Medicine Man - dead on arrival!
08-24-99, 12:18 AM
#1
Moderator
Thread Starter
Medicine Man is one of 1992's best movies, and one of my all-time favorites. I won't review the film, but instead I'll focus on the DVD.
Sadly, Buena Vista totally screwed up Medicine Man on DVD. While the video is not quite as bad as Highlander, it is really attrocious. At least Highlander had the excuse that the original master was pretty bad, but Medicine Man has no such excuse. Clearly, Buena Vista used an old transfer for the DVD. Of course, you'll be shocked to hear that it is not anamorphic. Compression artifacts are possibly the worst I've ever seen. Blacks are, well, brown. Edge enhancement is maxed out. Shimmer ruins every sunlit scene. Grain is quite noticable, but not horrible. Try this -- pause on a scene where the camera is steady on a background, and go through frame by frame -- watch the image jump around. It really reminds me of viewing a million color image on a PC in 256 colors. Individual pixels end up blocked together into a single color. The real crime here is that this movie has such beautiful cinematography, and Buena Vista has all but ruined it with the poor transfer.
Okay, so the video is awful, how about the audio? When you're near rock bottom, it is hard to sink lower. The soundtrack is recorded in Dolby Surround, but the surrounds can pretty much take the night off as they escape without much work. The dialog constantly fades in and out, being loud one word, then inexplicably soft the next. The audio certainly leaves a lot to be desired as well.
Extras? Well, this IS Buena Vista you know! A 3 1/2 minute production featurette that that is just plain garbage. A trailer is included. And of course, that wonderful BV feature -- chapter search! For a 1:45 movie, you get a whole 13 chapters!
Finally, I remember watching this movie on VHS a few years ago, and at the conclusion of the movie, a few "rain forest" facts were presented, mostly dealing with the rate of destruction of the rain forest. This important message is not on the DVD, despite the fact that 80 acres of rain forest are destoyed every minute. Including this message would help maintain public awareness of the devastation of one of our most precious resources.
For a professional review, read this at DVDFile (the only one I've found). The sentence talking about 23:46 is dead on. http://www.dvdfile.com/review/dvd-video/medicineman.htm
I'm sorry, but this has to be one of the worst DVDs to date from a major distributer. I strongly recommend you not buy this DVD unless you absolutely must have this movie in your collection, or simply you couldn't care less about the quality of the audio or video of your DVDs (or DVD and VHS looks the same to you).
-- Stephen
<HR>Review equipment:
- Yamaha DVD-S700 DVD player
- Mitsubishi CS-35707 35" direct view television
- Yamaha DSP-3090 amp
- Definitive Technology and B&W speakers/subs
<HR>
[This message has been edited by DarkElf (edited 08-27-1999).]
Sadly, Buena Vista totally screwed up Medicine Man on DVD. While the video is not quite as bad as Highlander, it is really attrocious. At least Highlander had the excuse that the original master was pretty bad, but Medicine Man has no such excuse. Clearly, Buena Vista used an old transfer for the DVD. Of course, you'll be shocked to hear that it is not anamorphic. Compression artifacts are possibly the worst I've ever seen. Blacks are, well, brown. Edge enhancement is maxed out. Shimmer ruins every sunlit scene. Grain is quite noticable, but not horrible. Try this -- pause on a scene where the camera is steady on a background, and go through frame by frame -- watch the image jump around. It really reminds me of viewing a million color image on a PC in 256 colors. Individual pixels end up blocked together into a single color. The real crime here is that this movie has such beautiful cinematography, and Buena Vista has all but ruined it with the poor transfer.
Okay, so the video is awful, how about the audio? When you're near rock bottom, it is hard to sink lower. The soundtrack is recorded in Dolby Surround, but the surrounds can pretty much take the night off as they escape without much work. The dialog constantly fades in and out, being loud one word, then inexplicably soft the next. The audio certainly leaves a lot to be desired as well.
Extras? Well, this IS Buena Vista you know! A 3 1/2 minute production featurette that that is just plain garbage. A trailer is included. And of course, that wonderful BV feature -- chapter search! For a 1:45 movie, you get a whole 13 chapters!
Finally, I remember watching this movie on VHS a few years ago, and at the conclusion of the movie, a few "rain forest" facts were presented, mostly dealing with the rate of destruction of the rain forest. This important message is not on the DVD, despite the fact that 80 acres of rain forest are destoyed every minute. Including this message would help maintain public awareness of the devastation of one of our most precious resources.
For a professional review, read this at DVDFile (the only one I've found). The sentence talking about 23:46 is dead on. http://www.dvdfile.com/review/dvd-video/medicineman.htm
I'm sorry, but this has to be one of the worst DVDs to date from a major distributer. I strongly recommend you not buy this DVD unless you absolutely must have this movie in your collection, or simply you couldn't care less about the quality of the audio or video of your DVDs (or DVD and VHS looks the same to you).
-- Stephen
<HR>Review equipment:
- Yamaha DVD-S700 DVD player
- Mitsubishi CS-35707 35" direct view television
- Yamaha DSP-3090 amp
- Definitive Technology and B&W speakers/subs
<HR>
[This message has been edited by DarkElf (edited 08-27-1999).]
08-24-99, 06:49 PM
#3
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Join Date: Feb 1999
Location: Adelaide, Australia
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I loved this movie and was so looking forward to getting a high quality DVD version of it.
Definitely giving this a miss now though, sounds like my crappy VHS tape is of better quality.<HR>
Chris Till 
Adelaide, South Australia
Definitely giving this a miss now though, sounds like my crappy VHS tape is of better quality.<HR>
Chris Till Adelaide, South Australia
08-25-99, 09:12 AM
#4
Moderator
Thread Starter
Hey Chris,
Well, just for grins, I put in a VHS last night, just to see how high my standards have risen now with DVD, and to be honest, VHS is still far worse than the worst DVDs I've seen. Bleeding is really bad, and clarity and detail aren't there. The Medicine Man DVD is probably still better than the VHS. But maybe not. With VHS, you expect a crappy picture, but your expectations are much higher for DVD. The things I comment on above really annoyed me and definitely intruded on a pleasant moviewatching experience. I sat there throughout the whole movie saying, "Ugh, that looks terrible!" My girlfriend walked in and said the same thing, and she's not into this as much as I am.
-- Stephen
Well, just for grins, I put in a VHS last night, just to see how high my standards have risen now with DVD, and to be honest, VHS is still far worse than the worst DVDs I've seen. Bleeding is really bad, and clarity and detail aren't there. The Medicine Man DVD is probably still better than the VHS. But maybe not. With VHS, you expect a crappy picture, but your expectations are much higher for DVD. The things I comment on above really annoyed me and definitely intruded on a pleasant moviewatching experience. I sat there throughout the whole movie saying, "Ugh, that looks terrible!" My girlfriend walked in and said the same thing, and she's not into this as much as I am.
-- Stephen
08-27-99, 03:56 PM
#6
Moderator
Thread Starter
Heather, I don't recommend buying the DVD, but I highly recommend renting it so that you can at least see the movie in its entirety. It is a solid 3.5 star movie (out of 4) IMO.
-- Stephen
-- Stephen
