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Specs |
- Widescreen 2.35:1
- 16:9 Enhanced
- Dual Layer ( )
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Languages |
- English: Dolby Digital 5.1 Surround
- French: Dolby Digital 5.1 Surround
- German: Dolby Digital 5.1 Surround
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Subtitles |
English, French, German, Hebrew, Czech, Greek, Polish, Hungarian, Dutch, Arabic, Turkish, Icelandic, Danish, Swedish, Norwegian, Finnish, Hindi, Bulgarian |
Extras |
- Theatrical trailer
- Photo gallery
- 2 Short film
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First Men In The Moon |
Paramount/Sony Pictures Home Entertainment .
R4 . COLOR . 99 mins .
G . PAL |
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There's a neat twist at the start of First Men in the Moon. The film is based on a century-old yarn by H.G. Wells, yet it opens in modern-day outer-space. Suddenly we're plunged back to Victorian Britain, to become involved in a very peculiar space-adventure indeed. It's a surprisingly good way to bring us back to Wellsian time-and-space. In Wells's world, a traditional mad scientist has invented a special paste which, when coated on wood or steel or any other material, totally negates the force of gravity and sends that object rocketing through the earth's atmosphere, into outer-space. His quest is, of course, to visit the Moon. And tagging along is his young next-door-neighbour, and next-door's American girlfriend. No sooner are they on the moon, than they find themselves IN the moon, in the grips of a mysterious insect-like lifeform which has built itself a weird civilisation. This is a civilisation which doesn't know of war (except against giant caterpillars) and which has the remarkable ability to become fluent in English after only one 10-minute lesson. Remarkable. No actors are harmed in the shooting of this sequence, because it comes to us courtesy of special-effects veteran Ray Harryhausen, who developed his amazingly absurd stop-motion Dynamation technique, responsible for a host of C-grade fantasy and sci-fi special effects. Take a piece of plasticine, construct a comical-looking monster, take a pic, move those plasticine limbs a fraction, take another pic -- do this at the rate of 24-frames per second, and you have unbelievably unbelievable life-forms populating your movie. The movie is a mixture of professionalism (sets are very realistic, with outer-space sequences looking as if painted by Chesley Bonestell) and absurd amateurism (Ray Harryhausen's efforts leading the charge into naive absurdity-land). It's ultimately very silly, but with a strangely engaging conclusion which boasts one of the oddest lines of dialogue to ever close a movie. I won't give it away -- but if you've read H.G. Wells, you'll find it not entirely unexpected. Rent this one when you have absolutely nothing better to do.......
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Extras |
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This is a good quality anamorphic widescreen, with the original stereo soundtrack sounding not too exagerrated in its artificially-processed 5.1 Surround mode. Extras are a vintage 'This is Dynamation' feature running for 3.25 minutes, and showing the full absurdity of Ray Harryhausen's Oscar-winning process (yes, he won an Oscar!), and then there's a 58-minute 'Chronicles of Ray Harryhausen' featurette featuring such unlikely participants as famed fantasy-writer Ray Bradbury, who wrote 'The Martian Chronicles', 'Fahrenheit 451' and other fine novels and short stories. He was a youthful friend of Ray Harryhausen, which is a reasonable excuse.... we however have no excuse for sticking with this documentary for almost an hour. There's a theatrical trailer for one of Harryhausen's most famous works, Jason and the Argonauts, and a trailer for First Men in the Moon.
LINK: http://www.dvd.net.au/review.cgi?review_id=5092
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And I quote... |
"Sci-fi or comedy? This one inadvertently qualifies as both...." - Anthony Clarke |
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Review Equipment |
- DVD Player:
Pioneer DVD 655A
- TV:
Loewe Profil Plus 3272 68cm
- Receiver:
Denon AVR-3801
- Speakers:
Neat Acoustics PETITE
- Centre Speaker:
Neat Acoustics PETITE
- Surrounds:
Celestian (50W)
- Subwoofer:
B&W ASW-500
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