Aviator, The: 2-Disc Widescreen Edition (2004) |
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Aviator, The: 2-Disc Widescreen Edition (2004) |
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| BUY IT |
| General | Extras | ||
| Category | Drama |
Main Menu Audio & Animation Audio Commentary-Martin Scorsese, Thelma Schoonmaker, Michael Mann Deleted Scenes-Howard Tells Ava About His Car Accident Featurette-Making Of-A Life Without Limits Featurette-The Role Of Howard Hughes In Aviation History Featurette-Modern Marvels: Howard Hughes, History Channel Doco Featurette-The Affliction Of Howard Hughes: Obsessive Compulsive Dis. Featurette-OCD Panel Discussion Featurette-An Evening With Leonardo DiCaprio And Alan Alda Featurette-The Visual Effects Of The Aviator Featurette-Constructing The Aviator: The Work Of Dante Ferretti Featurette-Costuming The Aviator: The Work Of Sandy Powell Featurette-The Age Of Glamour: The Hair And Make-Up Of The Aviator Featurette-Scoring The Aviator: The Work Of Howard Shore Featurette-The Wainwright Family - Loudon, Rufus And Martha Trailer-The Aviator Soundtrack Spot Gallery-Photo |
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| Rating |
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| Year Of Production | 2004 | ||
| Running Time | 162:52 (Case: 157) | ||
| RSDL / Flipper |
RSDL (79:18) Dual Disc Set |
Cast & Crew | |
| Start Up | Menu | ||
| Region Coding | 4 | Directed By | Martin Scorsese |
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Studio
Distributor |
 Warner Home Video |
Starring |
Leonardo DiCaprio Cate Blanchett Kate Beckinsale John C. Reilly Alec Baldwin Alan Alda Ian Holm Danny Huston Gwen Stefani Jude Law Adam Scott Matt Ross Kelli Garner |
| Case | ? | ||
| RPI | $34.95 | Music | Howard Shore |
| 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 | 2.35:1 | ||
| 16x9 Enhancement |
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| Video Format | 576i (PAL) | ||
| Original Aspect Ratio | 2.35:1 | Miscellaneous | |
| Jacket Pictures | No | ||
| Subtitles |
English English for the Hearing Impaired |
Smoking | Yes |
| Annoying Product Placement | No | ||
| Action In or After Credits | No | ||
2004 was certainly a big year for the biopic. Films recounting the lives of Ray Charles (Ray), J.M. Barrie (Finding Neverland), Bobby Darin (Beyond The Sea) and Cole Porter (De-Lovely) were released, among several others. Added to that list was one of the bigger films of the genre and winner of five Academy Awards - The Aviator, a lavish production focusing on the life of the eccentric billionaire Howard Hughes.
Directed with considerable flair by Martin Scorsese and starring Leonardo DiCaprio as Hughes, The Aviator deals with the period of Hughes' life from the late 1920s to the late 1940s. During this three decade period, Hughes was involved in many expensive pursuits, including movie making, aircraft and women. As the film opens, Hughes is struggling to finish directing the biggest budget film ever seen in Hollywood to that point. His epic Hell's Angels was turning into a bottomless money pit and Hughes was looking increasingly unlikely to finish it before he would go broke. But finish it he did to much acclaim which saw him shoot to the top of the Hollywood A list and never short of a date with a beautiful Tinseltown starlet.
Flying and aircraft were Hughes' other great loves and the film not only gains its name from his aerial pursuits but sees most of the focus of the film on this chapter of his life. Hughes sinks countless millions into his aircraft, test piloting many of the planes himself and setting all manner of new records in between nearly killing himself. He also gains a major stake in TWA airlines, moving the fledging commercial aviator to the top of the tree in transcontinental flight. He is, of course, perhaps best remembered in aircraft terms for his near fanatical desire to build the biggest plane ever built. His massive aircraft, which he named the Hercules (though the press dubbed it The Spruce Goose), barely flew at all but to this day it's still the biggest plane ever built.
