THE MOVIE

Set in the slums of New York in the '50's, this is an electrifiying musical about two gangs, the Jets and the Sharks. (Natalie Woods) plays Maria who falls in love with Tony (Richard Beymer) who is a member of the Jets. As Maria's brother is a member of the Sharks and is at war with the Jets, her love is forbidden.

When the two gangs rumble, disaster strikes which will affect the two gangs forever. Not giving too much away, this is a story of hatred and how love can concure all.

With an unforgettable score by Leonard Bernstein and Stephen Sondheim and choreography by Jerome Robbins, this film won ten Academy Awards including Best Picture of 1961.

THE TRANSFER

Video:

Wow. Another film that's pushing 40+ years old and it looks as good as any modern release.

Extensive work seems to have been done to ensure a pristine transfer was performed. There is the tiniest bit of telecine wobble noticable especially during the opening scene as we fly around New York City.

Unfortunately, it seems as if the same attention was not paid to the MPEG compression techniques used. It is generally not too bad, but there are scenes which obviously suffer from too-high compression rates. The opening picture where it changes from the sketch to live action is a prime example of this. Water shimmers badly and aliasing is present is many of the edges of buildings.

The picture IS 16:9 enhanced and flicking to this mode resulted in fewer aliasing problems, but there were still too many for a modern transfer.

Colour depth is exceptionally good. The bright backdrops are brought to live wonderfully, and the Jets blonde hair never looked so good.

Shadow detail is also of exceptionally high quality. Never wanting in clarity it help maintain an overall high standard.

The picture only scores slightly above average because of the bad compression faults.

Audio:

Yet another modern remix of an old soundtrack in 5.1 channels.

This ones a little different from Chitty Chitty Bang Bang or Fiddler on The Roof in that the sound engineer has not really expanded the soundtrack much beyond the use of the front soundstage.

Surround channel usage was virtually non-existent. It was very subtle when used.

Sub-woofer usage was virtually non-existent. Like the surrounds, it was very subtle.

Dialogue was clear and easy to understand. Again, it was spread across all 3 front channels and not restricted to the center channel.

The ADR work was very obvious is part, but certainly no indication of any lip synch problems.

THE EXTRAS