Journey Into Buddhism (WGBH TV Mini-Series)

 

Picture: C     Sound: C+     Extras: C-     Episodes: B-

 

 

The new WGBH DVD set Journey Into Buddhism is three discs and 255 minutes long.  Buddhism is a very fine, complex, major world religion, no mater what certain Right Wing hate mongers might say.  This mini-series tries to combine documentary with a sense of origin, meditative state and location in the physical and spiritual world to explain and express the belief system.

 

John Bush tries his best to capture it all on his own and often succeeds, but the only place where I (who have actually studied the religion) I found fault was a certain sense of repetition that was not awful, but may have worked against it in overall length.  However, it is a good piece of work and those interested could do much worse.

 

The letterboxed 1.78 X 1 image has aliasing problems all over, is from likely analog and/or early digital low def footage and is only saved by the color and locations to some extent.  The Dolby Digital 2.0 Stereo has no real surrounds, which extends to the Dolby 5.1 mix that is really stretching out the sound thin.  Extras include DVD-ROM downloadable director’s notes, bonus video dance and alternate music-only audio track which has the same sound quality as that of the narrated version.

 

 

-   Nicholas Sheffo