Starring:	Dustin Hoffman	135min
	Sharon Stone
	Samuel L Jackson	1997
Screenplay:	Micahel Crichton	Sci-fi
Director:	Barry Levinson	Colour

Region	2	Studio:	Warner Brothers
Format	Single Sided, Dual Layer	Subtitles	English
			English Closed Captions
Aspect ratio	2.35:1		Arabic
Anamorphic	Yes
Soundtracks	Dolby Digital 5.1	Extra Features	Commentary (Dustin Hoffman & Samuel L Jackson)
			Effects Documentary -The Making Of The Sphere (15min)
Case type	Cardboard		4 Trailers
			History of Science Fiction
			Biographies / Filmographies

The DVD * * * * *		The Movie * *
If ever there was a chance to understand what is going on in Sphere, watching it a second time on DVD - and then listening to the commentary - should do the trick. As it turned out, just watching it again was enough. It's true - Sphere is so riddled with internal inconsistency on the part of character and plot, seeking a deeper understanding of the story becomes a futile waste of time. A real shame, since in all other ways, this is one of the very best DVDs yet. The picture quality is quite superb, with the MPEG encoding having to jump through hoops during all those underwater scenes with floating bits all over the place. It succeeds - spreading itself leisurely over two sides (mid point just before 67 minutes in a tidy changeover), the image quality never falls below excellent. The sound too is reference standard, with good use of acoustics and dynamics - it almost makes the unbelievable believable. The documentary is not the world's greatest, mainly of interest to both DVD owners actually seeking full-time employment in the special effects industry - there's plenty of advice on hand for those looking for a way in. The quality of the programme is not that good, with smearing particularly evident on the vertical pans of the storyboards. It looks like a transfer from NTSC video, but considering it's a relatively inconsequential extra, it's falls a tad below world hunger in the Serious Problem stakes. Now to the commentary. This is by two of the three leads, and suffers because both Jackson and Hoffman recorded their contributions separately - these things tend to spark into life when people bounce off each other. Jackson has the lion's share of the yakking, and among the "working with Dustin" eulogies a few choice nuggets are there to be found (Girls! They dropped his "Mel Gibson" butt shot!) While Jackson seems happy with the movie, Hoffman seems more aware that it doesn't really work, and struggles constantly to find an explanation. His revelation that his favourite collaborator Levinson never at any time before or during the shoot "had a clear vision about what the film should be" was interesting, along with the discovery that cast apparently had a huge amount of input on script changes. With a less than coherent screenplay, and a director without a clear vision... was this entirely wise? Meanwhile, Sphere is placed into some kind of historical context in the History of Sci-Fi, a text based article. The overview is quite eclectic and well-informed, though containing a few contentious points just to get the aficionados going. Along with the usual notes, it's a welcome addition. So there's a lot here to wade through, and congratulations to Warner Brothers on coming up with the goods. In the States, the movie underperformed at the box office, and so the company released this feature packed disc at a reduced RRP of $20. There's little doubt that this combination has shifted a helluva lot more copies than the movie maybe ever deserved, but you can't criticize Warner for that.		Forty minutes in, and things look good. A team of meet-and-greeters have been despatched to an underwater spaceship, discovered at the bottom of the Pacific and thought to have crashed 300 years ago. That's ages, so no need to meet and greet you'd think, but happily for the plot clever scientists have detected signs of something inside. As events unfold, there are a number of fine early twists, and - though the cast exhibit implausibly little or no fear at every strange turn - things are intriguing. Then the titular sphere is discoverd, but a more appropriate geometric figure would be a pear - that's the shape of the plot from here on in. "Pear" - good title. I don't like revealing too much story beyond the early set-up, but in this case it is beacause I didn't understand any of it. Actually, that's not strictly true - by the end, you do have an idea of what was meant to be going on, but it doesn't make the slightest bit of sense. Rarely has so much money been thrown at such a bizarre hotchpotch of ideas. It's kind of frustrating to see, becasue some - not all - of the stuff from Michael Chricton's novel is good. But director Levinson must share blame with both him and the screenwriters for letting thing go so far off the rails. As for the performances, well no-one seems to try too hard. Hoffman mumbles as usual, Sharon "look ma, I'm acting" Stone's butch alter ego is less than convincing and Samuel L Jackson doesn't exactly seem stretched. It's the unreality of the characters' reactions to the increasingly bizarre events which sinks the film the most. All in all, another disappointing entry into the big budget sci-fi cannon. The Abyss, for all its flaws, was more coherant and far more engaging than this.