42nd Street Forever (2012/genre trailers collection/Synapse Blu-ray)/Playback (2011/Magnolia/MagNet
Blu-ray)/The River: The Complete First
Season (2012/DreamWorks/ABC Studios/Disney DVD)
Picture:
B-/B-/C Sound: C+/B-/C+ Extras: C+/D/D Main Programs: B/D/D
Now for a
fine collection of horror films and other action and exploitation releases when
they were fun and had no bounds, then a look at two new horror/thriller
productions that show how bad they have become these days.
After
issuing several DVD volumes, the trailer compilation series 42nd
Street has come up with their first Blu-ray and the first Blu-ray
collection of trailers ever nicely entitled 42nd Street Forever which covers a great number of
great, often independent, often exploitation films you may not have heard
about, but should see and even go out of your way in some cases if you
can. We have had some nice DVD sets of
such material (including several from Cheezy Flicks, plus the likes of All Monsters Attack!, Horror Of Hammer, Pulp Cinema and even some sets on single actors) but this sets a
new high watermark because the quality is better and gives us an even better
idea of how much fun these dozens of previews (some running five minutes) were.
Highlights
include many subgenres (women in prison films, biker films) and some genre
classics like Dark Star, Flesh Gordon, Honky, Ms. 45, Sugar Hill, Werewolves On Wheels and many others, including a good chunk we
have covered on this site in the last 9 years, including as import discs.
Extras
include commentaries on many of these, including Fangoria Magazine’s Michael
Gingold and fellow film enthusiasts Edwin Samuelson and Chris Poggiali.
Michael
A. Nickels’ Playback (2011) is a
lame thriller and a confused one as mixed as the bad editing and goofy ideas
with an unknown cast and Christian Slater as a corrupt cop in a goofy thriller
about a baby who grows up to be a young serial killer and the ‘connection of
evil’ includes videotapes, snow noise on an analog TV and glowing eyes on the
baby which the killer has retained.
Ohhhh kaaaay.
Then it
gets dumber and worse with bad dialogue, people acting extra dumb and a plot
that is all over the place, but never adds up to anything. So smug and self-impressed, it would be
laughable I it were not so bloody and bloody boring. I almost felt bad for the actors, but any of
them who have success will hopefully disown this dud. Extras (yes, it actually has some) includes a
trailer, photo gallery, HDNet clip promoting the film and short (but not short
enough) behind the scenes piece.
Sometimes
TV can outdo films in the same genre, but even the Steven Spielberg-backed The River: The Complete First Season
(2012) which has him unnecessarily working with the director of the ever-lame Paranormal Activity seems to be
Spielberg’s idea of doing something like that unfortunate hit and Lost with a touch of Poltergeist, but as oil and water do
not mix and lead cannot be turned to gold, this is an amazingly bad dud.
Bruce
Greenwood is a doctor who disappears when he goes to the Amazon, so can he be
found? Will his reality TV show be
cancelled? Will this show ever get
interesting? You can find out if you
have the patience to sit through the 7 episode over two DVDs, but just make
sure you are awake and for your own safety, do not operate heavy equipment!
This is
everything we have seen before and I do not know why Spielberg even bothered,
but it is unexciting and like Playback,
is trying to be hip and cutting edge while being contradictorily conformist and
square, which it is never hip to be no matter what poor pop group screeches
about otherwise. Spielberg is better
than this and this will go down as one of his most forgettable TV efforts. What a shame.
Extras include audio commentaries on two episodes (one per DVD), Deleted Scenes
and a behind-the-scenes featurette.
The 1080p
1.78 X 1 digital High Definition image on Street
has various aspect ratios to accommodate its many trailers, but despite the
wear, tear and damage, they usually look film like and less of them are poor or
faded than expected. Though many are on
DVD, many are not and very few have made Blu-ray. Hope this helps change that. The same HD presentation on Playback is stylized, has purposely
degraded images, is edited awkwardly to its disadvantage and even wallows in
low definition, so it is no better than that collection of trailers (usually
from the 1960s and 1970s) which tells you how the definition, detail and color
is not demo material for any HDTV. The
anamorphically enhanced 1.78 X 1 image on River
is an HD shoot and looks especially weak here.
The
DTS-HD MA (Master Audio) 2.0 Mono lossless mix on Street varies in quality like its image, with some audio being
compressed, other audio being noisy and some audio sounding good. I don’t think any of them were even in simple
stereo, but they sound better here than you might expect in some cases. The DTS-HD MA (Master Audio) 5.1 lossless mix
on Playback is better of course, but
not by much since the audio often collapses into mono (those videotapes) and a
good soundfield (like a good script) never materializes. The lossy Dolby Digital 5.1 on River should
be at least as good, but for whatever reason, the audio is too much in the
front channels and dialogue too much in the center channel.
- Nicholas Sheffo
