DVD Talk Forum - REVIEW: Three Seasons

Three Seasons
Director: Tony Bui

DVD info:
distributor: Seville Pictures (Canada)
catalog: 22029DV
approx 1.66:1 Letterbox (the cover incorrectly lists it as 16:9)
Region 1
NTSC
DVD-9 (average 8MB bit rate!)
Audio: Vietnamese 2.0 and French 2.0
Subtitle: English (non-removable, player generated)
runtime: 110 mins
animated scene index with 27 chapters
The main menu consists of an image of Harvey Keitel, and an animated background
with looping scenes from the movie.

Extras:
Cast and Director info
Trailer: Three Seasons
Trailer Gallery: In The Mood For Love, Eat Drink Man Woman and Chinese Box

Movie review:
The setting takes place in Vietnam (Saigon?), and follows the story of four individuals.
We have Kien-An, who farms white lotus for sale in the city, for a reclusive ex-poet. Her singing inspires the ex-poet to compose again... then there's Hai, a cyclo driver in the city, who is infactuated by a prostitue and wants to get closer to her...
Meanwhile, James (Harvey Kietel), an ex-G.I., is here searching for his daughter he fathered during the war to come to terms with his past, and Woody, a youngster that's parentless and
homeless, who walks the streets selling trinkets to tourists among other displaced children...
The characters' stories are not inter-related, but they do cross paths briefly.
We see the contrast of the poor population, where and how they live, to the extravagant hotels for tourists. We have the people that are trying to find a better life, but mostly only able to dream about what could be, and we are shown the poor living conditions of the general populace and the children that roam the streets trying to earn a buck...
But from all this sadness, hope still shines through for the people, through their kindness.
During all this, we see the old being bypassed by the new (Kien-An sings a song when the elder workers normally does the singing, people buying plastic scented white lotus flowers
as opposed to real white lotus flowers...)

The images in the movie are bleak, but beautiful... the director is able to capture the beauty of the Vietnamese culture and contrast it with the bleakness of the poor. Imagine being a child no older than 10, and living off the streets. Imagine your house where the front door opens to a train track. Imagine no more... watch this movie.

Image:
Very good
The print is very clean, but somewhat grainy. It seems the movie is shot with a brownish tint, as most scenes have a brown hue to them, and most evident in darker scenes. Bright outdoor scenes are very clear, with nice colour saturation. Shadow detail is good in some scenes, and poor in some others. This does not look like a mastering problem, but more so inherent on the source print.
Compression bit-rate is at a very high average of 8MBits.
The transfer is non-anamorphic, which the cover incorrectly lists as 16x9 Widescreen.
The aspect ratio looks like 1:66:1, but after zooming out the TV overscan with my Malata N996 DVD player, it was about 1.7:1

There was a slight glitch around the 12:40 minute mark of my copy. It was some ghosting/smearing for about 2 seconds, but not too distracting.

Subtitle:
Non-removable, player generated English only
Medium sized white text with black border make it very easy to read, and appears on the image instead of the black letterbox bars. The subtitles are properly synced to the speech,
and stay on-screen for the proper amount of time for easy reading.

Audio:
Very good sounding Stereo 2.0, and perfectly suitable for this movie. The volume is a little lower than normal, so need to turn up the amp.

Movie rating: 8/10 - we get to experience a slice of life in Saigon, Vietnam
DVD rating: 7.5/10 - Clean, but somewhat grainy image, due to source print