Return to Me (2000) |
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General | Extras | ||
Category | Romantic Comedy |
Main Menu Audio & Animation Audio Commentary-Bonnie Hunt (Dir/S'Writer) & Don Lake (S'Writer) Music Video-What If I Loved You Deleted Scenes-1 Theatrical Trailer |
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Rating | |||
Year Of Production | 2000 | ||
Running Time | 111:09 | ||
RSDL / Flipper | RSDL (65:00) | Cast & Crew | |
Start Up | Language Select Then Menu | ||
Region Coding | 2,4 | Directed By | Bonnie Hunt |
Studio
Distributor |
Twentieth Century Fox |
Starring |
David Duchovny Minnie Driver Carroll O'Connor Robert Loggia David Alan Grier Bonnie Hunt Joely Richardson James Belushi |
Case | Amaray-Transparent | ||
RPI | $34.95 | Music | Nicholas Pike |
Video | Audio | ||
Pan & Scan/Full Frame | Auto Pan & Scan Encoded |
English Dolby Digital 5.1 (448Kb/s) German Dolby Digital 5.1 (448Kb/s) French Dolby Digital 5.1 (448Kb/s) Italian Dolby Digital 5.1 (448Kb/s) Spanish Dolby Digital 5.1 (448Kb/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 |
English English for the Hearing Impaired German German for the Hearing Impaired French Italian Spanish Dutch Swedish Finnish Norwegian Danish Portuguese Polish Greek Hungarian |
Smoking | Yes |
Annoying Product Placement | No | ||
Action In or After Credits | Yes, at start of credits |
I was also pleasantly surprised to find out that David Duchovny (The X-Files) can convincingly play a character other than a FBI agent. Both David Duchovny and Minnie Driver play their parts superbly and with the great supporting cast, which includes Joely Richardson, James Belushi, Bonnie Hunt, Robert Loggia and many other recognizable faces, I was effortlessly transported into the world of Return To Me.
From the back cover blurb: "It took a lot of cajoling to get Bob Rueland (Duchovny), a recently widowed architect, to go on a blind date at a quirky Irish-Italian eatery. Once there, he's instantly smitten not with his date, but with the cheeky waitress, Grace (Driver)".
As luck or fate would have it (you choose whichever term you prefer), Bob leaves his phone at the restaurant, which creates the perfect excuse for him to go back to get it and hopefully see Grace again.
The transfer is presented in an aspect ratio of 1.85:1 and is 16x9 enhanced. This disc is also encoded with Auto Pan & Scan Information, which is great to see.
Foreground sharpness and detail is very good, especially on the close-up shots. In a lot of instances, the background detail is disrupted by film grain (more on that anon), so it loses a little of its sharpness and detail. Shadow detail is basically perfect and no low level noise, edge enhancement nor edge bleeding was noticed.
The colours were vibrant and deeply saturated, and were pretty much perfect. There were a couple of scenes where the skin tones seemed just a tad over-red, but really this is being unnecessarily picky.
Now, about that grain... Grain is everywhere, and I'm not talking about some minor barely noticeable stuff either. There is hardly a scene in the entire movie that is totally free of grain. In the rare instances where a scene was totally grain-free, the picture looked superb. The grain seemed to be more prevalent in well-lit scenes, which unfortunately there were plenty of. For those of you who are bothered by grain (like myself) it will certainly take much of the shine off this otherwise excellent transfer. I do, however, have a vague recollection that this film was pretty grainy at the cinema too, but I can't be sure, so I cannot say for certain that the grain wasn't induced during the transfer process. Pixelization (MPEG compression artefacting) which can look very similar to film grain, did not seem to be the main cause of the grain in this case. I did however, notice a couple of scenes that definitely suffered from some trivial or minor pixelization, which is not totally surprising, given the amount of maximum bandwidth left for the video stream on this DVD - see the Audio section for more details on this issue. A couple of the more noticeable instances of grain and pixelization can be found at 7:46 - 7:49, 7:57 - 8:06 (pixelization) and 22:17. There are several more, but I stopped writing them down after this point. On my 68cm TV this grain and pixelization was far less bothersome and only the worst instances still stood out enough to be distracting.
Only one other minor MPEG artefact was seen and it was during the end credits, at 108:12 - 108:18. It is hard to describe, but it is minor and won't detract from your enjoyment of the film in the slightest. There are a couple of instances of noticeable moiré and aliasing artefacts which were distracting, such as at 32:22, 56:17, 76:30, 84:05 - 84:20 and 106:28.
There is a light sprinkling of tiny film artefacts throughout the film, with only two being big enough to warrant mentioning; a big vertical scratch or pen mark at 21:52 and a hollow white circle in the centre of the screen at 58:49.
This disc is an RSDL disc, with the layer change occurring at 65:00 in Chapter 20, on a scene change. It is perfectly placed and does not disrupt the flow of the movie at all.
Sharpness | |
Shadow Detail | |
Colour | |
Grain/Pixelization | |
Film-To-Video Artefacts | |
Film Artefacts | |
Overall |
No audio sync problems were noticed with this transfer and dialogue was well integrated into the soundstage.
At 7:46 - 8:10 there is some low-level hiss present in each of the five Dolby Digital 5.1 soundtracks, indicating that this is inherent in the source material.
The musical score is by Nicolas Pike and it suits the movie well.
The surround channels are subtly used throughout the film to create an enveloping sound field. They are mostly used for musical ambience, but there are some good sound effects too. Surround sound highlights are at 14:37, 30:58, 67:36, 103:45 and 106:28. The frontal sound is nicely spread across the front speakers with good sound placement, creating an open and pleasing front soundstage.
The subwoofer is lightly but nicely used to enhance and add depth to the music, which in turn further complements the movie's soundtrack.
Dialogue | |
Audio Sync | |
Clicks/Pops/Dropouts | |
Surround Channel Use | |
Subwoofer | |
Overall |
The Scene Selection menu has an index, which makes jumping to any chapter a breeze.
NOTE: To view non-R4 releases, your equipment needs to be multi-zone compatible and usually also NTSC compatible.
Overall the video quality is good. It would have been excellent, if it hadn't been for the abundant and distracting grain.
The audio quality is great.
There is a pretty reasonable selection of extras present.
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). Calibrated with Video Essentials. 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) |