Giant (Two-Disc Special Edition)

Rating:
Summary: Classic epic--- but flawed re-recording of music score
Review: It's nice to have this classic Texas epic, one of the All-time great films, on DVD. And the extras are good.

Unfortunately, the sound mixing on both the DVD and the mid-to-late 90s tape version, is muted as the musical score was re-recorded during the remastering... The singing voices and the booming kettle drums can barely be heard at all, sucking much of the original drama out of the score.

Rating:
Summary: The Texas T.
Review: GIANT stars Rock Hudson and Elizabeth Taylor as Jordan and Leslie Benedict in an epic story about one family's journey to power and respectability. Jordan Benedict is a Texan rancher who travels east searching for horses to ride and cattle to breed. He makes a stop at the Lynnton estate. While there he meets Leslie Lynnton. At first he is amused by her charm and she is infatuated by his good looks and wealth. Soon his amusement grows into love and he asks Leslie to marry him. After a brief honeymoon, the couple returns to Jordan's dilapidating
Texan family ranch. Leslie is an outcast at first, but she slowly begins incorporating herself into the society in which she has moved teaching kindness and compassion to her lunkhead of a husband along the way. The movie follows their relationship and the growth of their family through about 30 years of marriage.

GIANT is a visually spectacular movie. Though the film's scenery isn't it's best feature, it adds a lot to the film's substance. The acting is very well done, especially by Taylor and James Dean. GIANT is probably best known as Dean's last movie (he was killed before the picture was even released). Dean plays Jet Fink, the lead secondary character in the picture--a man fighting against the world to make a name for himself and always playing second fiddle to Jordan Benedict. Rock Hudson does a decent job of acting in the film, but he is upstaged every time that James Dean appears in a scene. The real-life animosity that Hudson felt towards Dean adds a great deal of texture to their performances and makes the rough relationship between Jordan Benedict and Jet Fink even that much more realistic. Taylor holds her ground with Dean perfectly capturing the sexual tension between the two. Besides those three, there really aren't any other standout performances.

Unlike many epic movies that focus on nations, empires, or dynasties (both literally and metaphorically), GIANT chooses to tell the tale of the generation of one family, and specifically one couple. It's more a film about love and family than it is about cattle, oil, big business, or money. That's really nice to see for a change. After all, even though most of us probably aren't as materially blessed as the Benedicts, we all live epic stories.

Rating:
Summary: A DISGRACE
Review: Please heed the one brave reviewer who also found this DVD of GIANT a disgrace - and it is. Don't be mislead! The sound quality is terrible. The colors are, in some scenes, almost completely washed out, which make the images appear as if they were once in black and white and then colorized. In several scenes, you can actually see flashes of lines, as if the print was lifted off a television screen. There was NO attempt to upgrade, enhance or preserve this wonderful, classic film. The extras? Nothing special. Certainly not worth the cost of buying this terrible DVD expecting a top grade enhancement and then finding that you have something that wouldn't even be shown on TCM! My question is, where did TCM get THEIR print?? Please heed this advice. Buy the 1985 VHS tape before you waste your money on what has to be one of the worst rip-offs in DVD retail yet. By comparision: check out the terrific quality of the "North by Northwest" DVD. Beautifully done, lovingly preserved. This disgrace should never have been released. I wasted my money on this. It's TERRIBLE. Poor sound, poor colors, poor everything ... except for a great film getting a very poor treatment. Stay away! A disgrace. An absolute disgrace. Shame on these other reviewers. What were they looking at? From the opening scene you can hear how bad the sound is, how disappointing the colors are, how terrible the whole thing is. The DVD of "Giant" is "Little."

Rating:
Summary: This movie is GIANT success
Review: It stars Elizabeth Taylor, Rock Hudson, and James Dean. Who are all great actors in their own right. It is based on a book by Edna Ferber. This is about a tale of oil, cattle, and racial injustice. It follows the fortunes of one family from the 1930s to the 1950s, in Texas. It is directored by George Stevens, who won an Oscar, for this 1956 box-office hit, which got nine other nominations, including Best Picture.

Rating:
Summary: LUSCIOUS
Review: Oh please! For those of you who bash this movie, you obviously have no appreciation for the Hollywood system of the 1950s, with its epic movies and larger than life themes. Giant is one of these. Yes, it's long, yes, it's often over-the-top. But the bottom line is that it's luscious. You've got James Dean, Elizabeth Taylor, and Rock Hudson, three of the cinema's finest actors; plus a fine supporting cast, including a young, hot Dennis Hopper. I'd bet that anyone who doesn't enjoy this probably also didn't like "Gone with the Wind" or any other overproduced Hollywood gem.
Texas in all its glory lives in this masterpiece of a film.