Deef
22-11-2001, 10:40
Bij http://www.dvdfile.com zag ik de DVD review van Pearl Harbor!!! wou effe dele met jullie
Alright, let's just get the obvious question out of the way...is Pearl Harbor really as bad as they say it is? Well, yes, actually it is. I skipped this one in the theaters last summer, because like so many movies these days, I just say "Nah, I'll wait for the DVD," and then when it failed to garner the commercial and critical accolades expected, I was even more wary of what I was in for...
Yet when I plopped Pearl Harbor into my DVD player, I was actually rooting for this now-underdog of a movie, which may have been the most critically lambasted would-be epic of the last couple of decades ("Bora! Bora! Bora!" was my favorite critical blurb.) Unfortunately, and even though I've enjoyed some of director Michael Bay's previous hackmeister epics like The Rock and Armageddon in a so-bad-its-good way, I was pretty much horrified after only the first 20 minutes.
What is it that makes Pearl Harbor so bad? Oh, let me count the ways. Shot like a perfume commercial and edited like a music video, the script is absolutely terrible, the acting embarrassing, and Bay utterly fails in creating a believable, emotionally resonant recreation of Hawaii circa 1941. An obvious attempt to replicate the success and structure of Titanic - at least that James Cameron's mega-hit managed to successfully stage a historical tragedy that felt authentic - Pearl Harbor is a mass of tiresome cliches that has become an instant camp classic. This was supposed to be Bay's Schindler's List, but instead it's his Heaven's Gate.
Yet another "young lovers torn apart by tragedy" sappy plot, unfortunately here the leads are bland ciphers who look oh-so-pretty but are emotionally vapid. Ben Affleck delivers perhaps his worst performance ever in a motion picture, while everyone's favorite hunchback Josh Hartnett has only two facial expressions, happy puppy dog and sad puppy dog. And Bay obviously has no conception of what 1940's women looked or acted like, as all the "babes" say things like "Gosh golly, I wish I was in love!" and bat their eyelashes constantly. And note to modern Hollywood filmmakers attempting to recreate WWII: before the 1960s, it wasn't the style for women to look like anorexic waifs or crack whores! Just watch poor up and comer Kate Beckinsale (whose career will likely survive this train wreck) sporting the reddest lipstick in cinema history and an endless parade of fashions hardly affordable to a character of her financial stature. She doesn't look like a 40's army nurse, but Skeletor by way of Issac Mizrahi.
But if Pearl Harbor were just funny, it wouldn't be so bad. Worse, it is offensive. Like so many of these pseudo-historical pics, Bay makes no attempt at establishing a time and place. We learn nothing about the world or the war, and if you believe this movie, Hawaii in 1941 was all rich white people playing baseball and hanging out the linen. Bay and screenwriter Randall Wallace use composites of real historical figures and incidents but offer no context. Bay even somehow convinced Oscar winner Cuba Gooding, Jr., to go slumming and play the token black character with dialogue that is cringe-inducing, while Jon Voight plays perhaps the worst FDR ever seen onscreen. Even more sad is the depiction of the Japanese, who only speak in haiku, glare their evil steely gazes, and apparently have no emotion other than "We hate Americans!"
But I suppose the most damaging thing I can say about Pearl Harbor is that after sitting through over an hour of unbearable exposition, when the big battle scenes finally began I was rooting for the Japanese to kill everybody. Bay's attempts at merging different film stocks, techniques and styles to create tension is so laughable that I actually started to fall asleep, and the Saving Private Ryan climax is solipsistic and silly. But don't take my word for it, just listen to my roommate, who said after we both sat slackjawed for over three hours, "That was the biggest bowel movement in the anals of Hollywood history!"
Video: How Does The Disc Look?
Say what you want about the film itself, but Pearl Harbor is one gosh-darn good-looking movie! This is a gorgeous transfer, and Buena Vista and THX seem to have pulled out all the stops to make it one of the best DVD has yet seen. And aside from a caveat or two, they've succeeded, with a rich, lush and three-dimensional presentation that is sure to please.
This is a sparkling print that is clean as a whistle, with only a few shots exhibiting any film grain at all, and terrific blacks and sharp contrast. Colors are vivid and wonderfully saturated, so much so that at times I thought it would begin to smear or become unstable, but hues and the stylized fleshtones always remain rock solid. The film has a shiny, glossy quality that is rich with detail, especially the outdoor scenes which are wonderfully lifelike. Spread across two discs (the film breaks about two-thirds of the way through for an intermission, with the third act on the second disc) I noticed nary a compression artifact, even on the film's many dissolves and fades.
