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PLEASE NOTE: Michael D's is currently in READ ONLY MODE. Anything submitted will simply not be written to the database.
Lots of stuff is still broken, but at least reviews can now be looked up and read.
Twain, Shania-The Platinum Collection (2001)

Twain, Shania-The Platinum Collection (2001) (NTSC)

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Released 17-Jan-2002

Cover Art

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Details At A Glance

General Extras
Category Music Main Menu Animation
Notes-Gallery
Rating Rated PG
Year Of Production 2001
Running Time 80:32
RSDL / Flipper No/No Cast & Crew
Start Up Menu
Region Coding 1,2,3,4,5,6 Directed By Various
Studio
Distributor
Mercury Records
Universal Pictures Home Video
Starring Shania Twain
Case Flexbox
RPI ? Music Shania Twain


Video (NTSC) Audio
Pan & Scan/Full Frame Full Frame English Dolby Digital 2.0 (192Kb/s)
Widescreen Aspect Ratio None
16x9 Enhancement No
Video Format 480i (NTSC)
Original Aspect Ratio 1.33:1 Miscellaneous
Jacket Pictures No
Subtitles None Smoking No
Annoying Product Placement No
Action In or After Credits No

NOTE: The Profanity Filter is ON. Turn it off here.

Plot Synopsis

    Excuse me whilst I go take a cold shower.....

    Whichever way you look at it, Shania Twain (otherwise known as Mrs Robert "Mutt" Lange) is one seriously hot woman. Aside from the fact that she is physically a stunning looking woman, the sort that definitely turns the heads of every male as she walks in the room, she also is blessed with a fair instrument of a voice. That instrument has propelled her to being arguably the most successful female country music artist of the past couple of decades. Not that that has gone down too well with certain elements of the country music scene, but there is no denying that she, along with a number of other female artists, are the reason that country music has enjoyed something of a popularity revival over the past decade. In the case of Shania Twain, it has almost been a Cinderella story. Hailing from Timmins, Ontario (yep, she's a Canuck) under not exactly the most auspicious of circumstances, she has parlayed her vocal talents, and no small dose of her beauty, into a very successful career. Her eponymous debut album got decent reviews and did okay as far as sales go, but her follow up album exceeded just about everyone's expectations - The Woman In Me managed worldwide sales in excess of 12 million copies. Not a bad effort, especially for a female country artist.

    So how do you follow up such a smash album? The spectre of a failed follow up loomed large upon the release of Come On Over, and things started out a little slow for the album. But after a bit of cosmetic surgery to the mixing (well, I believe this is the case anyway) and a new album cover, the album suddenly became the hottest thing since sliced bread. It started to sell, and sell, and sell and kept on selling - right up to in excess of 18 million copies worldwide. It is still selling today. Officially that made Shania Twain the hottest female artist in the USA. I believe that she is the only female artist to have two 10 million selling albums in succession. I believe Come On Over is the best selling album ever by a female artist. And all this from a little old country music singer! I have to confess that I am a big fan of the lady, and own at last count seven different versions of Come On Over on CD alone. So you can guess that no one, but no one was going to beat me in the rush to review this DVD and its companion, The Specials.

   The DVD presents a collection of all her music videos from the three albums to date, plus a few live performances (a couple being duplicated from the companion DVD). Since these are basically promotional music videos, you pretty well know what you are getting here: 21 songs of generally good quality paraded on a variety of videos featuring various degrees of artistic choices and more or less of the lady's physical attributes, depending upon the song. Fans of the lady need not hesitate to indulge in this collection, and there is plenty here for country music fans and music fans in general.

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Track Listing

1. What Made You Say That
2. Dance With The One That Brought You
3. You Lay A Whole Lot Of Love On Me
4. Whose Bed Have Your Boots Been
5. Any Man Of Mine
6. The Woman In Me
7. If You're Not In It For Love
8. You Win My Love
9. No One Needs To Know
10. Home Ain't Where His Heart Is
11. God Bless The Child
12. Love Gets Me Every Time
13. Don't Be Stupid
14. You're Still The One
15. Honey, I'm Home
16. From This Moment On
17. That Don't Impress Me Much
18. Man! I Feel Like A Woman!
19. You've Got A Way
20. Come On Over
21. Rock This Country!

