Black Beauty (1994)

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General		Extras
Category	Family	Main Menu Audio Theatrical Trailer-(1:17)
Rating
Year Of Production	1994
Running Time	84:26
RSDL / Flipper	RSDL (35:07)	Cast & Crew
Start Up	Menu
Region Coding	2,4	Directed By	Caroline Thompson
Studio Distributor	Warner Home Video	Starring	Sean Bean David Thewlis
Case	Amaray-Transparent
RPI	$29.95	Music	Danny Elfman

Video		Audio
Pan & Scan/Full Frame	None	English Dolby Digital 2.0 (192Kb/s) French Dolby Digital 2.0 (192Kb/s) Dutch Dolby Digital 2.0 (192Kb/s) Italian Dolby Digital 2.0 (192Kb/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 Italian Dutch Arabic Spanish Portuguese German Romanian Bulgarian English for the Hearing Impaired Italian for the Hearing Impaired	Smoking	No
		Annoying Product Placement	No
		Action In or After Credits	Yes, action during closing credits

    Still here? OK, well, the film is based on the novel by Anna Sewell of the same name, which was first published way back in 1877.

    The film revolves around the life of one horse in general, oddly enough named Black Beauty. He goes through several tough times during his life which are depicted in the film. The odd thing about this film is that the actual horse - Black Beauty - narrates this film. We actually hear his thoughts. Although this is a rather odd way to tell the story of the film, it could be done in no other way, since there is not one human character that is present throughout the entire duration of the film that could explain it for you.

    After seeing Sean Bean in the opening few minutes of the film, my thoughts were that he was a leading character in this movie, both from his appearance on-screen early in the film and due to the fact that his name is listed first in the credits on the back cover of the DVD. Sadly, there was no Goldeneye-esque performance here; his character fades out after ten minutes, which was very annoying to say the least.

    Black Beauty is a family film that I struggled to get through the first time and had to go back to a second time to actually find out what was going on. Admittedly, that is only my opinion - my mum loved it.

Video

    Black Beauty is presented in an aspect ratio of 1.78:1 and is 16x9 enhanced.

    The transfer is sharp for the most part but is not as sharp as it should be. The black level is slightly off, being slightly too bright. The shadow detail is a little lacking. In many of the darker scenes, nearly all the detail could be made out, but not all of it. Low-level noise is apparent is several scenes.

    The strongest point of the transfer would have to be the colour. A lot of scenes are in lush countryside with very bright greens. This, coupled with the excellent PAL colour system make the colour in this transfer very vibrant. It is perfectly saturated at all times and helps to capture the depressing tone of the 1800s.

    No MPEG artefacts were present in the transfer. Aliasing is apparent in many scenes, especially from 40:24- 40:37, where the edges of the lawn are quite jagged. Telecine wobble mars the last few seconds of the end credits. At the same time, the transfer drops a level and becomes very undefined. However, the biggest problem in this transfer is grain. It is apparent from start to finish. This grain is very noticeable in many scenes particularly during 35:10 - 35:22. In this scene, there is an enormous amount of grain as well as other artefacts such as chroma noise and spots on the print. The reason for this would have to be problematic source material that has not been optimized for its DVD transfer.

    The layer change occurs at 35:07. This happens during a natural fade-to-black and is quite unobtrusive.

Video Ratings Summary

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

Audio

    There are four audio tracks on this DVD, being English, French, Dutch and Italian Dolby surround-encoded tracks. I listened to the English track only. The box incorrectly states that they are 2.0 stereo tracks.

    The dialogue was very clear at all times due to Black Beauty's dialogue being looped over the video.

    Audio sync was perfect at all times.

    The musical score by Danny Elfman was very deep and emotional. It fitted the film really well, although the main theme was vastly overused, appearing in all of the triumphant scenes.

    The surround channel was used very sparingly. When it was used, the only effects it created were subtle ambient sounds and some crowd murmurs. The subwoofer was only used to back up the music, and also during the bridge scene.

Audio Ratings Summary

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

Menu

Theatrical Trailer

• Pan & Scan version

• Nothing

Video
Audio
Extras
Plot
Overall