Widescreen Magazine reviews Lagaan;

Picture Score: 3
Sound Score (Dolby Digital): 3.5
Critics' Composite Score: 4

[scores are out of max 5]

Story Synopsis:
The year is 1893, when Britain’s Queen Victoria was the unsympathetic ruler of India. The people of Champaner, a small farming village in Central India, faced adversity with fortitude and injustice with dignity when they were forced to pay twice the amount of Lagaan (taxes) that year to the local king. This is an inspiring story of a battle without bloodshed fought by a group of unlikely heroes led by Bhuvan (Khan), an enigmatic young farmer with courage born of conviction. (Suzanne Hodges)

DVD Picture:
The anamorphically enhanced 2.35:1 DVD picture exhibits generally pleasing image quality, with images that are mostly sharp with pleasing detail. Images can appear quite smeared, with the loss of detail appearing consistent with the look of noise reduction. Edge enhancement can be quite bothersome, and moiré is occasionally noticed in patterns on clothing. While colors are rich and vibrant, the darker scenes can appear plugged up. Pixelization can be bothersome, and other compression-related artifacts create distraction. Distractingly, negative splices are detected on many occasions. The source element is revealing of dirt, artifacts, and scratches. (Suzanne Hodges)

Soundtrack:
The Dolby® Digital 5.1-channel soundtrack features a substantial -10 dB of offset for dialnorm. The audio presentation is rather pleasant to experience, especially through the music, which has been nicely recorded and projects an atmospheric, spacious presence throughout the listening space. The music also has an abundance in the low-end, with substantial .1 LFE activity. Otherwise, the nature of the soundfield is noticeably subtle in terms of spatiality, and typically focused toward the dialogue. Sound effects can also seem somewhat veiled in the upper-midrange. One notable aspect of this soundtrack production is that the presence of the music is somewhat more prominent than usual, compared to the effects and dialogue. Voices have a spatial ambiance that is indicative of an ADR production, and the ambience rendering of the outdoors might seems a little too subdued. (Perry Sun)

Source link: WSR Lagaan review

Ali



Edited By ali on Feb. 02 2002 at 18:54

Digitally Obsessed DVD review of Lagaan

Ali