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Category:    Home > Reviews > Biography > Entertainment Industry > Documentary > Music > Gay > Religion > CG Animation > Lesbian > Drama > Liberace: The World’s Greatest Showman (1992/Legend DVD)/Love Free Or Die (2012/Wolfe DVD)/Strange Frame (2013/Wolfe DVD)/This Must Be The Place (2011/Anchor Bay Blu-ray)

Liberace: The World’s Greatest Showman (1992/Legend DVD)/Love Free Or Die (2012/Wolfe DVD)/Strange Frame (2013/Wolfe DVD)/This Must Be The Place (2011/Anchor Bay Blu-ray)

 

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

 

 

Here are some recent Gay & Lesbian-related releases to consider…

 

 

Liberace: The World’s Greatest Showman (1992) is being issued on DVD in time for the feature film (originally intended for theaters, but homophobia has made it into a cable TV event) with Michael Douglas as the legendary pianist.  This compilation documentary with plenty of rare stills, videotape and film footage of the man at his peak.  It runs 79 minutes and I wish the makers/owners had extended it for this release as more footage would have made this better, but it is a nice summary of his work and life, reminding us just how successful, bold, individualistic and ahead of his time he was.

 

There are no extras.

 

 

Macky Alston’s Love Free Or Die (2012) is a new documentary about Bishop Gene Robinson, who also happens to be gay and has a life partner.  Ironically coming out on DVD as a new Pope has been elected, the 83-minutes-long work is to the point, greatly detailed and pretty thorough about how he came into his position, his political positions, the challenge of what would seem like a contradictory life and what this says about our nation, religion, the future and how times are changing, made more relevant by the Same Sex Marriage debate following said new Pope.

 

As I watched, it seemed almost unreal that what was happening was happening, but here it is and it is interesting how this story has never appeared in the mainstream media as all this change and debating is occurring.  Not a fan of the hard Right turn religion took in the 1980s, this also reflects the return of The Religious Left and this time, they are not going to be going away or be marginalized anytime soon.  Hope we hear more about this story down the line.

 

A trailer and featurette the only extras.

 

 

The computer animated Strange Frame (2013) is set decades into an over-technologized future where one woman falls for another against a backdrop of genetically engineered slaves and slavery, a world turned upside down, a future where civil rights struggles have to be fought yet again and where happiness is harder to find.

 

It plays like a part of a Heavy Metal movie and definitely owes something to the original magazine’s counterculture sensibilities.  It also is as sexual an a Japanese Animé, but any lesbianism here is naturalistic and not of the perverted, thought-police (or even pedophilic) kind we see in that genre.  There is humor here, but this is for mature adults.

 

It is a mix of styles (post-modern indeed) and has some interesting moments, but it cannot help repeating things we have seen before and the musical moments throughout tend to get in the way of narrative development, further holding the whole thing back.  However, it has its successes and for those interested, will be worth a look.

 

Voice actors include Ron Glass, Michael Dorn, Tim Curry, George Takei, Claudia Black, Cree Summer and Tara Strong.

 

Extras include an Original Theatrical Trailer, Deleted Scene and Making Of featurette with the voice cast.

 

 

Finally we have Paolo Sorrentino’s This Must Be The Place (2011) with Sean Penn as a one-time Goth Rock star named Cheyenne who looks feminine, dresses like that and seems like a transsexual variant of the lead singer of The Cure.  Living off of his royalties, he comes home to New York City from Dublin to deal with his father’s legacy and how they did not get along.

 

He also has to deal with his own personal isolationism, his personal pain and Penn gives one of his more daring performances.  But even backed by work from a good cast that includes an oddly cast David Byrne (I like him, but realism is not always enough), the great Harry Dean Stanton, Joyce Van Patten and Frances McDormand, the 111 minutes don’t seem to do enough with what is presented and some aspects of the script are either too predictable or (like the ending) don’t quite work.  Still, those interested should see it and those who might find it challenging should take it on to see what they think.

There are no extras.

 

 

The 1.33 X 1 on Liberace and anamorphically enhanced 1.78 X 1 image on Free are softer than usual with more aliasing errors than expected and can be trying in parts, but they are the two documentaries and that can be the nature of such productions.

 

The anamorphically enhanced 1.78 X 1 image on Frame and 1080p 2.35 X 1 digital High Definition image transfer on Place tie for first place with the former’s CGI animation good, but sometimes simple and limited.  The latter is the only Blu-ray here, but has detail limits throughout that hold it back despite having some nice location shooting.  The DTS-HD MA (Master Audio) lossless 5.1 mix on Place should be the sonic champion, but the dialogue-based production is not very loud and sometimes limited in overall sonics, so the lossy Dolby Digital 5.1 Free and Place are able to compete.  That leaves lossy Dolby Digital 2.0 Mono on Liberace showing the age of the older analog video production, but it is passable and not too rough.

 

 

-   Nicholas Sheffo


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