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Dom Robinson reviews

Titanic

THX Widescreen

Distributed by
Pioneer Entertainment Europe

Cat.no: PLFED 37501
Cert: 12
Running time: 189 minutes
Sides: 4 (CLV)
Year: 1997
Pressing: 1998
Chapters: 30 (9/8/6/7)
Sound: Dolby Surround
Widescreen: 2.30:1 (Super 35)
Price: £29.99
Extras : None

Director:

James Cameron

The Abyss, Aliens, Terminator 1 & 2, True Lies

Producers:

James Cameron and Jon Landau

Screenplay:

James Cameron

Music:

James Horner

Cast:

Jack Dawson: Leonardo DiCaprio

The Man In The Iron Mask, Marvin's Room, Romeo And Juliet, This Boy's Life, Total Eclipse, What's Eating Gilbert Grape

Rose Dewitt Bukater: Kate Winslet

Hamlet, Heavenly Creatures, Hideous Kinky, Jude, Sense And Sensibility, TV: "Casualty"

Cal Hockley: Billy Zane

Dead Calm, Lake Consequence, Memphis Belle, Orlando, The Phantom, Sniper, Tombstone

Holly Brown: Kathy Bates

Dolores Claiborne, Misery, Primary Colors, White Palace

Ruth Dewitt Bukater: Frances Fisher

Attack Of The 50 Foot Woman, Female Perversions

Captain Smith: Bernard Hill

The Bounty, Drowning By Numbers, Shirley Valentine, TV: "Boys From The Blackstuff", "Lipstick On Your Collar"

Bruce Ismay: Jonathan Hyde

Bliss, Deadly Advice, Jumanji, Richie Rich

Fabrizio: Danny Nucci

Old Rose: Gloria Stuart

The Invisible Man

Spicer Lovejoy: David Warner

The Man In The Iron Mask, The Omen, Scream 2, Star Trek 5, Time Bandits, TV: "Star Trek: Next Generation"

Thomas Andrews: Victor Garber

Hostile Advances - The Kerry Ellison Story

Brock Lovett: Bill Paxton

Aliens, Apollo 13, The Evening Star, Near Dark, Tombstone, True Lies, Twister

Lizzy Calvert: Suzy Amis

The Ballad Of Little Jo, Blown Away, Firestorm, The Usual Suspects

Fifth Officer Lowe: Ioan Gruffudd

TV: "Hornblower"

Titanic Orchestra: I Salonisti

Steerage Band: Gaelic Storm

Titanic pic

Titanic is James Cameron's epic account of the night that the R.M.S. Titanic went too fast on its maiden voyage and hit an iceberg, rupturing the underside of the ship's head and letting enough water in to make it sink. It's one of those films that doesn't really need its plot explaining as there can't be many people on the planet who don't know that the ship didn't quite make it to its destination, but rather took a diversion to the ocean bed.

In amongst the carnage, comes a tale of forbidden love and courage in the face of disaster. Leonardo Di Caprio and Kate Winslet, who was nominated for an Best Actress Oscar, as Jack and Rose, the young lovers separated by social class yet destined to find each other on the "unsinkable" ship.

The film won eleven Oscars including Best Picture and Best Director and it's easy to see why due to the grand scale of what's on show. When the ship starts to go down, it's a special effects extravaganza from the huge reconstruction of the vessel - a 90%-scaled model - right down to the mere breath of cold air exhaled by cold and frightened passengers. The success of the film has resulted in worldwide box office takings of over $1 billion and has spawned two soundtrack albums featuring James Horner's unsurpassable score and music from the film including Celine Dion and "An Irish Party In Third Class".

It could have been a different story though. Originally budgeted at around $120 million, delays and mounting problems forced production costs to spiral in rocket-like fashion to way over $200 million. Soon after, Cameron was being criticised beyond all comprehension and Hollywood critics reckoned the film would sink at the box office like its namesake ship.

Thankfully, Cameron was proved right in the end. Cinemagoers and the rest of the nation piled into the cinemas for over six months, a rare sight indeed. In fact the only other film from recent times that has stayed in cinemas for as long was the British hit, The Full Monty, but it's quite a different thing though to get the average Joe to stampede to the cinema for a film over three hours in length - as opposed to a 90-minute comedy - and as such Titanic has become the biggest grossing film of all time to date.

