Dingo (1991)

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General		Extras
Category	Drama	Main Menu Audio Gallery-Photo Trailer-The Big Steal, Star Struck, Malcolm, Travelling North
Rating
Year Of Production	1991
Running Time	109:52 (Case: 119)
RSDL / Flipper	RSDL (64:54)	Cast & Crew
Start Up	Menu
Region Coding	1,2,3,4,5,6	Directed By	Rolf de Heer
Studio Distributor	Gevest Australia Umbrella Entertainment	Starring	Colin Friels Miles Davis Helen Buday Joe Petruzzi Brigitte Catillon Bernard Fresson Bernadette Lafont Steven Shaw Helen Doig Daniel Scott Chelsea Gibson Ben Mortley Elissa McAuliffe
Case	Amaray-Transparent-Secure Clip
RPI	$29.95	Music	Miles Davis Michel Legrand

Video		Audio
Pan & Scan/Full Frame	None	English Dolby Digital 5.1 (448Kb/s) English Dolby Digital 2.0 (448Kb/s)
Widescreen Aspect Ratio	1.75:1
16x9 Enhancement
Video Format	576i (PAL)
Original Aspect Ratio	2.35:1	Miscellaneous
Jacket Pictures	No
Subtitles	None	Smoking	Yes
		Annoying Product Placement	No
		Action In or After Credits	No

    Miles Davis is the greatest jazz trumpet player ever, and even compared across the broader spectrum of jazz he has few (if any) peers. During his long and illustrious musical career he was greatly admired around the world for his wonderful playing and compositional skills. His movie career as an actor is much less well known. It consists of only one film, this one, made shortly before his death in 1991 by Dutch-born Australian director Rolf De Heer. De Heer has an interesting and eclectic body of work which includes Bad Boy Bubby and a film I reviewed recently, The Old Man Who Read Love Stories. 

    This film tells the story of an Australian trumpet player from the Western Australian outback, John 'Dingo' Anderson (Colin Friels), who is inspired by witnessing an impromptu concert by touring jazz trumpeter Billy Cross (Miles Davis) as a young boy. For many years he continues to live in his small town, scratching out a living as a dingo tracker and hunter and odd-job man. He has married his childhood sweetheart and they have two daughters. On the side he plays trumpet with a local band who play for local dances and other functions. He yearns, however, to play jazz and to visit Paris to see his idol, Billy Cross. The return of his childhood friend, Peter, to town prompts him to consider his future and his dreams.

    The strength of this film is in its wonderful score by Michael Legrand and Miles Davis and the outback locations. Unfortunately, the plot is not overly interesting and it plays out in a fairly predictable way. Friels does a good job as Dingo and was nominated for an AFI award for his performance. The film actually won two AFI awards for the score and sound and was nominated for four other awards including Best Film.

    As a big fan of Jazz music, I was very glad to get the opportunity to see this film, however I think its appeal would be limited to fans of Miles Davis or the director.

Video

    The video quality is good but not without faults including an incorrect aspect ratio.

    The feature is presented in a 1.75:1 aspect ratio 16x9 enhanced which is NOT the original aspect ratio of 2.35:1. As per the site's policy I will remove one star from the overall video score.

    The picture was quite clear and sharp throughout, however was affected by grain, especially in darker sequences. It was my impression that the picture had been lightened up which resulted in this artefact. As the bit rate was quite high I do not believe the grain was MPEG encoding related. There was no evidence of low level noise. Shadow Detail was OK, probably due to the lightening of the picture, however some scenes were still a little murky.

    The colour was good, however a little dark, with skin tones appearing a little unnatural in some scenes.

    Other than the grain mentioned above there were no other notable artefacts.

    The only subtitles were burned in for some French dialogue.

    The layer change occurs at 64:54 and was quite bad, causing a significant pause.
    

Video Ratings Summary

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

Audio

    The audio quality is very good and highlights the wonderful score.

    This DVD contains two audio options, an English Dolby Digital 5.1 soundtrack encoded at 448 Kb/s and an English Dolby Digital 2.0 stereo soundtrack encoded at 448 Kb/s. My comments refer to the 5.1 track.

    Dialogue was mostly clear and easy to understand and there was no problem with audio sync. Miles Davis was quite croaky and a little difficult to make out sometimes.

    The score of this film by Michael Legrand and Miles Davis is fantastic, haunting, evocative and jazz of the highest quality. Great stuff!  

    The surround speakers were not overly active, however, were well used for the music.

    The subwoofer added bass to the music and some LFE to a plane early in the film.

Audio Ratings Summary

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

Menu

    The menu was simple allowing for scene and audio selection (strangely the audio selection was on the extras menu).

Image Gallery

    Approximately 20 stills from the film, production and promotional materials.

Trailers

    Trailers are included for 4 other Umbrella titles.

    This movie was released in Region 1 a few years ago, with no extras and a pan and scan transfer. This all regions release is the best version available globally.

    The video quality is good but not in the correct aspect ratio.

    The audio quality is very good.

    The set has only a small picture gallery as an extra.

Video
Audio
Extras
Plot
Overall