All Things Fall Apart (2010/Image Blu-ray)/The Sunset Limited (2011/HBO Blu-rays)/Up From Slavery (Mill Creek DVDs)
Picture: B-/B/C Sound: B-/B-/C Extras: D/B-/D Films: D/B-/C
As Black
History Month is upon us, here is a mix of more new titles in time for it.
Non-actor
Curtis “50 Cent” Jackson
is back and this time he has brought Mario Van Pebbles with him to direct and
even co-star in the aptly titled All
Things Fall Apart (2010) as this one starts falling apart after the first
scene. Jackson is an ace college football player
whose dream of big league NFL football success is going well until a
problematic turn for the worst, changing his plans and dreams. Unfortunately, I never believed he was a good
player, the script is more formulaic than Gatorade and even Lynn Whitfield and
Ray Liotta could not save this clunker.
There are fortunately no extras.
Tommy Lee
Jones co-stars with Samuel L. Jackson in The
Sunset Limited (2011), a project Jones directed based on the work of Cormac
McCarthy about the two men as two characters in two rooms who discuss life,
dread, mortality and even spirituality and religion in this smart, intense,
brutal and clever cable telefilm that has two of the best living actors at
their best with chemistry and talent to spare.
I was pleasantly surprised how interesting this one room work. Jones’ character has apparently committed
suicide by jumping in front of a moving New
York subway car.
Go out of your way for this one if you are interested. Extras include feature length audio
commentary by Jones, Jackson & McCarthy and a Making Of featurette.
Finally
we have the documentary mini-series Up
From Slavery which tries to historically detail the ugly past of how the U.S.
was often built by slave labor and worse.
Though it gets many of the facts correct, reenactments don’t work and
there are other things done here that do not ring true and do not even seem of
their time, so this is a very choppy, odd program overall. You get seven episodes over two DVDs and
there are no extras.
The 1080p
1.78 X 1 digital High Definition image transfer on the Blu-rays are the best
here as expected, but Fall has its
share of motion blur and detail issues, while Sunset has a stable camera, better lighting and tends to look more
solid, warm and defined overall. The
1.33 X 1 on Slavery is very soft
throughout, showing the age and budget limit of the production.
Both
Blu-rays also have DTS-HD MA (Master Audio) 5.1 lossless mixes and you would
think Fall would have the best mix
of the three, but it is limited in soundfield and not always well recorded,
while the dialogue-based Sunset is
nicely recorded throughout, clean and clear.
Slavery offers lossy Dolby
Digital 2.0 Mono that is compressed, distorted and trying.
- Nicholas Sheffo
