World Is Not Enough, The: Ultimate Edition (1999)

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General		Extras
Category	Action	Main Menu Audio & Animation Audio Commentary-Director - Michael Apted Audio Commentary-Peter Lamont, Vic Armstrong & David Arnold Featurette-Making Of-James Bond Down River Featurette-Making Of-Creating An Icon: Making Of the Teaser Trailer Interviews-Cast & Crew-Hong Kong Press Conference Multiple Angles-Alternative Versions of Boat Chase Deleted Scenes Featurette-007, Women, Allies, Villians, Mission Combat Manual Featurette-Q Branch and Exotic Locations Featurette-Making Of Featurette-Bond Cocktail Featurette-Tribute To Desmond Llewelyn Music Video-"The World Is Not Enough" By Garbage Alternative Version-Storyboards & Rough Cuts - Secrets of 007 Theatrical Trailer-Archive Gallery-Photo-Experience The World Of Bond In 1999
Rating
Year Of Production	1999
Running Time	123:04
RSDL / Flipper	RSDL (66:44) Dual Disc Set	Cast & Crew
Start Up	Ads Then Menu
Region Coding	2,4	Directed By	Michael Apted
Studio Distributor	Sony Pictures Home Entertain	Starring	Pierce Brosnan Sophie Marceau Robert Carlyle Denise Richards Robbie Coltrane Judi Dench Desmond Llewelyn John Cleese Maria Grazia Cucinotta Samantha Bond Michael Kitchen Colin Salmon Goldie
Case	?
RPI	$19.95	Music	David Arnold

Video		Audio
Pan & Scan/Full Frame	None	English Dolby Digital 5.1 (448Kb/s) English dts 5.1 (768Kb/s) English Audio Commentary Dolby Digital 2.0 (224Kb/s) English Audio Commentary Dolby Digital 2.0 (224Kb/s)
Widescreen Aspect Ratio	2.35:1
16x9 Enhancement
Video Format	576i (PAL)
Original Aspect Ratio	2.35:1	Miscellaneous
Jacket Pictures	No
Subtitles	English English for the Hearing Impaired Danish Swedish Finnish Norwegian Danish Greek Hindi English Audio Commentary Dutch Audio Commentary English Audio Commentary Dutch Audio Commentary	Smoking	Yes
		Annoying Product Placement	Yes
		Action In or After Credits	No

    The World Is Not Enough was the third Pierce Brosnan Bond film in 1999 and to my mind the weakest of the four. It has previously been released in Region 4 as part of the special editions in 2001.The review of the previous version can be found here which contains an excellent plot summary. This new version is different to the previous release, however, the differences are not as large, especially in extras terms, as the other two of these new editions I have reviewed. The main differences can be summarised as follows:

	Special Edition	New Ultimate Edition
Video Transfer	Extremely well reviewed at the time	Very clean from a film artefacts perspective but the bitrate is a bit low causing some softness in the image which is a disappointment.
Audio Transfer	Dolby Digital 5.1 (384Kb/s)	Remastered Dolby Digital 5.1 (448Kb/s) and DTS 5.1 (768 Kb/s).
Formatting	Movie and extras stuffed onto one disc causing MPEG issues in the extras.	Two discs with extras on the second disc.
Commentaries	Two	Two
Other extras	Good collection of extras but with video issues	A few additional extras but not as much as other Ultimate Editions

    This is a curiously flat film punctuated by the usual excellent action scenes. Pierce Brosnan is his usual debonair and brutal self and Dench is good as M, however the rest of the cast seem to struggle. The story moves a little slowly in the first half. My personal opinion is that it comes down to the director, Michael Apted having no real experience as an action director when taking on this film. Based on some of his comments in the extras I get the impression he was out of his depth and knew it. On the positive side, there are certainly some great action sequences such as the pre-credits boat chase, the scene inside the pipeline and the final climactic submarine fight. Another element which disappointed me about this film was the music which I found fairly clichéd and ordinary in many parts. Certainly not up to the quality of other previous Bond scores. I also feel that some of the roles were miscast, including the obvious Denise Richards as a nuclear scientist (yeah, right) but also Sophie Marceau who never really looks comfortable. It was nice to see Robbie Coltrane reprising his role as Valentin Sukovsky which he first played in Goldeneye.

    Sadly, this was the last appearance of Desmond Llewellyn as Q who decided to retire from the role after this film and then was killed in a car accident a few weeks after the film premiered. The title is in fact the Bond family motto, which came directly from the Ian Fleming books.

    All in all this is an average Bond film being released in a new edition not that much improved over the old one.

Video

    The video quality is disappointing but still very good.

    The feature is presented in a 2.35:1 aspect ratio 16x9 enhanced which is the original aspect ratio.

    The Lowry restoration process has certainly resulted in a very clean and clear image throughout. The sharpness, however, was a bit disappointing as it was never crisp. This seems to be related to a less than excellent bitrate, which averaged just 4.5 Mb/s for the video component. One assumes any future high definition release will address this issue. There was some light background grain visible in some scenes such as at 24:30.The shadow detail was very good.

    The colour was very good with no issues to report.

    Artefacts were virtually non-existent, although I did notice a few little spots of aliasing such as at 9:05 on a grille.

    There are 13 subtitle streams including English & English for the hearing impaired. The English subtitles were clear and easy to read but a little summarised. Four of the other streams are commentary subtitles.

    The layer change occurs at 66:44 and was not noticeable during playback.
    

Video Ratings Summary

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

Audio

    The audio quality is very good but not in the same class as the audio on the new Goldeneye disc.

