A Woman Of Substance Trilogy (1984, 1986, 1991/Acorn Media DVD Set)/Chasing Happiness (2009/Tripod Entertainment DVD)/She’s Not Our Sister (2011/Image DVD)/What Goes Around Comes Around (2011/Image DVD)

 

Picture: C/C+/C/C     Sound: C/C+/C+/C+     Extras: C+/D/C-/C-     Main Programs: C+/C/C-/C

 

 

In a continued look at the role of women in recent media and if there is any real progress, but despite changing times and supposed progress, the following four selections show us how any such progress usually comes with limits of some kind and how that can be cleverly hidden.

 

Three mini-series make up the new A Woman Of Substance Trilogy DVD set from Acorn including the original A Woman Of Substance from 1984, Hold The Dream in 1986 and To Be The Best in 1991.  Based on the books of Barbara Taylor Bradford, A Woman Of Substance has Deborah Kerr as an older woman who still must do battle with greedy men to hold onto her corporate empire from sexist men who think they can just push her out, then tells us how she got their through extensive flashbacks.  Jenny Hargrove, Barry Bostwick, Peter Chelsom, Diane Baker, Gayle Hunnicut, Miranda Richardson, George Baker, John Mills and a very young Liam Neeson

 

The follow-up called Hold The Dream continues the storylines with Kerr and (as her granddaughter) Seagrove’s Paula Farley, joined this time by Claire Bloom, Stephen Collins, James Brolin, Fiona Fullerton, Nigel Havers, John Mills and once again, Liam Neeson.

 

Finally we have To Be The Best with the coup of Lindsay Wagner as Paula O’Neill, also fighting for power in a man’s world, but helped by friend Jack Figg, played by no less than Anthony Hopkins.  That alone makes this as strong a series as its predecessors, a rarity in any medium and they are joined by Fiona Fullerton Christopher Cazenove, Stephanie Beacham, Stuart Wilson and Julian Fellowes.

 

All are watchable and the women are well written, but as good as these can get, they are all still trapped in being an upscale version of the soap opera and though they are fine at it and for what they are, even this great cast of actors cannot override the sense of obvious melodrama.  However, these are at least intelligent and somewhat realistic with good performances and decent budgets, so the lead women here are formidable and likable.  An interesting set of shows to see or revisit, TV does not make them like this anymore so it might just be worth your time and they are all worth seeing once.  Extras include text and booklist for Bradford and two interviews: one with Diane Baker at 18 minutes and another for almost an hour with Bradford.

 

 

Fast forward almost two decades and we have able bodied younger women who may have much less money and power, but are definitely played as and portrayed as viable, independent and sexual in ways that are not suppressed except by a slight sense of implied conservatism.

 

The best of these remaining three entries is Beni Attori’s Chasing Happiness (2009), an interesting independent production that focuses on a group of women living together with one man (explicit about his love of women and sex, plus a unique contribution he can make to any sexual relationship) who use their nice house for multiple purposes (including gambling with cards, sex, and other fascinating endeavors), but are they happy?  At first, this is an outright comedy and the nudity, language and situations are not what you would see in a Hollywood production.

 

However, the very attitude and natural warm sexuality of the three female leads (Elisa Donovan, Cerina Vincent and Kashmera Shah) are rare in any production, so you can imagine my disappointment when this all falls apart in the last 20 minutes of the story and becoming very conventional.  Suddenly, the women seem to be getting punished for being women and it becomes a sad clichéfest with what is ultimately a dumb ending.  What were they thinking?  Well, we many never know because there are no extras.

 

Finally we have two African-American cast stage programs that try to capitalize on the Tyler Perry cycle (which is starting to slide, esp. evidenced by the surprise box office of the possibly problematically titled Think Like A Man from Fantastic Four director Tim Story, showing maybe that audience is looking for a new storyteller) and both in this case from One Village Productions.  Snoop Robinson’s She’s Not Our Sister (2011) is even a musical and it has three strong women battling with another strong woman, all of whom also have Christianity looming over them, so any power is uniquely and ideologically limited.

 

In addition, we get a corny, safe melodramatic tale and stereotypes that the strong women will eventually allow a “strong man” to be so for them.  The three sisters are about to inherit a fortune, but are not happy when a fourth woman steps forward for some of the money as she is their half-sister.  Will they resolve this?  Can religious morality help?  Haven’t we seen this story to death already?  I found this one to be especially weak and lame, so even diehard fans of this cycle may be very, very bored.  A lame photo gallery is the only extra.

 

David E. Talbert has been positioning himself as the next Tyler Perry, but he does not fare much better with his latest entry, What Goes Around Comes Around (2011) which has the same positive-yet-unrealistic, dignified characters in yet another formula romp.  Wesley Johnathan is a slacker who lives with his girlfriend (Reagan Gomez) who goes to work and essentially supports him.  He is, of course, sleeping around on him and then some (at least he is not on the so-called down-low, so she is not in jeopardy of getting VD, but that would have made a more interesting work) and if only he were a “strong man” or “real man” all could be heaven on earth.

 

Like Sister, this is embarrassingly predictable, but just not as totally, absolutely horrid.  Yes, we have seen worse, but like so many of the other Perry imitators, the biggest opportunity for African Americans since the Black New Wave is before them to get a more permanent foothold in the overall entertainment industry and they are squandering it on safe, phony, lame and even condescending product like this?  Sad.  The only extra is a brief, slight sloppy behind the scenes clip.

 

 

Acorn has a disclaimer that the 1.33 X 1 image transfer on the Substance DVDs are not of the best quality because despite being shot on film (likely 16mm), all they had for these discs were video masters, so the quality is soft throughout no matter what they did to fix them and clean them up.  I would like to see them on Blu-ray, so maybe someone will uncover film copies someday, but that’s what you will get here.  Limits can extend to color range and depth, yet the anamorphically enhanced 1.78 X 1 image on Sister and Around (which are recent HD shoots) look no better with softness, motion blur and detail issues they should not have.  Problematically shot, color range is the only saving grace in both cases.  So the visual winner here by default is the anamorphically enhanced 1.78 X 1 image Chasing, which also has the same blur issues, et al, but actually is a little more stable and has better color range.

 

The lossy Dolby Digital 2.0 Mono on Substance is also the softest sound of the four, though it might not be otherwise except that the source materials are older and at least a generation or two down, dooming their audio throughout.  Chasing and Sister have simple, lossy Dolby Digital 2.0 Stereo and though they have some sonic limits, play just well enough.  Around actually tries out a lossy Dolby Digital 5.1 mix, but it is also simple stereo in nature and the release should have only included that instead of spreading the sound around.

 

 

-   Nicholas Sheffo