The Big Lebowski (1998) |
|
The Big Lebowski (1998) |
|
|
| BUY IT |
| General | Extras | ||
| Category | Black Comedy | Booklet | |
| Rating |
|
||
| Year Of Production | 1998 | ||
| Running Time | 112 | ||
| RSDL / Flipper | Dual Layered | Cast & Crew | |
| Start Up | Language Select Then Aspect Ratio Then Menu | ||
| Region Coding | 2,4 | Directed By | Joel Coen |
|
Studio
Distributor |
Working Title Polygram |
Starring |
Jeff Bridges John Goodman Julianne Moore Steve Buscemi David Huddleston John Turturro |
| Case | Super Jewel | ||
| RPI | $29.95 | Music | Carter Burwell |
| Video | Audio | ||
| Pan & Scan/Full Frame | Full Frame |
English Dolby Digital 5.1 (448Kb/s) French Dolby Digital 5.1 (448Kb/s) |
|
| Widescreen Aspect Ratio | 1.78:1 | ||
| 16x9 Enhancement |
 |
||
| Video Format | 576i (PAL) | ||
| Original Aspect Ratio | 1.85:1 | Miscellaneous | |
| Jacket Pictures | No | ||
| Subtitles |
English French Dutch |
Smoking | No |
| Annoying Product Placement | No | ||
| Action In or After Credits | No | ||
What's a poor man to do? Obviously, go to the rich Jeff Lebowski and demand a new carpet.
In true Coen Brothers style, the plot twists and weaves progressively becoming more and more bizarre and comical as it proceeds.
Jeff Bridges is ably supported by his buddies Walter (John Goodman) and Donny (Steve Buscemi), and by a large supporting cast of odd characters. As with all Coen Brothers movies, the characters are all odd and finely crafted.
This transfer is presented at an aspect ratio of 1.78:1, 16x9 enhanced. The disc is a dual layer disc, with the other layer utilized for a full frame transfer of the movie.
The transfer is very sharp indeed, and very clear. Shadow detail is excellent, and there is no noise or grain in the darker scenes.
The colours were nicely rendered throughout.
A small degree of MPEG artefacting was seen early on in the movie, during the initial slow pan in the supermarket, where there is loss of detail of the individual items on the shelves, but this is a minor issue. Aliasing was not a problem with this transfer, and neither were film artefacts. All-in-all, this is a very good transfer.
Dialogue was usually easy to hear, but there were sections of the movie where it was hard to hear dialogue over the sound of the accompanying music. This was a pity, since a movie of this type is very much dialogue-driven.
There were no audio sync problems.
The music was suitably laconic, and accompanied the on-screen action admirably.
The surround channels did very little throughout this movie which was basically centre channel dialogue and L/R front music.
The .1 channel also did very little during this movie.
NOTE: To view non-R4 releases, your equipment needs to be multi-zone compatible and usually also NTSC compatible.
The Region 4 version of this DVD misses out on;
30 minute making-of featurette
Teaser Trailer
There is probably a slight preference for the R1 version in view of the additional making-of extra.
The video quality is very good.
The audio quality is acceptable, albeit unremarkable. Some dialogue is a little hard to hear.
The extras are pretty much non-existent.
| Video |  |
| Audio | |
| Extras |  |
| Plot | |
| Overall |  |
| Review Equipment | |
| DVD | Pioneer DV-505, using S-Video output |
| Display | Loewe Art-95 (95cm). Calibrated with Video Essentials. This display device is 16x9 capable. This display device has a maximum native resolution of 576i (PAL). |
| Audio Decoder | Denon AVD-2000 Dolby Digital decoder. Calibrated with Video Essentials. |
| Amplification | 2 x EA Playmaster 100W per channel stereo amplifiers for Left, Right, Left Rear and Right Rear; Philips 360 50W per channel stereo amplifier for Centre and Subwoofer |
| Speakers | Philips S2000 speakers for Left, Right; Polk Audio CS-100 Centre Speaker; Apex AS-123 speakers for Left Rear and Right Rear; Yamaha B100-115SE subwoofer |