6.5 | / 10 |
Users | 4.1 | |
Reviewer | 3.5 | |
Overall | 3.8 |
When unusual seismic activity is detected in the town of Dante's Peak, volcanologist is called in to investigate. He is certain that a long-dormant volcano is set to erupt and destroy the town.
Starring: Pierce Brosnan, Linda Hamilton, Jamie Renée Smith, Jeremy Foley, Elizabeth HoffmanThriller | 100% |
Action | 32% |
Adventure | Insignificant |
Video codec: VC-1
Video resolution: 1080p
Aspect ratio: 2.36:1
Original aspect ratio: 2.39:1
English: DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1 (48kHz, 24-bit)
Spanish: DTS 2.0
French: DTS 5.1
English SDH, French, Spanish
25GB Blu-ray Disc
Single disc (1 BD)
BD-Live
D-Box
Mobile features
Region free
Movie | 3.0 | |
Video | 3.0 | |
Audio | 4.0 | |
Extras | 4.0 | |
Overall | 3.5 |
With the copycat habit that studios can't seem to shake, 1997 saw two volcano-themed films hurtling toward the box office, Universal's Dante's Peak and Fox's Volcano. Universal won the race, and Fox had to hold its film until the following spring, hoping that a few extra months would make audiences forget they'd just seen a volcano wreak havoc on the screen. The strategy didn't work, and Volcano did weaker box office (though neither was a blockbuster). What struck me at the time, though, is how different the two films are, even though both derive from the same "high concept". Volcano plays like a classic Seventies disaster film, in which an unstoppable force bursts into a space where it doesn't belong (in this case, Los Angeles), because humanity thinks it has complete dominance and control over the venue (hah!). Dante's Peak is more like Jaws. It's set in a peaceful locale on the edge of an untamed natural domain with which humanity has coexisted for years in a sort of detente -- until one day some atypical incidents bring experts to town inquiring whether the truce has been broken. As experts often do, they disagree, and the local business owners fret about losing tourists and investors. By the time the problem has become too big to ignore -- one might call it the "we're going to need a bigger boat" moment -- it's too late.
Dante's Peak was Donaldson's second collaboration with cinematographer Andrzej Bartkowiak (the first was Species). Bartkowiak's breakthrough work in America was with Sidney Lumet, who famously hated showy camera work, which may be why Bartkowiak doesn't seem to have a signature style. He adapts to the material. Dante's Peak begins and end with major sequences that are murky and gray -- almost to the point of being black-and-white -- from blizzards of volcanic ash. For the sake of continuity and blending, the "normal" sequences in between can't be overly colorful or eye-popping, and they never have been. However, levels of black and white must be accurately maintained, or the "ash" scenes risk degenerating into shadowy muck. The 1080p, VC-1-encoded Blu-ray from Universal successfully reproduces the correct levels of black and white and gets the colors right in between, but it's less satisfactory in other respects. Detail suffers noticeably whenever we move away from objects in the foreground. The effect is most obvious in long shots with numerous separate items in the background, such as the outdoor crowd that Rachel addresses just after Harry arrives in town; the individual persons are vaguely outlined and sometimes blur into one another, almost as if this were an image on DVD, not Blu-ray. The same effect can be observed when Harry is driving into town and people are visible down the street, and it's also evident when Harry and Rachel subsequently drive up the mountain -- the trees around them don't reveal the detailed leaf patterns that one expects to see in a film of this vintage and budget. I cite these examples, because they occur in broad daylight, where shadows and sufficient lighting should not be an issue, and because they occur early enough in the film that interference from volcanic activity (or, to be precise, the special effects used to simulate it) cannot be the cause. Nor is this phenomenon attributable to focal issues. The objects are in focus, but the transfer isn't sharp enough to capture them. The situation appears to improve in the latter parts of the film, but that may simply be a function of unfamiliarity. We all know what crowds and forests look like, which means we know when they don't look right. But most of us can't make similar judgments about volcano craters, lava flows, ash storms or various other manifestations of the disaster depicted in Dante's Peak. If detail is similarly lacking in long shots, how would we know? This does not appear to me to be a case where DNR or other digital filtering was applied, because the usual signs of such filtering are absent; there were no motion artifacts, and faces in close-up looked natural and detailed. It's more likely that the original image harvest was less than it should have been. Maybe someday it'll be redone. In the meantime this version is watchable, though by no means the best that Blu-ray can provide. Addendum on Aug. 10, 2011: At least one viewer has reported seeing the kind of haloing around objects that is the telltale sign of artificial sharpening applied to make an image appear more detailed than it really is. The common term for this phenomenon is "edge enhancement", although it's a term I try to avoid, since it's often used loosely to describe a host of disparate phenomena. Since such sharpening has often been applied to precisely the kind of situations I described above, it is entirely possible that it has been applied to some or all of the Blu-ray of Dante's Peak. However, I myself did not notice any haloing, on a 72" screen from which I sit no more than 12 feet away. Still, different eyes see different things on different systems, and video sharpening tools are too closely associated with the issues I did notice to ignore the observation.
Fortunately, there's nothing to fault in the DTS lossless presentation of Dante's Peak's soundtrack, which does full justice to the rumbles, crashes, explosions and all-around mayhem of the volcanic eruption and associated earthquakes, structural collapses, fires and lava flows. Both the rear channels and the subwoofer get a workout during these sequences, although you won't hear much from them during the long build-up that consists mostly of dialogue and a hammily portentous score by John Frizzell (with theme by James Newton Howard).
It's my understanding that the Blu-ray's main supplements are identical to those on the previously released HD DVD, which I never saw. But the supplements are truly "vintage" in the sense that they date back to the 1997 "Signature Series" laserdisc set (remember those?). In the various editions of Dante's Peak since then, some supplements from that set have fallen by the wayside, including storyboards, photographs, the shooting script, advertising materials and an isolated musical score that was available as an alternate track to the documentary entitled "Getting Close to the Show". (And no, my set isn't for sale.)
Like most big studio pictures of the last twenty years or so, Dante's Peak is a "B" film with an "A" budget and cast. Massive craft and expense were poured into a telling a story that, for my money, could have been just as effectively told in a cheesy, low-budget thriller. (The big-budget version is pretty cheesy anyway, despite its scientific pretensions.) My own preference is for Volcano, which doesn't take itself as seriously and manages to inject a degree of wit into the unlikely juxtaposition of lava flows with the streets of L.A. Still, Dante's Peak has its moments, mostly courtesy of Brosnan and Hamilton. My only hesitation about recommending the Blu-ray is the weakness of the transfer. If you already have a previous version, I suggest renting the Blu-ray before buying.
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