Review of Amadeus

Video

Amadeus is a long movie at 2 hours 40 minutes, and is split over 38 chapters for the DVD release. The film is now over 15 years old, and a good source print was used for the DVD as picture quality is very good. There were no noticeable scratches or ‘pops’ on the screen and the image is sharp.

Audio

The best feature about this DVD release, is that the complete soundtrack has been re-mastered for new 5.1 audio. The music in this film is very powerful and classical fans will love the Mozart pieces in Dolby Digital. A full music only track is available on the DVD also, which may appeal.

They have done an excellent job in the re-mastering process. The powerful classical pieces reverberate around the listening room as they did in the original auditorium as depicted in the movie.

Features

Aaaaaaghhh! It’s a flipper! This is the worst feature of this disk.

There are many extras to play around with, including a dedicated music only audio track as I said above. The menus are static.

Conclusion

A very powerful educational film is transferred to DVD with a nice clutch of extras. But why did they have to go and spoil it by making it a flipper? Hopefully this trend is disappearing now, and totally spoils a great movie on DVD, although this is mitigated somewhat by the amount of extras that is included.