Tombstone (1993) |
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Tombstone (1993) |
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| General | Extras | ||
| Category | Western |
Main Menu Audio & Animation Dolby Digital Trailer-Canyon Featurette-Making Of Theatrical Trailer Biographies-Cast & Crew Easter Egg-Behind The Scenes Footage |
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| Rating |
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| Year Of Production | 1993 | ||
| Running Time | 123:53 (Case: 121) | ||
| RSDL / Flipper | RSDL (71:43) | Cast & Crew | |
| Start Up | Menu | ||
| Region Coding | 4 | Directed By | George P. Cosmatos |
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Studio
Distributor |
 Roadshow Home Entertainment |
Starring |
Kurt Russell Val Kilmer Sam Elliott Bill Paxton Powers Boothe Charlton Heston Billy Zane Michael Biehn Jason Priestley |
| Case | Soft Brackley-Transp | ||
| RPI | $34.95 | Music | Bruce Broughton |
| Video | Audio | ||
| Pan & Scan/Full Frame | None |
English Dolby Digital 5.1 (448Kb/s) English Dolby Digital 2.0  (224Kb/s)
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| Widescreen Aspect Ratio | 2.35:1 | ||
| 16x9 Enhancement |
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| Video Format | 576i (PAL) | ||
| Original Aspect Ratio | 2.40:1 | Miscellaneous | |
| Jacket Pictures | No | ||
| Subtitles | English for the Hearing Impaired | Smoking | Yes, A Western without smoking??.... |
| Annoying Product Placement | No | ||
| Action In or After Credits | Yes | ||
Tombstone depicts the legendary story of Wyatt Earp and his Immortals and the demise of the equally infamous Cowboys, the nastiest gang of villains of the 1880s. Interestingly, the Cowboys are the first known appearance of organised crime in the U.S... amazing how certain aspects of human nature can not be repressed.
Wyatt Earp (Kurt Russell) has retired from his peacemaking days and is seeking fame and fortune for himself and his family after so many years of selflessly serving the law. With this in mind, Wyatt gathers up his brothers Virgil (Sam Elliot) and Morgan (Bill Paxton) to head off to Tombstone during the silver rushes. Wyatt forms a partnership with a local casino, meets up with his old friend Doc Holliday (Val Kilmer), and everything is going well. Val Kilmer puts in an excellent performance, clearly the stand-out in this movie.
Enter the Cowboys; Curly Bill (Powers Boothe) and Johnny Ringo (Michael Biehn) who start to challenge the growing power of the Earp boys. Needless to say, both parties get their backs up and all hell is about to break loose. The showdown at the O.K Corral is the turning point of the struggle and nasty repercussions are felt. Throw in a bizarre love triangle with Josephine (Dana Delaney) and you have a recipe for a great, and enjoyable, western. I will leave it there, but you can probably get the picture from here.
This may not be the most historically accurate recording of the legend of Wyatt Earp but it is certainly enjoyable. If you are faint-hearted and/or don't like innumerable gunshots then Tombstone is not for you, but if this doesn't bother and you are after an enjoyable action movie then you can't go past Tombstone.
Tombstone is presented in the 16x9 enhanced aspect ratio of 2.35:1 at a generous 8.6Mbps average bitrate. The extra wide aspect ratio is justified by sweeping desert scenes with the director making full use of the medium, a pleasure to behold.
Sharpness is very good throughout. There are a few (very rare) occasions where minor grain detracts from the clarity of the image, but I would guess that this has a lot more to do with the harsh lighting in those scenes than problems with the transfer. Shadow detail is also very solid throughout with even very dark desert night scenes being handled well.
Colour is quite muted throughout, suiting the harsh desert environments. There are never any instances of colour bleed or chroma noise.
There are no major instances of MPEG artefacting to be found. The only evidence of pixelization can be found around 82:00 on hoof-prints in the sand with heavy lightning overhead. The problems are very minor and are exaggerated by the constantly changing light source. All aspects taken into account with the difficult encoding conditions I think the problem was minimised very well. There are only a few instances of aliasing, the first at 69:17 on some roof shingles and the other at 98:21 on some floorboards.
Subtitles were accurate throughout and often helped me to understand the thick accents used by a number of the actors.
This disc is an RSDL formatted disc with the layer change occurring at 71:43.
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| Film-To-Video Artefacts | |
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There are two available audio tracks on this DVD, an English Dolby Digital 5.1 soundtrack encoded at the higher bitrate of 448Kbps and an English Dolby Digital 2.0 track encoded at 224Kbps. It is nice to see both tracks having the higher encoding rate. I listened to the 5.1 track primarily, only sampling the 2.0 track.
Dialogue suffered due to the thick accents frequently used. This can't really be blamed on the transfer as the actors are at fault. One problem that did exists was the occasional onset of hiss during dialogue. It would almost seem as though the mike gain was turned up too high on some scenes, often resulting in hiss. This was far more noticeable at the beginning of the film (around 4:10) and decreased as the movie progressed.
There were no noticeable problems with audio sync; both lip movements and gunshots matched the on-screen action without a problem.
The original score by Bruce Broughton was very well-suited to the Western movie genre. It provides moments of heightened emotion, tension, romance, and sadness. This is one of the best Western scores that I have heard, supporting the movie while involving the audience with its wonderful orchestral presence. The score is carried very well by the soundtrack without any noticeable loss of clarity or distortion.
Strong action sequences involving gunfights are the perfect medium for surround sound - and fortunately this transfer has captured that very well. The surrounds tend to fade a little in the quieter scenes with minimal ambient noise but spring to life when necessary.
The subwoofer really only supports the action sequences and horses as the score does not rely on heavy bass. The falling of horse hooves has been captured very well and you can feel them as they thunder past.
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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 disc misses out on;
The video quality is very good.
The audio quality is very good.
The extras are somewhat disappointing, especially taking into account the upcoming Vista series R1 release.
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| Plot | |
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| Review Equipment | |
| DVD | Pioneer DV-535, using S-Video output |
| Display | RCA 80cm. Calibrated with Video Essentials. This display device is 16x9 capable. |
| Audio Decoder | Built in to amplifier/receiver. Calibrated with Video Essentials. |
| Amplification | Onkyo TX-DS787, THX Select |
| Speakers | All matching Vifa Drivers: centre 2x6.5" + 1" tweeter (d'appolito); fronts and rears 6.5" + 1" tweeter; centre rear 5" + 1" tweeter; sub 10" (150WRMS) |