Someone to Watch Over Me (1987) |
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Someone to Watch Over Me (1987) |
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| BUY IT |
| General | Extras | ||
| Category | Thriller |
Theatrical Trailer Biographies-Cast & Crew |
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| Rating |
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| Year Of Production | 1987 | ||
| Running Time | 102:13 | ||
| RSDL / Flipper | No/No | Cast & Crew | |
| Start Up | Menu | ||
| Region Coding | 2,4 | Directed By | Ridley Scott |
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Studio
Distributor |
 Sony Pictures Home Entertain |
Starring |
Tom Berenger Mimi Rogers Lorraine Bracco Jerry Orbach John Rubinstein |
| Case | Brackley-Trans-No Lip | ||
| RPI | $36.95 | Music | Michael Kamen |
| Video | Audio | ||
| Pan & Scan/Full Frame | None |
English Dolby Digital 2.0  (192Kb/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)
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| Widescreen Aspect Ratio | 1.78:1 | ||
| 16x9 Enhancement |
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| Video Format | 576i (PAL) | ||
| Original Aspect Ratio | 1.85:1 | Miscellaneous | |
| Jacket Pictures | No | ||
| Subtitles |
English French German Italian Spanish Dutch Arabic Czech Danish Finnish Greek Hebrew Hindi Hungarian Icelandic Norwegian Polish Portuguese Swedish Turkish |
Smoking | Yes |
| Annoying Product Placement | No | ||
| Action In or After Credits | No | ||
The picture is extremely clear and sharp at all times in both the foreground and background. The shadow detail is spot on. There are a couple of scenes that are intentionally dark with little detail in the black areas, but they still look natural and visually pleasing. No low-level noise, edge bleeding or excessive edge enhancement was ever noticed. I found the opening scene of the city at night particularly impressive on the big screen.
The colour was exemplary - beautifully saturated with wonderful skin tones throughout. It is one of the best transfers I have ever seen for a movie made in the 80s.
There are quite a few scenes that suffer from either trivial or minor grain, but this grain is not terribly disruptive as it never affects the foreground picture. The most noticeable instances can be found at 18:36-19:20, 23:00, 26:30, 58:28 and 86:20. No pixelization was noticed.
No MPEG artefacts were seen. Another impressive aspect of this transfer is its total lack of aliasing, with not a single occurrence noted throughout the entire transfer. I'm sure if you looked hard enough you would be able to find at least one or two occurrences somewhere, but really...
Film artefacts were very rare and were almost always small and unobtrusive, such as at 18:12 and shortly thereafter where a medium-sized scratch appears.
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| Shadow Detail |  |
| Colour | |
| Grain/Pixelization | |
| Film-To-Video Artefacts | |
| Film Artefacts | |
| Overall | |
There are five 192Kb/sec Dolby Digital 2.0 surround-encoded tracks on this DVD; English, French, German, Italian and Spanish. I listened to the default English soundtrack.
The dialogue was extremely clear and easy to understand throughout the entire movie, except for one line from Tom Berenger at 61:42 which I could not make out, even after several attempts to decipher it.
Audio sync was not a problem at all with this transfer, and was completely spot-on.
Michael Kamen's music score definitely suited the movie.
The surround channels are predominantly used for music with the odd sound effect thrown in. For a lot of the movie I was unaware that the rear speakers were even there. The dialogue was strongly centred on many occasions, which made the front soundstage sound quite narrow. The most noticeable surround use can be found at 17:32 and 98:15 - both are musical instances.
The subwoofer is very lightly used throughout the movie to enhance the music.
| Dialogue | |
| Audio Sync | |
| Clicks/Pops/Dropouts | |
| Surround Channel Use | |
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| Overall | |
NOTE: To view non-R4 releases, your equipment needs to be multi-zone compatible and usually also NTSC compatible.
The video transfer of this movie is superb, and only misses out on being reference quality because of the minor grain.
Overall the audio is good, with no transfer-induced faults. The lack of surround and subwoofer use are the only things that reduce its rating.
The extras are very limited.
| 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) |