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Review : Summit on Ice As a young boy growing up in Canada there is no escaping the sport of hockey and it's presence on the Canadian way of life. Since as far back as I can remember my dad has been watching or listening to games on the TV or radio. He even purchases the occasional tickets although with the current ticket prices that doesn't happen as much as it used to. At an early age I was exposed to the game and to this day I remember the first time I ever saw a live game. It was a cool experience and for awhile my dad and I would go to 3 or 4 games a year. During my younger years from about age 10 onwards I was a big hockey fan collecting sports cards and playing lots of street hockey and indoor hockey. Alas I was never much of an ice skater and that crushed my hopes and dreams of an NHL career. Still I have many fond hockey memories including organizing and officiating an indoor hockey league in my grade school years and one memorable birthday party where I staged a full all-star game scenario in my backyard. At one point in my life I lived and breathed hockey much like how I live and breathe movies now. As I grew older my interest waned somewhat and I found myself less interested in hockey in general but I still enjoyed the NHL series of games from EA Sports. It's been over a year since I last saw a complete game on the tube and even longer since I attended a game. Still on a deeper level I have been meaning to catch up with the world of hockey as the neighbor across the street is the captain of the local NHL team Vancouver Canucks. Perhaps some free tickets can be acquired as one of the major barriers is the cost of a ticket. A single ticket now costs what we were paying for 2 back in the mid 90's. Throughout the early days of the sport, Canadians dominated every aspect of the game. The top teams were the Montreal Canadians and the Toronto Maple Leafs and they consisted of mostly Canadian talent. Not only were Canadian's excelling at the NHL level but they were also taking top honors on the international stage as well winning numerous Olympic gold metals and World Championships. It seemed as though the Canadians would never be beaten but then out of nowhere came the Russians. The Russians began to win more and more consistently and became Canada's main opponent. In 1972 the rivalry would be taken to a whole new level in what has been called the greatest series in hockey history. The Canada-Russia summit, an eight game series between the two hockey heavyweights. The NHL even made their top players available for this contest. After a month long training camp the team led by ex-Boston Bruin's coach Harry Sinden and players like Ken Dryden, Paul Henderson and Bobby Clarke took the ice in the big event. The home ice advantage was to be split 4 games a piece with 4 games in Canada played in Montreal, Toronto, Vancouver and Winnipeg and 4 games overseas in Russia. "Summit on Ice" is a documentary based on this exciting and now legendary series. It covers all aspects surrounding the series from the selection of players, to the lineup changes and interesting back stories surrounding the series. Made up of equal parts hockey footage and retrospective interviews with players from both sides this is a very interesting documentary. As I've seen the game footage many times I found the interview footage to be more informative especially discussion with Phil Esposito who explained the players thoughts about the series and why initially they didn't come out playing their best. The format for this documentary is episodic in nature as this originally aired on Canadian television in 1992. The film is organized in segments which correspond to where the commercial breaks would have been during the television airing. These well timed segments each deal with a separate game or aspect of the series. However a minor problem pops up in how the transitions from one chapter to next is handled. Each chapter ends with a title logo and musical interlude going in to the break. A simple fade in and fade out would have worked much better in this case. Aside from that minor annoyance I'm hard pressed to find any problems with the documentary format or it's content. Sure some fans will be clamoring for more game footage or more interview footage but I think a good mixture of both was achieved here. After all fans have seen the games many times and many of them probably have them on tape from the many re airings over the years. If you missed during it's original airing on CBC or if your a fan of the Canada-Russia summit series and you want to learn more about the events surrounding it then "Summit on Ice" is a must see. Documentary Rating : 8.5/10 Video Seville presents "Summit on Ice" in it's original 1.33:1 aspect ratio. "Summit on Ice" was originally created to run in a two hour time frame on Canada's CBC network. The program consists of two different types of footage, interview footage, archival game and off ice footage. As one would expect the quality of the transfer varies depending on the source footage used. Interviews appear sharp and free of major defects whereas the game and off ice footage is often in rough shape with dust marks, scratches, vertical lines and any other number of video imperfections. It should be stated that not all of the game footage is in rough shape and that some of it looks downright beautiful. In general though the hockey shots suffer due to the age of the materials available. Colors are excellent in the interview footage and slightly muted during the hockey sequences. I've seen replays of these classic games and they've never looked so good so there appears to have been at least some cleanup done here and there. It should also be noted that each "Chapter" on the DVD corresponds to a commercial break that would have occurred in the original 1992 TV airing. At these points the video cuts to the logo sequence and returns from a fade out at the beginning of the next chapter. The black level is a bit troubling as the fade outs are a bit light for my liking. While I can't be entirely certain I'd guess this program was shot on high grade video as it doesn't have the sharpness and definition that film is capable of. Despite a few expected rough spots during the actual game footage, I've never seen Paul Henderson's game winning goal look so good. An above average transfer considering the elements that were available to work with. Video Rating : 7.5/10 Audio On the audio side of this disc the viewer is once again reminded of the origins of the program. Being a documentary shot for and probably financed by the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation there is little to talk about here. Audio is presented in both DD 2.0 English and DD 2.0 French. This is your standard news documentary type audio with things remaining tightly in the front speakers. Although the disc decoded as Dolby Surround it wouldn't surprise me if this was a simple stereo presentation. The predominantly dialogue based audio mix sounds good with both the interviews and voice over narration by Alan Clark coming through loud and clear. The audio during the hockey footage sequences isn't on the same level but that's due to the limited fidelity range of the television broadcasts which were probably recorded in mono during that time period. There's no real musical score or sound effects to speak of aside from the program's logo/musical sequence which is used throughout the program. Audio Rating : 7.5/10 Extras Seville Pictures are not content with just putting out bare bones discs and they try to add value content whenever possible. This disc includes a trio of special features. The sole video based supplement is a trailer for the earlier VHS release which runs 60 seconds in length and is presented in Dolby Stereo sound. On to the static supplements we have a interesting take on the standard cast/crew biographies with Player card style bios. This puts the biographies and statistics for the players into a hockey card type layout. Last but certainly not least there is an 8 question multiple choice trivia game which will be fairly easy to anyone paying attention during the feature. Certainly there isn't much in the way of extras here but given the nature of the feature there isn't much that could be included here. One feature that could have been included would have been the ability to jump to certain big moments in the series. That's just a thought though and I'm glad that there was some bonus material included at all even if it's not all that involving. Extras Rating : 6/10 Final Thoughts There aren't very many choices for sports fans on DVD especially hockey fans. A quick search on a major online DVD retailer for the words "hockey and DVD" only came up with 4 results. Seville Pictures adds a great 5th entry to that list with the excellent documentary "Summit on Ice". The video and audio quality were much better then expected and defiantly a cut above what it would have looked like on TV. Toss in a handful of extras for good measure and this disc is on a breakaway heading full speed towards the goal. "Summit on Ice" is a must see for any fan of Canadian hockey or classic hockey in general and would make a great stocking stuffer for come Christmas time. Recommended. Review by Mark McLeod November 8, 2001 |