American Graffiti [DVD] [1973] [Region 1] [US Import] [NTSC]

If you haven't seen this, it's a fun film from George Lucas's early days as a director (it's his second movie, after THX 1138, and introduced audiences to Harrison Ford before Lucas's next film, some obscure space fantasy...) The disc itself is decent. There are a few soft-focus long shots, but that's likely more to do with how it was shot. For the most part it's nice and crisp, looking how a film on the format should. There aren't many extras, but it does include the feature-length making of doc, which is very nice indeed, even if it is in 4:3 SD resolution.

My childhood fav brill soundtrack

still a great movie

Featuring a great cast of mostly unknown yet soon to be famous actors and starting a whole movement of nostalgia for the world of the 50's sock hops, cool cars and music, a young George Lucas films a semi-biographical remembrance documentary of sorts of his young teenager years in Modesto California in the late 50's and early 60's. Shot in a single nighttime span of various vignettes featuring the above-mentioned cast as well as many other characters we either knew in school or had heard stories about, American Graffiti became a very successful coming of age time capsule for that era. Even if you didn't do any cruising down the main street in your small town, you'll appreciate all the fantastic vintage cars and be reminded of all the various typical high school hijinks of these young people. And most of us can relate to at least one of not several of these young kids' situations on the precipice of adulthood facing a very uncertain future. Lucas manages to capture this feeling quite well. More than likely the nostalgia of our memories is much more pleasant than the reality! Lots of humor and great classic rock n roll keeps the film rolling along. And we see in the space of one night some who do step forward into adulthood and some who postpone it. The Blu-ray does a reasonable job putting up a remastered picture supervised by George Lucas himself. This movie has always been a difficult transfer to home video as it was filmed somewhat on the cheap and of course essentially shot completely at night. Some scenes have great fine grain, natural detail, good color pop and nice contrast. The gleaming, smooth paint jobs and chrome on the vintage cars shine just right. But there are some instances of black crush, disappearing grain into a sort of a digitally processed picture with some edge enhancements. None of this is fatal and for the most part you'll be pleased watching this disc. The 2.0 DTS-HD Master audio sound has very good fidelity. Dialog is sometimes drowned out a little by the music but there's no distortion or tinniness to the overall sound environment. Extras include a great "The Making of American Graffiti" documentary and some fantastic sometimes hilarious screen tests of the young cast. If you are of a certain age, you'll need this in your video collection to remember what it was like at a moment in America for high school kids before the rest of the 1960's and its terrible events began to crush all the innocence out of society for good. So, where were you in '62?

Excelente película. Todo Ok.

I had three products. Two arrived around the date line. The third is late by two weeks.

ok