| Video Roundup June 2009
Blu-ray Update
A selection of movies on Blu-ray for June 2009.
 Falling Down (1993,
Warner Home Video) ****
Falling Down baffled many audiences when it was
first released, in 1993, probably because it hit too close to home in depicting a
post-cold-war society that had begun to unravel and threaten the American Dream. Michael
Douglas, in glasses and a nerdy crew cut, plays William Foster, a worker who’s lost
his job at a defense-industry plant because of the cutbacks in defense spending made after
the collapse of the Soviet Union. Foster is a man on the edge; the film’s first shot
is a close-up of his eyes, and we soon discover that he’s in Los Angeles, stuck in
the mother of all traffic jams. Gazing at the bumper stickers on various passing cars, he
begins to lose it, and finally abandons his own car (the vanity plate reads
"D-FENS"), determined to walk home. But "home" is where his divorced
wife and daughter live, and where he is no longer welcome. As Foster treks his way across
the city, his actions become more and more violent as he lashes out at people he thinks
have denied him his due. He’s pursued by Detective Martin Prendergrast (Robert
Duvall), who, on his last day on the job before retiring, puts together bits and pieces of
police calls and begins to realize just what Foster’s doing.
Douglas and Duvall are superb; this is great acting by any
standard. The film is tightly directed by Joel Schumacher, and expertly edited to keep the
audience in suspense. Seen as a portrait of an era viewed through the eyes of a man driven
crazy by it, Falling Down now carries much more weight than it did it 1993. The
video transfer for this Blu-ray edition is gorgeous. Most of the film is shot in bright
sunlight, but the colors remain vivid and are never washed out. The detail is good enough
to give us a sense of three-dimensionality, and the print seems to have been cleaned up
considerably -- there are no artifacts or film damage. The sound is clean and
well-balanced, but mostly up front. There’s a good commentary track with Douglas,
Schumacher, and other members of the cast and crew, as well as a fascinating interview
with Douglas, conducted in 2009. The footage of this interview has been deliberately
damaged, and split-screen images are used to make it look retro, but none of this can
disguise the fact that Michael looks more like his father, Kirk Douglas, every day. The
disc comes packaged in an elaborate "book" folder that contains a wealth of
great still photographs. A must-rent, Falling Down would be a good purchase as
well.
 Final Destination (2000,
New Line) ***1/2
In this neat little film, the main character is never seen,
though his ominous presence is felt throughout. Members of a high school French class
board an international jet to begin their class trip: a romp in Paris. One of them, Alex
(Devon Sawa), has a premonitory dream that, shortly after takeoff, the plane will explode
over a river. He freaks out and is ushered off the plane, along with several other
students and a teacher. The plane takes off and promptly explodes, with such force that
the shock wave shatters the windows of the waiting room. Suddenly, Alex is being
investigated by the FBI, and is feared by the other survivors. He comes up with a theory
that he and his companions have cheated Death (that main character), who is now unhappy
about having been thwarted and is coming back to kill them, one by one. This proves to be
correct. The murders are ingenious, Rube Goldberg affairs in which one seemingly innocent
action leads to another and another and, in the end, a death that’s always easily
explained away as accidental. But Alex, and we, know better.
New Line’s print was quite good, free of any glaring
defects, and has been transferred to Blu-ray with its rich colors and dark, well-defined
shadows intact. The soundtrack seems a little anemic by today’s
sock-’em-in-the-gut standards, but has some good, imaginative use of the surrounds
and sufficient if unspectacular bass. There are very interesting extras, including one on
the casting, and an alternate ending that is not as cheap a shot as the one ultimately
used, but not as defining, either. All in all, this tidy little teen horror film is quite
a cut above the Friday the 13th franchise, and just short of the quality of Disturbia
and Fright Night.
 Frost/Nixon (2008,
Universal) ***1/2
After Richard Nixon resigned from office in the summer of
1974, President Gerald Ford pardoned him for any crimes he committed during the Watergate
affair, as well as for any other crimes he may have committed during his nearly six years
in office. Americans were incensed that Nixon (here played by Frank Langella) should have
gotten away scot-free, without at least apologizing for what he’d done. British
talk-show host and entrepreneur David Frost (Michael Sheen) saw a good financial
opportunity in being able to interview Nixon, and ask questions that might at last reveal
the ex-President’s full complicity in Watergate. At first it seemed as if Frost would
never raise enough money to fund the interviews, but he persevered, and finally, in 1977,
the two sat down before the cameras to talk.
