Dances With Wolves DTS
Plot Outline
Lt John Dunbar (Kevin Costner) is an accidental Civil War hero. As a reward for his heroism he is given a chance to transfer to the station of his choice. He chooses to be stationed at the American Frontier land before it’s all gone. His station turns out to be an unmanned outpost that’s near a Sioux Indian Tribe. Slowly John builds a friendship with the....
Plot Outline
Lt John Dunbar (Kevin Costner) is an accidental Civil War hero. As a reward for his heroism he is given a chance to transfer to the station of his choice. He chooses to be stationed at the American Frontier land before it’s all gone. His station turns out to be an unmanned outpost that’s near a Sioux Indian Tribe. Slowly John builds a friendship with the Indian tribe and with the help of a white woman named "Stands with a Fist" (Mary McDonnel) starts to overcome the language barrier.
John also builds a relationship with a wild wolf that he names "Two Socks", this relationship earns him the Indian name "Dances with Wolves". Through his relationship with the Indians John begins to see life from a different viewpoint. Finally John becomes faced with a crucial decision and needs to choose where his loyalty lies.
Video/Audio
The video quality is actually very, very good on this disk set; the picture is in a 2.35:1 [hl=../article_content.php?id=3]Anamorphic[/hl] format. I was quite surprised because I wasn’t expecting any more than an average picture, but it’s dust and scratch free and doesn’t look aged at all. Colours are strong with some dramatic sunsets and the picture is very detailed.
As with the Picture Quality, the audio track is equally stunning. On the disk you get a DTS track and a Dolby Digital 4.0 track. I watched the film with the DTS track and found it to be superb. The stand out moment for me was the buffalo stampede, there is so much base in this scene that you can feel them stampeding, excellent stuff.
Extras
The only real extra on here is an "Audio Commentary by Kevin Costner and Producer Jim Wilson" . Apparently it is quite unusual to get Costner to commit to providing an extra like this so it is regarded as a bit of a treat. The commentary track is actually very good, due to the length of the film it’s a bit much for one sitting. But spread over a few sessions it’s a very interesting and informative track. One of the things that comes across from the commentary is the very close friendship between Costner and Wilson.
The other extra on the disks is a brief list of Biographies, these only contain details about six members of the cast & crew, including Kevin Costner, Jim Wilson and Mary McDonnel.
Overall
Let me start by getting the major problem with this DVD out of the way first. I’m sure that you’ve heard of the DVD term flipper. In case you haven’t, this refers to a film that requires you to flip the disk over half way through as half of the film is on one side and half is on the other. "Dances with Wolves" takes this horrible concept to a whole new level. Two hours of the film is contained on one disk and the last hour is on a completely separate disk. Not only that, they haven’t even bothered to find a convenient stopping point. The film stops at exactly two hours in the middle of a scene waiting for you to pop the second disk in. Finally just to get my last gripe out of the way both disks come in those horrible cardboard snapper cases and they they’re boxed together in a cardboard sleeve.
OK, now that I’ve got that off my chest I can talk about the good points. I’m probably in a minority in that I had never actually watched this film before seeing this DVD. Many people had assured me however that I was in for a treat and they were not wrong. I’m always a little weary of three-hour films, but I didn’t even notice the time passing when I was watching this.
The storyline is gripping throughout; although it can meander along slowly at times it never dulls. I’ve seen a lot of comments on this film criticising the historical accuracy, personally I couldn’t care less if it’s particularly accurate or not. The story of a mans discovery and embrace of a culture completely different to his own was compelling for me regardless of the accuracy of it.
The acting is also top-notch; this was definitely Costners finest hour. It’s hard to believe that someone who can direct and star in such a monumental film as this could create Waterworld (what were you thinking Kevin). I’m probably more of a Costner fan than most people I know though, I loved "Tin Cup" but I’ve yet to find someone that agrees with me on that one.
I also want to mention the cinematography, as some of the scenes are breathtaking. The film is full of long panoramic shots of barren landscapes with glorious sunsets. There’s also a dramatic Buffalo hunt scene, which is both visually and aurally stunning. I could go on but firstly I wouldn’t want to reveal any more of the plot for you and secondly I think you’ve probably got the idea by now that I liked this film.
Just to go back to the two-disk point. If you don’t think you could you could deal with having to swap disks half way through a film then don’t worry. You can get this film without the DTS track on Region 1 on a single sided dual layer disk. Apparently there is also a Region 2 version due out in the UK in April that’s on one disk but also has DTS and Dolby Digital soundtracks. How they’ve managed this when the Region 1 couldn’t do it though, I’m not sure.
I’ve had to think a while about my score for this disk. I originally wanted to knock the score down severely for the fact that it’s spread across two disks. I find that I can’t bring myself to do it though because I enjoyed the film and the audio commentary so much and the Audio and Video quality are so good. One thing I can’t understand is, if they had problems fitting DTS and Dolby Digital on one disk why didn’t they put the DTS version on one disk and the Dolby Digital on the other. Anyway, I’m sure my complaints about this are getting a bit monotonous so I’ll finish with my score of 4.5 out of 5.
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