If I was distracted by anything, it may have been the film's intentionally high contrast. Shadow detail in the dark scenes is often wanting, with such sharp falloff that the film almost looks polarized at times. But this is likely an intended stylistic effect and a not a fault of the transfer, but shadow delineation still does appear undefined. There is also a bit of edge enhancement which keeps this just an inch from being true reference quality. Not terribly excessive, but I did notice it enough to be distracted. Still, this is a gorgeous-looking disc so it's hard to complain.
Audio: How Does The Disc Sound?
Presented in both Dolby Digital and DTS 5.1 surround, I found this to be a somewhat frustrating mix. Certainly, in most aspects it is state-of-the-art, which is to be expected given the film's budget. The overall experience is what you want from a Bay film - bombastic, highly aggressive sound acrobatics and a fully-enveloping, 360-degree soundfield. Dialogue, effects and the score are impeccably rendered across the front soundstage, boasting expansive dynamic range and excellent fidelity.
However, while imaging across all the channels is good (especially so on the DTS track) and the rears aggressive when it comes to the effects, the score could have been better directed and subtle ambiance is lacking. The Dolby track sounds especially flat in the rears, and aside from some impressive discrete effects, surrounds are limited to flyovers and whizzing planes and bombs during the big battle scenes, and I longed for additional presence during quieter passages. The score was also disappointing, which while full in the fronts, also sounded dull, and even flatter on the Dolby mix. Low end, however, is very powerful on both tracks, and the DTS mix is quite the couch mover, so crank this puppy up for a real good time. A bit uneven, but these are still a strong set of mixes.
Also included is a real first, a separate Dolby "Headphone" track. Plug in your headphones and get set for processed surround effects, even though this is only a 2.0 mix. Personally, I thought this was a useless gimmick, as I hate digital tweaking and processing to render the appearance of surround effects. Does it work? Sort of. I have decent headphones and occasionally heard an echoey type of effect, but nothing near what a 5.1 mix sounds like coming from a real set of speaks. But, if for some reason you find yourself needing surround effects while watching Pearl Harbor with headphones(?), here you go.
Also included is a French 5.1 surround track, and English Captions and Spanish subtitles. Note that English subtitles are burned into the film itself during the Japanese portions, and are rather small. While clear on my 65" monitor, I suspect most people will have trouble reading these on smaller screens...
ze bespraken ooknog de xtra' s maar die paste er nie meer bij.......
Alright, let's just get the obvious question out of the way...is Pearl Harbor really as bad as they say it is? Well, yes, actually it is. I skipped this one in the theaters last summer, because like so many movies these days, I just say "Nah, I'll wait for the DVD," and then when it failed to garner the commercial and critical accolades expected, I was even more wary of what I was in for...
Yet when I plopped Pearl Harbor into my DVD player, I was actually rooting for this now-underdog of a movie, which may have been the most critically lambasted would-be epic of the last couple of decades ("Bora! Bora! Bora!" was my favorite critical blurb.) Unfortunately, and even though I've enjoyed some of director Michael Bay's previous hackmeister epics like The Rock and Armageddon in a so-bad-its-good way, I was pretty much horrified after only the first 20 minutes.
What is it that makes Pearl Harbor so bad? Oh, let me count the ways. Shot like a perfume commercial and edited like a music video, the script is absolutely terrible, the acting embarrassing, and Bay utterly fails in creating a believable, emotionally resonant recreation of Hawaii circa 1941. An obvious attempt to replicate the success and structure of Titanic - at least that James Cameron's mega-hit managed to successfully stage a historical tragedy that felt authentic - Pearl Harbor is a mass of tiresome cliches that has become an instant camp classic. This was supposed to be Bay's Schindler's List, but instead it's his Heaven's Gate.
Yet another "young lovers torn apart by tragedy" sappy plot, unfortunately here the leads are bland ciphers who look oh-so-pretty but are emotionally vapid. Ben Affleck delivers perhaps his worst performance ever in a motion picture, while everyone's favorite hunchback Josh Hartnett has only two facial expressions, happy puppy dog and sad puppy dog. And Bay obviously has no conception of what 1940's women looked or acted like, as all the "babes" say things like "Gosh golly, I wish I was in love!" and bat their eyelashes constantly. And note to modern Hollywood filmmakers attempting to recreate WWII: before the 1960s, it wasn't the style for women to look like anorexic waifs or crack whores! Just watch poor up and comer Kate Beckinsale (whose career will likely survive this train wreck) sporting the reddest lipstick in cinema history and an endless parade of fashions hardly affordable to a character of her financial stature. She doesn't look like a 40's army nurse, but Skeletor by way of Issac Mizrahi.
