Rating: Summary: New Release was poorly produced Review: I have the older version of Pride and Prejudice from A&E on DVD and looks much better than the recently released one. I, however did return it for my money back. Don't get me wrong the movie was very enjoyable but I was sadly disappointed by the new DVD release. The new version looks overexposed and is missing something and it also skipped as well. None of my DVD's skip at all. If you can get past all that then keep the movie, I however sadly did return it.
Rating: Summary: I'm very pleased with the new DVD Review: I've read some other reviewers complain about the special edition, especially about the quality of the color. I admit that some of the scenes in the first disc are a bit white washed,(then again I never liked the yellowish tint of the VHS copy) but any difficiencies in color are more than made up for by other features. The widescreen is absolutely wonderful and gives new depth and dimension to a variety of scenes, and the picture is crisp and clear. I feel it was well worth the money.
Rating: Summary: Surprise. Review: I bought this for my girlfriend after considerable difficulty finding it. I usually find period peices boring, but started paying attention upon her insistence. To make a long story short, we were up until six in the morning watching all 5 hours in one sitting. It pulls you in. Very cool.
Rating: Summary: Special Edition dvd Review Review: I'm writing about the Special Edition DVD only. I absolutely love this patricular adaptation of P&P and have watched it so many times that I've pratically memorised the dialogue. I was excited when I saw that a remastered wisescreen edition was available and ordered it at once. What a disappointment. The colour is so bad, especially on the first disc, it renders it almost unwatchable. I tried to adjust my tv to make it better, but not much helped. I makes me mad because the clips from the series that are shown in the little featurette have great colour tones! This would be a good edition otherwise. I love the widescreen, and am glad they removed the credits between episodes, but please A&E and BBC, do something about the condition of the transfer!! If another edition comes out promising a better transfer i will certainly buy it, but this time I will definitely read reviews first. So the 2 stars are for this edition, not the actual series which still remains a 10/10 in my book.
Rating: Summary: Buyer Beware! Don't buy the New Edition! Review: I just received my copy of this new edition and it was a great disappointment. Very poor quality. The other DVD version may not be perfect, but it's certainly better than this one. Colors are washed out and in some cases almost nonexistent and contrast is too dark! Terrible conversion. I'm returning mine for a refund! This wonderful production deserves the best remastering, not a mediocre one like this one!
Rating: Summary: Wish I'd read the reviews . . . Review: I'm a huge fan of P&P--both the novel and the miniseries. I'm sorry to say that previous reviewers are right. The "Special Edition" is--quite literally--a washout. While the sound is good (and widescreen Colin Firth can never be a bad thing), the transfer is terrible. The colors, contrast and shading apparent in the video or original dvd versions are almost non existent in this "special" version. If you're a widescreen purist (or just want double the Colin) go ahead and invest--otherwise, your other version is probably just fine.
Rating: Summary: Great TV - terrible DVD Review: The best adaptation of a Jane Austern book ever - marred by a really terrible DVD image. It is way too dark and very, very green.
Rating: Summary: New DVD is much preferable to Video Review: This is purely a review of the DVD version of the movie; of course I enthusiastically recommend this BBC adaptation of "Pride and Prejudice", just as hundreds of others have done before me. Although I agree with other reviewers that there seems to be an issue with the colour (especially on the first of the two discs), I'd say it's easily adjusted on your television. The DVD is much preferable to the video version. I had the feeling when first watching the DVD that, thanks to the widescreen format, there is so much more scope. Yesterday my sister and I conducted an informal experiment; we compared a scene in her video version to the same scene in the new DVD version. It's very obvious that there is so much more in the picture on the DVD; one can truly appreciate how the director framed each shot, and it never seems that something is cut out (as it is in the video). I was also very impressed with the clarity; one can actually see the various textures of the fabrics, see individual leaves in the picture. And as any true fan of the movie would agree, the ability to select and immediately jump to a specific scene is much better than fast forwarding through a video. Finally, some of the scenes are a bit different; the most notable is the wedding scene, when our hero looks at his intended during the ceremony. This never happens in the video version.
Rating: Summary: Great miniseries, but where's the widescreen? Review: If you are like me, you expect to drop your dvd in the player and, voila! Showtime. But bad luck here. Everything was squished and NO widescreen. Needless to say, I was upset. So I did a brief search on the net and came up with the answer to this problem. I needed to change the settings on my dvd player so that it would recognize the type of television I own. If you find yourself having similar difficulty I point you to a site called TheDigitalBits.com, look for an article titled, "The Big Squeeze", concerning anamorphic widescreen. If you haven't seen the film already, enjoy! If you have already seen this miniseries, some of you may recognize that this 2001 edition of the dvd includes several brief scenes that did not appear during the prime-time airings on A&E, but you would have seen them if you caught the hour-length episodes on "A&E In The Classroom" about 4-5 years ago.
Rating: Summary: The much anticipated "Special Edition"...not so special... Review: Alright, I already wrote a review asking people to refrain from criticizing the dvd features of this "special edition" because, at the time, the only version available was a not-so-great, out of print edition with absolutely NO special features whatsoever(heck, the original version even lacked basic features like closed captioning and seamless episodes). I finally received the Special Edition dvd yesterday and reviewed it excitedly. It is, after all, the best movie ever made. :-) Anyhow, maybe it was all the anticipation. Maybe I had set my hopes too high...or maybe this new special edition just plain sucked. I don't know. Let's just say I'm not impressed. On the contrary, I'm pretty disappointed. But let's not start out negatively. Let me first say that some things are improved for this edition. First, there is closed captioning, which is great for those of us who want to know every word of this movie. Second, the episodes are seamless, which is a nice change from the original. Third, there is a behind the scenes "making of" featurette that is pretty interesting (but where neither Firth or Ehle are interviewed). Fourth, it's the widescreen version. And that's about it. There's some biographies or whatever, but for the most part, that's all the "special" you're going to get. No director commentaries, no cast interviews with the major stars, nothin'. As for the picture quality, I can't quite put my finger on it, but I actually find myself disappointed by it. The picture, although much crisper, was paler than the original version. Everyone looked so pale. I found myself readjusting my tv quite a bit. Often times, Elizabeth seemed to blend into the background the coloring was that bad. The original version had much warmer tones, which I enjoyed. Everyone looks so sickly in this new version. In balancing, if I could only have one version, I'd probably stick to the first one. The coloring on this special edition is really awful. Of course, when all is said and done, this is still my favorite movie of all time and, I think, one that everybody should own, despite it's flaws. That's why four stars--five stars for the content of this movie, but (-1) for its flawed presentation.
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