If he wasn't making movies or flying aircraft, Hughes was bedding women and the film shows highlights of some of his more famous conquests. Katharine Hepburn (the amazing Cate Blanchett in her Oscar-winning role) was one of the first and these fun scenes are easily the highlight of the film. Hughes also spent time with the stunning actress Ava Gardner (Kate Beckinsale), though these scenes are less than stimulating.
In a life filled with many triumphs, the last and perhaps best thing Howard Hughes is remembered for was his mental illness. When he died in 1976, Hughes was a recluse, refusing to set foot outside his hotel room where he had been living for several years for fear of getting some disease. Hughes suffered from obsessive compulsive disorder (OCD) for most of his life and throughout the film reminders about this affliction and the pain it caused this eccentric, yet brilliant man are shown. The repetitive manner in which he speaks or completes tasks and his near obsession with keeping clean and germ free play a big part of the film.
This is an interesting story about an interesting man as Hughes packed more into his life than most of us can only dream about. Unfortunately, as pure entertainment the story gets a little bogged down and plods towards the third act. With a near three hour run time, all but the most avid aircraft history buffs might find the going a little tough. It's a lavish production with a stunning design, costumes and overall look, but something is clearly missing to turn it into an entertaining masterpiece. The DVD presentation on the other hand is first class and one of the best releases of the year.
This is a very nice transfer overall, with plenty of highlights and few problems of any consequence.
We are greeted with a transfer in an aspect ratio of 2.35:1. It is also 16x9 enhanced.
This is easily the sharpest and most detailed transfer I have ever seen, with no evidence of edge enhancement, while shadow detail is quite decent. There is virtually no grain at all. There is no low level noise.
The colour palette of The Aviator is really quite remarkable and probably the most noticeable feature of the video transfer. Varying greatly throughout the runtime, the colours shown might even make you think your display device is playing tricks or worse, playing up! Do not adjust your set though, because this is exactly how it is supposed to look. The early part of the film is designed to emulate the colour processing techniques available to filmmakers in the 1920s. They only had a two colour process at their disposal, making any greens take on a bluish tinge. As the time period moves on to the 1930s, the film opens up into more of a conventional three strip technicolour, while the late 1940s appear more drab and lifelike. For the most part, skin tones are natural and blacks are solid. There are no problems with colour bleeding or oversaturation.
Despite the near three hour run time, the compression is faultless and as a result no MPEG artefacts are present. Film-to-video artefacts were also absent. Being a new movie, film artefacts were non-existent which is as expected.
Sampling the English for the Hearing Impaired subtitles found them well placed on screen and remarkably accurate.
The movie is contained on disc one and this is a dual layered disc with RSDL formatting. The layer change is at 79:18.
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There are two audio soundtracks on this disc. A quite excellent English Dolby Digital 5.1 soundtrack encoded at the bitrate of 384 Kb/s is joined by a Dolby Digital 2.0 English commentary soundtrack. The Dolby 5.1 soundtrack is a ripper and hugely solid effort with clear channel separation and excellent dialogue levels. It comes into its own of course whenever one of Howard Hughes' many aircraft zip and zoom around the screen. Things get even bigger, bolder and better when Hughes manages to crash one of his craft into several houses with the soundtrack springing into life into all corners of the room. Enveloping and engaging, this is a track to impress when needed.
Dialogue is excellent and there are no audio sync problems.
The score is by composer of the moment Howard Shore, and it captures the magic and spirit of the various eras such as the 1930s and 40s perfectly, plus the steady decline of Howard Hughes' mental state.
As mentioned before, there is plenty of surround channel use. The various plane flights and crashes are superbly handled, while the subwoofer also comes into its own during these bass-heavy scenes.
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There are plenty of extras in the two disc edition with most of the goodies contained on the second disc.
Whilst it is obvious that none of the three participants recorded this track together, this is still a very good example of how to do a commentary. Scorsese in particular is chock full of stories, anecdotes, information and above all passion for his topic, his films and the movie industry in general.
