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| Special Features: |
Disc One:
All-new digital transfer
Soundtrack remastered in Dolby Digital 5.1
Awards Notes
Disc Two:
Profile John Glenn: American Hero
Journey and the Mission: Scene-specific commentaries with director Philip Kaufman, producers Irwin Winkler and Robert Chartoff, cinematographer Caleb Deschanel; and cast members Jeff Goldblum, Veronica Cartwright, Scott Glenn, Ed Harris, Dennis Quaid, and Barbara Hershey.
13 minutes of Deleted Scenes/Bonus Footage/Never-before-seen additional scenes
3 new documentaries on the making of the film including interviews with Mercury astronauts and Chuck Yeager
Interactive timeline with vintage footage
Theatrical trailer(s)
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| Video Format: |
Anamorphic Widescreen (1.78:1)
[SS-SL]
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| Languages: |
English (Dolby Digital 5.1)
French (Dolby Digital 2.0 Surround)
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| Subtitles: |
English, Spanish, French
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| Captions: |
Yes
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| Casing: |
2-Disc Fold-out Case
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Based on Tom Wolfe's book of the same name, which rekindled the notion of American heroism at a time
when the Vietnam War had divided the country, Philip Kaufman's intimate space epic
was one of the most ambitious and exhilarating movies of the 1980s.
Detailing not just the Mercury space program and its heroic pilots, but also Chuck Yeager's intrepid
achievement in breaking the sound barrier,
The Right Stuff is filmmaking bravado at its finest. Kaufman manages to put us in the cockpit in many scenes,
and the results are an adrenaline shot that still holds up even by today's digital fx heavy standards.
The cast is superb, with Sam Shepard as legendary cowboy test pilot Chuck Yeager anchoring a talented crew that also includes
Ed Harris as famed astronaut and politician John Glenn, Dennis Quaid as "Gordo" Cooper, Fred Ward
as Gus Grissom and Scott Wilson as Scott Crossfield. Winner of four Academy Awards, including
Best Editing, Best Sound Effects, Best Sound and Best Original Score, and nominated for four more,
the fact that The Right Stuff made just $21.5 million at the box office is mind boggling.
Maybe now in this digitally remastered DVD release, it can be rediscovered.
For the film's 20th anniversary, a new digitally remastered two-disc special edition from Warner Bros.
replaces the original bare-bones DVD. By all accounts, The Right Stuff: Special Edition looks
and sounds fantastic, and the addition of a bounteous supply of supplemental features (including an 86-minute PBS documentary
on John Glenn) should have fans of the film drooling.
Picture Quality: 9/10
Warner Home Video's new digital remastering of The Right Stuff is presented in a 1.78:1 wide screen
transfer that features the anamorphic enhancement for 16:9 displays.
For a print marking its 20th anniversary, the transfer looks terrific. In general,
Warner has cleaned up the image very well. Detail is very sharp and very well defined,
though a few shots exhibit the expected softness that comes with age.
Color reproduction is fantastic, with vibrant hues, accurate flesh tones
and very little noise and grain. Blacks are nice and solid and shadow detail is
above average for the age of the print. Despite the three-plus hour run time, the bit rate doesn't seem
to have had a depreciable affect on video quality, and digital compression artifacts were barely noticed.
Kudos to Warner for another great transfer.
Sound Quality: 10/10
Presented in an outstanding Dolby Digital 5.1 audio track, Warner Bros. has given The Right Stuff
an audio track that's worthy of a film that won Academy Awards for Best Sound and Sound Effects Editing.
Despite what you might think, surround channel information is actually utilized quite well on the DVD,
particularly during many of the early jet plane sequences.
Directionality is very good in all 5 channels and there is excellent balance in the front channels.
Though the low frequency (sub-woofer) channel lacks the powerful punch found in most of today's recent releases,
it is quite active and more than adequate. A French Dolby Surround track is also included onto the DVD,
as well as English, Spanish and French subtitles.
Easter Eggs:
No Easter Eggs found during review.
Extra Features: 9/10
Disc one features the 3 hours and 13 minute digital transfer of the film in Dolby Digital 5.1 and 1.78:1 anamorphic
widescreen.
Disc two includes the meat of the extra features, and they are quite extensive.
Included are three new featurettes produced for the DVD.
Realizing the Right Stuff and T-20 Years and Counting run twenty and eleven minutes respectively,
offering a look at the production of the film through use of new interviews with the cast and
crew. The Real Men of The Right Stuff is a fifteen-minute featurette with Chuck Yeager and
author Tom Wolfe, and provides a looks at the actual Mercury astronauts.
The most significant program included on disc two is
John Glenn: American Hero is an extensive 86 minute PBS biography of the Mercury Astronaut,
who was later elected to the United States Senate. Most recently he returned to space at age seventy seven.
The Journey and the Mission: offers scene-specific commentaries with director Philip Kaufman
and various cast and crew members. Thirteen deleted scenes, running eleven minutes total,
offer an interesting glimpse at the huge scope of this project. A theatrical trailer and an interactive timeline
to space (incorporating vintage NASA footage) have also been included.
The Final Word:
Both a pure adrenaline rush and fascinating look at America's pioneer Mercury space program and its heroic
pilots, The Right Stuff is an historcal epic that ranks as one of the most entertaining
films about America's early space program ever made.
Warner’s digital remastering of The Right Stuff for the film's 20th Anniversary looks and sounds fantastic,
and the addition of a bounteous supply of supplemental features (headlined by an 86-minute PBS documentary
on John Glenn) should have fans of the film drooling.
A must have DVD for all space junkies.
Stephen Wong
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