future. Unfortunately, due to his great strength he often gets George and himself into trouble by hurting things without meaning to. The story opens with George & Lenny needing to leave the ranch they are working on quickly due to one of these incidents. They get work on another ranch which is run by the cruel Curly (Casey Siemaszko) and his father. Other important characters they meet here include Curly's wife (Sherilyn Fenn), who is lonely and abused by her husband and Candy (Ray Walston), an old farm hand, injured in an accident, who can no longer work in the fields.

    The acting in the film is absolutely top shelf with John Malkovich leading the way. His performance as Lenny is excellent and considering the academy's love of actors playing the mentally disabled it is slightly surprising that he was not nominated for an award. Gary Sinise is also very good as George in a film which was obviously a labour of love for him. Ray Walston stands out in the supporting cast with his heartfelt performance, especially during the section of the film involving his dog. Sherilyn Fenn is also surprisingly effective in a relatively small role.

    Overall, this is a well made adaptation of a famous story featuring excellent performances.

Video

    The video quality is very good with only some minor blemishes.

    The feature is presented in an aspect ratio of 1.85:1, which is the original aspect ratio. It is 16x9 enhanced.

    The picture was generally clear and sharp throughout, with no evidence of low level noise, although there was some light grain throughout most of the presentation. It was certainly not heavy enough to be distracting. Shadow detail was quite good with night and darkened scenes showing reasonable levels of detail.

    The colour was very good throughout with all colours being well saturated and free from colour bleeding. The skin colouring was very natural. The colour palette of the film is quite muted, mostly in autumnal shades.

    There were a few black & white specks on and off throughout the film, noticeable when you are looking for them but not too bad. Some minor aliasing was also present, such as on the light through the barn at 87:06 and the rifle at 93:21. Neither of these artefacts had any great effect on the quality of the presentation.

    There are subtitles in ten languages including English for the Hearing Impaired. The English subtitles were clear, easy to read and very close to the spoken word.

    This is a single layered disc so there is no layer change present.
    

Video Ratings Summary

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

Audio

    The audio quality is good, but very front and centre focussed.

    This DVD contains three audio options: an English Dolby Digital 2.0 stereo soundtrack encoded at 192 Kb/s, and the same in German & Spanish. The English version would have been the original theatrical soundtrack and is perfectly adequate for a character-driven film such as this.

    Dialogue was clear and easy to understand.    

    There were no problems with audio sync.    

    The score of this film by Mark Isham is quite good and suits the film, however, it occasionally veered too far into sentimentality.

    The surround speakers were virtually not used at all except for some music when played using Dolby ProLogic II.

    The subwoofer was not used.

Audio Ratings Summary

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

Menu

    The menu included a scene and language selection function.

Theatrical Trailer (2:13)

    The original theatrical trailer is included here and is not a bad one, if these interest you.

    The Region 4 version of this disc misses out on;

• Commentary from Director
• A higher bit rate transfer
• 11 Deleted Scenes with Optional Commentary
• Featurette of Gary Sinise and the screenwriter in discussion
• Test footage of hair, makeup etc
• Sherilyn Fenn's screen test
• Making Of Featurette

    The Region 1 special edition version of this disc misses out on;

• Nothing

    The Region 1 special edition version is definitely the best choice. Our release seems to be exactly the same as the standard edition in Region 1.

    The video quality is very good.

    The audio quality is good.

    The disc has only the theatrical trailer as an extra, which is shame for a film of this calibre.

Video
Audio
Extras
Plot
Overall