Gettysburg – The Battle & The Address (Discovery Channel/Genius Blu-ray) + Lincoln & Lee At Antietam (Inecom
DVD)
Picture:
B- Sound: B-/C+ Extras: D/B Main Programs: B-/B
If you
have not already overdosed on information about the battles surrounding
Gettysburg, here are two more titles in the current home video formats for you
to consider. Gettysburg – The Battle & The Address are two separate shows
meant for an hour-long time slot on The Discovery Channel (and its affiliates)
on Blu-ray from Genius. One is called The Battle That Changed The World, the
other, The Speech That Saved America. As good and smart as they are, they seem a
bit watered down for entertainment value and not as rich as what you might have
from PBS at its best or a small company called Inecom that has issued many
documentaries on the subject.
The
latest of these to come out on DVD from them is Lincoln & Lee At Antietam, which runs a healthier 90 minutes
and that means only 3 minutes less than the other two Blu-ray programs
combined. No worry about commercial
breaks there. Narrated by Robert F.
Maxwell, it is a very deep, rich, well-researched piece about what they rightly
claim is “the single bloodiest day in American history” covering just how
brutal and ugly that conflict became.
Not the usual safe fare of The Discovery Channel, this is possibly the
most underdiscussed aspect of the whole war and this program by Writer/Director
Robert Child is one of the first titles on the subject I would recommend to
anyone interested on the subject. The
better of the two releases, I hope we see a Blu-ray of it soon.
The 1080i
1.78 X 1 image on the Blu-rays have their share of motion blur and that holds
their watchability back, while the anamorphically enhanced 1.78 X 1 on the DVD
has much less, looks like a 1080p production and has better color
stability. The Dolby Digital 5.1 on the
Blu-ray is not bad, but on the weak side and with the absence of a newer,
richer audio codec, shows the original master was probably not that good. The Dolby Digital 2.0 Stereo on the DVD is not
as good, but not by any wide margin, well recorded and clear. Inecom was using 5.1 codecs like DTS and
Dolby in many of their recent releases, but opted otherwise here.
Extras
are non-existent on the Blu-ray, while the DVD offers a 25-minute-long on
camera interview with Maxwell, audio commentary by Maxwell & Child and
trailers for other DVDs in what has become a formidable series dubbed Minutes
Of History, which we have reviewed a few installments of, such as in the links
below.
You can
read more about this period on Inecom DVD at these links:
Gettysburg – Civil War Minutes III
http://www.fulvuedrive-in.com/review/2784/Gettysburg+&+Stories+Of+Valor
Horses Of Gettysburg
http://www.fulvuedrive-in.com/review/3826/Horses+Of+Gettysburg
- Nicholas Sheffo
