Ghostbusters (Remastered) (1984)

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General		Extras
Category	Comedy	Main Menu Audio & Animation Dolby Digital Trailer Audio Commentary-Ivan Reitman, Harold Ramis And Joe Medjuck Featurette-1984 Featurette Gallery-Conceptual Drawings Gallery-Photo-Production Photos Storyboards-Ghostly Gallery
Rating
Year Of Production	1984
Running Time	100:51
RSDL / Flipper	Dual Layered	Cast & Crew
Start Up	Menu
Region Coding	2,4,5	Directed By	Ivan Reitman
Studio Distributor	Sony Pictures Home Entertain	Starring	Bill Murray Dan Aykroyd Sigourney Weaver Harold Ramis Rick Moranis Annie Potts William Atherton Ernie Hudson David Margulies Steven Tash Jennifer Runyon Slavitza Jovan Michael Ensign
Case	Amaray-Opaque-Dual-Secure Clip
RPI	Box	Music	Bobby Alessi Elmer Bernstein David Foster

Video		Audio
Pan & Scan/Full Frame	None	English Dolby Digital 5.1 (448Kb/s) French Dolby Digital 2.0 (192Kb/s) German Dolby Digital 2.0 (192Kb/s) Italian Dolby Digital 2.0 (192Kb/s) Spanish Dolby Digital 2.0 (192Kb/s) English Audio Commentary Dolby Digital 2.0 (192Kb/s)
Widescreen Aspect Ratio	2.40:1
16x9 Enhancement
Video Format	576i (PAL)
Original Aspect Ratio	2.35:1	Miscellaneous
Jacket Pictures	No
Subtitles	English French German Italian Spanish Dutch Arabic Bulgarian Croatian Czech Danish Finnish Greek Hebrew Hungarian Icelandic Norwegian Polish Portuguese Romanian Swedish Turkish English for the Hearing Impaired English Audio Commentary French Audio Commentary German Audio Commentary Italian Audio Commentary Spanish Audio Commentary Dutch Audio Commentary	Smoking	Yes, Main character smokes
		Annoying Product Placement	Yes, Commercial magazine placements such as Time.
		Action In or After Credits	No

    The original (and best) Ghostbusters has been remastered on DVD, and it has been beautifully done. Most of us know the storyline by now, except maybe for the very young, so I will keep the plot synopsis brief.

    Ghostbusters is the story of three scientists who decide through necessity to go into the field of investigating and resolving paranormal activities in New York. They buy an old fire house and an old ambulance, and call themselves The Ghostbusters. They eventually start capturing ghosts and lock them away in an electronic containment facility they have built in the basement of the fire station. All is going along happily until, suddenly, a city environmental inspector takes exception to the whole process and shuts down the power to the containment facility. This leads to all the captured ghosts being freed, and they go on a rampage throughout New York. In the meantime, there is a whole other subplot happening between Bill Murray (Peter Veckman) and  Sigourney Weaver (Dana Barrett) which ties in with the increase in paranormal activity. It is soon revealed that the building in which Dana lives happens to be the centre for all the ghostly goings on, and that Zuul the Destroyer is coming to wipe out the world. The Ghostbusters are called upon to take care of Zuul, and in so doing they inadvertently select the method of destruction for the city, which happens to be a huge marshmallow man.

     Of course the Ghostbusters win out in the end, but the whole movie is a load of riotous fun, with great special effects and wonderful use of talented comedians such as Bill Murray and Dan Aykroyd.

Video

    This video transfer has had a wonderful remastering job done on it; I enjoyed it immensely. Of course, I have come to expect no less from Sony Pictures' DVD mastering division.

    The movie is presented in an aspect ratio of 2.40:1 and is 16x9 enhanced. It is worth noting that the original aspect ratio for the movie is 2.35:1. However, I do not think this minimal alteration to the aspect ratio has detracted from this release.

    The video was always sharp and clear, with no hint of graininess or low level noise. I also did not notice any aliasing at all. I am particularly sensitive to aliasing, and I find it to be the most annoying of all the video problems associated with DVD transfers.

