Canyon Dreams (1987) (NTSC)

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General		Extras
Category	Documentary	None
Rating
Year Of Production	1987
Running Time	38:28
RSDL / Flipper	No/No	Cast & Crew
Start Up	Menu
Region Coding	1,2,3,4,5,6	Directed By	Jan Nickman Gray Warriner
Studio Distributor	Miramar Simitar DVD	Starring	None Given
Case	Amaray-Opaque
RPI	$19.95	Music	Tangerine Dream

• Chapter 1 has the opening titles (white against black background).
• Chapter 2 is entitled Shadow Flyer. As the name suggests, it is mainly a set of fly-overs across the Grand Canyon. If the video transfer quality (which I'll comment on later) had been better, this would have been really impressive. I was surprised to see evidence of snow at 2:50 - I didn't realize snow fell around the Grand Canyon.
• Chapter 3 is entitled Canyon Carver. It focuses on the river itself, including shots of people whitewater rafting. Don't believe anyone who tells you that the Grand Canyon river is small. It may be insignificant compared to the size of the Canyon itself, but as this chapter shows it can be pretty big, fast and mean.
• Chapter 4 is entitled A Matter Of Time. Predictably, it contains lots of time lapse photography and ends with some night and star shots.
• Chapter 5 is entitled Water's Gift. It focuses on the water again, but now including some spectacular waterfalls and some underwater shots. Some of the shots are done in slow motion.
• Chapter 6 is entitled Canyon Voices. It returns back to a set of fly-overs, but shot in the afternoon sun.
• Chapter 7 (the last chapter) is entitled Sudden Revelation. It starts with a sunrise, followed by shots of the canyon reflected through water, and ends with a sunset, followed by closing titles.

    The music for Canyon Dreams was created towards the end of the "Blue Years" and featured a band line-up consisting of Edgar Froese, Christopher Franke and Paul Haslinger. I quite like the "Blue Years" period of Tangerine Dream. During this period the band released some pretty good albums such as Le Parc, Underwater Sunlight and Tyger (my favourite TD album). However, in Canyon Dreams we find the band substantially below form and running out of ideas - the music in this feature is pretty forgettable and nondescript apart from A Matter Of Time which is the only song here that holds any interest for me.

    I suspect that at around this time, Edgar and Christopher were probably not on very good speaking terms and the band was probably in a hurry to finish this off, which tends to dampen the creative juices a wee bit. Soon after recording this album, Christopher Franke left the band (apparently in a bit of a huff at the end of a concert) and went on to produce a number of solo albums. Fans of Babylon 5 may recall Christopher as the composer of the music soundtrack for the TV series. Paul Haslinger stayed on for a few years (termed the "Melrose Years") but eventually also left and today Tangerine Dream is essentially a father and son band - Edgar and Jerome Froese.

Video

    Sharpness and detail is generally poor. Fortunately, colour saturation seems to be acceptable, with a tendency towards slight dullness, and shadow detail seems consistent with overall detail.

    The film source itself is not pristine, but acceptable. There are minor film artefacts (mainly white marks and some scratches) throughout the entire presentation. Some amount of grain seems to be present, but with the video noise present throughout the transfer, it is hard to tell.

    The transfer rate hovers consistently around 8-9Mb/s. Despite this, however, I can occasionally see evidence of MPEG artefact showing through, such as shimmering and ringing around the landscape horizon (despite the high level of low level video noise).

Video Ratings Summary

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

Audio

    As the audio track is in 2 channels, the surround channels and sub-woofer are not activated during the presentation.

Audio Ratings Summary

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

Video
Audio
Extras
Plot
Overall