Baseball's
Greatest Games: New York Yankees' Postseason Heroics
(1996 - 2001/A&E/Lionsgate/MLB DVDs)/Sunset
Strip (2013/MVD/VSC
Blu-ray)/Teenage
(2013/Oscilloscope DVD)
Picture:
C+/B-/C+ Sound: C+/B-/C+ Extras: D/B-/B Main Programs:
B/B/B-
Here
are some new special interest documentaries you should know about...
Baseball's
Greatest Games: New York Yankees' Postseason Heroics
(1996 - 2001) is
another strong MLB release from A&E
(now with Lionsgate) that offers four great key games by one of the
most successful (loved and not so much) teams in all of baseball
history with Derek Jeter leading the team to some of its most
memorable victories here. The 1996 ALCS Game One has the team and
Jeter slaying the Baltimore Orioles, 2000 World Series Game Four
moving the Mets pout of the way, 2001 ALCS Game Three out
atletecizing the Oakland As and 2001 World Series Game Four recutting
the Arizona Diamondbacks.
There
are no extras, but it is a solid treasury and historical set worth
your time, especially if you are a diehard fan.
Hans
Fjellestad's Sunset
Strip
(2012) is a mostly very very well done documentary on the ow
landmark, famous, key, important and how it started as just another
dirt road before one man decided to do something with it, then
Hollywood happened and it became an epicenter of the creative,
commercial, artistic and sometimes political universe. Many people
from there you might not have heard of, plus many you have like Dan
Aykroyd, Jonny Depp, Slash, Mickey Rourke, Keanu Reeves, Hugh Hefner,
Tommy Lee, Lou Adler, Kenneth Anger, Edd Byrnes, Alice Cooper,
Clifton Collins Jr., Cherie Currie, Billy Corrigan, Clive Davis,
Pamela Des Barres, Perry Farrell, Mick Fleetwood, Steven Dorff and
Peter Fonda are among the many new interviewees.
There
is also a very generous helping of older footage on film, then tape
that shows the rise and constant reinvention of the stretch of
insanely famous land and all the famous people and even key events
that happened there. It's role in music, motion pictures, TV and
even the counterculture movement is spelled out and we get plenty of
key history. My only complaint is that the work stops being as
insightful and the history is turned off for a few overly long music
moments that take time that could have been used to tell more
important stories as the extras prove. A few questions are also left
unanswered, but this is a great work more than worth your time.
Extras
include Extended Interviews, an Original Theatrical Trailer,
featurette on the animation for the credits and four more featurettes
on the title locale covering Sex, Rock n' Roll. Comedy and even Riots
on The Sunset Strip.
Matt
Wolf's Teenage
(2013) is a little short at 77 minutes, but the documentary is based
on a book by Jon Savage (who co-wrote the script) about how the idea
of teenagers came out of the early years of the Industrial Revolution
(1875) and culminated into the final events of WWII (1945) with
plenty of troubles (WWI) and issues (the different ways different
countries treated their youth, with the results being more historic
and historically important like the U.S. vs. Germany) than has been
discussed.
Ben
Wishlaw and Jean Malone are among the voices for people of the past,
a remarkable amount of vintage film footage is furthered by some
terrific recreations of events and times key to those being discussed
(shot on 16mm and sometimes Super 8mm film to the makers' credits)
and I only wish it was longer and again, a few more questions were
asked. Either way, it is a very compelling work and another
impressive must-see that reveals some great hidden things and people
we should all know more about.
Extras
include a feature length audio commentary track by Wolf and Producer
Kyle Martin, four archival short films at full length featured in the
film, an Original Theatrical Trailer, On
The Set With The Bright Young People
featurette showing how new footage was literally filmed to add
authentic recreations to the narrative and Wolf and Martin are joined
by Executive Producer Jason Schwartzman for the featurette Dreaming
Documentary: Making TEENAGE.
The
1080p 1.78 X 1 digital High Definition image transfer on Sunset
has footage (film and video) that can show the age of the materials
used, but this is the best of the three presentations here as
expected being the only Blu-ray, yet expect some nice shots in
several formats. The
1.33 X 1 image on Baseball
(all shot on video) is not bad and the anamorphically enhanced 1.78 X
1 image on Teenage
(made of film old and new) look food for the formats used, but have
some softness and flaws they cannot help. Teenage
would likely look better on Blu-ray.
Though
listed as Dolby 5.1 without saying what kind of Dolby, theatrical
sound on Sunset
is a DTS-HD HR
(High Resolution) 5.1 mix that is the best on the list, though you
get more than a few old monophonic sound clips and a few moments of
location audio issues. Otherwise, it is what you'd expect for a
wide-ranging documentary and is decent. Both
DVD releases have lossy Dolby Digital 2.0 Stereo tracks, but Teenage
also offers a slightly clearer, lossy Dolby Digital 5.1 mix that is
preferable, but not enough to really pull it ahead of the Baseball
DVDs since this work is quiet in nature.
-
Nicholas Sheffo
