X15 DVD with David McLean, Charles Bronson, Ralph Taeger (NR) +Movie Reviews

Under-powered rocket picture...

Mark Savary | Seattle, WA | 02/16/2004

(2 out of 5 stars)

"Half plane, half rocket, the North American X-15 took test pilots to the edge of space for the first time, bridging the gap between air and space flight. This movie showcases the efforts of NASA and the X-15 group to get the experimental rocketplane in the air.Fans of the X-15 will be in heaven, as they are treated to a ton of footage of the X-15 in testing, accidents, and actual flight. But sadly, for the rest of us, the movie is a gigantic bore. The X-15 itself is the star of the movie, the humans being incidental, more or less cardboard cut-outs. The narration of Jimmy Stewart to limited to the opening and closing of the picture, while Mary Tyler Moore and the other officers' wives inexplicably vanish from the last quarter of the picture. Charles Bronson and the other leads are really pretty good, but despite their best efforts, it's really hard to care about them or the success of their plane. The film is strangely lacking in real emotional content. What emotion there is is contrived and has a forced, "by-the-numbers" quality. Without any real human drama, it almost feels as if the movie had been put together by a computer. As for the actual X-15 footage, it's hard even to get into that because almost all of the flight scenes are "stretched" to fit the widescreen format. As a result, all of the jets are twice as long and half as tall as they ought to look. Frankly, it's distracting, and so maybe the director should have opted for a smaller aspect ratio during filming so that the other footage would better match the X-15 footage.Basically, a toy model of a rocket would soar higher than this picture does... and that's without lighting the engines!"

MGM DVD doesn't help this turkey either...

David Hoggan | Milpitas, CA USA | 07/19/2004

(1 out of 5 stars)

"Dick Donner's directorial debut is about as far from auspicious as you want to get and is no way evocative of the successes he would enjoy in later years with the likes of Superman and the Lethal Weapon series. This maudlin, mysoginist, cliche-ridden old-school melodrama is further marred by aspect ratio problems that have been explained sufficiently by other reviewers, so I won't get into that here--but what adds insult to injury is MGM DVD's hack mastering job. The studio didn't even bother to optimize the film for 16.9 televisions, which partially would have allowed viewers with 1.33 TVs to compensate for the aspect ratio problem by making an adjustment in their DVD player's display settings. Furthermore, with today's digital technology it would have been easy enough to correct the aspect ratio problem in a post house by either adjusting the stock footage to 2.35:1 by zooming in on it, or remastering the whole film at 16.9 by slicing off the edges of the footage that Donner shot. I would have preferred the latter approach as it would have sacrificed very little in terms of picture fidelity, and if this were a worthwhile film, I'd rip the DVD to my hard drive and do the scaling myself in Adobe AfterEffects. But, alas, I have a life and will leave this pursuit to only the most die-hard purists out there. Bottom line, MGM need to get a clue in regards to consistently formatting their legacy releases to 16.9, a practice they have yet to adapt. All they need to do is walk into any Good Guys store and notice that the vast majority of large TVs now take advantage of the wider aspect ratio."

About the aspect ratio problem

Serial Movie Buff | Paris, France | 02/21/2004

(3 out of 5 stars)

"The aspect ratio issue addressed by other reviewers is genuine: stock NASA and USAF footage was massively used in this picture, but as this was shot in the standard aspect ratio of 1,37:1, it had to be stretched horizontally to match the 2,35:1 Panavision framing used for the rest of the movie. Hence the annoying distorsion that makes all aircraft look like some giant inadvertenly stamped his foot on them. Unfortunately, this is a flaw inherent to the movie itself, and the DVD is not to blame. The basic mistake was to shoot in widescreen a movie that relied so heavily on 'external' footage."

Please Fix The Anamorphic Stretch

Roger Mattson | Los Angeles, California | 02/17/2004

(1 out of 5 stars)

"Being an aviation enthusiast, I welcome any DVD release pertaining to aviation. "X-15" is no exception, even though this picture leaves much to be desired. I am especially critical of the official US Air Force photography of the X-15, the B-52, and the F-100 and F-104 chase plane sequences. Originally shot in the "flat" format, then viewed with an anamorphic "scope" lens, the images are stretched, so that these sequences are very distracting. I saw this film in the theater, and it was equally distracting there. With a now very sucessful director like Richard Donner and a studio like MGM, you would have thought the DVD release could have been corrected. A true disappointment!"

The Good Old Sixties

Normand Hamel | Laval, Quebec | 06/02/2009

(4 out of 5 stars)

"After reading so many bad reviews I was hesitant to make the purchase. But I had seen the movie at the theater when it first came out in 1961 and had kept a found memory of it. I had an urge to see it again. Frankly, it was not as bad as I expected.

What people say about the aspect ratio problem is true. Indeed it is disappointing, especially when you consider the fact that with today's technology it would have been relatively easy to make the necessary corrections. That being said, I decided I was going to enjoy it the way it was presented, since there are no alternatives.

This production has two main components. One has to do with the main subject itself, the X-15, and I gather would be quite technical for the general public. The other aspect is the typical run-of-the-mill 1960's melodrama, which turns what would have been a dry documentary into a movie. During the entire proceeding we go back and forth between those two polarities. It is actually quite well made in that regard. Remember that we are talking about the early sixties here. Of course we don't make movies like this anymore and some scenes are quite laughable. But yet, it has that charming flavor of what were then very promising times. We now know that they were the golden years of aerospace. Today that atmosphere can only be found at air museums or in movies like this one. Also, back in 1961 was the beginning of space flight and the X-15 program was competing with the Mercury program. This tension is alluded to right from the beginning, and hangs there like a backdrop to the main theme. In this regard it reminded me of Tom Wolf's "The Right Stuff", which came out quite a bit later.

A nice feature of this DVD is that subtitles are available in English, French or Spanish. I recommend to anyone to select the English subtitles, rather than no subtitles at all, for the sound is not very good and some of the exchanges are a bit technical. So if you don't want to miss anything go for the subtitles in the original language.

Enjoy!

n_hamel@videotron.ca"

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