Director Ron Howard’s film has the feeling of a
documentary, and aside from some gripping moments in which one gasps at the subtlety of
Frank Langella’s performance, the film is overall quite dry, though never boring. The
Blu-ray Disc is really not a good HD statement, but that’s not the fault of the
format. To preserve the feel of the late 1970s, the film’s colors were toned down to
simulate video, and there’s limited use of the surround channels. These are perfectly
fine choices for this film -- they just don’t provide any demonstration-quality
footage. There are some interesting extras, including Universal’s U-Control
picture-in-picture feature, some very good deleted scenes, and excerpts from the actual
Frost/Nixon interviews. My recommendation: by all means see Frost/Nixon, but rent
instead of buying.
 Grease (1978,
Paramount) ****
Paramount announced the Blu-ray edition of Grease
some time ago, then postponed it at least once. It’s finally here, and the wait has
been worth it: This is a definitive edition. It’s great fun to see John Travolta and
Olivia Newton-John so near the beginnings of their careers. Travolta was skinny back then,
and a real force as a singer and dancer. In fact, what’s still impressive about Grease
more than 30 years after its release is the dancing. Patricia Birch’s choreography is
dead on in capturing the spirit of the 1950s. The big dance numbers are still impressive,
and great entertainment. Of course it helps, with a nostalgic musical such as this, to
have been there in the first place -- so many younger viewers might not have the overall
warm and cuddly feeling about the entire film that older viewers will bring to it. But
even younger viewers must give a thumbs-up to the exuberant singing and dancing.
This Blu-ray edition looks great. The colors are vivid when
need be, yet the night scenes have deep blacks and excellent shadow detail -- the football
rally with bonfire near the beginning is a good case in point. Though there is some
effective surround sound in "Teen Angel" and during the dance-off spectacle at
Madison High, most of the sound is up front. The bass is clean and well focused, but it
won’t make your subwoofer sweat. Music wasn’t generally recorded like that back
then, and the sound engineers seem to have paid homage of sorts to the type of sound we
heard and loved in a previous era. The tons of extras will tell you just about everything
you ever wanted to know about Grease. It’s perfect summer entertainment.
 True Blood: The Complete First
Season (2008, HBO) ****
In Six Feet Under, producer-writer-director Alan
Ball created one of the best off-beat shows in the history of television. Now, in filming
the Sookie Stackhouse novels by Charlaine Harris, he’s doing Southern Gothic. Like
the earlier series, True Blood is by turns serious, soap opera-like, mysterious,
erotic, tragic, comic, and satirical. The backstory is that the Japanese have created a
synthetic blood that allows vampires to come out of the coffin (a thinly veiled metaphor
for "the closet") and mingle with society at large. In this deliberate and
clever parallel to the gay-rights movements, many liberals accept them and participate in
movements for vampire rights, while religious groups condemn them as the spawn of the
devil. True Blood is set in a small Louisiana parish populated largely by rednecks.
The social center of the town is Merlotte’s, a typical southern bar that doubles as a
restaurant and gossip center, and run by Sam Merlotte (Sam Trammell), an all-around nice
guy with a mysterious past. One of Sam’s waitresses is Sookie Stackhouse (Anna
Paquin), who has only two living relatives: her empty-headed stud of a brother, Jason
(Ryan Kwanten), and her grandmother, Adele (Lois Smith). Sookie’s life is soon made
interesting by the appearance of vampire Bill Compton (Stephen Moyer), who was turned into
a vampire while fighting in the Civil War. With Bill, it’s love at first sight and
bite; he rather likes humans and doesn’t think vampires should use them merely as
food. Still, grisly deaths begin to happen around Sookie, and there are numerous subplots,
as well as lots of nudity and sex.
This Blu-ray edition presents images as good as those of
any feature film, with rich color, excellent detail, perfect contrast, and very good
depth. The sound is also a full surround mix, and much better than those of most TV
series. Each episode also includes an enhanced mode; if you have a second-generation BD
player, this will present picture-in-picture goodies. Some of these are just additional
gossip about the townspeople, but there are also some faux documentaries on the vampire
movement and the origins of the coming-out process. Each episode ends in a cliff-hanger,
but True Blood is so addictively entertaining that you won’t mind.
. . . Rad Bennett
radb@hometheatersound.com |