A first-class film deserves a first-class cast and it gets it with the two leads performed by rising star, sometimes dubbed as the new River Phoenix, Leonardo DiCaprio and Kate Winslet, who is usually found in low-budget films, but has been cast into the limelight with this film. It hasn't gone to her head though and even at her recent wedding to James Threapleton, assistant film director on the set of her forthcoming film Hideous Kinky, there were no major amounts of security and the press were allowed to take photos, unlike a recent Spice Girl wedding.

While Jack is, literally, the small fish in a big pool of rich people, the rest of the cast includes Billy Zane as Rose's prospective but destructive husband, Frances Fisher as Rose's mother, Bernard Hill as the ship's captain, Jonathan Hyde as the ship's creator, Bill Paxton as the leader of a crew interviewing Rose in the present day trying to find out what exactly happened and Gloria Stuart as Rose now, which gave her the nomination for the Best Supporting Actress Oscar.

There are a few pieces of artistic licence though such as the scene of the captain going down with the ship, although apparently the real one didn't, as well as occasional one liners: As one man walks climbs a staircase towards the rear of the ship he recites Psalm 22. When he gets to "Yea, as I walk through the valley of the shadow of death", Jack shouts, "Wanna walk a little faster to that valley ?"

Titanic pic

A stunning film deserves a stunning transfer and that's exactly what you get here. In the cinema the film was breathtaking and at home, even on a 21" television, the experience, for me, has as great an impact. The widescreen framing is preserved here and it's the only way it can be watched. Although the film was shot using the Super-35 technique, allowing non-SFX shots to sometimes be shown with more picture at the top and/or bottom, while losing some side picture information, word has it that the fullscreen version is as bad as a standard pan-and-scan transfer.

Note that as the widescreen version has a ratio of 2.30:1 and that widescreen televisions have a ratio of 16:9 (ie. 1.78:1 approx.), so you will still get black bars on your widescreen television. This may seem obvious to may laserdisc owners out there, but while a few people have asked me why this happens - because one medium is wider than the other, so the old adage that you can't fit a square peg in a round hole applies - the problem manifested itself on BBC TV's Watchdog after an old man had more money than sense and spent £1700 on such a TV without bothering to learn the difference in ratios and complained when his Titanic video didn't fill the screen. Watchdog went on to explain, badly, that there are six different film ratios - when there are many more - and then showed the film on a widescreen TV but using the 16:9-enhanced mode (on a non-enhanced video) thus squashing the picture further and making everyone look fatter and accentuating the black bars thus filling the screen with twice as much blackness.

The sound quality is superb as well. Not only the aforementioned score and music, but the speakers will cry out as the ship rips apart. This PAL laserdisc is only the second to carry the THX logo for approved picture and sound quality. Plenty more discs will have been taken from a digital clone of a THX-approved master such as Braveheart, Independence Day and Speed, but it isn't cheap to include the logo on the cover.

There are 30 chapters throughout the film which isn't enough for a 189-minute film and there is no trailer, but there wasn't one on the NTSC Laserdisc either, the only thing you're missing out on being the Dolby Digital soundtrack. This disc also comes in a gorgeous gatefold sleeve and the film is split across four sides in CLV.

Titanic pic

If I had any complaints it would be the low number of chapters and that fact that the film suffers the U.S. problem of "PG-13"-itis, namely that the only thing done to attain that rating was to include one unnecessary "f-word" in the script.

Overall, this is my favourite film of the year and one of the best reasons to buy a laserdisc player since Encore's release of "The Big Blue: Version Longue" earlier this year. Rumours are abound, though, that James Cameron will eventually release a director's cut containing 30 minutes extra footage, a commentary track and a making-of documentary. Perhaps that will be the running order on the DVD when Fox get around to the market outside Japan. Until then, the only Titanic-esque DVD content appears on Carlton's A Night To Remember.

For now though, this disc only has competition from the NTSC Laserdisc which is more expensive at $50 and a widescreen video box-set costing even more at £79.99 and contains the film, the script and the making-of documentary.

FILM	 		: *****
PICTURE QUALITY		: *****
SOUND QUALITY		: *****
EXTRAS			: 0
-------------------------------
OVERALL			: ****

Review copyright © Dominic Robinson, 1998.
Check out Pioneer's Web site.

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