Dumb
It Down (2015/Cinedigm
DVD)/La Ciudad
(aka The
City/1999/Oscilloscope
DVD)/Nowitzki: The Perfect
Shot (2014/Magnolia
Blu-ray)
Picture:
C+/C+/B- Sound: C+/C+/B- Extras: C-/B-/C+ Main Programs:
B-
Here's
some new documentary releases worth your time, including a docudrama
reissued that is as relevant as ever...
Jade
Martin's Dumb
It Down
(2015) is yet another honest, smart, solid documentary examination of
underdiscussed issues from the Moguldom Studios, this time covering
the decline if Hip Hop & Rap. Another solid history lesson as
well, we see the early days of the rise of the genre in the late
1970s (out of Disco Party Music) to its immediate challenge of the
Reagan Era upon its arrival, to its surprising staying power and the
culture it bred that is still with us today. But something went
wrong. It started losing its political edge and power, its ability
to truly inform. How?
The
genre started becoming repetitive, audiences started settling fir
second-best and now, most hits are an instrumental beat with limited
lyrics (like Disco, it eventually relies on the self-replicating
culture it built, meaning these songs are on auto-pilot!) and a
perpetual demeaning that has no ironic distance and has it reverting
back to its late 1970s origins in the worst way. The great MC Lyte
leads the well-spoken interviewees with plenty of licensed music
clips and Videos that tell a new problematic chapter of Hip Hop/Rap
that either means it might be winding down, or a new counter-version
no one has heard of might be in the offerings. It will be really
interesting to revisit this key work in a few years to see how
prophetic and on the money it really is.
David
Riker's La
Ciudad
aka The
City
(1999) is an anthology dealing with stories of Latino immigrants
dealing with struggle and heartbreak that is as relevant now as it
was upon first release, including its first DVD release we covered
years ago at this link...
http://www.fulvuedrive-in.com/review/2369/The+City+(La+Ciudad
That
version fell out of print a while ago and has been going for insane
prices. Oscilloscope has issued it in an upgraded DVD edition with a
new transfer, the old extras and a new extras you can read about
below.
Sebastian
Dehnhardt's Nowitzki:
The Perfect Shot
(2015) tells the real life story about how a young German man named
Dirk Nowitzki decided to try to become a major basketball player, but
had a rough time of it on the way, eventually joining the Dallas
Mavericks (owned by Mark Cuban, who also owns Magnolia Picture, the
producer & distributor of this documentary), a team that was in
real trouble. He was none-too-helpful at first, but then good things
started to happen. We follow the sports story while getting a
thorough biography of the man himself.
Obviously,
non-fans of his team (or the sport) may not be interested, but this
is pretty good, pretty well done and shows an honest story of a man
with a great sports talent who would eventually rally his team to
national championships; the truest sign of a champion. Not bad at
106 minutes, it is definitely worth a look.
The
anamorphically enhanced 1.78 X 1 image on both DVDs are decent, with
Down
having some well-shot new interview footage and more than a few
licensed music video clips that are in as decent shape as we could
hope for, but there are also some shots that are rough and lack
definition. City
has been upgraded from just being letterboxed from its previous DVD
version in a new 2K transfer (hope we see a Blu-ray), but the
improvements are still plagued with more than a few soft shots that
make one wonder if it was shot in 16mm and not the 35mm (Kodak Plus-X
and Double-X black and white negative) it actually was shot in.
The
1080p 1.85 X 1 digital High Definition image transfer on Nowitzki
has some of the same mixed older video issues of Down,
but its HD-shot footage (interviews and newer sports footage) makes
it the visual winner here and it is well edited as well.
Both
DVDs are presented in lossy Dolby Digital 2.0 Stereo that sounds
decent, but has rough spots, with Down
at the mercy of some rough older audio and occasional location audio
issues, while City
was an Ultra Stereo release, a lesser version of Dolby's old A-type
analog noise reduction notorious for more distortion and sonic
limits. This still seems a little clearer than the old DVD, but only
narrowly so and with very weak surrounds.
The
DTS-HD MA (Master Audio) multi-lingual (especially English and
German) 5.1 lossless mix on Nowitzki
is well mixed and presented, but also has some location audio issues
and older audio it can only do so much about.
Extras
include Deleted Scenes on all but City,
which repeats the original 28-minutes-long
featurette on the making of the film and trailer from the older DVD,
but adds a too-brief Fifteen
Years Later
interview featurette with two of the lead actors. Down
adds two extended interviews and Nowitzki
adds an
Original Theatrical Trailer and new interview with Dirk Nowitzki.
-
Nicholas Sheffo
