Spectacular! (American Beauty (DVD))

Member Name: Slim Lee

Product:	American Beauty (DVD)
Date:	30/01/01 (297 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Nice features, especially the Storyboard

Disadvantages: No deleted scenes (but not that big a deal!)

“American Beauty” was hailed as the film of 1999, winning five Oscars and six BAFTA’s in the process (Best film in both). This was somewhat surprising as this was director Sam Mendes’s debut film (he had previously worked in theatre directing).

The quality of the acting (particularly Kevin Spacey and Annette Bening) is superb and the screenplay (hats off to screenwriter Alan Ball!) is excellent. What is more surprising though is the success of the film commercially as these types of thoughtful (serious) works are often overlooked, even with Oscar acclaim.

I’m not going to dwell too much on the film here as you can find more in depth reviews in the movie section here on DooYoo. Instead I’m going to focus purely on the DVD release (Region 2) and the features it offers.


What DooYoo get then?
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- Anamorphic widescreen (2:35:1 ratio)
- 5.1 surround soundtrack
- Main film feature (1 hour and 57 minutes) single layered
- Behind the scenes footage
- Theatrical trailers (x two)
- Audio commentary (from both the director and screenwriter)
- Subtitles in six languages
- Storyboard
- Brief two page notes from the director (inlay sheet)


How does it look?
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I’ve watched this DVD on a widescreen TV and also on my PC and the quality of the picture is excellent on both. It’s particularly good on the widescreen TV, as the DVD will automatically stretch to fit the screen but it will not lose any picture of the quality as it is anamorphic (if it wasn’t then it would appear out of proportion).

I generally find most DVDs now have excellent picture quality and this disc is no exception. It hasn’t jumped or frozen on any scenes as yet but you need to keep the disc clean or it will get damaged (they ARE NOT indestructible!).


Is the menu easy to use?
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It sure is!

You get a choice of four options on loading up the disc (after initially selecting your language)

- Play (main film)
- Scene Selection
- Bonus Material
- Subtitles & Languages

The scene selection menus allow you to chose which section of the movie to watch. It offers four scenes/chapters at a time (with a thumbnail picture), and it can be a bit of a pain clicking on the next set of four each time. There are 24 scenes/chapters in total but it is fairly quick to skim through. Not an option I really use a lot, but it's well organised with the chapters starting at sensible parts in the film.

The subtitles menu allows you to turn them on/off and to select between the six languages on offer (English, Dutch, Swedish, Norwegian, Danish and Finnish). Why these languages I haven’t a clue. I would’ve expected there to be French, Spanish or German subtitles instead of so many Scandinavian ones!

The Bonus Material menu is split into two sections. The first one deals with the Behind the scenes feature and the Audio Commentary. The second page allows you to look at the Storyboard and the two Trailers. All in all it's a pretty simple menu to navigate around.

The only major criticism I have of this disc is that it can be difficult to use on a PC DVD-ROM. I used to play DVDs only on my PC via InterVideo WinDVD and it didn’t like it one bit. I ended up having to right-click a long and select the menus that way. No such problems on a normal DVD player though. Watching the film itself is not a problem on either system, just accessing the extra features on a PC.


Tell me more about the features!
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The Storyboard feature for me is very interesting, as they go into small details of how they developed the film, not from just a screenwriting perspective, but also from the way they shot particular
scenes. I liked the first part of it where they explain why the computer screen in front of Lester has the text running vertically rather than horizontally (they were trying to make them look like bars of a jail cell!). It gives away a lot of details that even after watching the film several times you would never have spotted, so for the dedicated fan (adn movie buffs) this is a great feature, which unfortunately isn’t supplied on enough DVDs.

The notes from the director (Sam Mendes) on the inside inlay sheet of the DVD are interesting as a background to explain why and how he came to make this film. He also talks a little about his feelings for the film. It only amounts to a few hundred words, but it's better than the standard DVD inlay sheet which just lists the scenes/chapters.

The Commentary however, is far more detailed and will tell you a lot more about the mind-set of the director and screenwriter as they worked on putting the film together. This feature is only for the really dedicated fan, as most people are not going to sit through the entire movie just listening to the commentary. Unless you are especially interested in the making of the film and getting more of an insight into the film-making process then this feature is a bonus, but probably one that you won't use. I'm always impressed by a commentary on a DVD, but they aren't everyones cup of tea.

The trailers are fine, but are part and parcel of any DVD release now, so they won’t get many extra brownie points from me.


Verdict
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As DVDs go this one is pretty good. Standard fare such as trailers and subtitles don’t really get my interest, but the commentary and storyboard on this disc are great. The only other feature I really would have liked would have been some deleted scenes. That’s the only bit missing really, so overall it’s a great disc, which compliments a great film. Good disc to buy
also as i'm sure that you'll want to watch this one more than once.

Ah, maybe i'm just being greedy with DVD features now. There are still new releases coming out now (in the summer of 2001) that don't match this one .... so I give in ... it's a great disc ... go and buy it!





You should be able to pick this DVD for around £14.99 on or offline. My personal favourite is still online with www.play247.com for Region 2 DVDs. Most can be picked up for £14.99 with no delivery or packing charges. The exception to this is for boxed sets (which normally sell for £17.99). It's getting to be more of a dated release now, so the chance of picking it up in a sale is pretty high.


“American Beauty” is distributed by Dreamworks Home Entertainment.
If you can’t find a copy then the DVD reference for ordering is DVD 490 960 2 11

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