Everest [DVD]

With EVEREST, the spectacular giant-screen motion picture for IMAX theatres, you can relive a breathtaking journey to the top of the world. Filmed during the infamous 1996 storm that claimed eight lives, EVEREST documents the filmmakers' harrowing rescue efforts to help surviving members of the ill-fated group. Join an international team of climbers as they scale the world's tallest peak, and witness the perils of skin-blistering cold, violent blizzards that drop the windchill to minus 100 degrees, and air so thin it numbs the mind.

Filmed in spellbinding IMAX photography, "the most hyperrealistic format yet invented," as described by producer Greg MacGillivray, EVEREST will take you across creaking icefalls and gaping chasms, up dangerous, towering cliffs and into the death zone of oxygen-thin altitude. Narrated by Academy Award(R)-nominee Liam Neeson, and including the music of George Harrison, EVEREST is a rich, dramatic story - a daring adventure of triumph and tragedy.

Does an IMAX film play well on video? The large screen IMAX movie experience always sheds light on subjects we thought we knew before and adds a you-are-there immediacy. However, once the image is shrunk down to TV size, is the film still as effective? Certainly, one misses the impact of the huge IMAX screen, but for those who missed Everest in IMAX theaters, the video is well worth watching. The film is not letterboxed because the aspect ratio of IMAX films is very similar to that of a television. Only a few shots are "squished" to show the entire image (a shrine, a mountainscape), which gives them a bowed effect. Nevertheless, the clarity of an IMAX film is so good to begin with that it makes an excellent video transfer.

For anyone who read Jon Krakauer's bestseller Into Thin Air, Everest is vital to putting the images with Krakauer's prose, without following the excruciating blow-by-blow story again. As Doug Thomas states, "the video is well worth watching" for those who missed the IMAX experience, as it still provides a captivating visual representation of the treacherous journey to the world's highest peak.

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