Sorry for the late answer. My french disc is somewhere burried, but believe me, you do not want to watch that one.
A comparison of the english PAL DVD vom Arrow and the NTSC DVD from Sony was rather boring. I made notes of scene beginnings and tracks.
The Sony DVD is a "burned on demand"-Disk, 11 Chapters, 1 every 10minutes, regardless of scenes. It says that clearly on Amazon.Com, but if you chose a reseller, they do not mention it (beware: some DVD/Blu-ray-Players do not like DVD-R). Also after the film ends, I do not get to the menu, but the DVD simply stops and my Player shows the player-settings.
It is 16:9 as it should be, colour and picture quality are very good, no faults.
The Arrow DVD has chapter stops at scenes where it fits at scene-beginning, 12 chapters.
Its is 4:3, colour is a bit dark and washed out, picture quality looks bad, like a copy from a VHS.
In fact I still remember that the french version looks the same and even has a fault in one scene, that is typical for a VHS, a line diagonally wandering for a few seconds (something with a car, I think near the beginning, maybe even during the credits).
PAL-speedup should have shown a difference in play-time. It results from playing a film with 25 frames per second while it was filmed with 24 frames per second. 90 minutes film in USA should result in 86,4 minutes in EUR (PAL).
But that is not the case here, maybe due to my player. I own a modified US-Blu-ray-Player, which is codefree for DVD and code-switchable (Region A, B, C) for Blu-ray, a Philips.
Both DVD show nearly the same length:
Arrow: 1h 39min 47sec
Sony: 1h 39min 54sec
The film is the same, no scenes where added or changed, I compared critical scenes, where they showed blood, corpses or naked people. So the "unrated director's cut" is the only version you can buy and putting that on the title is a marketing ploy.
Due to the difference in picture quality, the Arrow DVD (and as far as I remember, the french DVD) is muddy and dark, the details of corpses and small things (earrings ripped off) are not entirely recognizable.
But there is in fact one scene, there the DVD differ:
Sony: 1h01min40sec - 1h03min43sec scene in bed, but nothing can be seen, action interrupted by phone call going to answermachine (female caller can be heard)
Arrow: 1h01min43sec - 1h03min46sec same as Sony DVD (female caller can be heard)
part of n. and her b. hanging down as he takes her from behind can be seen - a bit more than on the Sony Disc, due to different framing/aspect-ratio, but nothing sharp and no more than a few frames.
I tried to write this without spoiling anything or using offendable words.
If someone wants to I can send the notes, a short list of chapter & time codes with a raw description what happens.
Conclusion again:
The only extra that is to be found is a small leafleat-booklet with the Arrow-DVD. Not worth buying the DVD only for that, even for fans.
The Sony-DVD is the best one you can buy, unless someone thinks to produce a DVD or Blu-ray with extras. A commentary from the writer (Brad Fraser) would be most welcome, even an interview with the main ladies and protagonists. As I am one of the people who are really into the film, I even bought the book a double-script-flipper (both theater and film script), I thought of contacting Brad Fraser, but I cannot guess how much interest is there for a better version.
reply
share