A Burning Hot Summer (2011/Sundance Select/MPI DVD)/Burning Man (2011/IFC/MPI DVD)/Even The Rain (2010/Image DVD)/The Rains Of Ranchipur
(1955/Fox/Twilight Time Limited Edition Blu-ray)
Picture:
C/C+/C/B- Sound: C+/B-/C+/B- Extras: C-/C/C-/B- Films: C/D/C+/B-
PLEASE
NOTE: The
Rains Of Ranchipur
Blu-ray is limited to 3,000 copies and is available exclusively at the Screen
Archives website which can be reached at the link at the end of this review.
Now for
four dramas with their share of melodrama and something different to offer…
Philippe
Garrel’s A Burning Hot Summer (2011)
offers an initially interesting, but eventually mixed study of two couples
whose futures are all uncertain.
Frédéric (Louis Garrel the son of the director best know for
Bertolucci’s The Dreamers, reviewed
elsewhere on this site) is a painter married to a beautiful movie star (Monica
Bellucci) who is unhappy (how is that possible with her!?!) and is on the verge
of self-destruction. After a serious
incident, we see in flashback (which might just be too safe in this case) their
prolonged visit by a happy couple, Paul (Jérome Robart) who has political
aspirations and his wife Elisabeth (Céline Sallette) who is caught in the
middle when Paul tries to help Frédéric whose issues may be more than anyone
knows.
I liked
the acting and some of the ideas, but around the midway, the screenplay starts
to unravel despite the efforts of all involved and some of this includes things
we have definitely seen before. However,
despite my disappointments, I was glad to see it and wonder why we do not see
more of these actors. A trailer is the
only extra.
Jonathan
Teplitzky’s Burning Man (2011) is an
Australian film about a chef (Matthew Goode) who is angry, unhappy, frustrated
and still gets married despite behavior that is endlessly irresponsible,
outrageous and even criminal. As he gets
worse, he has more sex, that is if he can actually achieve any pleasure or
“contact” in his encounters and all that is left is a troubled man getting worse
and worse.
The
regression of our title character is believable, if predictable, but he was not
likable in the first place and this is not a success as a character study
either. It is not a Noir and has nothing
new to say or show, despite being bold at times. The cast can act and I like Australian films,
but this is barely good to begin with and just keeps getting distracted by his
behavior instead of offering deep insight into the how and why of his situation. Even Rachel Griffiths shows up, but this
never works and was a surprising disappointment.
Extras
include Interviews, a Behind The Scenes featurette, Trailer and audio
commentary track.
Iciar
Bollain’s Even The Rain (2010) has
Gael Garcia Bernal as a filmmaker going to Bolivia
to make a film about the Christopher Columbus tour of conquering the various Americas, but discovers he is not just dealing
with former history but Spanish Imperialism still running and ruining the land
and the people of Bolivia. He starts to cast for the film when the
people there start to rise up against a multi-national corporation whose made
some crazy deal to own and control all the water there (the real life incident
even involves the company claiming to own any rain that falls!) and suddenly
the film is not the top priority.
With Columbus now being
thought of as a genocidal figure, plus all the bad films made about him
(including epics that bombed in recent years), you would think the filmmaker
character would know better, but we guess not.
The film is trying to make political points (including quotes from
Howard Zinn, to whom the film is dedicated to) but does not go far enough or
says things only it understands it is saying, resulting in a mixed conclusion.
Still, it
has some good moments, but never quite gets it right. At least the acting is good. A trailer is the only extra.
Finally
we have Jean Negulesco’s The Rains Of
Ranchipur (1955) with Lana Turner and Michael Rennie as a couple visiting
the India city of the title when she starts to seduce and maybe fall for a
local native doctor of India (English actor Richard Burton in brownface, but
hey, Al Pacino got away with it decades later in Scarface, but this ages the film a good bit) while treating husband
Rennie as ineffective and weak. He
tolerates this, but the new relationship may change that.
A
still-Film Noir Fred MacMurray shows up as a drunken friend and the more Turner
goes after the doctor, the more she causes all kinds of relationship conflicts,
but her passions and earth-moving desires are rivaled by the earth moving when
a large-scale natural disaster hits (did her sexual powers cause that too?) and
the result is a big screen, sometimes corny, yet lush and pricy melodrama meant
for the big screen. The result is a very
entertaining film, even when it does not work and with time (including those
more-dated-than-ever visual effects) has more than its share of unintentionally
funny moments.
Joan
Caulfield and Eugenie Leontovich also star in this amusing work that was among
the last in the wider version of CinemaScope.
Extras include 3 Trailers, TV Spots and a DTS-HD MA (Master Audio) 2.0
Stereo isolated music track of Hugo Friedhofer’s really decent music score.
The
anamorphically enhanced 2.35 X 1 image on Burning
is the best of the three DVDs, with good color reproduction despite some
styling down of the image, but we still have some softness and detail
limits. The remaining two DVDs are also
in scope and the anamorphic format, but manage to be much softer throughout
with some shots not so good. That leaves
the 1080p 2.55 X 1 digital High Definition image transfer on Ranchipur is from a nice new HD master
of the 35mm CinemaScope materials the visual champ here.
By this
time, Fox had established the new DeLuxe Color labs so they did not have to pay
any money to Technicolor for any prints of any sort. Along with the slightly wider 2.55 frame,
that makes it (along with a few of the recent Blu-rays on the Forever Marilyn Blu-ray set) a rare
2.55 X 1/DeLuxe color release just before that scope frame was permanently
reduced to 2.35 X 1. In this case, the
materials can at times show the age of the materials used, but despite some
minor print issues, a few bad second-generation footage shots and color fading
and turning on again between scenes, this usually looks great and has a few
demo shots that show us how good DeLuxe color could look early on when it did
not fade.
Director
of Photography Milton Krasner knew how to use the very widescreen frame and the
resulting presentation is a real pleasure to watch and enjoy, no matter how
set-bound.
The lossy
Dolby Digital 5.1 on Burning and Rain should offer the best DVD sound,
but Burning actually has a better,
decent soundfield, even if the lossiness of the codec hinders its potential
performance. The lossy Dolby Digital 2.0
Stereo on Rain is even poorer than
its 5.1 version, but in fairness to it, it has more than its share of quiet
moments. Lossy French Dolby Digital 2.0
Stereo is the only option on Summer,
but it is also on the quiet side, though you can try Pro Logic surrounds on it
and the Rain to get more sound out of them.
The DTS-HD MA (Master Audio) 1.0 Mono lossless mix on Ranchipur is as good as any sound here,
Sadly,
this was originally a 4-track magnetic stereo sound film with traveling
dialogue and sound effects, but at least at this time, Fox has lost that
4-track master or any copies. Yet, it
sounds as good as the newer DVDs, so that should tell you something about how
warm and full the playback is.
As noted
above, The Rains Of Ranchipur
Blu-ray can be ordered while supplies last at:
www.screenarchives.com
- Nicholas Sheffo