But if Pearl Harbor were just funny, it wouldn't be so bad. Worse, it is offensive. Like so many of these pseudo-historical pics, Bay makes no attempt at establishing a time and place. We learn nothing about the world or the war, and if you believe this movie, Hawaii in 1941 was all rich white people playing baseball and hanging out the linen. Bay and screenwriter Randall Wallace use composites of real historical figures and incidents but offer no context. Bay even somehow convinced Oscar winner Cuba Gooding, Jr., to go slumming and play the token black character with dialogue that is cringe-inducing, while Jon Voight plays perhaps the worst FDR ever seen onscreen. Even more sad is the depiction of the Japanese, who only speak in haiku, glare their evil steely gazes, and apparently have no emotion other than "We hate Americans!"
But I suppose the most damaging thing I can say about Pearl Harbor is that after sitting through over an hour of unbearable exposition, when the big battle scenes finally began I was rooting for the Japanese to kill everybody. Bay's attempts at merging different film stocks, techniques and styles to create tension is so laughable that I actually started to fall asleep, and the Saving Private Ryan climax is solipsistic and silly. But don't take my word for it, just listen to my roommate, who said after we both sat slackjawed for over three hours, "That was the biggest bowel movement in the anals of Hollywood history!"
Video: How Does The Disc Look?
Say what you want about the film itself, but Pearl Harbor is one gosh-darn good-looking movie! This is a gorgeous transfer, and Buena Vista and THX seem to have pulled out all the stops to make it one of the best DVD has yet seen. And aside from a caveat or two, they've succeeded, with a rich, lush and three-dimensional presentation that is sure to please.
This is a sparkling print that is clean as a whistle, with only a few shots exhibiting any film grain at all, and terrific blacks and sharp contrast. Colors are vivid and wonderfully saturated, so much so that at times I thought it would begin to smear or become unstable, but hues and the stylized fleshtones always remain rock solid. The film has a shiny, glossy quality that is rich with detail, especially the outdoor scenes which are wonderfully lifelike. Spread across two discs (the film breaks about two-thirds of the way through for an intermission, with the third act on the second disc) I noticed nary a compression artifact, even on the film's many dissolves and fades.
If I was distracted by anything, it may have been the film's intentionally high contrast. Shadow detail in the dark scenes is often wanting, with such sharp falloff that the film almost looks polarized at times. But this is likely an intended stylistic effect and a not a fault of the transfer, but shadow delineation still does appear undefined. There is also a bit of edge enhancement which keeps this just an inch from being true reference quality. Not terribly excessive, but I did notice it enough to be distracted. Still, this is a gorgeous-looking disc so it's hard to complain.
Audio: How Does The Disc Sound?
Presented in both Dolby Digital and DTS 5.1 surround, I found this to be a somewhat frustrating mix. Certainly, in most aspects it is state-of-the-art, which is to be expected given the film's budget. The overall experience is what you want from a Bay film - bombastic, highly aggressive sound acrobatics and a fully-enveloping, 360-degree soundfield. Dialogue, effects and the score are impeccably rendered across the front soundstage, boasting expansive dynamic range and excellent fidelity.
However, while imaging across all the channels is good (especially so on the DTS track) and the rears aggressive when it comes to the effects, the score could have been better directed and subtle ambiance is lacking. The Dolby track sounds especially flat in the rears, and aside from some impressive discrete effects, surrounds are limited to flyovers and whizzing planes and bombs during the big battle scenes, and I longed for additional presence during quieter passages. The score was also disappointing, which while full in the fronts, also sounded dull, and even flatter on the Dolby mix. Low end, however, is very powerful on both tracks, and the DTS mix is quite the couch mover, so crank this puppy up for a real good time. A bit uneven, but these are still a strong set of mixes.
Also included is a real first, a separate Dolby "Headphone" track. Plug in your headphones and get set for processed surround effects, even though this is only a 2.0 mix. Personally, I thought this was a useless gimmick, as I hate digital tweaking and processing to render the appearance of surround effects. Does it work? Sort of. I have decent headphones and occasionally heard an echoey type of effect, but nothing near what a 5.1 mix sounds like coming from a real set of speaks. But, if for some reason you find yourself needing surround effects while watching Pearl Harbor with headphones(?), here you go.
Also included is a French 5.1 surround track, and English Captions and Spanish subtitles. Note that English subtitles are burned into the film itself during the Japanese portions, and are rather small. While clear on my 65" monitor, I suspect most people will have trouble reading these on smaller screens...
ze bespraken ooknog de xtra' s maar die paste er nie meer bij.......