    This DVD contains an English Dolby Digital 5.1 soundtrack encoded at 448 Kb/s and an English DTS 5.1 soundtrack encoded at 768 Kb/s. There are also two commentaries encoded in Dolby Digital 2.0 at 224 Kb/s. I started watching the film in DTS but was very disappointed by the DTS mix on this disc as it was quite flat and lifeless. I changed to the Dolby Digital which was certainly superior but not spectacular. The surround effects are there but it lacked somewhat in immersion and dynamism.

    Dialogue was clear and easy to understand at all times and there was no problem with audio sync.

    The score of this film by David Arnold is quite clichéd and lacks the normal spark of a Bond score. He mentions in the commentary that he decided to use less of the Bond theme than previous films, but if he wanted to do this he at least could have replaced it with something ear catching.

    The surround speakers are certainly well used during this film as you would expect such as during the boat jump at 9:25, explosion at 10:49, skiing at 36:00, the pipeline scene at 74:00 and during the caviar factory sequence.

    The subwoofer was also well used adding significant bass to the many explosions, hand grenades and other bumps, grinds and bangs (tee hee).

Audio Ratings Summary

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

    There are copious extras spread over two discs. I will mark extras which did not appear on the previous release as **NEW**. Subtitles are available for nearly all the extras.

Menu

    The menu was very nicely designed, reminiscent of the Bond movie opening credits style. I did find them slightly non-obvious in terms of finding all the extras. On these pages look out for the > on the bottom of the menu which leads you to extra pages of items on some menus.

Disc 1

Commentary - Director Michael Apted.

    This commentary appeared on the previous versions of the disc and was fairly ordinary. He does not have a very interesting manner and seems to have little of much interest to say.

Commentary - Production Designer Peter Lamont, 2nd Unit Director Vic Armstrong & Composer David Arnold.

    This commentary appeared on the previous versions of the disc and was certainly better than the first one. They are all together and bounce things off each other which makes it more interesting. They tell some anecdotes, discuss technical details, music choices and stunts. Quite decent.

Credits

    DVD Production Credits

Disc 2

Declassified : MI6 Vault

James Bond Down River (25:03)

    An extended making of featurette for the pre-credits boat chase sequence. Includes interviews with cast & crew, locations, wildlife issues, accidents, technical problems and testing of the boats. This was on the previous release. 4x3

Creating an Icon : Making the Teaser Trailer (4:25) **NEW**

    How low have extras sunk when we need a making of for a trailer? 4x3.

Hong Kong Press Conference (9:46) **NEW**

    A plainly grumpy Pierce Brosnan talks to the Hong Kong press. Reasonably interesting. 4x3.

Deleted Scenes with introductions by Director Michael Apted **NEW**

    Quite a few different extended, deleted and alternate scenes are included. This is the best new extra on this new edition.16x9 enhanced. The scenes are:

• The Thames Boat Chase (1:09) - This option plays an introduction by the director which leads to a sub-menu with the following options:
• Extended Scene (8:07) - An extended version of the Thames Boat Chase featuring a lot more interaction with Police boats and more stunts.
• Expanded Angle View (6:09) - Allows for up to 5 camera angles at once
• Alternate Angle View (6:09) - Allows for the choice of three different angles
• Original Scene (6:09) - For comparison purposes the scene from the film is included. 5.1 sound.
• Deleted Scene : Meeting Renard (2:44) - An earlier introduction of the Renard character was planned for the pre-titles sequence.
• Extended Scene : Bond Tries to Stop King (3:18)
• Extended Scene : The Things We Do For England (1:47) - Re-use of a classic Bond line.
• Deleted Scene : DB5 at King's Funeral (0:28) - More Aston Martin.
• Deleted Scene : Oil & Blood (1:52) - w/optional commentary. Bond & Electra drive through an Oil Field.
• Deleted Scene : Static Charge (1:08) - w/optional commentary. More dumb ideas for the Q scene.
• Alternate Scene : Trouble in the Pipeline (1:14) - filler.

007 Mission Control **NEW**

    This fairly pointless set of extras consists of highlights from the film separated into small segments and categorised into 007, Opening Titles, Women, Allies, Villains, Mission Combat Manual, Q Branch & Exotic Locations. The only thing I noticed that wasn't in the film was a version of the title sequence without text.

Mission Dossier

    This sub-menu includes a number of featurettes which all appeared on the special edition. The main difference is that the video quality is reasonable on this edition, which was roundly criticised in the previous review. Specifically they are:

• Making Of (15:06) - Very American, very promotional style making of. 4x3.
• Bond Cocktail (22:51) - Reasonable featurette about the ingredients which have made the Bond films successful.
• Tribute to Desmond Llewellyn (3:13) - Short tribute to Q which includes my favourite line in all Bond films 'I think he's attempting re-entry'.
• 'The World is Not Enough' Music Video (4:03) - Original music video for the theme song by Garbage. 4x3.
• The Secrets of 007 - Collection of storyboard comparisons and rough cut versions of scenes. OK but hardly essential.

Ministry of Propaganda

    This sub-menu includes the theatrical trailer which was included on the special edition. For some reason three menus are required to get to it!

Image Database

    This is a large selection of image galleries on various topics. The photos included are stills from the film, publicity material and behind-the-scenes shots. The galleries are timed rather than requiring you to click through each photo. There are segments on the stars plus scenes, girls, costumes and publicity.

    These new Ultimate Editions are the same globally except for colour system differences and subtitles. Draw.

    The video quality is very good but disappointing for an Ultimate Edition.

    The audio quality is very good but seems a bit flat.

    There are a huge array of extras on this 2 disc set, but most of them were available on the previous version.

Video
Audio
Extras
Plot
Overall