Cirque du Soleil-Solstrom (2003)

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General		Extras
Category	Dance	Main Menu Audio & Animation Menu Animation & Audio Dolby Digital Trailer Featurette-Making Of Gallery-Photo Trailer-Cirque On DVD, Fire Within DVD, Cirque Club
Rating
Year Of Production	2003
Running Time	586:09 (Case: 585)
RSDL / Flipper	Dual Layered Multi Disc Set (5)	Cast & Crew
Start Up	Menu
Region Coding	2,4,5	Directed By	Pierre Gagnon
Studio Distributor	Sony Pictures Home Entertain	Starring	None Given
Case	?
RPI	$49.95	Music	Various

Video		Audio
Pan & Scan/Full Frame	None	English Dolby Digital 5.1 (448Kb/s) English dts 5.1 (768Kb/s)
Widescreen Aspect Ratio	1.78:1
16x9 Enhancement
Video Format	576i (PAL)
Original Aspect Ratio	1.78:1	Miscellaneous
Jacket Pictures	No
Subtitles	English French German Italian Spanish Dutch	Smoking	Yes
		Annoying Product Placement	No
		Action In or After Credits	Yes, During end credits

    Anyone who has been fortunate enough to see any of the live performances of Canadian-based Cirque Du Soleil will need little introduction into what the group is about and the quality of the performances found in this 13-part series filmed in Montreal in 2003.

    Cirque Du Soleil has been stunning audiences since 1984, and from humble beginnings as street performers in Montreal, Canada, the group has grown to a multi million dollar business with several shows on the go around the world. The various travelling shows have visited more than 100 cities and performed to thousands of enthralled spectators. Taking the concept of a circus to new levels, Cirque Du Soleil features some of the usual acts such as clowns, highwire and acrobats, but it applies to these a layer of artistic mystique, classy costuming, enthralling storytelling and joyous music that leaves your regular circus for dead. I vividly remember walking out of a performance of Saltimbanco in 1999 stating that the spectacular I had just seen was easily the most amazing and best show I had ever seen. To this day it has not been surpassed.

    Cirque Du Soleil - Solstrom is a 13-part television series that draws inspiration from film, comedy, burlesque theatre, conventional circus acts, and of course Cirque Du Soleil's other live shows to create something completely new.

    The idea of this series is to take the message and mystique of Cirque Du Soleil to as many new people as possible. Not everyone can afford the prices asked to attend a live show, even if they did come to the city in which they lived, but almost everyone owns a television.

    The 13 episodes run for around 45 minutes each and play out a bit like a variety show. There is a theme, such as romance, love, freedom, imagination or adventure in each show (for example in episode two Twin Winds a young man gets caught up with his reflection in his bathroom mirror and spends the whole show running around enthralled by circus acts involving twins). As the story unfolds the main characters will interact with some of the Cirque performers who will work their magic (In Wind Of Romance a waiter assists a young man to deliver some flowers to his sweetheart by balancing on a 20 foot high stack of chairs).

    You will probably encounter a few acts that you have seen before, as the troupe has travelled to Australia several times over the last ten years and some of the performances come from those shows. But I guarantee there are some you will not have seen and you will most certainly find yourself gobsmacked at just how they manage to do some of the things they do.

    A quality series from a quality troupe of performers. This is high class all the way.

Video

    Anyone who has been to a live performance of Cirque Du Soleil will know the company does not skimp on anything. Every element of the show oozes quality and class and it's great to be able to report this trend has been carried across to the DVD production. Everything from the video transfer, the audio soundtrack and right through to the menus is about the best you will ever see.

    In video terms this is a lovely video effort, obviously benefiting from modern digital widescreen cameras and the superbit encoding apparently applied to transfer.

    It is presented in the widescreen aspect ratio of 1.78:1 and is also 16x9 enhanced.

    All the vision is incredibly sharp and detailed, and is consistently good throughout. There isn't a trace of edge enhancement and there are absolutely no problems with shadow detail. There is also no grain. The lighting looks a little flat on occasion, but this is obviously an artistic choice.

    The colours are excellent, with even saturation and consistent shading. Reds and blues come out especially well and the skin tones are perfect.

    There are no MPEG artefacts and video artefacts are also absent. All up, this is a very, very clean image with no problems to report.

    I sampled the English subtitles for a good part of the film and found them accurate and well placed on the screen.

    All five discs are dual layered, with episodes spanning layers.

Video Ratings Summary

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

Audio

    Wow! That is about all I need to say about the audio on these discs. It delivers some serious punch. There is a choice of two cracking audio soundtracks to accompany the stunning video. A Dolby Digital 5.1 soundtrack is joined by a dts soundtrack encoded at the lower bitrate of 768 Kb/s. I listened to both tracks and while there is basically nothing separating them, the dts really does shine and sparkle. Constant, enveloping and immersive audio pumps and oozes from all channels and this is truly what I would call demonstration material.

    Dialogue is actually fairly limited during the performances, but what is there is excellent.

    Cirque Du Soleil is renowned for its music and with these performances the arrangements nearly outshine the visuals. Elegant, beautifully rendered and delivered, this is musicianship at its best. The quality of the surround soundtracks lift the music to a whole new level.

Audio Ratings Summary

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

Main Menu Audio & Animation

Menu Animation & Audio

Dolby Digital Trailer

Featurette-Making Of

    A 17:53 making of featurette that features interviews with several of the key creative people involved coupled with plenty of highlights of the series. Worth a look to get an understanding of the sheer amount of work and money that went into the production.

Gallery-Photo

    An automatically running montage of beautiful looking photos from the production. Runs for 3:07.

Trailer

    There are three different trailers presented here. First up is a 4:47 look at all of the Cirque Du Soleil DVDs that are available. Next is a look at the documentary series Fire Within which runs for 0:47 and lastly is a very quick trailer for the Cirque Club which runs for 0:32.

    The Region 4 and Region 1 multi-disc sets are identical.

    Cirque De Soleil - Solstrom continues the tradition of finely crafted and high quality DVDs from this world famous troop of Canadian performers. With this 13-part series, Cirque Du Soleil will capture the imagination of a whole new group who have previously been unable to attend a live performance. It is the next best thing to sitting in the front row under the Grand Chapiteau.

    The video and audio quality are of the highest quality, as are the menus and whole packaging of this five disc set. Only the lack of any real meaty extras is a disappointment.

Video
Audio
Extras
Plot
Overall