Matthew Bournes Swan Lake

Let me tell you straight out, I have never been to a ballet or have been even remotely interested in it. I have however listened to, seen live and love classical music. Studying late at night is a good excuse to listen to music without lyrics to calm your soul and it does.

So how do you do a review of a live ballet when you're in that "I can't be bothered trying to understand ballet mood", you just put the disc in the player and say to yourself, "Lets just check it out" and so I did.

Swan Lake is the story of a young boy born into royalty, not having the choice to live the life that he'd prefer, dreaming of the day where he can be as free as a Swan. That opportunity arrives when he bumps into a street tramp that infuriates his royal mother who objects to her son being involved with someone not of royal blood.

This is by far the best looking dvd produced by Warner Vision. The picture is simply perfect for something off of a video master that it simply blew me away at times.

The color is rich, the reds, the purples, the blues, the pinks, the greys all blend evenly with everything. The blacks are balanced beautifully with the contrast and give some scenes the dark shadowy feel that I think the director was trying to achieve.

The only gripe I have, and the reason I didn't give the video a 10, is that you can see the video time-base signals at the top of the screen which distract you from time to time. I'm not sure if it was the copy I had but it was even more present when I was doing the screen captures and I had to manually remove them from the final picture.

Other than that, this truly has set a standard from Warner Vision that I hope they keep up. Great stuff.

I didn't get my hands on the A1 for this review so I had to stick with the Pro-logic version in which I hope does translate well enough to represent what the 5.1 version would produce.

The music was simply beautiful. Like I mentioned above, I used to listen to classical music while studying but never bothered to find out who had composed the music or for what it was composed for but after viewing this disc I soon found out.

Most of the audio is the music coming out all 4 speakers. I didn't notice much through the center speaker other than the usual pro-logic matrix of equal sound from the left & right being sent to the center channel. I switched off the center channel and left the stereo sound surround me with the stadium dsp mode.

Only samples of sound fx were used to signify claps, screams, laughs or footsteps and these usually stemmed from the front speakers.

All in all a good sounding mix, a great soundtrack to compliment the outstanding video.

Another first for Warner Vision is the extra extras on this disc. Firstly, the booklet seems like a smaller version of the program guide you would find at the live performance featuring an interview with Matthew Bourne himself answering questions about his depature from the traditional version of Swan Lake and casting a male as the Swan, leading to references of a gay Swan Lake. I didn't quite understand the original Swan Lake to understand the differences in this version but the interview helped in a way by questiong Matthews decisions to change the classic.

You'll also find a nice, act-by-act account of the events, which I went through first, to better understand what is going on throughout the performance.

Also included are your cast and character synopsis and an interesting selection of menus in 4 different languages. All in all, pretty much the perfect compliment to audio and video presentation.

I enjoyed the disc myself. I can't say that I'm a ballet lover after seeing this disc but I'm sure people out there who are would be mad to pass up this disc which is why I gave the disc overall a 9.

I'd like to sum up by thanking Warner Vision for their great products so far and to continue to produce consistent quality dvd products.