Heart of Darkness (1993) (TV movie, Tim Roth, John Malkovich)

Heart of Darkness (1993)
Made for Television
Cast: Tim Roth, John Malkovich, Isaach De Bankolé
Director: Nicolas Roeg

IMDB: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0110002/
Rotten Tomatoes: http://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/heart_of_darkness/
Nicolas Roeg's made-for-television adaptation of Joseph Conrad's classic Heart of Darkness succeeds because of its excellent cast and powerful story. Tim Roth stars as a solider who travels on an African river in search of Col. Kurtz (John Malkovich), a brilliant solider who has suddenly gone mad and is worshipped as a god by the native tribes. While it doesn't achieve the power of Conrad's novella or Francis Ford Coppola's adaptation Apocalypse Now, the movie has several fine sequences and excellent performances by the two leads.

DVD Release Date: January 14, 2014
ASIN: B00HQI7WE6
Amazon DVD-R: http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00HQI7WE6

ENCODING NOTES: This is NOT the DVD version. This is re-multiplexing into MKV format to solve audio sync issues with the AVI format of the laserdisc-to-digital transfer by brynrocks (torrent hash 9FD28EB5CE6C3D6071E66104818A0FD9C5987188, original transfer notes below). To avoid quality degradation if was NOT re-encoded like Terrannack (torrent hash 361454D82974913456AF54DE9E5785BF1BCF79C0). It can be played with VLC.

General
Format : Matroska
Format version : Version 4 / Version 2
File size : 1.34 GiB
Duration : 1h 45mn
Overall bit rate : 1 821 Kbps

Video
ID : 1
Format : MPEG-4 Visual
Format profile : Advanced Simple@L5
Format settings, BVOP : No
Format settings, QPel : No
Format settings, GMC : No warppoints
Format settings, Matrix : Default (MPEG)
Codec ID : V_MS/VFW/FOURCC / XVID
Codec ID/Hint : XviD
Duration : 1h 45mn
Bit rate : 1 465 Kbps
Width : 640 pixels
Height : 480 pixels
Display aspect ratio : 4:3
Frame rate mode : Constant
Frame rate : 25.000 fps
Color space : YUV
Chroma subsampling : 4:2:0
Bit depth : 8 bits
Scan type : Progressive
Compression mode : Lossy
Bits/(Pixel*Frame) : 0.191
Stream size : 1.08 GiB (80%)
Writing library : XviD 1.1.2 (UTC 2006-11-01)
Default : Yes
Forced : No

Audio
ID : 2
Format : MPEG Audio
Format version : Version 1
Format profile : Layer 3
Codec ID : A_MPEG/L3
Codec ID/Hint : MP3
Duration : 1h 45mn
Bit rate mode : Constant
Bit rate : 320 Kbps
Channel(s) : 2 channels
Sampling rate : 44.1 KHz
Compression mode : Lossy
Stream size : 241 MiB (18%)
Default : Yes
Forced : No

ORIGINAL ENCODING NOTES

While critical and individual opinions vary greatly on this film, I felt the need to make this direct laserdisc-to-digital transfer since it's unreleased on DVD, features two great actors, and adapts a classic story. As mentioned below, this is based on Joseph Conrad's "Heart of Darkness", which also inspired Apocalypse Now. It is important to understand that "Apocalypse" was very loosely based on Heart of Darkness, and this is a far more true to the novella adaptation. However, taken for its own merits, standing as a work of art on its own, you may find something to enjoy here.

In the absence of a DVD release, this is about as good a copy of this film as you are going to get. I transferred this directly from laserdisc and tweaked the picture for quality during the transfer (boosted the brightness a tad, boosted the saturation quite a bit, and boosted the sharpness a touch as well). Since this is a made-for-television movie, it was not created as a widescreen release, and therefor the aspect ratio is correct and true to the original at 4:3. If anyone is actually interested in the technical specs on the transfer, just post in the commens and I'll be glad to post.

I hope some folks find something of interest here. As an artist myself, it frustrates me to see any film, regardless of my personal opinion of its quality or merits, falling throught the cracks of a media change (VHS to DVD, DVD to Blu-Ray, etc.). Somebody took the time to make this movie, and everyone should get the chance to view and judge it for themselves.

From the Laserdisc jacket:
Turn of the Century Africa. Colonial traders driven by greed brave forbidding dangers to exploit the continent's vast treasures. One of these is sea captain Marlow (Tim Roth), who penetrates the depths of the Congo's steaming jungles in pursuit of the mysterious Mr. Kurtz (John Malkovich), deranged chief of a remote trading station. Far from the sanctuary of civilized society, Marlow and Kurtz face each other and the dark truth about man and themselves. Nocolas Roeg directs this acclaimed adaptation of Joseph Conrad's classic tale, the one that inspired Apocalypse Now, of the evil that lurks within the heart of man.

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