    The colours were nicely rendered and there was no colour bleed to be seen.

    Thankfully there was little in the way of MPEG compression artefacts. The same could be said for film-to-video artefacts, barring the obvious telecine wobble seen on the original Columbia Pictures intro. There were some minor film artefacts, but nothing that I would call distracting.

    There are numerous subtitle languages available for selection, however, I only sampled the English subtitles, which I found to be reasonably accurate to the spoken word, although some words were occasionally left out.

    The layer change occurs at 53:42 and it is not noticeable. It happens when Dana slams her apartment door on Peter Veckman.

Video Ratings Summary

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

Audio

    The audio transfer is superb: this is where the remastering process has really shined through in my opinion.

    We are presented with numerous choices for the audio track, however the best by far is the English Dolby Digital 5.1 (448Kb/s) version, which is the track I based my review on, as the other tracks are all in foreign languages and only presented in Dolby Digital 2.0 (192Kb/s).

    I had absolutely no problem with the dialogue in this transfer - it was nice and clear. There were no lip sync issues, either.

    This movie has always been renowned for its great musical score, and one of the biggest hits from the 1980s was the theme song from this movie, the self-titled 'Ghostbusters'. Bobby Alessi, Elmer Bernstein, and David Foster teamed up to compose and produce this fun musical score, and they did it superbly.

     David Foster has a string of great music scores behind him, and he can take credit for composing songs for the likes of Pretty Woman, Footloose, Sleepless In Seattle, and The Bodyguard to name just a few.

     Elmer Bernstein is a similarly accomplished composer who has worked on such film scores as Thoroughly Modern Millie (for which he won an Oscar), The Three Amigos and The Magnificent Seven.

     Not to be left out, Bobby Alessi also composed songs for the soundtrack of The Main Event and has arranged/produced or written releases for singers like Sir Paul McCartney, Olivia Newton John, and Christopher Cross to name a few.

     The main theme song 'Ghostbusters' is performed by Ray Parker Jr, who had a lot of success in the 1980s with his pop hits.

     The brilliant use of the surround channels in this movie makes for a very immersive sound field, just the way I like it.

     Very good use of the subwoofer will please those with the ability to send their neighbours running.

Audio Ratings Summary

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

Main Menu Audio & Animation

     The main menu takes the form of a cartoon image of New York city with the Stay Puff marshmallow man walking through it. The selections are incorporated into the buildings on the menu screen. The menu is presented in the 16:9 format and has the theme song 'Ghostbusters' playing underneath it.

Audio Commentary-Ivan Reitman, Harold Ramis And Joe Medjuck

     As the title suggests, there is an audio commentary available in Dolby Digital 2.0 (192Kb/s). I found having the background to many of the scenes explained interesting.

Featurette-1984 Featurette

    An engaging look at how the movie came to be. It's presented in 4x3 format and is narrated by Ivan Reitman, Dan Aykroyd, and Harold Ramis. The featurette has a run time of 10:53.

Gallery-Conceptual Drawings

    This featurette is a collection of drawings of how the movie sets were envisaged. It is presented in 4x3 format.

Gallery-Photo-Production Photos

    This is also a collection of photos showing many stages of the creative process for different props used on set. Again this is presented in 4x3 format.

Storyboards-Ghostly Gallery

    Not a particularly interesting feature, this focuses on storyboard line drawings of how the scenes were conceptualized. It is presented in 4x3 format.

    I have not seen the R1 version of this movie. However, from what I have read, the R4 version misses out on the SFX Team featurette and three scenes showing the special effects breakdown for them. Lastly, the R4 version misses out on 10 deleted scenes.

    However, apart from the SFX Team featurette that is reportedly better than the 1984 featurette, I would rate the actual movie presentation to be superior on the R4 version due to the PAL transfer.

    Ghostbusters is a rip-roaring comedy with a great plot and terrific acting. This DVD is a real must-have for those who love the comedy genre. Thanks to Sony Pictures for a great video and audio transfer.

Video
Audio
Extras
Plot
Overall