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DISCLAIMER
Well I don't know if I should be reviewing DVDs because I don't have a fancy home theatre. I don't have a large TV. I don't have a surround sound system. I watch movies on my little TV and the sound comes from the TV speakers. That was just a disclaimer.
Intro
Well, first things first, this movie is called "The Dragon Lives" and IS NOT "Bruce Lee: The Man, The Myth". The back of the DVD case states that it's "Also known as Bruce Lee: The Man, The Myth", this is false. The movie also goes by the title "He's A Legend, He's A Hero".
Picture Quality
Before watching this DVD I had heard that picture quality was less than spectacular. Well it's not, but not as bad as I was expecting, it's certainly watchable. There a certain scenes with lots of specks and lines and sometimes the color will look faded. This usually doesn't last to long. I had no problem with the picture quality, but I'm used to watching crappy DVD and VHS copies of kung fu movies, so maybe I just used to it.
When I first read the announcement that VCI was releasing "The Dragon Lives" it said it would be presented in anamorphic widescreen for 16:9 TVs. I wasn't too disappointed when VCI didn't deliver with the anamorphic widescreen because I don't have a widescreen TV. The picture isn't even fully widescreen at 2.35.1, instead it's cropped to 1.85.1, which really hurts some scenes as you can't see all the action or people in the scene. I think people getting cut out of scenes is due to poor framing of the shots and bad camera work rather than the cropping of the picture.
Sound Quality
Read the disclaimer, it all sounded fine to me.
Extras
The only extras on the disc are a Bruce Li bio and filmography written by the talented William Wilson. I'll tell you if you buy this disc you should buy it only for the Bruce Li bio, it's that damn good. I'm not just saying that because William hooked me up with a free DVD either, well okay maybe I am. Seriously, the bio is very good and much more in depth than most other cheapie kung fu DVD bios and filmography. The filmography even lists alternate titles to Bruce Li's films, something that should be on all kung fu DVDs with everyone retitling movies left and right you never know what you're getting. Take this movie for instance! William thought he was writing a bio and filmography for Bruce Li's "Bruce Lee: The Man, The Myth", so he was quite surprised to learn it wasn't. Anyway, good work William. There you happy now! The VCI site also listed an extra feature as some trailers, but I didn't see any on there. I'll blame that one on William.
Menus/Screens/Other Crap
I gotta admit I love the main menu which is animated. There is a hitting sound effect which echoes as a drawing of Bruce Li sorta comes at out at you, it looks pretty nifty. The "Extras" page starts of with a small picture of Bruce Li and some text with a green background. As the text begins to scroll upward the pic and green background disappear and are replace by a black background. This makes reading the text much easier. The text scrolls along a decent pace, not too slow or too fast. Some background music would've been nice though. One thing I did like was the fact that there are 18 chapter selections. Usually some kung fu DVDs will only have a paltry 8, so having 18 is nice. The packaging was better than the Front Row or Gemstone stuff although for some reason I found the background colour on the back of the cover really cheesy, but the front looked cool.
Overall
The disc itself is not bad, better than a lot of stuff I've seen. The picture quality could've been better, but it's watchable. It would've been a lot better had the movie actually been "Bruce Lee: The Man, The Myth", but I got the disc for free, so I don't care.
Reviewed by Keith.