'A Passage To India' - High-Def Digest Review

[Attebery]

Josh's review of 'A Passage to India' has been posted. He says it may not rise to quite the same level as David Lean's classic masterpieces 'Bridge on the River Kwai' or 'Lawrence of Arabia', but it's a fine film and a treat to watch in High Definition. The Blu-ray has very good picture quality and a decent assortment of supplements, even if the audio is just acceptable. Recommended.

Full review here:
http://bluray.highdefdigest.com/1357...getoindia.html

[theHDphantom]

"The Blu-ray: Vital Disc Stats

'A Passage to India' comes to Blu-ray from Sony Pictures Home Entertainment. Like most of the studio's product, the disc opens with an annoying Blu-ray promo. Apparently, nobody at the studio realizes that someone already watching a Blu-ray disc doesn't need to be sold on how great Blu-ray is."




You can skip these you know. I think it's there more for when you have a guest or two over and so they can see this advertising and see for themselves how great blu-ray is. It's a great way to get them buying into the format. I remember Fox doing this A LOT with DVD.


As for the review, I think I'll pick this one up if it's a reasonable price at Future Shop. I like Forster's novels. Glad to hear at has nice audio and video.

[zaphod]

Excellent review imho, and it pretty much echoes my feelings on the movie, especially the part of it being slightly too preachy at times. Thankfully, this is a Sony catalogue release so it's not region coded.

Modern audiences will likely find more troublesome the casting of Alec Guinness painted up in brownface as the Indian character Professor Godbole. Even at the time, it was a controversial decision, if perhaps a bit more tolerable in 1984 (Ben Kingsley had just won an Oscar a couple years earlier for much the same thing).

I actually enjoyed Alec Guinness painted in brown shoe-cream. I was a bit surprised at the comparison with Kingsley as Kingsley is part Indian, but I guess he too needed a little shoe-cream to look like Gandhi.

Originally Posted by theHDphantom

You can skip these you know. I think it's there more for when you have a guest or two over and so they can see this advertising and see for themselves how great blu-ray is. It's a great way to get them buying into the format. I remember Fox doing this A LOT with DVD.

Even if you can skip them, they're still bloody annoying and totally superfluous, Josh is right on this. If you have guests over to watch a Blu-Ray, do they still need advertising?
If they weren't skippable, I'd refuse to buy the disc altogether and hope for a European release without this crap.

[Josh Z]

Originally Posted by zaphod

I was a bit surprised at the comparison with Kingsley as Kingsley is part Indian,

Even so, I doubt many people think of Kingsley as being an Indian actor.

[Josh Z]

I've given it some thought, and decided to remove the Ben Kingsley reference.

[theHDphantom]

Originally Posted by zaphod

Even if you can skip them, they're still bloody annoying and totally superfluous, Josh is right on this. If you have guests over to watch a Blu-Ray, do they still need advertising?
If they weren't skippable, I'd refuse to buy the disc altogether and hope for a European release without this crap.

Blu-ray is still new. They'll stop the commercials soon enough. For now, it's still good marketing for your guests, especially if they know nothing about the format itself (even though I find the blu-ray advertisements not too hot). For now, just pick up your controller and hit the skip button if you don't want to watch it, like I do. I have no complaints about it.

[crabkey]

'Passage' is a minor masterpiece that I enjoy more with each successive viewing. Josh's observation, 'Who could top Lawrence of Arabia?' reminds me of my comment when asked for my opinion after seeing 'Passage' on its initial run: 'Lean made the mistake of making "Lawrence of Arabia".' I had to explain that everything Lean did after 'Lawrence' was going to suffer by comparison. 'Passage' is a treasure to have on Blu to add to every other edition of the movie I own (including laserdisc!)

[singhcr]

I just watched the movie yesterday. The movie is very good with excellent PQ as well. I am confused about one thing- both the HDD review and the case say the film is 1.66:1, but when I watched the movie I saw no bars on the sides of the image. Can anyone else confirm this? I was watching on a BD-P1400.

[Josh Z]

Originally Posted by singhcr

I just watched the movie yesterday. The movie is very good with excellent PQ as well. I am confused about one thing- both the HDD review and the case say the film is 1.66:1, but when I watched the movie I saw no bars on the sides of the image. Can anyone else confirm this? I was watching on a BD-P1400.

Likely your TV has some overscan, which is obscuring the side bars.

[singhcr]

Hmmm... I forgot about that. I have a CRT rear projection HDTV. Out of curiosity, what were you watching the film on? DLP, LCD, etc?

[Josh Z]

Originally Posted by singhcr

Hmmm... I forgot about that. I have a CRT rear projection HDTV. Out of curiosity, what were you watching the film on? DLP, LCD, etc?

A 1080p DLP projector with no overscan.