There is just one measly deleted scene that runs for just 1:39. It has Howard Hughes (Leonardo DiCaprio) telling Ava Gardner (Kate Beckinsale) about a car accident he was involved in several years earlier. Pretty dull really.
A fairly stock-standard making of that shows only a brief glimpse of the behind-the-scenes action and spends most of the time with the actors congratulating each other and the director for the marvellous job. Seen it all before and thankfully it runs for just 11:33.
An interesting look at the role Howard Hughes played in the development of early aviation history. Contains some archival footage of the man himself, but also relies a little too heavily on footage from the film. Runs for 14:41.
Running for a lengthy 43:37, this is a quality History Channel documentary that is easily the pick of the extras on the bonus disc. It offers a well researched and comprehensive account of Howard Hughes' life, albeit from a engineering angle, focusing on his aviation exploits and only briefly discussing his movie making and romances. Guaranteed you will learn something from watching this.
Running for 14:09, this is an interesting look at the medical condition that afflicted Howard Hughes: Obsessive Compulsive Disorder. Features interviews with Leonardo DiCaprio, various medical experts on the subject and several patients who suffer from the disease. It adds some credibility to Leo's acting performance.
Recorded on 2 December 2004, this is panel style discussion featuring director Martin Scorsese, Leonardo DiCaprio, Howard Hughes' widow Terry Moore and a couple of medical experts. They discuss the affliction of obsessive compulsive disorder and how they translated the condition to the film. Runs for 14:53.
Running for a healthy 28:07 this is a moderated question and answer session with stars Leonardo DiCaprio and Alan Alda in front of a theatre audience. They discuss the film in some detail. One of the better extras.
Running for 12:02, this is a fairly standard look at the CGI visual effects found throughout the film. Some of them are quite impressively done.
A 6:00 look at the glamorous production design of the film and the work of Scorsese favourite Dante Ferretti.
An all-too-brief 3:35 look at the costumes found in the film and how costumer Sandy Powell set about recreating the look of 20s, 30s and 40s Hollywood.
Running for 8:08, this is a quick look at how the hair and make-up stylists went about recreating the looks of the famous stars portrayed in the film.
Composer Howard Shore discusses how the score came to be, what inspired him and what message he is trying to convey with his music. Runs for 7:15.
Singer Loudon Wainwright and his two children Rufus and Martha appeared in the film as singers at the cabaret club. In this 5:07 featurette Wainwright senior discusses how their roles came to be and what happened during filming.
A 19 second trailer for the CD soundtrack from the film. Interestingly, apart from the voice-over there is only the sound of an aircraft. I would have thought a sample of what I was buying might have been more appropriate.
A series of nicely presented colour photos showing both film highlights and behind-the-scenes action.
NOTE: To view non-R4 releases, your equipment needs to be multi-zone compatible and usually also NTSC compatible.
Aside from the addition of a French Dolby Digital 2.0 surround soundtrack and a couple more subtitles options, the Region 1 disc is identical to the Region 4.
Whilst The Aviator is an interesting film about an incredibly interesting person, it is not an overly entertaining one - and therein lies its main problem. As a biopic of a man who led a truly extraordinary life it succeeds on so many levels, but as a story designed to entertain it is let down by some plodding moments and a lengthy runtime. The DVD presentation on the other hand is exemplary, one of the best releases of the year in terms of bonus material.
The video and audio quality are of reference quality.
The extras spill across to a second disc and are of high quality, especially the informative commentary track.
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| Review Equipment | |
| DVD | Denon DVD-3910, using RGB output |
| Display | Loewe Calida (84cm). Calibrated with Digital Video Essentials (PAL). This display device is 16x9 capable. |
| Audio Decoder | Built in to amplifier/receiver. Calibrated with Digital Video Essentials (PAL). |
| Amplification | Harmon/Kardon AVR7000. |
| Speakers | Front - B&W 602S2, Centre - B&W CC6S2, Rear - B&W 601S2, Sub - Energy E:xl S10 |