Transfer Quality

Video

    One thing about the DVD: despite the fact that the packaging says this is a PAL transfer, it is in actual fact an NTSC effort. Accordingly, you will need a display device capable of accepting an NTSC signal, or a player that converts the signal to a PAL signal, in order to see anything. (Ed. Apparently this will be re-released later this year as a PAL disc.)

    Since the collection comprises predominantly promotional videos, the general aspect ratio is a Full Frame 1.33:1 format. However, there are videos here that are in an aspect ratio of 1.78:1. The collection is, however, not 16x9 enhanced.

    Since we are talking about promotional music videos, you can pretty much guess that the quality on offer is a tad variable. Overall, I would rate the collection as only marginally better than average as far as sharpness and detail is concerned. This is partly due to some slightly poor earlier videos, although some artistic choices don't exactly help either. Shadow detail is quite decent, although none of the videos are really shot in such a manner as to place great emphasis on this point. There is some artistic use of grain here, but otherwise there did not seem to be any serious doses of grain in the transfer. The only two videos that seem to be afflicted with unintentional grain are Whose Bed Have Your Boots Been Under? and Any Man Of Mine. Clarity is decent but not especially memorable.

    The colours are a bit all over the place as expected, ranging from nice, vibrant, and beautifully toned to rather lacklustre, tending towards undersaturated. This is pretty much what I would expect from this sort of collection. There is a general tendency towards oversaturation in the reds, to a greater extent in (If You're Not In It For Love) I'm Outta Here! There are also issues with colour bleed amongst the earlier videos as well as (If You're Not In It For Love) I'm Outta Here!

    Whose Bed Have Your Boots Been Under? suffers somewhat from pixelization between 11:49 and 12:39, and there are plenty of problems with what appears to be ghosting in What Made You Say That and Home Ain't Where The Heart Is (Anymore). Beyond that there did not appear to be any MPEG artefacts in the transfer. Most of the later videos in the collection seem to suffer from aliasing problems to a greater or lesser degree, which is compounded in From This Moment On and Home Ain't Where His Heart Is (Anymore) by moiré artefacting. Rounding out the film-to-video artefacts are some subtle cross colouration issues in the microphone in Home Ain't Where His Heart Is (Anymore). Film artefacts were present but not that much of an issue really.

    There are no subtitle options on the DVD.

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

Audio

    There is just the one soundtrack on offer on the DVD, being an English Dolby Digital 2.0 soundtrack. It is not the greatest you will ever hear but does just enough to at least make the music worthwhile listening to.

    The vocals were clear and easy to understand, and there did not appear to be any audio sync problems in the transfer - apart from the odd lip synch issue here and there.

    This really is a run-of-the-mill type soundtrack that is serviceable and not much else. Lacking surround encoding, there is nothing wrong with the sound that a full Dolby Digital 5.1 soundtrack or a higher bit rate 2.0 soundtrack would have solved.

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

Extras

    Sod all basically.

Menu

    Very plain, very lacking in any real thought as far as presentation is concerned.

Notes - Gallery

    Basically just a listing for each song of when and where they were shot, and who the director was.

R4 vs R1

NOTE: To view non-R4 releases, your equipment needs to be multi-zone compatible and usually also NTSC compatible.

    Since this is an all-region NTSC formatted DVD, it would seem that the Region 4 version is identical to the Region 1 version.

Summary

    It is not the greatest collection of videos you will ever see, transfer quality wise, but Shania Twain - The Platinum Collection is a nice compilation of songs to showcase her chart career to date. Whilst the overall presentation smacks a little of the cheap and nasty approach, and certainly Dolby Digital 5.1 sound would have been expected here, this is a worthwhile consideration for the collection if you are a fan of the lady or country music in a broader sense. But there is no way I could elevate this as an essential inclusion in any representative music DVD collection.

Ratings (out of 5)

Video
Audio
Extras
Plot
Overall

© Ian Morris (Biological imperfection run amok)
Tuesday, March 05, 2002
Review Equipment
DVDPioneer DV-515, using S-Video output
DisplaySony Trinitron Wega (80cm). Calibrated with Video Essentials. This display device is 16x9 capable.
Audio DecoderBuilt in to amplifier/receiver. Calibrated with Video Essentials.
AmplificationYamaha RXV-795
SpeakersEnergy Speakers: centre EXLC; left and right C-2; rears EXLR; and subwoofer ES-12XL

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