Baseball’s Greatest Games: San Francisco Giants First Perfect Game (MLB A&E DVD)/Complete History Of The New York Giants (Gaiam Vivendi DVDs)/Home Run Showdown (2010/Image Blu-ray)/Touchback (2010/Anchor Bay Blu-ray w/DVD)/You’ve Got A Friend (2007/Gaiam Vivendi DVD)

 

Picture: C+/C+/C+/B- & C/C     Sound: DVDs: C+/Blu-rays: B-     Extras: D/B-/D/C/D     Main Programs: B/B/C-/C/C-

 

 

Sports releases always seem to fall into two categories: documentary/special interest titles on the real thing and melodramas that try to show the other side of sports in how healthy competition is supposed to be and how it is about character, even when the scripts are clichéd beyond belief.  The next releases reinforce this.

 

 

First we have the latest of the Baseball’s Greatest Games DVD singles from A&E and Major League Baseball with the San Francisco Giants First Perfect Game against including three soundtracks (original TV audio, alternative radio broadcast and Spanish language presentation) as matt Cain and company stop The Houston Astros in a June 12, 2012 game.  Interesting for non-fans like myself, it is another landmark game and is great to have it presented here.

 

The Complete History Of The New York Giants is a double DVD set from Gaiam Vivendi that has a terrific documentary on the rise and rough road for the football franchise over the decades, but how they produced and featured legends all the way up to their recent Super Bowl win.  This is the third title on the team we have covered recently since that win and it is as strong as any of them.  It is great to see the fans stick with them and the Mara Family stay in there to make things happen.

 

Bonus material includes a 1981 Cowboys game on DVD One and the 2007 NFC Championship Game on DVD Two.  In both cases, fans will be pleased.

 

 

Now for the dramas.  First we have the same old underdog kids baseball team tale in Oz Scott’s Home Run Showdown (2010) which is a surprisingly flat variant of this and though some name adults (Matthew Lillard, Dean Cain, Barry Bostwick and Annabeth Gish) turn up, this never goes anywhere, the dialogue is often boring when it is not outright unbelievable and it even seems some of the youngsters are being made fun or and verbally abused on some level.  There are no extras.  James A. Contner’s You’ve Got A Friend (2007) has some of the same morality ideas, but slightly better dialogue and no meanness as a displaced youth wants to enter a motorless car race.  John Schneider is the only name of note here, but this still falls flat.  There are no extras here either.

 

 

Finally we have Don Handfield’s Touchback (2010) focusing on teens and football as a young man (Scott Murphy) had an awful injury when trying to win a high school championship, but now he has a chance as an adult family man to recapture his missed glory and with the help of his old coach (Kurt Russell, not unfamiliar to sports releases, cast here in particular to have us remember the underrated Miracle. reviewed on Blu-ray elsewhere on this site) in a mixed script and mixed film.

 

At least I bought some of the premise as more than formulaic, but then, it does not know much of where to go except to try and be a feel-good redemption tale and that is where it gets in trouble because so many of those in and out of sports tales have been made (especially since the 1980s thanks to the big box office of Spielberg films) and this one never pays off.  Christine Lahti turns up though, which is a plus, but only diehard football fans will want to even consider this one.

 

Extras include a Making Of featurette and feature length audio commentary track by Handfield and Presley.

 

 

The anamorphically enhanced 1.78 X 1 image on all the DVDs have their softness, but the Giants discs look the best with good color and consistent performance, while the dramatic DVDs have color issues, look more faded (including style choices) and seem pale overall.  The 1080p 1.78 X 1 digital High Definition image transfers on the Blu-rays are not evenly matched, with Touchback the visual champ by default as style still affects performance, but it is consistent enough with some quality a DVD could not deliver, but the same on Showdown (shot on 35mm film) comes across as oddly flat and what should have been the visual champ fizzles.

 

The lossy Dolby Digital 2.0 Stereo on all the DVDs (save Dolby 5.1 on Touchback) sound good for what they are, but are nothing extraordinary and Touchback cannot outdo the other mixes despite using more tracks.  Fortunately, its DTS-HD MA (Master Audio) 5.1 lossless mix is better if not perfect and like the Dolby TrueHD 5.1 on Showdown, does not have a consistent soundfield, but both are the best sonically here and do not suffer the limits of a lossy sound codec.

 

 

-   Nicholas Sheffo