Portlandia
– Season Three
(2013/IFC/MVD/VSC DVD Set)/Shanghai
Calling (2013/Anchor Bay
DVD)/Sisters &
Brothers (2011/Anchor Bay
Blu-ray)/Unfinished Song
(2012/Weinstein/Anchor Bay DVD)
Picture:
C+/C/B-/C+ Sound: C+/C+/B-/C+ Extras: C/C/D/C Main
Programs: C/C/C-/C
Now
for another set of comedy releases…
Portlandia
– Season Three (2013) makes the show Lorne Michaels'
biggest non-Saturday Night Live hit since Kids In the Hall
and if you missed the first few seasons, you can read more at these
links:
One
http://www.fulvuedrive-in.com/review/11376/Absolutely+Fabulous:+Absolutely+Everything+(199
Two
http://www.fulvuedrive-in.com/review/11848/Paul+Rodriguez:+Just+For+The+Record+(2012/Im
Carrie
Brownstein and Fred Armisen, et al, have grown into their characters
well, but the 10 episodes here show a series staying where it has
found commercial success for better and worse, meaning the show has
now peaked and the humor, plus its approach are not so fresh and
amusing anymore. We get some “surprise” guests, but few
(like No Doubt or Chloe Sevigny) are really as interesting as they
had been before. The sites are even more common at this point, so
the camerawork is also the same. Not a big fan to begin with, the
show is at least watchable,but we get no big laughs and it is
becoming a for-fans-only affair at this point. See for yourself and
compare to earlier seasons.
Extras
include the Winter Special episode, 2 Deleted Scenes and Tours
of Portland with Kumal Nanjiani.
Daniel
Hsia's Shanghai Calling (2013) wants to be a funny
fish-out-of-water comedy with an ethnic update as a young
Chinese-American businessman named Sam (Daniel Henney) expects to be
promoted in his New York City job when his company sends him to
Shanghai “for 3 months” to help them and he does not even
speak Chinese, Mandarin or anything close to them. From there, we
get some meet-cutes with a few women, business complications, Bill
Paxton as the “mayor” of “American Town” and
too many obvious jokes and plot developments throughout the somewhat
long 101 minutes. If the actors were not so appealing and locales
more familiar, this would be a bad TV movie. However, that is not
enough to save it.
There
is a technical presentation issue we'll discuss below, but I wanted
to like this one and no matter how long I waited for it to improve,
it never did. A Behind the Scenes featurette is the only extra.
Carl
Bessai's Sisters & Brothers (2011) is an even larger
disappointment, trying to be funny about relationships, but the
script is so mundane and dull that you never believe anything you see
and adding faux comic strip panels that simply interrupt anything
that might start working does not help. The mostly unknown cast
though is suddenly overshadowed by Glee actor Cory Monteith, listed
as the third in the main cast and who recently passed on after an
ugly, nightmarish bout with addition issues. He does not seem well
here and even looks a bit pale, but his lack of energy is less
notable since this is some kind of flat mumblecore (read
dysfunctional is fun and normal) flick that does not know what to do
with itself. A mentally ill brother is also in the narrative, but is
not integrated well enough into the plot and this dragged on
uncomfortably for 86 longer-than-it-should-have-felt minutes. Now a
curio, expect an odd, strange and waste of time.
There
are no extras.
Finally
we have Paul Andrew Williams' Unfinished Song (2012) featuring
Terrence Stamp and Vanessa Redgrave leading (playing a married
couple) a cast of elderly people in a home for them run by a young
woman (the always charming Gemma Arterton) who tries to inspire
everyone with song. Unfortunately, some of them are getting sick of
the stuck old routine and oppressed emotions and regrets make up some
of the story. Stamp and Redgrave have some good scenes, there are
some amusing moments, but the use of music becomes silly, overused
and nearly makes fun of the elderly here instead of cherishing them.
Worst
of all is how we have seen everything here before the screenplay
offers, so only the actors make this watchable and at 94 minutes, it
runs a little longer than it should and is trying to be some
feel-good film on some level. None of this works much, but some
viewers might find somethings to like here. Unfortunately, I was not
impressed and even disappointed since I liked the actors.
Extras
include Deleted Scenes (none of which would have helped) and
Outtakes.
The
1080p 1.78 X 1 digital High Definition image transfer on Sisters
is the best picture performer here, but the comic book pieces are
obnoxious and even have degraded moments too often that further hold
the playback back. The anamorphically enhanced 1.78 X 1 image on
Portlandia and anamorphically enhanced 2.35 X 1 on Song
tie for second place showing some softness throughout and maybe they
would look better on Blu-ray, but the presentations are not great by
any means, though fine for the format.
Then
some Shanghai, which is here in an anamorphically enhanced
1.78 X 1 presentation, but was (as we can see on the featurette, but
the compositions do look odd) originally meant to be seen in scope so
it should be here in an anamorphically enhanced 2.35 X 1
presentation. What has happened here is that someone took the 2.35 X
1 frame and cut thew sides off (!!!) resulting in a soft presentation
looking even softer than it should. This is one of the most bizarre
things I have seen of late and this means we loose parts of the
acto9rs and sometimes fine Shanghai locales. Why do this? Who
knows,m but it is a terrible mistake and makes for the worst disc
here.
The
Dolby TrueHD 5.1 mix on Sisters
is the best presentation here sonically, but everything on the list
is dialogue and joke driven, so that does not say much. Sometimes,
the recording quality of the actors is not even consistent. That
leaves lossy Dolby Digital 5.1 on Shanghai
and Song
having weak soundfields and quiet moments, while Portlandia
has only lossy Dolby Digital 2.0 Stereo with fairly good Pro Logic
surrounds that can compete with both. They are professionally
recorded and fine for what they are, but lossless presentations would
likely bring out more of the audio.
-
Nicholas Sheffo
